“You were inside with him” —Seth Meyers, host of the Weekend Comrades Update, greets Norm Macdonald

With comedy fans still reeling from the news that the true original and old stand-up Saturday Night Live star Norm Macdonald had died at the age of 61, Seth Meyers was slow to process Tuesday’s loss Late at night. Paying tribute to a guy whose deadpan style he nevertheless managed to imitate in his time by delivering replicas to SNLMeyers’ Weekend Update desk began by noting that the famous Macdonald (who hid his battle with cancer from almost everyone for a decade) “didn’t want anything sentimental.”

Maybe, but Meyers’ segment saw the host share his heartfelt admiration for his Weekend Update predecessor, sharing moments unique to Norm Macdonald, like the hour in the morning. Saturday Night Live 40th anniversary show where Macdonald’s little disjointed entry went off script enough for the venerable SNL (and now Late at night) Wally Feresten, the card guy, took the unprecedented step of making sure he didn’t wield the wrong cards. He wasn’t – it was just Norm who was Norm. “I remember laughing a lot,” Meyers recalls, “not because of what Norm was saying as much as the idea that either of us thought Norm would play by someone else’s rules.”

As for Macdonald’s influence on him personally, Meyers was unequivocal in noting that he still has to “beat Norm out of me” when it comes to delivering topical jokes to an audience. Explaining that Macdonald’s greatest gift was “the ability to just stare at the audience without blinking, telling the jokes you believed in,” Meyers shared Macdonald’s respect for SNL being “the last place on TV you can bomb”. Meyers didn’t mention Macdonald’s infamous sacking by NBC boss the late Don Ohlmeyer, apparently for Norm’s penchant for cheeky jokes about Ohlmeyer’s golf buddy. JO Simpson. In retrospect, that couldn’t help, but Norm’s canning was more likely about how SNLthe audience of were simply unwilling to accept Norm’s signature, fearlessly refusing to hold anyone’s hand through the jokes he knew were funny. With the admiration of a peer and a fan, Meyers explained that enjoying a Norm Macdonald joke meant feeling that “You were inside with him.”

By signing, Meyers urged viewers still shocked by the news of Macdonald’s death (Meyers recorded just hours after the news broke) to seek out the moth story to Late night with Conan O’Brien for just a taste of what made it “truly timeless”. (We compiled the moth joke alongside some of the MacDonalds other biggest hits for you, and a Dirty work rewatch is never a bad idea.) “He was the gold standard, and he will continue to be the gold standard,” Meyers finally said.