This particular strength comes up often in the debate about what is and isn’t funny on late-night TV, which has moved beyond the standard monologue-sketch-interview formula to include a deluge of games, stunts, karaoke and lip-syncing.

“Everybody has taken Jimmy Fallon’s lead in terms of ‘do something that goes viral’ and do a talent thing, rather than comedy being the primary objective,” Macdonald says. “I think with Conan, still the first agenda is comedy and everything comes after that.”

But you’ll never hear O’Brien compare himself to anyone else. He insists it’s a pointless exercise. His collaborators are also loath to criticize competitors, saying there’s room for everyone. In a rare move last year, O’Brien publicly chastised one of his writers who tweeted a screed against the “prom king comedy” favored by Fallon and Kimmel: “Comedy in 2015 needs a severe motherf—ing shakeup. No celebrities, no parodies, no pranks, no mash-ups or hashtag wars . . . and shove your lip-synching up your ass.”

“I wish one of my writers would focus on making my show funnier instead of tweeting stupid things about the state of late night comedy,” O’Brien tweeted in response.

“I do not like comedy snobbery. I do not like people passing judgment on other people’s comedy, especially publicly . . . there’s tons of stuff out there that we can choose to dislike,” O’Brien says now.

And it’s not like O’Brien doesn’t love a good stunt with a celebrity guest. He has eaten Taco Bell with Martha Stewart and joined Grindr with Billy Eichner. But you will not find him playing any games. Mostly because he doesn’t like them. If someone invites him over to play “Pictionary,” he’ll find a way out of it.

“I don’t have anything personally against anyone doing that. That’s just not my thing, and it wouldn’t be organic. It wouldn’t look right,” O’Brien says. “I don’t want to make Dame Judi Dench ride a pogo stick. If Dame Judi Dench shows up and says, ‘By the way, I happen to love riding my pogo stick,’ great! But I don’t want to make her ride a pogo stick. Because when she falls, then we’re at war with Britain and it’s my fault.”