If you thought that Stephen Colbert’s live election night special on Showtime was one of the most amazingly awful pieces of television you’ve ever seen, the Late Show host would like you to know that it was doubly awful being in front of the camera. “That was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Colbert confessed during a one-on-one conversation with fellow comedian/political commentator/all-around funny guy, Last Week Tonight‘s John Oliver, held on Nov. 19 at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center as a fundraiser for the Montclair Film Festival. “The audience was sobbing openly.”

What made the telecast even more challenging was the fact that Colbert and his writing staff had to jettison much of their preplanned material when it became clear which way the electoral winds were blowing. “We had guests and pretaped pieces for one of three eventualities: Hillary Clinton wins and we know; Hillary Clinton wins and we don’t know, because it’s not called until the show’s over; or Donald Trump wins and we don’t know, because he has such a narrow path to victory.” In the end, Colbert wound up having to put on a show that nobody had prepared for: Donald Trump winning the election in real time. “We have two-and-a-half shows worth of material that you’ll probably never see,” he said mournfully. “We had all these made-up commercials, but none of them were appropriate once we went on the air.”

Two weeks removed from that difficult election night, Oliver and Colbert enjoyed a free-flowing conversation covering everything from their Daily Show days to what to expect from the next four years. Here are five other highlights from this meeting of two of our favorite comic minds.

Bomb hard

Every standup comic has a “Worst Gig Ever” story, and Oliver was kind enough to share his tale with us. One night, he took the stage to perform for an audience of four, all of whom left before the hour-long set was over. “Two people left about 15 minutes in,” he remembered. “So we’re down to two people, a married couple. And then the husband — in a real act of betrayal — said to his wife, ‘I’m just going to the toilet.’ We knew that wasn’t true, because he took his coat with him. So he leaves, and it’s just me and his wife, and I’m trying not to look into her eyes. I was approaching the 30-minute mark, and I saw her hand go down toward her bag. I said, ‘You’re leaving, aren’t you?’ And she said, ‘I’m sorry.’ I could hear the door as she opened it, and when it closed, the lighting guy said, ‘Do you want to keep going?’ There’s no way to spin that as a good gig!”

View photos Nothing like a pillow fight between friends. (Dave Kotinsky / Getty) More

The naked time

Being on HBO allows a late-night host certain freedoms that a late-night host on, say, CBS wouldn’t get — freedoms like four-letter words, no commercials, and, of course, lots and lots of nudity. And Oliver remembered that Last Week Tonight made sure to take advantage of the latter option, which is readily employed by such popular series as Game of Thrones and Girls, early on. “In the first season, we did one scene of full frontal male nudity — not mine! — and we had to cast a series of penises, so they brought me all these penis shots. My casting criteria was: [the penis] shouldn’t make your heart hurt, or feel bad for the person or make you think that a trip to the doctor would be advised. So that eliminated two out of the five penises.” Now that he’s in his third season, though, he doesn’t feel the need to strip down again. “We wanted to exercise all those muscles [early on] and then relax and do our show. But we couldn’t not do it at that point.”

No guests, please, he’s British

Pop quiz: What do Last Week Tonight and Full Frontal With Samantha Bee have in common beyond the fact that they’re each hosted by ex-Daily Show correspondents? They also both eschew the typical late-night format of making time for an interview portion. In Oliver’s case, that wasn’t his original intention. “We built a whole side of our stage as an interview area, because that’s what I thought you did. That’s the DNA I was raised on at The Daily Show. You talk for a bit, and then you to talk to someone else for a bit, and then everyone stops talking.” The host did incorporate interviews into never-aired test shows, but dropped them after HBO said that he could use that time for other material. “We still have this whole interview stage that we barely ever use. Right now, it’s where we have dancing mascots and explosions.”