When one thinks of Regis Philbin they may think of his historic run on television on a number of different shows.
Likely it’s from his run on “Live!” with Kathie Lee, Kelly Ripa or for a short-time, by himself that he hosted.
Others may think of game shows, especially “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” that he helped turn into a TV phenomenon.
Those are all great and worthy of praise as we remember Regis today after his death at 88 years old Friday night.
One thing I will always remember about Regis however happened on TV but didn’t occur on a show he actually hosted.
A week after 9/11 back in 2001, when we started to return to life as normal, or at least as best as we all could, David Letterman returned to “The Late Show” on CBS.
After an obviously emotional start to the program and just after a visit from Dan Rather, Letterman welcomed Regis Philbin as his guest.
For some reason I always remembered Letterman saying early in the show that “Regis is here so at least we have something to laugh at” and it helped break the uneasiness everyone was going through in even the slightest way.
You can watch the full episode of “The Late Show” from September 17, 2001 by clicking here or if you’d like to watch Regis’s appearance that night, simply click play on the video below.
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJxGWrsGntY&w=560&h=315]