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Norm MacDonald gets fired (1998)

It is said that Edith Piaf could sing the phone book and it would be beautiful. Well, Norm MacDonald could read the phone book and it would be funny. Here’s a 1998 Letterman appearance, the day he was fired from Saturday Night Live.

No one knows for sure why SNL fired Norm. The executive he mentioned here, Don Ohlmeyer, was a friend of O.J. Simpson. So Norm’s relentless pillorying of the former sports star may have had something to do with it.

After the jump, happier times. Two all-time classic Norm moments from 1997 and 2010…

Here Norm hilariously sabotages Conan O’Brien’s interview with Courtney Thorne-Smith, one of the then-stars of Melrose Place. Make sure to watch it through to the very end.

(For the full episode, these are parts one, two and three.)

The moth joke. In all its glory.

Finally, a bunch of asshole tell anecdotes about Norm on the Howard Stern Show.