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Conan sidekick Andy Richter on new show, growing up in Yorkville

Andy Richter described it this way: "I felt like she hit me in the head with a baseball bat!"

The comedian and TV personality, who grew up in Yorkville, had enrolled at the University of Illinois to become a journalist. During his sophomore year, he sat down with a College of Communications dean. She asked what he wanted to do.

"I want to be a writer," Richter said. "But, I think I want to write something fictional. I'm not so much interested in writing journalism as I am writing entertainment."

"Well," the dean said, "you're at the wrong school!"

The exchange flabbergasted young Richter.

"I had never considered for a second that I would go anywhere but the U of I," he said. "It only took me a minute to realize she was right."

That's how Yorkville's Andy Richter grew up to become the man Esquire magazine dubbed "the world's greatest sidekick" - a job he's held with Conan O'Brien on and off through "Late Night," "The Tonight Show" and "Conan." Richter is also a writer, comedian, actor and, now, the host of the Food Network's "Celebrity Food Fight" game show series that started May 29.

"I never thought it was possible to wind up having the kind of career I have," Richter confessed.

"Being from Yorkville, Illinois, you couldn't tell people, 'I'm going to be on TV!' or 'I'm going to be in the movies!' At the time, it sounded ridiculous even to say, 'I'm going to be a writer for a living!'"

Richter was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and moved to Yorkville at age 4. In 1984, he graduated Yorkville High School.

"It was a pretty simple, idyllic, Midwest small-town upbringing," he said. "I lived in the farm house that my great-grandfather built. I would go play in the woods until I got hungry. I would eat, then go back into the woods."

After Richter's meeting with the dean, he decided that movies might be his future and went to Chicago's Columbia College where he discovered acting.

"I was surrounded by a bunch of creative, artsy weirdos," he said. "It was great!"

Then, he enrolled in a class at Chicago's Improv Olympics.

"That was when I really found my tribe," Richter said. "These are my people!"

Improvisational comedy, he explained, was suited to him because "I'm not a good writer, in that I don't do well on my own. I do better in groups. So collaborating was right up my alley."

He does plenty of that with Conan O'Brien. The two first teamed up in 1993. Being an announcer/sidekick is an anything-goes kind of job: Richter's done everything from making out with an elephant trunk puppet in the shower to destroying post-Halloween pumpkins with a chain saw.

He's also acted in movies and TV, including his own short-lived series "Andy Richter Controls the Universe."

Yorkville native Andy Richter, center, hosts the Food Network's second season of "Celebrity Food Fight" with guests Katie Lee, Christopher Knight, Anne Burrell and Kevin Jonas.

These days, Richter, a married father of two, also works on his Food Network show, in which celebrities pair off with noted chefs to perform such antics as guessing fake cookbook titles and using their fingers to identify edible items in a box.

"My biggest challenge is maintaining a balance between cracking jokes and moving the show along," Richter said. "I'm like a traffic cop making sure everything happens when it should."

"I know what makes a show work," he adds. "There is a very salable commodity out there called television and I'm in the business of manufacturing it. On top of that, it's so much fun."

Take the time Richter sat next to Anderson Cooper at the Turner Network, where executives pitch the upcoming fall TV season to entice potential advertisers.

"There I was next to Anderson Cooper, making comments and making him giggle," Richter said. "That's what I live for! I am so happy to be sitting next to Anderson Cooper, who likes to giggle.

"The people I don't understand are the ones who don't want to sit at a boring sales presentation and whisper funny things to each other.

"To me, that's what life is - sitting through the boring stuff and making people laugh."

- Dann Gire

• Jamie Sotonoff and Dann Gire are looking for good stories about suburbanites in showbiz. Know some? Contact them at jsotonoff@dailyherald.com or dgire@dailyherald.com.

Richter on Hastert

Andy Richter turned to Twitter recently to comment on another person who put Yorkville High School in the news: disgraced former U.S. House Speaker Dennis Hastert.

Hastert, a former teacher and wrestling coach there, has admitted to sexual misconduct with students. Richter recalled a chair outside the boys’ showers, where one of Hastert’s accusers said the coach sat and watched the students.

“I went to Yorkville High School and I remember this chair,” Richter tweeted last month. “Purportedly ‘to keep boys from fighting.’”

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