Paul Shaffer

…and his comic foil, bandleader Paul Shaffer; nonsensical skits, notably “Stupid Pet Tricks”; and roving cameras that captured ordinary people and placed them in the limelight.

…with the show’s diminutive bandleader, Paul Shaffer, an accomplished musician who affected a glitzy showbiz persona that typified the show’s winking tongue-in-cheek sensibility. Like Late Night, it had a hip cachet that had much to do with the audience’s being in on the joke, whether it involved the nightly Top…