In 1997, an ambitious comedian, writer, and actor named Stephen Colbert was looking for any work doing comedy that he could find. In fact, he made a packet for The Late Show with David Letterman that included Letterman’s famous recurring Top Ten List bit.

17 years later, that same Stephen Colbert is set to take over that same Late Show in 2015. After all that time, that Top Ten List that went nowhere was read by Colbert in front of David Letterman and still holds up pretty well, despite being Christmas-themed. Apparently, Colbert also revealed that he was almost an intern at Late Night and could have theoretically made Letterman’s acquaintance years ago.

If you should take anything from this, it should be that, even without the facade of The Colbert Report character, Stephen Colbert is going to have a hell of a good time as host of The Late Show.