Everyone’s two favourite late night hosts – Stephen Colbert and Conan O’Brien – got together on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to put their heads together. Very literally.

Conan O’Brien is a legend for many things: revolutionizing late night talk shows, revolutionizing The Simpsons, revolutionizing Chuck Norris. So it’s bound to be with great privilege that Stephen gets to share a stage with him. But share a stage? They’ve been there, done that. What they haven’t done before is share a box. With just their faces. A very small box. And only their heads.

The two late night hosts went head-to-head last night. And what they came up with was some pretty good shtick – though it’s not the first time Colbert has stuck his head in a box to talk to someone.

Conan and Colbert have pretty differing comedic styles, but there is a middle ground with plenty of room to meet. Unlike that box, where there is very little room to meet. But, it does have ample room for comedy! Colbert throws away all pretenses of serious conversation only a few moments in (if there were any pretenses left after they stuck their heads in a cardboard box, anyway). The conversation quickly turns into a grooming session when Colbert pulls out a comb to run through Conan O’Brien’s fiery hair.

The end result was still Conan’s peculiar hair.

But they did get down and serious, when both men wept, just centimeters away from each other. What they were weeping over was… okay it’s debatable if they had a valid reason for their crying session. But these guys are pretty good fake criers.

Now, it’s pretty obvious that Conan O’Brien is really Irish. But did you know that he’s really, really Irish? He recently did one of those 23andMe-style DNA tests and found out that he is basically 100% Irish. Like, not 93%, not 97%, 100%, full-on Irish. But – is anyone surprised by this? The palest, red-headedest man on TV is obviously fully Irish.

And even though his genetics say one thing, that doesn’t mean that he’s good at being Irish. He’s a born and raised American, so when it comes to Irish culture, Conan is more in the “D-” range.

There isn’t any other space in late night where a host gets so up close an personal with a guest. Carpool Karaoke? That’s a comfortably sized sedan, or whatever it is they drive around. And don’t think that, just because it’s on Comedy Central, The Daily Show is operating out of a shoe-boxed sized studio. Yeah, it’s probably pretty small – it is Comedy Central after all – but it’s not cardboard box small. Colbert has the market cornered on that kind of thing.

Catch more of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert airing weeknights at 11.35 et/pt on Global, and watch the latest episodes online here on GlobalTV.com!