At its best, interviewing a comic can go like great improv. Even at its worst, at least one person can be counted on to be quick and funny.

   "Sometimes, not even that," sighs Colin Mochrie, who in spite of his own judgment is quick and funny -- and suddenly seen all over.

   The master improvisor is a nine-year player on the English Whose Line Is It Anyway? and co-stars on the U.S. ABC remake hosted by Drew Carey. He has the lead in the Canadian game show spoof Supertown Challenge, a concept dreamed up by Steve Smith and Red Green Show cohort Patrick McKenna and shot at Hamilton's ONTV. It premieres tomorrow night at 7:30 on The Comedy Network.

   Mochrie will also be featured on Comedy's upcoming series Improv Heaven & Hell.

   Right now, having a tape recorder capture his every word appears to be his idea of Hell on earth. Hence the woeful comment on his potential as an interview subject, an exercise he was scheduled to repeat a dozen times this week, including appearances on Dini this afternoon and Open Mike With Mike Bullard tonight.

   "Part of it is very gratifying because I'm being recognized for the work I'm doing, blah, blah, blah, fine," he says.

   "But still, I would get bored listening about me after about five minutes. Some people have really interesting lives. I love my life. It's a great life. But it will never make a movie. Unless something drastic happens in the next little while. I'm thinking of spending time in crime-infested areas."

   When he comes up with a good story, it turns out to be an anecdote about his wife, comic/Go Girl! writer Deb McGrath, or their eight-year-old son Luke, a budding performer who believes Mom's faux talk show should be renamed Go Girl -- And A Boy!

   "I'm probably third on the family ladder of funniness," apologizes Mochrie, in mild interview agony.

   "Am I too boring? Do I look neurotic? I'm not going to last," he moans.

   His on-stage abandon contrasts sharply with this off-stage reserve.

   "I don't understand it. There are times when I watch myself and I'm almost embarrassed that I do it. But for some reason, I feel very relaxed up there," he says.

   At 40 and in the business for 22 years, he spent much of the past few either in London or New York shooting Whose Line or in L.A. for McGrath's syndicated series My Talk Show.

   Back home, he resigned himself to enjoying a low-profile career that earned him a fair living.

   Then all this.

   Promoting Whose Line in L.A. for ABC this summer, he got the Hollywood star treatment.

   "People were throwing me up with (NYPD Blue's) Kim Delaney and taking pictures. That poor woman. I said, 'Hi, I'm Colin Mochrie. I guess we're going out now.' That's when she looked scared."

   Since, he's been offered guest parts on Mad About You and on Fantasy Island, which would have meant two weeks in Hawaii.

   "The same day, I was auditioning for a laughing hyena up here, to put it all in perspective. I had to turn them down because we were just getting ready to start Supertown. I gave up Hawaii for Hamilton."

   But he got that hyena job on the HBO cartoon series George & Martha. McGrath is the voice of his hyena wife. For the first time since we sat down, I swear he straightens up and looks proud.

   "I'm also playing a sexually ambiguous crocodile," he says. "I have layers."