Have you ever wondered what kind of a song they'd come up with if you were pulled out of the audience on Whose Line Is It Anyway?

   I had a chance to find out yesterday from Wayne Brady, who was in town guesting on Open Mike With Mike Bullard.

   Brady is the show-stopping song plugger on the improv game show, which airs Thursday nights on CTV and ABC. The back-to-back half-hours are hosted by Drew Carey and feature improv masters Ryan Stiles and Colin Mochrie.

   "Basically, all I know is that your name is Bill and that you're a reporter," said Brady, the youngest member of the TV troupe. "So right away I start thinking of newspaper images -- bylines, front page, cub reporter, the Daily Planet, that type of thing."

   Brady stands up and breaks into song to demonstrate:

      "Bill, I think you're really sweet;
      Why don't you give me a sign.
      I might be hetero;
      But I think that you're bi-line."

      "Gee, uh, thanks Wayne."

   Brady swears that the songs, which start as simple suggestions from Carey and the audience, are all instantly ad-libbed.

   "It's all improv from the get-go," said Brady, who along with the rest of the cast tapes several sketches over a two-and-a-half hour studio stretch. Later, the sketches are edited into separate shows. That's why the cast is always wearing the same primary-coloured clothes.

   "We're like the friggin' Power Rangers or the Teletubbies of Comedy," Brady said. "Hopefully, next season I can start wearing some of my own clothes."

   He said it would defeat the purpose if the cast had more time to work out their routines. "It has to be like walking the tightrope," he said.

   Unlike Stiles and Mochrie, Brady skipped the Second City route. Straight out of high school, he cut his comedy teeth with the Sak theatre troupe in Orlando, Fla., performing at venues such as Disney World and Universal Studios.

   When it came time to audition for Whose Line in late 1997, Brady was up against hundreds of Second City and Groundlings grads.

   "At the end of the day, when the smoke cleared, there were five of us," said Brady, who knocked the producers dead with his impressions and his singing shtick. "Of the five (who were chosen), I'm the only person to be a regular since that season."

   He knew he belonged as soon as he made Stiles laugh.

   "It's an incredible team," he said. "And to have the venue to do it on network TV in millions of homes -- it's a really heady experience."

   Now he's working on his own ABC variety show pilot for next fall. "It's either going to be called The Wayne Brady Show or Wayne.com," he said. It will feature a cast of unknowns, but don't be surprised if Carey and company drop in from time to time.

   "It's going to be interactive on a lot of levels, both with the Internet and the studio audience.

   Movie offers have flooded in, but nothing has grabbed Brady. "Sometimes I want to ask one of these producers what it is that they see in me that they would want to send me this particular script," said Brady, who sees himself more in the Danny Kaye musical-comedy mould. "Last time I checked, I didn't look like an enforcer from the 'hood. But I get these scripts: Jimmy's Big Black Ass Adventure. What's that all about?"

   No matter what offers come his way, don't expect Brady to drop out of Whose Line just yet. "Are you kidding?" he said. "I'm riding that horse until its neck breaks."