That left Mr. Davis, who appeared on television answering questions for 25 minutes ahead of the debate, as the biggest name on the marquee.
Her mother, a former radio soap opera actress and producer, greeted the addition to the living room with the welcoming yelp, "Hello TV!" And the television answered with, "Hello out there in TV land!" And so it went.
When Odinga mentioned, for some reason, that he is "an engineer by profession" (he was, thirty-five yeago ago), a drunk man, in a suit and a cowboy hat, standing under the television, answered "Thasalie!" Mohammed Dida used his time to explain that the Alliance of Real Change, or A.R.K., was not A.R.C., another party, though admittedly the "K" in A.R.K. did not stand for anything.
The Monkees, American pop-rock group created as a made-for-television answer to the Beatles in the mid-1960s.
If the comparison is with television, the answer is murkier.
But mostly, he seems to sit in his den, watch television and answer the phone.
Has anyone ever told you that your high-wattage passion for no-collar American food makes you television's answer to Calvin Trillin, if Mr. Trillin bleached his hair, drove a Camaro and drank Boozy Creamsicles?
When viewers are asked by newspapers or the BBC Trust to define what they would like to see more of on British television, the answer is invariably the same: more originality and less reliance on familiar formats.
DUBLIN — The final straw, said Dermot Gilmartin, was seeing an official struggle on television to answer questions about the topic of the hour: the European Union's Lisbon Treaty, which is being put to a referendum here on Thursday.
The communications minister, John Mahama, said the government would not "dance to the tune of foreigners".But the government got its voice heard a few days later when Mr Atta Mills organised a solo performance to set out his agenda on television, and answer questions from journalists.
(Bless those experts; to the untrained eye the foam at the mouth looks like dishwashing detergent.) Tracing what he imagines to be Harrison Ford's footsteps on Air Force One in the movie "Air Force One," Mr. Harmon does come to seem as if he might be television's answer to Mr. Ford -- a sober-minded maverick with a grin.
