Kathy Kinney is not a standup comic, she doesn't pretend to be one, nor does she play one on TV. "I like to call myself a TV whore," says Kinney, who's best known for her role as Drew's feisty, garishly made-up arch enemy Mimi Bobeck on The Drew Carey Show.

"I love working on a comedy series. I sort of see us as performers riding around in a wagon in medieval times. I love the schedule: we work four days in front of a live audience, take a break, then pick up and start a new show."

Although Kinney made her start doing improv with a troupe in comedy clubs in the mid '80s, she's tried her hand at everything from off-Broadway theatre and film, to a plethora of sitcom guest appearances. And TV-land is where she wants to stay. "My agents get frustrated with me because I'll turn down movie parts if I don't think it's going to be fun. I'm stingy with my time." So she ends up happily spending most of her time playing Mimi. "There are about three stock questions that people on the street always ask me. One of them is 'Where's Drew?' And I always say, 'He's waiting in the car.' Also, people wanna know when we're gonna get together [on the show]. It's like they think all this fighting is just covering up some underlying lust. Well, we'll never get together--unless there's a lot of money involved or hell freezes over."

Kinney can't seem to escape the TV-watching public's intermingling of sitcom fiction and real-life fact. Even in bars in small Central American countries. "Drew brought the cast on a cruise vacation around Mexico and a bit of Central America last year. I'm very sun-phobic so I had a scarf wrapped around my head and long sleeves and sunglasses on the whole time, going around thinking that I looked like Katharine Hepburn. This local guy somewhere in Honduras, in a bar on stilts over water, goes 'Hey, where's your makeup?'" A question many astute Americans pose her in the street, to which she usually quips, "I wash my face."

Kathy Kinney hosts An Evening at Eve's Tavern, at Kola Note July 20, 7pm & 9:30pm, $19.50+tax