Fan Fare

Regis Philbin, the genial TV morning show host and sometime punching bag for his sidekick Kelly Ripa, came face-to-face with an actor on a completely different career trajectory on Thursday, when Neil Patrick Harris stopped by the set to pick up an award for his impersonation of Regis.

These days, Harris couldn’t get any more popular unless he slipped on his Doogie Howser doctor coat and found a cure for some deadly disease. Coming off his well-received job hosting the Primetime Emmy Awards on Sept. 20, Harris is holding down a job playing a womanizing executive on “How I Met Your Mother,” and he earned an Emmy nomination for that role. Somewhere along the line, he also did an impersonation of Regis that got the excitable TV host’s attention.

Harris has the gay audience because he is openly gay, he has the stoner audience because of his ironic cameo appearance in the two “Harold & Kumar”  movies (warning, graphic language in clip) and he has the audience that looks at him nostalgically from his role in the early 1990s “Doogie Howers, M.D.” sitcom.

And then there’s Regis Philbin.

On his syndicated TV talk show, “Live! With Regis and Kelly,” Philbin and co-host Ripa made much of the fact that Philbin has never won the award handed out each year for whoever does the “best Regis” impersonation.

“It would be nice if Regis won it once and a while,” Philbin said on his show, wearing a white tuxedo and a black bow-tie.

But alas, the avuncular Philbin’s flummoxed act was all for naught, as Harris came out to accept the so-called Relly Award from everyone’s favorite TV pitch man.

“May I just say that I did not win the Emmy Award this year,” Harris said. “I did win the Relly Award, and you would think  … you would think that this would be nice consolation, and would make me feel nice. And in fact, it does not.”

To add to that dig, Harris said that he likes to do his Regis impersonation on the set of “How I Met Your Mother.” Maybe Philbin could stop by and see how it’s done.

(Photo credit: Disney-ABC Domestic Television)