KEVIN Clash is behind one the half-dozen most recognizable names on TV – and, chances are, you’ve never heard of him.
He’s bigger than just about just about anyone on CBS and ABC – and more young people know him than anyone on The WB.
Yet he can’t score a table at a choice restaurant, he’s never been to the Oscars and doesn’t have a personal assistant.
Kevin Clash is – are you ready? – Elmo.
That’s right, Elmo – “Sesame Street’s” furry red, um, thing with fingernails-on-blackboard voice who is a multi-million dollar industry unto himself.
“I’m happy with the anonymity,” Clash says. But he also knows why he is unknown to everyone but a handful of insiders.
“Puppeteers are treated as second class entertainers,” he says, but that’s another story.
Like a man who can eavesdrop at his own funeral, Clash’s anonymity allows him to listen while people talk about him.
“One day I’m in a cab where the driver’s complaining that the Elmo tape playing all day is driving him crazy,” Clash recalls.
“So, I agree with him and hold it in the whole ride, laughing inside, until I get out and tease him to ‘keep the change!’ in the voice – he didn’t know what hit him.”
And attempting to put the lifeless Elmo muppet through airport security is always a trip.
“I’m concerned with security – I say: ‘Be careful with him.’ ” If the guards want to know why, “I tell them who I am. [Then] they whip out the cell phone, call the kids and have me do the voice.”
But Clash doesn’t always tell people who he is. He takes walks around the city and usually spots kids decked in Elmo T-shirts or holding stuffed Elmo dolls.
“I’ll step outside myself and realize this thing is huge – but those are the times I don’t say anything.”
When he isn’t working, he’s in his Manhattan pad glued to either the Weather Channel – checking world temperatures – or to the Food Network.
“I’m obsessed,” he exclaims. “I’m known for my Maryland crabcakes.”
No wonder he prefers eating in – his name alone is not enough to get into the trendier restaurants without a reservation.
“I tell the hostess I’m Elmo – 80 percent of the time it fails. They think: ‘He’s no Robert DeNiro,’ ” Clash says.
And he has days like everyone when he’s in no mood for work because he deals with “muppets and three year olds.” But he’s managed single-handedly to turn Elmo – who wasn’t even originally his main role – into an icon.
“The guy who used to play Elmo threw him to me one day and I came up with a voice on the spot. The next day, I was Elmo.”
