By CLAYTON PARK

Forget David Letterman, Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. The REAL star of late-night television around here is that guy who stars in those crazy commercials for Vern Fonk, the insurance agency that makes its home on the corner of North 39th and Stone Way - the Fremont-Wallingford border.

If you're a night-owl TV watcher, you know who I'm talking about. For those of you who prefer turning in before the stroke of midnight, let me fill you in on what you're missing. Vern Fonk commercials are 30-seconds of uninhibited wackiness that are, by far, funnier than what has been passing for skits on "Saturday Night Live" lately.

Quite often, they are dead-on satires of everything from "60 Minutes" TV commentator Andy Rooney ("Hi, I'm Vern Rooney...") to Ronco Records ("Vern Fonk's Greatest Hits" on Bronco Records).

Other Vern Fonk ads are just plain silly: One of my favorite Vern Fonk spot starts off "normal," with our guy, dressed in a business-suit, standing in front of a bookcase, speaking with a completely serious expression as he acknowledges: "That's right, this is another one of those goofy Vern Fonk ads..." After a standard spiel about insurance services, he then breaks into an outrageous rap-music-style rant that has to be seen to be believed: "When you need insurance, you know who you should call, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, Vern, Fonk-Fonk-Fonk..."

Vern Fonk's TV spots often evoke a "did I just see what I thought I saw?" reaction, which of course you know that you did after repeated viewings.

A couple years ago, The Stranger ran a review of "Forrest Gump" that actually advised readers to skip the movie and watch Vern Fonk's parody, which opens with "Vern Gump" sitting on a park bench at Green Lake as he talks about how "insurance is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get..."

OK, so here are the questions I'm sure a lot of people have been wondering: Is that guy in the commercials REALLY Vern Fonk? And, do those commercials, while undeniably memorable, REALLY make people want to buy insurance from them?

The answer to the first question is no. The guy in the commercials is a 33-year-old actor named Rob Thielke, who just so happens to also be a Vern Fonk insurance agent. He worked for several years at the agency's main office on Stone Way before opening a Vern Fonk office in Everett which he continues to manage.

The REAL Vern Fonk retired several years ago, having sold the business in 1994 to his daughter Rene Mulvany and her husband Kevin. Rene now serves as president, while Kevin is vice president of the company.

Thielke says he gets recognized as "Vern Fonk" nearly everywhere he goes, and has even been asked to sign autographs at restaurants and while grocery shopping.

The REAL Vern Fonk "thinks it's great," adds Thieke, who says Fonk is happy about anything that can get the phone to ring. "I've asked him, 'when people see your credit card, do people laugh?' 'Oh yeah!' he says."

Which brings us to the answer of the second question: Yes, the commercials are working in that it has succeeded in getting the Vern Fonk name noticed. "Advertising doesn't force someone to come in," explains Kevin. "We have to be good at insurance. The commercial is just a way to get someone to call us or remember our name."

Kevin says it's no coincidence that business has grown tremendously since the agency began airing its zany commercials in1995. This month, Vern Fonk, which specializes in non-standard auto insurance, is opening a Bellevue office, the agency's fourth, following the opening of its Tacoma office in 1995 and its Everett office last year.

Kevin said when his agency started running TV commercials five years ago, they initially tried the conservative approach, with a kindly older man at a desk who told viewers, "If you have a couple of tickets, we can help you."

"They were very Sunny Kobe Cook-ish," recalls Kevin, only without the presence of Sunny Kobe Cook, who, love her or hate her, is inarguably a presence.

The commercials were a complete flop, according to Kevin. "We were getting a response, but not enough of one ... but we knew we couldn't give up on advertising. We knew we wanted to open more offices (throughout Puget Sound) and the only way to advertise that could reach all those markets effectively was TV."

The solution that Kevin and Rene chose was to change their approach to their commercials. Enter: Rob Thielke, the agency's longtime employee whom Kevin describes as someone who can be "as conservative as they come" when dealing with clients, but who, at times, also liked to occasionally clown around, much to the delight of his co-workers. For example, when the movie "Forrest Gump" came out, Kevin said Thielke started imitating the title character at work, complete with Forrest Gump's walk and manner of speech.

"That gave us the idea for doing the 'Vern Fonk' commercial," said Kevin.

That commercial put Vern Fonk on the map, said Thielke, who still gets comments about it three years later from people he meets when out in public.

Some little known facts: Rene, who has a degree in marketing from Central Washington University, and Thielke are the chief script writers for the commercials. With only a couple rare exceptions, all the actors in commercials are Vern Fonk employees. Kevin is usually "the tall one" in the commercials involving crash test dummies. Rene plays the little old lady that Thielke helps across the street in the "Insurance Agent-Man" commercial (a takeoff on the old "Secret Agent-Man" TV show). Rene also came up with the tagline: "Honk When You Drive By Vern Fonk." "The honk tells you how to pronounce the name," explains Kevin, who adds: "You'd be surprised how many people honk as they drive by our office."

Ironically, Thielke says, his older brother, whom he describes as a "struggling actor in L.A," was the one who appeared in those first Vern Fonk commercials, the "real boring" ones. "It's funny, when he comes home because he's this guy who's been pursing acting with limited success and his friends laugh because I'M the one who's become famous!" says Thielke.