Mr. Brady answers a ''Bunch'' of stupid questions

There are very few men who can pull off plaid pants and curly hair. Gary Cole is one such fellow. On Nov. 29, the versatile 46-year-old actor reprises his role as Mike Brady in the Fox TV movie ”The Brady Bunch in the White House,” which features the obliviously outmoded architect taking over the Oval Office. To learn more about Cole — who also earned cult acclaim as ”Office Space”’s droning boss, Bill Lumbergh, and now stars in The WB’s ”Family Affair” — we thought it’d be greaaaaat to ask him some stupid questions.

What are the pros and cons of sporting Mr. Brady’s ’70s white-man ‘fro?
The only pro I can think of is you do get laughs. The cons are basically everything else. You don’t look very cool. It’s not all that comfortable. It’s hard to take a nap, because [afterward] you look even stranger: You’ve got a permanent that’s no longer permanent.

If Mike Brady can become President, can’t ”Family Affair” rise from No. 104 in the ratings and topple its competitors, ”Friends” and ”Survivor”?
God, I didn’t know we were that high. [Laughs] ”Family Affair” will rule the Thursday 8 p.m. time slot…when there’s a ”Friends” episode where everyone falls down the elevator shaft and is lost forever. And Thailand sinks into the Pacific.

Did your residual checks ever get mixed up with Gary Coleman’s?
We get mixed up all the time. In the early ’80s, I got one of my first television jobs at NBC. I applied for an American Express card and they wrote back, saying ”Dear Mr. Coleman…” — because Gary Coleman was on NBC at the time, and he was, like, nine — denying my request because I wasn’t old enough.

It would be an honor if you, as Bill Lumbergh, asked me if I got the memo about the new cover sheets for all TPS reports.
Yeahhhhh, uh…listen, did you get the, uh, TPS reports? We, uh, kind of lost some people over the weekend and now have to play catch-up, ‘mkay? Thaaaaaanks, Peter.

That was pretty cool. Do boring corporations ever hire you as a motivational speaker?
Uh, no. But that’s something I should check into. You mix that with the Gary Coleman money, and I could make a lot of extra cabbage here.