WHEN JAY THOMAS WAS 16, DATELESS and desperate, he sank $700 into a used Fiat station wagon in the hopes that its reclining seats might have aphrodisiac powers. No such luck. "Nobody wanted to make out with me in that car." he says, recalling fumbling nights at a New Orleans drive-in. "I could never get the seal back, or I'd accidentally hit the girl in the head. In my mind, I'm that same guy in high school who couldn't get a date."

The evidence, however, is much to the contrary. These days, though the 44-year-old Thomas is still driving a 10-year-old Toyota station wagon, he is not only not a romantic klutz but also has to his credit two of the most publicized lover-guy roles in sitcoms. Last season, as the caustic talk show host Jerry Gold, he was finally unmasked as the mystery man who fathered Murphy Brown's baby. And this season, as crusty newspaper columnist Jack Stein, he's the roughhewn, commitment-phobic boyfriend of Susan Dey's yuppie restaurateur, Wally Porter, on CBS's Love & War.

Thomas's two most recent hits top a dizzying string of credits that includes a quirky role as amiable deli owner Remo Da Vinci on Mork & Mindy, a three-season stint on Cheers (as Carla's hockey-player husband. Eddie LeBec) and this year a big-screen role as talk show host Zim Zimmerman in the Dolly Parton comedy, Straight Talk—all in conjunction with a still flourishing radio career that has spanned 12 cities and 26 years. (He is currently the early morning disc jockey at KPWR in Los Angeles.)

The onscreen transition from loser to lothario hasn't been easy for Thomas, who is still fretting over his first kissing scene the season before last with Candice Bergen. "There must have been some executive at CBS who had to break the news to her," he says, laughing. "Relax her with a couple of cocktails, then show her my picture. I remember looking at her and thinking. "I've been alive like 40 years, and I have never kissed anything that looked like that.' "

Yes, he admits. "I'm insecure." At 5'8", Thomas is the butt of a lot of short jokes and says he hates the way "my eyes close and my teeth stick out of my mouth when I smile. You think Susan Dey and Candice Bergen would date me in real life?" That may be an open-ended question, but at least, says Thomas, when he and Dey smooch onscreen, "nobody goes E-e-e-w-w-w!' "

Diane English, creator of both Murphy Brown and Love & War, feels that Thomas is selling himself...well, short. "He has a lot of sex appeal and tremendous charisma," says English, who adds that Thomas was her first choice to play Jack Stein. "Both of them have a big mouth," she says with a laugh. "Very opinionated and aggressive. But Jay's also a very warm, caring person."

And he is a guy who can get the girl—and make the commitment. Thomas has been happily married for nearly six years to Sally Michel-son, who is expecting the couple's second baby in March. (Their son, Sam, is 2.) "I'm one of those guys who got more attractive as he lost hair and got older," he reluctantly concedes. But he isn't taking his newfound hunk image to the bank. "I always figure I'll wind up in the Where Are They Now? section, working at a convenience store out in Simi Valley," he says. "I'm probably led by a terror of failure."

If so, it certainly wasn't in evidence during Thomas's New Orleans boyhood. Then, as the younger son of the late Harry Thomas, president of a small oil company, and his wife, Kathy, a trophy-winning ballroom dancer, he spent idyllic afternoons hunting and fishing on the Louisiana bayous. He got his start as a comic, unwittingly, when his family nicknamed him Mr. Grumpy. "I'd grump and complain because I didn't want to be with people," he says. "Then I'd start telling jokes, and they'd laugh, and I'd be into the whole deal."

By 16, Thomas was doing stand-up comedy at clubs in the French Quarter, cribbing material from Bill Cosby and Woody Allen. "If it was good enough," he says, "the audience didn't care if it was original." After graduating in 1966 from Jesuit High School, a military school in New Orleans, Thomas got his first deejay job at a Top-40 station in Pensacola, Fla. He then started hopscotching through various Southern schools—and disc jockey jobs—eventually graduating from Jacksonville University in 1972 with a degree in sociology.

Three years later, Thomas moved to New York City, where, while nurturing his radio career, he also branched out into stand-up comedy and acting. During his 20s, he was also married briefly. "She was wrong to choose me, and I was wrong to choose her," he says. "She was a great gal, but we never kept in touch."

In 1979, Thomas's prime-time career began when producers, impressed with his stand-up routine, cast him in Mork & Mindy. He moved to L.A., only to have his part fizzle after two seasons. "I'd never even been to see a TV show filmed, and suddenly I'm in the thing," he recalls. "I lived that first year just trying to do what I thought was acting." That effort was especially daunting given coworker Robin Williams's awesome talent. "He'd move his finger, and the place was hysterical, says Thomas. "I'd say something, and there was dead silence. I wash I funny, and I wasn't relaxed."

Flattened when he was written out of the show, Thomas returned to New York City, where he took acting lessons and resumed an already successful radio career. Then in 1986 he lost his job at WXRK-FM (K-Rock) to shock-jocker Howard Stern. ("Howard'S boring a lot of the time, and then he slaps you with something wild, says Thomas, pulling no punches. "He's like a car accident. You pass, you don't want to look, but you do anyway. [His] is a crappy act to have.") While in New York he also met Sally, then a buyer for Saks Filth Avenue, through friends. "I remember thinking that Sally was the nicest person I'd met in a long, long time," says Jay, "and that if everything worked out, I'd probably marry her. Of course, he says, sounding like Jack Stein, " I didn't tell her any of this." When he decided to return to L.A., she followed, and they were married in December 1986. "It was sort of a quickie deal," says Jay of the small, low-key ceremony, which took place just six months after his proposal. "I think she was afraid I'd take it back.

With his television career securely anchored. Thomas no longer stews about being occasionally mistaken for Jay Leno and Home Improvement's Tim Allen ("I was ver-r-r-r-y insulted," he says) and now enjoys the oddball perks of fame. During a recent proctology exam, he reports, the attending nurse asked for his autograph.

Still, the price—and the pace—can be grueling. Thomas is usually up at 3:30 A.M. for a workout and is on the air at KPWR by 5 for his four-hour show. By midmorning he's on the Love & War set, where days last until 6 P.M.—except on Friday, when live taping can run until 11.

"I only think about the radio when I'm doing it," says Thomas, "and the acting when I'm doing it. When I'm driving. I just think about getting home."

Off hours, Jay golfs and, with Sally, who is studying to be a nutritionist, supervises construction of an addition to their three-bedroom Hollywood Hills home. When stress gets the best of him. Jay starts to whistle. "I can hear him whistling, " Sally says, "and I know that he's trying to get things back on track again before he totally flips out."

It all seems to suit the energetic Thomas, who says that despite a career "that reads like a Piedmont Airlines flight schedule," he still has one goal. "I'd like to play the sheriff of the town and shoot everybody," he says, lost for a moment in the reverie. "But I'll probably just get parts for normal guys."

SUSAN SCHINDEHETTE
KRISTINA JOHNSON in Los Angeles