Who is W. Kamau Bell and why is he on TV?

W. Kamau Bell (he goes by Kamau, as in cum-OW) says he's been flying under the radar. That's not easy to do when you have a weekly TV show on a major cable network in primetime. But he's probably right.

Truth is, Kamau has been noticed by a lot of FX viewers who watch Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell  and enjoy his liberal-oriented political humor and social satire. And his bosses at FX have noticed, too. They have big plans for the former San Francisco-area standup comic.

Starting Wednesday, Sept. 4, Kamau will have a Monday-through-Thursday show at 11 p.m. on Fox's new cable channel, FXX. With Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and Bill Maher, does TV have room for another comedian with a progressive bent?  I'm betting it does.

Gap-toothed Kamau has his own unique style. He still fawns over celebrities during interviews but his questions and responses have been getting sharper throughout his inaugural TV season.

Interestingly, Kamau registers strongly with women between 18 and 34. He's been told they see a feminist agenda in the show. I suspect it has more to do with a sweetness that underlies his personality. A young father and husband, Kamau seems to be in it for the laughs, not for a slice of someone's jugular.

He's been getting more comfortable with the TV camera and is clearly at home with his studio audience and in taped pieces with people on the street. He is never more than a step away from his roots in standup, where he spent 15 years honing his craft.

In a phone interview, he told me he considered his TV show a sort of internship that led up to his new daily show. "Every talk show starts out on wobbly legs. But if poeple get to keep their jobs long enough, they find their way...If I started out five days a week, I think I'd be dead or canceled by now. By starting out once a week, I've been able to get my sea legs."

FX told him to experiment with his weekly show and he has done just that. He frequently has his writers on camera to perform sketches and monologues. Some were terrific, others were awful, but it's all part of the growing pains.

 "I think in every episode we've tried to do something that was different. We've had a band. We've sent other people than me out on the street. We've had sketch pieces unlike those we've done before. We're trying to come up with as many different angles as possible so that, when we start the daily show, we feel like we've got a lot in the reservoir."

Politics aside, I asked, what makes conservative hosts different from liberal hosts?

"Conservative comedians end up becoming leaders of the Republican Party," he said. "Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh are nothing more than conservative comedians who are taken seriously by their party. With Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, certainly the Democratic Party appreciates them, but they are not being promoted into leadership positions."

For some reason, Kamau added, people take Bill O'Reilly seriously. Stewart, on the other hand, goes to great lengths to let his viewers know he's a comedian.

Starting next month, he embarks on a three-week, 10-city tour. The Totally Biased Stand Up Tour with W. Kamau Bell includes a stop at Largo at the Coronet, 366 N. La Cienega, on Saturday, July 20. At each stop, he shares the stage with three of his staff writers, most of them standup comedians like himself. And after each performance, he takes questions from the audience.  Maybe someone will ask how he got the name Kamau.