Glenn Humplik and Phil Giroux are two regular guys.

They live in Ottawa, have decent jobs in the IT sector and on the weekends enjoying hanging out with pals on an internationally broadcast TV series.

"People just assume because we're on MTV we work full time doing that," Humplik says, "which is, for Phil and I, totally not the case. It's just a hobby."

"We're just hanging out with our friends, doing the show, having a good time," says Giroux.

The Tom Green Show isn't just a hobby to two million regular viewers who religiously follow Green's antics weekly on the Comedy Network and MTV.

His fans have rallied around his Candid Camera-meets-South Park-meets-Ed the Sock variety show since it emerged from

an Ottawa community television station in early 1998.

So faithful are the masses, they flooded Humplik's e-mail account at the request of Green during the third season opener -- which airs in Canada tonight at midnight on j. (Rerun tomorrow at 11:30 p.m.)

"The first day after it aired, I got about 50,000 e-mails and I called Sympatico. I had to give up the account," Humplik reports.

"It would've been kind of cool if they were like nice letters, but they were just 'Listen to Tom. Quit your job.' "

Nobody's trying to get rid of Humplik or Giroux, of course. Quite the opposite.

Green has waged an on-air campaign to get his longtime friends to quit their jobs in Canada and play TV star with him in L.A. as their other pal Derek Harvie has.

"Moving is not quite a option now," says Giroux.

Humplik states it succinctly.

"Let us put it this way: Would you want Tom Green as your full-time boss?"

They remain content to hang out on sets and film segments on the weekend.

"It's actually good they've moved to L.A., so I can live in peace in Ottawa," says Humplik.

"Unfortunately, he's taken a couple of road trips and he makes the most of his time here."

Green and Giroux met 15 years ago and performed together at Yuk Yuk's in the late '80s while Green was still in high school.

"When he wanted to be, like, vice-president of the high school, his speech was pouring lettuce all over himself and dumping carrots all over the place," Giroux recalls.

Humplik met Green at the University of Ottawa's campus radio station.

Their late-night shifts turned into a radio talk show and eventually three years on Rogers Cable.

"What you see in front of you is not that different from what we saw in Ottawa all those years," Humplik says of the evolution.

Humplik's role, frankly, is to put up with Green.

When he isn't tormenting his parents by painting their house plaid or tossing dead animals in their bed, Green directs much of his pathos on his pal Humplik.

Incredibly, Humplik claims to find the humour (comedy = tragedy + time, after all) in most of Green's stunts -- be it throwing Humplik's clothes out of airplane, kissing Pierce Brosnan or eating human hair.

"When you hang out with Tom long enough, you lose some of your inhibitions.

"I mean, I don't go sucking on cows' teats, but I've definitely become less shy over the years," he says.

"Although I'm still probably the straightest of the four -- that's probably why I'm the most picked on."

Giroux stays relatively safe perched behind Green's desk providing his trademark laugh track. (The authenticity of which this interviewer can attest to personally.)

"A lot of people think my full-time job is to sit behind there and laugh," Giroux says.

The duo says the best advice to survive a Tom Green segment is to pretend it doesn't get to you, plot off-camera revenge and laugh really hard when the joke's on someone other than you.

"The hardest I ever laughed were actually the two shows where Phil got picked on," Humplik chuckles.

"We just did a whole show about Phil.

"I was in the window -- it was the best show I ever had."