Goodnight, Funny Man.

YES, MOST PEOPLE will remember Tony Randall, who died last week at the age of 84, as the uptight and finicky Felix Unger on television's The Odd Couple. Or perhaps they'll remember him as the Broadway star and patron of the stage who founded the National Actor's Theater.

To us, he'll always be that guy we saw sitting in the corner at Knickerbocker one winter afternoon four or five years ago. He looked lonely, had a bad case of the sniffles and was wearing a very nice scarf. We considered saying something to him, but thought better of it.

We'll remember him as perhaps the world's most unlikely spokesman for the Bowery Mission. You'd think Jack Klugman would've been more appropriate, yet there was Randall, smiling out from all those subway ads.

We'll remember him as a man who felt obligated to prove to the world that he really, really, really wasn't gay by fathering his first child at the age of 77. Who saw that one coming?

We'll remember him as one of several forces pushing for the destruction of Times Square. How many of the classic old grindhouses were gutted, if not flattened outright, so he could build that damn theater of his?

First and foremost, however, we'll remember him as a singer with a social conscience. Not too many people are familiar with Randall's recorded work from the 60s, back when it seemed everyone was releasing an album. Lorne Greene, Sebastian Cabot-even Anthony Perkins had their own vinyl masterpieces.

In 1967, Randall recorded Warm and Wavery for Mercury. On it, he performs delightful versions of some old standards, backed by a lush orchestral arrangement by Luchi De Jesus. His renditions of "Me and My Shadow," "You Oughta Be in Pictures" and "I Came Here to Talk for Joe" remain standouts in a crowded field.

Back in the mid-60s, when so much of America was in an uproar, when other artists were doing what they could-often sadly and desperately-to appeal to the hippies, Tony Randall took that rare and brave step of reaching out to the often neglected Asian community with our favorite cut off the album, "Chinatown, My Chinatown." A sample of the lyrics:

When the town is fast asleep,

and it's midnight in the sky,

That's the time the festive Chink

Starts to wink his other eye?

Perhaps it was a subtle reference to his starring role in 1964's The 7 Faces of Dr. Lao. Or perhaps it was just another way in which Randall broke rank to say, "You Chinamen are a-okay with me."

But seriously, in spite of Randall's various crimes against New York and its inhabitants, he'll always have a special place in our hearts. If nothing else, there's that performance in Gremlins 2: The New Batch. We will miss him dearly.