Skip E. Lowe

LOS ANGELES — When an earnest but sometimes inept talk show host took to public access television in 1978 with a celebrity name-dropping show, it seemed incongruous that Skip E. Lowe would somehow outlast every other TV host from Johnny Carson to Jay Leno.

For one thing, his show aired on the kind of cable channels that carry school board meetings. For another, many of his guests were faded stars people weren’t sure were still alive.

But the former child actor, who died Monday at age 85 of complications of emphysema, did just that.

Lowe filmed “Skip E. Lowe Looks at Hollywood” for 36 years, broadcasting it on cable TV outlets in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco. He filmed the last one just two weeks ago.

“He loved show business, and the fact that the show was public access, that didn’t bother him at all. He was on television,” his agent, Alan Eichler, said Thursday.

The result: Lowe assembled a cult following of fans in the cities where his show aired, including some of the entertainers he couldn’t get on camera.

Martin Short acknowledged he based his unctuous, often bumbling Jiminy Glick character partly on Lowe, and Harry Shearer profiled Lowe for a 1998 New York Times Magazine story headlined, “Ineptness Has Its Virtues.”