WHAT'S it like at the top when all your colleagues are animated and you live in a paper-cutout house? Steve is the human host of Nickelodeon's ''Blue's Clues,'' the most watched preschool television show in the United States. A man-boy who is not afraid of looking dumb, Steve towers, physically, over the Muppets, the alien Teletubbies and the pocket monsters that are the rock stars of the kiddie-entertainment circuit. If Pokemon is mythically hip, Steve is nerd transcendent. ''I'm a micro-celebrity, about as small a celebrity as you can be,'' said Steven Burns, 26, who has played Steve since the first show in September 1996.

And yet, when F. A. O. Schwarz sponsored the May 1998 introduction of show-related products, 7,000 people turned out to meet Steve and his sidekick, Blue, a powder-blue ''girl'' dog. Jill Zier and her daughter, Maggie, 4, were among the well-wishers who waited in the rain. ''I don't think anyone knew until that morning what a sensation the show was,'' Ms. Zier said. Next week, a 63-foot-tall Blue will join Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

With pie-plate eyes and a full spectrum of affirming thumbs-up gestures, Steve is a Candide for the millennium, fending off cynicism and teaching children that needing to be clued in is cool. In each episode, Blue leaves paw-print clues for Steve to find and assemble into a story, song or activity.

Steve the character may live in a bright yellow house with different patterned wallpaper in every room and a big red Thinking Chair, but Steve the person wanted a minimal loft with a leather sofa and a view of the Brooklyn Bridge. There isn't a television in sight.

Mr. Burns admitted that when he was a young couch potato, watching Mr. Rogers made him uncomfortable. Now, he thinks of Mr. Rogers as a gentle genius. The antic Pee-wee Herman, before his disgrace, was also an inspiration, but Mr. Burns's true role model, in terms of sincerity, humor and sheer lovability, is the blue Muppet Grover.

''When I was in college, I used to sit around and talk about the importance of Samuel Beckett, James Joyce and David Mamet,'' said Mr. Burns, who studied theater at Allentown College in Pennsylvania. ''Now, I sit around and discuss the importance of Grover's early work.''

BLUE'S CLUES,'' seen by 14.6 million viewers each week, is a major success for Nick Jr., the educational arm of Nickelodeon. Aimed at children between 2 and 5, the show is churning up the sandbox in the small but intensely orchestrated world of children's quality television.

Much hinges on the ability of Steve to work on multiple levels. ''Here's the mail, it never fails; it makes me want to wag my tail, and when it comes, I always wail, 'Mail!' '' Steve performs the oft-repeated ditty with gusto (wagging his rear end) and with a knowing hint of Al Jolson in his voice. Children jump up and shake their own bottoms; parents are left wondering, who is this guy?

''Nobody could be that guy,'' Mr. Burns said. ''He wouldn't last 30 seconds in New York City.''

The signature green-striped rugby shirt is off as Mr. Burns, in a black sweater over a black T-shirt, downed a slab of sausage pizza last week at a favorite Italian restaurant in Brooklyn, around the corner from his new loft. Youngsters nearby didn't recognize him. ''If I don't turn it on, kids don't know it's me,'' he said. ''But I can make them recognize me by going a little bit yopey-dopey.''

Though he pounces and somersaults from set to set with considerable agility, Steve still has a hard time finding clues and needs all the help he can get from an animated cast of chatty extras and the children who are watching. The show's techniques are without precedent: snail's pacing, viewer participation required to advance the plot, constant repetition of set pieces (''We just figured out Blue's clues, we just figured out Blue's clues, We just figured out . . . '') and perhaps most radical, a male host who asks for help.

''We're raising a generation of boys who are not going to be afraid to pull into a gas station and ask for directions,'' said Brown Johnson, the senior vice president at Nick Jr.

Unlike Pee-wee Herman and Mr. Rogers, Steve, who stares trustingly straight at the camera with Rudolf Valentino eyes, has developed an avid following among both preteen girls and mothers. The former send torrents of e-mail; the latter scrutinize the show with an intensity that might make even Elmo, the red Muppet, blush.

One mother, Lottchen Shivers, dressed up her 5-year-old son as Steve for Halloween, right down to the rugby shirt and a haircut with fringe bangs. (Little Sammy didn't buy it; he wanted to be a lion.) Heather Mee and her son, Eric, have been fans ''from the very beginning,'' she said, adding, ''I watch his performances really closely to see if and when he's going to lose it, but he's brilliant.''

The attention Mr. Burns has received isn't all upbeat. Last spring, when disturbing rumors began to circulate that Steve had been in a car accident, taken a drug overdose or been diagnosed with cancer, Rosie O'Donnell invited Mr. Burns to appear on her show.

''I died a whole lot of different ways,'' the actor said of the inexplicable reports. ''It didn't bother me except when they involved negative things. Rosie's kid is a big fan, so I just went on and said, 'Hi, I'm alive. Bye.' It was pretty easy to prove I wasn't dead.''

Mr. Burns, who comes across as the sedated twin of the hyperactive Steve, acknowledged that meaning so much to impressionable children is both a privilege and a burden. ''At first, I really did see it as a little bit of a sentence,'' he said. ''I thought, 'This really cool kid's show just got huge, and I'm stuck in this green striped shirt for the rest of my life.' '' Quickly he added, ''But it's not like that --it's great working for kids.''

Mr. Burns, a co-producer of the show, has his own plans for Steve's future. ''I'd like to see him loosen up,'' he said. Recently, Steve slipped in an Elvis impression. ''It was hysterical,'' Gay Feldman said. ''I felt he was really doing something aimed at me as an adult. My kids wanted to know why I was laughing.''

Born in Boyertown, Pa., the youngest of three children, Mr. Burns set out for New York, he said ''to fail privately as an actor'' before moving onto something else. He paid his dues, living in a basement apartment around Times Square with views of hustlers from the knees down, and he made guest appearances on ''Homicide'' and ''Law and Order.'' When he first found success it was as a voice-over artist recording advertisements (McDonald's Arch Deluxe, 1-800-Collect). When he showed up to audition for the part of Steve, he had long hair and an earring. ''I was a bit of a skate rat,'' he said.

Mr. Burns's loft seems to owe equal parts to the brooding extras he has played and the man-boy he is on ''Blue's Clues.'' It's a guy's pad: lots of space and not much in it. The black couch has a coffee table in front of it made of rusted steel. (Worry about tetanus shots, not dents.) The refrigerator (empty but for club soda, Champagne and a half-pint of EggBeaters) is decorated with photographs of women in bikinis. They're just friends, Mr. Burns said. ''I'm painfully single at the moment.'' An electric guitar stands in the corner (his favorite music: the mopey British rock band Radio Head). In the bedroom, a red velvet Thinking Chair, just like the one on the show, is piled with laundry. ''I just can't bring myself to sit on it,'' he said.