‘Man From U.N.C.L.E.’ Laughs Last : Television: Robert Vaughn stars in ‘Danger Theatre,’ which mocks characters like his famous Napoleon Solo.

He’s just making a quick stop in New York City--two days-- because he’s sailing next week for a month’s tour of Europe, then heading up to Nantucket.

At least he’s here long enough to lunch at the Russian Tea Room, where he nods hello to fellow note-worthies as he regales his booth companions with tales of past and present adventures.

His intercontinental travels from Yugoslavia to Peru. His activism in the ‘60s when he led anti-war efforts. His friendship with the Kennedys, through whom he recently met President Clinton. His five years as an expatriate in London. His week trapped in Czechoslovakia when the Soviet tanks rolled in.

Sound like the life of Napoleon Solo?

Well, Robert Vaughn at 60 turns out to have matched the wide range of the globe-trotting secret agent character that made him a TV star on “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”

Created in 1964 as the small screen’s answer to then-reigning movie hero James Bond, Vaughn’s spy matched Sean Connery’s savoir faire, taste for the high life and appeal to females of the species.

Solo could always thwart those nefarious THRUSH plots to take over the planet. Not quite so the heroes in the new TV series Vaughn is here to promote. “Danger Theatre” arrives on the Fox network Sunday night as a half-hour spoof of all those full-throttle cop and derring-do hours that filled the ‘70s--from “Mannix” to “Hawaii Five-0.”

Vaughn’s character is merely a pseudo-chief who introduces the proceedings from behind a desk wearing a three-piece suit. He gets to make fun of his upright image, about which he’s always had a healthy sense of humor. Good thing--since younger viewers know him not for his classic TV series, but for pioneering one of the lower-rent genres of today’s tube: infomercials.

Long before Cher made these long-form ads safe for stars--or the bald-spot spray-painters made them a mainstream hoot--Vaughn was hawking the Helsinki Formula hair-loss treatment back in the early ‘80s.

“Yes, that was about the most profitable thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he says flatly. “Every call that came in on the 800 number, I got a piece of that.”

Vaughn didn’t hesitate to venture into the ad genre because “I sensed it would be a big market. And I was right. So I could stay home a lot during that time.”

That’s Vaughn’s goal these days--just making enough money to live (quite) comfortably in Connecticut with his wife of 19 years, Linda, on property with a pond that freezes over for his hockey goalie son, Cassidy, 17, and from which they send their astronaut-wanna-be daughter, Caitlin, 11, to Space Camp annually in Alabama. The man who was one of Hollywood’s most eligible bachelors until he married at 41 is first and foremost a family man now.

Most of Vaughn’s big-screen vehicles have been less than memorable. “I’ve done 75 movies. But I’ve never done any kind of quality--I think a half-dozen have been good. ‘Bullitt.’ ‘The Magnificent Seven.’ ‘The Towering Inferno.’ ‘Superman III.’ ”

But Vaughn doesn’t seem to look back at what might have been, at least professionally. If he remains inextricably tied to Napoleon Solo, that’s fine with him.

“It was the nicest period of my life professionally. Everybody just had such a good time. We were doing a spoof of a spoof of a spoof, and the writers had such latitude that they could do anything they wanted. Most of all, we had (the MGM studio lot) in its glory days as far as the sets were concerned. They had existing sets from all over the world, so the show looked very impressive. It was just a lot of fun,” Vaughn said.