If Seinfeld Didn’t Write Nutty Book, Who Did?

This should be prankster Ted L. Nancy’s moment in the sun. Instead, the funny man who purportedly lives in Thousand Oaks is nowhere to be found.

Thanks in part to a foreword by Jerry Seinfeld, Nancy’s first book of deranged comedic correspondence, “Letters from a Nut,” has enjoyed strong sales and positive reviews since it was published earlier this year.

Nancy’s ridiculously silly missives--from fan mail to the King of Tonga to requests to gamble at the Flamingo Hilton in a “lucky” giant shrimp outfit--were even talked up on “Larry King Live” and “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.”

But it wasn’t Nancy doing the talking. In fact, no one associated with “Letters from a Nut”--not Seinfeld, his high-powered literary agent or the book’s New York publisher--has ever met or spoken with the author, who lists a Moorpark Road return address on all his letters.

“Never met Ted Nancy,” said Dan Strone of the William Morris Agency. “I don’t really communicate with him.”

Asked how Nancy participates in marketing decisions, or if he even gets paid, Strone replied, “He’s not in it for the money, Ted. He’s really about the art.”

As fans of Nancy’s off-kilter humor are disappointedly discovering, the mystery man is not easy to track down: a visit to the return address listed on his outrageous joke letters yields a post office box in a tiny strip mall, next to dog groomer The Pampered Pooch and a rental car business.

And the owners of Mail N’ More, the letter-retrieval business, say they have never met Nancy in the flesh, communicating only by phone.

All of which has led many people to conclude--quite naturally, perhaps--that Ted L. Nancy doesn’t exist and is nothing but a thinly veiled pseudonym for Seinfeld himself, or perhaps one of his sitcom’s writers. If so, Seinfeld has not owned up to his alter ego, telling Larry King and Jay Leno while plugging the book earlier this year that Nancy is indeed for real.

“I did not write them, that I promise you,” Seinfeld told a skeptical Larry King. “ . . . I am telling you the truth.”

In his foreword to “Letters from a Nut,” Seinfeld explains how he got a hold of Nancy’s wacky work.

He was watching the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Telethon at a friend’s house in 1995 when he noticed a pile of letters on the coffee table. He picked one up, read it and laughed. Then he read some more, along with the equally funny responses from the corporations and establishments that followed. He began to read them out loud, and soon, everyone was laughing out loud.

Everyone, that is, but one man, who “just kind of nodded approvingly as each letter was read.”

“I guess I didn’t realize it at the time,” Seinfeld wrote, “but I am convinced that man was the real Ted L. Nancy.”

Seinfeld asked the friend hosting the party if he could borrow the letters, and later called back and asked if there were more. There were. Likening his intermediary role to that of Clark Kent reaching Superman, the comedian then took the bundle to Strone, “literary agent to the stars,” and the rest is history.

Or so the story goes, anyway.

Regardless of the truth, one thing is certain: The letters are nutty and often hilarious, exposing corporate America’s politically correct tendency to respond to all customer inquiries, no matter how weird.

Take, for example, Nancy’s letter to Nordstrom headquarters in Seattle asking if he could buy a mannequin at a Glendale department store that closely resembled a deceased neighbor so he could give it to the family. The situation closely resembles a recent “Seinfeld” plot.

“Yours is one of the more interesting requests I have ever received,” Bruce A. Nordstrom wrote back. “Candidly, I can’t imagine any family who has lost a loved one wanting to see a mannequin that resembles that person.”

Or Nancy’s missive to the Los Angeles Lakers, wondering if he could still attend home games despite a medical condition that required him to expose his rear end save for some cellophane wrapping.

“The only time you will see my cellophane-exposed buttocks will be during the time I enter and exit the arena and during behind-the-back passes and three-point buzzer shots,” Nancy wrote.

Laker publicist Bob Steiner--who informed Nancy via mail that it was fine to attend games as long as he draped something over his derriere--said he has not read the book but was informed by others he had been had.

The problem with such letters, Steiner said, is that it’s often difficult to tell the fake weird ones from the real weird ones.

“We get a lot of strange letters, but I don’t think we’ve ever gotten one that strange,” Steiner said. “I didn’t believe this one, but then again, you never know. You have to take it seriously. I think what it does prove is that we answer all letters. It would have been real easy to throw that one in the wastebasket.”

Alice Nathanson, spokeswoman for Kal Kan pet food company in Vernon, agreed. Kal Kan was also victimized by Nancy, who wrote the company’s president with the unbelievable news that his cat, Charles, had recently reached 36 years of age. Of course, old Charles ate nothing but Kal Kan.

After trying unsuccessfully to locate Nancy by phone, Kal Kan representatives mailed him some complimentary coupons and a request for a picture of his geriatric cat.

“Most people here think the book is very funny. There’s no hard feelings,” Nathanson said. “We take all consumer contact very seriously. People are very involved and concerned about their pets. And truth is stranger than fiction. You never know if something could be true.”

As word spreads about Nancy and his mischievous writings, some admirers are finding out that not all is as it appears when it comes to this cult figure. Rosemary Afara, who owns Mail N’ More in Thousand Oaks with her brother and sister, said fans continue to call and drop by the business, only to find out Nancy is supposedly living incognito.

“They come with the book and say, ‘Where is Mr. Ted Nancy?’ ” Afara said. “We tell them, ‘Sorry, he’s not here, but you can always leave him a letter.’ ”

About two years ago, Afara said, someone identifying himself as Nancy called up and asked to rent a post office box. They have never seen him come in to retrieve the mail from the box, which is accessible 24 hours a day. But they often communicate with him over the phone.

How do they get paid?

Nancy leaves cash in the box, Afara said.

Shortly before the book was published, he also left Afara a little note, informing her and her siblings that a book of his correspondence was coming out, so attempts to reach him at the address might increase.

Afara, for one, does not believe Seinfeld and Nancy are one and the same, judging from the many conversations she has had with the author by phone. Moreover, the book isn’t as amusing as the man in the sitcom, she said.

“It’s the same voice every time, and it doesn’t sound like Jerry,” Afara said of the calls. “I really don’t think it’s him. Some of the book is funny, but I didn’t read most of it myself.”