Percy Dovetonsils is a fictional character created and played by television comedian Ernie Kovacs. It is probably the best remembered of Kovacs' many TV incarnations. Percy was always introduced with a sweeping flourish of harp music as a "poet laureate" who appeared onscreen as a bizarre effeminate "artiste" with weirdly slicked hair (including two carefully placed spit-curls on his forehead) and extraordinarily thick eyeglasses that appeared to have eyes painted on the backsides of the lenses. He would appear seated in a chair wearing a zebra-patterned smoking jacket, and reading from an oversize book lying open in his lap. Percy would address the audience in a syrupy lisp and read his poems out of the book while sipping from a martini glass (which often had a daisy for a swizzle stick)