Not so long ago Kelsey Grammer could have been a regular caller to psychiatrist Dr Frasier Crane's radio phone-in show. Right now, though, he can do without the mental therapy.
Grammer is probably still feeling "gloating and silly", as he put it himself, after he was awarded a third consecutive Emmy for outstanding actor in a comedy. He is still celebrating after the programme, which was created as a vehicle for his unique talent, won a gong for best comedy, a record-breaking fifth time in a row.
The countless awards over the years, the programme's massive ratings and the fact that in the US it will replace Seinfeld in the highly coveted Thursday night slot on NBC all mean that Frasier is now America's No 1 programme. And Kelsey Grammer? He's one of American comedy's shiniest stars.
He has played Dr Frasier Crane, a deeply flawed yet deeply endearing radio talk show host, ever since Cheers, the Boston bar-room series where the character first evolved, came to an end in 1993.
In some ways Frasier has been his salvation, but commentators marvel that while his psychiatrist character spends his time sorting out the heads of others Grammer has lived a life that is every therapist's dream.
We saw hints of that life at the awards ceremony, where despite the shiny happy face of Kelsey Grammer, there was an underlying acceptance that here was a man who has been through the mill.
We knew first from the tone of his ex-Cheers colleague Ted Danson's voice when he announced that the winner of outstanding actor in a comedy was "my sweet friend Kelsey Grammer" that here was no ordinary clown.
Grinning, Grammer stood up and embraced his third wife, Camille Donatacci. The audience lapped up his acceptance speech, which contained a mysterious reference to a group of people who came to him at "a very dark time in my life".
Here we glimpsed the Kelsey Grammer who could conceivably end up on a radio show with a highbrow Ivy League-educated psychiatrist. Frasier is a household name in Seattle because of his phone-in advice show. He regularly cocks a sometimes unsympathetic ear to the travails of the city's disturbed and depressed. Picking apart Grammer's lifelong litany of disasters would take up several such shows.
It all started, he would tell Dr Crane, shortly after he was born in the Virgin Islands. When Grammer was two his musician parents separated and he went with his mother to live with his grandparents in New Jersey and later Florida.
When he was 13 his father was shot dead by an intruder. Then his grandfather, to whom he was extremely close, died. But it was when his sister was raped and murdered that Kelsey Grammer began wrestling with the demons that would eventually come close to ruining his life.
He felt "guilty, ashamed and angry and wanted to make up for it somehow. Maybe even get myself killed," he wrote in his autobiography, So Far. He was deeply depressed and took to drinking heavily. He became a pitiful figure, wandering the streets of New York.
He had gone to the city to study acting at the Juilliard School. After his grandfather's death he had discovered Shakespeare and began acting in plays.
Despite his inner turmoil he got through acting school and was accepted at the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, where he perfected his distinctive Shakespearean bellow, performing works around the country by the great bard and those of George Bernard Shaw.
The part of Dr Frasier Crane in Cheers came his way in 1984. Onscreen he was a hit, winning awards from his first season on the show. Off-screen he was hitting a variety of bottles. His cocaine and alcohol habits earned him a notoriety that had nothing to do with his genius for comic timing, along with a brief spell in prison.
By 1992 he had married and divorced twice and had a daughter, Spencer. His marriage to exotic dancer Leigh-Anne Csuhany was a disaster, and Grammer says he became that unusual species, a battered husband.
"She had to convince me that I was nothing, unattractive, untalented, undeserving of love and incapable of being loved by anyone but her. The way she achieved this was to break me down with verbal abuse," he said.
There was more than the verbal tools, he said. "She'd spit in my face. Slap me. Punch me. Kick me. Break glasses over my head. Break windows. Tear up pictures of my loved ones. Threaten to kill me, kill herself. Cut my balls off. Chop me up. Put a bullet in my head".
Csuhany did eventually kill herself, leaving a note that read "Kelsey doesn't love me".
The self-destruct mechanism in Kelsey Grammer had been well and truly activated. Two years ago he checked into the Betty Ford Clinic to dry out after he was involved in a car accident. Therapy, more expensive and less public than that doled out by Dr Frasier Crane, was availed of. It was a dark time, but evidently "a group of people" pulled him through.
Marriage to wife No 3 has been good for Grammer. "I take great joy in a walk with the dog, or going sailing, or just sitting outside and having a bit of food. Married life is treating me well. With the right person, it's great."
Grammer has not yet made a successful transition to movies. One attempt, Down Periscope, was widely panned, but his guest appearances on shows like The Simpsons are consistently good.
Meanwhile, thanks to the talented team of writers and actors that Grammer praised in his Emmy speech, the success of Frasier looks set to continue. In the Seinfeld slot it is almost sure to get to No 1 in the US TV ratings.
And all those hours on a therapist's couch seem to have paid off. He told one interviewer recently that "life has been great, even when it's been tough. I've been an optimist throughout every hill and valley." And right now is definitely one of the peaks.