Awards shows tend to leave me cold these days. I don't pay much attention to the Oscars or the Emmys or the dozens of others, which are essentially celebrities stroking the egos of other celebrities.

(Does the Emmys have a category for "best awards show" yet? Or "best performance by the winner of an award on an awards show"?)

But a recent story about this year's Daytime Emmys caught my eye because, for the second year in a row, the Discovery Channel's "Cash Cab" won for "outstanding game/audience participation show"!

And for the third year in a row, host/cabbie Ben Bailey was nominated as "outstanding game show host." (He lost to Meredith Vieira, of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire"; last year to Alex Trebek, "Jeopardy!"; the year before that to Bob Barker, "The Price Is Right." All multiple winners.)

As far as I'm concerned, Bailey was robbed. How can the show win two years in a row and Bailey gets shut out? He IS the show.

What's more, he hosts a game show AND drives a New York cab at the same time.

Have you ever taken a cab in Manhattan? Have you seen how they drive when they're NOT hosting a game show?

Anyway, my wife and I discovered "Cash Cab" in its first season a few years ago, but we've only watched it on and off, as we were without cable/satellite for a couple of years. But now that the Discovery Channel is in our home again, Joyce watches little else.

And it seems to be on all the time. There are other shows on Discovery, right?

New episodes of "Cash Cab" are airing now, but reruns are all over the place, not to mention the nighttime spinoff, Bailey's "Cash Cab After Dark." Which actually looks just like "Cash Cab," only the sun is down. (I think; it's hard to tell in Manhattan.)

Bailey — who also moonlights as a standup comic, an actor … and I think he might be driving that cab for fares on the weekend — is a personable host. If you haven't seen the show, it really is, as he says, "a TV game show that takes place right here in my taxi."

The premise is simple. He drives Manhattan streets and waits to be hailed by some unsuspecting victim(s). As many as four sometimes. Then he pulls over. As they climb into the cab, they tell Bailey their destination — and sometimes he pretends to speak another language or not quite understand, and has even asked, "Where's that?" (Just like a real cabbie, right?)

Suddenly the theme music kicks in, strobe lights start bouncing on the ceiling of the cab and the startled passengers are told that they are on a TV game show.