Though he was only on Saturday Night Live for a few short seasons — one as a full cast member, another as one of its second fiddles — Finesse Mitchell made an impression on the strengths of his signature character, the z-snapping ghetto queen Starkisha, and his takes on the likes of Andre 3000, Colin Powell and O.J.

He didn’t have the biggest roster of characters, true. But he had promise. So why was he shown the door? Partly because of the budget, he says, and partly because he's black.

Unlike its recent Palin/Fey-powered successes, SNL in 2006 was in a ratings slump. Yet the cast had swelled. “We had 16 cast members fighting for stage time. We were literally fighting to get our sketches on,” says Mitchell, sitting at the head of a table in a hotel meeting room during a recent interview. “The show is very expensive to make and Lorne Michaels had to let people go. He didn't want to, but he had to.”

What's more, the show had another black guy, the baby-faced and versatile Kenan Thompson.

“I knew Kenan was the favorite,” he says, though by the sounds of it there are no hard feelings, “so I started looking for other stuff to do.”

Hence the return to stand-up, his first and true love, he says, and to hosting the Just for Laughs tour when it pulls into Massey Hall on Thursday. Aside from Mitchell, the tour features Scottish and supremely funny Danny Bhoy along with Ireland's David O'Doherty, English comic Hal Cruttenden and the somewhat local (he's from Wawa, ON) Pete Zedlacher.

The 36-year-old, Atlanta-born Mitchell is known for his bits about the unlikely names black women impose on their children, and yes, he includes himself in that group, and is quick to make light of his own moderate fame.

He says he's “snap famous” — though to explain that one would ruin the joke.

“My heart lives in stand up.... It's how I breathe,” he says, even though it was a second career choice. He started out in the pro football program at the University of Miami but instead went into comedy — against the advice of his classmate Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who thought it was a bad career choice.

Likewise, Mitchell says he tried to talk the future WWE star and all-around action figure out of his plan to go into pro wrestling.

Mitchell got better advice a few years ago from his girlfriend when his time was running out at SNL. "She said ‘I can't wait until you leave that show because you'll be happy again,’" he recalls. The two were married in September.

"Most women would be ‘nuh-uh!’" — here he puts on the ghetto queen voice and does a z-snap — "’Don’choo leave that damn show!’ But if I have a woman who encourages me to leave, that's probably someone who'd be with me even if I had no job at all."

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Good news for anyone who, like me, was unable to see Battleawesome Awesomestar because of its repeated sell-outs. Word from inside Bad Dog Theatre is that a remount of the sci-fi improv is in the works for early in the New Year.

Until then, yet another hit TV show is getting the improv treatment in Rome'd, a take on the HBO series from director Andrew Currie, with Bad Dog regulars Dave Pearce, Aurora Browne, Lisa Merchant and Kris Siddiqi. Every Saturday in November, starting Nov. 8. 138 Danforth Ave. 10pm. $10; $5 if you're wearing a toga. Seriously. www.baddogtheatre.com.