What if Gary Busey’s life was a TV show?

“I’m with Busey.”

I’ve wanted the chance to say that for 25 years. I’ve always been curious about what it would be like to hang with the edgy dude whose brilliant, Oscar-nominated portrayal of Buddy Holly in 1978 was topped only by his same-year appearance in the greatest surfing film ever made, “Big Wednesday.” A guy whose notorious wild streak had him burning the candle at both ends, then dripping the wax on himself for good measure.

But now those three little words have been co-opted by comedy writer Adam De La Pena, another Busey devotee who has persuaded Comedy Central that following Busey around with a camera might be an entertaining way for viewers to spend 30 minutes each week.

Tonight’s premiere at 10 shows only glimmers of promise, however. De La Pena and Busey operate at very different rhythms, and although this can work for them (Busey’s thousand-yard stare is always a scene saver), it fails just as often.

Busey is also at fault for trying a little too hard to be outrageous, to be a little too Busey. “When I’m working with someone new, we don’t shake hands, we give each other a lovingly sensual French kiss,” he says earnestly, moving in for the kill.

Busey is kidding, but for an episode subtitled “Being a Man,” he spends an awful lot of time blurring sex roles (he’s in drag for a nightclub visit). Time spent at his Malibu home (luxury car out front, the Pacific out back), at a paint-ball park and lunching in town is more rewarding and produces the occasional classic Buseyism (“Friends are just enemies in reverse” and “Fear is the darkroom where the devil develops his negatives”).

“Hanging with Gary, you learn a lot of things,” De La Pena says to the camera, but “you really have to look deep, then off to the side, then dig a little -- like to the center of the Earth. But it’s all worth it.”

Not so much tonight. But I’m hanging in there.