As the serial’s sly, sophisticated mob front man, Duke Lavery, he’s used to snapping his fingers and getting anything his little heart desires. At least as far as transportation goes- it’s much the same in real life with Buchanan. “If people want me some place badly enough, I guess they’ll get me there,” he says. In a city where four whells, a sun roof and sheepskin seat covers are positively mandatory, Ian Buchanan WALKS TO WORK. Yes, one foot in front of the other. To indulge this eccentric bent, Ian has found an apartment two blocks from the GH studio. And he’s right- if friends really want him to join in a shopping spree or a night on the town, they swing by and pick him up. If the network really desires his presence at a photo shoot, a wardrobe session or an important party, they swing by and pick him up. In a chauffer-driven limo.

The man who walks to work has found this his morning and evening constitutionals are no longer exactly private. The fans, you see, have found him. Buchanan squirmed as he recalled one peek they recently had. “I came out of the GH gate one night last week and there were about eight girls standing there. They started shrieking, ‘It IS true! It IS true!’ I’m wondering- what’s true? That my hair is really black? That I’m not 6’4”! Finally they squealed, ‘You DO walk! You DO walk!’”

Besides his odd, ambulatory mode of transportation, what fans find fascinating about Buchanan is his hair. The well-lubricated Buchanan has certainly created a daytime TV sensation with his sleek, slick, gangsteresque style of coiffing and combing. Some view him as a nostalgic throwback to the matinee idols of the ‘30s and ‘40s. Others aren’t quite so kind.

“Some people ask me if my hair is done by Arco,” sighs Buchanan, who adopted his greaseball look long before he’d ever heard of GH and vice versa. As a heavyweight international mode (GH is his first professional acting gig), Ian’s oleo locks were his trademark for several years and he can’t quite fathom why there’s such a fuss about it now. “Europeans wear their hair like this a great deal,” he says.

When asked about the circulating rumors around the GH set that, per the orders of producer Gloria Monty, no one- repeat NO ONE- but Buchanan is allowed to sport the slippery look, Ian adopts a look of angelic innocence and tosses off a nonchalant, “Oh, really?” After a shrug, he fesses up: “Yes, I’ve heard that rumor, too.”

Sitting in a booth at The Columbia Bar and Grill- a swanky restaurant on the same block as the GH studio- you’d swear he just stepped off the set, even though it’s his day off. In a quasi-Al Capone suit, striped shirt, expertly knotted tie, and every hair firmly- and we do mean firmly- in place, it’s next to impossible to tell if you’re talking to Buchanan, to Lavery or to some Memorex splicing of both.

His accent is somewhat heavier than it is on the show and so are his eyebrows. Ian Buchanan hates tape recorders and interviews. Maybe scared of them is a better way to phrase it. He responds to questions cautiously, as if the potential for incrimination lies around every bend. In most cases, one or two sentences suffice. “I was never too comfortable about the questions,” he admits. “Especially when... I’m asked ‘Are you wearing makeup?’ or ‘Are you aware that you have one eye that squints?’”

Just then the waiter arrives- stares for a moment at Ian’s one eye that squints- and reports that a hot chicken salad and a four-egg omelette are the specialties of the day. Ian orders a beer and decides to peruse the menu.

Buchanan’s reluctance to divulge personal details, it seems, stems from his days of media overkill as a superstar cover boy. Everywhere he turned, somebody was conferring some honor to him. “For about two minutes in my career I was ‘The Most Photographed Man in Europe,’” recalls the actor. The distinction was bestowed by some designer or some photographer or some magazine editor- Buchanan can’t really remember which- on a whirlwind promotional tour that he’ll only describe as “really weird.” Later, he was selected by the Sony Company to be “Mr. Walkman” throughout the Orient in an endless slew of TV commercials and magazine advertisements.

His beginnings were humble. Born in a tiny cottage in the only slightly larger community of East Kilbride, Scotland, Buchanan is the second oldest of six kids. One sister owns a pub; another sister is a farmer. He’s got a brother who’s a chef and two younger brothers who still live at home with mom and dabble in auto mechanics. The family doesn’t own a TV set- and it takes an event like wedding of Andrew and Fergie to get them to watch at the neighbor’s house. They haven’t much of a clue as to the extent of Ian’s U.S.A. success- although he’s prepared a video cassette of his best GH scenes for them. Heaven knows what they’ll watch it on.

Buchanan remembers learning at a very early age just how small Scotland really is. “I had a geography teacher who really scared the hell out of our class by announcing it was possible to take the whole of Scotland and lose it in one of the Great Lakes of North America,” he remembers. “I wondered, ‘Why on earth would anybody want to do that?’”

Apparently the lesson stuck. As soon as his bank account would allow, Buchanan hopped a bus for what was to be a sunny vacation in Spain. A year later he was still there- but his career aspirations had switched from restaurant management to modeling.

Once the really big bucks started rolling in, Ian established residences around the globe- but when it’s time to move on, he rarely packs his trunk. “I have this very bad habit of walking out of an apartment, locking the door and never returning,” Buchanan admits. Usually, some kind-hearted buddy gets the chore of cartoning up his possessions and shoving them into storage. Ian still pays bundles in warehouse tabs- having never reclaimed most of the objects he’s acquired in his travels. He doesn’t seem to mind. “Occasionally, I’ll get very self-indulgent and miss something,” he claims. “I think, ‘Wow, I wish I had that piece of furniture that’s lying in some dark place in Tokyo at the moment... but I don’t really need it.”

The habit extends to pooches- which will, no doubt, shock animal lovers everywhere. Buchanan, who’d lived in New York prior to nabbing the GH role, left behind his dog MacBeth, a whippet, and has no immediate intentions of flying the little guy out to Hollywood.

“He’s being kept by a friend of mine- and he’s having a ball,” says Ian. “He had one hell of a summer going out to the Hamptons every other weekend.” MacBeth was born on Manhattan’s ritzy Central Park South, making him- according to Ian- “more American than I will ever be. The only thing I have that was born in this country is half my teeth!”

After living the life of a nomad for so many years, Buchanan insists, “I don’t have any problem leaving anything behind.” Still, memories of MacBeth occasionally do warm the cockles of his heart. Sighs Iahn, “If I have a couple beers I start missing him.”

He does frequently return to Scotland where, even though they can’t tune in GH, his brothers are positively envious of his TV romance with Finola Hughes. The actress, who plays Police Chief Anna Devane, is well known to the clan for her sexy role as a witchy femme fatale dancer opposite John Travolta in STAYING ALIVE.

Buchanan states flatly that he doesn’t think about, have opinions about or wish to be bothered with just how urgently GH needed a big, new, he-man star and a sizzling love interest for leading lady Hughes. It’s all show biz gobbledygook to him- but he will admit to one thing. “When I saw her in STAYING ALIVE, I had a mad, mad crush on her,” he grins.

They may steam up the small screen now, but their first meeting- several moths ago in London- was hardly auspicious. Buchanan caught one of Finola’s ballet performances one night in Blighty- and wormed his way into an introduction at the party afterwards. He remembers the hello in glorious Technicolor, 70 millimeter and 3-D Dolby. She can’t recall meeting him in the least.

He tries his level best to not be bugged by it. In fact, he’s come up with a whopping good silver lining for this otherwise dismal cloud. “She doesn’t remember me? Great!” announces Buchanan. “I don’t mind in the least because I don’t have to get worried and ask, ‘How did I behave?’”

Not that, in a million years, one could imagine Ian- or Duke Lavery, for that matter- having a few too many martinis, donning a lampshade and swinging from the chandelier as Finola Hughes- or Anna Devane, for that matter- faints and falls to the floor from the shock of it all. This guy’s the perfect gentleman. Why, he even wears pajamas to bed. Says the actor, “Running about naked in the house is not comfortable for me.”

The waiter returns yet again- this time not to announce dessert selections but to inform Mr. Buchanan that his limo is waiting. Ian quickly removes his napkin, swallows the last of his brew, apologizes that he’s got an appointment for wardrobe fittings at the Bullock’s Department Store to find a dozen or so of those shoulder-padded, pin-striped Roaring 20s suits that drive all you gun molls crazy and- before we can ask him if he’s aware that he has one eye that squints- he vanishes into thin air. Duke would approve.