A laugh-out-loud funny guy in a wheelchair just might be the next Oprah, if he and his legions of supporters get their way. He also hopes to change a few minds about people with disabilities along the way.

Zach Anner, 26, who hails from Buffalo but now lives in Austin, Texas, has been generating buzz since he posted online his audition for Your Own Show, a reality series produced by Oprah Winfrey and Mark Burnett of Survivor fame.

The competition will air on Winfrey’s OWN network, which takes to the airwaves in 2011. The winner will host their own talk show.

In his audition, Anner, who has used a wheelchair since he was 5, explains he has cerebral palsy, “the sexiest of the palsies.”

After posting his audition to Oprah.com in early June, Anner drew votes from friends and family, including me, his cousin. (His dad is my mom's brother.)

He’d gathered approximately 8,000 votes when a friend phoned him in the middle of the night last weekend.

“They asked me what I’d think if I had 40,000 votes. Then when they showed me the site, I actually had over a million,” said Anner.

Unbeknownst to Anner, who now leads the Internet competition with more than 2.6 million votes, a link to his audition had appeared on reddit.com. More online plugs soon followed, including a shoutout from musician John Mayer on his blog. A hit was born.

Anner runs through some of the possibilities he rejected for his pitch, among them a cooking show (“Normally when I cook, I set my pants on fire”) and a series on health and well-being (he appears on-camera in paisley underwear and a t-shirt, attempting yoga moves until he falls down).

“This isn’t yoga,” Anner says, as the camera pulls away to show him struggling on the floor. “I’m just trying to put on my pants.”

So far, 3,900 auditions have been submitted online, along with roughly 2,000 more at in-person casting calls. The top 5 Internet vote-getters will be invited to audition for the reality show. (Voting ends July 3.)

Beth Gebhard of OWN didn’t know whether Oprah has seen Anner’s audition.

“She’s been involved with the creative side of this right from the get-go, so she’s seen a lot of them,” said Gebhard, who enjoyed Anner’s entry. “It’s really, really funny,” says Gebhard.

Having one of the auditions for the show go viral can’t hurt ratings, either, she admits.

Gebhard says Anner’s vote totals are pretty impressive. “It’s very obvious he’s got a lot of momentum,” said Gebhard.

“Humour allows people to exhale a little. A lot of the time when people meet someone in a wheelchair, or with some disability, it’s the first thing they notice, but they don’t know how to react . . . This helps people see beyond the chair, so that they can start to realize we’re just normal people,” says Anner.

Anner pitched a travel show designed to inspire people who never thought they could travel, and has ideas for a typical episode.

“I’d like to go to Rome, and maybe I’ll be carried off the plane. I’d go and try to get blessed by the Pope. And hey, if they lose my chair in the luggage and I have to get pulled around Rome in a wagon, that’d be pretty funny,” says Anner.

Anner says he gets his outlook from his parents, Jonathan, a bartender, and Susan, who lectures in theatre and playwrighting.

“They always treated me just like an ordinary kid. I’d get into fights with my brother, they wouldn’t say to him ‘Oh, leave him alone, he’s disabled and fragile.’ They also took me and my brother Brad on trips,” says Anner.

Jonathan says the wheelchair has been freeing for his son, not an object of pity.

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“The first time Zach was in his wheelchair, we went on a trip to the Allegheny Mountains. I remember him chasing the birds and the butterflies around, smiling,” says Jonathan. “It was the first time I ever saw him running around like that — it just happened to be in a wheelchair.”

Anner has posted a video on YouTube thanking everyone who helped create the rush of support. Mayer’s video reply credits the support to Anner’s personality and humour. Mayer even offered to provide the theme song for Anner’s show, if he gets it.

Anner is keen to take the heartthrob up on his offer. “I was thinking I might like to a duet with him, but that might cut down on the sexy factor,” Anner jokes.