Niles Crane - Personality

Personality

Niles, like Frasier, is fastidious, snobby and fussy, has gourmet tastes, and was described by a professional interviewer by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer as obsessive-compulsive. He frequently wears Double breasted suits and suspenders rather than single breasted which Frasier often wears. Although Frasier also plays the piano, when they make music together Niles plays while Frasier sings. He is an admirer of the fine arts including opera, theatre, and classical music, drinks fine wine and enjoys French food which he himself cooks, and frequently obsesses about knowing the right people and climbing the social ladder. At the cafe he frequents with Frasier and other friends and family members, Niles' usual is a latte with a "whisper" of cinnamon, and occasionally chocolate shavings or nutmeg. However he says at one point that nutmeg "inflames my stomach lining". According to Daphne he "would eat a worm if I gave it a French name, and Frasier once said, "I'm a teamster compared to you!"

Also like his brother, Niles is very intelligent. His IQ is 156, well over the Mensa threshold. Unlike Frasier, Niles has a long list of phobias and medical conditions, many of which are clearly psychosomatic. Most prominently, he is quite mysophobic, given to wiping his hands after human contact and wiping down chairs in public places before sitting on them, it is revealed in one episode that the root of this is a babysitter (Ronee Lawrence) who told him scary stories about insects that would crawl in through his ears and eat his brains, and lay their eggs on furniture. (When he tells this and other contamination horror stories to a group of fourth-graders, they think he is wonderful for knowing such "cool" facts.) He has nose bleeds when he tells a direct lie, and he faints at the sight of his own blood. When extremely stressed, Niles is prone to panic attacks and fits of hyperventilation. On more than one occasion, he's fainted. In one episode, he discloses that stress makes him want to hide under a piano. His divorce from Maris caused stress-induced narcolepsy. He also suffers from a long list of allergies, some exceedingly rare.

Physically weak and very uncoordinated, Niles is seemingly hopeless at sports and videogames, barely able to catch objects even after simple throws (unless Daphne, or occasionally Martin, is doing the throwing; then he is remarkably nimble). However, in some episodes he is shown to be fair at basketball. On one occasion, while attending a basketball game, he is fortuitously invited on court during the game's intermission to try his skill - or luck - at scoring from half court, and much to the astonishment of his brother and father (and himself), Niles makes the impossible throw (Earning himself the temporary moniker of "Half-court Crane"). The brothers are often seen coming or going to squash matches, though Martin once commented in disbelief, "You have to wonder what goes on at that squash court!" Accompanying Martin on the shooting range one day, Niles discovered that he is an excellent marksman. He is a fair fencer, and has had some lessons in kickboxing. On other occasions he has expressed interest in lifting weights and taking karate lessons, but these ventures are typically laughed at by his father and brother and often amount to nothing. He is also a master speller, having come close to winning the national spelling competition as a youth and spell-checking the graffiti in a bathroom stall at a local coffee bar with a red marker.

When Niles suffers a walking heart attack he is not aware of it for several days, because he experiences referred pain and believes he has a toothache. After a dental checkup finds nothing wrong Frasier's producer Roz Doyle tells him that it is probably a sinus infection, but he knows that there is a one-in-ten-thousand chance it is his heart. When a number of extremely unlikely events occur to or around him, he consults a doctor and immediately enters a hospital for surgery.

Niles drives a Mercedes-Benz E320 with the license plate 5HR1NK, while Frasier drives BMW models. The brothers share political views that differ from their father's.