TV & VIDEO - April 7, 1988

Former “Saturday Night Live” star Gilda Radner is neither the first nor the most famous person to battle ovarian cancer. But she may be the first to turn the disease into a joke on national television. Radner will make her first TV appearance in nearly two years when she guest-stars on Showtime’s “It’s Garry Shandling’s Show,” April 29. In the show, taped this week, Radner enters to a thunderous ovation from the studio audience, and asks forgiveness from her host for milking the applause for everything she can get. “I haven’t been on television in quite a while,” she says. When Shandling asks her where she’s been, Radner replies: “I’ve had cancer. What did you have?” Deadpans the host: “Oh, I’ve just had a series of bad career moves.” (Fox Broadcasting, which broadcasts reruns of the Showtime episodes, does not expect to air the Radner program before the end of the year.)