Look Who’s Talking XXIV : Television: Maury Povich, Cristina Ferrare, Chuck Woolery and Montel Williams join the horde of talk shows. Best of the new hosts: comic Jenny Jones.

Attention!

If you’re a cross-dressing, sex-addicted, paraplegic, alcoholic victim of sexual and physical abuse by a satanic white supremacist albino parent who sold you into prostitution, where you murdered a Madonna look-alike who was raped by Pygmies while snorting coke with an organ donor who turned out to be the long-lost twin of your gay mobster uncle who weighs 400 pounds and is happy about it, and if, as a bonus, you’ve written a book linking sexual fulfillment to varicose veins. . . .

See you on television.

You may be courted by two dozen talk shows, many of them adept at creating the fantasy of intimacy.

Incredibly, there are just that many talk shows on TV these days and nights, ranging from golden oldies to a spate of newcomers weighing in with infinite versions of the same verbiage. And those that fail will have no shortage of replacements, with Dennis Miller, Vicki Lawrence, Whoopi Goldberg, KCBS Channel 2 news anchor Bree Walker and mega-biographer Kitty Kelley among those either already set to host their own talk shows or being mentioned as possibilities for 1992.

TV needs more talk shows like it needs a hole in the tongue. Most merge into a fuzzy monolith consisting of indistinguishable platforms for plugs and pitches. Whether the host or hosts are facing the camera from a desk or from a set or from the studio audience, the talk-show format is now so generic that even half-hour infomercials have adopted it as a tool to sell their products.

Among the newcomers, “The Maury Povich Show” (3 p.m. on KCBS Channel 2) premiered with the biggest profile, given the stardom acquired by its host on “A Current Affair.” It is also the biggest retread, with Povich doing little more than aping “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” “Donahue,” “Sally Jessy Raphael” and “Geraldo,” although tending toward multiple topics per hour instead of one.

Nearly as derivative is “The Chuck Woolery Show” (1 p.m. on KCAL Channel 9), wherein game-show host Woolery enthusiastically interviews celebrities in a standard host-sits-with-guests style. It’s all very genial, but if anything could be called Muzak of the mouth, this is it.

By far the best of the new daytime talk programs is “Jenny Jones,” (2 p.m. on KNBC Channel 4), with stand-up comic Jones energizing a tired genre by virtue of her luminous personality and playful wit. There is no one funnier or fresher in daytime.

In avoiding topical issues, Jones also avoids the insidious affliction that marks Povich and many of her other counterparts: pretentiousness. Monday was an example. While two sisters were screaming at each other on “Sally Jessy Raphael” on Channel 9, Jones devoted her hour to the CBS daytime soap “The Young and the Restless.”

Because of their popularity, soaps are a talk-show staple in ratings sweeps months. But Jones soared above the mundane by visiting the set and getting, among many things, hands-on instruction from the cast’s male hunks on how to do love scenes, with the show’s steamy music in the background. When she gave her version of the “long lingering look,” your heart thumped so hard that you popped your buttons.

In the wardrobe room, Jones patted a mannequin on the rear. By not taking itself seriously, her show is a refreshing pat on the rear.

Also on the lighter side is “Cristina & Friends.” It ends a four-week test on Channel 9 Friday, after which “The Jerry Springer Show”--an oppressively self-important talk hour starring a Cincinnati news anchorman and former mayor--returns to this 11 a.m. time slot where it began the season.

“Cristina & Friends” has tackled some serious issues, too. Whereas Springer is generally funereal, however, “Cristina & Friends” at least has a sense of fun and spontaneity, with host Cristina Ferrare leading “friends” Cyndi James Gossett and comic Carrie Snow in coffee-klatch-style chats about themselves--especially about themselves--and the state of whatever else suits them.

On Monday, that included penile implants. Yes, those! Or as Ferrare put it: “Now we move on to penile implants for men unable to get or sustain erection.”

Said Channel 9 news anchor Pat Harvey, a guest panelist: “I’ve interviewed a lot of people who have this particular problem.” That’s the TV news business.

Meanwhile, enter Dr. Jack Jaffe with a variety of implants and jokes: “I can’t make it long enough to hang a flag on or hard enough to drive a nail with.” This was getting pretty serious, so it was time to lighten up by having Cristina and her friends commiserate with the nation by revealing how they were cutting back on Christmas spending out of economic necessity.

Snow was especially broke, she said, because she was spending $10,000 “on my new breasts.”

Well, the mood was getting rather somber. So it was time to lighten it up again by bringing out Dr. Carolyn Stevens-Mohr to watch controversial portions of Michael Jackson’s notorious new video and, in doing so, analyze Jackson’s motivations. Fortunately for the doctor, she had never met Jackson, and thus could approach her diagnosis with a fresh perspective.

“The (simulated) masturbation . . . was his way of saying to society, ‘Screw you!’ ” Stevens-Mohr said. “Is this a cry for help?” Ferrare wanted to know. “Oh, yes, it is,” the doctor replied, emphatically, adding later that “underneath, I think he’s really a beautiful person.”

Ferrare weighed in by allowing that the video had a positive side in its “melting together of black and white.” No one commented on another aspect of the video--that this “melting together of black and white” seemed to be happening on Jackson’s skin.

Here’s hoping that Ferrare’s friend Carrie Snow tuned in Monday’s “Montel Williams Show” (4 p.m. on KCOP Channel 13), where Williams devoted an hour to a very scholarly investigation of “what it’s like to go through life with very, very large breasts.” Make that epic breasts.

It was a show about boobs for boobs. Each of Williams’ three female guests was fronted by pairs of Goodyear blimps, and the questions came fast and furious. Do they sleep on their chests? How can they roll over in bed? How can they drive? How can they do you know what?

When the camera cut to Williams, he wore a studious expression.

Suddenly, the controversy: Enter another big-breasted woman contending that women should not earn money by displaying their big breasts. Whoa!

In fairness, not all of Williams’ shows are this top-heavy with dumbness. Neither, however, does there seem to be a good reason for the series to remain on the air beyond its ability to fill an hour in a station’s schedule.

Filling time: That’s the extent of most talk shows.