The longest running gig in the history of modern standup comedy will enter its 26th year on Friday, June 5, when author/actor/humorist Jean Shepherd. makes his annual stop at Princeton University's Alexander Hall. In terms of comedic longevity, names like Bob Hope, Milton Berle and Henny Youngman might be the first to come to mind, while many fans of. Mr. Shepherd, who first rose to fame as the host of a nightly radio show on WOR-AM back in the 1960s, don't even think of him as a comedian. Not that he wasn't funny on the radio, but it was his unique and insightful perspective on the human condition that captivated a devoted audience of all ages and kept them beside their radios for 45 minutes every night for more than two decades before his final broadcast in 1978. Since then Mr. Shepherd, also known for the short Stories he wrote for Car and Driver, Playboy, and other rnagazines, not to mention short story anthologies like In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey's Night of Golden Memories (And Other Disasters), has branched out into television and feature films. His crowning achievement so far has been A Christmas Story, which merged several of his tales into one movie that has become a holiday tradition right up there with Miracle on 42nd Street and It's a Wonderful Life. The sequel, A Summer Story, is already being planned by MGM Studios, which is negotiating with Macaulay Culkin for the lead. But no matter what he's doing, Mr. Shepherd has always shown up, year after year for graduation weekend at Princeton. "I've played at that place for so long I feel like I own the lease," said Mr. Shepherd during a recent interview. "It's a great place to do a show, and a terrific audience - just absolutely the best audience I have all year. Some people have seen all the shows I've done there, and that goes back to the late Elizabethan Wars." You get the idea it's also a sentimental homecoming for Mr. Shepherd, who used to own a weekend home in Washington Township during his tenure at WOR. But don't expect him to get teary-eyed over his radio days. Fans, may be surprised, even shattered, to hear that he never liked doing radio and probably never will. "See, that was just a gig," he explained. "I never thought of myself as doing talk radio. I thought of myself as a comedian who happened to be doing a radio show. "My performing is particularly effective in front of a live audience. At the same time I was doing the radio show, I was also playing Carnegie Hall, I did four or five major Off-Broadway plays and I was traveling all over the country doing live perforrnances. ''Towards the end, I was feeling so trapped by that damn radio show because it would keep me in New York when I had other opportunities. Radio is very limiting because it's only local (although he was syndicated by as much as 300 stations at various times) and you always have to be there." Local New York, in fact, is the only area around the country where he's still remembered for radio. "I was on the Johnny Carson Show five times, and I hear more from audiences around the country about that than any of the radio I did," he explained, adding that he was once in the running to replace Jack Parr on The Tonight Show before Carson got the job. "I spent the last three years of my time (at WOR) trying to get out of my contract. I realized radio was not a medium for the kind of thing I do when one night in 1978, there were 26 one-minute commercials in 45 minutes. It wasn't a medium for a performer. It's a sales medium, a medium to sell stuff." Another common Misconception about Mr. Shepherd is while the characters of his stories often depict his own family and childhood exploits growing up in Depression-Era Indiana, they are not based on his personal experiences. "I had an underlying theme I knew I was writing about, and then I'd write the story," he said. "I'd take my ideas from things things I'd see currently, because I think nostalgia is a very sick thing in America. This fascination and addiction to the past is one of the reasons that our country is declining, although I don't want to get into that here. "I'll see something like - well let's take Wanda Hickey for example," he continued. "I was coming home from a nightclub show I'd done at the Limelight (in Manhattan). It was raining, a cold, windy night. And I'm going along Third Street, and I see two couples ahead of me. They were wearing tuxedo's and long dresses and I said 'Holy God, it's the prom!' And they were wet and struggling, it was a whole bad scene, but I remember thinking that five years from now they're gonna say they had the greatest time in the world, and look at 'em! I thought that would make a great short story, and I went back and wrote Wanda Hickey." Rain or shine, Mr. Shepherd will use Wanda Hickey as the centerpiece of this year's Princeton show. "I haven't told that story live for 20 years." said Mr. Shepherd. "And it's a great story." He may have turned his back on radio, but the Princeton tradition will continue. Last year, Mr. Shepherd hinted last year might be his final show at Alexander Hall, but he's since had a change of heart. "I'm not planning on making anything the last," he said with his trademark guffaw. "Once you start performing, it's like a drug. I think Johnny Carson is gonna be very sorry he retired. I'm never gonna retire." JEAN SHEPHERD Friday, June 5 at Alexander Hall, Princeton University. Tickets $14. (609) 258-3655.