Entertainment

Live! It’s Saturday White!

‘Sheer panic.” That’s Betty White explaining her preparations for hosting “Saturday Night Live” on May 8.

“Let’s face it, it’s going to be fun,” says the 88-year-old comic legend. “But contemplating it is a little scary.” For her fans, it’s a little Internet miracle. More than half a million people have joined the “Betty White To Host SNL (please?)!” Facebook fan group since December. That’s roughly the population of Wyoming — and they’re all rooting for an octogenarian to host a show known for jokes about penises gift-wrapped in boxes.

“I don’t understand it all,” says White. “I’m the luckiest old broad on two feet.”

It has indeed been a good year for the former “Golden Girl.”

She stole the show in the Sandra Bullock rom-com “The Proposal,” talked trash with Abe Vigoda in a wildly popular Super Bowl commercial for Snickers, and snagged a lifetime achievement award from the Screen Actors Guild. Not bad for a girl from Oak Park, Ill., who got her big break on the “Hollywood on Television” variety show . . . in 1949.

“Betty White is such a talented, valuable American resource that I think if we drill inside her, we might find oil,” Tina Fey jokes to The Post. The former “SNL” head writer will join White and former castmates Amy Poehler, Ana Gasteyer, Maya Rudolph, Rachel Dratch and Molly Shannon on the Mother’s Day Eve broadcast.

Current “SNL” star Kristen Wiig says she still can’t believe White is hosting. “She’s funny just being herself — she has this air about her that says, ‘I don’t give a s – – t,’ and I love that,” Wiig says. “That’s why I’m swearing, in honor of her.”

White describes her own sense of humor as bawdy.

“I don’t think of myself as a sweet, innocent persona,” she says. “I love double- entendre — half of the time I think it’s what you don’t say that’s the funniest.”

Case in point? Ask White if there’s anything in show business she hasn’t done that she’d still like to do.

“Robert Redford,” is the nearly 90-year-old’s standard response.

“She has impeccable comic timing and she also has a keen nose for contemporary comedy,” says Gasteyer, who likens White to a hip aunt.

“It’s a great reminder that age has nothing to do with youthful spirit.”

And America’s youth has giddily embraced White, more than six decades after her TV debut.

Robert Pattinson of “Twilight” recently called her one of the sexiest women in America (“I should write him a thank-you note,” quips White), and 70 percent of her online fan club is under age 45, according to David Matthews, the Texan who launched the campaign to bring her to “SNL.” Matthews himself is a whippersnapper of 29, a mere kindergartner when “The Golden Girls” debuted. He dreamt up the Betty White fan group after a “road trip and a couple of glasses of wine” last winter. Beginning with just 145 fans, he had no inkling that his ripple of a request would turn into a pop-culture tsunami.

“You could say she’s the embodiment of Americana,” he suggests.

“But she can throw out a cuss word that will make your jaw drop.”

White credits her parents as her comedy idols, fondly recalling a childhood filled with laughter. She remembers her salesman father returning from the road armed with pun-filled jokes. “I had the two best parents that were ever born — there wasn’t a straight man in the house,” she says. “They just thought funny.”

So what’s White’s secret for staying so, well, zeitgeist-y?

“I think energy builds on energy,” she says. “I love the business I’m in, and the more you do, the more it works.”

As for her still-svelte figure, White weighs herself in her Brentwood home each morning, skips bedtime snacks and never sits still.

“I have a two-story house and a very bad memory,” she laughs.

White has “not a clue” what characters she’ll be playing on her big “SNL” debut, but hopes flying blind will work in her favor. “As far as humor is concerned, I think spontaneity helps,” she says. “I’m just going to play it by ear and see what they give me.”

And what if the writers assign her a strung-out Lindsay Lohan impression?

“No, no, I get first refusal,” she explains. “It keeps me from wanting to run away from home!”

She says her favorite “SNL” character of all time is the Church Lady (“That cracked me up,” she says), and calls Fey’s Sarah Palin parody “the best impression that ever happened.”

White can’t wait to play with the other funny ladies returning for the show, but remains undecided about the infamous “SNL”

after-party.

“I do the show Saturday night, Sunday I fly back to California, and Monday I start the new series I’m doing for TV Land,” she says, referring to the role she just scored on “Hot in Cleveland.”

Between her new sitcom, chats with Oprah, book deadlines (her fifth is in the works), animal welfare work and, oh yes, that little Saturday night hosting gig, it will be a wonder if White can catch her breath, let alone catch some cocktails at 2 a.m.

Still, she’s keeping her options open. If she does hit the party, she’ll be accompanied by longtime secretary Donna Ellerbusch and beloved agent Jeff Witjas.

“I have an entourage,” she deadpans.

Witjas, a senior vice president at APA talent agency in Beverly Hills, says he, for one, isn’t surprised by White’s career explosion.

“I thought it would happen when she turned 90,” he jokes. “Go figure, she accomplished it two years early.”

Still, isn’t there something the “mother of comedy” still wants to do with her career? Say, a nude scene with that young, smoldering Pattinson who’s so taken with her?

“No, sorry I wouldn’t,” she says. “There really isn’t much spare time these days.”