TALKIN' ABOUT MANY GENERATIONS

The phone rings, and Joe Franklin-who has no secretary in his famously cluttered office but rather what he calls ''an odd retinue'' of hangers-on and helpers-gives the caller his trademark kiss-off: ''I'm talking about you on the other phone!'' Hanging up, the former television talk-show host (Joe Franklin's Memory Lane, The Joe Franklin Show) and oddball talent coordinator leans past the piles of junk and smiles. ''Sometimes they believe it,'' he says. They won't if they read Up Late With Joe Franklin (Scribner, $20), in which the King of Nostalgia reveals his secrets of phone etiquette (other patented brush-offs include ''My lawyer's here'' and ''They're filming me for 60 Minutes right now''). Readers will also get a personal history of radio and television: Franklin, who retired from his WWOR-TV show in 1993, spent a record 44 years on TV, not counting his 50 years in radio, which began in 1945, when he was 15. ''I wanted people to know that my whole life is tongue-in-cheek,'' Franklin says of the book. ''People think they're putting me on, but I'm putting them on.'' He's referring, of course, to Billy Crystal's long-running Joe Franklin impersonation, once a staple of Saturday Night Live. The real Joe Franklin would prefer to be known for pioneering the talk-show format and for guests who rivaled The Tonight Show's. ''I had six Presidents,'' claims Franklin, who still does a weekly radio show. ''I had Charlie Chaplin. I had Cary Grant. I had Henry Kissinger, Arthur Schlesinger. Barbra Streisand was my singer. I had her on 40 times.'' Wow, 40 times? ''At least 40!'' he says. ''Well, maybe 12.''