Like The Bunny, Bob Barker Just Keeps Going And Going …

After a quarter-century as host of “The Price Is Right,” he remains priceless.

But Bob Barker reaches an even more impressive milestone today, at five past noon. It was 40 years earlier to the minute that he got the best news of his life.

“I know exactly where I was, I know exactly how I felt,” Barker says. “I hung up the phone and said to my wife, ‘Dorothy Jo, I got it!’ ” Ten days later, he went on the air as the new host of an NBC game show called “Truth or Consequences.”

Between that 18-year gig and “The Price Is Right” (a CBS fixture weekdays at 10 a.m.), Barker has never been off the air since.

“I have grown old in your service,” he joked on a prime-time retrospective last summer.

But this television veteran, who turned 73 two weeks ago and white-haired long before that, cheerfully defies his years - and the actuarial tables of his youth-adoring industry.

All in all, Barker rocks. Still.

His “Price Is Right,” which premiered Sept. 4, 1972, is now television’s longest-running game show. It is the only game show on any of the major broadcast networks, where a dozen or more once thrived.

How to explain Barker’s longevity?

For one thing, he, unlike many others in his trade, doesn’t undermine himself with campiness and irony, doesn’t mock the quiz-show genre he is part of. No phony grin, smarmy air, knowing winks. Barker plays no games.

“I don’t try to create false enthusiasm,” he says during a visit to Manhattan. “I enjoy the show right along with the audience.

“I want the contestants to feel as though they’re guests in my home,” he adds. “Perhaps my feeling of respect for them comes across to viewers, and that may be one of the reasons why I’ve lasted.”