TWELVE months later, Matt Drudge remains humble.

“Sure, it’s been a year on the high seas, but who knew this story would lead to tricks and treats?” said Drudge, who first told the world about Monica Lewinsky and President Clinton on his website, “The Drudge Report.”

For better or worse, Drudge is the one journalistic name that has been irrevocably attached to the Clinton scandal the way Woodward and Bernstein were to Watergate or Peter Arnett was to the Gulf War.

Drudge even got his own weekly TV series out of it – a Saturday-night show, “Drudge,” on cable’s Fox News Channel, which goes live tomorrow night (11 p.m.) with a studio audience.

“People take my calls now, which is different,” Drudge said. “But I’m not sitting here intellectualizing this [Clinton-Lewinsky] thing. I don’t have any panic attacks and I sleep well.

“I’m sure that later on, I’ll look back and say, ‘What the hell was that about?’ But I’m a guy who lives in the moment – and I’m not sitting here reflecting on it too much. I don’t think I’ll be reliving the Lewinsky thing 20 years from now.

“The television show was a gift,” he says.

Drudge has no second thoughtsabout exposing the Lewinsky story.

“It’s been a helluva trip … right in front of all the slings and arrows from the crowd, whether from the media or the White House,” he said.

“I was already in over my head before the story broke … but I’m not overwhelmed. I’ve kept my [website] operation exactly the same out of my rundown apartment. My car is a little more dented up, though.”

Drudge’s notoriety won him a controversial spot on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and a more controversial speaking engagement at the National Press Club.