How to modify this script?

[Kurt Hansen]

http://www.tuxradar.com/content/save-time-gedit-snippets:

To convert tab-separated text lines into a HTML-table:

$<
lines = $GEDIT_SELECTED_TEXT.split("\n");
output = '<table\>\n';

for line in lines:
	output += '<tr\>';
	
	columns = line.split("\t");
	for item in columns:
		output += '<td\>' + item + '</td\> '
	
	output += '</tr\>\n';

output += '</table\>';
return output
 >

I would like to make a small modification (I'm not a programmer myself). 
Let's say I have these lines:

Price table
1 <tab> Green apple <tab> $1
5 <tab> Green apples <tab> $4
10 <tab> Green apples <tab> $7

Since there's only one "field" in the first line, I want this output:

<tr><td colspan="3">Price table</td></tr>

- insted of

<tr><td>Price table</td></tr>

How to? Thank you i advance.
-- 
Venlig hilsen
Kurt Hansen