Joan Rivers (1933-2014)

I saw this a while back and if you didn’t ever get a chance to see her live it comes close. This is the first part but you’ll find linques to the rest. She has a riff with the band at the beginning but you see how she enters to do her act and then gets side-swiped by the need to dish.

There’s an old joke that in New York man has three basic needs: food, sex, and fixing other people’s musicals. With her it was the need to dish. I stand in awe at her phenomenal skill at improvising. And of course, a lot of that is experience and having bumped up against similar circumstances in previous perfs but still.

And just remember, after she got through with this act she’d change, go back out on stage to spend however much time it took with her visitors before she called it quits for the night. That is, if she wasn’t then going to an airport to fly to the next date. Astounding. We that are young shall never see so much, nor live so long.

Cheeky Brits:

‘As a tribute to the late Joan Rivers, parts of this station will be gradually replaced over the next 40 years,’ read the alert board at the Hackney Wick station.