Joan was sometimes funny, always cruel, and brave to the very end

Joan Rivers could get away with being cruel about other people as long as she was harsh about herself, writes Terry Prone.

You know the attention a parakeet gets when it uses a stick to get food? The public looks on and thinks it’s one smart lad. Imagine, with its little bird brain, it can work out that an abandoned stick will enable it to reach whatever it wants for its tea, beyond its normal reach.

The human equivalent? The late comedienne Joan Rivers, who fashioned a tool for survival, personal advancement, and riches beyond the dreams of Croesus, out of a despised human trait: cruelty. Let’s not dance around it, here. Them’s the facts. Not since Vlad the Impaler has anyone else built such a rep based on upfront personal cruelty. Other comedians might make the odd crack about someone famous, but always in the celebs-joshing-celebs mode now owned by misnamed ‘chat’ shows like Graham Norton’s. Nobody else in comedy was downright vicious about other showbiz figures. Most of the pilloried forced a smile. A few didn’t. Elizabeth Taylor, during her obese years, was known to find Rivers’ relentlessly harsh pursuit of her desperately hurtful — like the crack that Taylor’s favourite food was seconds. Boom boom, take it away, Joan.