I got texted this morning letting me know that Joan Rivers had passed away. I had a few minutes of complete and utter shock, before moving online quickly and checking no less that 5 media outlets and Melissa Rivers' Twitter on my phone just to accept it as true. The rest of the trip was just more stunned sitting there, and to be honest a couple of tears that I tried to keep discreet as I got off the train and walked home. I honestly couldn't work out why I was so upset. I mean as saddening as anybody's passing is, I didn't know Joan Rivers personally or anything. I just watch her on television very often. I thought about it for a little while, and it occured to me that even though I never knew Joan intimately, it was so easy to feel like I did. She was just so wonderfully open book about everything. Through her half a century of comedy and multiple biographies, autobiographies, standups and television specials, she's revealed such an enormous amount about her private life. Her brand of humour is one the countless celebrities have unhappily been on the other end of, but she's levelled the playing field by keeping the jokes just as self-deprecating, meaning that nobody is immune from her barrage of laugh-inducing insults. Behold my favourites...
“I’ve had so much plastic surgery, when I die, they will donate my body to Tupperware.”
“I have no sex appeal. If my husband didn’t toss and turn, we’d never have had the kid.”
Joan Rivers
I think it was a very warm and inviting sort of humour, full of points and jagged edges but the sort that were utterly side-splitting (yeah, pathetic i know). I watched her a great deal over the years, everything from old episodes of Late Show with Joan Rivers to Joan and Melissa, Fashion Police and In Bed with Joan. Seeing some of her interviews and reading a few of her autobiographies, you could see that she was serious at all the right moments, but always knew how to lighten the mood. How could one not feel like they could have been best friends with her?! I imagined her as Hollywood's kooky old grandmother, with all the old-world anecdotes and ridiculously inappropriate one liners. I feel genuinely sad that I never got famous enough to go on In Bed With Joan :(
Talking quickly about her style as well. I think she was absolutely masterful. Her look was ranged between the grande dame socialite and the Dame Edna gaieté. Just such a manner of glitz and glamour, furs and jewels. I think it was sophisocated enough to make her an icon, but colourful enough to keep her away from the herds of Upper East Side socialite prunes. It was the perfect aesthetic for her as a person, decadent, wise, and barrels and barrels of fun.
I thank Joan sincerely for hours upon hours of guilty giggles/rolling on the floor wetting myself laughing over the years, and pray that she may rest in peace. Wherever she is I hope that she's still joking and the she looks as amazingly glamorous as ever. I also wish her family and friends all the strength in the world for this loss.
Joan Rivers 1933-2014