FIVE TAKEAWAYS FROM LAST GIRL BEFORE FREEWAY

Say what you will about Joan Rivers, but say it knowing that she’s probably beaten you to the punch line. The late comedian, known for her no-holds-barred humour and a fondness for silicone, doled searing criticism of herself in equal measure to others. In her Rivers bio Last Girl Before Freeway, Leslie Bennetts corrals the good, the bad and – as Rivers’s nature begs – the bawdy. Here 1are your takeaways: Untruths abound: The fashion critic was infamously prone to fabrication, with lies ranging from off-white to borderline unlawful. Rivers once auditioned with a stand-up routine stolen from the casting director sitting opposite. A couple more falsies, to right the record: Bill Cosby recommended Rivers for her breakthrough appearance on the Johnny Carson show (wrong: Rivers’s manager, Roy Silver, did his job on that one – not that you’d want a recommendation from Cosby anymore), and the comedian graduated with academic honours from Barnard (nope: and this half-truth is hereditary. Joan’s sister claimed similar scholarly distinction – to death, even, with the honour appearing in Barbara’s 2 obituary). Honesty is ugly: Though famous for her brazen criticism of Hollywood heavyweights, Rivers’s harshest judgment hit home. Asked if she’d rather be beautiful or be funny (because it has to be, you know, an either/or sort of thing), Rivers said she’d unquestionably rather be 3 beautiful. Little bundle of jokes: shortly after delivering daughter Melissa in 1968, Rivers sent her only child to Johnny Carson’s NBC office in the hands of a uniformed nurse. A sign around Melissa’s neck read “Mr. Carson, this is for you.” Melissa was later returned to her rightful, if not reckless, parents. 4 Joan Rivers, just like us: known for her dangerously restrictive diet, Rivers did harbour a weakness for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, keeping a constantly stocked cache in the freezer. Beyond that, the Brooklyn-born actress routinely opted for Altoids 5 (exactly two) at mealtime. Die laughing: Rivers’s disparaging assessment of fellow comedian Jerry Lewis’s annual Muscular Dystrophy Association telethon prompted a handwritten death threat from the funnyman himself. It worked, more or less – she kept mum on Lewis for a long while afterward – but this has spawned some of the Internet’s more creative conspiracy theories surrounding Rivers’s death.