Housework can’t kill you… but why risk it?

She was the original lady comic. In this heart-warming and hilarious interview, just weeks before her death, Phyllis Diller talked to Barbra Paskin about Dudley Moore, plastic surgery, winning in a man’s world – and her greatest regret

She was a feisty trailblazer, pushing frontiers for women where they hadn't been before. When she became a stand-up comic at 37, ('that was really old in 1956') she had no female competition. In a genre dominated by men, there were few women. It was a time when women stayed home to become wives and mothers. They rarely took on careers as well. Especially not as comics. Diller changed all that.

The last time I saw her was a few months ago in her colourful Brentwood home, next to Beverly Hills, that was filled with art, much of it her own. Since her retirement ten years ago, she had turned to painting and she'd been up most of the night painting cherry trees and flower-filled vases. 'I couldn't stop myself. One colour just sort of led to another.'

I was there to do an interview for a BBC documentary on Dudley Moore, one of her favourite people. 'I was crazy about Dudley because I'm a jazzophile. I love jazz, I like it 24 hours a day and he was a fine jazz pianist. Also he was the other love of my life, comedy.'

She relished telling the story of how, after reading in the paper that she'd love to have him play jazz for her, the comic actor had called her and offered to fulfil her desire. To her astonishment, he turned up, not alone but with his trio and a carload of sound equipment. A house full of friends, among them Bob Hope, sat on the floor watching Dudley and his trio perform some of his celebrated compositions. It was a special night for Phyllis but one that was tempered with regret.

'He was a sad person and that's what made his music so evocative, it pulled at your heartstrings. Dudley was never happy. He was born sad. And being crippled didn't help. But his main outlet was the beautiful jazz.'

It's not widely known that Diller was also an accomplished pianist. Yet, although she played with more than 100 symphony orchestras, she was never able to realise her true dream.

'I've played with symphonies and that's the greatest joy of my life. I started out to be a concert pianist. And then I got to the big city and found out that I was no Mozart. But I can't play jazz. And that's been the great disappointment in my life.'

After giving up on her musical aspirations, she allowed marriage and five children to intervene. Then, for a while she worked as a newspaper columnist on a local paper while husband Sherwood spent two years urging her into comedy. All her life she had been an amateur comic, amusing friends and family with her patter. A new medium – television – was beckoning Sid Caesar and other comics from the East coast, 'but when Milton Berle signed his $10m contract, it just blew my husband's mind! He saw dollar signs in his eyes and he actually insisted that I become a comic!'

Eventually, she auditioned at the celebrated San Francisco nightclub The Purple Onion, which led to 86 weeks of stand-up comedy. A spot on Groucho Marx's weekly television show, You Bet Your Life, cemented Diller's future. Along with her routines. She invented a dumb husband, 'Fang', who overnight became a household name. 'Everybody could relate to this husband, because all husbands, no matter how bright, do dumb things every now and then. But of course in Fang's case he did everything dumb.'

Her real husband loved being confused with Fang. The
fictional character was so popular that he took to introducing himself as Fang. 'I guess he was starved for attention,' Phyllis reflected. He even had his towels and notepaper embossed with a single fang. 'I often had to make an explanation that no, he was Sherwood Diller, not Fang!'

Still, she very rarely discussed her routines with him. 'He was one of those motor mouths who just
fills the air with verbiage and they never say anything,' she said of the man whom she eventually divorced after 25 years of marriage. 'So we didn't discuss anything except what he was saying!'

'I had reams of material about being flat-chested, like "My Playtex living bra died of starvation,"' she laughed with her trademark cackle.

She soon became known for the rapid-
fire delivery ('energy' she corrected me) that emulated the style of her friend Bob Hope.

Her work, she liked to say, was 'an art, and extremely diŒfficult.' And although she made it seem easy, almost every word was carefully scripted by her beforehand.

So where did it all begin? I asked. Her answer surprised me. 'I had no self-esteem and that's the way the material began. In high school. All the girls were prettier, richer, I was the underdog. So I played it. And got laughs. And it became my fortune.'

Like her friend Dudley Moore, I remarked. 'The poor thing, he always felt some imperfection because he was a little bit crippled and he was short. We all want to be perfect. That's why my chest jokes worked. Because no woman is satis
fied with her chest.'

How aware was she at the time that she was charting new frontiers?

'I wasn't aware of any of that. I wasn't even aware of being unusual because I was female. I wasn't aware of anything except that I wanted to be funny. I just wanted that. It was later that it all came to light that I had done something quite unusual.'

Phyllis' shows were sellouts and she carried her stage success to the small screen with frequent television specials. And there were films, including Eight On The Lam with Bob Hope, whom she regarded as her mentor. As a schoolgirl, she had been 'just mad about him'.

'Bob was my guru and I learned so much from him. He was really the king of the one-liners. It was wonderful to have the pat on the back come from the greatest stand-up comic that ever lived. That's what I got out of him. Plus eternal friendship.'

Her looks were a frequent subject for the tabloids , and she did everything to make herself as outrageously unattractive as possible. So in 1972, at the age of 55, she stunned her followers by transforming herself with a complete face-lift. And became vociferous about it in the media. Why, I asked, did she do that at a time when women kept silent about such things?

'I was never happy with the way I looked. I had a badly broken nose from a car accident. Then my teeth were crooked. So I had a crooked nose and crooked teeth and I just wasn't one of those great beauties and I wanted to be. I wanted to be Queen of the May, little knowing I'd be happy all my life with the comedy role.'

After Diller went public, suddenly the subject of plastic surgery became permissible. She brought it out of the closet. 'In the old days people used to treat a face-lift like an abortion. Something to be ashamed of. They'd go out of town, go to South America. But I made it respectable because I treated it matter-of-factly by saying it's a good thing. You look better, you feel better and emotionally it gave me a big lift. I couldn't tell you the dišfference it made in my life to look really nice. Boy! I would look in the mirror and not believe it. I would say "who is that?" It changed my wholeattitude, plus I began having suitors, old men who liked me!'

In the last several years, she had turned to art and writing, both with some measure of success. She wrote three books: her autobiography, Like A Lampshade In A Whorehouse, and two self-help manuals, Phyllis Diller's Housekeeping Hints and Phyllis Diller's Marriage Manual.

The world will miss her trademark cackle and verbal humour. But her films and television performances live on. And a film, Goodnight, We Love You, that captured her last stand-up performance in 2002.

'I've been very blessed in my life," she told me. 'I always wanted to make people laugh.' And in that, she achieved her greatest success.

THE WIT AND WISDOM OF PHYLLIS DILLER

• On cooking 'I do dinner in three phases. Serve the food, clear the table, bury the dead.'
• On husband 'Fang' 'Fang is the cheapest man alive. On Christmas Eve, he puts the kids to bed, fires one shot and tells them Santa committed suicide.'
• On vanity 'You know what keeps me humble? Mirrors!'
• On parenting 'Be nice to your children. They choose your rest home.'