"Never kowtowing to anyone’s pieties" … Joan Rivers in 2008. Photograph: Tony Larkin/Rex  I saw Joan Rivers perform on four occasions. She was already in her 70s on the first of those, and old age was an integral part of her act. Perhaps when she was young it was shocking to see a woman be so cynical and outspoken. When she was old, that wasn't unusual any more, and the joke became instead how startling it was to see a septuagenarian this filthy, fierce and unflinching – not least about decorum, decay and impending death. (Sample quip: "At my funeral, I want Meryl Streep crying in five different accents.")  So now she's gone, and – to judge by her stage act – she wouldn't want any crocodile tears about it. But then, that was an act. The odd one out among the live shows I saw Rivers perform was her so-called "play" on the Edinburgh fringe in 2008. It was really just gussied-up standup, but the show – which told a sort-of story about Hollywood's cult of youth and efforts to elbow Rivers out of the limelight – was tonally a little different to her usually bloodless shtick. "Performing for you is my life," Rivers grandstanded at the end, "and no one has the right to take it away from me." It was a shameless bid for sympathy and a standing ovation – and not the work of someone who cared as little as she tended to affect.  That was also – and not coincidentally – the least exciting performance I saw her give. Faux victimhood wasn't what we sought from Rivers; we wanted affront and abuse, and usually we got it. Tinseltown gossip and bitchiness? Check. Breathtaking lack of sentimentality about her own life and loves? Present and correct. So-called political correctness loudly flouted. But of course. Rivers also ruthlessly sent up – or celebrated – her own self-absorption, avarice and superficiality, and by association, the world she lived in and seemed most luridly to represent.  Particularly in her later years, there was nothing novel about PC-baiting. What distinguished Rivers' work was the vehemence (and the delight) she brought to the task, the quality of the jokes (she was, above all, a great gag woman) – and of course the fact that the last laugh was always on her. Take any of her remarks about the Chinese, thin people or little people out of context (as she claimed happened with her comments about Gaza a few weeks ago), and you'd have every right to think: how unpleasant. But when we hear them from the stage, in a show that pumps abuse by the tsunami, we're laughing at how anyone can be so warped, so insensitive, so heedless of censure or consequence.  Sometimes, the joke palled: the essential hollowness of that worldview gets hard to obscure over two-and-a-half hours. But it was awe-inspiring to watch Rivers try: she had the stamina of someone (several someones) a fraction of her age. And when the shtick was firing, she was electrifying. Partly because hers was a devil-with-best-tunes picture of monstrosity you couldn't take your eyes off – and let's face it, the weird plastic face helped. But also because of the vicarious thrill supplied by imagining a life without politeness (or hypocrisy), in which we all give vent to our wickedest, knee-jerkiest thoughts – and to hell with the fallout.  At such times, when she was in full flow, you'd have doubted Rivers' voice could ever be silenced. Now it has been – but I'll bet death had a struggle to shut her up. Her comedy will live on as long as people love brilliantly written jokes. And the example she set, of grabbing life and the limelight with both hands, laying bare her vanity and venality for the rest of our amusement, never kowtowing to anyone's pieties, least of all her own, is a pretty inspiring one.
Brian Logan remembers the four times he saw the unflinching, fierce and filthy performances of this comedic force