Joan Rivers' latest outing is called the (First Annual) Farewell Tour and, although Darcus Howe might wish it otherwise, she clearly isn't minded to succumb to old age just yet. First, there's that wrinkle-free face: "like a Siamese cat in a wind tunnel", according to her warm-up wags, Kit and the Widow. Then there's her on-stage energy. Perhaps the plastic surgeon fitted a new engine as well when Rivers, now 72, last went under the knife.
This London date offers up the usual Rivers brew of bitchiness, ruthlessness and celebrity abuse: imagine Heat magazine guest-edited by Machiavelli. Madonna is "an old whore, whose knees are in different time zones". And what's all this fuss about Michael Jackson? "I'm sick of this attitude. What? No one else here has ever fucked a kid?!"
It's hard to tell whether Rivers' stage persona is a satire on rampant amoral egoism or a celebration of it. "You grab and you take," she advises women, and (ironically, really) "all that counts is looks". Sometimes the aggressive shallowness of the world-view grates. But more often than not, you have to submit to a woman who can express contradictory sentiments ("I hate old people!", "I love old people!") with equal ardour, and takes such delight in mischief-making and outrage.
Some of tonight's material is whiskery. The Katharine Hepburn joke may have worked better when the lady still lived. But Rivers does a killer impersonation of poor Julie Andrews, singing Chim Chim Cher-ee after an operation on her throat. Then there's her audition for a colostomy bag commercial: "I'll do it for $75,000 and I'll throw in sound effects."
A broadcaster on shopping channel QVC, Rivers is well positioned to invoke the self-abasement we all might undergo for the right money. The Darcus Howe fracas may have hinted at her more principled side. But on stage, she's only ever the battle-axe, a lightning rod for the neurotic mercenary in all of us.
· At the Usher Hall, Edinburgh (0131-228 1155) tonight, then touring.
