Before Joan Rivers, before Roseanne Barr and Kathy Griffin there was Phyllis Diller. The comic, who died on Monday aged 95, was the first female standup to gain national recognition in the US, in the 1950s and 60s. Mentored by Bob Hope, she mixed an out-there style (a blonde fright wig, gaudy outfits and bejewelled cigarette holder) with a put-upon-housewife persona and a broad, unique laugh. Diller traded in machine-gun one liners and self-deprecating humour which reflected the shifting gender attitudes of the time. Here are some of the best zingers from the woman who, Joan Rivers said, "broke the way for every woman comedian".
• "I'm in my 14th year of a 10-day beauty plan."
• [On her wedding] "We had a civil ceremony – his mother couldn't come."
• "Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight."
• "Housework won't kill you, but then again why take the chance?"
• "I do dinner in three phases; serve the food, clear the table, bury the dead."
• "We spend the first 12 months of our children's lives teaching them to walk and talk and the next 12 months teaching them to sit down and shut up."
• [On her mother in law] "She got a water bed for Christmas, you know what's in there? Lake Erie."
• "I want to look 65 again, like I did when I was 30."
• "You know you're old when your birth certificate is on a scroll and they've discontinued your blood type."
