Pioneering American comedy entertainer Joan Rivers is dead at 81.
She had been in critical condition at Mount Sinai hospital in New York, after she stopped breathing during an operation on her vocal chords.
Her career as a comic, talk show host, and celebrity commentator spanned decades.
US correspondent Kate Fisher takes a look back.
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"I was always the maverick in the family"Few would dispute that. Joan Rivers was a stand-up comedy trailblazer, who began fighting for respect in a male-dominated field over fifty years ago, as she describes in an interview with the Archive of American Television:"In those days stand up was very diffrent. i wasn't allowed to say i was preganat. It was very careful. I did a joke that was so easy and it scandoulous in those days. Well, i mean. it was scandouls."Her TV breakthrough came in 1965 as a guest on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson,upsotShe alsways acknowledged Carson as her mentor, as she told public radio station WNYC in New York":I wen t on his show once nad i was satra. iof he annointed you you were set for life."But after she launched a rival program, The Late Show, he never spoke to her again. The show was axed and soon after her husband committed suicide.She rebuilt her life, launching her own syndicated daytime talk show. She went on to win an Emmy Award and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.But in recent years her increasingly brutal and personal put-downs have found opposition. When questioned recently on CNN about her decision to wear fur - she walked out of the studio:sot.On WNYC she defended her outspoken style:"when they say you've crossed the line, who decided where the line is? You know they say that's bad but on a scale of one to osama bin laden how bad am I?"Whatever end of the scale you perceive her to be, there's no doubt that a world wothout Joan Rivers will be a much less colourful place.Kate Fisher, Washington.