Born Phyllis Ada Driver, Phyllis Diller has been in show business for five decades. She is known for her outrageous wit -- matched only by her hair and her laugh. Her loud-mouthed, rapid-fire (and notably clean) delivery picks on everything from her husband (Fang) to the agonies of being a poor, self-deprecating housewife. The bulk of her performing career has been spent in dinner clubs around the world and on-stage (as a piano virtuoso) with over more than 100 orchestras. She has appeared on countless television sitcoms and dramas throughout the past 50 years, including The Carol Burnett Show, The Love Boat, and 7th Heaven. Diller has also appeared in scores of films, television specials, and Broadway productions. She co-starred in three of Bob Hope's movies, recorded five comedy albums, and published four books. She won a Lifetime Achievement Award in comedy from the American Comedy Awards in 1992 and a Lucy Award in 2000. She is an avid humanitarian. Diller started her career when she was 37 years old. She was a contestant on the '50s television game show You Bet Your Life, hosted by Groucho Marx. After that, she was booked at The Purple Onion nightclub in San Francisco for two weeks -- and extended her stay for 87 more. She went on tour from there. Diller was educated at the Sherwood Music Conservatory in Chicago and at Bluffton College in Ohio. She has five children and has been married and divorced twice. She now lives in Los Angeles, CA. It was Tuesday afternoon when the phone rang and the voice on the other line said, I have Ms. Diller on the line, do you have time to interview her now? She has time for you. Of course I had a hot flash as the blood rushed to my head as I scrambled for the hand written notes I had on a stray piece of paper and as I regained my composure, I started to talk to the legendary Miss Phyllis Diller. Amongst the scribbles of what were to be full questions the first word written was "Fang". This is what started out my interview with the 89 year old voice on the other end of the telephone. In your stand up routines you always referred to your pathetic husband Fang, tell us about him? He is an imaginary husband. He is a myth, an ad lib I was experimenting with material and he came to me. I admired Bob Newhart's driving bit and people liked it so I had to have a driving bit so I had to come up with someone and the audience fell in live with the fact that I had an idiot husband. In you career, you have met dignitaries, politicians and superstars, who is the most interesting person you have met? Streisand, because she is so bright, She is a designer, who designs her own clothes and an interior design. And oh what a voice she just opens her mouth and sings, she has the voice of an angel. I also admire Bob Hope, he was such a great business man and so smart. He saved up for his old age, so many of the old timers never saved their money. What did you do before you were a stand up comic? I was trained as a concert pianist and the little town that I was raised in if you could play the piano you could always get a job and after high school, I went to Chicago to a conservatory to study and I realized I didn't have the talent to be a concert pianist. Then I wanted to go to school to be a secretary, but my mother wouldn't let me do it, so she sent me to college to be a music teacher, I knew I didn't want to teach children, I would put a gag on them, that is where I met my husband, that is where I made my path in life to become a wife and mother. What defined your style? I worked with one liners or gags and the shorter the better, the set up and the pay off, I am in the Guinness book of world record for delivering 12 punch lines per minute. As far as styles, there are three types of funny people, (get your mind out of the gutter), comic actors, comediennes, they change costumes, sing and etc and me, the stand up comic, we are responsible for our own material. Your look, always different and eccentric, can you define it? Looking like the woman next door. I had a designer that designed my look that did everything for me from tennis to going to the store to but I had a lot of input. She designed everything for me from the age of 18; I designed everything I ever wore from the age of the age of 5. Tell us about your new book. The book is simply my real biography out in paperback entitled "Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse" My Life in Comedy, By Richard Buskin. I also have a new CD on the market at www.Laugh.com What else do you want our readers to know? Some of you may or may not know Sam Coleridge, he wrote couplets; it means two lines. I usually write one liners bit this time I have written two lines, A child has an imaginary friend. An adult has a God. These poignant words from this pioneer made me look at life differently. Ms. Diller, at 89 years old was as sharp as a tack and out of the kindness of her heart, sent an autographed picture of herself to my mother for her 75th birthday. I look on her career and can honestly say, "That's Funny!"