SOURCE MATERIAL: Phyllis Diller on starting out and how she defined her job

An extended Q&A from 2002

There are certain people I worked a little harder to get into Comedy Notes in the Boston Globe, back when I was writing that column weekly. They were usually people whose legend more than made up for their lack of zeitgeist. So when Phyllis Diller came to the Mohegan Sun Casino in 2002, I would have begged my editor to get the interview. It was a bit out of the Globe’s normal geographic reach for upcoming shows, but I didn’t have to argue too hard.