This Time Together by Carol Burnett.✔✔✔

I was a huge fan of the Carol Burnett Show back in the 70s. You couldn't get through a show without a belly laugh or too, and more often than not, laughing almost to tears, especially at Tim Conway, who just had to walk into a skit to make me start laughing.

There were a few good laughs in this book too, as Carol related many anecdotes, which is basically how the book was written. For example, and this is an actual happening, Carol, dressed in pants, went into an ice cream parlour in NYC where women were only welcome if they wore skirts ( we're back in the 50s here). A waitress loudly berated her for wearing pants, and Carol finally explained herself - and certainly silenced the waitress - when she said she had just received a wooden leg and was too embarrassed to wear a skirt! Then there was the skit where Tim Conway, as a dentist, injected himself with novocaine to check out the effectiveness of the drug - once in the arm, once in his leg, and then finally between his eyebrows, with Harvey Korman writhing with laughter in the dentists' chair, trying unsuccessfully to be the terrified patient.

This was a very quick read, but thoroughly enjoyable. There's even a memorable quote from her daughter Carrie who died of cancer in 2002, and who when asked why she was always so cheerful even amidst such invasive treatments, said: "Every day I wake up and decide: today I'm going to love my life". It's evident her mother did - and it's a decision we'd all be better off making every day of our lives.