Roundtable: Comedy Legends

Aren’t I the lucky lady?” cracked Phyllis Diller, the 93-year-old stand-up great (and veteran of 23 Bob Hope TV specials), as she took a seat to discuss comedy with a trio of old cronies: Mel Brooks, 84, who has won every major showbiz award — the Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony (making him that rarest of Hollywood icon, an “EGOT”); nine-time Emmy winner Carl Reiner, 88, whose career spans Sid Caesar’s Your Show of Shows, The Dick Van Dyke Show, four movies with Steve Martin (starting with The Jerk) and an on-camera romance with Betty White (in TV Land’s Hot in Cleveland); and Tim Conway, 77, who has won five Emmys for side-splitting work on The Carol Burnett Show and, more recently, 30 Rock. These comedy legends gathered to swap stories Dec. 9 at Siren Studios in Hollywood with guest moderator Dick Cavett, arguably TV’s greatest — and most erudite — conversationalist and author of the new book Talk Show. After more than an hour, they were all still laughing.