Burnett was, as always, charming, gracious, slim, attractive and honkingly funny. She looks about 400 times better than Mick Jagger, that's for sure.

The evening began with a large-screen video montage of scenes from the 11-year run of "The Carol Burnett Show." Most clips came from the live audience question-and-answer sessions that opened each program. These served as an introduction for those too young to remember Burnett's early years and recalled how explosively funny and daring her show was, and the weirdness of some members of her live audience.

Burnett then arrived onstage to a thundering ovation that was a prelude to an hour and a half of hilarity and warmth. The format was Q & A, but it didn't take much to rev Burnett up into a hellz-a-poppin' exhibition of the narrative virtuosity that made her a star.

Some of her best TV characters made an appearance-shrill Eunice of "Mama's House;" Patsy, the "good" twin (Burnett also played the evil twin)-a space cadet in love with a lighthouse, and Mrs. Wiggins, the totally stupid Italy-shaped secretary.

Then there were the film icons skewered by Burnett and company over the years-Shirley Temple ("Oh, pweeze, won't someone hewp me find moy daddy?"); "Gone With the Wind" (as Scarlett, Burnett's dress-made-out-of-the-curtains outfit featured a drapery rod through the shoulders that nearly beheaded co-star Harvey Korman), and a hilariously creepy take-off on the creepy film "Sunset Boulevard" that became a classic of sketch comedy.

She offered advice to young actors who questioned her from the audience: "Get your education," and went on with hardheaded recommendations for survival in show business. Burnett graduated from UCLA, of which she is now a trustee, and her legendary charitable endeavors include several scholarship funds for students of theater, musical theater and journalism.

The best material of the evening involved descriptions of the antics of lunatic comedian Tim Conway who spent decades playing Burnett (and everyone else) like a piano onstage and off. There isn't room to repeat the tales of Conway's torture-by-wit of his co-stars, his (now ex-) wife, traffic cops, stodgy bridge-obsessed dinner guests, but most in the audience laughed until they cried.

Then there were the tales of Burnett's beloved granny, who raised her in a one-room apartment off Hollywood Boulevard and used to check under the Murphy bed every night for Randolph Scott. Granny had "at least six husbands," Burnett said, and when she died at 81, her boyfriend was a 40-year-old jazz musician in Ronondo Beach.

Burnett's career has featured hundreds of exceptional stage, film and television performances in comedic, dramatic and musical roles, for which she has received dozens of prestigious awards: five Golden Globes, a Peabody, an Ace, more People's Choice Awards than any woman in history and six Emmys, including one this year for her recurring role in the NBC comedy "Mad About You."

And hey, she's still going! She and daughter Carrie Hamilton will guest star on "Touched by an Angel" this fall. And if you've got a sec, give her critically acclaimed memoir, "One More Time" (1986) a read. Our lives should all turn out as well.