Anyone strolling past the London Eye last night might have got a shock. Perched just on the edge of Jubilee Gardens on the South Bank was a giant upside-down purple cow, all four legs in the air. Hoove-ing into view, you could say. This was not a new Damien Hirst project, but the capital’s funniest, funkiest live venue, the E4 Udderbelly, and it will be playing host to comedy, live music, cabaret and much more for the next seven weeks.

Inside the cow there were even more shocks. Maybe not for anyone who has seen Joan Rivers before, but for Rivers virgins this was a chance to see the irreverently brash New York comedienne who outraged television viewers with her four-letter-word tirade against Russell Crowe last year as a guest on ITV’s Loose Women.

The launching act for the Udderbelly festival, at 75 Rivers is still going strong. Or, as her warm-up act, comedy cabaret duo Kit and the Widow declared in their inimitable Noughties’ Noel Coward style: “The only Rivers older are the Nile and Euphrates.” The South Bank is not the only thing here to have had a facelift of course. The recent winner of America’s version of The Celebrity Apprentice happily admitted that she opts for the knife. Inner beauty will always lose to outer looks, she quipped. No man ever fell for a woman because she was good at housework.

She certainly milked laughs from her own turbulent life. When she broke up with her boyfriend who only had one leg, she was heartbroken— she really missed those handicapped parking spaces.

Listening to her stab her stiletto into fellow stars was as enjoyable as it was familiar. Few escaped her nuclear attack. From the inevitable victims — Michael Jackson, Madonna — to those who one might have to be Rivers’ vintage to know — June Allyson, Jimmy Carter’s daughter Amy — the barbs rattled along at breakneck speed. Most stars today, from Tom Cruise to Sean Penn, are so small she feels like Snow White when she meets them, Rivers said.

The weirdest aspect of the evening, apart from her facial expression — which does seem stretched almost to snapping point — was that the front of the stage was covered in cue cards. It is hard to believe that she needed them as she could surely have done much of this bitchy, breathlessly funny show in her sleep. New venue, same old schtick, but fantastic old schtick.