Wind machines and Meryl Streep’s tears: Everything Joan Rivers wanted at her funeral

Late comedian Joan Rivers had hoped her funeral would feature a wind machine so that her hair, even in a casket, would blow like Beyonce’s.

The award-winning star died in a New York hospital, aged 81, one week after she lost consciousness during a medical procedure in Manhattan.

An extract from Rivers’ 2012 book I Hate Everyone… Starting With Me detailed her requests for her funeral which was to be “a huge showbiz affair with lights, cameras, action”.

Rivers wanted “Meryl Streep crying, in five different accents”, no eulogy, and Bobby Vinton to “pick up (her) head and sing Mr. Lonely”.

“I want to look gorgeous, better dead than I do alive. I want to be buried in a Valentino gown and I want Harry Winston to make me a toe tag,” she wrote.

A funeral date for the comedy icon is yet to be announced.