TORONTO - The sold-out crowd at Massey Hall were so glad they had some time together with TV legend Carol Burnett on Friday night, even though it seemed that just as she got started, came the time to say so long.

Over the course of 90-minutes, the 76-year-old Burnett regaled besotted fans with hilarious clips - including the famous curtain-rod wearing Scarlett in the Gone with the Wind parody Went With The Wind - and musical performances from The Carol Burnett Show while taking questions from the audience in between, just like she used to do at the beginning of her beloved '60-'70s variety-sketch-comedy series.

She was also given gifts ranging from a green quilt to a painting, and one fan even showed off a tattoo of Burnett she had put on her lower back after meeting the TV icon years ago, while another offered up a hug.

After an opening montage of Burnett doing her famous Tarzan yell (she later did it live), TV audience questions and Bob Mackie-designed outfits was screened on a tiny screen up on stage, Burnett - dressed smartly in a red sequined top and matching suit, and black heels (she does Pilates twice a week she told us) - finally appeared to a standing ovation.

Appropriately, she launched her 90-minute appearance, titled Carol Burnett: Laughter and Reflection, with a tribute to TV show regular Harvey Korman, who died last May at the age of 81.

"He became my partner in the show," said Burnett, who first spotted his talents on The Danny Kaye show where he was regular previously.

"He made me better. He was like a brother to me."

She also talked about how Korman and Tim Conway later teamed up on her show and how Conway's life mission was to crack Korman up in the the middle of a live sketch.

"Tim, really his goal in life was destroy Harvey," said Burnett, who then introduced a clip of a dentist skit in which Korman was unable to contain his laughter while Conway mugged.

Burnett said Conway was just as funny "in real life," demonstrating with a story about how he went to a bridge party with his wife and went into the bathroom and put globs of vaseline all over his face and attached broken-in-half Q-tips to his face, returning to the party and telling the guests: "The Q-tip box exploded!"

Audience questions seemed mainly like an excuse to lavish praise on Burnett - the first older male at the microphone actually burst into long nervous laughter before he finally got it together - and often queries had to do with specific skits from the TV show which may have only been interesting to them and not anyone else.

Still, Burnett is nothing if not a well-mannered pro and stickhandled her way through it all, offering up stories about her show regulars - including Vicki Lawrence, who a very pregnant Burnett went to see in The Miss Fireball competition in Inglewood, Calif, after Lawrence wrote her a letter asking her for a job - and famous guests ranging from Gloria Swanson to Red Skelton, plus her own career and life.

When asked who were her favourite characters to play, Burnett said bickering southerner Eunice and office bimbo Mrs. Wiggins, the latter whose walk with her butt sticking out in a tight skirt she demonstrated for Friday night's audience.

Frank Sinatra, she told the crowd, was the one guest she would have loved to have hosted.

But not all of the questions were about The Carol Burnett Show.

Burnett offered up a funny story about when she and Elizabeth Taylor were shooting a movie together in Toronto in the '80s, how a family kept calling the hotel offering up the master bedroom of their house to the two women.

"We should do it" Taylor told Burnett.

"She was a hoot," said Burnett of Taylor.

Then there was the time she was filming the role of Miss Hannigan in Annie and she was brought back two months later to reshoot a musical number, Easy Street, with Bernadette Peters and Tim Curry.

The problem was that Burnett had just her chin fixed so directer John Houston advised her to emerge from a closet "looking determined."