During the course of his six-decade career, Jackie Mason was declared one of the greatest comedians of all time, by Mel Brooks; played hundreds of sellout shows, on Broadway and in London; won a Tony, an Emmy and was even nominated for a Grammy; and performed for the Queen and the Queen Mother. He also had career-damaging feuds with the TV host Ed Sullivan and the singer Frank Sinatra, the second of which would end with Mason’s Las Vegas hotel room being strafed with bullets. Mason, who has died aged 93, was a pioneer of a modern, personalised form of...