Some of it wasn't that good -- you thought that the people on the dais were plastered, because they were roaring at jokes that didn't deserve a roar; unless the show was edited later, and Orson Welles and Phyllis Diller could be pictured gaping and shaking with laughter at moments when they weren't doing any such thing.
But some of it was very good. Don Rickles, one of the nicest human beings to survive Hollywood, was a rollicking insult-machine, and you never knew what the heck he was going to say or who he was going to say it at, because he himself probably didn't know, either. I've heard that there were only two comedians that nobody EVER wrote for, and one was Don Rickles, and the other was Jonathan Winters. And if you want sheer improvisational genius, check out Jonny Winters challenged by Jack Paar to do stuff with a stick:
Anyway, the shows were preceded by a WARNING, to the effect that some people might find the humor culturally offensive, or something like that. Well, well, what do you know, they roasted Muhammad Ali, and Freddie Prinze came out telling jokes about his Spanish 'hood, and Floyd Patterson came out insulting Ali's prowess, and Nipsey Russell came out to parody Ali's poems, and Howard Cosell -- one of Ali's biggest fans and a very close friend -- was there to mix it up with him quite literally, trading slaps to the head. Ali was at first a little tense, but ten minutes in, he was utterly loose and enjoying himself immensely. Plenty of guys gave him great tributes, especially Billy Crystal, whose impersonations of Cosell and Ali were dead to rights. Probably the funniest shtick was what Red Buttons did, what he always did at these roasts -- the delayed jokes in his "Never Got a Dinner" routine. Buttons came, in his pleading, exaggerated, insistent mock-earnest way, already a gag, and said, "Why, why, I tell you, why, ladies and gentlemen, are we giving THIS man a dinner, when so many of the greatest black men in history -- never got a dinner?? Sidney Poitier -- Sidney Poitier, who said to Lester Maddox, 'Guess who's NOT coming to dinner?" -- NEVER got a dinner!" -- and so forth.
You saw some genuine no-holds-barred friendship and admiration on display. It did my heart good to see it.