Lily Tomlin has been one of the top comedic voices for 40 years, and has won almost every award in show business, from Emmys to Tonys to Grammys and more. (The only one missing is an Oscar, but she has a nomination for a supporting role in 1975’s Nashville.) Given all that, you might expect the 69-year-old to have little patience for the endless phone interviews she must do to promote her diverse work.

The truth is, Tomlin is a giving and engaging subject who admits, “I digress very easily.” So a scheduled 15-to-20-minute talk stretched out to over 50, going off on welcome tangents about her early life in Detroit (she was a cheerleader) to the whereabouts of her former Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In costars Ruth Buzzi, Jo Ann Worley, and Arte Johnson. (“They’re all alive; I’m the only maniac that loves to work.”)

Blame it on her youth.

“I think I’m the kid,” she tells the Straight on the phone from Los Angeles. Despite being a comedy icon, she admits she still possesses some of the self-doubt of an emerging artist. “Are there people who are really secure? I still get nervous and want it to be great, in terms of performance or your work. And you think, ”˜Oh, God, I’m never going to come up with anything again,’ although I have a certain comfort level because I’ve been around so long.”

After dropping out of pre-med courses (“I had textbook narcolepsy,” she says. “All I had to do was open a textbook and I’d drop forward and my forehead would crash against the page”), Tomlin took her brand of standup, consisting of a gang of characters, to the stages. When she auditioned for the 1950s and ’60s variety series The Garry Moore Show, she was asked if she did impressions. Not so much. “So I said, out of nowhere, ”˜If I could do one thing on television, I’d do my barefoot tap-dance.’ ” And so she did.

Her characterizations were so off-the-wall, she was quickly thrust onto the most popular TV comedy of its generation, Laugh-In. “It was phenomenal,” she recalls. Her most famous creation, Ernestine the operator, was an overnight sensation.

The range she showed on the small screen took her to success in the movies, from Nashville to Short Cuts to A Prairie Home Companion. But they weren’t all Robert Altman films. Oh, no. One was 1978’s deliciously awful romance Moment by Moment, a group brain fart by all concerned: herself, as a lonely older woman, John Travolta, a studly drifter, and her real-life partner Jane Wagner, who wrote and directed the mess.

It turned out to be a minor blip on an otherwise sterling career, but at the time was a shock.

“Oh, God, of course we suffered. It was horrible! Suffered so bad,” she laughs. “John and I set out on a big publicity tour, and pretty soon we found ourselves defending ourselves. We were totally unprepared. It was really crushing.”

In the ensuing 30 years, Tomlin has eschewed lead romantic roles and stuck to what she does best: comedy. While still acting (she currently has a recurring role as Roberta on Desperate Housewives), she hasn’t forgotten her roots and hits the road regularly to perform standup. She’ll be at the River Rock Show Theatre in Richmond next Friday (January 9), where she promises to bring along 10 or 12 of her favourite characters as well as comment on Dubya, Barack Obama, and even our humble burg.

“It keeps you on your toes,” she says of doing live shows. “It’s just a very living experience.”