After last month’s bomb attempt on an American plane, security experts say we need more sophisticated profiling of passengers to spot likely suspects before they get too far. So watch out, then, if you are an elderly Jewish comedienne.

The redoubtable Joan Rivers was stopped on Sunday from boarding a plane from Costa Rica back to the USA. Officials’ suspicions were aroused because her passport bore dual names, Joan Rosenberg aka Joan Rivers (Rosenberg her late husband’s name).

She was forced to spend an extra night in the central American country after failing to persuade airport staff to let her take her original flight. “I said I’m going to have a heart attack over this”, she told the New York Daily Post, “so the woman called the paramedics.”