Joan Rivers’ Secret Battle With Boozing

Joan Rivers fueled her acid-tongued rants on "Fashion Police" with white wine sipped from a Starbucks cup — and The National ENQUIRER can now expose the late icon’s secret battle with the bottle as pals have finally broken their silence about the ugly truth behind the laughs!

The comedienne’s daughter, Melissa Rivers (left), revealed shocking details about her mom’s boozing during the E! show’s series finale on Nov. 27. She recalled her mom drinking “at 7 a.m.,” calling it “cocktail hour,” and remembered chauffeuring her home after taping episodes of the snark-fest.

“Joan liked wine to loosen up before, during and after the show,” dished an insider. "She was bad enough sober, but when tipsy she was the queen of mean. She would get nastier and nastier, and no one was spared."

"Everyone knew she was drinking on the job — you could smell the booze on her," an insider confided. "The sad thing is Joan clearly had a drinking problem. She started drinking in the morning and kept going through the day until she dozed off. Wine was like water to her.”

Joan’s razor-sharp barbs made her the "Fashion Police" centerpiece, and the show faltered after her untimely death in September 2014 at 81, a week after going into cardiac and respiratory arrest during a medical procedure. (She's shown here with Andy Warhol biographer Bob Colacello in 1990.)

“Joan could be really funny,” says the insider, “but her jokes were laced with bitterness and booze!”