I was lucky enough to get to Billy Connolly’s final show of his 9 week tour – in Brighton, on Friday evening.
I love Billy – he’s just so consistently reliable in terms of what makes him laugh and therefore his audience laugh. For a start he finds himself hilarious so half his stories take forever to tell because he’s laughing too much which is very contagious. Then he swears. All the time. Every other word in fact is the F-word and very occasionally – saved for special occasions only the C-word. I guess it’s his way of biding time when needs be.
The rest of his show is mostly made up of incontinence jokes, masturbating jokes, bottoms, willies, farting, pubic hair, sex and all those very basic things that most of us find funny even if we don’t want to admit it. He even managed to talk about how “Marmite burns your arse” for half an hour (I didn’t know that did you?).
He’s amazing really. Nearly 70 and he was on stage for 2 hours and a half hours. The first 20 minutes were taken up with explaining what a wanker he thought Rupert Murdoch was “and that red haired arrogant bitch” – he denies all the publicity that announced that he was walking off stage owing to heckling – said it just wasn’t true but then managed to make a very funny story out of hecklers he has known and loved. He’s very physical on stage – wandering around pretending to be teeny aeroplanes or have diarrhoea – impressive, given his age….
The best bit – and something I’m sure he’s very proud of because he mentioned it several times is that the audience is so mixed – lots of young people mixed in with old. It is very reassuring to know that if you carry on swearing, laughing burping and farting into old age then young people will still find you funny.
Gappy
March 19, 2012I saw Billy Connolly get a parking ticket on Ascot High Street once. He was laughing his head off.
Family Affairs
March 19, 2012Was he? I bet he just laughs all the time – he said he wasn’t allowed to sit next to people on trains because of his laugh Lx
Laura
March 19, 2012I love Billy Connolly – we went to see him a few years ago. I grew up watching Billy and his humour is right up my street!
Family Affairs
March 19, 2012Knew it !!! X
Sharon
March 19, 2012He’s amazing. We went to see him on Thursday evening in Brighton so just missed bumping in to you! We got 2hrs 45mins solid and at one point I thought I’d pee’d my pants. My face still hurt on Friday 🙂
Family Affairs
March 20, 2012So did mine – and my ribs Lx
Expat Mum
March 20, 2012God I love Billy. I remember years ago watching him on telly and my mum used to pretend to be shocked at his language and yet was wetting herself laughing when he was talking about trying to tidy up the house when the Catholic priest popped in for a whisky, I mean a cup of tea!
Family Affairs
March 20, 2012Doesn’t he do lots of touring in the US? He lives in LA now? Lx