The Big Yin

They took away one of my bollocks, and then I dyed my nipples black
I crawled into your bedroom, you were snorin' on yer back
What the fuck you doin' to me babe...

In February, I will be paying money to go and sit in an old theatre in Dunedin and be sworn at by a hairy bloke older than my dad. Other men of my vintage are excited about going to see cutting-edge international DJs, or big stadium rock acts like U2. Is being excited about going to see Billy Connolly play the Regent as sure a sign as any that elderly decrepitness is vaulting over the horizon to devour me where I stand?

As Millencolin would have put it, can I say no?

Billy Connolly was a massive part of my childhood, or more accurately my adolescence. The old man had a bunch of his live albums from the '70s and '80s taped, which got a fair hammering in our household. Basically, Billy Connolly taught me to swear. There is nothing on Earth, if not the Universe, funnier than agitated swearing in a Glaswegian accent. And if ye done like it ye can fuck off Jimmeh. Getting out videos of his live performances - an achievement in itself as we didn't even have a VCR until mid 1991 so we usually had to hire that as well - was always a highlight. One of his best routines was on the dubiously named 'Wreck On Tour' (mid Eighties I think) live album which started with a long diatribe about the sorts of people who should swear and the sorts who shouldn't. "The Pope," he said, "he should swear. Probably feels like it kissin' all those fuckin' runways. 'Don't you people ever sweep this fuckin' thing?' He should swear. Maybe he does. Says it in Latin and nobody notices." That's still the single funniest audio recording I've ever heard. Go find it on Amazon or something and buy it now. Now I tells ya.

There was a routine I saw one New Years at home (long before drinking age) he did about incontinence which could literally make you piss your pants. There was his version of Tammy Wynette's D.I.V.O.R.C.E. which went to number one in the UK (probably on the basis of his reference to his wife calling him an F-ing C). And even as recently as his World Tour of Scotland (OK that's twelve years ago now) he did a bit about his old man trying to buy a prescription windscreen for his Robin Reliant which placed me in physical pain through laughing. Even though now he's old, and grey, and doing ING commercials - not doing them a lot of good judging by the fact they've posted their first ever quarterly loss, just the 478 million Euros or so - he'll still sell out the entire country (marrying one of the locals probably helped his NZ profile a bit).

Anyway it's gotta be better than the last stand-up I saw. Wil Anderson at Livid about six or seven years back. He was off chops on go-fast, babbled incoherently, foamed at the mouth and even fucked up his very old, very tired 'Kieren Perkins has his name on his milk' routine. When you're even getting fired from Triple M, you're fucked. Then again there was the Pizza live show at the Festy Hall - last show there ever before they built a Borders and a stack of Oaks serviced apartments on it - which was pretty much carried around on the back of Tahir Bilgic (aka Habib), the only decent stand-up amongst the cast.

So I may be the youngest person in the building on Feb 4 at the Regent, and he may be as old and wobbly and pretty-much-past-it as AC/DC, but to be fair Billy Connolly is as much a part of my remembrances of growing up as AC/DC were. Who are also touring again soon. Time to get the lads together p'raps...

The Doctor is OUT.