There aren't many reasons to go out in Cardiff on a Monday night, but the chance to see Billy Connolly is one of them. Having seen him at the Millenium Centre in 2007 I wasn't overly excited about this show but I was interested to see if the great man had lost any of his touch.
I shouldn't have worries. A packed audience at the Powerpoint arena was in the mood to laugh. Billy Connolly needs no support act, big build up or computer graphics, he just appears and does what seems natural and effortless.
He immediately acknowledged the fact he is getting older (he is now 69) which makes his rambling style seem even more shambolic than usual. On the previous occasion I saw him it was apparent he eased himself in for the opening hour and then unleashed another hour of scintillating comedy few can equal.
Today, though he went at it from the start commencing with a reference to his last stay in a Cardiff hotel when he heard a Radio 4 programme about the Wankier music from the Indes.
Anyone of a certain age knows the mind wanders as you get older and tonight's performance showed that it can affect comedians. Every sentence seemed to lead him in a different direction though he was (generally) able to get back on track eventually.
Fans will be relieved to hear that he is not mellowing and I would have not liked to be the guy in charge of the air-conditioning after he verbally abused him several times. He was, however, more tolerant of a strange man who tried to sell him a tin of an unknown substance. As he mentioned earlier his method of dealing with hecklers is a torrent of four letter words which he demonstrated but he did ask the security guards to be gentle with this nuisance as they removed him.
Despite several stories left up in the air Billy Connolly finally called it quit after one last joke and as we streched our legs we realised we had spent two and a half hours (interval-less) in the company of the great man. His stamina and desire to continue to communicate with an audience after all these years is stunning. The purist may claim that little of the material was new, but does that matter if you are constantly laughing?
You can hardly move now for stand-up comedians filling concert halls, but the person who started it is still at the top of his game. No one does it the way he does. If you haven't seen him before, catch him while you can.
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