Rare Steamroller Of A Talent
The Age
Monday September 25, 1995
Alan Attwood tells why a wee bit of Billy does you good.
SOMETIMES I DESPAIR about Melbourne. I despair when what could have been a splendid inner-city park becomes a mini-golf rink; when a casino project swallows a huge chunk of the city; when earnest debate about footballers' groins and knees swamps the sporting pages.
But then I find a new reason to feel good about the place.
Billy Connolly, for example. Billy has sold out 11 concerts in Melbourne. Eleven. I find it very encouraging that so many people - somewhere around 29,000 of them - are paying good money to get out at night and have a laugh. Heaven knows we could all use one.
Yet I have reason to feel bitter about all these people.
Thought I was being so clever: I popped down to Bass on the very morning tickets went on sale a few months back. Stood in line feeling smug as I heard a chap at the counter being told that no, he couldn't get tickets for the night he wanted.
It was sold out. He looked like an opera buff. Poor sod, I thought, doesn't he know you've got to get in early for these things?
The joke was on me. The opera buff was a Billy Connolly fan. He was finding out, just as I did soon afterwards, that the Scottish comedian had sold out four concerts in a matter of hours. I went in seeking tickets for Concert One, a Friday, and came out with tickets for Show Five, a Wednesday. Not even especially good tickets, as it turned out. Way up high, near the back. Still, I've run into many people over the past weeks who've been unable to get tickets at all.
They have wanted to know what Billy was like. He was funny, of course. But funny with hardly any jokes. I can remember just one. Man goes into an army surplus store and asks if they have any camouflage pants. Yes, says the assistant, but we can't find them.
That got a big laugh. But even funnier was something Connolly said en route to the punchline. He suddenly pondered the idea of army surplus stores. Why is it, he wondered aloud, that the army is always buying too much stuff?
Why indeed. He has an extraordinary knack of spotting the absurdity within the commonplace. Sometimes he seems even to be surprising himself. I guess you wouldn't know for sure unless you saw several shows back to back, but he gives the impression of a man making much of it up as he goes along.
He has favorite themes, and I'd heard him explore some of the ideas before, but you also have a sense of him verbally rummaging through a pile of scraps and picking up those that interest him.
He did this for a little under three hours, without a break.
That's an awful lot of talking, let alone performing. I've only ever seen one other person talk so well for so long. That was Dave Allen in Sydney many years ago.
Like Connolly, he didn't tell jokes. He just sat and talked, and talked, and had everyone falling about. From memory, Allen barely moved out of his chair. Connolly, a very energetic performer, stalks every part of the stage.
To entertain people just by talking to them is no easy thing.
They call it the gift of the gab, but it's a much rarer gift than most people believe. Politicians, disc-jockeys, real- estate agents, ministers of religion and all those other people who can talk at great length without saying anything at all should try listening to Billy Connolly.
Some won't want to. He's coarse. Crude as buggery. He swears.
But - as he points out - he swears well. It's part of his appeal. He steamrolls over cant and prissiness and prudery.
Should be more of it.
Does he still offend people? It's hard to believe, after all this time (he's been coming and going from Australia for nearly 20 years), that anyone could go to one of his shows without knowing what to expect.
Still, I carried out an experiment the other night. I made a point of swivelling around and about during different parts of the show to see if people were looking shocked or were walking out or were fanning themselves furiously.
I made several interesting discoveries. The first was that nobody looked likely to leave the show and then pen a Letter to the Editor signed Appalled; Hawthorn. Another was that there was an extraordinary range of ages and dress-styles in the audience.
If Connolly is a cult comedian, the cult has an eclectic membership. There was everyone from young chaps with wispy beards to little old ladies, and some of these ladies should be ashamed of themselves the way they were tittering to the story of David Attenborough and the badger. If they try retelling it at bingo the air will turn as blue as the hair rinses.
The final impression from the audience was that everyone was enjoying themselves. Here we all were in Casinoville, about to be swamped by footy finals, with the ghastly prospect of a federal election campaign descending on us before very long, sniggering and snorting fit to burst. Being not so much talked at as tickled. Bless your boots, Billy.
Billy Connolly gives his last Melbourne performance on 29 September.
© 1995 The Age