• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

‘So how are the other guys?’

‘Who?’

‘The rest of the Monty Python crew. Eric? Michael?’

And my heart sinks.

Sometimes I tell them I’m not John Cleese. ‘No, I’m a Scottish comedian,’ I say. ‘My name’s Billy Connolly.’

‘Oh? Incognito?’ And then they do the nudge, nudge, wink, wink thing.

As it happened, earlier that day I’d told the crew about being mistaken for John. I could see that some of them only half-believed me. After all, no Brit would confuse my Glaswegian brogue for John’s clipped English vowels. But then, as I came downstairs from Preston’s gallery, a big black guy tapped me on the shoulder.

‘Are you John Cleese?’

‘No, I’m Billy Connolly.’

‘Oh … incognito?’

Nicky, the producer, just exploded. The truth was revealed before her very eyes.

Now I was back on my trike, heading southeast on Route 66, gradually coming to the edge of Chicago. It’s always weird when you leave a city. No matter how much you like the place, the outskirts always suck. You go from these gigantic palaces in the sky, like the Chicago Tribune Building and the Sears Tower (which I could see in my mirrors for ages) and then the surroundings get more and more shabby and rundown. The Windy City is a brawny kind of place, and here at its fringes are the factories, slaughterhouses and foundries on which it built its industrial might and reputation. The road darts between warehouses and over railroad tracks and makes a few turns. Then, suddenly, we were out in the countryside, joining Interstate 55 for about eight miles (it was built directly over Route 66 here, so you can’t avoid it) before leaving it to rejoin old 66. Even here, out of town and in the proper outdoors, it was a bit shabby, largely because it was reclaimed mining land and there was still a kind of messiness to it. And the weather didn’t help. It was another grey and windy day. Although I like rain and what it does, I was starting to feel we really hadn’t been blessed with good weather since arriving in Chicago. A bit of sun would have been welcome, especially now that we were on Route 66. Everybody’s image of the Mother Road involves bright colours – red and yellow, white and blue – rock’n’roll, hamburgers and hot dogs, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. But I was getting rained on all the time and somehow it didn’t fit.

A few minutes later, I entered Romeoville, a town about thirty miles southwest of Chicago. Nestling between urban areas, this part of Illinois was mostly agricultural country, and Route 66 was flanked by wide-open plains that looked like potato fields, only occasionally broken up by sparse lines of trees or telegraph poles. Much of the produce from these fields used to be shipped from Romeoville along the Des Plaines River, which passes through the town, and the Illinois & Michigan canal system. Nowadays, nearly all of it goes by road.

Romeoville used to be called Romeo when it was part of a twinned community with Juliet, a few miles further down Route 66. That romantic association ended in 1845, when someone realised that Juliet was most likely a misspelling of the name of the French pioneer Louis Jolliet, who first explored the area in the 1670s. The town decided to change its name in honour of him, but it still didn’t get the spelling quite right. It’s now known as Joliet. Meanwhile, jilted by its twin, Romeo acknowledged the busted romance and became Romeoville. Nowadays, it plays very much second fiddle to Joliet, which is the first significant city beyond the sprawl of Chicago.

You might have heard Joliet mentioned in television crime programmes. It used to be a quarry town, nicknamed ‘Stone City’. Much of that lovely white stone seen on skyscrapers like the Wrigley Building in the heart of Chicago came from Joliet’s quarries. But these days the town is most famous for its prisons. They are the biggest industry in town. Imagine prison being your biggest industry – holy moly! – but that’s one of the strangest things about America. The Land of the Free incarcerates more of its people than any other country on earth.

Joliet