Billy Connolly's Route 66_ The Big Yin on the Ultimate American Road Trip - Billy Connolly [44]
It can be weird, because people tell me that my movement on stage is getting funnier and better, but I’ve still got no idea what I’m doing. All I know is that they’re laughing while I’m poncing around. And I don’t go and look at other people, in case I inadvertently steal their moves, so I’ve not even got anything to compare it to. I also avoid watching other comedians, because I know I’ll just absorb their material and then think it’s mine later.
A lot of comedians who are accused of stealing stuff don’t intentionally nick it. They just become a sort of comedy black hole, sucking in material. They see and hear so many funny things when they go to clubs, performing with other guys, and everything they hear goes straight into their mental filing system. Months or even years later, it’ll pop out and they’ll swear it’s their own idea. But actually they heard it ages ago in some obscure club in Chicago or wherever. Then the guy who actually did come up with it gets mad – and quite rightly so. But we all pick things up by mental osmosis, and comedians are no different to anyone else.
To avoid this problem, I go completely by feel – a bit like reading Braille – whenever I’m on stage or making a television show. It’s a weird and frightening process because I never know how I’m doing. And making the series about Route 66 was no different. I was sure the director and half of the crew thought I was fishing for compliments because I kept asking them how it was going, but I genuinely didn’t know.
So it was a gamble, but quite an exciting one. I knew it could backfire. I could have spent these seven weeks doing a live tour, where thousands of people would have paid good money to see me and would have given me a warm welcome. But one night of television would reach millions of people. Which meant I had to be good, even though I hadn’t scripted a single word beforehand. So, before arriving at each location, I immersed myself in my research notes and just hoped it would all come out in the correct order. As on stage, whenever I remembered something interesting, it would just plop out. There was no preconceived plan. But it seemed to work, and it always gave me a boost when I saw the crew laughing. That was my quality-assurance test.
St Louis is a rather beautiful city, with lovely people. In fact, every town I’d passed through up to this point had been beautiful, clean and tidy. America really is a country of small towns, most of which are handsome and well kept, although some are stultifying in their dullness. Driving through them, the streets are often empty, with nobody walking along, something I’ve never encountered in Britain. Whenever I stopped to eat or have a pee, I’d meet charming people in the shops and restaurants, but on the street the towns and villages were invariably completely dead. It lent a sadness to these places – like the locals had all given up their streets to the car.
Before riding back into the centre of St Louis, I visited an area that one of those tornadoes I’d seen on the news had torn apart only a few days earlier. Riding towards it, there was no sign of anything out of the ordinary, but then we turned a corner and arrived in the district of Bridgeton. God Almighty. With wind speeds up to 200 m.p.h., the tornado had cut a swath half a mile wide and twenty-one miles long through several counties in and around the city. Within that zone – total devastation. Three feet outside the zone – everything perfect and orderly. From a distance, it looked like a big machine had cut a valley clean through the town. Houses had been decimated, leaving only the foundations and enormous mounds of crap. Huge trees had been uprooted, just pulled right out of the ground, showing the awesome power that the tornado must have possessed. Officially, it had been designated an EF4, the second-worst type of tornado.