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So, with the sun shining properly at last, it was terrific to bump along the real Mother Road, with railway tracks to my right and the interstate on my left. Rolling agricultural country stretched far into the distance as I entered the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. Above me, jet planes were playing noughts and crosses with their vapour trails in the sky. I passed a field dotted with bunches of flowers. It was a graveyard, but all the gravestones had been laid flat on the ground, so, from a distance, the commemorative flowers looked like a really peculiar crop.

A train passed me, so I waved. I think we all have a duty to wave at trains. This doesn’t apply to planes or cars, but trains always get a wee wave from me, partly because I love those huge American locomotives, but mainly because I always hope to see a hobo looking out of one of the carriages. Apparently there are still loads of them around, catching goods trains across America, although I’ve never seen one.

This was God-fearing country, the buckle of the Bible Belt. At one crossroads, I stopped to wait for the traffic lights to turn green and spotted churches on three of the four corners. I passed a big billboard that featured a single word – ‘Jesus’, it said. This got me wondering why certain areas tend to be more evangelistic than others. I reckon it might be the lack of choice of things to do in small towns and agricultural communities. Churches don’t loom quite so large in the sights of people living in Manhattan, Los Angeles or Chicago.

The previous day, I’d lain on my bed and watched a woman on television saying she had ascended into heaven and fought demons. According to her, the demons were red and black dragons, and God had given her a sword to slay them. The icing on the cake came when she told the viewers that she could teach them how to slay demons, too. All they had to do was buy her CD for twenty-five dollars. It sounded fanciful. And what a bunch of ninnies who fork out twenty-five dollars. Do you know what always strikes me as ironic? Jesus was such a pleasant person and he had some intelligent, earth-shaking views. So why are so many of his followers such ninnies? There seemed to be a church every five yards in Missouri, and some of them were monstrously huge. I didn’t get it. Everyone I’d met in this state had been bright and likeable, but clearly a lot of them are gullible, too.

I stopped for a lunchtime pizza in an ordinary wee place. A woman was sitting in the restaurant with two boys, and one of them asked, ‘Are you Billy Connolly?’

‘Yeah.’

‘I saw you in The Last Samurai. Could I have a picture taken with you?’

‘Sure.’

‘Is that your trike?’ He pointed out of the window.

‘Yeah.’

‘It’s a beauty.’

‘Come on out and have a look at it.’

I showed him around the bike, then he said, ‘That’s my pickup over there.’

It was a lovely green truck, old and very beautiful, so I complimented him on it.

‘Yeah, I love it.’ Then he pointed across the street. ‘And that’s my church, over there.’

It was one of those gigantic Midwestern churches, the type where a TV evangelist fraud might preach. God, you’re so nice – and you seemed smarter than that, I thought. That might sound arrogant, but I’ve watched those preachers for years on American television. Almost to a man, they’re frauds. They’ve got that politician look about them – two haircuts a day, whitened teeth, all that crap – and they talk a load of bloody nonsense. They’re very selective about the Bible. None of the bits that hammer slavery ever get mentioned, but they’re very keen on quoting the bits that hammer homosexuality. Oh yes.

Riding on, I was confronted by a typical example of why Route 66 was dying. Half a mile to my left, Interstate 44 surged through the landscape, sucking all the businesses towards it, like iron fillings to a magnet. On 66, lying in the shadow of the freeway, every business seemed to be crumbling. I could sense the local communities trying different things to attract any passing trade, but it was no