Billy’s funny old world
DESPITE the poignant, valedictory tone of the host’s concluding words, BILLY CONNOLLY’S ULTIMATE WORLD TOUR (ITV, 9pm) is an enjoyably upbeat, refreshingly positive hour of TV.
A one-off special, it looks back over 25 years of Billy’s travelogues while at the same time seeking to assure us there’s life in the old guy yet. It was Billy’s diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, back in 2013, that persuaded him and wife Pamela to leave New York for Florida (“I couldn’t stand the winter anymore. I didn’t want to be sliding and falling on my a*** all over the place...”) and it’s from his Key West base that he now sets out on further excursions.
I use the word “excursions” because, for obvious reasons, Billy is not about to embark on another of those epic globetrotting adventures recalled here in the archive clips.
Instead, he simply wants to show us around his neighbourhood. Fine by me. From a fishing trip with an old pal (“I’ve never caught a fish on film,” he chuckles, “and I don’t care…”) to accompanying a Crocodile Response Agent on his rounds, it soon becomes clear he’s lost none of his sense of wonder, nor the joy he’s always experienced on meeting new people and hearing their stories.
Not that he plans to end his days in this part of the world, it seems. Ultimately, Scotland still calls.
“It’s a weird subject to bring up,” he says. “I wouldn’t like to stay away forever. I’d like to be planted there eventually, in Loch Lomond.”
For the moment, though, he signs off with a few philosophical thoughts “from the ageing hippy…”
People, he insists “are pretty much the same wherever you go. Fear of the foreigner is something we’ve got to get over if the world is going to become a liveable place.”
Also tonight, I challenge you not to be reduced to a blubbering wreck by THIS IS MY SONG (BBC1, 8pm), in which ordinary people (sorry, I know that’s a hideous expression) get the chance to work with music industry experts and record a song that’s of huge significance to them.
They include 13-year-old Jasmine, who suffers from chronic anxiety but who’s almost magically transformed when she sings.
Elsewhere, hundreds of thousands of Pride revellers are having a wonderful time in the ob-doc series OXFORD STREET 24/7 (Channel 5, 9pm). And everyone, from Tube staff to St John Ambulance volunteers to the clean-up team, is entering into the spirit.
The latter, mind you, have their work cut out, sweeping up all the litter left behind.
“We pick up anything between 55 and 65 tonnes,” reports one chap. And theirs, it seems, can be a thankless task.
“Some people look at us in a different way,” says a colleague, “just because we clean the rubbish.” Meanwhile, at a nearby product launch, celebrity photographer Andy Barnes is getting worried about the absence of top-end celebs.
But, hey, no need to panic. “Brilliant!” he suddenly cries. “We’re saved. Lizzy’s turned up. Lizzy Cundy.”