I’ve loved Billy Connolly for years, since I was a little lad.  I love his style of rambling, swinging from one topic to another.  He’s not a joke teller, like Jimmy Carr, but a storyteller.  He carries you along with him whether you like it or not.

So, when I saw that Jimmy Carr had tweeted that he’d just been to see Billy perform (and that he was brilliant) I was immediately excited – I might get the chance to go!  I’ve never seen him live before, so it was a thrill to think that I might get the chance.  I checked with friends if they wanted to come and then set about trying to get my four tickets.

I was immediately disappointed, for the sites which appeared at first glance to have tickets available turned out to be sites with no tickets available.  The bastards.  In a last chance ditch I phoned Ticketmaster, and was told that there were standing tickets left for the show on Tuesday 26th January (though these didn’t appear on their website).  After calling friends to check the revised date, and going through the agony of trying to get through again, and not knowing if the tickets would have gone, I finally had it all confirmed – I was going to see Billy Connolly!

So, last night I saw Billy Connolly live for the first (but hopefully not the last) time, and it was bloody brilliant.  No support act, just straight in with a two hour non-stop show.  A chap in front of us had a brilliant laugh too, and boy did he use it.  Typical Billy style, wistfully meandering through topics, all the time face-achingly funny.

Jimmy said it first, but I’m saying it too.  I bloody love Billy.

On the second of January Mrs Tom and myself set off to London for a bit of a day out.  We had family staying over Christmas and with our holiday being a group tour it felt like a while since we had spent any time together alone doing something for ourselves.

We had a bit of a wander and a nice dinner in a Spaghetti House chain restaurant.  Not amazing but not bad either.  After that we took ourselves off to the Soho Comedy Club which is in “The Comedy” – a pub just off from Leicester Square and near Piccadilly Circus in Oxenden Street, where The Comedy Store is.

It cost £5 to get in (£7 without the flier we had) which is excellent value – The Comedy Store up the road is £20-£25.  The pub is very nice downstairs, but the comedy happens in a room upstairs where around 120 people are crammed into quite a small room, but there is enough room for everyone to sit comfortably – sort of like being in the cinema – people have to move if you want to get up.

A couple of the acts really caught my eye – Joel Dommett and Eric Lampaert.  They were both really funny and pretty original and I really liked them.

So here they both are (Joel’s video is the performance from the 2nd Jan I actually saw):

Attending a student comedy gig tonight at my chum Adem’s place of work, the Thanet branch of Canterbury Christ Church University has reminded me of when I used to see a lot more comedy when I was younger.  A local pub used to have gigs on and we would go to watch in the room upstairs and have a great time.  It was there I first saw people like Ross Noble, Andrew Maxwell and many others, some of which have gone on to much better things.

I would also visit Jongleurs and other comedy clubs and have a really good time.  I used to watch comedy videos all the time, stand up, TV series, sketch shows I loved it all.  Actually I still do love it all and wish I got out to more live gigs and had the opportunity to watch more comedy on TV.

Perhaps I should finally bite the bullet and buy a new TV to put into my ‘attic room’ and hook a DVD player up to it so that I can watch funny stuff whilst Mrs Tom watches programmes about murders on obscure satellite TV channels.