HE MAY have made one of the most controversial remarks in recent comedy history but it clearly hasn’t harmed Billy Connolly’s box-office allure.
Just months after his notorious joke about Iraq hostage Ken Bigley, demand for tickets to see Connolly’s first Scottish tour in more than a decade is sky-high.
Pairs of tickets for the sold-out tour are attracting £400 bids on the eBay internet a
uction site - eight times their face value.
His comments about Bigley were made at London’s Hammersmith Apollo in October. He was reported to have said: "Perhaps I shouldn’t be saying this, but don’t you wish they would just get on with it?"
One man in the audience shouted: "You’re talking about a man’s life, Billy."
The 62-year-old also joked about Bigley’s Thai wife, Sombat, saying: "What is it with him and that young Asian wife?"
Connolly claimed the joke was taken out of context.
Shortly after, Bigley was beheaded after being held in captivity for 22 days by Iraqi militants. But while the comic was publicly savaged, the past week has proved that support from his fans is as strong as ever.
Promoters have had to add five dates to the Too Old To Die Young tour. Two nights were added to the three in Edinburgh after 6,500 tickets were bought, while the number of shows in Glasgow was raised to six. All are now sold out.
More than 20 bids were made for two front-row tickets, worth £25 each, in Edinburgh. The bids reached £395. Another fan paid £205 for a pair of tickets in the upper circle.
In Glasgow and Falkirk, people made bids of £185 for a pair of tickets, while others were willing to pay £205 for a pair of tickets for Pitlochry and £155 for Aberdeen.
In Glasgow, so many people tried to buy tickets at the same time they brought down the SECC’s booking website, while phone lines remained jammed with the volume of calls.
The response was just as swift elsewhere. In Aberdeen and Inverness, the tickets sold out within two hours; in Pitlochry it took four hours for the tickets to go - or one every 30 seconds.
A spokeswoman for the tour promoter, the Mel Bush Organisation,
said: "It has been an incredible response - in Glasgow, only tickets to see U2 have sold out quicker. The support from his fans has been stronger than ever."
Giles Conisbee, marketing manager of the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, said it proved that the earlier negative publicity had not affected Connolly’s popularity.
"The fans voted with their feet. The response was very impressive and we sold out extremely quickly."
Connolly will perform 26 dates on his tour, during April and May.
He will be playing in venues from Dumfries and Arran to the Orkney and Shetland isles.
