Chortle comment

Billy Connolly has renewed his attempts to squirm out of the Kenneth Bigley row – by denying he even said the controversial words attributed to him.

The comic has lost countless fans after he was reported as saying “Don’t you wish they’d just get on with it?” as the British hostage’s life hung in the balance in Iraq.

In an unapologetic interview in The Times today, the comic however insisted: “I didn’t say the remark… I didn’t say anything remotely like that. It was completely untrue.”

But the truth is, he did. I was in the Hammersmith Apollo audience when he said near-identical comments a week earlier than the incident that made the newspaper.

And my reaction to that report was not ‘what a terrible thing to say’ but, as a journalist, to kick myself for missing the news story that had been under my nose for days.

For his comments even on that first night attracted a sharp intake of breath from more than 3,500 people who felt he was walking on dodgy ground.

Connolly now says he was targeting media coverage, not Bigley’s plight: “What I was thinking was...the whole press, the CNN, the news programmes every day about the same thing, every single day, and you can see them getting tired of it and wishing something would happen. That was the kind of line I was on.”

If that was his angle, it didn’t come across on the night. And it certainly did not come across the morning, after in the unforgiving black-and-white of the newsprint.

For Connolly to now try to explain his remarks into some sort of context is understandable, especially as the backlash has been so severe and when you consider that similar, and worse, is said in comedy clubs up and down the country every day of the week. Ultimately, Connolly is a brilliant comedian who was brave enough to bare his honest, if unedifying reaction, to the story and examine it.

But it’s not so brave to outright deny that he said it, and try to blame it on some sort of media conspiracy.

Of course The Sun, which broke the story, has its own reasons for reporting the row. It’s desperate to regain credibility – and indeed readers – in Liverpool, a city that has never forgiven the newspaper for its callous reporting of the Hillsborough tragedy.

But complete fabrication of something thousands of witnesses saw over several nights seems unlikely – and while plenty of fans have confirmed what he said, no one but Connolly has ever claimed the words were never spoken at all.

Even before this, Connolly says he saw the tabloids as his “enemy”  which “seem to have a problem with the truth.”

But to try to turn the fire on them has failed spectacularly, not least because his comments about Bigley polarized the nation.

In handling the frenzied reaction, he could have proven himself an honest, fearless but human comedian instead of a petulant child reluctant to admit responsibility for his own opinions.

Published: 3 Nov 2004