Billy Connolly's first UK gig for three years, part of a benefit week for his late sound engineer, was a rare treat.
He positively embraced the chance to flex his comedy muscles between dusting cobwebs off his castles. At 61, the California resident has not mellowed. Even a little rusty he beats most match-fit upstarts.
Entering in T-shirt and jeans, he fulminated at the futility of exercise and rarely eased up over the interval-less 150 minutes.
He might dislike marathon runners, but he is a marathon gigger. Sex, drugs, religion and the misery of ageing top his agenda. No one would eat his birthday cake recently because after he had blown out the candles it was covered in saliva.
Connolly makes a virtue out of distraction. During a fishing-trip anecdote he was so sidetracked it seemed as if he would never reach the pay-off.
As he explained, he tends to "fall off the north face of the story". But these narrative side-roads are essential listening. Where else will you hear about a cabbie who embalmed his granny?
Stand-ups are frequently compared to musicians, but while bands his age trundle out greatest hits this sexagenarian is minting fresh classics.
His quasi-autobiographies are poor substitutes for hearing him at full tilt, bemoaning the rise of pin-up newsreaders and being "blinded by the lipgloss", or travelling in a stretch limo - "a tunnel with wheels".
The show culminated in the ribald recollection of a druggy snog before digressing into a yarn about his father having a stroke, ending in a foulmouthed hospital scene which was both disturbing and head-hurtingly hysterical.
He then returned to the original theme and trumped himself with the unforgettable image of being trapped in a sleeping bag with a vomiting girlfriend. Vintage Connolly.
Also 22 April. Information: 0870 606 3500.
