On the road

ONCE upon a time, Billy Connolly concentrated merely on making us laugh.

These days you’re as likely to find him fronting a travelogue documentary.

This time around, he’s sampling the delights of one of the world’s most famous highways in his new series, Billy Connolly’s Route 66.

The road stretches 2,488 miles from Chicago to Santa Monica, and is the subject of a song that been performed by various artists including Nat King Cole, Chuck Berry, The Rolling Stones and Depeche Mode.

“How many other roads do you know that people sing about?” says Connolly.

“It’s just one of those places you long to see. Ever since I was a wee boy in Glasgow I have fantasised about getting my kicks on Route 66.

“This will be a tale in tarmac of presidents and paupers, cowboys and Indians, diners and drive-thrus, framed in a landscape from 100 movies with a soundtrack of the greatest music in the world – rock ’n’ roll.

“We’re going to have lots of fun, meet lots of people and see lots of things.”

Connolly makes his way across the US on his trusty Boom motortrike.

“It’s like a Batmobile with three wheels and it’s a joy, it’s funky and it’s for showing off on,” he says. “It’s a poser’s machine. It’s a cross between a hot rod and a chopper. It can’t squit through traffic like a motorcycle. You are stuck with the cars.

“But you don’t get to listen to Radio 4 playing, and you get rained on. And there is no heater, you freeze your bum off and, if it rains, your crotch gets wet.

“So it’s got none of the advantages of a car and none of the advantages of a bike. You either like it or you don’t.”

The opening episode sees him travelling through Illinois, the home of Abraham Lincoln, the blues, Amish communities and terrifying tornadoes.

In Chicago, he visits the building from which notorious gangster Al Capone ran his empire, and journeys to the top of the Willis Tower, America’s tallest building.

THE ex-marine-turned-marine biologist with his name in the title of Monty Hall’s Great Irish Escape admits that making this series has been something of a dream, especially when it came to filming a recent episode.

“I had the missus with me, my lovely dog, my Land Rover and my boat and a lovely group of local people buying me Guinness all day, so it wasn’t too shabby,” he says.

“The comments have been very positive about the show, and one of them is, ‘There doesn’t seem to be a lot of science going on’, and the reason is that a huge amount of time was spent just patrolling the coast, and it’s not great telly that – a bloke, alone in a boat patrolling for hour after hour,” he says.

In tonight’s offering, Hall sets out on a mission with the Irish Air Corps to observe whales from above, before being called out to rescue a stranded basking shark.

NEW series Young Soldiers follows a group of young men as they leave friends, families and lives behind to become Britain’s next generation of infantry soldiers.

The first part examines the lads’ first day as new recruits. Here, cameras follow Ashley, 19, Lee, 19, Darren, 22 and Andrew, 26, as they are put through their paces at Catterick’s Infantry Training Centre.

The trainees are drilled on everything from personal fitness to keeping their lockers tidy, and some find it tougher than others.

Those who survive the first five weeks of intensive preparation will be rewarded with the first milestone in their army careers, the presentation of their regimental berets.