Live '99 — One Night Stand Down Under and The Best of The Rest

Billy Connolly wanders the stage without a script, weaving massive, digressive stories that take the long way around to a punchline. The centerpiece of the set is a deeply graphic anecdote borrowed from Liam Neeson about a crew member on the set of the film Rob Roy who accidentally runs over a cat. The crewman’s misguided attempt to humanely end the animal’s suffering results in a second, unseen dead cat—a story so aggressively bleak that viewers complained to broadcasting regulators when it aired on television years later.

Filmed in Brisbane in April 1999 and released as a two-part video package, the hour-long show was bundled with a retrospective spanning his previous three decades in stand-up. Connolly was firmly established as an elder statesman of Scottish comedy at this point, but the new material proves he was still actively refining his chaotic, conversational style. He fills out the remainder of the live hour with extended, highly profane riffs on astrology and Glasgow house parties.