Billy Connolly's meetings with monsters: The comic finds killer carp, giant frogs in fancy dress and a beastie in the bayou on his epic American railway journey

  • Billy Connolly continues his journey across the US - this time to the south 
  • He goes to a high school football game and eats the worst hotdog ever
  • He struggles to comprehend the sheer scale of Texas 

When I was an apprentice welder in the shipyards of Glasgow in the 60s, I thought the mighty boats we were building were the biggest things in the world. They made human beings look like ants.

But Texans would put ships like that in their bathwater and call them toys. Everything in the Lone Star State is huge beyond imagination. It covers a quarter of a million miles, and I’m crossing it on the world’s oldest named passenger rail service, the Sunset Limited, as part of my 6,000-mile trek around America by train.

Starting in Chicago, heading west to Seattle and then south to Los Angeles, I’ve rolled through a dozen states to reach Texas. I feel like a hobo, a railroad tramp, and though I’m travelling in more comfort than the penniless freeloaders did in the Great Depression, there’s an intoxicating romance about the trip. I’ve even brought my banjo along.

Billy Connolly has rolled through a dozen states to reach Texas

Billy Connolly has rolled through a dozen states to reach Texas

Now when I hear about a colony of Texan bats, it has to be the biggest in the world – so many the brain can’t begin to comprehend the number. So of course I have to go and see.

The Bracken Cave on the outskirts of San Antonio is a colossal hole in the ground, and every summer about 20 million Mexican free-tailed bats flock here to roost. You’d think they might get on each other’s nerves and find somewhere else to hang out, but apparently not.

The cave mouth was created by a sinkhole, 100ft across. At dusk the first bat spirals out and, within moments, a blanket of them covers the sky. The sight is hypnotic, as if you’re watching one entity with masses of moving parts.

There are almost as many American Football players in Texas schools as bats in that cave. At least 40,000 youngsters play every week. Friday night high school matches are played in packed stadiums.

Now, I’ll be honest, I don’t understand the sport, but I couldn’t pass up the chance to see one of these giant games. I’m invited to a local derby, between the O’Connor Panthers and the Johnson Jaguars – it’s the equivalent of a Rangers v Celtic clash in Glasgow, with less drizzle.

Though I didn’t have a clue what was going on, the game was great. I can’t say the same for the half-time hot dog, which was a horror-show: a caterpillar of meat in a bun made from sofa foam, coated in cheese sprayed from an aerosol that stuck to my beard. Boy, it was bad.

I’m a fan of the more ephemeral and eccentric American experiences – like the toilet seat collection amassed by 90-year-old retired plumber Barney Smith. He embeds objects like silver dollars and belt buckles into the seats to make glittering mosaics. One includes debris from the crashed space shuttle Challenger.

It’s dazzling, though I’m not sure it’s what I’d want to see when I was parking my bum. Barney says he was inspired by his father, a huntsman who used to mount the heads of his kills on the walls. As a boy, Barney thought the wooden shields at the base of the stuffed heads looked like loo seats. And so an obsession was born.

In New Orleans he boards a new train, the Crescent, which will take him to New York

In New Orleans he boards a new train, the Crescent, which will take him to New York

The Sunset Limited carries me onward, this time to the bayous of Louisiana. The wonderfully named Coerte A Voorhies has offered to take me out on his boat to see some low-flying fish, so I tie a bandanna round my head and we set off.

As we motor across the swamp, I’m tempted to trail my fingers in the water. Coerte reckons this is a bad idea, if I want to keep my hand. I’d forgotten about the killer reptiles: ‘Where I come from,’ I tell him, ‘there’s very little risk of being eaten by an alligator, except in the most dangerous parts of Edinburgh.’

Almost as deadly are the Asian carp which hurl themselves out of the water every few seconds. The river is full of them: a few escaped from a fish farm in 1978 and now there are millions. One lands in the boat and has to be hauled back over the side. Big ones can weigh 30lb. ‘You don’t want to get hit in the face by one,’ says Coerte. ‘It could kill you.’

Even these aren’t the biggest threat out here. Coerte, who is in his 80s, tells me the legend of the Rougarou, a creature with a human body and the head of a wolf, said to appear after dark. We don’t hang around.

As we motor across the swamp, I’m tempted to trail my fingers in the water. Coerte reckons this is a bad idea, if I want to keep my hand. I’d forgotten about the killer reptile

In New Orleans I board a new train, the Crescent, which will take me to New York. As we pull out of the Big Easy, I begin to pick out a banjo tune. This is Lake Pontchartrain, and we’re riding across one of the longest water-crossing bridges in the world.

It’s nearly 24 miles long and a crazy experience, like taking a train across the sea. Strictly speaking, this isn’t a lake at all but an estuary that feeds the Gulf of Mexico, and the banks are the inspiration for a classic Hank Williams song.

Hank is one of my heroes so, as we ride through Alabama, I make a point of stopping to visit his grave. Then it’s on to Birmingham, heart of the civil rights movement. During the 50s and 60s it was the most segregated city in the States, with so many attacks on black communities that it became known as ‘Bombingham’.

In early May of 1963, hundreds of black children, some as young as six, gathered to march in peaceful protest. It was dubbed the Children’s Crusade and, in response, the police unleashed dogs and opened up with water cannon.

It’s a shameful tale, and though it led to social change the most striking fact of all is that the kids remained non-violent throughout. It’s a great honour that four of those children have agreed to meet me – though now they are wise old men and women. One of them, Georgina, tells me what it was like going to school: ‘We had to give the bus driver our money, get off again and go to a door at the rear. There was a sign that said “Coloureds Only” on one side and “Whites Only” on the other. We couldn’t sit on the whites-only side, even if there were no seats on our side – we had to stand. And if the bus was full and a white person got on, the driver would shift the sign back and we’d have to move.’

That was just one of many injustices, says Janice, who was a teenager in 1963. She tells me how her mother and father were intimidated by the authorities: ‘If they’d gone out to demonstrate, they could have lost their jobs. But we weren’t working so we didn’t really have anything to lose, and everything to gain.’

They tell me about the police brutality, and how they were thrown into jail for weeks before being bussed out to the state fairground, where black people were usually forbidden to go. ‘It was terrifying,’ says Georgina. ‘We thought we were going to be lynched.’ Instead they were penned for hours in a warehouse before finally being released.

Decades later, the government offered them official pardons. Janice and Georgina proudly refused theirs. They should have been awarded medals of honour.

Their story is ringing in my ears as we head up the eastern seaboard to Baltimore, Maryland. It’s the setting for one of my favourite shows, The Wire, but I want to see an older crime scenario: the doll houses made by amateur forensics expert Frances Glessner Lee in the 1940s. Her ‘Nutshell Studies of Unexplained Death’ are mini recreations of real murder scenes, accurate to the last bloodstain. Kept at the Maryland Medical Examiner’s Office, they’re used by trainee detectives as they learn to spot clues. One victim has been drowned, another stabbed to death, a third suffocated – it’s gruesome but fascinating.

Finally, I head over to Andy’s Diner for a hot dog that’s reputed to be the best in the United States. It’s better than the one I had at the football match, for sure. But the best in all America? I think I’ll have to go round once more, just to check. n

Billy Connolly’s Tracks Across America, Friday, 9pm, ITV. Adapted from Across The Tracks by Billy Connolly, published by Sphere, £20. Offer price £16 (20% discount) until 16 April. Visit mailbookshop.co.uk or call 0844 571 0640. P&P free on orders over £12.