Billy Connolly has described a William McGonagall supper at Dundee’s Angus Hotel in 1980 as one of the funniest nights of his life.
Little wonder given the events which unfolded.
By midnight the 500 guests were munching down chip butties during a lock-in!
The first William McGonagall Supper was unleashed on Dundonians and over the BBC airwaves to raise funds for the new Dundee Rep Theatre in Tay Square.
McGonagall was a Dundee carpet weaver with a sideline in terrible verse who carried an umbrella to protect himself from rotten fruit thrown at him by strangers.
Connolly performed toast as Dundee Bard
Dundee journalist Fraser Elder, Courier artist and Craigie co-founder in the 1960s, and later BBC Radio Good Morning Scotland producer, and member of the Sportscene team, organised the supper.
Fraser had joined the BBC in 1968 and worked in Glasgow where he struck up a friendship with Connolly, who was a lifelong fan of the hilariously hopeless wordsmith.
The audience conformed to the rule of bunnets and shawls to be worn and each mention of the Dundee Bard’s name prompted a rise to attention and a toast.
The Big Yin’s original take on McGonagall predictably brought the house down!
“The snooters dreep fae yon chiel’s neb,
“The glabber skips abin yer thrums,
“The sleekkit stoorie’s creell’s asneck,
“A’ the best son when it comes!”
Connolly has never forgotten the sight of 500 people at the Angus Hotel dressed up as McGonagall with men wearing a bonnet and women wearing shawls.
At the end of the night Connolly invited the stragglers to the lounge of the Angus Hotel and said he had a very special surprise for everyone – a chip butty.
He had sent an order over to the Deep Sea Restaurant, which was across the road at the time, to make up 100 chip butties that were delivered around midnight.
The Angus Hotel manager was persuaded to hold a lock-in until the wee small hours!
So why does Connolly love the trite delights of the Dundee Bard’s doggerel?
Connolly recalled the tragic life of poet
The Big Yin broke it down further while looking back at his 50-year stand-up career and sharing his hard-earned insights in the programme Billy Connolly Does…
“He was a terrible poet – so bad you would think someone really clever had sat down to write a bad poem.
“He is an abstract genius and he called himself Scotland’s greatest poet.
“Once you get into him you can’t get rid of it. He had a tragic life. He was invited to Balmoral to meet The Queen – but he wasn’t.
“It was a trick set up by the students of St Andrews University and when he got there the students presented him with a big sausage.”
The seven-part series, which was shown on Gold, intertwined new interviews from his base in Florida with travelogue and archive performances going back 50 years.
Connolly employed his trademark wit to recall why McGonagall didn’t like publicans.
“He said: ‘The first man ever to throw a plate of peas at me was a publican…’
“Not ‘a publican hit me with a plate of peas’ – the first man. So there must have been a following of people throwing plates of peas at him. It’s tragic, isn’t it?
“I did a McGonagall night in Dundee which was one of the funniest nights of my life.
“They make speeches and every time his name is mentioned the entire audience stands up and says: ‘The world’s greatest poet’ and sits down again.”
The meal had a Dundee theme with diners being served Clepington consommé, Tay whale cutlet (Arbroath smokie) and Dudhope Diane (roast beef) as well as Broughty Ferry tea (coffee).
Big Yin didn’t want the evening to end!
Fraser watched the episode and shared his own memories of the evening!
“Actors from the TV soap Take the High Road performed the touching McGonagall play Forget-Me-Not.
“Musical tributes came from Robin Hall and Wormit’s own David Findlay and his Olympians Scottish Dance Band.
“The star of the evening was Newport Provost Willie Smith, a McGonagall devotee, who, along with being the exclusive publisher of his works as a managing director of David Winter, was a globe-trotting lecturer in places such as USA, Japan and China.
“Billy delivering the Immortal Memory brought the house down and he enjoyed the evening so much that he didn’t want it to end at midnight!
“He came up to me and asked: ‘Where’s the nearest chip shop?’ I told him it was just across the road and he sent out for chip butties and the party kept going!
“The old Angus Hotel manager was a good friend of mine so he was persuaded to hold a lock-in and the supper went into the early hours!
“The Big Yin was still holding court as the sun was coming up!
“Billy used to say: ‘I love Dundee but the McGonagall supper was something else – it’ll never be done again; it was a one-off’.
“He was right – everything came together that night and it was unforgettable.
“The manager described it as one of the most outstanding events ever held in the Angus Hotel and the performance was also nominated for a BBC radio award.
“We didn’t win but the memories of that night mean more than any gong!”
The friendship endured for decades and Connolly was Fraser’s best man when he got married to second wife Kay in 1984, where the Big Yin’s speech lasted an hour!
What became of the Dundee Bard?
McGonagall was born in Edinburgh but his art first flourished in Dundee and he has been widely hailed as the writer of the worst poetry in the English language.
Famously, he received a letter in 1894 purportedly from the King of Burma and the Andaman Islands informing him that he had been knighted as ‘Topaz McGonagall, Grand Knight of the Holy Order of the White Elephant Burma’.
Despite it being a fairly obvious hoax, McGonagall referred to himself as William Topaz McGonagall, Knight of the White Elephant, Burma, in his advertising up until his death in 1902.
He died in poverty and was buried in a pauper’s grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard.
The Big Yin famously brought a BBC camera crew to the city in 1994 as part of his World Tour of Scotland.
He then complemented a comic concert at the Caird Hall with a straight reading of McGonagall’s The Tay Bridge Disaster at the top of Dundee Law, where he was beset by a blizzard.
Connolly said the blizzard was “McGonagall from beyond the grave”.
More like this:
Old Angus Hotel vs new Overgate – Dundee’s battle of the buildings
Billy Connolly: The Big Yin recalls losing his virginity in a tent in Arbroath
Conversation