BILLY Connolly was funny once, a long time ago. It must have been the early 80s, I suppose, when I went to see him at the BIC with some friends, who originated from Glasgow and thought the Big Yin was the best thing since sliced bread.

I didn't share their almost religious enthusiasm for the bloke, although he was quite amusing, as I recall, in a very loud, in your face way.

So it didn't surprise me when Connolly made some tasteless gag about British hostage Ken Bigley.

Nor was I shocked by his response (two words, the second being "off!") to a gentleman in the audience who dared to object - or the foul-mouthed tirade he unleashed upon the press when they had the temerity to do what his old mate Michael Parkinson would never do, ie question his questionable attempt at humour.

Wouldn't you just love it if Connolly could bring himself to explain (preferably in words of more than two syllables) what he was trying to get at when he said, referring to the British hostage at that time still being threatened with execution in Iraq, "Don't you just wish they his captors would get on with it?"

No, instead this one-time working class hero spat out a torrent of filth at his paying customers and the media. It was a pure lager lout outburst from someone who'd rather have us believe he's an astute social commentator.

It was a shame because Connolly, in his own ham-fisted way, was actually touching upon something unspoken yet grotesquely relevant with that initial, ill-judged "gag".

Ken Bigley was all over the papers and TV when I set off for Africa just over a fortnight ago. So were his family - and all the people of Liverpool, lighting candles in their local churches, ringing the phone-ins and lambasting Tony Blair for not doing more to save him (as if it were the PM, not Abu Musab al Zarqawi, holding the poor man captive.)

I was away from the media the rest for a week, but when I came back it was almost as if Ken Bigley had never existed. He'd disappeared from the front pages and been shunted off the bulletins.

The media were - as Connolly baldly stated - losing patience with his captors. Bigley had been big news when his beheading was apparently imminent. The longer he hung on, somehow dodging a grisly death, the less newsworthy he became.

Then more film was released of Bigley, caged like a frightened animal, and suddenly he was back on the front pages - but not for long.

The two Americans taken at the same time as Bigley, though, received a much lower profile in their home country - even after their swift executions.

And a leading US comedian and talk show host called Bill Maher felt sufficiently emboldened to suggest in his opening monologue that Iraqi militants had been ignoring local rubbish collection rules on severed heads. (His audience apparently roared with laughter. How Connolly must wish he could crack America.)

Iraqi prime minister Iyad Allawi claimed the intense initial exposure given to Ken Bigley's plight would only encourage more hostage-taking.

"Terrorists feed on the media," he said, and he was right, of course. The media, meanwhile, had been feeding on the terror, although they showed their appetite was quickly sated.

Then, late last week, it emerged that Ken Bigley, after weeks of unima-ginable terror had been killed in cold blood - and the feeding frenzy could begin all over again. Who's laughing now, eh, Billy?

First published: Oct 12