One of my favourite things in life is laughing. It keeps me going and gets me over all sorts of nastiness and unpleastantries. Those who don’t laugh or can’t laugh at themselves must live a truly sad life.

I adore anything that makes me laugh—even the politically incorrect stuff that alas today is fast becoming scarcer than the oil we should have found oh so long ago on these sacred islands.

One of the funniest men in the galaxy must surely be Billy Connolly. He is also a great politically incorrect bastard so kudos to him. I just adore him.

Every so often I look him up—not in Gozo where he lives or lived—but on that great invention YouTube. How in hell’s name did we ever survive pre-YouTube?

There, oh bliss, I found one of the funniest pieces by the Scottish clown. He actually mentioned Gozo and did a terribly funny imitation of all things sacred. The piece was about 10 years old but good old Billy hardly dates so I watched on in awe.

Then he mimicked the Pope—at the time it was the Pole, John Paul II, now also raised to the ranks of sainthood. Nothing wrong in mimicking him at all—except that he mimicked the movement of his hands and his slurring of words. Again nothing wrong—much—is there?

I stopped and thought: isn’t Billy Connolly himself now suffering from Parkinson’s just like the good Pole did for some years before he died? That in fact was what caused his slur and funny hand-waving.

The last thing God in heaven or his Saint John Paul would ever inflict, or wish to inflict, on anyone (especially a good comedian) is something as debilitating as Parkinson’s.

But I couldn’t stop myself from grinning to think that this is a true case of strange, and hardly hilarious, karma.