Bill Bailey had just finished a long set at the Craigmore Centre in Drumnadrochit, a village on the breathtakingly beautiful northern banks of Loch Ness. The venue was packed, and he’d gone down like a knocked-out Nessie, but the audience were still there.

“I’d done a couple of hours and been well-received but at the end, nobody moved,” Bill, 59, tells me. Bemused, he’d said, ‘What? That’s it’ and still the crowd just sat there grinning. “In the end the hall manager…