Billy Connolly’s two-part series on the way we treat death was a strangely moving affair. Not because he was meeting bereaved and dying people from around the world, but because Connolly himself looked so frail at times. Connolly opened the series by explaining that in the same week he was told, among other things, that he had Parkinson's disease and prostate cancer. He was also given a hearing aid.

The health issues seemed to have taken a toll on the stand-up legend. He was still as sharp as ever, but he did not quite seem the force of nature he usually is. Though I'm sure if he was onstage Dr Theatre would kick in. Over the two programmes he wandered around cemeteries and funeral parlours looking windswept and interesting, but also weirdly like John Cleese in Gandalf’s wig.

There were, of course, flashes of the old Connolly magic. While he has breath in his body he will be able to tell a cracking story and one gem last night was about a wake where a deceased hunchback had to be tied down to fit in his coffin. Due to the vibrations of the party the string snapped and the body rose up and groaned and farted due to the gas escaping. As the terrfied people ran out one man caught his jacket on a nail and thought he was being pulled back by the corpse.

But these laugh-out-loud moments were the exception. Connolly might be able to chuckle in the face of his own mortality and say that he is not ready to go yet, but he was also very pensive, wondering what happens after we die as he wandered through Glasgow’s spectacular Necropolis cemetery.

The trouble with death is that it is one of the few certainties in life. There is no getting away from it, though we may try to put it off. One beardy boffin claimed that people may be able to live to be a thousand years old. I was not entirely convinced. Elsewhere Connolly visited a San Francisco research lab where people donated their bodies to science. It was very peaceful and respectful, though Connolly said that he had heard about scientists lobbing testicles about in labs back home. “That’s Glasgow,” said the laid back laboratory boss. 

From spectacular Balinese cremations to comedian Chic Murray going up in a curling puff of smoke the air was heavy with people snuffing it. At the end Connolly climbed into a cardboard coffin. It didn’t look right. He might not be the wild man partying with Keith Moon that he once was, but there is life in the Big Yin yet.

Billy Connolly's Big Send Off is on ITV Player.