Billy Bob booed off the gravy train

Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll are no problem. But as Billy Bob Thornton has discovered, no musician, however famous, can get away with visiting Canada and suggesting the locals might be ever-so-slightly boring.

The Hollywood actor, who is trying to rebrand himself as a hillbilly singer, has been forced to cancel a tour of Quebec and Ontario after complaining on the national radio network CBC that local audiences "just sit there". "It's mashed potatoes with no gravy ... We tend to play places where people throw things at each other. And here, they just sit there," he said.

The comments sparked outrage when aired on Thursday and Thornton and his band, the Boxmasters, were booed when they arrived onstage in Toronto as support act for Willie Nelson the next night. On Saturday, a large audience in Montreal applauded when they were suddenly told the Boxmasters had cancelled their remaining dates.

Radio host Jian Ghomeshi had said that, as well as being the band's lead singer and drummer, Thornton was an "Oscar-winning screenwriter-actor-director". Thornton then refused to answer questions for most of the interview, before accusing Ghomeshi of suggesting music was little more than a hobby for him and saying the show's producers had been told his career outside music was not to be mentioned.

Click here to watch Billy Bob Thornton's interview.

- INDEPENDENT