MADE IN Scotland
Welder, folk singer, comedian, actor. In a new autobiography, Made in Scotland, Billy Connolly traces his whakapapa and the country that made him.
Where do you come from? It’s one of the most basic human questions of all. Luckily, it is easily answered – what kind of prick doesn’t know where they were born? But there is another question, which might sound a wee bit similar but is actually very different: What do you come from?
And, let me tell you, that question can take you all sorts of strange places...
Last year, just in case you didn’t know, I was knighted. On October 31, 2017, I went down to Buckingham Palace and Prince William put his sword on both of my shoulders and made me Sir William Connolly CBE. I got it for ‘‘services to entertainment and charity’’. When I was young, I would have hated the very idea of being given a knighthood. The hippy Billy Connolly would have thought it was all nonsense. But I’ve mellowed as I’ve got older and I have come to appreciate being given things by people. If somebody or other in authority wants to tell me: ‘‘You’re very good, therefore you’re entitled to this,’’ it is a charitable act. They are doing it for the very best reasons and to turn it down would be churlish, in my opinion.
Just take it. Be nice and appreciate it.
So, I took it and I said: ‘‘Thank you.’’ It’s not like having a knighthood has made any great difference to my life. I don’t spend my days now hanging out with other goodly knights or rescuing damsels in distress. The only thing that it has changed is some people’s attitudes towards me. I have noticed that some people get a great delight from calling me ‘‘Sir Billy’’: ‘‘Sir Billy, will you do this, please?’’ Well, good luck to them, but it doesn’t really mean anything to
me. In any case, if I am honest, I didn’t really cover myself in glory when I got knighted. Prince William asked me a few questions but I was very nervous, and what with that and my Parkinson’s disease, my mouth suddenly stopped working at the most inopportune moment. I flubbered and I bejabbered. The prince asked me something, f... knows what it was, and I said: ‘‘ F lab ge rb el bar beg hg hg hgh .’’
Honestly, he must think I am a complete simpleton. I’d love to meet him again to apologise, and to show him that I’m not a total idiot.
After my knighthood was announced, a woman from the BBC came to Glasgow to interview me. We sat down in a lovely hotel in a nice part of town, and she hit me with her first question:
‘‘This must mean a lot to you, with you coming from nothing?’’
I looked at her, and I laughed.
‘‘I didnae come from nothing,’’ I told her. ‘‘I come from something.’’
I mean, I have never hidden that I come from humble stock. I grew up in the tenements of postwar Glasgow. In fact, I used to specify exactly where, onstage: it was on a kitchen floor, ‘‘on the linoleum, three floors up’’. The early years of my life were spent in grinding poverty... but it wasn’t
nothing. It was something – something very important. There is this viewpoint that if you have come from the working class you have come from nothing, whereas the middle and upper classes are something, and I don’t hold with that opinion. I think the working class is something. It is everything. They are the builders of society, and without them the whole house falls down.
I am very proud to be working class, and especially a working-class Glaswegian who has worked in the shipyards. It is something, and don’t you forget it. I come from something. I come from the working class. And, most of all, I come from Scotland. It’s weird how I always get so closely linked with Scotland. I am probably more famous for being a Glaswegian than for anything I have actually done. Yet I don’t mind this focus – in fact, I enjoy it – and I understand it. I have always sounded very Scottish. Nobody is ever going to mistake where I come from. And when I started out, my humour was totally bound up in Scotland and Scottishness. How could it not be? It was what I knew. It was all that I knew.
I love Scotland, with a fierce passion that has never dimmed. I love talking about Scotland and, most of all, I love being there. I have lived in America for many years now, but I have never stopped feeling Scottish. Nearly 20 years ago, in a book that she wrote about me, my wife, Pamela, said: ‘‘Billy is constantly drawn back to Scotland. It’s as though he’d fade into depression without a regular fix.’’ Well, it’s as true now as it was then. I need to feed from Scotland – from the land, and from the fierce craic of the people.
It’s a strange thing to be proud of where you come from. It doesn’t really make any sense. After all, it’s not something that you have earned or worked for – it’s a simple accident of birth. But being Scottish is a very lovely thing. Scotland is a unique and wonderful place. Its national motto says a lot about it: Nemo me impune lacessit.
‘‘You will not strike me with impunity.’’ A decent translation might be: ‘‘By all means punch me in the nose but prepare yourself for a kick in the arse.’’ JP Donleavy explained it well: ‘‘I’ll thank you not to f... about with me.’’ It’s also notable that the national animal of Scotland is a unicorn. Occasionally, people say to me: ‘‘But that’s a mythical animal!’’ To which I answer: ‘‘Oh, yeah? You’ll be telling me the Loch Ness Monster is mythical next!’’ And that is Scotland in a nutshell.
Glasgow made me, but I love all of Scotland. There’s a beauty and an intensity there it is hard to find anywhere else in the world. The west coast of Scotland, and the Highlands and islands, are probably still my favourite places on the planet. My long-time manager, Steve Brown, who sadly died in 2017, was a farmer for years and he used to tell me how he got great spiritual strength from the soil. He used to sink his arms into it, right up to the elbows, and draw comfort from it. I guess that’s how I feel about Scotland. It’s a very lovable place.
I would love Scotland just as much even if I didn’t come from there. Luckily, I’m steeped in the country and in its culture, which I have absorbed over so many decades.
I mean, I’m 75 years old now. Seventy-f...ingfive! Me! I am well versed in Scottish history – although the only problem with reading history is that it tends to be littered with royal families, which I find boring. Royal families always strike me as being like the Mafia, using their family name to conquer people and steal their stuff. Not that I mentioned any of that to Prince William. He might have found another use for that sword. I took the safe option and just said: ‘‘ F lab ge rb el bar beg hg hg hgh .’’
The funny thing is that I wasn’t offended when the woman from the BBC asked me that daft question. She asked me very nicely, with no malice at all, and it is true that I have always talked about my roots in poverty. I suppose I can see exactly where she was coming from. But she was dead wrong.
I didnae come from nothing: I come from Scotland. And I will always be happy and proud that I do.