THE BIG YIN ON
The big banana boots he stomped to fame in back in the Seventies have long been a museum piece in his native Glasgow and Sir Billy Connolly performed his last standup comedy gig in 2017.
He was forced to stop touring by ill health. As he put it after he was diagnosed in 2013: “I’ve got Parkinson’s disease. I wish he’d f***ing kept it.”
Nowadays The Big Yin is happy to spend his time out of the spotlight, fishing from the dock of his home in the Florida Keys, writing his autobiography and enjoying a new-found love of art.
And in a new documentary 78-yearold Billy speaks about this “new lease of life” and reflects on his last stage performances in the 2017 High Horse tour.
He says: “It was obvious from my movement, that I wasn’t who I used to be. And so I had to explain it.. just to say that I am not defined by it.
“It’s got me and it will get me and it will end me but that’s OK with me.
“I started low and I ended high. Just staying up there, until it is time to stop, seems a natural and good thing to do. It is a good thing to be proud of, I wanted to be a funnyman and I got it.”
Looking straight into the camera as if talking to his audience one last time, he says: “It’s been a pleasure talking to you all those years. From the beginning when I was a folkie, right through, I couldn’t have done anything without you. You have been magnificent.”
Billy began his stand-up career in 1971, after a spell working as a welder in the Glasgow shipyards and then singing and playing banjo with the Humblebums folk group, which he founded with singer songwriter Gerry Rafferty.
He credits a 1975 appearance on Michael Parkinson’s BBC chat show with “changing his life”, catapulting him to global fame and a career in comedy that earned him a knighthood in 2017.
Sir Billy’s career on the road was cut short when Parkinson’s meant he could no longer remember his stories in the way he used to.
Confirming he will never do another show, he says: “I’ve done my stand-up. I did it for 50 years. I did it quite well. And it is time to stop.
“My illness, my Parkinson’s disease, has rendered me different. It would either mean renewing what I do and doing something else, or give up what I did and that’s what I’ve done.
“Why do I like to make people laugh? Because it is a jolly thing, it is good for you and it is good for them. It is a dynamite thing to be able to do, to get a laugh out of someone.”
And making people laugh with routines such as The Crucifixion and the Jobbie Weecha, and songs
He wants to fish and to sit on his dock in Florida
PAMELA STEPHENSON ON HUSBAND BILLY’S LIFE