In recent years I have got the feelin g there is somethin g on the other side
Sir Billy opens up about afterlife
Maybe this is my refusal to accept that I’ll be squashed and that’ll be the end
COMEDY legend Sir Billy Connolly says he has begun to get the inkling there is an afterlife.
The 78-year-old, who was brought up as a Catholic, has previously described himself as an atheist and was openly critical of the Church.
Asked now about death and a possible afterlife, he said: “Who knows? It might be so lovely on the other side that you don’t ever think about that.
“I’m sure there’s something. I don’t know... in recent years, I’ve just got a feeling that there is, that we don’t just turn to sh*te.”
Sir Billy added: “Maybe this is my refusal to accept something so mundane, that I’ll be squashed, like any other garden mite, and that’ll be the end.
“Well, that can’t be what happens, can it?”
He also said his Parkinson’s disease has got so bad he can no longer play his beloved banjo. Sir
Billy, who was a musician before becoming a stand-up comic, added he struggles to get out of a chair.
Speaking about the neurological disorder, Sir Billy added: “Sometimes I think of it like a strange animal.
“One that sits beside you and says, ‘How will you get on without this?’, before it takes away something else.
“I can’t play the banjo any more. My handwriting’s gone. My yodelling’s gone... What works on a Monday to get you out of a chair doesn’t always work by Wednesday. It can be a cruel disease.”
He added: “I fly a lot in my dreams. I fly in an upright position, with a power that comes out the soles of my feet.”
In an Observer interview to promote his new memoirs, Windswept & Interesting, Sir Billy said he can still fish near his home in the US state of Florida but had to dictate the book to his daughters.
He is also still drawing and making artwork – and is amazed there are people who collect it. In an ITV documentary called It’s Been a Pleasure, Billy spoke last year about his “new lease of life” in Florida with wife Pamela Stephenson, 71.
Pamela said at the time: “What he wants to do is take it easy.
“He wants to fish on his dock in Florida, and enjoy the sunshine, watch television and drink tea and eat biscuits.” In a show Billy made for the BBC that aired in 2019, he said: “My life, it’s slipping away and I can feel it and I should. “I’m 75, I’m near the end. I’m a damn sight nearer the end than the beginning.” The comments worried fans. Sir Billy, a welder in his home city of Glasgow before his life in showbiz, responded by recording a video while playing a banjo. He said: “Not dying, not dead, not slipping away. Sorry if I depressed you. Maybe I should have phrased it better.”