Sick jokes make me feel better
SIR Billy Connolly says his sick sense of humour is helping him cope with Parkinson’s as his symptoms are worsen.
The Big Yin was diagnosed with the disease in 2013.
The comic, who stopped performing live six years ago due to the condition, says he hasn’t given up on a cure being found.
Billy, 77, said: “Now that I am getting older and sicker it is important that my comedy kicks in. I went to a doctor in New York, he was a Russian and he said, ‘Do you realise it’s an incurable disease?’ I was like, come on behave yourself.
“Instead of saying incurable, say you have yet to find a cure.
“It gives me a wee light at the end of the tunnel. Don’t say to people it is incurable. Who the f*** are you – the devil? You’ve got to try.”
He added: “I’ve started to drool, which is a new one on me. I don’t know how to deal with it so I have come to the conclusion women find drooling attractive and there is a record only I have heard of called, I Love a Man with a Shiny Chin.’
“I started ending my shows with Little Richard’s Whole Lotta Shakin’ Going On.
“You have to attack this thing head on. Shaking is the new cool.
“I did a lot of comedy where I got rid of my own taboos by making fun of them and shining a light on them. It’s worked out rather well.” Connolly opens up about his lifelong love affair with dark humour and his health in BBC Scotland series Billy and Us, which sees the comic reflect on his colourful yet often traumatic past and the comedy it inspired.
From the dockyards to sex, religion, class and politics, he talks candidly about his life and career, while reviewing a range of archive film, including his routines and interviews by the likes of Michael Parkinson.
In the final episode – The Dark Side – which airs on Thursday, Billy talks about saying the unsayable and making people laugh in the face of adversity.
The dad-of-five, whose routines saw him tackle sensitive issues including death, illness and even incontinence, said: “The best way to deal with the dark side of life is to laugh right in its face.
“There was a guy at the shipyards
Comic says humour helps him fight Parkinson’s I would make fun of darkness and it was a joy to do SIR BILLY CONNOLLY ON FINDING HUMOUR
where we would get our lightbulbs.
“He always had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a cough from the bowels of hell, which would go on for days.
“I would say, ‘Jesus you need to do something about that cough.’ and he would say, ‘F*** off, do you know that graveyard up at Drumoyne? It’s full of men who would love my cough.’ It’s that I carry with me.
“Everybody knows death is coming and there are all types of tricks, religion etc to deal with it but comedy can release you from your terror of death.
“You can treat it lightly and kid on it’s the school bully you can beat.”
He added: “We filmed in a crematorium out at Cathcart and I was with the guys doing the bodies and they came up to me with a tin of stuff before it went into the urn to be presented to the relatives.
“It was the ashes of a guy who had committed suicide the day before. It had a profound effect on me. Here was a guy who had a good idea the day before and was now dust in a tin. It was so awful. I had to find humour.
“Like in my song about the chip shop guy who died and his friends and family got a fright when the sign on the takeaway door read, ‘Tony’s Frying tonight.’”
Billy has searched for comedy in the darkest times in his life, including when his father was ill. He said: “It’s important to unpick the pain and replace it with laughter.
“I would make fun of darkness and it was a joy. I used to talk about my father’s stroke and the other men I met in the hospital – guys who were seriously ill – and I would make fun of it as it was my way of dealing with it. I used to joke about the time my sister was talking to my dad, who went a bit doolally towards the end. He excused himself and went and got the frying pan and had a pee in it. My sister was distraught but my father was perfectly happy.
“My incontinence trousers routine was one of the most successful things I ever did. I couldn’t believe the reaction it got and still gets to this day.”
He added: “It’s such a tender thing comedy, it lives on a shaky branch. If it is picked up the wrong way it can fall terribly but picked up the right way it can enlighten people and make people feel better.
“Humour will always be in a state of change. Different moral realms will come and go and the humour will adjust itself to suit. Just now I think it is a bit up itself. If people are offended they can sod off.”
Billy, who is married to Pamela Stephenson, added: “Poets and comedians are in charge of making the world a better place and leaving it in a better state than they found it. I hope I have managed to do that.” ●Billy and Us is on BBC Scotland on Thursday at 10pm.