Billy Connolly saved me from alcohol abuse spiral, admits Jack Vettriano
HE has made a career out of bawling witty one-liners to packed concert halls.
But Sir Billy Connolly’s most significant words of wisdom were offered softly and in private to artist Jack Vettriano, it has emerged.
The painter has credited the Big Yin with saving his life thanks to some advice that helped him beat alcohol abuse.
Vettriano has told how he was battling depression when recently commissioned by the BBC to produce a portrait of the legendary Glaswegian comic ahead of his 75th birthday.
As the pair collaborated on the project, he let slip his secret to Connolly, who won his own battle with booze in the 1980s.
Fife-born Vettriano, 65, revealed to The Scottish Mail on Sunday: ‘I was at a very low ebb and using alcohol to get through it.
‘I confided in Billy that I had got into the habit of drinking at lunchtime and he looked me straight in the eye and said: “Take it from me, Jack, it’s the wrong road”.
‘I was very touched by it and it made me realise I had to change.
‘Here is a man who has faced public struggles with alcohol abuse and was vilified and even driven out of the country and he came through it.
‘He is an inspiration to me and I couldn’t help but listen to him.
‘His painting was the first I had done for a number of years and it has helped heal me. It’s one of the hardest pieces I have painted as he is such an iconic figure, but it is also the one I am most proud of.
‘I cannot thank him enough – I’m not drinking any more.’
Vettriano, who has become Scotland’s most commercially successful artist with a series of famous images infused with smouldering sexuality, lost the power to paint in 2014 after a fall.
He said: ‘I started to get very reclusive. I badly injured my shoulder and wrist, so drink became my escapism. It was that way for a while. I am not ashamed to admit I have taken anti-depressants and seen psychiatrists but I am in a good place now.’
Connolly turned to drink to cope with his sudden rise to fame but – coupled with a cocaine habit – it left him regularly blacking out.
He finally went teetotal in 1985 and has not touched a drop of alcohol since.
Vettriano’s own toxic relationship with booze was first publicly exposed in 2012 when he was convicted of drink-driving and possession of amphetamine at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court.
He admitted: ‘I regret it very much. I had been painting all day and it wasn’t going well. I was drinking and using speed and hadn’t eaten and was in a mess. I put my shoes on and decided to go and get a fish supper.
‘I made it to the place and was on my way home when five police cars pulled up at the traffic lights. They knew exactly who I was.
‘I didn’t think about what I was doing before I went out. I’m embarrassed by it – it is not the right image to project.’
He added: ‘I didn’t take a line of amphetamine until I was 45. I have lived my life the wrong way round. People have their own ideas about me but I wasn’t a drinker when I was young.’
In a candid interview, Vettriano – who grew up in Methil and now lives in London – confesses it rankles with him that the National Galleries of Scotland still refuses to display any of his work.
He said: ‘No one has made an impact on Scottish art the way I have.
‘If the National Galleries really cared about the people of Scotland – the taxpayers that they represent – they would have one of mine on show in Edinburgh. Who comes to Edinburgh to see a Van Gogh or Vermeer?’
Vettriano’s works include The Singing Butler – which sold at auction for £744,800 in 2004 – His Favourite Girl and Contemplation Of Betrayal. Millions of prints of his paintings have been sold.
His portrait of Connolly has been recast on a 50ft-high gable wall in Glasgow.
‘Painting Billy helped me heal’ ‘I was drinking and taking speed’