Billy: I’ll be disease research guinea pig in bid to find a cure
COMEDY legend Sir Billy Connolly has spoken movingly about his battle with Parkinson’s disease and how he has put himself forward as a ‘guinea pig’ to help researchers find a cure. The Glasgow-born comedian was diagnosed with the degenerative condition five years ago.
Sir Billy, who now lives in Florida, revealed he has been in touch with scientists at Harvard University in Massachusetts, whose stem cell institute is a key leader in research into Parkinson’s.
In an extract from a new book published exclusively in the Mail on Sunday, the 75-yearold described the extent to which the disease – currently incurable – consumes his life, preventing him from driving or performing shows.
He told the newspaper that he had volunteered for the first experimental treatments on humans, which involve laboratory engineered stem cells being injected into the part of the brain affected by the condition.
Sir Billy said: ‘Researchers are making progress on a cure. I’ve spoken to guys working on it at Harvard and told them I’ll be a guinea pig for them.’
Last year, researchers announced primates with Parkinson’s symptoms regained significant mobility after induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells – which have the potential to develop into any cell – were inserted into their brains.
Two months ago, Japanese researchers at Kyoto University began the first human trial, involving seven participants aged between 50 and 69.
The two-year experiment follows collaboration with other research teams worldwide as they race to find a cure.
Sir Billy received the devastating Parkinson’s diagnosis in the same week in December 2013 as he was told he had prostate cancer – for which he has since had successful surgery.
Almost five years on, the brain condition, he said, is the first thing he thinks of every morning when he wakes up.
He added: ‘It occupies a lot of my thinking time every single day. The thing that I find hardest is coming to grips with the fact that it’s never going to go away.
‘Everything that has ever been wrong with me in the past always went away eventually. It was either operated on or it cured itself. This isn’t going anywhere; in fact, it’s going to get worse.’
But he added: I’ve learned to take it easier and to look out for when the shaking starts. I’m coping with it and I’m hanging in there.’ In his wryly observed book, Made in Scotland, a mix of memoir and travelogue, he recalls his struggles to control his body when he was knighted last year at Buckingham Palace.
‘I didn’t really cover myself in glory,’ he said. ‘When Prince William asked me a few questions I was nervous, and what with that and the Parkinson’s disease, my mouth stopped working. I flubbered and I bejabbered.
‘The Prince asked me something – f*** knows what it was – and I said: “Flabgerbelbarbeghghghgh”. I’d love to meet him again to show him I’m not a total idiot.’
Former shipyard worker Sir Billy, who uses hearing aids to help him cope with partial deafness, added: ‘I have come off the road now and I haven’t been playing any shows but I would like to do more.
‘I don’t know what the future holds because I don’t know what state I will be in. Having Parkinson’s – and being 75 – has inevitably made me think about my death, but those thoughts go away as quickly as they come.’
Two months ago, broadcaster Sir Michael Parkinson attracted criticism when he claimed his old friend Sir Billy failed to recognise him because of his worsening condition. In reply, he was described as ‘an old f**t’ by the comedian’s wife, Pamela Stephenson.
‘Learned to take it easier’