Sir Billy: Drunken prank on bus that led to me giving up the booze for ever
IT sounds like a scene straight out of a Hollywood film.
But Sir Billy Connolly has disclosed that a drunken prank that almost sent him and screen legend Sir Michael Caine plunging down a ravine in a bus was one of the main reasons he gave up drinking.
Sir Billy quit the booze for good 35 years ago after his wife Pamela Stephenson told him it made him ‘nasty’ – and an ‘extreme’ practical joke on location for a film.
While working on the 1985 movie Water in the Caribbean, Sir Billy, Sir Michael and others involved in the film were heading by bus from a restaurant to their hotel.
Sir Billy decided to cover the driver’s eyes, which he says would have led to them driving off a cliff if Sir Michael had not intervened.
In his autobiography, Windswept and Interesting, he writes: ‘I was filming in St Lucia. One night, I had a jolly evening with Michael Caine and some of the other cast and crew. By the time we left the restaurant, I was steaming.
‘We then had to ride back to our hotel in a local bus that took a precarious route on a terrible road beside a steep ravine. For some reason, I thought it would be a wheeze to cover the driver’s eyes.
‘To prevent us from careering off the edge of the cliff, Michael Caine had to intervene. He talked to me about it the following morning, and I decided to quit drinking again. At the end of 1985, I stopped for good.
‘Pamela had made her position perfectly clear. She took Daisy [their daughter] to New York when she became a cast member of Saturday Night Live and I was worried she wouldn’t come back. So I decided to quit drinking while it was still my idea.’
Later, Miss Stephenson told him that his drinking was a problem, and that she did not like the person he became when he was drunk. He said she went to Bali in an attempt to forget about him.
On her return, she challenged him about his drinking, saying she cared about him but that he was damaging himself. Sir Billy was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2013 after a doctor spotted him walking strangely in the lobby of a Los Angeles hotel. He moved to Florida from New York after doctors advised him to live in a warmer climate.
Windswept and Interesting is published on October 14.