The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
‘Life is slipping away and I can feel it’: Connolly
Legendary comic tells of fight with Parkinson’s in BBC documentary
Sir Billy Connolly has told how he feels his life “slipping away” and he is being stripped of his talents and other attributes before another adventure, “in the spirit world”.
The comic legend, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2013, also revealed how he fights with the realisation the condition is only going to worsen.
Speaking in the second part of a new BBC Scotland documentary, Billy Connolly, Made In Scotland, to be shown on Friday, The Big Yin tells how attributes, including his famous banjoplaying skills, are diminishing one by one.
He said: “My life is 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 I am the beginning – but it doesn’t frighten me.
“It’s an adventure and it’s quite interesting to see myself slipping away.
“Bits slip off and leave me – talents leave and attributes leave.
“I don’t have the balance I used to have; I don’t have the energy I used to have; I can’t hear the way I used to hear; I can’t see as good as I used to.
“I can’t remember the way I used to remember.
“I can’t work banjo. my left hand on the
“It’s as if I’m being prepared for something, some other adventure which is over the hill.”
He adds, however: “There’s still time to go yet. There’s still places to go, new friends to make, maybe new songs to write and sing and jokes to tell.”
In the documentary, Connolly also discusses the impact Parkinson’s has had on his stage performances and how it left him “afraid to move” on stage.
He said: “Instead of going away to the front of the stage and prowling along the front the way I used to do, I stood where I was.”
He went on: “Parkinson’s is strange because it’s not going to go away.
“All my life I’ve got sick, I’ve got the flu or I’ve got pneumonia and various things, and they all went away – this isn’t going anywhere. It’s going to get worse.
“It takes a certain calm to deal with and I sometimes don’t have it. I sometimes get angry with it but that doesn’t last long.
“The good things are there, the love you have for people is still there and with a bit of luck the love they have for you is still there, and I’m very lucky in as much as I made a bit of a mark and you think ‘well I must have done something right’ and that keeps you company when you’re older – the fact that when you were creative, you created well. It’s a great companion.”