Laughter is the best medicine for Billy and us all
ELTON (Berkshire), Pamela (Florida), David (London) and Andy (Surrey) all had their say about Billy Connolly and Me. That’ll be Elton John, Pamela Stephenson, David Tennant and Andy Murray then.
That they were introduced thus, given equal billing with ‘ordinary’ people like Martina (Wicklow) and Jessica (California) says it all about what Billy Connolly means to us.
But what does he mean to me? Well, like Andy Murray, it was growing up listening to his casettes. Andy’s were on the road down to England for tennis tournaments, mine were at Stupart’s barbers where I first heard his Crucifixion spiel, relocated to Glasgow, of course.
Billy would know Stupart’s on Crow Road well, it’s just down the road from where he grew up in the west end of Glasgow, not far from where he worked on the shipyards and near where he played his early folk concerts with Gerry Rafferty, breaking off between songs to tell funny stories to the audience.
I first met Billy at a charity cricket match when I was working as a cub reporter in the south of England where he lived in the Eighties... I was at an advantage. I hadn’t taken a photographer with me (he hasn’t always got on with them), and I had an accent he knew.
He immediately put me at ease and we talked about the West of Scotland cricket ground close to where I grew up.
And that is the essence of Billy as evidenced by the stories told by his fans on this celebration of his 50 years entertaining us and making us smile.
Billy himself tells the tale of one fan asking for an autograph for his friend and then going back to him to ask if he would write F*** off on it. This garrulous Scot is so likeable we’re even happy when he insults us.
Wicklow teacher Martina recalls playing his video to her pupils and then being upbraided by the Vice-Principal.
I imagine Billy would smile at that, he was put down at school when he wrote that he would be a comedian, a teacher raising a laugh from the class when he reminded him that he had seen him playing football earlier in the day. Billy had the last laugh though and the school brought him back after he’d made it.
Billy has always possessed a child-like perspective of how
ridiculous life is which is probably why he has always been so popular with young people... that, and the fact that he swears a lot.
One fan talks about how he was concerned that his children would not ‘get’ him but found that they loved him just as much, particularly his physical comedy.
I watch Billy Connolly and Me with my daughter and she breaks into laughter at Billy talking about confronting old age.
He bemoans the plethora of health crusaders who’d have him eat brown bread. His contention is that it will only put a couple of weeks on his life and not at a time when it would be useful, say at 18, but when he’s in his dotage.
Billy imagines himself older, sat with a drip in him, pissing his trousers and his helper asking if he is so down because all his friends have died. ‘Those’ll be the white bread ones then,’ he rasps back.
The sad irony amid this joyfest is that Billy’s powers are declining – he has Parkinson’s. In typical fashion Billy jokes: ‘I wish he’d kept it.’ He also makes it a centrepiece of his show with a signature tune of ‘A Whole Lot Of Shaking Going On.’
An hour of Billy Connolly And Me just raced by with tales of what the world’s best-loved comedian means to his fans. One said that watching him brought on her labour, another, Californian Jessica that her doctor prescribed an hour a week of Billy Connolly to beat depression.
No better tribute.