SAD SILENCING OF BILLY’S BANJO

Loss: Billy Connolly BILLY Connolly didn’t need to be around fellow Humble-bum Gerry Rafferty for long to recognise what a real musician sounded like.

He surmised correctly that, even after a lifetime of practice, he wouldn’t be in the same league as his friend and, wisely, adjusted his ambitions.

That did not mean the lifetime of practice was abandoned. Even as Connolly became one of the funniest men alive, the banjo work continued, day after day, decade after decade. There was no laughter, no eyes-at-winkle as he played. Billy the banjo man was a study of concentration, a toiler determined to wring the best he could from the instrument.

Few were surprised when the comedian told BBC’s Desert Island Discs that his luxury item would be his banjo. Now, battling Parkinson’s Disease, Connolly confides the tremors are too severe for him to play the banjo or the guitar. It must be a devastating loss.

Connolly proves that musical instruments are not just for maestros. They are for anyone who gets pleasure from teasing a tune out of them.

It’s fitting that a mural on a housing development in Anderston, Glasgow, depicts him playing the banjo. That’s the Big Yin up there with one of the loves of his life. IF you’re rolling your ‘r’s in words such as ‘ broom’ or ‘squirrel’, you’re probably an outof-touch English comedian who picked up your Highland accent from Scottie in Star Trek. New research confirms we don’t talk like that now, and haven’t for aeons. It is news to me, however, that many Scots now drop the ‘r’ in words such as ‘car’ and ‘ bar’. What, then, is the ‘r’ for? If it’s for saying the word ‘Ireland’ properly, then we need it. But if we refer to the country as ‘Island’, like the BBC does, then it could be we don’t any mo.