Oh Billy, even in your darkest days you’re a lighthouse of joy
Billy Connolly has been talking about his Parkinson’s disease. ‘All my life i’ve got sick . . . the flu and pneumonia, various things, and they all went away. This isn’t going anywhere. it is going to get worse,’ he said, during his two-part documentary series Made in Scotland (BBC2, last part tonight at 9pm).
After being diagnosed with Parkinson’s and prostate cancer on the same day in 2013, the star is frailer in many ways, but still thinking positive.
‘The good things are there. The love we have for people is still there. And with a bit of luck the love they have for you is still there,’ the 76-yearold added.
indeed, Connolly is lucky in so many ways.
A cherished grandfather, much loved father of five with a wife, Pamela Stephenson, who still adores him, plus money to ease his comfort through the declining years ahead . . . he has much to be thankful for, and he knows it.
Five years ago, he sold his Scottish castle where family and friends would gather for Highland reunions. Today, he mostly lives in Florida, where he paints, keeps his youthful spirit alive, wears snazzy trousers and, yes, plans his latest television adventures.
The first part of Made in Scotland was one of the best things on television over the festive season. it included some vintage clips of Connolly’s stand-up routines, which are still laugh-out-loud hilarious.
With the exception of the Father Ted repeats and the American version of The Office (on Amazon Prime), i can’t think of a single thing on TV over Christmas that really made me laugh like he did.
Oh God, there were far too many smug line-ups on dreary panel shows — there was Jimmy Carr, Jonathan Ross, lee Mack, an anniversary celebration of Goodness, Gracious Me, Mrs Brown’s Boys and yet more Jimmy Carr.
it was as if we had to be punished, rather than entertained.
Then there was Billy, a lighthouse of joy beaming across this grim sea of mediocrity.
Can you think of a single contemporary comedian on the circuit today who is even half as funny as he? No, me neither.
The thin gruel of their politicised and often embittered humour cannot compare with the soaring majesty of Connolly’s observational comedy. And he carried on being funny after he got rich and famous, something that has escaped the likes of John Cleese, Steve Coogan, Eddie izzard and Ricky Gervais.
Even his humanity is intact, along with his keen sense of the absurd and celebration of the ridiculous.
Three of the reasons why his comedy became universal, enjoyed by young and old alike. Three reasons why he has endured where others have not.
Perhaps part of his success was that he was never really political. Well, that is not strictly true. When i saw him in Perth on his small tour of Scotland in 2014, he called the Scottish Referendum ‘a load of s***e, a lot of patriotic crap.’ He also noted that he would ‘never get tired of kicking Nigel Farage’s a***.’
But these were more irritated asides rather than something to work a tenminute routine around.
HE SUPPORTED himself back then by leaning on a small table and used a prompt-sheet to get him through the show. He talked about his Parkinson’s, explaining how he did two crosswords a day to keep it at bay. He told the audience not to worry about his left arm, which had a tendency to drift upwards at an odd angle, locking into a position that ‘makes it look like i’m carrying an invisible raincoat’.
last week, Made in Scotland revealed the creeping progression of the disease, and a hand that now shakes uncontrollably for long periods. yet Connolly is still brilliant at being himself on television, talking straight to camera without pomp or affectation.
This programme wasn’t just about him, it was also about Glasgow in the Sixties, in all its grime and glory. The horror of his own brutal childhood wasn’t mentioned and at no point, in the modish manner, did he seek sympathy or try to portray himself as a victim. instead, he showed how humour alleviated the drudgery and harshness of life in the shipyards.
yet despite the laughs, a terrible cloud of sadness hangs over these shows.
There is an unspoken farewell roaming on the airwaves, almost as if Billy Connolly is explaining himself to us all, for one last time.
it feels like he has taken charge of his own on-screen obituary — typical!
He certainly thinks this will be his last big television production, as he finds himself at the wrong end of the telescope of life.
His powers of balance, energy, hearing, seeing and remembering? They are all beginning to fail, he says, making one feel that the fashionable haircut and youthful clothes are a facade of sorts.
All these talents and senses once so freely given to him, are now being taken. We find him preparing for what he calls his last adventure on a road that finds him ‘a damn sight nearer the end than the beginning’, just as curious about death as he has always been about life.
The final curtain hasn’t quite fallen yet, but he remains as inspirational as ever.