Windswept And Interesting

Billy Connolly £25 Hardback HODDER & STOUGHTON

There was a time the genre “Misery Lit” soared to prominence, a necessary outing as long-repressed stories of unspeakable domestic abuse and cruelty began to see the light.

Billy Connolly’s enlightening, entertaining autobiography doesn’t quite fit into this category, but the tales he tells of the active and passive cruelty he endured as a child do make you gasp.

His style of writing, much like his stage performances, sees stories come tumbling out fully-formed, almost unscripted and mostly unvarnished. He often makes the point of how his stage shows were never scripted, how he would step out before his audiences and the show would just spring out of him. Of course his live performances have now ceased, after his Parkinson’s diagnosis in 2013.

The title comes from friend and folk singer Archie Fisher’s description of Billy’s appearance. It also, quite aptly, describes his life. Colourful, charismatic and battered by circumstance.

While the structure is conventional, from his early beginnings and to the present day, Connolly’s voice takes you where you didn’t expect to go. The horrible abuse he suffered as a child is described matter-offactly. The boy whose mother ran off when he was wee, who was left in the care of two aunts.

The cruelty, physical attacks, sexual abuse and humiliation he suffered by his family’s hands.

But really, this is a book written with love. Love for the Glasgow he grew up in, love of music, his friends, his family and an irrepressible love of life.

There’s plenty for music lovers, including his time with Tam Harvey and Gerry Rafferty as The Humblebums, and tales from gigs around Scotland.

It’s a funny and illuminating, story of a man who danced to his own drum, and who, no matter what life has thrown at him, still knows how to laugh about it. Not that he says that, but it’s easy to work out for yourself.

Stories come tumbling out fully-formed”