Billy Connolly

Connolly was born at 69 Dover Street,[10] "on the linoleum, three floors up"[11] "at six o'clock in the evening",[10] in Anderston, Glasgow. This section of Dover Street, between Breadalbane and Claremont streets, was demolished in the 1970s.[10] Connolly refers to this in his 1983 song "I Wish I Was in Glasgow" with the lines "I would take you there and show you but they've pulled the building down" and "they bulldozed it all to make a road". The flat had only two rooms: a kitchen-living room, with a recess where the children slept, and another room for their parents. The family bathed in the kitchen sink, and there was no hot water.[12]

Connolly was born to Catholic parents, William Connolly and Mary McLean, both of whom were of partly Irish descent.[13] In 1946, when he was four years old, Connolly's mother left her children while their father was serving as an engineer in the Royal Air Force in Burma.[12] "I've never felt abandoned by her," Connolly explained in 2009.[14] "My mother was a teenager. My father was in Burma, fighting a bloody war. The Germans were dropping all kinds of crap on the town. We lived at the docks, so that's where all the bombs were happening. She was a teenager with two kids in a slum. A guy comes along and says, 'I love you. Come with me.' Given the choice, I think I'd have gone with him. It looks as though it might all end next Wednesday, from where you're standing. I don't have an ounce of feelings that she abandoned me. She tried to survive."[14]

Connolly and his older sister, Florence (named after their maternal grandmother, and eighteen months his senior),[12][15] were cared for by two aunts, Margaret and Mona Connolly, his father's sisters, in their cramped tenement in Stewartville Street, Partick. "My aunts constantly told me I was stupid, which still affects me today pretty badly. It's just a belief that I'm not quite as good as anyone else. It gets worse as you get older. I'm a happy man now but I still have the scars of that."[6] Regarding his sister, Connolly has called her his "great defender".[14] "To this day, he explained in 2009,[14] "Guys say, 'God, your sister... We didn't dare beat you up – your sister was a nightmare'. She used to get after them."

In the mid-1960s, Flo was on holiday in Dunoon with her husband and two children. "My mother said, 'I saw Florence walking along, and I followed her.'"[14] "I said, 'Did you speak to her?' 'Oh, no, I didn't,' she said. I thought, 'Oh, my god. It's like being a ghost while you're still alive.' Walking behind your own child. Having a look. I couldn't bear that."[14]

The aunts resented the children for the fact that they had to sacrifice their young lives to look after them. It was Mona who was troubled the most by having to care for her niece and nephew. "It was very big of her to take on the responsibility, but having said that, I wish people wouldn't do that. I wish people wouldn't be very big for five minutes and rotten for twenty years. Just keep your 'big' and keep your 'rotten' and get out of my life, because, quite frankly, I would rather have gone to a children's home and be with a lot of other kids being treated the same. To this day, I'm still working on the things she did to me."[16][17]

Connolly credits one of John Bradshaw's publications with helping him deal with his past demons. "He reckons that if this trauma happened to you when you were five or six then, emotionally, that part of you remains five or six. And what you have to do is carry that five- or six-year-old around with you and try and emotionally help that other part of you. It sounds a bit airy-fairy, but I think he's something of a genius, Mr. Bradshaw."[16]

Connolly, Sr. returned from the war, a stranger to his children, shortly after the move to Partick. He never spoke to them about their mother's departure.[12] Connolly's biography, Billy, written by wife Pamela Stephenson, documented years of physical and sexual abuse by his father, which began when he was ten and lasted until he was about 15.[18] "Sometimes, when father hit me, I flew over the settee backwards in a sitting position. It was fabulous. Just like real flying, except you didn't get a cup of tea or a safety belt or anything."[12] In 1949, Mona gave birth to a son, Michael, by a "local man". He was presented as a brother to Billy and Flo, and nobody questioned it.[12]

Connolly's bedroom had double windows, which directly faced St Peter's Primary School across the street.[16] Now defunct, the school has been converted into living accommodation. "The school was very violent indeed. At first, in the infant school, the nuns were very violent. And then over here at St Peter's, they were just strapping you all the time. I had a psychopath in here, called McDonald — Miss McDonald. "Big Rosie", they called her. There was a guy with glasses in my class and she called him "four eyes", and she was a teacher!"[19]

At St. Peter's, Connolly decided that he wanted to make people laugh. "I can remember the moment in the school playground. I would have been 7 or 8. And I was sitting in a puddle and people were laughing. I had fallen in it and people found it funny. And it wasn't all that uncomfortable, so I stayed in it longer than I normally would because I really enjoyed the laughing. My life was very unhappy at the time, and laughter wasn't something I heard all the time, so it was a joy. And I realised quickly that if you can have an audience this way, life was rather pleasant."[16] While at St Peter's, Connolly joined a gang. His arch-enemy was Geordie Sinclair, who lived around the corner.[14]

Connolly was a Wolf Cub with the 141st Glasgow Scout Group. He revisits the site of one field trip, Auchengillan scout camp, during his World Tour of Scotland.[11] At age 12, Connolly decided he wanted to become a comedian but did not think that he fitted the mould, feeling he needed to become more "windswept and interesting". Also at that age, he joined an organisation called The Children of Mary. The group would visit people and say the Rosary, with a statue of the Lady of Lourdes in a shoebox. "We were as welcome as haemorrhoids."[14] The group would all kneel around the statue and pray. "You could hear people hurrying prayers because there was a good television programme coming."[14]

In the 1950s, Glasgow's sandstone tenements fell out of favour with the planners, which resulted in new houses being built on the fields and farmlands in the outskirts of the city. Between the ages of fourteen and twenty, Connolly was brought up on a now-demolished council estate on Kinfauns Drive in the Drumchapel district of Glasgow, and would make the daily journey to St. Gerard's Secondary School (also now defunct) in Govan, on the southern side of the River Clyde. He rode the bus to Partick, crossed the water by ferry and walked to 80 Vicarfield Street.[1][11]

"Drumchapel is a housing estate just outside Glasgow. Well, it's in Glasgow, but just outside civilisation," he has joked.[11] "To be quite honest, I quite liked it when I lived there. When I moved to Drumchapel, I was fourteen and there was a bluebell wood there, and it was in great condition then — I don't think it's in quite so good condition now — but it was lovely then. We had rabbits and pheasants, and I really quite liked it. I just started to dislike it when I got older, into my teens and things. In my late teens, when I was stuck out there, it cost me a lot of money to go anyplace. It was a kind of cowboy town, but I liked that aspect of it, buying stuff out of vans, a ragman coming in a wee green van."[12]

Connolly revisited this tenement in Drumchapel during filming for The South Bank Show in 1992.[20] "It eventually started to pall. This dreadful atmosphere came about the place. It's like Siberia. And once you're out here, there's no getting out of it. You have to buy your way out, or some kind of talent has to take you out, or you have to be very bright and move away to university."[16]

Also at fourteen, Connolly started to become interested in music — mainly Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. At fifteen, he left school with two engineering qualifications, one collected by mistake which belonged to a boy named Connell.[21]

Connolly was a year too young to work in the shipyards. Instead, he started working for John Smith's Bookshop, on St Vincent Street, delivering books on his bicycle. He became a delivery-van driver with Bilslands' Bakery until he was sixteen, when he was deemed overqualified (due to his J1 and J2 certificates) to become an engineer.[21] Instead, he worked as a boilermaker[22] at Alexander Stephen and Sons shipyard in Linthouse.[21]

"What an extraordinary feeling," Connolly said, upon returning to the site of the now-demolished shipyard in 1992.[16] "I spent a great deal of my life in here. From age 16 to... well, I started at 15. I started my apprenticeship at 16 and finished when I was 21. Stayed till I was 22, and moved along. I finished welding when I was 24. When I came here, as an apprentice, there was six ships being built, right where I'm standing. It was an extraordinary place. A hive of activity. Welders, caulkers, platers, burners, joiners, engineers, electricians. I learned how men talked to one another, and how merciless Glasgow humour can be. It has made an indelible mark on me."[16] His foreman was Sammy Boyd, but the two biggest influences on him, according to the book written by his wife Pamela, were Jimmy Lucas and Bobby Dalgleish. Jimmy was one of Billy's trainers in the yard who helped him to hone his skills as a welder and a comedian.

Connolly also joined the Territorial Army Reserve unit 15th (Scottish) Battalion, the Parachute Regiment (15 PARA). He later commemorated his experiences in the song "Weekend Soldier".[21]

Connolly has been married to Pamela Stephenson since 1989

Connolly married Iris Pressagh in 1969. They separated in 1981 and divorced in 1985.

On 30 December 1985, Connolly became teetotal, having been an alcoholic.[46] "I don't miss drinking. It has taken me by surprise," Connolly stated 24 years later.[14] "I miss the craic. I miss the joy of it all. The headbanging stupidity, the loveliness, the craziness of it. I miss it terribly." He recalls blackouts that he would fill in upon returning to sobriety. "Well, [the memories] stopped coming back. But when I drank, I would go, 'Oh, I remember now.'" Psychologists call it state-dependent learning.[14] "That was frightening. I remember thinking, 'Beware, Billy boy. Beware. All is not well. Do something.'" Regarding the decision he made to stay sober: "If [Pamela] goes away, I'm on my own. There's nothing. There's only me and it. So the choice becomes very apparent."[14]

In 1986, he visited Mozambique to appear in a documentary for Comic Relief. He also featured in the charity's inaugural live stage show, both as a stand-up and portraying a willing "victim" in his partner Pamela Stephenson's act of sawing a man in half to create two dwarfs. Connolly completed his first world tour in 1987, including six nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London, which was documented in the Billy and Albert video. In March 1988, his father died after a stroke, the eighth of his life.[11][19][47] His mother died five years later, in 1993, of motor neurone disease.

Connolly and Stephenson married in Fiji on 20 December 1989: he had been living with her since 1981. "Marriage to Pam didn't change me; it saved me," he later said. "I was going to die. I was on a downwards spiral and enjoying every second of it. Not only was I dying, but I was looking forward to it."[6]

In the book Billy (and in a December 2008 online interview), Connolly states he was sexually abused by his father between the ages of ten and fifteen. He believes this was a result of the Catholic Church not allowing his father to divorce after his mother left the family. Because of this, Connolly has a "deep distrust and dislike of the Catholic church and any other organisation that brainwashes people".[49] He has called himself an atheist.[50]

In September 2013, Connolly underwent minor surgery for early-stage prostate cancer.[51] The announcement also stated that he was being treated for the initial symptoms of Parkinson's disease.[52] Connolly had acknowledged earlier in 2013 that he had started to forget his lines during performances.[53][54] In January 2019, he disclosed that its advance may force his retirement from performing.[55]

He appeared on the BBC's genealogy programme Who Do You Think You Are? on 2 October 2014, in which he discovered his Indian ancestry.[56][57]

Connolly is father to five children: two from his first marriage and three from his second. He became a grandfather in 2001, when his daughter Cara gave birth to Walter.[6]

Connolly had previously been a vocal opponent of Scottish independence. In 1974, he made a political party television broadcast on behalf of the Labour Party which criticised the Scottish National Party. In 1999, he blamed the SNP for a perceived increase in Anglophobia in Scotland; described the new Scottish Parliament as a joke; and declined to attend the opening ceremony.[63]

He questioned the expense of independence, and whether average Scots would benefit from another level of government, though he added "Scots are very capable of making up their mind without my tuppence worth."[64]

In April 2014, in an interview with the Radio Times leading up to the independence referendum, he stated "I think it's time for people to get together, not split apart. The more people stay together, the happier they'll be." He also referred to the Darien scheme, an effort to establish a Scottish colony in the Isthmus of Panama in 1698; the colony's failure destroyed the Kingdom of Scotland's economy and led to the Acts of Union in 1707. Connolly wrote, "You must remember that the Union saved Scotland. Scotland was bankrupt and the English opened us up to their American and Canadian markets, from which we just flowered."

During an interview with the BBC prior to polling day for the Scottish independence referendum on 18 September 2014, Connolly revealed he would not be voting as he was flying to New Zealand that day. He expressed his belief that the people of Scotland did not need his opinion to make up their minds on the subject.[65]

In October 2018, several media outlets stated that in his book Made in Scotland, released on 10 October, Connolly had voiced his support for independence in light of the 2016 referendum on the United Kingdom leaving the European Union (Brexit), in which Scotland voted to remain. The Times reported Connolly as calling the Brexit vote a "disaster" and saying that independence "may be the way to go" in order for Scotland to maintain a connection to Europe, leading to speculation that he could be questioning his Unionist beliefs after decades of vehemently opposing independence.[66][67] In Episode Five of the BBC Scotland documentary, Billy and Us, first broadcast on 11 June 2020, he said "I've never liked nationalism in any of its guises. I'm not saying I've never agreed with independence. I think a Scottish republic is as good an idea as any I ever heard."[68]

Connolly is a patron of the National Association for Bikers with a Disability.[69] He is also a patron of Celtic F.C.'s The Celtic Foundation.[70]

In 1965, together with Tam Harvey, Connolly started a group called The Humblebums. At their first gig, Connolly reportedly introduced them both to the audience by saying, "My name's Billy Connolly, and I'm humble. This is Tam Harvey, he's a bum." The band would later include Gerry Rafferty, who saw Connolly at a charity show in Paisley.[71] "Gerry was very good for me. He taught me that I would never be a musician as long as my arse looked south. He was just so outstandingly good and getting better, and although I was getting better too, the space between us remained huge. He was a real musician, he knew and felt music, a bass player, with a lovely sense of harmony, as well as a great guitarist. I knew tunes and how to play them but that was where my musicianship ended. Unfortunately, I’m still the same to this day. I work very hard, I play every day but I’m still ordinary. I can be flashy, but it’s all tricks really. He’s a musician and I’m just not in the same league. So, I gave up these ambitions and concentrated on what I was really born to do."[71]

After Harvey left the group, Connolly and Rafferty continued as a duo and the latter two of their three albums featured just that duo. Connolly sang, played five-string banjo, guitar, and autoharp, and at live shows entertained the audience with his humorous introductions to the songs.

Frank Bruno and Connolly provided lead vocals on, "The War Song of the Urpneys" from The Dreamstone; although the version heard in the series was largely sung by composer Mike Batt.

In his World Tour of Scotland, Connolly revealed that, at a trailer show during the Edinburgh Festival, the Humblebums took to the stage just before Yehudi Menuhin.

The Humblebums broke up in 1971 and both Connolly and Rafferty went solo. Connolly's first solo album in 1972, Billy Connolly Live! on Transatlantic Records, featured him as a singer-songwriter.

His early albums were a mixture of comedy performances, with comedic and serious musical interludes. Among his best-known musical performances were "The Welly Boot Song", a parody of the Scottish folk song "The Wark O' The Weavers," which became his theme song for several years; "In the Brownies", a parody of the hit Village People songs "In the Navy" and "Y.M.C.A." (for which Connolly filmed a music video); "Two Little Boys in Blue", a tongue-in-cheek indictment of police brutality done to the tune of Rolf Harris' "Two Little Boys"; and the ballad, "I Wish I Was in Glasgow," which Connolly would later perform in duet with Malcolm McDowell on a guest appearance on the 1990s American sitcom Pearl (which starred Rhea Perlman). He also performed the occasional Humblebums-era song such as, "Oh, No!" as well as straightforward covers such as a version of Dolly Parton's, "Coat of Many Colors", both of which were included on his Get Right Intae Him! album.

In November 1975, his spoof of the Tammy Wynette song, "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" was a UK No. 1 single for one week. Wynette's original was about parents spelling out words of an impending marital split to avoid traumatising their young child. Connolly's spoof of the song played on the dog owners using the same tactic to avoid worrying their pet about an impending trip to the vet. Connolly's song is about a couple whose marriage is ruined by a bad vet visit (spelling out "W-O-R-M" or "Q-U-A-R-A-N-T-I-N-E", for example.) His song, "No Chance" was a parody of J. J. Barrie's cover of the song, "No Charge".

In 1985, he sang the theme song to Super Gran which was released as a single. In 1996, he performed a cover of Ralph McTell's "In the Dreamtime" as the theme to his World Tour of Australia. By the late 1980s, Connolly had all but dropped the music from his act, though he still records the occasional musical performance, such as a 1980s recording of his composition "Sergeant, Where's Mine?" with The Dubliners. In 1998, he covered The Beatles' "Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!" on the George Martin tribute album In My Life. He sang the Scottish folk song "Bonnie George Campbell" during the film, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events. In 1995 and 2005, he released two albums of instrumental performances, Musical Tour of Scotland and, Billy Connolly's Musical Tour of New Zealand, respectively.

Connolly is among the artists featured on Banjoman, a tribute to American folk musician Derroll Adams, released in 2002. He plays one song, "The Rock".

Connolly during a stand-up show in 2005

Connolly's observational comedy is idiosyncratic and often off-the-cuff. He has offended certain sectors of audiences, critics and the media with his free use of the word "fuck" and he has made jokes relating to masturbation, blasphemy, defecation, flatulence, haemorrhoids, sex, his father's illness, his aunts' cruelty and, in the latter stages of his career, old age (specifically his experiences of growing old).[72]

In 2007 and again in 2010, he was voted the greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups.[73] He once again topped the list on Channel 5's Greatest Stand-Up Comedians, broadcast on New Year's Eve 2013.[74]

Since the 1980s, Connolly has worn a custom-made black T-shirt with a shirt-tail as part of his on-stage attire. From 1986 until his death in 2017, his manager was Steve Brown.[75]

Between 1973 and 1977 Connolly wrote a newspaper gag-a-day comic with cartoonist Malky McCormick, titled The Big Yin.[76]

Since 2012, Connolly has released six collections with the UK's leading art publisher, Castle Fine Art. Inspired by a rainy day in Montreal, the humorous black-and-white drawings, collectively titled Born On A Rainy Day, have been likened to the cave paintings from the Aurignacian period. His method is similar to that of the Surrealist Automatism movement, whereby the artist allows their hand to move randomly across the paper or canvas without a specific intent. In April 2019, to celebrate World Parkinson's Day, his art was projected onto MacLellan's Castle in Kirkcudbright. His first sculpture, which is inspired by his past as a welder, was released in March 2020.[77]

Below is a partial list of Connolly's solo musical and comedic recordings. For his releases with the Humblebums, see here.

• 1972 – Billy Connolly Live
• 1974 – Cop Yer Whack for This
• 1974 – Solo Concert
• 1975 – Get Right Intae Him! (#80 AUS[78]
• 1975 – Words and Music
• 1975 – The Big Yin
• 1976 – Atlantic Bridge
• 1977 – Billy Connolly
• 1977 – Raw Meat for the Balcony!
• 1978 – Anthology
• 1979 – Riotous Assembly
• 1981 – The Pick of Billy Connolly (compilation) (#34 AUS[78])
• 1983 – A Change Is as Good as Arrest
• 1983 – In Concert
• 1984 – Big Yin Double Helping (compilation)
• 1985 – An Audience with Billy Connolly
• 1985 – Wreck on Tour
• 1987 – Billy & Albert
• 1991 – Live at the Odeon Hammersmith London
• 1995 – Musical Tour of Scotland
• 1995 – Billy Connolly – Live Down Under 1995
• 1996 – World Tour of Australia
• 1997 – Two Night Stand
• 1999 – Comedy and Songs (compilation)
• 1999 – One Night Stand Down Under
• 2002 – Live in Dublin 2002
• 2002 – The Big Yin – Billy Connolly in Concert (compilation)
• 2003 – Transatlantic Years (compilation of material recorded between 1969 and 1974)
• 2003 – Humble Beginnings: The Complete Transatlantic Recordings 1969–74
• 2005 – Billy Connolly's Musical Tour of New Zealand
• 2007 – Live in Concert
• 2010 – The Man: Live in London (recorded January 2010)
• 2011 – Billy Connolly's Route 66

Connolly has written three plays:

• An' Me Wi' A Bad Leg Tae (1975)
• When Hair Was Long And Time Was Short (1977)
• Red Runner (1979)

On 11 July 2001, Connolly was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Glasgow.[79]

In 2003, the BAFTA presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award.[80]

In the 2003 Birthday Honours, Connolly was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE), for "services to Entertainment".[81]

On 4 July 2006, Connolly was awarded an honorary doctorate by Glasgow's Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (RSAMD), for his service to performing arts.[82]

On 18 March 2007 and again on 11 April 2010, Connolly was named Number One in Channel 4's "100 Greatest Stand-Ups".[83]

On 22 July 2010, Connolly was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Letters (D.Litt.) by Nottingham Trent University.[84]

On 20 August 2010, Connolly was made a Freeman of Glasgow, with the award of the Freedom of the City of Glasgow.[85]

On 10 December 2012, Connolly picked up his BAFTA Scotland Award for Outstanding Achievement in Television and Film at his BAFTA, A Life in Pictures, interview in the Old Fruitmarket, Glasgow.[86]

In January 2016, he was presented with the Special Recognition award at the National Television Awards to honour his career.[87]

In the 2017 Birthday Honours, Connolly was knighted for "services to entertainment and charity".[88]

As of 2017, Glasgow has at least three large-scale gable murals commissioned by BBC Scotland and one metalwork mural commissioned by Sanctuary Scotland Housing Association depicting him.[89]

On 22 June 2017, Connolly received an honorary doctorate from University of Strathclyde in Glasgow.[90]

In November 2019, The Glasgow Times named Connolly as The Greatest Glaswegian as determined by a public poll.[91]

• Connolly, Billy; Campbell, Duncan (19 March 1976). Billy Connolly, The Authorized Version. Macmillan. ISBN 978-0330247672.
• Connolly, Billy (27 October 1983). Gullible's Travels. Arrow Books. ISBN 978-0099323105.
• Connolly, Billy (18 October 2018). Made in Scotland: My Grand Adventures in a Wee Country. Penguin Books. ISBN 9781785943706.
• Margolis, Jonathan (5 October 1998). The Big Yin: The Life and Times of Billy Connolly. Orion. ISBN 978-0752817224.
• Stephenson, Pamela (2003). Billy. Perennial Currents. ISBN 978-0-06-053731-9.
• Stephenson, Pamela (2002). Billy (Audio Edition read by Pamela Stephenson). HighBridge Company. ISBN 978-1-56511-725-9.
• Stephenson, Pamela (2003). Bravemouth: Living with Billy Connolly. Headline. ISBN 978-0-7553-1284-9.

• Official website
• Billy Connolly at IMDb
• Billy Connolly at British Comedy Guide
• 1989 KCRW one-hour radio interview "Bob Claster's Funny Stuff"