Billy Connolly

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Image:Billy.jpg William "Billy" Connolly, CBE, D.Litt (born 24 November, 1942) is a comedian, musician, presenter, and actor. He is sometimes known, especially in his native Scotland, by the nickname "The Big Yin" ("The Big One", a reference to his height).

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Background

Billy Connolly was born at 65 Dover Street in Glasgow, Scotland, to Mary and William Connolly, the son of an Irish immigrant. In 1946, with their son barely four years old, Connolly's parents divorced. He and his sister, Florence ("Flo"), would be looked after by two aunts, Margaret and Mona, his father's sisters.

Connolly was brought up in the Anderston, and later Partick, districts of Glasgow. He attended St. Peter's Primary School in Glasgow and St. Gerard's Secondary School in Govan. At the age of 12, he decided he wanted to become a comedian but felt he didn't fit the mold; he felt he needed to become more "windswept and interesting". Instead, at the age of 15, he left school and became a welder in a Glasgow shipyard. Around the same time he joined the Territorial Army's Parachute Regiment. At the medical, the doctor noted to him, "You're not very big downstairs, are you?", to which Connolly replied, "I thought we were only going to fight them."

In 1965, after he had completed a five-year apprenticeship as a welder, Connolly accepted a ten-week job building an oil rig in Nigeria. Upon his return to Scotland, he focused on being a folk singer.

On 27 June, 1969, a 26-year-old Connolly married his first wife, Iris Pressagh. In December of that year, his first child, Jamie, was born. He has four more children — one (Cara, b. 1973) with Iris and three with his second wife, Pamela: Daisy (December 31, 1983), Amy (1986), and Scarlett (1988).

His biggest break came when he appeared on the BBC's Parkinson talk show in 1975. He became a close friend of the host, Michael Parkinson, and now holds the joint record (along with Kenneth Williams) for appearances on the programme, having been a guest on eight occasions. He later said, "That programme changed my entire life."

In 1976, Connolly opened for Elton John on the latter's US tour. "In Washington, some guy threw a pipe and it hit me right between my eyes," he told Michael Parkinson two years later. "It wasn't my audience. They made me feel about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit."

In 1985, he divorced from his wife of sixteen years (they had separated four years earlier). He was awarded custody of their two children. That same year, he recorded An Audience With....

1986 saw him visit Mozambique to record a documentary for Comic Relief.

Connolly completed his first world tour in 1987, including six nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London, which resulted in the Billy and Albert video.

When the Fox Network aired Freedomfest: Nelson Mandela's 70th Birthday Celebration in 1988, Connolly was still virtually unknown in the States, but his performance drew attention, particularly from producers, and interest in him grew.

In 1989, Connolly's father passed away after a stroke, his eighth. His mother died only four years later. On December 20, 1989, in Fiji, Connolly married his current wife, New Zealand-born (but a naturalised Australian) Pamela Stephenson, with whom he had been living 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 forwards to it." It's rumoured that when Stephenson first met her future spouse, he swore so much that she thought he had Tourette's Syndrome.

In 1990, HBO brought him to the US, where he appeared as half of Whoopi Goldberg and Billy Connolly in Performance, a special produced by New York's Brooklyn Academy of Music. Goldberg introduced Connolly, and the rest, as they say, is history.

Connolly was dealt a blow in 1993 when his best friend and fishing partner, Jimmy Kent, passed away.

In early January 1994, Connolly began a 40-date World Tour of Scotland, which would be broadcast by the BBC later in the year as a six-part series. It was so well received that the BBC signed him up to do a similar tour two years later, this time in Australia. The eight-part series followed Connolly on his custom-made Harley Davidson trike [1].

Also in 1996, Connolly recorded a BBC special, entitled A Scot in the Arctic, in which he spends a week by himself in the Arctic Circle. A notable feature of these shows is that he strips naked in one scene in each of them, usually in some remote wilderness area where no one is likely to complain, although for Comic Relief he once danced naked around Piccadilly Circus.

In November 1998, Connolly was the subject of a two-hour retrospective entitled Billy Connolly: Erect for 30 Years, which included tributes from Dame Judi Dench, Sean Connery, Whoopi Goldberg, Robin Williams, Dustin Hoffman, and Eddie Izzard. The special was released on DVD in North America in 2004.

The following year, Connolly undertook a four-month, 59-date sellout tour of Australia and New Zealand. Later in the year, he completed a five-week, 25-date sellout run at London's Hammersmith Apollo. Not content, in 2000 he travelled to Canada for two weeks on a 13-date tour.

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Career

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Folk music

In 1965, together with Tam Harvey, Connolly started a group called the Humblebums. At their first gig, Connolly 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. Connolly sang, played banjo and guitar, and entertained the audience with his humorous introductions to the songs. The trio broke up in 1971, at which point Connolly went solo. His first solo album in 1972, Billy Connolly Live! on Transatlantic Records, features Connolly as a singer, songwriter, and musician.

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 comical ode to the working class which became his theme song for several years; "In the Brownies", a parody of the Village People classics "Y.M.C.A." and "In the Navy" (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 on a guest appearance on the 1990s American sitcom Pearl (which starred Rhea Perlman). In November 1975, his humorous version of "D.I.V.O.R.C.E." had a one-week spell as the UK's No. 1 single.

In 1985 he sang the theme song to Supergran, which was released as a single. By the late 1980s, Connolly had all but dropped the music from his act, though he still records the occasional musical performance. Most recently, he sang a song during the film Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events.

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Stand-up comedy

It is as a stand-up comedian that Connolly is best known. His observational humour is idiosyncratic. He talks about himself, who he is, where he's been, what he thinks and how he reacts to the world around him. He has outraged audiences, critics and, of course, the media with his free use of the word "fuck". He has used masturbation, blasphemy, defecation, flatulence, sex, his father's illness and his aunts' cruelty to entertain. By exploring these subjects with humour, Connolly has done much to strip away the taboos surrounding them. Yet he does not tell jokes in the conventional way. At the end of a concert the audience can be convulsed with laughter but few can remember a specific "funny" line.

One of Connolly's most famous comedy skits is "The Crucifixion", an early 1970s recording in which he likens Christ's Last Supper to a drunken night out in Glasgow. The recording was banned by many radio stations at the time. Around this same time, a joke told during a television talk show appearance (about a murderer and his bike) became a sensation that, reportedly, people still remember three decades after the appearance. (A transcript of the complete joke can be found on this website.)

Billy Connolly also performed a sketch broadcast on TV, when talking about national anthems, and comparing the UK's slow tune to the lively ones of many other nations, Billy suggested that it should be replaced by the theme tune to The Archers.

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Film actor

Connolly launched a second career as a film actor in the 1970s, and after a string of obscure and unsuccessful films, he was officially introduced to mainstream American audiences when he took over the lead role (from Howard Hesseman) in the sitcom Head of the Class in 1990, which was followed by a brief stint as the star of a Head of the Class spin-off entitled Billy. Since then, he has gone on to become a character actor of some repute, appearing in a number of major films such as Indecent Proposal, The Boondock Saints, The Man Who Sued God, The Last Samurai and Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events . He received his best notices, including BAFTA and Screen Actors Guild award nominations for his co-starring role in 1997's Mrs. Brown opposite Dame Judi Dench.

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Recent Developments

In 2001, Connolly completed the third in his "World Tour" BBC series, this time of Ireland, Wales and England, which began in Dublin and ended in Plymouth. It was broadcast the following year.

Also in 2001, Pamela Stephenson's biography of her husband, Billy, was published. It outlines his career and life, including the sexual abuse by his father that lasted from his tenth to his fourteenth year. Much of the book is about Connolly the celebrity but the account of his early years provides a context for his humour and point of view. A follow-up, Bravemouth, was published in 2003.

Connolly himself is credited with writing several books, including Billy Connolly (late 1970s) and Gullible's Travels (early 1980s), both based upon his stage act, as well as books based upon some of his "World Tour" television series. Connolly, however, has stated that his comedy does not work on the printed page.

A fourth BBC series, World Tour of New Zealand, was filmed in 2004 and aired that winter. Also in his 63rd year, Connolly performed two sold-out benefit concerts at the Oxford New Theatre in memory of Malcolm Kingsworth, who for twenty-five years was Connolly's tour manager and sound engineer.

In October 2004, during an 18-night stint at London's Hammersmith Apollo, the comedian was criticised for making jokes about the hostage Kenneth Bigley [2]. Shortly after Connolly joked about the future beheading of the hostage, Bigley was beheaded in Iraq.

However, despite the bad press, in January 2005, Connolly came 8th in The Comedian's Comedian, a poll voted for by fellow comedians and comedy insider and embarked on a major UK tour with an impressive 15 sold-out nights in Glasgow.

Also in 2005, Connolly and Stephenson announced they are returning to live in the former's native land after living in Hollywood for several years.

Later in the year, Billy topped Channel Five's poll of "Britain's Favourite Comedian" ahead of the likes of John Cleese, Ronnie Barker, Dawn French, and Peter Cook.

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Awards

Connolly was awarded an honorary Doctor of Letters degree by the University of Glasgow on 11 July, 2001. This particularly bemused his wife, who noted that she had studied for six years to obtain her Ph.D., whereas Billy merely had to turn up and collect his. 2003 saw him presented with a BAFTA Lifetime Achievement award and a CBE in the Queen's Birthday Honours List.

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Quote

On one of his appearances on Parkinson, the host put it to Connolly that it was his talent that was responsible for his success. The comedian responded:

"Anyone can do what I'm doing now: all you've got to do is want it."
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Further reading

  • Billy, Pamela Stephenson, Harper Collins, 2001. ISBN 0-000-711045-6
  • Bravemouth, Pamela Stephenson, Headline, 2003.
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Filmography

Year Title
2006
2005

Documentaries

2004

Television

Documentaries/Specials

  • Comedy Central Presents: 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All Time as #73
2003

Documentaries/Specials

  • Julie Walters: A BAFTA Tribute as Himself
  • The Importance of Being Famous as Himself
  • Overnight as Himself
  • Comic Relief 2003: The Big Hair Do as Himself
2002

Documentaries/Specials

  • Ultimate Fights from the Movies as Frankie from Crossing the Line
  • Billy Connolly: A BAFTA Tribute as Himself
  • Judi Dench: A BAFTA Tribute as Himself
  • The Rutles 2: Can't Buy Me Lunch
2001

Television Movies

Documentaries/Specials

  • Comic Relief: Say Pants to Poverty as Himself
  • Comic Relief Short Pants as Himself
2000

Television Movies

1999
1998
1997

Television Movies

Documentaries/Specials

  • Sean Connery, an Intimate Portrait as Himself
  • Sean Connery Close Up as Himself
  • Whatever Happened to... Clement and La Frenais? as Himself
1996

Television

Video Games

Documentaries/Specials

  • A Scot in the Arctic as Himself
1995
1994

Television

1993

Television Movies

1992

Television

  • Billy as Billy MacGregor
1991
1990

Television

Television Movies

1989

Documentaries/Specials

1988

Documentaries/Specials

1987
1986
1985

Television

Television Special

1984

Television

Television Movies

1983
1982

Television Movies

1981

Television Movies

Documentaries/Specials

1980
1978
1976

Television Movies

Documentaries/Specials

1975

Television Movies


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Television Guest Appearances

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External links

de:Billy Connolly ja:ビリー・コノリー sv:Billy Connolly

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