It's weird making a film. You have to wait until you're finished to see what you've got.
Often the thing you set out to do disappears and you come up with something else.
It's one of the most exciting bits of film-making, I think.
You all get together, a certain number of people -
engineering and sound and cameras and a comedian in the middle
of it all, and you don't necessarily know what it is until you're finished.
Just chat amongst yourselves, I won't be long.
And it can be different from the thing you aimed at getting when you started out.
Which makes it all very interesting, it's a bit like my stage act.
Cos often I'd go on intending saying one thing
and never coming up with it.
Just going on and inventing stuff.
Go into the toilet, lock the door, "Oh, for Christ sake...
LAUGHTER
Another wee jobbie.
It just really made my name.
It'll come to me, it's on the tip of my tongue.
Said where am I from?
"Eton, I know you from Eton!"
You know what?
While it's not for me to say I was a trailblazer.
I was watching a revolution, a comedy revolution.
Just totally blew my mind, you know.
A world-beater, Billy Connolly, it's like Muhammad Ali.
Things have changed a lot since I've began singing and joking for a living.
Ha! Ha-ha!
No more mother-in-law jokes for a start,
I mean that's a plus.
He's the godfather of alternative comedy.
Argh!
"This is my take on life, this is how I see life, this is how I live life."
"I've been on my feet, never got a minute to myself...
"I never sat doon..."
It was just, you know like, it was that...
..that sarcasm, that cutting edge.
I would like to thank the Catholic Church personally
for the rhythm method of contraception,
without which I wouldn't be here at all.
I probably spent the last 20 years trying not to
sort of just be him.
Grow a beard.
Get a Scottish accent.
I thought what's going on?
Because my head was sober but my legs are giving it that...
..fucking...
I'm a hard-working, lazy man.
My ambition has never been that great, but I've been lucky
enough to have a talent that's taking me further
than I could have dreamt of.
I wish we could do that.
Stand up on our own for two hours, collect all the gate receipts,
nobody else to pay, strum a guitar, make a lot of money.
While the fame and the crowds have got bigger, what's important
to me has shrunk in scope and yet become infinitely more rewarding.
It's a sin, really, I'm so blissfully unaware
how this has come about.
Really, who would have thought I'd end up here?
Mr Billy Connolly...
..for services to entertainment.
When I was nominated for a knighthood, the woman
interviewing me said, very nicely, "It will be strange for you,
"having a knighthood, coming from nothing."
And I said, "I don't come from nothing.
"I come from something."
# I belong to Glasgow
# Dear old Glasgow town
# But what's the matter with Glasgow
# For it's going round and round?
# I'm only a common old working chap
# As anyone can see
BILLY SINGS ALONG
# But when I get a couple of drinks on a Saturday
# Glasgow belongs to me! #
Glasgow belongs to me.
Will Fyffe it for all men of Glasgow
and sang it in the music halls of the world.
He may have exaggerated the strong heads of his fellow citizens,
but what he didn't exaggerate was the warm heart of the people,
stubborn in their loyalties.
I think these films were made by a particular class of person.
They always sold Scotland the same way -
"We invented the pneumatic tyre and the bicycle,"
and, you know, they're always constantly trying
to prove themselves to the rest of the world,
instead of just accepting it for what it was.
We built ships, railway engines, machinery for all over the world,
and we make the greatest drink in the world too, eh?
Aye, we're the wee boys all right, we're the wee boys.
The Scotsman, bold, brave and true.
HE LAUGHS
I've always found that funny.
I've never understood the point of tarting up Scotland
and Glasgow in particular.
It's the blether, the laughs and a deep respect for culture
that makes me love my hometown for what it is.
Not what it could be.
My father was born over there.
I was brought up right over here.
And this is where I spent my childhood.
I am a Scotsman, born and raised up a close.
I made that film over 40 years ago and while there's plenty that's
changed on the surface, people have stayed pretty much
the same and that's what this film is about.
How being around the people of Glasgow and the pubs,
shipyards and clubs
turned me from being Billy Connolly the welder
to Billy Connolly the Big Yin.
It was a combination of his talent and a really fruitful seedbed
of where he grew up and the kind of gallus humour that exists in Glasgow.
Glasgow is a funny place.
I can't believe that's Billy Conway, man.
Oh, amazing, Billy, man.
You're expected to be funny and something has gone terribly
wrong if you are not funny,
and people will ask you if you're well, you know?
Well, you've fucking just made my fucking day, man.
Everyone has to be honest about the major influence
in their career.
Willow, what a lovely name!
She's saying, "You woke me, you bugger."
I was always watching Billy out of one corner and going,
"That's what I want to do," but, you know, don't take
all his material and just do it in a Cockney accent,
which was essentially... I could have done that.
Almost everything he talked about, I could go, "I remember that,
"I remember those type of people he's talking about."
I'm no' sorry for bothering you.
You don't look the least bit sorry!
Now, I've never been very good at starting things...
..so I'm going to start this just before the middle,
in a Glasgow institution - the pub.
Terrific.
You know, drinking is a serious business in Scotland
and in Glasgow, maybe most of all.
Welcome to the Saracen Head, or the Saree,
as it's better known in Glasgow.
It's the only pub I know has its own song as well.
# The girl that I marry will have to be
# Able to swallow more wine than me
# And Carlsberg Special Brew
# And Newcastle Brown ale too
# The girl that I marry will drink in the Saree with me
# The girl that I marry
# Will have to be heiress to a pub or a brewery
# I hope she comes on soon
# Cos on her honeymoon
# The girl that I marry will drink in the Saree with me! #
Written by John Murphy.
A great pal of mine.
It's looking a lot posher than it used to.
It's come upmarket since I knew it.
It used to be really down-at-heel-looking.
And its most famous feature, there was a barrel over there,
on the gantry, a ceramic sherry barrel
and the little guy who collected the glasses and stuff around the bar,
used to get the dregs and pour them in
and it became a favourite, called White Tornado.
You could buy a glass of this.
And it dripped onto the floor
and where it was dripping, it had eaten a big hole...
..in the floor!
There was no pub like it in the world.
# Oh, it's closing time again
# You'll have to leave us
# For you've got that faraway look in your eyes
# We've got to hose the lobby doon
# And count the tumblers
# And wipe the stoor from off tomorrow's pies. #
You ever noticed about the Glasgow drunk -
he walks with one leg, like that?
And I wasn't conscious of it at the time,
but this world of drink was an incredibly rich vein
just waiting to be tapped.
He's usually carrying a fish supper...
..which looks as if it weighs about two hundredweight.
Prior to Billy, comedy was about jokes.
Asking everybody if they're all right.
"You a'right?"
Ken Dodd, Jimmy Tarbuck did jokes, Eric and Ernie did silly,
surreal sketches, but it wasn't the stuff of life.
He's the un-all-rightest looking guy in the world, you know.
This was a complete revolution.
"You're a fanny, anyhow."
Billy has this thing, this very free style,
because it is conversational.
Conversational stand-up, that's what it is.
"You know when we do this and that, why is that with this? I've noticed this thing with that."
He's doing this one-legged walk and wondering how come
he's knackered and not getting any place.
It was funny, because you recognised the truth of it.
You knew that was right, you knew that's how people are,
whether it was from your own direct experience,
or from your understanding of the culture you were living in.
And that's why were laughing at it cos it is our story
and we've all seen those stories.
We never had many parties in our house, you know.
But we had a few, lot of aunties and uncles,
when we did have parties, they sang...
# Haw-herry-pah...
You know, songs with no words.
# Haw...
# Herry-paw...
# When-it-aww...
# Helm-skil-me-ma-ooh! #
# Herry-haw! #
I don't know why people in Glasgow actually...
But when they get drunk, they do do it.
And they only opened their eyes to point at you, you know.
# Herry-faw!
# Oh! #
I've got my Auntie Betty. She would go...
# Once I had a secret love!
# That lived within the heart of me! #
Go on, Betty!
And I used to love watching them.
They were a brilliant race of people, they're dead now.
Uncle Bobby, he would sing, Here In My Heart.
It took about a fortnight.
# Heeeeeeeee...
# ..rrrr...in my heaaa...
Uncle Donnie, he'd be on the floor...
# ..aaart! #
..his wife, my Auntie Marion, would say,
"Just walk over him, hen, he gets a wee bit religious this time of night."
And he'd be lying like Jesus on the cross.
Uncle Hughie was brilliant.
He knew really dirty songs and nobody ever pulled
him up for it, because they couldn't recognise any words.
He was always so pissed.
"Hughie, give us a song."
# Oh, what's a jo-jubby below
# Down below, whup-di-doh
# Where to go...oh, fuck, oh!
# What'd ya know? There ya go
# Oh, tall, pecky-oh... #
And all my wee aunties are going, # La-la-la-la-la! #
Connolly was the bridge.
I think, the Glaswegians especially, just took him into their breast
and went, "That's what you're doing - you're actually narrating who we are."
# We've got a hoach lavvy doo in a cutie tumblere... #
I enjoyed drinking, but it's a thing of the past.
# I was too drunk for my own good... #
It was lovely when I was doing it
and then the fun went away
and I stopped it.
That's this sign to watch for - when the fun disappears.
SHE WHISTLES
He knew early on. Imagine if he kept drinking. Phew!
We would not be sitting here now.
Although he was hilarious when he was drunk, he knew.
Smart guy.
But tea is the best substance in the world.
Tea, I love tea.
It makes me feel good, it makes me feel jolly.
Tea is the substance.
I may not drink any more,
but I still love the culture that goes into a pub.
The noise, the unspoken rules, the language of the crowd.
It was all music to me.
It sounds outrageous,
but woman weren't even allowed in here until 1989.
Personally speaking, I prefer pubs with mostly men in it.
Me too.
Everybody speaks about the male-only thing as if there was something
wrong with it, but it was a lovely thing.
You know, mixing with the guys
and there's a thing about male company that I like very much.
And it isn't just dirty jokes or talking about football.
There's a mixture of things that men like to talk about to each other.
It was a lovely bit of my life and I kind of miss it.
Cos I said to him, I said, "Look, if I thought that you were actually...
Politics, books, films, family, football, religion.
Everything was on the table to talk,
argue and take the piss out of each other with.
But the thing that united tens of thousands of men across countless
pubs across the city was the job.
# I'll sing of a river I'm happy beside
# The song that I sing is the song of the Clyde. #
The Clyde provided us with more than just work.
It gave us, an entire city, our identity.
# All the way to the sea...
# But from Glasgow to Greenock...
It's what made our men stand out from other men.
# The hammer's ding-dong is the song of the Clyde. #
Ships were lined up right along the Clyde -
putting stuff off and taking whisky on and all those other things
that we exported, railway engines and stuff like that.
It was a fantastic place.
Where I lived, there was a big, steep hill called Gardner Street.
If you stood on top of it, you could see the ships.
It looked as if the ships were sailing through the houses.
It was a lovely thing.
A river of shipyards and all shipbuilding rivers,
the Clyde is the most versatile in the world.
For most boys of my generation, leaving school and ending
up in the shipyards was pretty much inevitable.
The pull was as strong as gravity and almost as pointless to resist.
It was good, because you knew it was going to make you a man.
The welder is king in pre-fabrication.
You're a schoolboy with a yodelly voice.
And it was time to become a man.
Working on the Clyde was hugely intimidating to a boy.
And when you're 16, you might have hairs on your chin,
you might get drunk, you might even get somebody pregnant,
but you're still a boy.
That is the first thing that strikes you when you join the shipyards.
It's the deafening sound of caulkers.
Almost makes you want to quit.
They had a pneumatic gun with a chisel at the front.
Da-da-da-da-da!
It was deafeningly loud.
And as far as noise is concerned, it doesnae annoy you when you're working the machine.
Does it not make you deaf, though? Deaf? The only time I'm deaf is when
anybody asks me to buy a drink, that's the only time I'm deaf.
Especially when you're a apprentice and you've just started,
you think you're never going to survive this deafening noise.
And of course, you do, by becoming deaf.
As a boy, you clamour to be heard above the crowd.
But when you're walking into a man's world you quickly learn to shut up, listen and watch.
Guys would talk round the fire and try to be funny to each other.
And they were always very observant about each other.
There was a guy called Willie and they called him Wull the Gull.
Cos if you threw your crust away, he was like a seagull
he was like a seagull - he'd dive and catch it.
Who were the characters who stick in your mind most of all from those days?
Oh, there was lots of them. There was Sandy Boyd,
the man with the bottomless toolbox - anything you wanted.
You'd say, "Sandy, have you got a bit of sugar there?"
"Certainly!" Into the box.
"Have you got a file?"
We used to ask him for things, start posing him questions.
You know, "Do have a tin of soup?"
Into the bottomless toolbox.
There's a lot of great guys.
The great Voltaine - he used to do magic tricks.
And I don't think he was too bright, the guy.
He had a silver welder's helmet and he used to do his magician bit.
"Think of a number." "13." "Correct"
And everybody was applauding him.
But everybody kept him going, you know.
And it was all like that.
It was all rough and the language was all really rough.
There was a lot of swearing.
Swearing and, "Fuck this and fuck that and fuck the other thing."
The gate was closed and it was all guys
and the jokes were furious and the language was strong.
And if you didn't like it, get the fuck out of there.
The Clyde is very different. Almost unrecognisable now.
The quiet is almost overwhelming to my memories
of a once relentless noise.
In these sheds nobody tells jokes any more.
There's just dead machinery lying about the place.
And the wind whistling through.
It's a constant sort of puzzle to me,
where did all these thousands of men go?
All those men who worked on the docks, all those stevedores
and dockers, all the riveters and hole-borers from the shipyards,
platers and welders, thousands and thousands of men.
Where have they all gone?
When I was a boy, there used to be sheds in the public parks
where men would meet.
Old men.
They liked each other's company, they obviously got out of the house
and out from under their wives' feet.
So, this is your men's shed where you make stuff?
Well, this is the start of it. Come and have a look.
How are you doing? What are you making?
It's a dispatcher.
We've got a lot of problems with grey squirrels around here.
You do? Yes.
But they're good for eating.
What, greys? Aye.
They've got a nutty flavour to them.
Obviously.
You're taking the piss!
I remember the first time I seen you.
The first time I'd ever heard somebody swearing on stage.
Oh, aye. That it's. Oh!
What do you think? A natural.
And how many men do you use around here?
There are 50 odd members signed up. We have about 40 regulars.
That's your lot.
Well done, there you are.
Most of the guys are retired.
And our average age here is 69.
When I was in the shipyards, old guys would retire,
and they would generally last 18 months,
and then down to the graveyard.
I think it's remarkable.
I think it's a kind of miracle.
Aye, that we're alive.
Because usually you'd be playing dominoes in the park.
Cos I used to go up and talk to all the old guys when I was a boy.
They'd be cutting tobacco with knives, they always had knives.
They were my heroes.
I think you're doing a remarkable thing.
Considering most guys didn't know each other,
most guys were pretty much isolated within the community
before this started.
There's a reason for that.
Behind every miserable old bugger, there's a reason.
I come from a bantering, shipyard-working background.
I miss those people, the old shipyard workers and my dad,
and my uncles, and Connolly, whenever I hear him,
I see those men, even though they're long gone now.
I see them all in him.
Well, I've had my tea.
I loved calling myself a welder,
being part of something bigger than me.
It was comforting.
Especially when you're young, still trying yourself out for size
and finding your voice.
All the same, like every other man there,
come Friday, I couldn't wait for the weekend to begin.
We were all running towards the drink, the dance,
and the football.
Oh, yeah, Scottish Cup finals.
We always had 110,000, 111,000.
Rangers and Celtic.
You have Rangers, who will never employ a Catholic,
or who say they will and then don't,
and you have Celtic, who have this history of Catholicism,
and lots of wee priests in the stand every Saturday.
You know, oh, we... Oh, we're not biased at all.
Then you see all the wee white lines
if you look up at the directors' box.
# Hallelujah, hallelujah... #
I remember leaving Hampden Park with my feet off the ground,
as I was going down those passageways, just squashed
by the adults, being lifted off the ground
and levitating my way out.
You never see crowds like that any more.
Thank God.
It was much noisier, and people sang a lot more.
Celtic supporters used to sing hymns.
Hail glorious Saint Patrick, dear saint of our isle.
On us, thy poor children, bestow a sweet smile.
# On us, thy poor children, bestow a sweet smile. #
And now thou art high in the mansions above,
on Erin's green valleys look down in thy love.
You'd get thousands of other people singing,
# On Erin's green valley, on Erin's green valley,
# On Erin's green valley, look down in thy love.
# On Erin's green valleys, on Erin's green valleys,
# On Erin's green valleys... #
What about the Rangers fans, then?
Och, they were always ruffians.
# You've heard of Rangers, the Glasgow Rangers
# The team victorious whose cause is glorious
# Those mighty Rangers, who fear no danger... #
I often think of big Sammy.
He was a cocker in the shipyard, and a real Rangers supporter,
and I called him a blue-nosed bastard when I was an apprentice,
and he got after me.
And he grabbed me, and he held me down on the deck,
and the carpenters and platers used to line off the deck
with French chalk, you know, where the bulkheads were going
to lie, they French chalked it on the deck.
They would mark those lines with blue paint,
do a little right angle of blue paint.
He put me on the deck, and he painted my nose blue.
I often think of him and wonder how he's doing.
For all its reputation of being a hard city,
Glasgow was no tougher or funnier than Newcastle,
Liverpool, Cardiff, or the East End of London.
Working class towns are hard places. They have to be.
What's distinct to Glasgow, however,
is its special relationship with bigotry.
Bigotry and deprivation seem to go hand-in-hand,
and being Catholic and Glaswegian,
I was educated separately from my Protestant friends,
from the people I was brought up with,
and this is where I learned bigotry at first-hand.
Because we, as Catholics, had holidays of obligation
throughout the year, the Protestant schools made up
for this by giving the kids an extra week in summer.
And during this extra week, they would come down to right here,
and harangue us through the railings.
And during holidays of obligation, we would go up the hill
to their school, and harangue THEM through the railings.
Not the most pleasant thing to happen to a kid.
I think Scotland is, in many ways, a schizophrenic country.
On the one hand, you've got the dour Scottish Presbyterian,
you mustn't enjoy yourself, life is a valley of pain,
and then you die.
Then on the other hand you've got the sort of Gaelic culture of dance
and music and whisky.
But also, we're quite tribal in Scotland, and we like to be
in our tribe against the rest of the tribes.
You know, it's like Glasgow was always the arse end of Scotland
because Edinburgh always got, "Ooh, it's lovely in Edinburgh,
"it's all...we've got a castle, and it's all fabulous."
Glasgow just always had that edge,
that mischief, that we could turn on you at any point.
The banter saves your life in places like Glasgow.
My dad was an Elvis Presley fan, and he always said to me,
"In this kind of town, hen, if anybody asks you
"what your religion is, just say you're an Elvis Presleyterian,
"and you'll get through."
At the same time, I've known people all my life,
just being around Glasgow.
Guys who would go to Rangers matches and shout that stuff,
and then come off and not be like that.
You know, in their daily life, they weren't like that at all.
But that was their sort of hobby.
"Bigotry is my hobby."
I've never submitted to that kind of behaviour myself,
so I was always just being with guys who were going dancing
and stuff like that. That's why I came here.
We used to go to the Barrowland Ballroom,
which is across the road there.
We'd come in here and make your breath stink first,
before you went to the dancing.
Looking for love, or at least pretending to,
has proved to be the greatest source of embarrassment,
and embarrassment, the greatest source of comedy imaginable.
And the Barrowland, Glasgow's premier dance hall,
was my arena of public humiliation.
It was a big ballroom, and the girls stood along the wall,
and the men stood along the edge of the dance floor,
so you tried to get the nerve up to walk across the no-man's-land.
"Are you dancing?" was the question. "You dancing?"
And if she said, "Naw," oh, my God,
all you could do was turn and walk away,
and then mingle, and go to another bit of the room and see
if you could get someone else.
What you mustn't do is say, "OK," and ask the one next to her.
"Are you dancing?" "Naw."
"Naw." "Naw." "Naw."
Right oot the door and away!
And then they had this country music section in the middle of the dance.
It's now country time.
# Diddly-aye-de-diddly-diddly- dee-diddly-diddly-dee... #
And it's a ladies' choice.
# Diddle-aye-de-diddly-do.
# Diddle-de...# Oh!
LAUGHTER
"Isabel."
"Hello." "Hello, Isabel. How are you doing?"
"Great. Would you like to dance?" I said, "Yeah, yeah, aye, come on.
"Right, Isabel. Right, fine." And it's the Gay Gordons.
And the guys are going, "Woo!"
"Shut the fuck up!"
"How you doing anyway, Isabel?" "Fine." "Yeah, same.
"I learned it at school."
"Get it, Billy! Get it fucking your arse!"
"Fuck you!"
My whole romantic life was one disaster following another.
I used to look out the bus window at the streets teeming with people,
and I would look at the women and say, "She's done it.
"She's done it.
"He's done it with her.
"When will I ever get to do it?"
I thought, "I'd better give her a kiss. I think she will expect a kiss."
And I couldn't see, cos it was dark.
And I went like this.
This thing approached me.
This void!
This big shiny cave.
What I noticed is that Billy, and I think I copied this...
HE HOWLS
..is the sweet spot of stand-up comedy, the mother lode,
the golden seam that you can mine, is to act out an idea.
And she forced me backwards!
My mouth was round there! I'm breathing through my arse!
Can you imagine a comic from the '70s
not only talking about that, acting it out, making it funny,
getting, you know, just the whole thing there.
Argh!
She violated me!
I don't think many people have done it better than him.
Bouncing up and down on me like I'm a fucking horse!
My virginity was a great weight.
Losing it, however, merely took it off my shoulders
and put it on my penis.
But I do have one love that has never disappointed,
and has always been true.
It's always been there to mend my heart 100 times over.
His name is Hank, and I'd like to introduce you to him.
This is a record shop. You might not recognise it.
And this is a record on here, a record that changed my life.
Before we got that record, we were in the Barras,
my father and I. It's a marketplace in Glasgow.
And he bought a record unheard,
called Dear Mary by Slim Whitman.
A kind of yodeller.
And he thought it was a hymn, he thought it was a hymn
for Mary mother of Jesus.
But it wasn't, it was just a love song.
"I'm writing this letter, dear Mary, to let you know how I feel
"cos I'm lonesome and so weary, I can hardly eat a meal."
And I loved it. I loved the music, I loved the yodelling,
I'd never heard it before.
My father noticed that I was playing it at all the time and singing
along with it. And the next Sunday, we went back to the Barras,
he went up to the same record dealer and said,
"I bought this record, Dear Mary. Do you have anything else like it?"
He says, "I don't have anything else by Slim Whitman,
"but I have this guy you might like", and it was Hank Williams,
Long Gone Lonesome Blues.
He put it on, and the second I heard it, I knew my life had changed.
You might find it happening to you.
# I went down to the river to watch those fish swim by
# But when I got to the river
# So lonesome I wanted to cry, oh, Lord
# So that I jumped in the river but the doggone river was dry. #
On the record sleeve, there was a guy, an invention
of Hank Williams, called Luke The Drifter.
He walked into the sunset with a guitar over his shoulder.
That's how I saw myself from that moment,
walking into the distance, having broken a few hearts,
saved a few bob, on to the next adventure,
which I swore was going to be my life.
I nearly did it.
# She's a long gone
# And now I'm lonesome blue. #
With my records, beard and flowing hair,
I was already the most interesting man I knew,
but it was only when I knew I wanted to stand out from the crowd
that I truly embraced fashion.
Here was a means for me to let everyone know
that I wanted their attention without even opening my mouth.
It's a love that has served me well,
something fashion designer Marina MacLean wants to talk to me about today.
To me, this sums up the 1970s,
and it's very hard for one image to do all that.
But I really, really think it does. And not only that, because it's you,
it sums up Glasgow in the 1970s.
When did you first start becoming aware of clothes
and excited about clothes? When I became a welder,
they called it going on your own can.
You give your father £1.50 or £2.50 or whatever it was,
and you were left with what was left,
And you got to buy your clothes
without anybody's permission any more.
And for some reason, I went straight to pink.
I've got pink shirts and pink underwear, to my father's panic.
I thought he was going to have a stroke.
Which he eventually had, but nothing to do with my underwear.
But what I found is that women loved pink. Yes.
You know, I knew women liked pink to wear,
but I wasn't sure what they would think of it on a guy.
Turned out very positive!
If you live in a housing estate with rows of beige houses,
and you come out dressed to go out, you become a kind of star.
People know him as this hard-drinking welder from Glasgow.
But then he's wearing the sort of stuff that Freddie Mercury
used to wear, you know, he's wearing leotards.
Going into the late '60s and the early '70s,
a lot of the clothes being worn were women's clothes,
much brighter colours than men. Men in showbusiness wore grey or blue,
or maybe grey, or maybe blue and grey.
So I think that that's a rock and roll thing,
and then if anybody would question your sexuality,
then you can fight them and you can prove your sexuality that way.
I assume that's how it went down.
He would have been so unusual in Glasgow then.
He would have got the piss taken out of him.
I remember all the old workies, like,
"What are you wearing torn jeans for?" You know.
"What are you wearing your brother's troosers for?" You know.
He is pure gallus. Gallus just means you've got it.
You've just got that little bit of fairy dust sprinkled over you,
that just makes you gallus.
I remember getting on the bus in my basket weave shoes
with white socks, sitting there, and a woman said,
"You're very neat about the feet."
I wanted to buy a banjo, and it had suddenly come over me,
this desire, to have long hair and a beard and be a hobo.
If you showed any weakness inasmuch as if you were keen
on anything outside their realm, they would crucify you for it.
I had been going around saying, "Does anyone have a banjo in the attic doing nothing?"
And when I came into the, wherever they were sitting
having their tea, they'd go, "Here he comes.
"Plonk, plonk, plonk, plonk, plonk, plonk...
"When I'm cleaning windows."
But eventually, I got one, and like a teenager discovering
his todger, I became obsessed with playing it.
I was relentless, and then one day, someone in the yards
changed my life forever.
This has been the best yard I've ever worked in.
See that guy there on the right? That's Willie McInnis.
He's a welder. But it was Willie who made me quit the shipyards.
He said, "What are you doing?" I said, "I'm going to be a folk singer.
"I'm going to quit at the holidays."
He said, "If you were really keen on it, you would do it now."
The most important thing he said to me, he said,
"You don't want to be sitting here as an old man,
"knowing you could have got out."
He said, "I've known guys like that, and it destroys their whole life."
Just telling themselves they could have done better,
didn't take the chance.
He said, "You've got the chance, go and do it."
So I did it.
I was off, being a hairy banjo player, touring the world,
singing a song, thanks to Willie McInnis.
Life as a five-string windswept minstrel,
that was the thing for me.
It's not something you hear very often, he was a great banjo player, by the way.
But he was, he was mean on the banjo.
And much to my delight, I wasn't the only one thinking like this.
He wasn't particularly unusual on the folk scene,
because there was a lot of shaggy men with big beards,
there was a lot of humour around as well.
Glaswegian working-class kids with ambitions to do something,
anything different from what had gone on before them,
were finding each other.
We were all cheering each other on to become
playwrights, musicians, and painters.
And that's how I came into the orbit of Scotland's
favourite artist, John Byrne.
It sticks out like a sore thumb, but that's what I wanted
anyway, I wanted to brighten up the area because it was such
a dismal gable end in such a dismal environment.
Well, it's definitely an improvement anyway, it definitely is.
I think it's beautiful, it's lovely.
I think it's a very nice thing, very good.
I, and most of Scotland, love John's work, but there's always one.
I think it's a waste of money, considering there is so many
repairs needing done.
This place should be cleared up to start with,
before that should have been attempted.
And 50 years on, he's in the National Portrait Gallery.
And I'm glad to say, we are still friends.
Do we start at the beginning? Aye.
There were three of us, me, John, and Gerry Rafferty.
Gerry was to go on to become one of Scotland's finest songwriters.
But at the time, we were all just kind of making it up as we were going along.
It was Gerry Rafferty who I'd known since he was eight.
He was on the bus, we got the bus together,
and he said, "I was at a party in Paisley,"
and he said, "I met the funniest guy in the world.
"Funniest guy ever met in my life."
And that was in 1968.
John has painted, drawn, and even animated me,
throughout my career...
..including this slice of pure gallus from earlier.
We used to make each other laugh a lot.
I know.
I used to phone John, I would lie on the floor to phone
him, because I knew I was going to end up there.
So I used to get on the floor to phone him.
I was the same, I was lying on the floor as well.
Who is this guy? And here we are, still laughing.
I think if you look around long enough,
you'll find they all have the same face.
Very nice clothes, though.
Extraordinary outfits. Aye, I know.
She's just bought some cocaine from him. She has!
I would take a couple of pounds of cocaine. Couple of kilos.
I wonder what kind of dog was that. Don't know.
Just half a dog.
THEY CHUCKLE
She was famous for having half a dog.
That's a sleekit looking face, if ever I saw one.
He's definitely spotted boys stealing apples off the tree. Absolutely.
And getting away with it.
What a horrible looking guy.
Aye. And his eyes do follow you around the room.
The left one certainly does. I know.
# No more gay life with the boys
# I'll sit down with my pipe and corduroys
# No more red wine
# Oh, no, these times are gone. #
While I was trying to play the banjo and get famous
and be a somebody, Gerry was writing songs,
because he had to.
John was painting for his own reasons.
And it was all very natural.
Guys who were playing and trying to make something of themselves,
meeting, and being so pleased with each other,
and recognising things in each other that they had in common.
But, you know, there are various rungs on the ladder you do,
you don't know they're rungs until you've done them.
But being accepted by these guys was spectacular,
being so spectacularly accepted by them was amazing.
But I remember thinking, "Oh, God! I've done myself a bit of good here."
It was very good for me, meeting Gerry Rafferty.
Gerry was on a path to success.
He was dedicated to making it with his songs.
# Walk in, sit down
# Open up your case, tune up and turn round... #
And his attitude affected me, and I got into it.
You know, we are worthwhile, we are good, we will be successful.
It's good material, it has to be successful
if we do it right.
We were the weirdest outfit, The Humblebums.
Nobody had seen a duo like this before,
including us.
Me telling these stories and playing occasionally,
and Gerry singing these extraordinary songs.
# Shoeshine boy
# He's making his money, working downtown on mean street... #
People were just flabbergasted by him.
Then, I would step in and do a story, and have them all roaring with laughter.
My comedy routines were getting longer and more inventive.
And Gerry would be sitting on the stool with the guitar, listening.
People often say, "Gerry got fed up with you, waiting
"for you to finish your stories." It wasn't like that.
He was... He liked the funny stuff.
And he liked being part of it and singing his songs.
Our friendship was on dodgy grounds, there was a strain that happens
in all bands, from Simon & Garfunkel to the Rolling Stones,
to anybody, there's a strain that happens.
The longer you are together, the strain gets worse and worse.
# Goodbye, goodbye
# Wipe the tear, baby dear, from your eye... #
I always remember, it was Queen Street railway station,
and I said, "I think we've come to the end of it, don't you?
"I think we should do a Scottish tour and save the money and split,
"you go your way and I'll go mine.
"We've taken this as far as it can go."
"And he said, 'Yeah, I agree.' "
And the following day he said,
"Listen, Billy, I've been thinking...
"I think we've taken this as far as it can go.
"I think we should split."
I thought, "I wonder where you heard that!"
But anyway, we split very amicably,
and he went off to do Stealers Wheel,
and I went off on my own to be Billy Connolly.
I think I have to acknowledge that The Humblebums gave me the desire
to be more than just a comedian.
# Well, I don't know why I came here tonight
# I got the feeling that something ain't right... #
He does look like a rock star, and he's sexy.
There, I've said it.
# Tell Laura I love her... #
# Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right... #
# Tell Laura, I... #
You know, you do these gigs, and at one of them,
he had a band, I think, at the end, and it was rock and roll, you know?
I know he had success as a folk singer,
but it's hard to be a rock star when you're playing a banjo, you know?
You can't have it all, Bill.
You can't be one of the greatest comedians in the world and then rock
out at the end, I'm sorry. You know?
CHEERS AND APPLAUSE
TUNES BANJO
Just chat amongst yourselves, I won't be long.
When I came into comedy, mothers-in-laws were considered
funny, and I never held with that.
I wanted to go somewhere else with it.
Here's a wee Glasgow one.
# Oh, the pigeon
# He's a nice bird
# And he sits
# On the grass
# And when he
# Gets excited
# He sticks his head
# Under his wing... # LAUGHTER
Everyone has a first.
The Beatles' first number one was Please Please Me.
They wrote better and bigger songs, but that song will always be the
first one that got them on the map.
Well, I had a joke, The Crucifixion, and that brings us right back
to where we started.
The Saree Heid.
Tam Quinn, who played guitar in a band, came up and told me
a joke one day.
He said the Apostles
were having some Chinese takeaway,
and Jesus came in and said, "Where did you get that?"
And they said, "Oh, Judas bought them, he seems to have come into some money."
And I thought it was the funniest thing I'd ever heard.
And I told it that night on stage, with little added bits.
As a way of introducing it, I said there was a misprint
in the Bible, and that stuff never happened in Galilee,
it happened in Gallowgate, that's the street outside here.
The Last Supper actually happened in a small tavern known
as the Saracen's Head Inn.
CHEERING
It's quite a popular place for cocktails of an evening, you know?
All the Apostles were in there, all drinking, but this wee Apostle
came up to a big Apostle and said, "What's the score here?
"You telt me the big yin was coming in."
Went down really well, and I expanded on it.
Eventually, it became about 20, 25 minutes long.
And it came to define me, people came from miles away
to see me doing it.
Door opens, and in he comes the big yin.
"Hello there, boys!
"Been oot all morning, daeing they miracles, I'm knackered.
"Gie's a glass of that wine. Nae kidding, son, I'm knackered,
"see the miracles I've done this morning? Take a look oot that door, there's nothing but deidpunters
"walking up and doon."
I actually heard The Crucifixion on a record, thought it was one
of the cleverest and funniest things I'd ever heard.
And it's that... You know, like all writers,
like all comedians, he's a magpie, he picks things up,
he hears things, he picks them up and he transforms them.
And when I first heard it, I thought, this is really going to upset people.
Fantastic!
Now he's become such a national treasure,
you know, and he's Sir Billy Connolly now,
and yet, when he was doing The Crucifixion, there was people
protesting outside of his gigs, you know.
He didn't back down.
Billy Connolly's blasphemy of Jesus Christ.
That's why we're protesting, as Christians, you see.
We are not against him, if he keeps to clean humour,
but we think these things are too sacred to make a fool of.
There was one guy, Pastor Jack Glass was his name,
used to turn up with three nails and say, "Crucify Christ again,"
and all that.
All I am asking for is not a public apology to me,
but a public apology to every person who is offended by this skit
on the crucifixion.
If he makes that public apology, we will be quite happy
to end our campaign.
He was really young when he was doing all this,
coming up against a real backlash of people saying -
you can't say that and you can't say that, this is how comedians behave.
And he completely ignored it, and the strength it must have took.
There is no way I'm going to apologise to him for anything.
Not only am I not ashamed of the things I've done,
I'm very, very proud of them.
That's the tragedy of today, we feel it's such a permissive age
that people are completely Godless and Christless.
They prefer to listen to toilet talk like Connolly's, who we call Manure Mouth.
And he hit me with a big bag of shillings, 30 pieces of silver.
Hit me right on the forehead.
Tsshh... All over the place.
# I'd like to tell you a story
# 'Bout a real stupid arse
# He's standing outside this hall right now
# His name, Pastor Jack Glass... #
Look, if the Church and its millions and billions can't stand against me,
it's in deep trouble.
# Satan is real, working in spirit... #
An English boyfriend of mine introduced me to The Crucifixion.
I'd never heard it before, and he played it for me
in his wooing of me.
He thought that would be a way in. It was!
REPORTER: In Glasgow, they call Billy Connolly Big Yin,
the big one.
Not just because he happens to stand over six feet tall,
but because he is the biggest thing to hit Scotland since...
Well, nobody can remember when.
I was going to come here on a bus, but I was feart in case somebody
thought I was the Pope and got tore into me.
You are actually a commentator on the society that you're living in.
Instead of doing a little story and getting a punchline and getting
a laugh, you would get lots of ripples as you went along.
Building up the story and inventing bits.
And it became a kind of disease, I couldn't get enough of it.
And then the banjo took a sidestep, and I did it without it,
and for a couple of years, I took the banjo with me and kept
it on the side, in case I couldn't do without it.
But then I just stopped taking it to the gig.
It was an extraordinary time in my life.
But first, someone who means everything in Scotland,
and, as yet, very little down here.
I say "as yet" because I think that this young man is one
of the most original and best comedians I've heard in many a day.
Billy Connolly.
When I did the Parkinson show, for the first time,
I told a joke that just took the country by storm.
This guy was going oot to meet his friend in the pub
and he went down, and he said, "Hello, how's it going?" He said, "Fine, fine."
He said, "How's the wife?" He said, "Oh, she's deid.
"Deid, oot the game. I murdered her."
"You kidding me on!"
"No, no, this morning. Deid.
He said, "Look, I'm not talking to you if you keep on talking like that."
He said, "Please yourself. I'll show you if you want."
He said, "Aye, show me." So he goes away to his tenement building,
through the close, that's the entrance to the tenement...
Into the back green, into the washhouse,
and sure enough, there is a big mound of earth.
But there's a bum sticking out of it.
He says, "Is that her?" He says, "Aye."
He says, "What did you leave her bum sticking out for?"
He says, "I need somewhere to park my bike."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
Now it seems almost odd that we would be surprised
that there was a working-class person on TV,
but him sitting there on Parkinson,
you know, was just life-changing for me.
When I left the show, I got to Glasgow on the plane,
and I'd come through Glasgow Airport, and all the people started
to applaud in the airport.
I thought, "Well, that's a bit different."
Back in the '60s and the '70s, you hardly heard a Scottish accent,
even on Scottish television. This was quite revolutionary.
It gave us, I suppose, a sense of confidence and belonging.
And my concerts after that sold out in an instant.
I thought, "Oh, God, this is bigger than I thought."
He opened up the door.
So many comedians today, I think, owe him, a very great deal.
Well, the Parkinson's thing has trapped me again.
Go.
You can either break down and complain about how miserable
your life is, or have a go at it and survive.
# Oh, Ma, he's making eyes at me! #
Yours is running like a tap!
BAGPIPES PLAY
This programme contains strong language.
# Campbeltown Loch, I wish you were whisky
# I would drink you dry
# I wish you were whisky, Campbeltown Loch, och aye
# Oh, Campbeltown Loch, I wish you were whisky
# I would drink you dry
# Wee boat with the money I've got
# I sailed it way oot in the bay... #
That's the only words I know.
Don't panic, I haven't started losing it,
but there's no denying it - I'm 75, I've got Parkinson's,
and I'm at the wrong end of the telescope of life.
I'm at the point where the yesteryears
mean more than the yesterdays
because it's back there in my childhood and youth...
Go.
..that all those things that made me live keenest in my memory now.
My swimming costume, it grew like this.
LAUGHTER
So, I'm going on a Proustian wander through Scotland
to the places, the objects and the sounds...
# Aaah... #
..that brought me to where I am now.
Oh, memories, memories!
Come on, I promise you'll like it.
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Aye, I'm very lucky.
I've got this kind of fame, this kind of working-class fame,
which isn't really true, you know? I couldn't weld to save my life.
For those of you who think I'm an ordinary person,
I've been portrayed in oils. Don't you forget it.
But I'm looked on as a journeyman welder who made it.
But it's 50 years since I welded, you know?
Can I call you Billy? Call me Billy.
Call me Sir William. Sir William.
Billy's obviously somebody that's an international star worldwide,
and, you know, there's not that many people
that literally are famous all over the world.
And fame is difficult anyway
and I think he's done it really, really well.
Just talking about...
They say money brings all its own worries.
You know, "Ooh, money brings its own worries."
Rubbish! It's brilliant.
You know, for a working-class kid
to hear someone talk about having money and going,
"It's the bollocks."
He's a man of the people. He's relatable, but he's honest.
That is the point.
And that just translates onto the stage, you know?
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
Billy's a bit like,
"Right, if you're not going to talk about it, I am."
CHEERING CONTINUES
You're only doing that cos I'm not well.
LAUGHTER
Since I got Parkinson's disease,
I've cut back all my work,
but the fame remains and I've never known anything like it...
..and it's a very pleasant feeling.
Keeping well? Aye, I try my best. See you again.
People saying how nice it is to see you
and how good you're looking.
What's wrong with that?
You look great. Och, I look like shit, really.
No, you look great. No, you don't. You look great.
For a man your age! THEY LAUGH
I get a funny idea of what the world's like.
I think everybody's laughing and smiling,
cos they are to me.
Thank you very much. Nae bother. It was nice to meet you.
Although his work is often very precisely located
in place and in community,
it has a universality
that somehow goes beyond the particular
and speaks to all of us.
Mum, look.
And when you do that to an audience, I think they respond
so magnificently
that they start to revere you.
I get away with murder.
If I'm walking along the street and there's men down a hole
fixing some pipes or the sewage or something,
I like to say, "Come on, get your back into it.
"No wonder the country's in the state it's in."
And they'll burst out laughing.
Well, anybody else would get a kick in the arse, you know?
Being famous and Scottish,
I'm often asked what Scotland means to me.
For me, Scotland isn't so much a place but a state of mind.
It's an outlook on life that comes from trying to balance
what I would call the Yin and Yang of the place -
our landscapes are beautiful but full of midges,
our love of languages is only matched by our love of profanity.
Away and boil yer fucking heid!
We're pragmatic and deeply sentimental.
The tender Scot.
The Scot that loves his wife so much,
he nearly tells her.
Really, it's no surprise that Jekyll And Hyde
was written by a Scotsman.
I like that idea.
We can be funny as anything,
but there's just that little moment on the edge sometimes
where you can see it where just...
It's funny - it's dead funny - and then we can just go flip.
It's great.
That's what this film is about.
How the Scottish experience is a Celtic-flavoured
sweet and sour affair...
..something I was aware of from my earliest memories.
My beginnings were no better or worse
than the other 20,000 boys and girls
that were born the same year as me in Glasgow.
No-one thought we were poor
till somebody came along and told us.
So, you've come to Glasgow, have you?
Pretty grim, isn't it?
There was a lot of debris around,
an endless supply of bricks to throw at things.
But however, we'll never lack company.
We've always got the rats.
Comedy, like drama, is about conflict,
and Glasgow is my city of conflict.
The views, the sounds, the smells of these streets
are jammed with memories of being cold and warm...
..in love and heartbroken, crying with laughter and regret.
I love Glasgow, but that love has always been matched
with an urge to leave, to see over the horizon
and that pull has made me a proud citizen of the world.
Yet there's always been a string in my heart
that I'm glad pulls me back to where I'm from...
..to all the things that made me, good and bad - Scotland.
It's a beautiful place.
And when the water's going over the sand at the bottom,
it's almost turquoise.
It looks like the Caribbean.
You soon realise it's not the Caribbean
when that water touches your scrotum.
You go for the high-jump record.
It was in the water of Scotland's coasts
that I pieced together as a young boy
that pain and comedy were perfect bedfellows.
It was in Aberdeen. I was there on holiday with the school.
We were down at the beach and it was grey and windy and wet.
I love Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire.
But we all ran towards the water.
Our big teacher called Mr Hegarty, "In you go, boys."
There was guys just over the horizon in survival suits
working on oil rigs for the sheer low temperature of the water,
and we had these woolly swimming trunks.
My swimming costume, it was that knitted stuff
with a belt and a fucking pocket,
the reason for which escapes me completely.
None of your Speedo second skin. LAUGHTER
This was more your second cardigan.
LAUGHTER
I'll never forget it as long as I live.
Arrgh!
And once it's past your scrotum, it hasn't hit your waist.
It isn't the Caribbean.
It's the North Atlantic.
It beat the Titanic and it'll beat you.
To this day, people think that the woolly trunks of my childhood
are a favoured joke, but - and to my great delight -
the Glasgow Southside knitters and crocheters
have discovered they were very much the real deal.
These have been a challenge.
We've been trying to work off vintage patterns, and obviously,
you know, these are sort of 1940s patterns
and things are slightly different -
the wording's different, the yarns are all different.
My tension was just a tad too slack.
So, we've got this guy here.
I thought it was a joke
cos I'd never heard of them before, or ever seen them,
so I just thought he'd made it up until it was obvious he hadn't.
Everything that Billy does is just pointing out
the ridiculousness of everyday life.
Yeah, I remember watching him with my own parents
and with my friends' parents as a teenager
and just thinking, "This guy is hilarious."
It's situations that you're in, and as a teenager,
you don't really know how to deal with them,
and then he comes out with all these crazy...
You know, about going to the dancing,
meeting girls or meeting boys
and it's like he kind of took the fear out of a lot of stuff
and just made it ridiculous.
He was probably my first experience of what actual swearing was
and it was an education.
It was great. But he got away with it.
He still does. You know, it doesn't sound like swearing.
It just sounds like Billy.
People could look in and see your willy,
if you had one.
LAUGHTER
One foot in the North Sea, the whole fucking lot disappeared.
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
He gets a pass. It's really odd.
There's people who go, "Oh, I don't like comedians that swear.
"You don't have to swear to be funny."
"Open the door!" "I can't!
"I'm shitting my brains out!" LAUGHTER
But people sort of go...
Especially old ladies,
they just kind of go, "Oh, it's just Billy."
You know? And he's allowed to swear.
"Will you open this fucking door?"
"I can't get off the seat. Oh, break the fucking thing down."
There is a thing that very proper people say -
swearing shows a lack of vocabulary,
but I think it shows an increase in vocabulary.
You know all the normal words, and you can say "fuck", as well.
And there's also the reality of
this is how people talk in real life.
I swear, but I'm a complete hypocrite.
I don't do it in front of my kids, you know?
But I've invented swear words that I can do in front of them.
One of them is B-A-S-A.
If you say it fast, it's quite convincing, you know?
"Hey, ya basa!" LAUGHTER
But you're not swearing. Your conscience is clear.
It's dead sneaky.
He understands how to use swear words
and he takes joy in them.
Another good one is G-E-T-I-F-U. "Getifu".
If you do it fast along with "basa", it's quite handy.
"Getifu, ya basa!
"You, ya basa, getifu out of there!"
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE It sounds quite good.
I think him more than anyone else,
he really respects just how good swear words are.
There's a swearing expression in Glasgow that I've...
It's quite poetic and it's quite violent and it's...
I've never heard it anywhere else
and it's, "Jesus suffering fuck".
When something goes wrong,
someone'll go, "Jesus suffering fuck!"
Now, that's poetry, whether you like it or not.
People who have discovered their daughter's pregnant,
they go, "Brilliant. Fucking brilliant."
Stand back and just admit that
the absolute correct thing has been uttered.
It's like, "What the fuck?"
There's no equivalent. "What the fuck?"
There's no need for anything else to be said.
There's no arguing about the subject matter.
The subject matter isn't important. Something catastrophic has occurred.
"What the fuck?"
LAUGHTER
I had to get stripped.
There was fish looking out the water saying,
"There's a fucking pale blue guy coming in."
LAUGHTER
A good memory is the one you can give away,
and that's what I try to do -
make the unique a bit more universal.
And in that spirit, come with me
to a loch less than an hour from Glasgow.
Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce the Woolly Buggers,
who are going to frolic in Loch Ard?
Go.
Wearing their woolly swimming costumes
that I wore as a boy.
They look very happy now, but what happens is that
the woolly costume turns into a sort of drogue parachute behind you,
where the crotch is at your knees and it slows you down.
There seemed to be a plot from keeping us from being sexy.
There was a guy in my class at school called Nino Manible.
He was an Italian boy. He was great. Very stylish.
And he had the best swimming costume you ever saw.
It was red satin with white satin on the sides
and laces up both sides,
and we had the woolly ones with the belt.
HE LAUGHS Not quite the same.
I wanted to murder him in his bed and steal his costume.
The things I remember about the swimming and holidays
and all that - they're all painful.
We used to go to Rothesay and there's loads of pictures
of my sister and I standing on the beach in trench coats
in the pelting rain with bucket and spade.
I loved it.
Glasgow Fair holidays - the second fortnight in July.
Glasgow would empty, the factories would shut down,
and everybody would go on holiday down the Clyde.
This is Wemyss Bay station, where the dream began.
We got on the train at Glasgow Central with the family.
The train was jammed with people with suitcases and bags
and they would all spew onto these platforms.
There would be all sorts of laughing and talking
as hundreds of people got more and more excited, the children.
Down to meet the ferry. There would be the Jeanie Deans,
or the Queen Elizabeth II,
the Saint Columba, the Columbia,
the Marchioness of Breadalbane, the Waverley.
You had to see it - this place just full of people,
all suitcases and bags.
My father would be saying, "Come on, Billy. Keep up."
All pour out here
and the ferry would be sitting waiting
with the wooden gangway coming down onto the pier.
Traditionally, it's a rainy time of year,
the second fortnight in July.
It was the first time you'd seen the Clyde
since you'd seen it from the train window on the way down.
It's the first time you'd actually seen it there.
A great feeling, down to Rothesay.
# At Rothesay Bay, at Rothesay Bay
# Where the children laugh and play... #
# When you're lonely, tired and sad
# Grab a steamer, sail down the Clyde
# Go to Arran, Millport or Rothesay Bay
# No kidding, it's a magic way to spend the day
# Red funnels glow in the sun Ho-ho
# Splashing paddles please everyone... #
All the excited children with buckets and spades,
people playing accordions and violins.
I tell you what happened to me on this boat.
I was eating a pear.
My father had given us - my sister and I - half a pear each,
split down the middle,
and a seagull shat on it.
I was just about... HE LAUGHS
I was just about to eat it when...splat!
It's remained with me all these years.
Cheated out of my pear.
# And don't forget, folks Try it on the Waverley... #
Two chimneys!
The sun's an unusual feature, but Rothesay hasn't changed much.
The children have just got a lot older, that's all.
Do you see the blue bucket there?
The wheelie bin? That was Children's Corner.
The Punch and Judy show, Uncle Phil and Tony.
Hello, boys and girls. CHILDREN: Hello.
Uncle Phil was the sort of MC,
and Tony did all the voices of the Punch and Judy.
"Oh, no, you didn't." "Oh, yes, you did."
And the children would perform here.
We'd all be sitting out there and the little performers...
# Oh, Ma, he's making eyes at me
# Ma, he's awful nice to me
# Ma, he's almost breaking my heart
# I'm beside him, mercy! Let his conscience guide him
# Ma, he wants to marry me
# Be my honey bee
# Every moment he gets bolder Now he's leaning on my shoulder
# Ma, he's kissing me... #
All together! HE LAUGHS
And we'd all join in.
# Oh, Ma, he's making eyes at me... #
Hello, boys and girls.
And when you think of Punch and Judy,
it was about murdering children.
"Kill the baby! Kill the baby!
"Eat the sausages! There's a crocodile coming."
That was the education we got.
It was the first time I'd ever seen a performer -
like a professional performer - Uncle Phil.
It was the first sort of show I'd ever been to,
and it was the first for all those Glaswegian kids.
It was lovely.
Eating Rothesay rock, sucking your fillings out.
It was brilliant.
It hasn't changed much.
I would be down here in my woollen swimming costume,
with the crotch down at my knees.
We'd all run in the water, "Hurray!"
It was great. One of the great memories of my life.
They look as if they've conquered the costume, these swimmers.
Maybe it's a better quality wool they've used for theirs.
You've pulled them up and spoiled it!
Well done. Thank you, sir.
Well done. Cheers, man.
Yours is running like a tap! LAUGHTER
I love losing control.
Your body won't work any more.
Oh, memories, memories!
I've been in that state a few times and I remember it.
My son makes me laugh.
We were away fishing and he told me a story.
This boy had got a tick on his penis
and his mother had been telling Jamie the story -
Jamie's my son.
Right on the end of his penis, he had got a tick,
and her husband was away from home and he knew about ticks and things,
so she phoned him and he said, "Get Vaseline and rub it on.
"Then get tweezers and get a grip of the tick
"and twist it out, pulling all the time."
She went away to get Vaseline and she couldn't find any,
but she found Vicks VapoRub
and put it on the boy who nearly passed away...
..with the pain of it.
And my son was telling me and I lost control completely.
I was hanging off the chair. He had to hold me up.
And I love getting into that state of laughter.
HE LAUGHS
Oh!
They should be dry in a fortnight.
Thank you very much, everybody. It worked perfectly.
Thanks very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.
How great they had the belts.
I remember those belts so well.
And as much as I love those wet Rothesay days,
I hated school in equal measure.
My sister Flo was my guardian. She looked after me all my life.
She used to hit people for me, bullies and stuff.
My primary school was like a Dickensian hangover -
violent and abusive.
And then we'd go to school
and I'd get this monster of a teacher,
you know, big Rosie McDonald, and she got such joy
from whacking people with this leather belt. Arrgh!
To humiliate someone is a desperately bad and wrong thing.
Humiliation is forever. It takes you so long to get over it.
I think there's always been a tradition in Scotland
of hiding the pain behind humour,
and it's a tradition that runs through
most of our literature.
And it's not just in comedy, but it's in song,
and it's in our fiction, as well, and in our poetry.
But horrible suffering does not make you artistic.
Horrible suffering makes you really sad.
If you happen to be artistic,
you'll try and use that to get yourself out
because you're artistic.
It's really tough luck.
Because it is a completely Darwinian meat grinder
and some people get out with the boxing,
some people get out with the Army, some people...
..get out by educating themselves up...
..and some people do creative things.
Before I was even aware of it, I inherently knew that the arts,
be it music, painting or literature,
were vital somehow.
All the colour I needed and all the answers I was looking for
were just waiting to be discovered.
People often say, "Well, football and boxing
"are the way out of the working class,"
if indeed you want to leave it,
but the library is where the tunnel is if you want to escape.
The library is the key.
All the knowledge in the world is there.
You just want to lift it up.
The great brains are there to be picked.
Books are your ticket to the whole world.
It's a free ticket to the entire Earth.
It's some nice person saying, "Come in and listen to this.
"You've never heard this before. It'll change you for the better."
When I was a boy of 15, I left school
and I worked in John Smith's Bookshop in Glasgow.
And part of my duties was to sweep the floor in the morning
and I would mess about and look at all the stuff.
Being the only guy in the book shop was a great luxury.
But my favourite probably
is a book I've given away more than any other book.
It's one of the lovely things you can do to a person
is give them a book that you've enjoyed,
and this is A Confederacy Of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole.
He committed suicide.
Some people say it's because he couldn't get it published.
But his mother had it published and it's brilliant and funny.
Scarlett, my daughter, and I were sailing.
We had a yacht and we were sailing down Samoa.
You can't hide the profits forever.
And I had A Confederacy Of Dunces with me and...
HE LAUGHS
I had a copy of Confederacy Of Dunces
and I said to her, "Read this."
And she was in the next cabin to me
and I was lying in bed at night with my wife
and I could hear the laughing from her cabin next door
and I thought, "Yes! Another convert to the cause."
There's nothing nicer than laughing out loud at a book.
It's the ultimate talent -
to be able to jot that down and make a person laugh.
It's brilliant.
My love for the right way to say something...
..has never left me...
..and it keeps me company.
I'm not scared to be alone...
..because I have my books and my thoughts
and I'm OK alone.
My own company doesn't frighten me.
It's good to be an observer,
going around watching the people around you,
feeding from watching them.
Some people just become them, become part of the crowd,
watching the Punch and Judy,
and some of us are watching the audience.
I've been that guy all my life.
My sister and I were playing in the street.
We got lost. We were lost. Well, we weren't lost.
We knew where we were, but nobody could find us.
You know, it's your story, but it's their story, as well,
cos, I mean, it's comedy, but it's old-school storytelling.
It's just dead funny.
Mr Cumberland had come home from his work, right?
He was a docker and he had the money in his pocket, right?
He's give it to his wife.
"There's your money. I'm away out for a pint."
"Not fucking likely, you're not!" LAUGHTER
She's giving him brain damage.
"I've been on my feet, never get a minute to myself.
"Never a fucking minute, never sat doon."
HE MUMBLES "Every time I go to sit doon,
"there's a fucking wean sitting in a chair.
"Get the fuck oot of there!
"You go oot and get they weans in.
"Go oot and get they fucking weans in.
"Then you can think about a pint. Get the fucking weans in here!"
Stand-up as a medium isn't really regarded as an art form.
It's just when it's done...
And the reason for that is, when it's done really well,
it's just a person standing on stage just talking.
And he's away oot in the street.
"Right, I'll get the fucking weans in.
"Right, how many have I got? 12?
"Right, one, two, three. Come here, you."
So, he's got the first 12 weans,
two of which was me and my sister.
He's doing something which looks effortless,
but actually, if you were to sort of break it down...
HE SCREAMS
..there's so much going on there
to be able to hold a room and to read the energy.
The only reason we were found
is that my mother was out with the polis looking for us
and they found two Cumberlands. LAUGHTER
That's somebody using language to dilate people's pupils
and to make people sweat and to make people move a lot
and double up and cry and whinny and moan
and hold each other's hands just by talking at them.
"What's up with you?"
"We cannae get in." LAUGHTER
"The bed's full of people."
LAUGHTER
For a supposedly gruff nation,
I'm immensely proud of the value Scotland places on art.
Galleries are scattered all over.
We used to go on a Sunday, my sister and I,
to the art galleries and slide around on the marble floor,
take our shoes off and slide in our socks.
We also went to see the paintings. We knew nothing of art.
We just knew that this was clever stuff
and it was very enjoyable, lovable.
I've loved art ever since.
Christ of Saint John of the Cross, Salvador Dali,
was bought by Glasgow and it's in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery.
It's the most extraordinary painting.
Above the crucifix, looking down on the world.
I didn't know why Picasso was important,
or why Salvador Dali was important.
I just knew they were important in your life,
and it's not just to be sneered at.
And abstract painting is a lot more than cartoonists make it out to be.
You know, there's an importance in it to be learned.
Someone who can paint an emotion is an important person
and it's an important thing he's doing on the human scale.
And eventually, all that gets through to you.
You can't force an appreciation of art.
It just comes, and if you're lucky, you may, one day, out of the blue,
pick up a pen and surprise yourself.
It was years after going to the Kelvingrove
that I started drawing and I haven't really stopped since.
The art has been a great thing for me
because sometimes I don't know what it is.
There's an abstract side to it that I love.
And I'm proud of that side of me
that I've got that abstract out of my head onto paper.
I don't know what it is,
but I think that's what pleases me most about it.
It's a mystery and it's good for you.
It's like being able to draw something like an emotion...
..cos nobody knows what it looks like.
But if you do it right,
people get the same buzz from it as you did.
There's a charm and a wit and a worldliness,
but underneath, there's this incredible layer of intelligence
and a political mind
and an analytical mind and he can switch it around.
He can just be funny or he can be funny with layers
underneath it of poignancy, of pathos and bathos.
I never know quite the difference between them.
One, bathos seems to be more bathing, but anyway...
Any of the big words. You can shove all the big words in there.
He's a thinker, you know? He's reflective.
Yes, he's a welder, but at the same time,
he's an artist and he's a poet.
He's sort of all things.
He's all things.
What? That's gone too far!
He's not Jesus! LAUGHTER
Maybe it's something to do with the weather -
the idea that there's something through the mist
that's waiting to be crystallised -
but there is a balance of the abstract and the figurative
that runs through Scottish culture.
You read it in the books of James Hogg,
hear it in the pipers' laments
and see it in the art of Moira Maclean.
Moira was born and raised in the Outer Hebrides.
As a child, she played in the abandoned crofts
that littered the islands.
These became her palette.
Moira raids the croft and transforms the abandoned
and the forgotten into art.
To walk into her house is to enter a world where everything is curated
and recognised as possessing some kind of beauty.
I see them more like dreamscape.
Yeah. Or... You've certainly got that.
I wanted to trigger a memory for people.
I love that. Do you like it? I love it. It's sensational.
I use the fragments of old wallpaper...
Yeah, I can see that.
..within the paintings, so I like that kind of combination.
Yeah, I like it, too. I think it's remarkable.
I like the way you've done it on the wall.
It's not going to go anywhere.
Yeah, you're making art in a different way,
but it's the same kind of thing.
It's the kind of observations, isn't it? Yeah.
The everyday and things from when you were wee.
Absolutely. Things you remember. Yeah. Yeah. It's the same thing.
Where did you get your tattoos?
New York. New York. Fantastic.
The sailors used to get it for sailing round the Horn...
..to Valparaiso.
They would get these swallows tattooed. Yeah.
But I've never sailed round the Horn.
I just thought I'd give myself the tattoo.
Oh, well, it's quite cool.
I remember men in the village with the swallow tattoo...
Yeah. ..the Golden Virginia and...
A guy told me the other day in Glasgow it was a gang.
It was a gang? A gang used to get this tattoo.
Swallows there.
So, I hope I don't bump into them in the middle of the night
asking me if I'm a member.
God, I love this! Yeah.
It's my collection of Gaelic Bibles, Biobull.
I've been collecting them from derelict houses.
First of all, I never used to take them
cos I felt like they should remain in the house.
Yeah, I can understand that.
Cos the things that were left were always the Bibles and the mirrors.
Really?
Yeah, and I was thinking the Bibles are like a reflection on the soul
and the mirrors are like a reflection of the lives,
and these are the things that are sort of left in that space.
The Bibles are always sitting on the mantelpiece.
That's extraordinary. I love that piece.
Her work is of great importance...
..to describe the way people lived in Scotland.
The pile of Bibles in a frame was profound when I saw it.
His artistry, for me - Connolly's artistry -
is about flying.
You know, he's winging it all the time.
He's just winging where he's going.
SHE HUMS
He wrote that brilliant song about Glasgow.
# Oh, I wish I was in Glasgow
# With some good old friends of mine
# Some good old rough companions
# And some good old smooth red wine
# Oh, I was born in Glasgow near the centre of... #
I knew from an early age that I wanted to escape.
# I would take you there and show you
# But they've pulled the building down... #
And it's not that there was anything wrong with where I was.
It was just that I wanted to be somewhere else.
# It always makes me frown
# They bulldozed it all... #
And then, when I was a teenager, it happened.
I left, or to be accurate,
I and tens of thousands of other Glaswegians left.
We were told we were living in slums
and they, and we, had to go.
So, we went to a different kind of slum in the country
called Drumchapel.
Now we all had indoor plumbing.
The problem was we had fuck all else.
When they took us there, there was no amenities.
It was a crime to move thousands of people
to a housing estate with no cinemas, no theatres, no cafes,
no shops, no churches, no schools, just houses.
Being moved to a new house is a good thing,
but not if that's all there is.
So, you'd get up in the morning, go to your work,
come back to your house, go to sleep.
There's something nasty about it.
It was a dirty trick played on us.
One of the first things I ever remember feeling
was being terribly cheated,
that the wee faceless councillors in Glasgow had dispatched us out here
and we were supposed to feel great because we had a bath.
But, you know, you can only spend so much of your time in the bath
playing with your rubber ducks and things.
Even as a boy, I knew cafes, cinemas,
community were the key to a sane life.
If a place has none of those things, a dullness descends,
a kind of anger develops,
and if you have no way of articulating that anger,
you just lash out.
And the architects of this brave new world?
Town planners in Georgian houses.
But for every Yin, there's a Yang,
and while my memories of Drumchapel aren't all good,
they weren't all bad either.
But the other side is I was a teenager becoming a...
I was 14 when we moved there, so you're becoming a man.
There's memories of fancying women and going to dances and things,
and cycling to school, which are fond memories.
Cycling from Drumchapel was a very important part of my life.
Doing like 40 or 50 miles on the bike.
I was quite serious about it.
And it released me from Drumchapel and took me off into the country.
I remember so well going camping with my bike when I would be 14.
Two or three friends. You'd a tent and a groundsheet.
Parents had no idea where you were.
You just cycled off round the corner
and away to Bowling and Balloch and Loch Lomondside.
And if somebody said to your father, "Where's Billy?"
"He's away camping." "Where to?" "I don't know.
"Where did you go camping? He's away there."
Today, people would go crazy.
I'll introduce you to a friend of mine.
I'll bring him out.
The Flying Scot.
This used to be my bike.
How I dreamed of owning one of these.
All these years I cycled.
Then when I eventually made a couple of bob,
I bought myself one.
And when they were getting it ready for me,
they sandblasted "The Big Yin" on the crossbar.
It's remarkably like the way I left it.
A Brooks saddle you have to break in.
And there's a rivet right in the front there.
If you ever watch the Tour de France,
you'll hear some of the old commentators saying,
"He's riding the rivet."
That means he's forward in the saddle, giving it pelters.
Ten-speed Campagnolo gears,
Weinmann centre pull brakes,
Mavic mudguards.
Many a happy hour I spent on this boy.
I cycled from London to Glasgow and Glasgow to John O'Groats...
..and I'm the better for it.
Dear Frank Ifield made a punk record.
It's called I Remember You, You Bastard.
LAUGHTER
I toured all over Scotland with my bike and banjo.
Guy goes into the Army and Navy store and he says,
"Have you got any camouflage jackets?"
The bloke says, "Aye, I've got thousands,
"but I cannae find them." LAUGHTER
Meeting wonderful people
and occasionally recognising kindred souls.
He came up through the folkies in the '70s,
and the folkies in the '70s knew about singing songs,
getting somebody's floor to sleep on.
I think it's one of my more attractive features,
the way my hair just...
Smart but casual, we call it.
He learned how to communicate to an audience
in a very real, human way and sing them a song.
It's a very old tradition.
# Away in the forest a bluebird was sleeping
# Where only the coyote calls... # BANGING
You know, and then you'd get... You'd be partying all night.
LAUGHTER
Well, that's fucked that one, hasn't it?
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
We'd be partying until four in the morning.
I mean, you're talking serious partying.
# As the rain pours down in the yard
# Rain, the most haunting sound
# Rain, that makes beautiful music
# And rain
# Brings peace upon all who it falls. #
It's supposed to be the little angel getting her wings there.
That's lovely. Harmonic.
Cos I used to say, in my act, you know,
they should stop calling rain bad weather. Aye.
If rain's bad weather, we're buggered. Aye.
There's plenty of it coming. Aye, you're absolutely right.
My kind of musicians are the ones that like to share.
Martin Stephenson is my kind of musician.
In the late '80s, on the precipice of fame,
he gave up his turn in the spotlight.
He downsized and moved to the Highlands to tour,
play and write, to be a happy minstrel.
Sometimes, when I'm doing a gig - and this goes back years -
I get your voice coming in
cos inside a songwriter, you've got a Nick Drake,
but you've got a comedian, there's a poet.
The poet and the songwriter hate the comedian.
The comedian fucking hates the poet
because the poet's doing this, you know? Wants the serious song.
And then I'll get two verses through a serious song
and I'll hear your voice go, "Oh, for fuck's sake!
"Not another verse!"
In my head, when you're trying to deal with all that...
As soon as you go to write,
"The rain running down the windowpane..." Oh, God!
If "rain" didn't rhyme with "window pane",
there'd be no songwriters. Oh, no.
I think the trick is to include everyday, ordinary stuff. Aye.
Walking across the room and sitting down and standing up.
Aye. Write it down. Aye.
Make the picture complete. Absolutely.
I think people rely on falling in love and falling out of love,
as if that's all you did all day.
HE LAUGHS
That would be exhausting, wouldn't it?
You have to go and buy sausages. Aye, get normal things.
Polish your shoes. Aye, put the kettle on.
Yeah, that's what makes the picture
and I think that's what makes the great guys great. Aye.
# If it wasnae for your wellies where would you be?
# You'd be in the hospital or infirmary
# For you would have a dose of the flu or even pleurisy
# If you didnae have your feet
# In your wellies. #
CHEERING AND APPLAUSE
But the banjo was the one for me. Aye.
It's what I always wanted to do.
I'm not that good on it. Oh, I think you're a good player.
I've seen you play. I can play, but...
..when I hear people who can really play,
I'm flabbergasted at how great some people are...
Aye. ..at how some people can be really simple and great. Oh, aye.
Some people are all over you. Oh, they don't stop.
Notes coming out of your hair. It's true, aye.
All over your clothes, covered in notes.
If they see you going for the mic,
it's like they're trying to stop you get the mic.
HE LAUGHS It's true.
I remember I used to play with a guy called Tam Harvey
and we accompanied a singer called Matt McGinn,
who wasn't really very musical,
but he would just start singing without consulting you.
Aye. We would be behind him and he'd go...
HE HUMS
And Tam would say, "Pull him into G."
Pull him into G! So, we'd both got D7.
HE HUMS
# Aaah... #
And off he went in G. That's a full chord, aye.
"Pull him into G."
Tow him into G!
HE HUMS
# Aaah... #
I fell in love with Scotland on the most intense level on my bike.
Look at it. It's a place where beautiful isn't enough of a word.
It's profoundly beautiful.
And here's that dichotomy again about Scotland.
For all its beauty in the summer sun,
it still looks better in the rain and snow.
It's rugged, not pretty,
and you're not meant to understand the enormity of all of this.
You just have to go with it.
People like to say this is God's country.
Bollocks! It's OUR country
and we should never stop marvelling at it.
Children don't like scenery. They don't get it.
They don't get it. You say, "Look, girls. Look, that's..."
I take my daughters to Scotland, you know?
"There you are, girls. What do you think?"
And they go, "What? What? What?" LAUGHTER
Because you have to be taught this stuff, that this is nice.
"See, mountains and trees, in that order, are nice."
"Why?" "Shut up! Nice.
"Now repeat after me, 'Ooh, ah, that's nice.' "
"Ooh, ah." "Right..."
LAUGHTER AND APPLAUSE
My life is slipping away,
and I can feel it and I should.
I'm 75. I'm near the end.
I'm a damn sight nearer the end than I am the beginning.
But it doesn't frighten me.
It's an adventure.
And it's quite interesting to see myself slipping away,
as bits slip off and leave me,
talents leave and attributes leave.
And I don't have the balance I used to have.
I don't have the energy I used to have.
I can't hear the way I used to hear.
I can't see as good as I used to.
I can't remember the way I used to remember.
And they all came one at a time. They just slipped away, thank you.
It's like somebody's in charge of you
and they're saying, "Right, I added all these bits
"when you were a youth.
"Now it's time to subtract."
I can't work my left hand on the banjo.
It's as if I'm being prepared for something,
some other adventure...
..which is over, over the hill.
I've got all this stuff to lose first.
And then I'll be at the shadowy side of the hill
doing the next episode in the spirit world.
It was rough to hear about it,
and everyone, when they get to a certain point,
the wheels start coming off
and you've got to address that, keep talking about it,
cos the truth of that can help other people, you know?
That's a really true heart, when someone does that.
You know, I always think that's pretty amazing.
And my dad's got Parkinson's, as well,
and I know the effect that it has on my dad every day,
the anger and the frustration that he deals with because of it.
There's still time to go yet.
There's still places to go, new friends to make,
maybe new songs to write and sing and jokes to tell.
I remember I had a wee girlfriend
and she was knitting with her mother in the living room one night.
And her mother was a bit uptight about me, you know,
cos she saw me as a hairy rascal,
and I said, "What's that you're knitting?"
And she showed me the knitting pattern.
I said, "What's that?" She said, "K2tog.
"That's knit two together."
I said, "Oh, aye." She said...
"You have to watch it," she said, "cos some people..."
She meant to say, "Some people are slack knitters
"and some people are tight knitters,"
and she said "knickers" instead.
She said, "Some people are slack knickers."
I said, "I think I've met a couple of them."
Euan Cattanach is, as far as I know,
the only gamekeeper turned banjo maker
living and working in Scotland today,
or ever, for that matter...
..and his work is inspiring.
It's quite heavy, Billy.
It's got this electric tone ring in it.
They call it the Whyte Laydie tone ring, but it's not.
The right name for it is electric tone ring.
It was the banjo that was called the Whyte Laydie.
It's a lovely banjo. Yeah, definitely.
Sounds like a beauty. Aye. Well played, as well.
You told me you couldnae play. I cannae play like I used to.
Well, you must have been bloody good.
THEY LAUGH
Whoo!
I haven't paid attention to the music in the last few years,
and because of the Parkinson's, I don't play as well as I used to,
so it kind of puts reins on me that weren't there before.
But I've been...
In recent times, in recent months, I've had an urge to do it again,
to write songs again, and I think I'll get round to it.
Your work's great.
Ah, it's basically scrap wood.
Don't tell the customers. HE LAUGHS
No, no, but this is for the fretless one.
That's the fretless neck. Oh, that's lovely.
That's going to be nice.
Have you got a buyer for the fretless?
Not yet, no. Somebody'll buy it.
No, there's no pressure. I might buy it myself. No, no.
You're not buying anything off of me, Billy Connolly.
You wouldn't buy anything off of me, son.
You want one, you've got it. You want it, you've got it.
Aye?
Just cos it's you and me, right? It's yours.
I'll get it sorted out so you can get it. That's lovely.
I've just been needing a wee push to get it done.
Oh, that's brilliant. OK? Whoohoo!
I've just been needing that wee push to get it done.
So, there you are. You're the proud owner of a banjo.
It'll be nice, like. It'll be nice to have.
I don't know how you're going to get it, mind.
You'll need to come back. I'll hitchhike.
APPLAUSE
I did a world tour
and I explained to them that I had Parkinson's disease
and they didn't mind at all and I got on with it.
I've got Parkinson's disease
and I wish he'd fucking kept it to himself, but there you go.
LAUGHTER
I didn't know how standing there would feel.
I hadn't stood anywhere since I'd got Parkinson's.
And I discovered that
I got kind of rooted to the spot
and became afraid to move.
Instead of going away to the front of the stage
and prowling along the front the way I used to do,
I stood where I was.
The Parkinson guy - I got my daughter to Google it -
is James Parkinson,
who studied it at the beginning of the century.
And it used to be called shaking palsy.
Fuck, I'm glad he showed up.
LAUGHTER
Comedy does need focus, and boy, he had that, you know.
But there were times when I was watching him thinking,
"I bet he'd love to be able to act that out a bit more."
You know? It was...
I never thought for one moment he was less of a comic,
but I was feeling his frustration.
That, to me, was really tough.
Parkinson's is strange because it's not going to go away.
All my life, I've got sick -
I got the flu and I got pneumonia and various things,
and they all went away.
This isn't going anywhere. It's going to get worse.
Can I stop here? INTERVIEWER: Yeah, course you can, Billy.
It takes a certain calm to deal with...
..and I sometimes don't have it.
Sometimes, I get angry with it, but that doesn't last long.
I just collapsed in laughter as he was whipped into the sky.
But 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.
And I'm very lucky inasmuch as I made a bit of a mark.
And you think, "Well, I must have done something right,"
and that keeps you company when you're older.
There's the fact that when you were creative...
See you later. Thank you.
..you created well.
It accompanies you. It's a great companion.
You can volunteer to take life seriously,
but it's going to get you.
You know they're going to win over you. It's harsh.
And you can either break down and complain about
how miserable your life is, or have a go at it and survive.
I think that's the basis of it all.
Sheep shagging is very good for you, I'm told. I have never done this.
It's one of the things I'm keeping
for when the doctor tells me I've got cancer.
You know, I've got a list of things I'd like to try.
LAUGHTER You know?
So, I'll be behind the farm wall with a syringe with the heroin.
"Right we are, bring the fucking sheep over."
LAUGHTER
Apparently, you take them to the edge of a mountain for best effect.
They push back better, I'm told.