1975 was a strange year for pop music. Pitched against the Bay City Rollers, Rod Stewart, Queen et al, we had various novelty records. The Goodies and Jasper Carrott went Top 5 with their ‘Funky Gibbon’ and ‘Funky Moped’, while Windsor Davies and Don Estelle added some TV frivolity to an otherwise straight rendition of ‘Whispering Grass’, all the way to number one. Then, in November, along came a weird-looking Scot, providing alternative lyrics to Tammy Wynette’s recent hit ‘D.I.V.O.R.C.E.’. It, too, topped the UK charts and the performer certainly added a new dimension to Top of the Pops.
His
name was Billy Connolly, and he quickly became a nationwide media darling. His
hit song wasn’t that funny – certainly not as hilarious as he seemed to think
during his live TOTP act – but to a fourteen year-old he was a revelation.
Actually I had seen him on television already not once but twice, although I’m
not sure I’d made the connection straightaway. Earlier that year I’d almost
certainly watched his leather-jacketed, vulgar debut on Parkinson in
which we were introduced to Billy Connolly the comedian and one-time folk
singer, already well-known in Scotland. In the autumn I’d also been shocked yet
enthralled by Peter McDougall’s hard-hitting Play For Today, Just Another Saturday.
Focussed on the sectarian divide in Glasgow prised open by the provocative
Protestant marches, the drama featured Billy playing a version of himself,
complete with what was, to the English, an almost incomprehensible accent.
So within a few short months I was appraised of this amazing entertainer who was to demonstrate many more strings to his bow (banjo?), of which more later. In the world of drama, he proved himself a very capable cinema star and in ’93 returned to the small screen in another McDougall dark comedy, Down Among The Big Boys. This time Billy played the lead role, as a seasoned armed robber, but his natural sense of fun also came in handy.
It also earned him a few early Eighties guest slots on The Kenny Everett Television Show and that fave show of mine and my fellow university students, Not The Nine o’Clock News. They include this amusing skit opposite his future wife Pamela Stephenson mangling her words as Janet Street-Porter, and as another formulaic guest being interviewed by a sycophantic Rowan Atkinson. Of course, Billy has been a chat show regular for yonks. Nobody appeared on more Michael Parkinson programmes, and when he was advertised as being on the bill, I knew I would definitely be staying up late after Match of the Day! There he was again on Saturday Night Clive in 1990 and Melvyn Bragg was guaranteed a huge audience for his South Bank Show when Connolly was the subject.
I think I saw one such edition in 1979, then again in 1992 by which time he’d shaved off his distinctive beard. Billy Connolly was the ideal arts show guest. Besides a genial comic genius, he was riveting when describing his childhood, mining even the bleakest moments for humour. He has also always been particularly intelligent and articulate on more serious subjects such as mental health, happy to venture beyond the safe, crowd-pleasing anecdote.
And yet what so many of us love about him is his straight-talking. I’m no fan of his old booze and cocaine lifestyle but he can always be relied upon for saying what many are thinking, however politically-incorrect, even on a live awards show. He has never been afraid to show his emotions either, as during a Live Aid break following one of the harrowing reports from Africa. Of course, being the trooper he is, Billy recovered sufficiently to introduce his friend Elton John.
He may have experienced a poverty-stricken upbringing but by the mid-Eighties he seemed very much at home amongst the biggest names in global entertainment. I don’t think Elton was in the ITV studio but another of Billy’s landmark TV triumphs was on An Audience With…Billy Connolly, also in 1985. There have been many ‘Audience With…s’ since then, featuring a gallery of contemporary celebs (Ooh, there’s Angela Rippon and that bloke from ‘Bulman’!), but Connolly set the bar ludicrously high, at a level perhaps only Victoria Wood in her prime could reach.
In the ‘90s he struck a deal with the Beeb to make a few series which melded beautifully Connolly the stand-up and Connolly the perfect travel companion. Michael Palin was terribly nice but you felt the Scot would take you further off the beaten track and do so with wry or withering comments. His ‘World Tour of Scotland’ was for me essential viewing. It showcased not only hilarious excerpts from his comedy tour but also his appreciation of the world beyond the theatres, especially the great outdoors, the wilder the better! Several years later, it was during his World Tour of England, Wales and Ireland that I first heard his observation that “There’s no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothes”, a motivational remark which even merited a card on the wall of a Somerset County Council conference room. He was also informative and often used his own ancestry to lure us in to his adventures,
Billy’s love of folk music was never far from the surface, as on his travels around Australia, New Zealand and the USA, where he bestrode a motorised trike along Route 66 resembling a superannuated extra from ‘Easy Rider’. My only quibble concerns his obsession with playing the banjo. Now, I’m not dissing the instrument, nor Connolly’s clearly proficient playing, but he never misses a chance to whip it out in every pub, bothy or bar, even his freezing tent on A Scot in the Arctic. Stick to the jokes and history lessons, please, Bill!
But
that’s the wonderful thing about Billy Connolly. He just appears to be so at
ease with people - the more unconventional the better – and he brings out the
same in them. Of course he may be a very different person away from the camera
but he never fails to entertain on the small screen. I have seen various
leading comedians live on stage but Connolly is The One That Got Away. I still
regret making the effort to secure a few tickets to watch the master in action.
Given his Parkinson’s diagnosis, this regret will never be rectified. Kay,
Izzard, Bishop, they all ‘own’ the auditorium but Billy seems the most
effortless, and owns not just an audience as a single entity but each
individual in it.
One of his most memorable TV performances came, with appropriate post-watershed language, on the night of BBC’s inaugural Comic Relief in 1986. Well before the Big Yin’s series Down Under, he was particularly insightful and mirthful on the subject of Australia, but it’s his whole joyous personality that’s on display. I can think of no other comedian who leaves me not only laughing but involuntarily imitating (extremely badly, of course) his Scottish accent, speech rhythms and beard strokes. I cannae help it, y’know…. That’s the magnetic personality unique to the living legend called Billy Connolly.
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