Billy Connolly enjoys growing old disgracefully as he wrestles with Parkinson's
Age has meant very little to Sir Billy Connolly as throughout his 80 years a youthful exuberance has carried him along.
Finally though, a decade after a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis, the Big Yin is embracing his golden years... as it means he can grow old disgracefully.
“The upside is that people make excuses for you,” he laughs.
“You can pee in the bed. You can leap onto the floor at a wedding and do all sorts of magic steps. To be shameful.
“Shamefully out of touch but not giving a f***. It’s wonderful. I’ve spent a great deal of my life being a boy, being excited by things and it’s done me good.
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“I know lots of people who are dead and they don’t know it. They haven’t had a funeral. They’re just dead. They’ve given up. They don’t get excited by anything any more.”
Billy onstage in 1981 (Redferns)
A young Billy Connolly in 1965 (No Name)The Scottish comedian, who has been married to comic-turned-psychologist Pamela Stephenson since 1989, is appearing in a new series of UKTV’s Billy Connolly Does…, in which he reflects on 50 years of stand-up.
It’s a bittersweet time in his life - his many demons have been fought, and the brutal years of booze and cocaine addiction are now outweighed by the nearly four decades of sobriety.
And the early-stage prostate cancer that reared its ugly head in 2013 hasn’t reappeared since treatment.
But the Parkinson’s disease he was diagnosed with that same year, sadly, is slowly progressing and the father of five can no longer play his beloved banjo.
“I’m an old guy,” he admits in the show. “I don’t mind it, actually. I have a lovely life. There are people that are a lot worse than me and I’m doing just dandy.”
Billy as a young boy with his aunt Mona (DAILY MIRROR)After their move to Key West in Florida, Billy and Pamela stay in contact with US doctors who keep an eye on his condition.
The degenerative brain disease causes tremors and stiffness in the body, and can impact memory and speech.
“I’m just grateful that only the left side shakes,” says Glaswegian Billy.
“I think I’m doing great. And I’ll be in the supermarket and I think, ‘I’m walking good today. Handling the trolley well, picking things up great…’
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“And I get to the checkout and they say, ‘Would you like a bit of help to your car?’ I think, oh God, they’ve spotted there’s something wrong with me.”
Since the Parkinson’s diagnosis, the biggest blow to hit Billy was the loss of his older sister Florence, who died in 2015 at the age of 74.
“Flo, she was my hero all of my childhood,” says the star of the movie Mrs Brown.
“She used to beat people up for me. I had blond hair, I used to get picked on by the bigger boys and she would always appear like the Lone Ranger over the hill.
“When she died a few years ago I felt a real longing for my sister.
“I thought, in the church, when she was lying in her coffin, ‘She’ll never save me again, I’m alone’ and I felt a real emptiness.
“Flo was dead, there was no going back, I had to carry her out and I was crying, my Flo was dead and it had a profound effect. I miss her, I miss her bravery.”
Billy and Pamela on their wedding day in 1983 (ExpressStar)Flo, just 18 months older than him, was his childhood refuge when life at home became unbearably cruel.
Their mum abandoned them when they were four and six, and his father’s sisters Mona and Margaret took them in – with heartbreaking consequences.
“My aunties could f***ing inflict twice the pain without lifting their hands by humiliation,” Billy recalls.
“All the time, ‘You’re thick’, ‘You’re stupid’. To humiliate someone is a desperately bad and wrong thing, it’s worse than hitting somebody. Humiliation is for ever, it takes you so long to get over it, it takes your whole life.”
There was no respite at school either, where sadistic teachers would beat Billy for the slightest misstep.
“Rosie McDonald, Big Rosie they called her, as if she deserved affection,” he remembers.
“Her specialty was placing pencils under your knuckles, between your knuckles and the desk so as to induce extra pain when she whacked you.
“She would thrash me for nothing, for showing interest in pigeons outside the window or glancing away when she was talking. She was a sadistic b*****d. And there was Miss Gleeson.
“Miss Gleeson hated me for not doing my homework. She’d hit me with a belt. She didn’t know my life at home was hell, there was awful things going on, that I was being preyed upon, and my aunt was a nightmare.”
A childhood photo of Billy with his beloved older sister Flo (DAILY MIRROR)When his father reappeared one night when Billy was five, he had no idea who the enormous man was, taking cover under the table in fear.
But life was about to get even more harrowing for Billy as the man who was supposed to care for him turned predatory, sexually molesting his son between the ages of 10 and 14 as they shared a bed in a two-bedroom flat.
The shame drove Billy to suicidal thoughts, compounded by the bullying he was receiving from teachers and peers at school.
It wasn’t until their father had several strokes and was dying in hospital that Billy found the strength to shine a light on the abuse.
Until then, even his wife did not know what Billy’s father had inflicted on him, and as they pulled up to the hospital car park, it came spilling out.
“I hadn’t thought about it for years, and I had thought it no longer bothered me,” Billy wrote in his 2021 book Windswept & Interesting.
“But at that point, when he was dying, it bothered me terrible.
“All my sadness and shame and fury came pouring out. As we sat in the car, Pamela listened to me silently.
“She was obviously shocked and deeply upset on my behalf. We were both crying, and I couldn’t bring myself to go to his hospital room to say goodbye. Even now, if I dwell on it, it really gets me down.”
Rock’n’roll became a refuge for a young Billy, who was inspired by stars such as Billy Fury and Cliff Richard.
He says: “They all came, shaking their hips and I thought, ‘That’s what I should be doing’. I should be walking on to a stage, that’s what I’m made for.
“That’s what happens to all show-business people, you go through a dreamland thing when you’re young and you say, ‘That could be me, I could do that. The start of everything is the belief that it’s real.”
* Billy Connolly Does… returns to Gold on Thursday at 9pm, with all three episodes available as a boxset on Sky, Virgin and NOW.
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