The Big Yin mastered the art of funny – there was barely such a thing as standup comedy in the UK when he graduated from Glasgow’s shipyard to the stage
It was news we saw coming, but that barely diminishes the sadness of hearing that Billy Connolly’s live performing career is at an end. Most 76-year-olds, of course, have long since retired – but so at home was Connolly on the live comedy stage, you could believe he might retire to rather than from it. When I saw him in Aberdeen in the early days of his Parkinson’s diagnosis, it had diminished his capacity to entertain not one jot.
So what are we losing? One of standup’s great naturals, one of very few whose appeal spanned generations and social tribes – and a link to the origins of the art form, in the UK at least. There was barely such a thing as standup comedy when Connolly graduated from the Clyde shipyards – as a folk singer, in the first instance. When he put the banjo to one side, what emerged was a form of folk comedy. Funny existed everywhere: in the behaviour, observations and jokes Connolly encountered in the people and traditions of Glasgow, and beyond. His comedy was just a means of getting it from the street – or the shipyard – to the stage.
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