![]() ![]() We didn't dare beat you up – your sister was a nightmare'. "To this day," he explained in 2009, "Guys say, 'God, your sister. I'm a happy man now but I still have the scars of that." Regarding his sister, Connolly has called her his "great defender". It's just a belief that I'm not quite as good as anyone else. "My aunts constantly told me I was stupid, which still affects me today pretty badly. She tried to survive." Ĭonnolly and his older sister, Florence (named after their maternal grandmother, and eighteen months his senior), were cared for by his father's two sisters, Margaret and Mona Connolly, in their cramped tenement in Stewartville Street, Partick. I don't have an ounce of feelings that she abandoned me. It looks as though it might all end next Wednesday, from where you're standing. Come with me.' Given the choice, I think I'd have gone with him. She was a teenager with two kids in a slum. We lived at the docks, so that's where all the bombs were happening. The Germans were dropping all sorts of crap on the town. ![]() My father was in Burma, fighting a bloody war. "I've never felt abandoned by her," Connolly explained in 2009. In 1946, when he was four years old, Connolly's mother left her children while their father was serving as an engineer in the Royal Air Force in Burma. Ĭonnolly was born to Catholic parents, William Connolly and Mary McLean, both of whom were of partly Irish descent. The family bathed in the kitchen sink, and there was no hot water. The flat had only two rooms: a kitchen-living room, with a recess where the children slept, and another room for their parents. Connolly refers to this in his 1983 song "I Wish I Was in Glasgow" with the lines "I would take you there and show you but they've pulled the building down" and "they bulldozed it all to make a road". ![]() This section of Dover Street, between Breadalbane and Claremont streets, was demolished in the 1970s. Ĭonnolly was born on 24 November 1942 at 69 Dover Street, "on the linoleum, three floors up", in Anderston, Glasgow. During the filming of the ITV documentary Billy Connolly: It's Been a Pleasure, he described how art had given him "a new lease of life". ![]() In 2020, he unveiled the fifth release from his Born On A Rainy Day collection in London, followed by another installment later that year. In October that year, he was knighted at Buckingham Palace by Prince William, for services to entertainment and charity.Ĭonnolly announced his retirement from comedy in 2018, and in recent years he has established himself as an artist. These were later turned into part of Glasgow's official mural trail. On his 75th birthday in 2017, three portraits of Connolly were made by leading artists Jack Vettriano, John Byrne, and Rachel Maclean. #Disney brave t shirts seriesIn 1975 he topped the UK Singles Chart with " D.I.V.O.R.C.E." Īs an actor, Connolly has appeared in various films, including Indecent Proposal (1993), Pocahontas (1995), Muppet Treasure Island (1996), Mrs Brown (1997) (for which he was nominated for the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role), The Boondock Saints (1999), The Last Samurai (2003), Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008), Brave (2012), and The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies (2014). In 1972, Connolly's first solo album, Billy Connolly Live!, was produced, with a mixture of comedic songs and short monologues. He also played the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. In 1972, he made his theatrical debut, at the Cottage Theatre in Cumbernauld, with a revue called Connolly's Glasgow Flourish. In the early 1970s, Connolly made the transition from folk singer with a comedic persona to fully-fledged comedian, for which he is now best known. He first sang in the folk rock band The Humblebums with Gerry Rafferty and Tam Harvey, with whom he stayed until 1974, before beginning singing as a solo artist. In 2022 he received the BAFTA Fellowship for lifetime achievement from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.Ĭonnolly's trade, in the early 1960s, was that of a welder (specifically a boilermaker) in the Glasgow shipyards, but he gave it up towards the end of the decade to pursue a career as a folk singer. Known for his idiosyncratic and often improvised observational comedy, frequently including strong language, Connolly has topped many UK polls as the greatest stand-up comedian of all time. He is sometimes known, especially in his homeland, by the Scots nickname the Big Yin ("the Big One"). Sir William Connolly CBE (born 24 November 1942) is a Scottish actor, retired comedian, artist, writer, musician, and presenter. ![]()
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