Sean Connery got lost on the way to my house – I shouted: ‘For f**k’s sake, you’re James Bond’, says Billy Connolly
SIR Billy Connolly would not want to be cast as a miserable victim of Parkinson’s disease.
Now a new show will remind us of the many hilarious moments the Big Yin has given us and why he remains one of the world’s funniest comedians.
Among clips of classic stand-up performances and side-splitting interviews, the outspoken comic shares hilarious tales involving his showbiz pals, including Sean Connery.
Chatting in the kitchen of the Florida Keys home he shares with wife Pamela Stephenson, he says with a smile: “Bad behaviour is behaviour that’s irritable to other people.”
In the first episode of Billy Connolly Does . . . , he recalls the mischief he got up to over the years — including a bizarre game he used to play with his entourage while on tour.
Billy, 79, said: “You’re living in the lap of luxury in these wonderful hotels with great staff, and at some point you go, ‘Oh f**k this’, and you do something naughty.
“You get to the hotel and you’re all checking in and somebody will say ‘Changes!’, and you have to reappear in the bar dressed only in stuff you find in your room.
“There’s bed sheets and table cloths and pillow cases — and at Holiday Inns you use the bit of paper that goes across the toilet.
“Suddenly the bar is full of Romans — it’s great fun. That’s bad behaviour.”
Surreal moment
The game was dreamt up by his late soundman Malcolm Kingsnorth, who was previously Status Quo’s sound engineer.
And he recalls a more surreal moment on tour when his bass player staggered into a hotel restaurant clutching a huge potted plant with giant leaves and said: “They do a lovely Pimm’s No.1 in here.”
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There are, of course, plenty of wild nights out to recall — including one with The Who’s Keith Moon and actor John Hurt.
Unusually, the legendary wildman drummer was not drinking — and he gave an eyebrow-raising explanation for why no alcohol passed his lips.
Billy said: “Nobody introduced Moon and I. We were in an ice-cream place in London and there were booths that sat about six or eight people, and he was directly behind me.
“So, we were talking, and he said, ‘What you doing later?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know.’
“He said, ‘Let’s have a laugh.’ So we went out on the town.
“It was me and John Hurt and him. We went out for a p***-up and he wouldn’t drink.
"He said, ‘I’ve given up drinking. I’m only having brandy suppositories.’”
Recalling a tale from his life in LA, Billy explained how one day he had to rescue James Bond from the roadside.
He said: “I knew a lot of famous people. I lived in the Hollywood Hills.
“We had a wee party on a Sunday afternoon, and I was making soup.
He said, ‘Let’s have a laugh.’ So we went out on the town. It was me and John Hurt and him. We went out for a p***-up and he wouldn’t drink. He said, ‘I’ve given up drinking. I’m only having brandy suppositories.’
Billy Connolly on Keith Moon
“Pamela was looking for the alcohol stuff and she said ‘Sean Connery’s just phoned — he cannae find the place’.
“I said, ‘It’s easy to find. I told him twice or three times’.
“I went out to find him and he was at the side of the road next to the fire station. “I said ‘what the f**k happened to you?’ Connery replied: ‘Ridiculous directions you gave me, I couldn’t find the place.'
“I said, ‘Have you not got one of those direction finders?'
“Connery responded: ‘I don’t know how to work them.’
And I said: ‘Ah, for f**k’s sake, you’re James Bond!’”
It’s just one of the many anecdotes Billy shares in the series, which begins next Thursday on Gold.
It promises to “provide an intimate guide into Billy’s relationship with his material, as well as offering insights into his life.”
In the show, Billy wears a series of colourful shirts as he chats to interviewer Mike Reilly, sitting on his verandah and on a boat on the river outside.
It’s a long way from Glasgow, where he and older sister Florence grew up in the tenement blocks.
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Abandoned by their mother, the siblings had a tough childhood and were brought up by their aunts.
Billy was working in the Clydeside shipyards when he began playing music in folk clubs before switching to comedy.
'Ghost is headless dog'
He finally got his big break in 1975, when he was booked as an unknown to appear on Michael Parkinson's chat show.
Even now, the star is humble about his rise to fame.
Speaking about the first property he bought after finding success, he said: “I got the big house in Aberdeenshire — 17 bedrooms. It had a ghost.
“I never saw it but an old guy in the village told me. He said ‘have you seen the ghost yet?’ I said ‘no’. He said ‘it’s a dog — a headless dog’.
“I said, ‘It’s a shame if it’s a headless dog. How’s it going to lick its willy?’.”
His dad didn’t find Big Yin’s rise to fame quite so funny.
Billy went on: “He didn’t seem as if he loved it. He was working at Rolls Royce in Hillington in Glasgow. He was an engineering parts inspector.
“And whoever was in charge at the front door at Rolls-Royce would guide people to my father and would say ‘would you like to meet Billy Connolly’s father?’ And I think he went right off me.
He didn’t seem as if he loved it. He was working at Rolls Royce in Hillington in Glasgow. He was an engineering parts inspector. And whoever was in charge at the front door at Rolls-Royce would guide people to my father and would say ‘would you like to meet Billy Connolly’s father?’ And I think he went right off me.
Billy Connolly on his father
“The whole idea of me being a comedian was just a pain in the a**e for him. You can’t blame him really.” Alongside the laughs, he shares a touching insight into fatherhood.
It’s no surprise, then, that Billy wanted to be a different parent to his five children — Jamie and Cara from his first marriage to interior designer Iris Pressagh and Daisy, Amy and Scarlett with Pamela, 72.
Recalling when he had Jamie, his first child, he said: “It was in the days when the fathers weren’t allowed in the birthing department.
"My wife wanted me to come in. And then when I went in she said, ‘Get out’.
“Then I didn’t see Jamie until he was at the bottom of my bed in his little cot. It was lovely.
“So I said the same thing to him as I said to all the girls — I said ‘welcome, we’ll have a good laugh you and me’.”
He went on: “I used to love the heat-seeking missile — put the child at the edge of the bed and go to the other side and just lie and watch it rolling towards you sound asleep. And they always end up with their feet against you.
“Your bed should be a welcome place for children. They love it.
'I miss them being babies'
“When people say, ‘We’ve got a new baby coming, we’ve got his room ready’, you think, ‘The poor wee soul — he’s going to jail. He doesn’t even know he’s done anything — he’s in solitary confinement. Have them in the bed!’”
“I miss them being babies, changing them, making them sleep — It’s all delightful.
Connery replied: ‘Ridiculous directions you gave me, I couldn’t find the place'. I said, ‘Have you not got one of those direction finders?' Connery responded: ‘I don’t know how to work them.’ And I said: ‘Ah, for f**k’s sake, you’re James Bond!'
Billy Connolly on Sean Connery
“It was the joy of my life when my son was born. It gave the whole thing a reason to be, you know this wee thing was dependent on me. It made everything nice and worthwhile.”
In 2013, Billy was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
He announced his retirement from stand-up in 2018 and has not acted since his role in the 2016 comedy movie Wild Oats.
He won plaudits for his performance as John Brown in the 1997 film Mrs Brown with Dame Judi Dench about Queen Victoria’s close bond with her Highland helper.
In 2018 he held an exhibition of his own art, and in October last year he published his autobiography, Windswept & Interesting.
Billy and Pam now live in Florida after winters in their beloved New York became too hazardous for Billy to manage due to his Parkinson’s.
He is philosophical about the move — but blunt as always, he explains: “I lived in New York, and I loved it, in Manhattan.
“But in winter it becomes an ice rink. I just couldn’t balance any more. I had to get out of there.”
Billy married Pam, 72, in 1989, eight years after meeting her and four years after his divorce.
It could have been a complicated situation — but the Scottish legend thinks differently.
He added: “Love is easy — it’s everything else that’s hard. Love’s the easiest thing on earth — it just falls on you and devours you, and all you can do is return it.
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“It’s the biggest gift you can give to anybody, to return the love that is given to you.”
- Billy Connolly Does . . . begins on Gold on Thursday, February 24.
