Billy Connolly life & health

Subject: Billy Connolly life & health
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 May 17 - 11:16 AM

I thought there was a thread from a few years ago when Connolly was diagnosed with Parkinson's, but I can't find it. Happily, a search brings up dozens of references to his musical work, but this one is simply intended to note the decline in his health and his approach to what comes next in his public life.

Pat Kane: Why the Big Yin deserves big, big love as Billy Connolly fades from our sight:

There's not much more that a certain generation of us can take of the public dimming of the Partick supernova known as Billy Connolly, due to his advancing Parkinson's and cancer. But as he continues to accept his invitations and his celebrations, so must we deal with it.

As the supreme comic of human frailty and our subversive bodies — always something leaking, smelling, sticking out or needing covered up — you might have wondered what Connolly would do if his own body started to profoundly rebel. New material, new routines? Well, new opening music: in any future performing plans (and there are some), he wants the opening track to be Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On. As manifested by his participation in last month's BBC love letter to the Big Yin, Billy and Me, Connolly also seems to want to be something much more dignified: a ruminative, tie-dyed, inspirational icon. Around which many are gathering, to pay deepest respects. At least two of the three giant Glasgow wall murals of Connolly commissioned by the BBC, and announced this week — I will pass over Jack Vettriano's efforts in silence, though of course Billy would be more generous — are worthy of Connolly's energy and inventiveness.

I'm not sure if this thread belongs above or below the line, it's a bit of a mongrel. I was thinking of the Terry Pratchett thread about his health when I started this.

The story of his diagnosis in a hotel lobby.

Subject: RE: Billy Connolly life & health
From: gnu
Date: 28 May 17 - 11:56 AM

Above the line and below the line. Different titles?

Subject: RE: Billy Connolly life & health
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 28 May 17 - 12:49 PM

I suspect the subtopic of his music is going to creep in regardless of where it lives.

Subject: RE: Billy Connolly life & health
From: akenaton
Date: 28 May 17 - 01:48 PM

I knew Billy and his mate Tam Harvey before they started as the Humblebums. they used to attend our Folk Club as regulars and many a good argument we had over politics.

Billy wasn't a big drinker like Alex Campbell or Matt McGinn, he seemed to look after his health and I seldom seen him smoking....anything.
Sorry to hear that his health is failing, he was always a real genuine guy with time for everyone......folks said he lost the plot a bit after splitting up with his wife and starting on the celebrity circuit with Pamela (the lovie) Stevenson......who knows, are celebrities ever truly happy? I read some of his books about his psychological traumas.......obviously screwed out of him by Pam. We would have been better off with our memories.

Subject: RE: Billy Connolly life & health
From: Peter K (Fionn)
Date: 28 May 17 - 03:20 PM

If you have to be so peculiarly snide, Ake, do your homework! It's Stephenson.

I too knew Connolly in the Tam Harvey days, when they were under the wing of the late lamented Arthur Argo. Whatever the circs of Connolly's breakup with his first wife (which is none of our business) your remarks about his second are misleading and unfair.

Subject: RE: Billy Connolly life & health
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 28 May 17 - 05:51 PM

Saw him live a year ago at the Hammersmith Apollo. Just as I did in 1977 at the London Palladium, I nearly died laughing. Next time I see him I'm having a personal ambulance standing by. He was on great form despite his lack of mobility. Funniest man on the planet!

Subject: RE: Billy Connolly life & health
From: Senoufou
Date: 28 May 17 - 07:35 PM

I must be word-perfect with 'An Audience With Billy Connelly' on Youtube. (incontinence knickers, Highland singers, looking for a party, the National Anthem etc)
Also his account of working in the shipyards as an apprentice welder (the 'cripples' horn) and Terrorism in Glasgow.
He's my favourite performer of all time, he really is.
I always blub when listening to his version of Irish Heartbeat.
And the Wellies song is funny.

I'm very sad he's ill now. Of all the celebrities, he's the one I'd miss the most.