Overseas-based Billy Connolly is about to receive the freedom of Glasgow, Stephen McGinty examines how the former shipyard worker keeps his Scots links alive

Published on Thursday 19 August 2010 12:11

A few years ago, a bakery in Partick advertised that Billy Connolly, a strict vegetarian, was fond of their meat pies. Even if you allow that his aversion to meat rendered any patronage to be largely fictitious, the tribute to the discerning palate of the great comedian was marred slightly by the simple fact that they had also spelt his name wrong.

So it was that one corner of the city choose to celebrate its most famous son. In another corner, on Stockwell Street, The Scotia Bar, the city's oldest pub had a photo of Connolly, curled with age, tucked above the till in recognition of his early gigs as a banjo-strumming folk-singer, one whose comic interludes proved more popular than the songs they were designed to introduce. Over in the People's Palace there hung a painting of Connolly by the artist John Byrne in all his Seventies psychedelic splendour. The only problem was that the six foot by four foot panel was only one half of the painting, the other panel, was missing or, as they explained to the artist when he enquired about its whereabouts: "We've lost it."

If one was to read into these sincere, if meagre tributes an indifference or a chilliness by the city towards the comedian, musician, actor and occasional author then it is one in want of swift revision. Last night at a lavish ceremony and banquet at the city chambers, Billy Connolly received the highest honour Glasgow can bestow: the Freedom of the City. Should he wish to once again don his big banana boots, he can now stride alongside such giants as William Gladstone, Nelson Mandela and the nimble feet of Kenny Dalglish. (In actual fact, he isn't allowed to wear the boots anymore - they are now museum pieces handled by curators in gloves. At a press conference yesterday he wasn't even allowed to put his hands in them.)

Heralded by a score specially written by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra into the banqueting hall crammed with closest friends and family Billy Connolly was presented with framed and illuminated scroll which details the rights to which he is now entitled. They could fuel a new stand-up routine. Connolly, as of yesterday, has the right to graze cows on Glasgow Green, to fish in the Clyde and, if he should so choose, to no longer associate with un-Freemen, ie the common herd.

• Billy Connolly with wife Pamela Stephenson after collecting his CBE

for his services to entertainment in 2003 Yet with such rights comes great responsibility. He now has the duty to patrol and guard his home town and, if necessary, to defend the town by arms. And should he renege on this agreement he will be prosecuted for perjury. However, he is, if found guilty, still entitled to a cell of his own.

The relationship between Billy Connolly and his home town has been a life-long love affair, but one with moments of estrangement. Yesterday, however, as befits an OAP - albeit one with pierced nipples and a passion for loud tartan trews - he was movingly nostalgic. Asked what he would change about the city, he replied: "There is nothing I would change about Glasgow - as a matter of fact it changes too much for me. I go away and come back and a trendy restaurant is no longer a trendy restaurant. It looks different, it looks brighter and brighter. I once said, ‘Glasgow looks like it has just learned to work a sun roof, because suddenly everything got bright' but, and I mean this in the nicest possible way, I loved it the old way as well.

"When I think of Glasgow I'll tell you what I see: going down Renfield Street approaching Central Station, on the right coming down the hill, it is raining and the cobbles are all wet and they are shining in the neon light and there is a Barr's Irn-Bru advert up on a building and it was a little Indian boy called Bar Bru - it would be considered very racist now, but he was shining down and it would shine down on Union Street and you would see all the red and green in the cobblestones and that is what I see … It was b-e-autiful."

Brought up in a tenement in Anderston before moving to Partick, he left school at 15, first to work as a delivery boy until his 16th birthday when he moved into the shipyards and began a five-year apprenticeship as a boilermaker. While it was visiting the theatre with his aunts to see Stanley Baxter, that showed him a comedian could have a Scots accent, not just the received pronunciation of the BBC, it was the natural wit of his shipyard colleagues and his own success in making them laugh that convinced him to embark on a career in comedy. The city also supplied him with the tools of his humour. He once said: "This is the only nation I've ever known that makes fun of it's own language. We have wee jokes, for example, like, ‘Did you hear about the lonely prisoner? He was in his cell.' Now this is daft. But it's lovely. And it says a lot about the Glaswegian character."

The laughs he would export around the world were formed in the crucible of Glasgow. He famously re-staged the last supper in the city. "People to this day think the Last Supper was in Galilee. When, in actual fact, it was in Gallowgate, in Glasgow. Near the cross…"

He made his theatrical debut in 1972 at the Cottage Theatre in Cumbernauld with a show called Connolly's Glasgow Flourish, which he followed up with the Great Northern Welly Boot Show. In 1974 he sold out the Pavilion in Glasgow and one year later performed 14 sell-out shows in just 12 days at the Glasgow Apollo. His trajectory was now set and would soon carry him out of the country.

In previous biographies of Billy Connolly, authors advanced an argument that the comedian had been wounded by the city - or at least its paying patrons and their lukewarm reception of his play, An Me Wi'Ma Bad Leg Tae in the late 1970s. Then there was the problems associated with fame in one's home town, as he explained in an interview: "We have a saying in Scotland, ‘I ken his faither', which is a put-down. The TV show Nationwide once did a programme on me in Glasgow. At one point I was in the street where I grew up and a girl was asking me for my autograph. A little crowd gathered and two little old ladies were watching. One of them looked over at me and said, ‘And his father was such a nice man'.

He left the city in 1979 for London and, later, Los Angeles and while he now has homes in Manhattan, the Mediterranean island of Gozo and Candacraig House in Aberdeenshire, he does not own a home in Glasgow, preferring to stay, while visiting the city, in the Hilton Hotel whose high floors afford him a view of how far he has come. Yet he insists his affection with Glasgow is undimmed. When he celebrated his 60th birthday the candle holders were in the shape of the Finnieston crane. But he has no ambition to be "become this big super Mr Glasgow which I have never wanted. I am immensely proud of Glasgow - I just have to open my mouth and you know where I come from".

Friends say that his visits to the city are frequent - not least to visit his daughter and two grandchildren - and low-key. He is a creature of habit with favourite shops and restaurants; he raves about the Cullen Skink at Cafe Gandolfi on Albion Street; pops in, when possible, to enjoy the folk scene at the Clutha Vaults and when fishing tackle needs replenishing heads to a little shop in Yoker.

Then there is a recent culinary tribute to which he has, unlike the meat pie, partaken. When Cafe D'Jaconelli on Maryhill Road introduced "The Big Yin" in his honour, he brought his grandchildren along to try the gut-busting four scoops of ice cream and multiple toppings. Then there are his regular trips to Parkhead, where he has his own seat - one of only two so designated, the other being for Rod Stewart. It was while attending a Celtic match that his car was broken into and his suitcase stolen. A witness spotted the thief dump the case and called police who, upon discovering its owner, had an inspector at the game inform Connolly it was now in the custody of London Road police station. Connolly visited the station, thanked officers and now points out in routines Glasgow police are the world's finest: "They recover your stolen property before you've reported it missing."

He is also the patron of the Celtic Foundation, which is the visible face of his charitable work, but a lot more goes unseen, such as the funeral bills for those families in need or a children's home in need of refurbishment. Yesterday Peter McDougall, who wrote three television dramas in which Connolly appeared, said: "He is the only man I have ever met who has given me a glimpse of genius. He can spot a smirk 100 yards away and fold it into a story and convey its sadness and wonder. Billy is the quintessential Glaswegian and he's been representing us faithfully for many years around the world."

Perhaps the most astute commentary on the comic's relationship with the city came from Jimmy Reid, at whose funeral Connolly spoke on Thursday. They first met when Connolly performed at a dinner for the Scottish football team in 1974. In an interview a few years ago, Reid said of his friend: "He absorbed from the old-timers the basics of the Scottish music-hall tradition, how to impersonate and capture a voice. He's actually a very traditional comic, Billy, despite the swearing. Without knowing it, he learnt a very old distinctly Glaswegian way of being funny. He imbibed it like mother's milk.

"In one sense, Billy is Glasgow. The city has changed and Billy has changed, but both have a cultural core that cannot change. It really is time the city gave him some form of tangible recognition." And yesterday they did.