Billy Connolly: 'Love letter to The Big Yin' to be staged 52 years after Edinburgh Festival Fringe debut

Comedy star Billy Connolly made a breakthrough with The Great Northern Welly Boot Show

It was the event that changed the life of a young Glasgow musician forever – thanks to a parody of the Clyde shipyards he had worked in and a scripted stand-up performance.

When folk singer Billy Connolly decided to take a stage show to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe satirising the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders “work-in”, his career as an entertainer was about to go off in a very different direction.

Now, more than half a century after he scored a festival hit with The Great Northern Welly Boot Show, the unique comedy of ‘The Big Yin’ is set to steal the limelight at the Fringe once again – thanks to a stage show paying tribute to the life and legacy of the legendary Scottish comic.

Theatremaker Gary McNair has created the stage show 'Dear Billy.' Picture: John Devlin

Days after he celebrated his 81st birthday, the National Theatre of Scotland (NTS) has revealed plans for a festival run next summer of a new stage show aimed at “celebrating The Big Yin and what he means to the people of Scotland”. Theatre maker Gary McNair has been collecting stories of Sir Billy across Scotland for several years and took an early version of his show “Dear Billy” on a mini-tour of the country earlier this year.

The first confirmed show for the 2024 Fringe, which will be in a venue NTS is keeping under wraps, will be staged after Dear Billy visits His Majesty’s Theatre in Aberdeen, Eden Court in Inverness, and the Pavilion Theatre in his home city of Glasgow.

McNair, who performs Dear Billy with two musicians, will be collecting stories and memories about Connolly during each performance of the show NTS has billed "a love letter to The Big Yin from the people of Scotland".

McNair said: “As I’ve embarked further into this project, I’ve come to realise that I, and anyone else who is lucky enough to tell stories on stage for a living, owes a huge debt of gratitude to Billy for blazing a trail as wide as the Clyde and leaving plenty of room in his wake for people to find their own voice and use it.”

Theatremaker Gary McNair has created the stage show 'Dear Billy.' Picture: Tommy Ga-Ken Wan

Connolly announced his retirement from performing live in 2018 – five years after it was revealed he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and had undergone surgery for prostate cancer. However, the comic has continued to work on his visual art, as well as books and TV shows looking back on his career.

Connolly is said to have become inspired to be a folk musician after a visit to the Fringe in the early 1960s.

After learning a banjo he bought at Glasgow’s famous Barrowland market, he began to play in folk sessions around Glasgow, and formed a duo, The Humblebums, with Tam Harvey, who they would later perform and record as a trio with Gerry Rafferty.

When The Humblebums broke up in 1971, Connolly decided to pursue a solo career and was encouraged to focus on the comedy skills he had displayed on stage between songs.

The Offshore Theatre Company, including Kenny Ireland (chorus, right), Bill Paterson (chorus, 2nd right) and Billy Connolly (in front), presented The Great Northern Welly Boot Show at the Waverley Market during the 1972 Edinburgh Festival Fringe 1972. Picture: Denis Straughan

Connolly joined forces with poet, novelist and playwright Tom Buchan to write a stage comedy for the 1972 Fringe.

The Great Northern Welly Boot Show, which Connolly also starred in with Bill Paterson, who would go on to become a leading stage and screen star, was such a success in Edinburgh that it secured an immediate transfer to the Young Vic in London.

Legend has it that Connolly’s reputation for stand-up comedy was cemented at the Fringe when he had to fill in for half an hour before one performance of The Great Northern Welly Boot Show Show – because of the wrong start time on an advert.

Producer Kenny Ireland later recalled: "That was the moment he became a star. He volunteered to go out to explain to the audience that there would be a bit of a delay and he said he'd do a wee bit of his stuff to keep things going.

Theatremaker Gary McNair has created the stage show 'Dear Billy.' Picture: John Devlin

"He'd never performed solo to an audience of more than about 80 folkies before, but he blossomed out there. By the time he came off, the place was packed with 700 people laughing at Billy – and he loved it.”