…I make no secret of my admiration of the Scottish comic genius nicknamed ‘The Big Yin’… Billy Connolly has had me convulsed with laughter so often for over 40 years… from the first appearance on the Michael Parkinson Show on a Saturday evening chat show, way back when… he came on stage in a leather suit, together with an enormous kilt sporran… he told the racy ‘somewhere-to-park-my-bike’ story… and the rest is history… his ability to take the mundane, everyday trivia that makes up our lives, and hilariously magnify bits of it, is the stuff of stage and television legend… over the years, I’ve been privileged to watch him perform in over half a dozen different countries at various stages in his peripatetic meanderings around the planet… sum’times I wonder, ‘who’s following who, here?’… he never fails to make me and whatever his audience respond to a brand of humour that’s born of the hard slums of Glasgow, honed in the pubs, clubs and cafes of the throwback ‘folk-singing groups’ of the sixties, and polished to perfection on the most prestigious international theatres… he’ll be the first to tell yeez that he’s not a ‘one-off’… in the shipyards in Docklands Govan, and the bars around Glasgow, there are hundreds of men (and women) whose wit sparkles with the mostly irreverent brand that he has made famous… now, ‘The Big Yin’ is 71 years old… I seem to have grown up with him as a constant in my own life… in Scotland… in London (first real ‘foreign’ posting for me)… in Asia… in the Middle East… I have just about every DVD of the comic tours and the superb ‘travelogues’ he’s done, which showcase not only his wit, but greatly insightful intellect… and like all the best performers, I can re-run any of his DVDs (and have done dozens of times) and still laugh as if it’s the first listening… I can only recall Peter Ustinov as another presence on live stage who so completely was able to hold an audience like that… I’m writing this coz I saw a snippet today on Facebook where he talked about his close friend, Robin Williams, not as a comic, but as a ‘pal’… and I just wonder how much guys like Billy and Robin realise that to hundreds of millions around the world they have been and are real ‘pals’… I’ll give yeez an early bit of Billy to laugh at below…see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!…
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I remember seeing him on that first Parkinson show, and I don’t think, that up to that point, I had ever laughed so much at a comedian. What is amazing about his comedy is that he swears so freely, and yet people like my mum who hate bad language, think he is brilliant. The only comedian I’ve seen to touch him recently is Peter Kay. Thanks for the clip.
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…agreed, m’Lady, Elaine… there are too few who can make us laugh so hard it almost hurts … gold dust, they are…
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Very good and delightful post. 🙂
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…thanks, Raul… I’m glad you liked it! 🙂 cheeeeeers , that man 🙂
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An absolute legend, I loved this guy from an early age, even though I can ne understand half of what he was saying 🙂 A true comic genius 🙂
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..as his career developed, he began to temper the accent a little..:)
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Yeah, probably hanging around with those yanks too much. 🙂
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Bliss!
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…he’s the best! 🙂
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Reblogged this on theowlladyblog.
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Reblogged this on MARSocial Author Business Enhancement Interviews.
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Hilarious!
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..he is ALWAYS funny … 🙂
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An undoubted genius. A comic’s comic.
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..he could make an empty house laugh! 🙂
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Except he never plays to empty houses……..
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true… always packed halls 🙂
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Lovely post Seumas. I’d like to add that it was my (English) father that introduced me to Billy at a very early age. I remember him playing Billy’s records and sitting with tears running down his cheeks and nearly choking with laughter. I must have been about six and recall not understanding the joke but laughing at the state my dad was in. Dad died when I was fifteen and of course I grew up to love Billy as much as he did. So much so, the only time I have ever been to a live show I paid a princely sum to some eBay scallywag for a front row seat. It was marvellous. I wanted to reach out, shake his hand and thank him for making my father so happy in his latter years. Love him. He is one of lifes geniuses. I am left with few memories of my father but his laughter to the point of choking at Billy is one of them. Thank you for reminding me. Xx
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,…. it’s nice that he evokes pleasantness… a truly gifted funny man ..
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