Billy Connolly
Billy Connolly
William "Billy" Connolly, CBEis a Scottish comedian, musician, presenter and actor. He is sometimes known, especially in his native Scotland, by the nickname "The Big Yin". His first trade, in the early 1960s, was as a welderin the Glasgow shipyards, but he gave it up towards the end of the decade to pursue a career as a folk singer, firstly in the Humblebums alongside friend Gerry Rafferty until 1971, and subsequently as a solo artist. In the early 1970s, he...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionMovie Actor
Date of Birth24 November 1942
CityAnderston, Scotland
There's nothing like it, but it's not as good as you think it's going to be. . . . I was disappointed because there are records of people finding things that have been there for years. I was hoping for a shirt button, or my club's badge - but not a sausage.
Well, the film's not only pricking the pomposity of the Church, it's pricking the pomposity, and sometimes you would think fraudulence, of the insurance companies. I had never read anything like this until I was doing the film, but Mark [Joffe, the director] and people showed me stuff where, like a flood, it mattered where the water came from. If you're flooded from above, you get the money; if you're flooded from below, you don't. What's that about?
I think my securities far outweigh my insecurities. I am not nearly as afraid of myself and my imagination as I used to be.
I have been made redundant before and it is a terrible blow; redundant is a rotten word because it makes you think you are useless.
I am totally, absolutely romantic. When I broke up with a girl I would listen to the most heart-breaking music and make it worse. That's what girls do. I think I am a girl really.
The world needs more Edwin Morgans, people who can take the language and swing it round their heads and don't care what you think.
Ally MacLeod thinks that tactics are a new kind of mint.
I'm a citizen of the world. I like it that way. The world's a wonderful. I just think that some people are pretty badly represented. But when you speak to the people themselves they're delightful. They all want so little.
I think of my life as a series of moments and I've found that the great moments often don't have too much to them. They're not huge, complicated events; they're just magical wee moments when somebody says 'I love you' or 'You're a really good at what you do' or simply 'You're a good person'.
Who discovered we could get milk from cows, and what did he THINK he was doing at the time?
I think age is terribly overrated. You're okay as long as you don't grow up. By all means grow old, but don't mature. Remain childlike, retain wonder, the ability to be flabbergasted by something.
I've always liked it here. Part of me is Irish. . . . My family comes from the west coast, so whenever I come to Ireland I get a wee tingling in my heart that I'm where I belong.
Roses are red, Violets are blue, I'm a schizophrenic, and so am I.
For years I thought the club's name was Partick Thistle Nil.