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
I set out to be a cross between Lenny Bruce and Robert the Bruce - my main thrust was the body and its functions and malfunctions - the absurdity of the thing.
I decided to stop drinking while it was still my idea.
,000 people in Hampden Park. Of course they're all Scottish. Because no one else goes there. The English have an unwritten rule: they only go to places they might get back from.
Politically correct is the language of cowardice.
Outgrew the media... The negativity felt like a disease.
I'd never consciously left home to see a zombie movie. They were fine by me, but I had no intention of ever being in one. But I've been learning more about it as I've been doing interviews. I didn't even know there were specialist zombie magazines and clubs. I heard the other day that a radio station had asked people if they`d made preparations for an attack by zombies, and a staggering number of people replied yes!
If you haven't heard a good rumour by 11:00am, start one.
The religion in Scotland is one of the most patronising things... after the weather.
Without arts programmes there's only reality TV, and reality TV needs the arts to show it what reality is.
I became a welder. I was actually becoming an Engineer and I joined the wrong queue. And so I became a welder, without knowing what a welder was.
I'm a big fan of the Mars Bar Diet. You don't eat the Mars bar, you stick it up your arse and let a rottweiler chase you home.
Don't work out, work in.
Learn to feel sorry for music because, although it is the international language, it has no swear words.
Chic Murray once told me he fell in the street, and a woman said to him, Did you fall? He said, No, I'm tryin' to break a bar of chocolate in my back pocket.