billy connolly
This piece first appeared on Robin Ince's blog. Read more posts here.
I’ve just been to a screening of Billy Connolly’s High Horse Tour Live.
Billy Connolly is back on the road, doing what he loves best - stand-up. His Parkinson’s Disease means he can no longer play the banjo, but despite ill health he has clung on to that most precious of faculties – a sense of humour.
Age is not a factor when it comes to laughter. We can continue to choose to laugh till the end. And if we have the ability to make people laugh, age cannot take that away from us either.
Billy Connolly’s two-part series on the way we treat death was a strangely moving affair. Not because he was meeting bereaved and dying people from around the world, but because Connolly himself looked so frail at times. Connolly opened the series by explaining that in the same week he was told, among other things, that he had Parkinson's disease and prostate cancer. He was also given a hearing aid.
Update 18/9/13 – After this piece about comedians discussing their prostates appeared I received some interesting feedback. I was advised by one reader that I should go back to my doctor and insist on an examination or change doctors. Or maybe I should take the approach of comedian Bob Slayer (pictured below), who ran Heroes @ The Fringe in Edinburgh this summer and has reminded me of a story he told in his act, as follows:
Update - Re below, Kay's book is out now and he plays the Soho Theatre on 18 & 19 Oct. Details here.
According to news reports Billy Connolly was particularly outspoken at a recent gig in Ireland. During his show in Killarney on Thursday night the Big Yin apparently swore at photographer Valerie O'Sullivan because she was in his eyeline. O'Sullivan was the official photographer at the INEC venue and according to reports, after saying "get the fuck out of here" Connolly then called her, pardon my language, a "fucking cunt".
Pages
Zircon - This is a contributing Drupal Theme
Design by
WeebPal.
