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Billy Connolly: Ten great routines

As the comic announces his retirement from touring

As Sir Billy Connolly announces his retirement from touring , here are ten of his all-time greatest routines, as arbitrarily decided by us…

1. The Last Supper/Crucifixion, 1972

His first fully-fledged comedy routine started as some banter between folk songs but span out into a full 20-minute routine, based around the idea that Jesus hadn’t really been born in Galilee but in Gallowgate in Glasgow, and that the Last Supper had been a drunken night out in Connolly’s local, the Saracen’s Head.

In his most recent book, Made In Scotland, Sir Billy wrote: ‘It got me noticed. People sarted talking about it and came from miles away to see me do it. It became hugely popular and came to define me… That was the first huge break for me.’

Although Connolly was little-known outside his home town, a producer called Nat Joseph committed a couple of his gigs to vinyl, even if the recording standards were very low-fi. The second, recorded at a small venue, The Tudor Hotel in Airdrie, contained this routine, and became an instant cult… at least for those who could understand the comic’s strong accent.

2. On Parkinson in 1975

The appearance that propelled Connolly into the national consciousness. In 1975, Michael Parkinson was visiting Glasgow and the taxi driver started waxing lyrical about the local comedian, even stopping at a record shop to buy one of his albums to present to the chat show host.

When he played it, he liked it so much he invited Connolly on to his show, which drew audiences of 10million. The comic’s manager had cautioned: ‘Whatever you do, don’t tell him the joke about the dead wife!’

But his appearance was going so well he couldn’t stop himself.

As the credits rolled, Parky told his guest: ‘You did yourself some good there’… and indeed the gag took the country by storm, and the Big Yin could find himself playing some bigger venues.

3. Jojoba, 1985

His pronunciation of the shampoo ingredient – ‘in Glasgow that was the month before November’ – as well as his incredulity at the complexity of hair care products makes this a a quintessential Connolly routine. He’s performed it on TV a few times, but it got its first outing in his Wreck On Tour show, released as an LP in 1985.

4. Incontinence Pants, 1985

From the same era, Connolly’s Audience With… collected some of his greatest hits, performed in front of a star-studded audience for ITV. It’s Connolly at his prime.

5. Comic Relief, 1986

The Big Yin performed stand-up on the very first Comic Relief, at London’s Shaftesbury Theatre. He delivered a routine about his travels to Australia and Barbados – and the dangerous animals he encountered – as well as the ‘jojoba’ routine.

Connolly maintained a long association with the charity – including streaking around London's Piccadilly Circus for Red Nose Day 2001.

6. Billy and Albert, 1987

Connolly completed his first world tour in 1987, including six nights at the Royal Albert Hall in London, which was recorded and released as the bestselling video Billy and Albert.

7. Billy Connolly Live, 1994

The 1994 recording Billy Connolly Live – recorded during his 20 nights at the Hammersmith Apollo – was the best-selling comedy VHS tape of that year.

Here he talks about the difference between men and women, showing that there may be hack subjects, but it’s what you do with them that counts:

8. Farting, 1998

As Michael Parkinson was quick to realise, Billy Connolly made the perfect chat show guest. In this episode of the Late Late Show with Tom Snyder from 1998, he speaks about the delights of breaking wind, starting with stories from the set of The Impostors, which was released that year:

9. Terrorism 2007

The terror attack on Glasgow airport – and the baggage handler who took matters into his own hands to try to thwart it – was the perfect grist for Connolly’s comic mill. A couple of years earlier, Connolly had been booed over an ill-judged sick joke he made over hostage Ken Bigley, soon before he was killed in Iraq, for which he was roasted in the press. Some commentators suggested it was the end of the comic’s career. His subsequent work proved it wasn’t…

10. Billy Connolly ’s Sausage 2012

Appearing on Graham Norton’s show, the Big Yin shares one of his favourite stories.

Published: 3 Dec 2018

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The Big Spin: Billy Connolly and the art of adaptation

In comedy, imitation is rightly frowned upon, but adaptation is a seriously under-appreciated art. Imitation is usually equated with laziness, inauthenticity and, indeed, thievery; all one is doing is exploiting someone else's creativity. Adaptation, on the other hand, is quite another matter; it is not only creative in itself, but also a mark of the impact of character upon content.

There is certainly nothing appealing about joke-stealing. The joke thieves are the kind of people whom the philosopher Francis Bacon once likened to ants, because 'they only collect and use'. What they do is unoriginal and dishonest, because they simply repeat what someone else has written or said.

The adaptors, on the other hand, are the sort of people Bacon likened to bees, because the bee 'gathers its material from the flowers of the garden and of the field, but transforms and digests it by a power of its own'. What they do, in the comic world, is take an existing idea, or even a whole routine, and invest so much of their own wit, vision and personality into it that it becomes something that, while still bearing a family resemblance, is now significantly different from the original source material.

This is what tends to be obscured by the understandable anger about the joke thieves. The focus on their blatant borrowings (or, as some stand-ups call it, 'hooverings') has the unfortunate consequence of suggesting that all comedians are either entirely original or unoriginal, purely authors or imitators. The reality, however, is that very little, if anything, which emerges into the comic world is genuinely sui generis, and what passes as new and original is actually, to varying degrees, a fresh take on an existing idea.

What we need to do, therefore, is to stop being quite so obsessed with those who adapt material really badly and brazenly, and start being more appreciative of those who do it really well.

This has long been a common attitude in other branches of the arts. In opera, for example, Mozart, according to recent research, borrowed fairly heavily from The Beneficent Dervish - composed by several players from his inner circle - when he wrote The Magic Flute , while Puccini's Turandot owed its story to the romantic epic Haft Peykar ('Seven Beauties') by the 12th-Century Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi; and, in drama, George Bernard Shaw drew on Tobias Smollett's 1751 novel The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle when writing Pygmalion in 1913 , which was in turn quite brilliantly re-imagined by Garson Kanin for his 1946 play Born Yesterday , and Shakespeare, of course, borrowed freely from the likes of Chaucer, Sir Philip Sidney and Plautus.

The same process of adaptation has long been evident in popular culture. John Lennon , for example, famously used a 19th-Century poster for Pablo Fanque's Circus, purchased from an antiques shop in Sevenoaks, to create the 1967 song Being For the Benefit of Mr Kite! ('Everything from the song is from that poster,' he later admitted, 'except the horse wasn't called Henry'). He also, two years later, reversed the arpeggios of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata to serve as the basis for the comparably compelling Because .

Similarly, though not quite as exhaustively, George Lucas drew heavily on Akira Kurosawa's 1958 film The Hidden Fortress when making Star Wars in 1977 , while Christopher Guest followed the formula of Albert Brooks's 1979 movie Real Life when starting his own series of so-called 'mockumentaries'. In yet another medium in 2008 , the American street artist Shepard Fairey used Mannie Garcia's photograph of Barack Obama for his stencilled 'Hope' version, which became an iconic contribution of that year's US election campaign.

Whether or not one agrees with Oscar Wilde 's contentious qualification - 'Talent borrows, genus steals' - the influences inherent in our inventions have grown increasingly apparent in recent decades. Television has been eating and regurgitating itself for ages, music is sampling its past to the point of self-parody, and in Hollywood it's now Groundhog Day even for Groundhog Day .

This brings us back to comedy. Thanks to the unprecedented amount of old comic material in easy access via the Internet - the audio, the video, the transcripts and the quotes - it's never been harder not to be influenced subliminally, let alone consciously, by existing ideas, themes and routines. The very evanescence of the experience - a quick glance at a tweet, for example, followed by another unrelated distraction - means that, although it is simpler than ever to search for the original authorship of something, there is less inclination to bother.

That is why, for example, the shamelessly lazy shoehorning-in of a very old joke about Diana Dors (the mayor of her home town, being so anxious not to mispronounce her real surname of Fluck, ends up introducing her as 'Diana Clunt') in 2019 on the first episode of This Time With Alan Partridge ('And here's Alice Clunt'. 'It's Alice Fluck, actually'. 'Ah yes, I see what I've done'), was greeted by many on social media, and in newspapers, as if an ingenious new gag had just been heard.

The provenance, though never irrelevant, arguably matters rather less, however, when the appropriation leads to the genuine craft of adaptation. Some performers do not just lift material; they liberate it from a lesser form.

A case in point is Sir Billy Connolly . It was while I was 'ghost-editing' (or, as I believe the more fashionable phrase now puts it, 'ghost-curating') his recent collection of comic material, Tall Tales And Wee Stories , that I became aware of just how well-evolved his skills of adaptation had become over the course of his long career. It is, indeed, hard to think of anyone better at planting a personal flag in someone else's material ('Connollising'?) and gradually cultivating it into something fresh and fertile.

In the early days of his career, there was indeed a fairly 'normal' amount of basic 'hoovering' going on, as he looked for ideas from practically anywhere and everywhere. In his first TV special in 1976 , for example, there was a veritable procession of very old club gags parroted for public approval (e.g. straight repeats: 'There was this Irish guy who bought two hundred acres of land - the tide was oot'; and slight revisions: 'What about the two Laplanders doing the crossword? One says to the other, "Oh, Michael, I've got a hard one here". He says, "What's that?" He says, "It's got four letters, and old MacDonald had one". He says. "I've got it - it's a farm!" The other one says, "Ah, yes, of course". He says, "How do you spell that?" The other one says, "I think it's e-i-e-i-o"').

By his own admission, he also took a joke from a musician friend of his called Tam Quinn ('Jesus's apostles were eating a Chinese takeaway when Jesus came in. Jesus asked them, "Where did you get that?" and they said, "Oh, Judas bought it. He seems to have come into some money"'), told it that night during his set, and immediately got a positive reception. In the next few months, as a consequence, he would build on it until it became his early classic, the 'Crucifixion' routine.

Even his celebrated breakthrough gag on Parkinson , in 1975 , about the half-buried bum that served as a parking space for a bike, had been in circulation for ages up and down the northern pubs and clubs. His distinctiveness in using it there was simply in being the first one to believe, unlike so many other comics of the time, that he could get away with telling it on a mainstream TV show.

Even later on in his career, there would still be the odd act of somewhat crude appropriation, such as the line that was 'borrowed' from the 1976 TV special, The Barry Humphries Show , which featured Edna Everage in Stratford-upon-Avon (spying a passing Morris Traveller, the housewife but not quite yet a superstar exclaimed, 'Oh, look, there's a little half-timbered car. I love those, I call them Tudor cars!'); this turned up again in a fine 1991 Billy Connolly routine about Scottish women and scones ('They've all got Morris Minor Travellers, with the wood - it's a sort of Tudor estate car!'). He also clearly leaned quite heavily on Richard Pryor 's material from the late 1970s when developing his 'Shouting at Wildebeest' routine a couple of decades later; he was indebted to George Carlin's material in the 1996 show Back In Town , from which he picked and mixed to develop his own variations on the dangers of 'beigism'; and dipped into Dave Allen 's later riffs on language, commercialism and the nature of ageing to engage with the same range of themes.

Most of the time, however, as a mature comic performer, he could reformulate a specific joke or story, reanimate it from within, and the 'Connollisation' would be complete. Take, for example, the very basic joke that, of all people, Bernard Manning had been telling since (at least) the late 1960s:

A Jewish fella is on his death bed, and he says to his wife, 'Are you there, Becky?' She says, 'I'm here, Hymie'. He says, 'When I came home from the war in 1918 wounded, Becky, you were by my side. I entered the concentration camp in 1933 ,' he says, 'Becky, you were by my side. I opened that little shop just after the war and I went bankrupt, didn't have two shillings to call my own,' he says, 'and you were by my side. I'm dying now, and you're still by my side. Becky,' he says, 'you're a jinx!'

In the early 1980s, Sir Billy 'revived' it, but also adapted it, to turn it into this routine:

I like older people, you know? Even since I was a wee boy I've liked them. They used to play dominoes in a little park near me, in a wee shed, and I used to go and talk to the old guys. And it's a love that has never really left me. And I remember hearing an old guy in Glasgow, arguing with his wife. And it stays with me to this day. He said, 'Hey, Agnes'. She goes, 'What?' 'When were we married? What year was it when we were married?' ' 1911 '. ' 1911 ? Fucking hell... 1911 ...That was only three years before the fuckin' war came. Aye. We had three bairns. I went away and fought in the war, didn't I? Away fighting in a place I couldnae even fuckin' spell. And there was nights I was a frightened person. But you know what got me through it, Agnes? I knew you were by my side, every step of the way.

1918 they let us oot. Couldnae get a job. Fuckin' unemployed. As we marched proudly intae the Twenties, and the National Strike. I didnae go on strike myself. I was fuckin' unemployed at the time. It wasnae easy. But I got by, with you by my side, every step of the way. Standing by my side.

Intae the Hungry Thirties we went. We managed to get through the Depression without eatin' any of the children. As we proudly marched toward 1939 and another war. They gave me a steel helmet and a big stick and told me to keep the Germans out of Sauchiehall Street. Which I did to the best of my ability. 'Cause I knew that you were beside me, every step of the way.

1945 , they let us oot and I couldnae get a fuckin' job. They said I was too old. Struggled forward for five years, got the pension. We soon tired of the Caribbean holidays and the mad parties. Settled down to a life of starvation with occasional trips to hypothermia. Aye. And you by my side, every step of the way.

And here we are. What are we?...Nineteen-fuckin'-eighty-seven! My God. We're in the middle of a recession, whatever that might be. Feels like a depression to me. It might be a typin' error, y'know what I mean? And you're still beside me, every step of the way.

D'you know, Agnes, I was thinkin'... You're a fuckin' jinx !'

Another unlikely influence was an anecdote - probably apocryphal - much-used by British comics, often on chat shows from the 1990s onwards, about Freddie Starr . The standard version was as follows:

One of the funniest stories I heard about Freddie Starr was when he was living in this huge old mansion in Berkshire, on his own, between wives. He'd get really bored, so he would go outside and hang around on this quiet little country lane near his house and wave down random motorists and say, 'Can you give me a hand, please - I need a push'. They'd recognise him, of course, and so they'd get out and follow him as he walked off at a brisk pace, through the gates, past the front of the house, past the garage, and round the back to the garden - and then he'd get on a swing!

Sir Billy developed this into a 2010 routine called (informally) 'The Push':

There's a couple, in bed, in their house. The rain is lashing doon. It's half past three in the mornin', four o'clock in the mornin'. The rain is lashing against the house, the thunder is crashing, the lightning is flashing. All the ashes are happening: crash, flash, lash. And the man is lyin' beside his wife, and he's feeling very comfortable. They've got the duvet, they're lyin' there, comfortable, oooohh, happy-happy. The comfort you get when there's a storm outside the house and you're inside: ooooh, happy-happy.

Suddenly, there's a thunderous knock on the door.

THUD! THUD! THUD! [Muffled sounds of someone shouting] 'Who the fuck...?' 'Shhhhh, just keep quiet, they'll go away eventually.' THUD! THUD! THUD! [Louder muffled sounds of someone shouting] 'Fuck, I'm not opening the door to that crazy bastar...' The guy's wife says, 'You'd better open the door. It might be the police...it might be some tragic news...It might be something awful has happened that we should know about. It sounds really urgent.' 'Oh, fer fuck's sake!' So he gets up. Puts on his jeans, his t-shirt, his slippers. And he goes doon, opens up the door: [Storm sounds:] Whhhhooooosshhhhkkkkkk!!! There's a guy standin' there. Sodden from head to foot. Soakin' wet. 'Oh man - you gotta help me! I'm SO stuck! I really need a push! You gotta help me, man, I'm really, really stuck!!' 'You fuckin' tell the RAC! Get hold of the fuckin' AA! FUCK OFF!!!' SLAM! 'Stuck? Fuckin' stuck???' He goes back up to bed. His wife says, 'Who was it?' 'Just some prick who was stuck, says he needs a push! I told him to phone the RAC or AA.' 'Oh, for God's sake, you didn't?' 'Course I fuckin' did!' 'Oh, for God's sake! You've got a short memory!' 'What?' 'Don't you remember just last summer? When we were on holiday? We were stuck on the motorway with a puncture? A total stranger in a rainstorm stopped, and fixed our puncture, and sent us on our way! We don't even remember his name! Now it's our duty to pass that on! It's your spiritual duty as a human being and as a humanitarian act to pass that along! For God's sake!' 'Oh, for fffffffffuck's sake...Okay...' Gets out of bed, gets into his jeans, puts his t-shirt on, his slippers. Away doon stairs. Opens the door. WHHHHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSSHHHHKKKKKK!!! And the guy's not there anymore. 'WHERE ARE YA?...WHERE THE FUCK ARE YA?? THE GUY WHO'S STUCK AND NEEDS A PUSH? WHERE ARE YA???' 'I'm over here - on the swing!'

Such comparisons as these do not merely highlight the structural simplicity of the essential gags but, more importantly, illustrate just how thoroughly, imaginatively and intimately Connolly could create something significantly richer, more distinct and superior (what the critic Walter Benjamin called 'narrative amplitude'), not only in his own voice but also via his own inimitable comic vision.

The Starr and Manning manipulations, however, were relatively modest by Sir Billy's high standards. There are other instances of adoption and adaptation that really show the full extent of his ability to take a common seed and grow something that feels unique.

In 1970 , for example, Peter Sellers told a short comic story - which he attributed to Michael Caine but had in fact already been in circulation for several years - about alcohol and the Pope:

There are a lot of Italian restaurants in London. You know Mario and Franco's? They've got a chain of restaurants in London. And a Cockney went in there one night. And this guy sat down, and he said, 'Oi, Franco: vieni qui'. So Franco came up and he said, 'Yes, what-a would you like?' He says, 'I want a large plate of spaghetti vongole, and a large double Scotch, right?' And Franco said, 'Look, I'm sorry, I got no dispensation for the Scotch whisky, I'm sorry. We've only got here the vino. You can only have the vino. If you want the vino, it s'aright, but I got no possibility for the Scotch whisky, I'm sorry.'

So the guy said, 'Nah, listen: I can't drink that stuff. I can't drink wine, see? An' the reason I can't drink it, I'll tell ya. It's a bit delicate, only that, well, see, I'm goin' out with this bird, an' if I'm on the Scotch, well, it makes me nice an' lively all night, an' if I'm on the vino it's, er, all dahn to larkin, innit? I mean, you know, nuffin' 'appens.' So Franco says, 'Well, I'm sorry, sir, it's-a not possible for me, no, I can't do it, I'd do it if it was possible but I can't. Look, if you don't like this vino you don't pay for it - I can't say more.' He says, 'All right, then, I'll have it, I'll have it.'

So he tries this wine. He's had two glasses and it's knocked him sideways. He's very, very, sloshed, you know? He says, 'Oi, 'ere, Franco: vieni qui. What was in that stuff? What was in that, what was in that wine?' He said, 'Look, I'll tell you somethin' that nobody knows. Shut the windows and the doors, and I'll tell you somethin'. Not nobody knows this thing what I'm going to tell you now: the Pope drinks due bottles of this same wine every day from his life.' The guy says, 'The Pope what ??' He says, 'The Pope drinks due bottiglie - two bottles - of this same vino every day from his life.'

He says, 'No wonder he's got them four fellas carryin' him around then!'

The Sellers version was very much like all of the previous, very basic, versions, except that he tweaked it superficially to suit his distinctive gift for comic accents. As a brilliant interpreter of other people's scripts, it was typically well-judged in its self-limitation, and added just enough charm to work as a revision that was worthwhile.

The Sellers version, however, soon faded from most people's memory, to the extent that when Sir Billy seized on the source later on in the same decade, he stamped his own signature so surely on to the material that it struck the majority of his audience as a completely new routine:

This wee thing is about two Glasgow guys who went on holiday to Rome. These two guys were in Rome, and they were going around, being tourists, looking up at all the famous sights: 'Aye, look at that, that's fantastic . . . Look at that an' all, fantastic, I'm intae that . . . I wonder who papered that ceiling, that's fantastic . . .' And the sun was belting down on them: 'Hey, the sun's beltin' doon on me!' 'Aye, we should go an' get a bevvy.' 'Right.'

So, they shot into a wee bar in Rome. And they go right up to the bar and say, 'Hey, Jimmy, give us two pints of heavy.' And the barman says, 'What?' In Italian, like. And they go, 'Two pints of heavy - are you deef or somethin'?' The barman says, 'Look, we don't have "heavy" in Rome. We've got all sorts of clever things, but we don't have heavy. But look,' and he's pointing at all the different bottles, 'you're welcome to anything you see here . . .'

So, they're looking suspiciously at all these unfamiliar drinks. 'Ah, I don't know about any of these things . . . Hey, tell you what - what does the Pope drink?' The guy says, 'Oh, crème de menthe. I've heard he likes a wee glass of crème de menthe every now and again.' 'Give us two pints of THAT, then!'

Their two green pints duly arrive. And they look at the drink for a moment, a bit unsure about it, and then nod at each other. 'Aw, if it's good enough for the Big Yin, it's good enough for me, okay . . .' They pour the whole glass straight down their throats. 'Nae bad - it's like drinkin' Polo mints, in't it?' 'When in Rome, eh? D'you get it? When in Rome and that!' They lick their lips and turn back to the barman: 'Give us another two, there you go! And they're at it all night. Nothing but green pints.

They wake up in the morning. They're in a crumpled heap in a shop doorway. Their suits are all creased and ruffled up and they've peed their trousers and been sick down their jackets. They've been shouting and hugh-ing all night. HEUEGH! And occasionally calling for Ralf: RALF! Hughie and Ralph. HEUUEEGGHH!!! RAAAALFFF!!! And it's green. Green Hughie. Hughie Green ?

I'll tell you what, though - just to digress - talking about being sick. How come - this is a great dilemma - how come every time you're sick there's diced carrots in it? How come? Because I have never eaten diced carrots in my life! You can have lamb madras, a few bevvies, and HUUGHHIE!!! Diced carrots. RAAAALFFF!!! More diced carrots. Every time. And sometimes tomato skins as well, even though I don't eat bloody tomato skins! How come? Now my personal theory is that there's a pervert somewhere, with pockets full of diced carrots, following drunk guys.

But back to Rome. Back in Rome these two guys are waking up in the morning. They're rubbing their faces slowly, rubbing their weary eyes. 'Christ Almighty! . . . Ooohhhhh, ma heid! . . . I think I'm wearin' an internal balaclava!' One of them starts rubbing his body. 'Christ Almighty . . . Oohhh, ma body's so sore . . . AAGGHH! I CANNAE FEEL MA LEG!' 'That's MA leg, ya bampot!' 'Oh, thank Christ for that! Jeez, what a fright I got there!' He looks over at his friend. 'How are you?' 'To tell you the truth . . . I feel kind of funny. I think I've had a tongue transplant. This one doesnae seem to fit.'

'Christ . . . and they say the Pope drinks that stuff?'

'Aye. Nae wonder they have to carry him about on a chair, eh?'

That is the kind of adaptation to admire. The comparison reveals the inventiveness of the adaptor rather than merely, or mainly, his initial source material.

It takes the same basic set-up, and the same basic pay-off, that Sellers himself had borrowed, but, once deconstructed and reconstructed, it reappears bearing the syntax, the structure and the soul of Sir Billy Connolly . It is, as always, not the comic material that is unique, but rather the comic spirit that lives and breathes and plays around within it.

Knowing about such adaptations, therefore, far from diminishing one's respect and admiration for this remarkable performer - this most busy of Baconian bees - surely ought to increase it, because the insight allows us to appreciate more fully the exceptional cleverness of his craft. The same basic stories can pass out of the mouths of many different storytellers before finding the one with the magic to make them really come alive and remain in the mind. No one, in British comedy, has been a better teller, and re-teller, of tales than Sir Billy Connolly .

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Billy Connolly - Tall Tales And Wee Stories

"Coming from Glasgow, it's weird, I don't really tell jokes, like Irish jokes and all that. I tell wee stories. And some of them don't even have punchlines. But you'll get used to it as the night goes on, and on, and on, and on and on..."

In December 2018 , after 50-years of belly-laughs, energy, outrage and enjoyment, Billy Connolly announced his retirement from stand-up comedy. It had been an extraordinary career.

When he first started out in the late Sixties, Billy played the banjo in the folk clubs of Glasgow. Between songs, he would improvise a bit, telling anecdotes from the Clyde shipyard where he worked. In the process, he made all kinds of discoveries about what audiences found funny, from his own exaggerated body movements to the power of speaking explicitly about sex. He began to understand the craft of great storytelling too. Soon the songs became shorter and the monologues longer, and Billy quickly became recognised as one of the most exciting comedians of his generation.

Billy's routines always felt spontaneous. He improvised, embellished and digressed as he went: a two-minute anecdote could become a 20-minute routine by the next night of a tour. And he brought a beautiful sense of the absurd to his shows as he riffed on holidays, alcohol, the crucifixion, or naked bungee jumping.

But Billy's comedy could be laced with anger too. He hated pretentiousness and called out hypocrisy where ever he saw it. He loved to shock, and his startling appearance gave him license to say anything he damn well pleased about sex, politics or religion. It was only because he was so likeable that he got it away. Billy had the popular touch. His comedy spanned generations and different social tribes in a way that few others have ever managed.

Tall Tales And Wee Stories brings together the very best of Billy's storytelling for the first time and includes his most famous routines including, The Last Supper, Jojoba Shampoo, Incontinence Pants and Shouting at Wildebeest. With an introduction and original illustrations by Billy throughout, it is an inspirational, energetic and riotously funny read, and a fitting celebration of our greatest ever comedian.

First published: Thursday 17th October 2019

• Buy at Amazon
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• Publisher: Two Roads
• Minutes: 336
• Catalogue: 9781529361339

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• Published: Thursday 17th September 2020
• Catalogue: 9781529361360
• Download: 2.62mb

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Billy Connolly: Made in Scotland – what to expect and when it’s on BBC Two tonight

The scottish comedian looks back on his career and life with this two-part documentary showing off his beloved scotland.

When Billy Connolly first burst on to the comedy scene in 1973, Baptist Church leaders said that his now legendary Last Supper sketch was “blasphemous” and that he would “sent to hell.”

Now, 45 years later, he’s still standing, and is one of the nation’s most-loved comedians.

Read more Billy Connolly on why he’s retired from touring

The Scottish star, 76, is revisiting his past with a two-part documentary for the BBC – here’s your need to know:

When is it on TV?

Billy Connolly: Made in Scotland began on BBC Two on Friday 28 December, and concludes with the second part at 9.00pm tonight.

What happens on the show?

Connolly returns to his birthplace – he currently lives in Florida – to recount his life story that took him from Glaswegian welder to world-class comedian.

The programme features interviews with the star known as The Big Yin, as well as other big names in the world of comedy, such as Eddie Izzard and Tracey Ullman, who talk about Connolly’s enduring appeal. There are also vintage clips of him in action, both on screen and on stage.

The show also features a look back at Scotland of yore – and includes an anecdote from Connolly where he finds out knitted woolly swimming trunks were not a figment of his imagination.

Why did he first get into comedy?

He says on the documentary: “Mothers-in-law were considered funny and I never held with that, I wanted to go somewhere else with it.”

Why is he called the Big Yin?

Connolly’s nickname  The Big Yin  was first used during his teenage years to differentiate between himself and his father. He said previously: “My father was a very strong man. Broad and strong. He had an 18½-inch neck collar. Huge, like a bull. He was ‘Big Billy’ and I was ‘Wee Billy.’ And then I got bigger than him, and the whole thing got out of control.

“And then I became  The Big Yin  in Scotland. So, we’d go into the pub and someone would say, ‘Billy Connolly was in.’ ‘Oh? Big Billy or Wee Billy?’ ‘The Big Yin.’ ‘Oh, Wee Billy.’ If you were a stranger, you’d think, ‘What are these people talking about?'”

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The Billy Connelly Business Plan. Improved Performance. Return on Capital Employed. FLEXIBILITY. Merger Tax Credits. Revenue. Divestments. Net Cash Flow. SENSE OF URGENCY. Operating Costs. Personnel Reductions. Net Income.

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How to write stand up comedy

By BBC Maestro

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Are you thinking about making the step into stand-up? As every pro knows, there’s hours and hours of research and writing behind even a three-minute open mic set. 

If you’ve always been the joker in your pack of friends, the move into performing for a larger crowd may seem obvious – but do you know how to take your natural sense of humour and turn it into a complete and professional stand-up set? In this article, we take a closer look at how to write a stand-up routine.

What is stand-up comedy?

The components of a stand-up set, what’s the difference between stand-up and improv, how to write stand-up comedy in 7 steps, tips for new stand-up writers.

Stand-up comedy is a live performance by a comedian, who delivers a prepared routine that hopefully will make their audience laugh. There can be elements of improv; however, a professional stand-up set will have hours of preparation behind it.

The term “stand-up” originates in America, Sir Billy Connolly tells viewers in his BBC Maestro course. In Britain, he explains, these performers originally worked in variety theatre where they were called “front of cloth comedians”. This was because their role was to entertain the audience while set changes went on behind the stage curtains (behind him is a sea of moving furniture).

Before this, stage comedy has been largely slapstick with a lot of physical humour: the front of cloth performer simply didn’t have the space. Like today, routines were made up from a series of jokes and were often anecdotal. Variety theatre (vaudeville in the US) no longer exists; however, the new type of comedy it created remains, in the figure of the solo comedian, entertaining their audience with usually nothing but their words.

It can feel like a daunting place to stand. As Billy puts it – “Standing up on stage is the best laxative known to man.”

So, what gives a comedian confidence? It’s all about knowing that you have well-written comedy material behind you.

A stand-up set has a pretty tight structure, however anarchic or entertainingly rambling the material might seem. This makes your job as a stand-up writer easier as you have a framework to work with. What are the components of a typical stand-up comedy set?

The set is the whole performance. This can be a quick slot at an open mic night or a three-hour production in a stadium – the term is the same. Within the sets are routines, and within these routines are a series of jokes. If you look at one of Sir Billy’s famous long routines, like Incontinence Pants, you’ll notice that there are plenty of gags within the routine before you arrive at the memorable punchline.

When you’re putting together your stand-up routine’s script, this is how you structure your set:

1. The opening

What’s your killer opening? How are you going to get your new audience on side? Billy Connolly recounts the time he almost gave a new promoter a nervous breakdown, by musing “What’s my opening going to be?” in the taxi on the way to the actual gig. You can get away with this when you have decades of experience, but for now, you’ll feel a lot more confident if you have something prepared.

2. The routines

This is the substance of your set. For a five-minute set, plan to have two or three different ‘chunks’, made up from clusters of jokes. In comedy, these are often called “bits”.

3. The bits

These are the funny bits, and hopefully you’ve got lots of hilarious original material just waiting to be captured and delivered.

4. The transitions

Don’t forget these, or your routine will sound a bit clunky and won’t flow. Transitions are how you move between the jokes. Unless you’re Milton Jones, your set probably isn’t a long stream of quick-fire one-liners, so you need some neat ways to join together your jokes.

5. The closer

How do you finish your set? Wrap up with a joke that leaves your audience laughing, and they’ll remember you. Ideally, your final joke can be a callback from earlier, or you could bookend your set by returning to your original joke. Billy comments, “there are many ways to end shows. Sometimes it’s just to get off when they tell you to.”

A stand-up comedian works to a pre-scripted set, while an improv performer has to deliver their routine with little or no preparation. However, there are overlaps, with a stand-up frequently having to improvise during their set and a skilled improviser knowing what background material they can draw on.

Do you need to build in spaces for improvisation when you’re writing your stand-up set? More experienced stand-ups are comfortable with what’s called ‘crowd work’, which includes audience interaction, and naturally leads to tangents and off-the-cuff material. Some of these riffs will become part of the act for future performances.

Be prepared to adapt your stand-up script. A touring comedian will often prepare what’s called a “local”, which is a joke written especially for that venue. “I would always recommend that you start with something they can identify with”, says Billy Connolly. “But it’s not always that easy”.

Billy finds that one way to incorporate local material into his set is to walk around the town you’re performing in that evening. He’d simply people-watch and note what they were doing, so he’d have some idea of the audience.

That opening joke that Billy Connolly muses about in the back of the taxi? He was in Australia, and by the time he stepped out on stage, he’d come up with the “Blue-ringed octopus”. This then flowed into a routine about Australia’s many poisonous creatures – a particularly OTT variant on the “local” theme.

The easiest way to write stand-up comedy is to break it down into logical steps. The first time you stand up on that platform, you’ll thank yourself for all the meticulous work and preparation.

1. Learn from the best

Watch other stand-up comedians and go to comedy gigs if you can. Who do you admire? Does Jerry Seinfeld, Jack Dee or Sarah Millican feel like the best fit for your humour?  Catch up with episodes of Live At The Apollo for a good cross-section of stand-up (here’s an engaging clip from an Eddie Izzard set, about dressage). Just remember, you’re after inspiration, not specific jokes.

2. Collect comedy material

Feeling inspired? Start gathering your own material. Keep a comedy journal for a week or two, where you note down everything that could potentially be funny. “Comedians just rejoice in life and make fun from nothing”, says Billy Connolly. “When you consider some of the jokes you’ve told in your life, about cows and mean work and golfers, everybody’s funny. Every situation is funny.”

3. Write every day

Be disciplined and aim to create at least one joke every day. Treat each joke like a mini narrative with a beginning, middle and end. The important parts of the joke are the set-up and the punchline, and the latter needs to subvert the former. It can be easier to start with the punchline and work backwards to craft the perfect set-up.

4. Gather your jokes into a set

When you have collected a good amount of jokes, start working them into longer routines and adding transitions, so they flow together naturally. Start to see your act as one long story, a novel if you like, with the jokes as the chapters.

5. Add an opener and a closer

Now you can really pull things together by adding these two important sections. The opener needs to grab attention and make your audience want to hear more, while the closing lines need to wrap things up neatly – and memorably.

6. Find an audience

Deep breath: practise in front of your friends. Ask them to be honest about your material (feedback from friends is hard, but believe us, better from them than from hecklers). Take any criticism on the chin and learn from it, and work out how you can work the positives into more of your act.

7. Edit your routine

Now it’s time to refine your act. Make any edits based on the feedback, and even if you think a joke is brilliant, if it didn’t land with your friend, you can take it out. Remember, you can always work it into a later set, in a different form. Nothing is ever wasted. It’s also wise to think about the pacing of the performance. Is it too long or too short?

Finally, here are a few extra tips to bear in mind when writing stand-up comedy:

• Think about the tone. It needs to be conversational and natural.
• Can you easily memorise your material? Are there any sections you find tricky to remember?
• Make sure you have spare jokes up your sleeve, in case of emergencies.
• Practice editing as you go. Sometimes you just know that you’ll have to adapt part of your act on the fly, and if you’re used to doing this, you’ll find it easier.
• For advice about performing your new stand-up routine, read our article, How to do stand-up comedy

And always remember Billy’s wise words, “it’s a joyous thing to give somebody a laugh.”

Enjoy the process and see you at the open mic night.

Learn how to write stand-up from the Maestro himself, Sir Billy Connolly. He shares his wisdom and experience in his insightful  BBC Maestro comedy course , gained from over 50 years in the business.

See related courses

Sir Billy Connolly

Bill Lawrence

Writing Comedy for Television

Jed Mercurio

Writing Drama for Television

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Sir Billy Connolly's Funniest Jokes: Here are 80 of the Big Yin's best one liners and hilarious jokes

Engagement Journalist

One of Scotland's most treasured, Sir Billy Connolly has been making us laugh for decades. Here are 80 of the Big Yin's best jokes and one liners.

An international superstar of comedy and film and a national treasure to boot, there'll never be another quite like Sir Billy Connolly.

From dominating the music scene to packing the patter with comedy shows that have left global audiences crying with laughter, the Big Yin has no shortage of talent and acts as an inspiration given he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2013 yet continued to boast an incredible career and even become knighted by 2017.

Now, aside from being hilarious himself he has also teamed up with the BBC as a mentor offering young comedians tips for a successful career - a true gentleman and a scholar.

In celebration of Sir Billy Connolly, we've pieced together 80 of his finest jokes, one liners and quips over his epic career..

1 . Billy Connolly on... Scottish Heritage

“Scottish-Americans tell you that if you want to identify tartans, it’s easy – you simply look under the kilt, and if it’s a quarter-pounder, you know it’s a McDonald’s.” Photo: Submitted

2 . Billy Connolly on... Judging others

“Before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that who cares? He’s a mile away and you’ve got his shoes!” Photo: YouTube Screenshot

3 . Billy Connolly on... The weather

“I hate all those weathermen, too, who tell you that rain is bad weather. There’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing, so get yourself a sexy raincoat and live a little.” Photo: Submitted

4 . Billy Connolly on... Being a movie star

“I’m a huge film star, but you have to hurry to the movies because I usually die in the first 15 f***ing minutes. I’m the only guy I know who died in a f***ing Muppet Movie.” Photo: PA

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In pictures: Billy Connolly talks us through his latest art collection

Digital Reporter

The world has become a brighter place with the release of the Spring 2023 edition of Billy Connolly’s Born on a Rainy Day collection, available exclusively from Castle Fine Art as of yesterday, Thursday March 23.

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The six new limited-edition pieces are initially available as framed and unframed portfolios, hand-signed by The Big Yin himself and are presented on 100% cotton deckle-edged paper, float-mounted in black painted and silver foiled pine frames.

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Ahead of the official worldwide launch on March 30, Castle Fine Art is offering collectors the opportunity to pre-order the set of six hand-signed limited edition artworks. Until then, the framed set is offered at a special pre-launch price of £6,250, and the unframed boxed set at £4,500.

Billy launched his Born on a Rainy Day collection with Castle Fine Art in 2012 and it’s proved hugely popular with collectors.

The six new pieces are: ‘Birds on a Wire’, ‘Headrest’, ‘Backseat Driver’, ‘Very Humble Goldfish’, ‘Helping Mummy With Twine’ and ‘A Load of Old Bollocks’.

Watch an exclusive video interview with Billy by Castle Fine Art here - and read Billy’s comments on his latest works below.

A Load of Old Bollocks

Billy was inspired by seeing baskets of balls in design showrooms. He says: “They’re all over the place now. Balls with balls in them; they have string ones and wax ones and ones with spots on them. the balls from fishing nets to keep them afloat.

“And glass ones and wooden ones – they keep them in a big dish in design showrooms, and I’ve often wanted one. I wasn’t quite sure what I wanted it for, and it reminded me of one of them.

“I couldn’t think of a name for the piece I started to draw, so I thought ‘A Load of Old Bollocks’ would cover it nicely. It’s a lovely statement – a load of old bollocks. You can say it wherever you like, you can say it about Shakespeare – “what a load of old bollocks!” You can say it about songs, poems – “a load of old bollocks!”

“And it just sums things up. It’s a nice thing, that basket of balls; it’ll never have a use. It’s a load of old bollocks! It’ll never be welded, it’ll never be riveted, it’ll never mean anything to anybody. It’s a load of old bollocks, and it pleases me greatly.”

Helping Mummy With Twine

Billy says: “I start a lot of pieces and go back to them afterwards and see what they remind me of, and this reminded me of my aunt asking me to hold the wool while she made it into a ball.

“I would do this for an hour and a half and as a prize she would let me play with her darning mushroom, a plastic mushroom with a battery in it and you darn socks with it. You put the sock on it so the light was shining through. But I just flashed it. I was an easily entertained young man.”

Very Humble Goldfish

Billy says: “He’s a lovely goldfish. I almost drew him as a diving superstar, the way that dolphins are, but in the end when I looked at him, he wasn’t a diver, he was a goldfish with his big lumpy head, and he was a more humble thing than a diver, and I really got to like him.

“His head would make a splash and the whole thing about the diving is that you mustn’t make a splash unless he did his famous folding head trick!

“I hadn’t seen him in a year or two. I saw him again recently and he blew me away! He’s great. I love his colours and I’ve never done anything else in those Partick Thistle colours”.

Backseat Driver

Billy says: “I’m very fond of him. I didn’t know what it was at first, because it didn’t have legs. It was just a shape. It was like a potato scone, and then I got the idea for the horse and I put a head on it, and the legs, but I couldn’t work out a way to put the legs on his back. So I gave it a rest, I put a little chair in.

“I’ve never tried to imagine him going anywhere. He’s just quite happy where he is. He’s not going anywhere fast, and he knows this. He’s very wise.

“I used to draw lots of blindfolds. I was driven to it and I don’t know why. They don’t mean anything to me, and then sometimes they mean lots of different things. It’s my own little language and I enjoy it and happily other people seem to enjoy it too.

“We had a donkey once, and he just stood. He didn’t go to many places. Donkeys are lovely like that, they just stand, and think. The Glasgow boxer, Peter Keenan, saw himself as a great working class hero, and he was, and he saw me as that as well. He thought I was another kind of him. And he said: ‘I’ve got the very thing for you’. He bred Clydesdale horses and he had a donkey from somewhere. He said: ‘Do you want a donkey?’ and I said: ‘Yeah, I’d love one!’ He gave us a pregnant donkey, and she gave birth to baby Booby. My eldest daughter Cara used to love them.”

Birds on a Wire

Billy says: “I pondered for ages on the title. I didn’t know what it was, but once I finished it, ‘Bird on a Wire’ by Leonard Cohen kept coming back to me with these birds. I tried to get away from it and eventually had to use it. That’s not the same as stealing a song, it’s just borrowing a title. Leonard Cohen was a good man - he wouldn’t mind.

“I went to my doctor in LA once, and about 15 Buddhists all scrambled past me. I got inside and he said: ‘Did you see the Buddhists?’ I said ‘Yeah.’ He said: ‘Did you see Leonard?’. He was one of them. Leonard Cohen was living with the Buddhists.

“The man in the picture is sitting on a seat with his legs dangling over, doing a sort of martial art, and the ball is just a ball. The birds let you know which way is up. If you want to know which way to hang it, the birds are the right way up – my drawings come with instructions!”

Billy says: “This is called ‘Headrest’ because it’s a man on a deckchair – with no headrest. That’s one of the failings of deck chairs, they don’t have headrests – your head goes down the back like his does, which puts you in an ideal position for having your throat cut.

“I love those naughty seaside postcards which often have guys in that position. This guy has had a rotten day at work and has gone ‘OOOOHH!’ as he relaxes in his deckchair. I’m very fond of him, I like that when I draw people, I like them. I like them because they are usually hard-working and innocent people who just know what like it is to work and they know what like it is to rest, and they know what it’s all about. And they’re worthwhile and they’re innocent, and they deserve a great deal more credit than they get.

“There’s a thing about deckchairs that has often frightened me. I remember describing to an audience about my daughter Cara in a deckchair when we were on holiday, and she couldn’t fix it properly. I looked away, and the noise came – crack! It’d fallen down on our fingers, And when I said it to the audience, they all went ‘OOOOOHHH!’ The noise of a thousand people expressing sympathy, it was great!”

For updates on city centre life, follow the #LoveGlasgow hashtag across social media for inspiration, city guides, what’s on listings, days and night out ideas this spring.

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Scottish comedian Sir Billy Connolly unveils four new drawings for sale

The much-loved comedian, 80, has been a keen artist since 2012. His new artworks are titled Pontius Tries Pilates, One Armed Juggler, Nightmare and Drunk Donkey.

Thursday 10 August 2023 11:49, UK

Sir Billy Connolly has unveiled four new artworks for sale.

The much-loved Scottish comedian, 80, has been a keen artist since 2012, and has unveiled the new drawings through the Castle Fine Art gallery.

The pieces have been launched through his Born on a Rainy Day art series and are being sold for £1,250 each - though they can be bought as a set for £4,500 framed or £3,300 unframed.

The pieces are named Pontius Tries Pilates, One Armed Juggler, Nightmare and Drunk Donkey.

"The Big Yin" said he always wanted to give Pontius Pilate a "keep-fit name", adding the idea came to him when his wife joined a pilates gym.

He added: "I said it would be funny to call it Pontius Pilates, then I thought people would be offended by that, so I fiddled around and I got Pontius Tries Pilates.

"He's just a guy trying at the gym, trying his best. I don't understand the whole gymnasium culture, but he does and he's good."

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• Sir Billy Connolly

On his One Armed Juggler drawing, Sir Billy said: "He's an example of the fact that most of the figures in my work are doing things that don't matter. Just doing the things they do, thinking they'll do you good - I've spent my life doing that."

He added: "You see guys in their 60s out running in the evening and you think: 'Get a chair. Get a chair and a bottle of beer and switch on the telly; who are you kidding?'.

"But all my guys are doing that, they're trying to be part of it wherever 'it' is."

The Nightmare piece is inspired by Sir Billy's own bad dreams, which he says he never really remembers upon waking up.

He said: "But I'm famous for shouting in the night and singing and laughing; my daughter has seen me; I've never remembered it.

"And I was directing a play in my sleep. I was talking to the actors and then I would become the actors, singing songs."

His Drunk Donkey piece hearkens back to his earlier days when he lived in Scotland.

He owned two donkeys who he says he would let "wander about the place eating grass".

The comedian says the animals are "lovely" and "friendly", comparing them to dogs.

He added: "They cling to you, they've got a real tie to human beings. Donkeys are funny animals but it's an endearing kind of funny.

"Our donkeys used to escape over the wall of the garden, run down to the village and the villagers would bring them back.

"Donkeys always look drunk and behave drunk. This one's a friendly looking guy and I think he's been drunk a few times because he's got a beer belly on him. And he's got the drunk legs."

Read more: Klimt portrait becomes most expensive artwork auctioned in Europe Solo Banksy exhibition to be held at Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art

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Sir Billy was first inspired to start drawing while on tour in Canada .

He said: "I'd never drawn in my life until this point, but I just started drawing weird islands and carried on drawing.

"I asked my wife to tell me if they were getting better and she said 'definitely'.

"My manager sent them to the gallery, and now I make pictures and they're lovely to me.

"And the fact that other people like them and want to live with them in their homes blows me sideways.

"To have somebody who wants a part of your mind in their life - I thought my wife had been the only one to fall for that, but it turns out that she's not alone."

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