Sir Billy Connolly, born in 1942, is a Scottish comedian, actor, musician and, latterly, artist – the Big Yin, as Scotland has long called him, and by the reckoning of repeated UK polls the greatest stand-up comedian of all time. His route to the stage remains one of the great British showbusiness stories: a welder in the Glasgow shipyards in the early 1960s, he left the trade to sing folk music, playing in the Humblebums alongside Gerry Rafferty before striking out alone, and by the early 1970s the talk between the songs had taken over entirely. The comedy that emerged – idiosyncratic, improvised, observational and cheerfully profane – reset the standard for British stand-up.
The milestones piled up: a UK No. 1 single with ‘D.I.V.O.R.C.E.’ in 1975, a record fifteen appearances on Parkinson, and film roles from Mrs Brown, which brought a BAFTA nomination for Best Actor, to Muppet Treasure Island. He was knighted in 2017 for services to entertainment and charity, received the BAFTA Fellowship in 2022, and since retiring from comedy in 2018 has built a second life as a visual artist.
7 hours and 55 minutes
