Who is popular today?

Now enjoying a ‘surreal’ life in Florida – the climate’s good for his Parkinson’s – the veteran comedian talks about fame, fishing and finally publishing his routines in book form
The old voice you can conjure with your eyes closed, so for the first five minutes or so it’s disconcerting to sit and talk with Billy Connolly. That familiar electric gruffness has been replaced with something kindlier and more considered. Getting used to it is a bit like watching John McEnroe play tennis on the seniors’ circuit – you wait for a moment that suggests the old unique timing, and it’s all the more poignant when you catch the sudden ghost of it.
We met in a hotel bar on one of those baking days of summer. Connolly was over in the UK to finish the voiceovers of his latest eccentric tour of America for ITV. His wife, Pamela Stephenson, accompanied him into the coolness of the bar, settled him in a corner chair and then left us to it. All day before we met I’d been immersed in his new book, which collects in print the wild and whirling tales that have been Connolly’s stage show for the past four decades – those riffs on inflight toilets, Mairi’s Wedding, incontinence knickers, the Last Supper. His collected stories. He’s resisted ever writing them down, but the fact that he recently announced retirement from the stage made it seem like the right moment. Still, he says, he can’t quite bear to look at his own words on the page. Continue reading...