Back in 1975, Billy Connolly made a joke on the BBC talk show Parkinson that made him famous overnight.
"When I got to Glasgow airport … and everybody started to clap, the whole airport started clapping. I thought 'oh, that's a bit different' and they never really stopped after that."
Billy Connolly Photo: supplied / credit Jaimie Gramston © John Murray.
The anarchic 76-year-old Scottish comedian, writer, producer – and now artist – retired from stand-up late last year, six years after a diagnosis of Parkinson's disease.
He speaks to Kim Hill from Florida where he's still fishing, drawing and keeping the local manatee population well-fed.
Billy Connolly was an aspiring folksinger when his comedy career began in the late '60s. He'd play the banjo in Scottish folk clubs while chatting between songs – until the chat got longer and funnier and took over.
Photo: supplied
The new book Tall Tales and Wee Stories captures decades worth of his most famous routines.
The tales are usually fact blend with a bit of fiction, Connolly says.
"A lot of it's the truth exaggerated out of all control."
Stand up comedy was something he "had to do" and something he loved it at the time, he says.
"From the wings to the microphone, the nerves just disappear. You're so enriched by the applause and everything you enter a new phase, the nerves just disappear.
"When you're walking out on to the stage at the concert hall, you're actually saying 'I'm the funniest man in the room' and you constantly have this nightmare that somebody else in the room is going to take you up on it."
These days, Connolly doesn't travel often, but he did visit old friends in Scotland recently and misses his home country from time to time.
Like many, he's baffled by Brexit.
"I'm all for the Scottish people and what they believe … the Scottish people are tired of voting one way and getting saddled with something else. They're getting fed up with it and they want to be part of Europe so it's up to them to make up their mind and vote for it."
One thing Connolly loves about Florida – where he lives with NZ-born wife Pamela Stephenson after several years in New York – is the saltwater flyfishing.
Then there's the manatee who visits the back door to be fed lettuce.
One cold day in Canada only a few years ago, Connolly discovered a new passion which is now his primary focus – drawing.
"I bought a sketchbook and some felt-tip pens at an art shop across from the hotel … I just started drawing and that was it."
Since then, he's exhibited his pen-and-ink drawings and Tall Tales and Wee Stories features some of his – usually bandaged – figures.
Connolly tells Kim Hill he's not sure why they're bandaged.
"My art is pure and un-judged, I am creating for myself, it is personal and private," he has said in the past.
Count Me In, by Billy Connolly Photo: Billy Connolly
Connolly's 2013 diagnosis of Parkinson's disease came quite by chance and completely out of the blue, he says.
One day, an Australian doctor – on tour with a dance group – watched him walk across an LA hotel lobby, then called him over.
"He said 'I'm a specialist in Parkinson's disease and I think by your gait you've got it. See your doctor'. So I did, and he was right."
Many people tell him that they admire his attitude to the disease, Connolly says.
"The thing is to just carry on as if it wasn't there – as much as you can."
Tall Tales And Wee Stories is out now.
