Billy Connolly: The lost years

With his career now in full flow, Billy Connolly is growing apart from his first wife and developing an addiction to drink and drugs. Our second extract from Pamela Stephenson's candid biography of her husband reveals how Connolly coped with fame - and she ended up in bed with the Hairy One
  • The Observer,

As Billy's fame escalated in the mid-70s, he began to meet many of his heroes. He was particularly fascinated with rock stars, especially the wild ones, such as Mick Jagger and Keith Moon. In July and August 1976, Billy opened for Elton John during his USA tour. He learned the hard way that it is not easy to play someone else's audience. 'Hearing them announce my name is like someone saying, "Ready, Aim, FIRE!"' moaned Billy at the time.

Billy was assuaging his hangover with a cup of tea one morning when he came across an article about one of his heroes, Tom Waits, in Rolling Stone. Waits informed the world that he died on stage every night while opening for another rock band. Tom described it as: 'A nightly exercise in terror.' 'Oh, thank God, I'm not alone,' sighed Billy.

During the Elton John tour, one of Elton's roadies introduced Billy to cocaine. It's not surprising that Billy became very drawn to that particular drug, for it has a very interesting effect on people like him who have difficulty concentrating. Instead of amping them up in the usual way, such stimulants can have a paradoxical effect and actually help them to concentrate.

Unfortunately, his cocaine abuse escalated along with his alcohol abuse, and didn't stop until after he met me. His ambition was always to use it and have some left in the morning, but that never happened.

After the tour with Elton, Billy made an album called Atlantic Bridge. Half of it was recorded at Carnegie Hall in Dunfermline, where Andrew Carnegie came from, and the other half at Carnegie Hall in New York. The Python star Eric Idle came to see Billy in New York and brought Paul Simon and Mick Jagger. It was the beginning of a great friendship with the Python. Idle had been to see him before, usually in London with Peter Cook in tow, but Billy had always been very wary of them. 'I'd always been scared of people with tertiary education and high intellects in case they found me wanting,' he explains. 'I thought they viewed me as just a welder who knew a few jokes.'

'He was pure joy,' says Eric. 'Breathtakingly honest. We went backstage and there he was in his banana boots. The next day he came round to my hotel room and entertained us for three hours, telling us stories of Scottish bank robberies. We all howled the entire afternoon... he was extraordinary.'

Back in London, Elton phoned Billy while he was in the process of having a sepia photo-portrait taken by the photographer Terry O'Neil. 'Maureen?' (that's what Elton calls Billy), 'want to come and hear my new album?' Billy went out to the Mill Studios, already bomb-happy on wine and cocaine, then continued to party when he got there. Elton played him one of his latest tracks, then left the sound suite briefly to confer with a studio technician. When he returned, he found that Billy had collapsed on to the floor. 'Jesus! Somebody wake him up! Get help!' People frantically tried to revive him, imagining he had passed away. When Billy came around he was embarrassed about all the fuss.

'I'm perfectly fine,' he informed them. 'It's happened before...'

'But you can't accept that sort of thing happening... you just died!'

'Fuck,' Billy shrugged his shoulders, 'that's what life's like.'

Billy is one of the lucky ones, for some did not survive the effects of the 70s. The night before Billy left for one of his tours of Australia he was out on the razzle in London with Keith Moon. Keith seemed surprisingly abstinent. 'I'm only doing brandy suppositories these days, dear boy,' he said.

'I'm going to Australia tomorrow,' Billy informed him in the course of the evening.

'Then tell them from me to fuck off,' replied Keith. He'd had a run-in there with the press. When Billy arrived in Australia the headlines seemed to scream a warning to him. Keith had died that night.

'Fuck,' thought Billy, 'maybe I'd better take it easy.'

But nothing changed. On one occasion in Sydney, just before Billy was due to play the Opera House, he recorded an interview with Michael Parkinson. 'Eh, Parkie,' said Billy afterwards, 'I think we'll have a wee dram.'

The pair had become great mates. Billy has always highly valued his friendship with Michael. That night they drove to a dive in King's Cross where they found the entire Queensland rugby team had also gathered, for a post-game beer. The shortest team player was a steak-fed mountain and each one sported a badly shaved head and an attitude to match. Michael felt a shadow looming over his face as one of these monsters squeezed himself threateningly between him and Billy, facing him square-on.

'Hey, Parko...' That was what they called him in Australia.

'Yes,' replied Michael, nervously.

Before the rugby player could continue, Billy's voice rang out insolently from right behind him.

'See you!' He was actually addressing the hulk, 'Why don't you fuck off!'

It's a miracle they got out of there in one piece. They were both truly drunk and heading back to the Sebel Town House, their hotel, when the driver suddenly alerted Michael.

'He's gone.'

'What do you mean, he's gone?'

'He's got out of the car!'

The car had stopped for traffic in the middle of King's Cross, a five-way thoroughfare as busy and dangerous as the Place de L'Etoile in Paris. Michael was horrified to see Billy standing smack in the middle of the cross, doing an arm-flailing, Fred Astaire-inspired dance.

'Puttin' on my top hat...' sang Billy, 'I've pudding on my top hat...'

'Billy, Billy, Billy...' Michael had braved the side-swiping vehicles to try to coax him out of harm's way.

'Eh, Parkie,' he proposed, 'can you dance?'

'Yes... on occasion... but...'

'Can you take the woman's part?'

He whirled Michael around in a bizarrely rhythmic fashion until a couple of approaching policemen sent them scurrying for safety.

The following night, Michael had grave concerns about Billy's ability to do the show, but despite the odds he gave the best performance Michael had seen... or at least that's what it seemed like through the filter of Michael's own sore head and bloodshot eyes. 'You bastard!' said Michael.

Billy's popularity in the UK continued to expand. He was eventually playing 89 nights on a single tour, whereas most rock bands did 10 or so. Established comedians usually only played nightclubs with a few hundred seats and perhaps the London Palladium if they were lucky; Billy was selling out rock venues.

In the process of building his concert audience, Billy had to be away from his wife Iris and the family a great deal. Things had not been right for a while. After their second child Cara was born in 1974, joining Jamie, then four, he and Iris decided to move to the countryside, to the peaceful town of Drymen, just outside Glasgow. At last they had a wonderful garden for the children to roam around in and Billy made them a wee sandpit.

Billy was happy that his children were having the kind of life he had only dreamed about and, on the surface, his life was quite jolly; but inside, he was lost.

When he made public appearances, he arrived to great fanfare. He would open shops and cut ribbons while pipe bands played. A little voice inside, however, kept nagging him. It sounded a little bit like his bullying aunt Mona. 'Who do you think you are? You don't deserve this.'

Billy was getting drunk very regularly and was even having blackouts. The trick, he decided, was never to let his hangover catch up with him - just stay drunk.

By the end of the 70s, he and Iris were in serious trouble. Each had a problem with alcohol, although neither could see it; most of the people they mixed with got drunk on a regular basis.

Billy's astounding rise to public attention had been extraordinarily difficult for Iris. When she first met Billy, he was not long out of his welding boots, and now he was one of the most famous names in the country. Iris never liked show business.

Iris's underlying resentment towards Billy came out when she threw him a surprise 35th birthday party. 'An extraordinary amount of drink had been consumed,' reports Billy's friend, the musician Ralph McTell. A huge chocolate cake was wheeled out. 'Billy Connolly...' announced Iris, imitating Eamon Andrews, 'this is your cake!' She pushed his head into it and Billy retaliated in kind. Soon, an unbelievably messy skirmish was under way. There was cake everywhere, on the walls and in the carpet.

Iris had a lot to cope with and Billy was hardly ever there. Billy himself thought the two had very little in common once the bells had stopped ringing and they were alone in a room together. In fact, nothing in life seemed permanent to him. It was delightful to have fame, but even that, too, seemed temporary.

Although Billy had had more than enough proof that he was brilliant at what he did, he still felt like a fraud sometimes, a welder who hadn't yet been found out. He was still convinced that, any minute, somebody was going to tap him on the shoulder and say, 'Well, I hope you enjoyed yourself, because Monday morning you've got your working boots on. You're a welder again.' On the other hand, it was wonderful to have such success. It gave the lie to the people who said he was stupid. 'You can't be stupid and sustain it,' thought Billy.

Deep down, though, he still had his doubts, and was bitterly disappointed to discover that fame was a hollow victory. He had thought all his worries would go away once he was successful and had some money, but they refused to evaporate. He was particularly worried about money, because he was terrified of being famous and broke at the same time. That, he thought, would be like going to hell.

His underlying insecurities disappeared when he was drunk, but came raging back in the morning, so Billy took to asking for the wine list at breakfast. After his show at night, he would go to the nearest bar and ask for a pint of wine. Ten bottles later he was ready to start a fight.

'I spent the whole time battering people I liked and singing with my arm round people I loathed,' he remembers.

One night, after 2am, Billy was so drunk he couldn't find his way out of a London phone box. Luckily, he was able to remember Pete Brown's number, so he managed to call him for help.

'It's not that difficult,' said his then manager, forcing himself awake. 'There's only four sides and one's got the phone on it.'

'I cannae find the door...' repeated Billy, utterly gone.

'Billy... where are you?' insisted Pete.

'I'm, eh... I'm... och, somewhere in London.' He was barely coherent.

'Read the address on the notice by the side of the phone.'

'I cannae focus.' Billy was clearly about to pass out.

Fortunately, Billy is a creature of habit. Pete willed himself into his car and drove around all Billy's usual haunts. It was miraculous that he actually found him in the end and managed to drag his comatose body out of its red-box prison.

'I was just enjoying a wee snooze,' complained Billy.

'Good news,' announced John Lloyd, who co-produced the popular new BBC2 topical comedy show Not the Nine O'Clock News, starring Rowan Atkinson, Mel Smith, Griff Rhys Jones and Pamela Stephenson.

'Billy Connolly has agreed to come on next week's show.'

'Brilliant!' enthused the three boys.

'Who's Billy Connolly?' I inquired.

We didn't usually have guests on the show. We impersonated pretty well everyone who was famous at the time, so it wasn't necessary. I had neither seen nor heard of Billy, but was curious to meet the man who was so revered by this bunch of middle-class, tertiary-educated, too-cool-for-the-room funsters who poured scorn on most people. In their presence, I felt like a kind of female Crocodile Dundee character, which greatly embarrassed me.

We all turned up at Billy's London flat in the autumn of 1979. He greeted us at the top of the entrance stairs in Levi's, a satin tour jacket and cowboy boots. I was speechless with surprise. In my working life I was mainly surrounded by youths, but here was an alpha-man, a crazy, hilarious, sensitive, charismatic savage. I was desperately wishing I had worn something more feminine than my jeans and oversize man's tweed jacket and tie.

Billy, apparently, had a terrible hangover that morning and found it hard to be a good host. He had some beer in the fridge, but the previous night's brandy had left him with an adding-up dysfunction and he couldn't work out if he had enough for everyone or not, so he offered nothing.

'Anyone else desperate for food?' he asked. We all piled into a taxi to go and eat lunch at Geale's in Notting Hill, where Billy delivered the final coup de grce by eating his grilled Dover sole with his bare hands. 'What an animal!' I was thrilled.

In the show, Billy played the Ayatollah Khomeini, running in slow motion towards me while I sang a love song to him dressed as a terrorist. It was a terrific piece of satire, but that week the Iranian Embassy was blown up, so for reasons of taste the show had to be ditched until the following week. Another of our scenes, where I played the media personality Janet Street-Porter, would have been innocuous enough to air. Barely intelligible, in huge fake teeth and a red wig with giant spectacles perched on my nose, I conducted a mock interview: 'Tonight I'm talking to Billy Connolly, the well-known Scottish comedian.'

The cutaway shot of Billy showed him trying to control his laughter as my 'Janet' teeth began to fall out.

'So, Billy, do a lot of people have trouble understanding your accent?'

'Eh? Sorry?' asked Billy, as if not understanding Janet's.

After the taping of that show we congregated in the green room for some horrible snacks and a drink. I sensed that Billy had not been too impressed with me. I felt hurt when I noticed that Billy said 'Goodbye' to everyone else and avoided me. He left with Pete Brown, a Mick Jagger emulator in a fur coat.

Seconds after leaving the room Billy ran in again, sucked the beer off his moustache and gave me a little peck on the cheek. 'Cheerio,' he said. 'You're great. Keep it up.' Bastard clearly hated me.

'So, what exactly was wrong with me?' I asked defensively, 21 years after our first meeting. 'What didn't you like about me at first?'

'I thought you were way out of my league. I imagined posh Oxbridge guys would be more your line of country. I thought you were a beautiful woman and very bright... but I thought if you fancied anyone it would be some kind of big-shot brainiac like a Peter Cook type. Some guy in a blazer from Hampstead... everything I'm not. Never gave it another thought.'

'Good answer!'

Of course, there was the rather important reason that Billy and I were still married to our first spouses when we met, although both of those relationships were falling apart. [Stephenson's first husband was actor Nicholas Ball]. But it wasn't until nearly a year later that I met Billy again. By then, Nicholas and I had separated. I was filming at a greyhound track in Brighton with the Not The Nine O'Clock News crew, helping to create a tasteful little sketch that involved Epsom salts, racing humans and moving toilet bowls. At the end of a hard day's funny work, I was jumping out of the wardrobe trailer when a teenage autograph-hunter stopped me. 'Billy Connolly's in town,' he announced, apropos of absolutely nothing. 'He's playing the Dome.'

Billy wasn't there by the time I arrived unannounced to visit him at the theatre, but his manager Jamie Wark let me into a sparsely furnished dressing room that was half-full of instrument cases.

I sat on Billy's hand-basin while he prepared for his 'Big Wee Tour' show. He thought I looked like a ridiculous little goblin, perched up there in my red trousers. He told me all about his current desperate unhappiness, that he felt his marriage had collapsed and he was trying to leave Iris, but she refused to accept that and kept calling him, saying, 'Where the hell are you?' I took all this with a grain of salt, but I just couldn't leave his side.

He seemed to be filled with a terrible hopelessness. We went to his hotel, where he proceeded to drink 30 brandies. I was afraid for him.

If we had wanted to announce to the world that we were in a hotel together, we couldn't have found a better place. Quite apart from our celebrity, we were two hairy people wearing loud clothing... at the time and place of the Tory Party Conference. A hundred thousand people had marched to Brighton to demand jobs, and most of them were chanting outside our window when we woke up the next morning. There was a gang of workmen belting nails into adjoining corridor walls, while the hotel staff scurried around in a panic because the IRA had threatened to bomb the Tory-ridden building.

'All those speech defects in one town,' Billy complained, as I tried to hide. Jamie Wark had barged in without knocking and was crashing about the room searching for guitars and banjos. The two of them seemed quite comfortable with this thoroughly embarrassing scenario.

'Thatcher... all those people I hate are here,' Billy continued, as if nothing was the matter.

'Oh, I get it,' I thought, thoroughly humiliated, 'Jamie's no stranger to finding Billy in bed with some woman.'

'Billy!' I hissed, 'tell him to leave NOW!'

I'd made a terrible mistake. Engaging though he was, he was also a pitiful, self-destructive drunk who was likely to be Big Trouble. That was apparently a 'brandy tour'. Whenever Billy went on tour he would chose a different 'tour drink'. He'd had the gin tour and the white-wine tour just prior to that one. On the road he tried to keep his spirits up, in more ways than one. He also had a tour voice, a tour dance and a tour name, which at this time was 'Captain Demento' while his sound crew was 'The Flying McNalty Twins'. You can imagine how delighted I was to hear that I had received the honorary title of 'Tour Pull'. I had never been treated like a groupie before, but then, I'd never behaved like one.

The man was a total nightmare. I met him again at the Carlton Hotel a week or so later. When I arrived, he was watching a football match and refused to speak to me. 'Ssshh!' he kept saying. 'In a minute.' I was furious, until I again saw his vulnerability and sweetness. Despite his shocking, chauvinist behaviour, he was really wonderfully kind and his terrible sadness melted me. But after a couple more meetings, during which he again consumed outrageous amounts of alcohol that altered his personality for the worse, I decided I couldn't save him. Severing contact was hard, because I was deeply drawn to him. He had unresolved issues of abandonment and abuse, and had always been punished for being 'stupid'.

As Christmas of 1980 approached, I decided to run away to Bali, a place where I had always found peace.

'I guess,' Billy had said to me before my departure, 'if you're falling in love with a drunken weirdo, you've got to give it a great deal of thought.'

• Extracted from Billy by Pamela Stephenson, published by HarperCollins Publishers on 1 October 2001 at £17.99. © Pamela Stephenson 2001

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