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Billy Connolly: Made in Scotland review – pure gallus from a folk comedy hero

Connolly recounts his thrilling escape from the shipyards in a vivid portrait of 1960s Glasgow

‘When I was nominated for a knighthood, the woman interviewing me said, very nicely, ‘It’ll be strange for you, having a knighthood, coming from nothing.’ And I said, I don’t come from nothing. I come from something.”
There are many reasons to cheer Billy Connolly. Him being possibly the greatest standup comedian of all time is a sound one. But in his documentary dotage, he’s brilliant at being himself on TV and knowing how much limelight to hog. He knows he’s a big deal, but he wants to share things that interest and delight him – and they are usually other people.

So it was that the first half of his televisual autobiography Billy Connolly: Made in Scotland (BBC Two) – it concludes next week – was often not directly about him. Instead it was an almost tangibly vivid portrait of 1960s Glasgow. Connolly’s horrible, well-documented childhood was skipped over as he rhapsodised about the lives of Clyde shipyard workers – a mass of men devoted to football, beer, swearing, hammering at colossal pieces of metal and being funny.

Billy started by sitting in the Sarry, AKA the Saracen Head in Gallowgate, to sing the pub’s own song (“The girl that I marry will have to be / Able to swallow more wine than me…”) and lament the passing of the days when Glasgow men gathered there to talk about another punishing, deafening day at work, and to see if anyone ordered a white tornado, ie a pint of the dregs the glass collector would tip into an urn behind the bar.

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from Culture | The Guardian http://bit.ly/2EVw7O9
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