Connolly from nought to sixty; His humour and outlook have become so

1942-45 On November 24, 1942, Billy Connolly - 11 pounds and four ounces - enters the world on the kitchen linoleum of a tenement flat, 65 Dover Street, Anderston, Glasgow. Soon after his son is born, William Connolly leaves Glasgow for Burma with the RAF. Billy's mother, Mamie, is depressed and has trouble coping, so he's cared for by his three-year-old sister, Florence. He develops pneumonia three times before he is four. Her husband still away at war, Mamie takes a lover, Willie Adams.

1946 Mamie walks out on her two children. They are discovered freezing, hungry and upset in the abandoned flat, and are taken to stay with William Connolly's two sisters, Mona and Margaret, who live in Stewartville Street, Partick. In March, William returns from the war.

1947-48 Billy starts St Peter's School. William becomes increasingly distant from his children, and it is left to Mona and Margaret to raise them. Mona resents this and takes her frustration out on Billy, beating him bloody and telling him he's useless so often that he begins to believe it. Later, he will claim that his aunts, "two f**king psychopaths", deeply influenced his choice of career. Mona will suffer a breakdown and be committed to a psychiatric hospital.

1949-51 In May, 1949, Mona gives birth to a son, Michael; the father is a local man who will not marry her. The boy is raised as a brother to Billy, who has decided to become an altar boy. "I was a member of the Children of Mary and we used to go round saying the rosary in people's houses with the Lady of Lourdes in a shoebox. We'd turn up at people's doors and you'd just watch them losing the will to live. So that was probably my first audience."

1952 With Michael now living at Stewartville Street, Billy has to share a sofa-bed with his father. Aged ten, he wakes to find William "interfering" with him. It continues for the next five years. "I remember it happening a lot, not every night, but every night you were in a state thinking it was going to happen, that you'd be awakened by it," he later reveals in his wife Pamela Stephenson's biography of him. "I would pray for the holidays. I couldn't wait for us to go to the seaside because then we had separate beds."

1953-56 Billy starts at St Gerard's secondary school. The Connollys move to Kinfauns Drive in Drumchapel. Watching television one day, Billy sees the comedian Chic Murray, and decides that comedy is for him. Simultaneously, however, his thoughts grow morbid. "I became very weird at the time and got obsessed with death for a while. I would follow funerals and stand outside crematoria. I read a lot about death and started wearing black."

1957 At 15, Billy decides school is not for him. "I'm so f**king proud. I walked out and I didn't look back. When I left I knew more about the sex life of pigeons than anything else because I used to gaze out of the classroom window at the roof opposite and watch the pigeons."

1958 Billy considers joining the Merchant Navy but "they said the only thing I could be was a steward. My father said, 'They're all homosexuals. Don't do that.' Then I said I'd like to be an actor, and he said 'Well, they're all homosexuals as well.' So I thought, maybe the world's this huge place full of homosexuals who'll get you unless you're a welder. The only hedge against homosexuality was to become a welder." He is taken on as an apprentice in Stephen's Shipyard.

1959 Visiting his maternal grandparents one day, Billy is astonished to meet his mother. He had been hoping for a loving reunion and an apology. He's disappointed on both counts. "Big f**king anti-climax from where I'm sitting," he thinks.

1960-63 Billy continues his apprenticeship and joins the Territorial Army. As a paratrooper, he makes 17 jumps, travels abroad, and sees some combat. But as his politics become more radical, he grows disillusioned with the military, begins wearing a CND badge with his uniform, and eventually leaves the TA.

The Connollys move from Drumchapel to White Street, Partick. Billy starts dating June McQueen, and buys a banjo from the Barras market.

1964 Folk clubs become a home from home. Danny Kyle, lead singer of the Tannahills, invites Billy to join the band.

He tells June McQueen that their relationship is over because he wants to be a beatnik. He also has a few homosexual experiences but finds these uncomfortable and unsatisfying.

1965 Billy forms his own band, the Skillet-Lickers, but then leaves to join the Acme Brush Company. That same year he performs with the folk singer Jimmy Steel; forgetting the words to one number, he tells the story of the song instead, and is delighted to discover he can make a whole audience laugh.

He starts seeing Iris Pressagh, an interior designer and art student.

1966After six weeks welding an oil rig in Nigeria, Billy quits the shipyards and become a professional musician. In Paisley's Folk Attic, he meets Tam Harvey, a guitarist. They form a duo. "We're the Humblebums," is Billy's standard introduction from the stage. "I'm humble ... this is Tam Harvey."

1967-68 The Humblebums sign to Transatlantic Records and release their first album - The Humblebums First Collection of Merry Melodies. After a concert in Dunoon town hall, a woman comes up to Billy and he mistakes her for an autograph-seeker. It's his mother. Again, the reunion is unsatisfying, and he decides to keep his distance in future.

1969 At a Humblebums gig in Paisley Orange Hall, Billy meets Gerry Rafferty. "Right from the word go we got on like a house on fire," Rafferty recalls. "We came from very similar backgrounds: West of Scotland, Irish Catholic descent. And I had a very similar sense of humour, although in a much quieter kind of way."

Rafferty invites Billy back to his flat and plays him some songs he has written. Impressed, Billy invites Rafferty to join the band. Six months after he joins, Harvey leaves and the Humblebums continue as a duo. They release a second album, The New Humblebums, with cover art by Paisley-based painter John Byrne.

Iris becomes pregnant and she and Billy marry. Gerry Rafferty is best man. They move to Paisley. On December 27, Billy's son, James Maxton Connolly is born.

1970 After releasing a third album, Open Up The Door, the Humblebums split. "It was getting awkward on stage," says Rafferty. "When I did a solo piece, just voice and acoustic guitar, Billy would walk off stage. And his jokes were getting longer and longer while the songs were getting shorter and shorter. It made sense to part when we did. There was no bad feeling of any kind."

1971 Worried that he isn't good enough to make it as a solo artist, Billy nervously throws himself into writing. After a period in London, he returns to Glasgow in debt, and offers to perform for expenses. His first proper solo gig is in Musselburgh, a mix of comedy and songs. After that, things begin to take off: he plays in America for the first time, and makes his TV debut.

Mona dies. According to Pamela Stephenson, "It seemed as though the first act of his life story had ended, and he was glad to have made it to the intermission."

1972 Billy makes his theatrical debut at the Cottage Theatre, Cumbernauld, with the revue Connolly's Glasgow Flourish. He follows this with The Great Northern Welly Boot Show, co-written with the poet Tom Buchan. It is a huge success at the Edinburgh Fringe. John Byrne designs the sets and costumes, including Billy's soon-to-be- famous big banana boots.

1973 As Billy's stage costumes grow increasingly outlandish, the press begin to take notice. "Is this the new Harry Lauder?" they wonder.

In October, Iris gives birth to a daughter, Cara. The family move to Redlands Road, Hyndland.

1974 Billy sells out a run at the Pavilion, Glasgow, playing to 24,000 people in March. It's the moment when he really establishes himself in Scotland. Queues for tickets are reminiscent of Beatlemania. The Herald note that "when he appears in clubs and hotels his followers pay upwards of (pounds) 2 (including a light supper) to catch a glimpse of his act, and for his appearances at theatres in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen some 12,000 people will pay up to (pounds) 1.25."

His live album Solo Concert, containing infamous set piece The Last Supper and Crucifixion, is delayed because Billy is worried the green sleeve will be interpreted as a sectarian gesture. The Scotland World Cup squad have him flown out to Germany to motivate them before a game. He campaigns for the Labour candidate Brian Wilson, now UK Energy Minister. He performs for inmates of the Special Unit in Barlinnie, noting, almost enviously, that "They've come through bad times - maybe the worst there is - and they're standing upright. They know exactly who they are and what they are."

The Connollys move from Glasgow to the village of Drymen, Stirlingshire.

1975 On January 12, Billy is the first Scottish performer to headline the London Palladium. Later that year, he appears for the first time on the Parkinson show, where he tells a joke about the man who murders his wife and leaves her bum sticking out the ground so he has somewhere to park his bike. It makes him an instant national star. "I saw him as a class warrior," recalls Michael Parkinson. "There was a political edge to his humour: it was as if he was saying to working class people, 'Look at me. If I can do it, you can.'"

But not everyone is impressed. Pastor Jack Glass and members of his Zion Baptist Church picket BBC Scotland after Connolly is featured in the religious programme Eighth Day. Pastor Glass continues to protest outside Connolly shows over the next few years, saying "If the Forth was lava, I would throw him in."

On October 21, Billy plays Belfast, selling 4000 tickets in two hours. There is a worry that, as a high-profile Catholic who has spoken out against bigotry, he may be a target for Belfast's Orangemen, and is escorted to the venue by police carrying machine guns. The audience includes the IRA's Northern chief of staff, a Unionist MP, and the chairman of the Protestant Action Group. One Irish performer notes: "Just by the words he used and the subjects he touches on, one man has pushed forward the frontiers of humour in this country by ten years." The Irish tour is filmed and released as Big Banana Feet. Billy appears in Just Another Saturday, a television play written by Peter McDougall. On November 1, his song D.I.V.O.R.C.E goes to Number One.

John Byrne paints the famous portrait of Billy that still hangs in Glasgow's People's Palace. "It was absolutely of its time," he laughs. "He couldn't stand still for two seconds. And he wouldn't stop talking. I had to reprimand him several times. Everything was happening for him and he was hyper."

1976 Billy's play An Me Wi A Bad Leg, Tae, opens in Irvine and tours to London. In July and August he supports Elton John - then the biggest rock star in the world - on his American tour. He gets a taste for cocaine, which escalates his already considerable alcohol intake. In London, full of cocaine and wine, he collapses on the floor of a recording studio.

On August 10, he opens for Elton John at Madison Square Garden in New York, performing in front of 175,000 people. Brian Wilson - who once put Billy Connolly on the same bill as Pink Floyd as part of a concert in Dunoon - was there. "I was working for The Herald at that time," he says. "I was in Kansas for the Republican Convention and stopped off in New York. It was a great gig, and a really influential tour in terms of getting over to a much wider audience."

1977 Billy turns down an invitation to appear at the Queen's Jubilee Command Performance. "Can you imagine me on stage doing a heavy number and looking up to at the royal box to see if she gives the royal approval for everyone to laugh. It's not on."

1978 In his first big screen role, Billy appears with Richard Burton in Absolution. In a Scottish Opera production of Die Fledermaus, he plays Frosch, a drunken jailer.

However, his relationship with Scotland worsens when, in a BBC documentary, he condemns Glasgow's "desperate slums". Labour Councillor Michael Kelly responds: "Billy Connolly moves into the city from his country house to get material for his next best- selling record. We are well aware of the problems facing the city and don't need him to draw our attention to them." On November 23, Billy attacks a Sunday People journalist who has visited his home.

1979 Billy embarks on the Big Wee Tour of Britain - 69 dates in 84 days. Backstage in Brighton, he meets Pamela Stephenson for the second time, having already appeared with her on Not The Nine O'Clock News. He tells her that he is desperately unhappy and that his marriage is over. Back at his hotel, where they begin their affair, he drinks 30 brandies.

"What I saw of him - particularly in that dressing room - was that he was about to die," she says. "He was very suicidal. He was throwing everything away, desperately trying to feel no pain at all. You know how you get a sense from some people when they are very self- destructive that there is something they are trying to bury? They've got something they are trying to forget or they are trying to drown their sorrows? He was hurting in a very deep way. I genuinely did have a sense of not wanting to leave his side. I thought, 'If I leave this man, he's going to die.'"

In April, Billy plays The Theatre Royal, Glasgow. In its review of the show, The Herald detects a new note of tension between performer and audience. Interviewed around this time, Billy says, "People who should know me better have now rejected me in Scotland. They assume I must have changed when in my heart I'm pleading to be treated the same.

"I didn't make it till I was over 30. I wasn't a 17-year-old rock 'n' roll singer. Of course I've got all the trappings of success, but it hurts when friends treat me like some circus freak. I think success and money change other people more than the lucky man who's got them.

"If I identified with Glasgow as severely as I used to, I'd be a phoney. I'd be mimicking them. Because I'm not one of them any more. I have money, a nice house. You might say I've talked myself out of a corner. I'm not a shipyard worker. I've become a different kind of animal. It would be astoundingly pretentious of me to imagine I was the guy I used to be."

1980 Scottish councillors and churchmen protest plans to stage a Variety Club dinner in Billy's honour in Glasgow. A revival of his play is staged at the Pavilion theatre to poor reviews. Billy himself appears in the second half but the shows do not sell out. "I'm finished with Glasgow," he announces. "I'll never appear on stage again in the city."

1981 On May 11, Iris speaks to the press, dismissing rumours that her husband is having an affair with Pamela Stephenson. But by August it is all over. "We have been unhappy for some considerable time due to the pressures of business exerted on me," Billy announces. "The root cause of our differences did not involve any other party." He says he will not contest any divorce.

Twice in September, Billy clashes with journalists and photographers. On the second occasion, he and Stephenson are in Heathrow Airport, returning from Paris. One cameraman is kicked in the stomach. The incident makes the Nine O' Clock News.

"I was savaged and ravaged when I went out with Pamela," he later tells Mick Brown of The Telegraph. "It was the single most painful thing in my life, because it really estranged me from my children. It took us years to get that right again. It really wounded us that we were made a kind of joke, because what we felt was deeply, deeply serious."

1982 Billy is now living with Pamela Stephenson in London. When drunk, he is a "mean, violent, out-of-control nutter with psychotic rage, frequent blackouts and memory loss" so she encourages him to stop drinking. He agrees to give up booze for a year and see how it goes.

1983 In court again. This time for a custody battle over Jamie, now 13, and Cara, 9. Billy's lawyer alleges that Iris has a drink problem, while her lawyer claims that he had spent three weeks in a monastery drying out.

In December, Pamela Stephenson gives birth to a daughter, Daisy. That same month Billy appears at the London Apollo. His act contains the line: "My father was a child molester."

1984 Billy is drinking heavily again. Working on a film in St Lucia, he almost crashes a bus over the side of a ravine.

1985 He parts company with manager Harvey Goldsmith, who tells him: "You're not funny anymore."

On June 27, Iris is granted a divorce on grounds of adultery. Billy is granted custody of their children. On December 30, Billy finally quits drinking for good.

1986 Pamela Stephenson gives birth to a second daughter, Amy, in July. Two months later, they move into a mansion in Berkshire, Gruntfuttock Hall. Near neighbours include Michael Parkinson and Rolf Harris. Billy makes friends with the Duchess of York and Princess Anne, leading to heavy criticism from the Scottish press. "What would people like me to do when I am invited to dinner with the Queen?" he responds. "Should I say 'No, I can't because I am working class and an anarchist?' I'd look like a prick. I am any man's equal. I see myself as equal to Prince Charles."

1987 A quiet year punctuated by a now traditional appearance on Parkinson. This time he talks about giving up drinking. "When the fun goes away, it's awful My forties are the best years of my life - so far."

1988 Come July, come a new addition to the family: a third daughter with Pamela, Scarlett Layla. In September, Billy plays his first proper shows in Glasgow for eight years, three nights at the Theatre Royal. Every single ticket sells out in three hours.

Further evidence of his comeback is provided when his live video Billy and Albert goes double platinum. In November, he appears on the David Letterman show for the first time. They ask him to return every six weeks. Longing for American success, he agrees.

On March 31, Billy's father dies in hospital, following a second stroke. Sitting in the car afterwards, he admits to his wife that he was sexually abused as a child.

1989 Production starts on The Big Man, in which Billy stars with Liam Neeson. He cuts his hair and shaves off his beard for the part, causing gasps of horror throughout the land. Will the Samson of Comedy still be funny?

On December 20, Billy and Pamela Stephenson marry on Fiji. A local choir sing Loch Lomond and the theme from The Archers. Dame Edna gives the bride away. Daisy, Amy and Scarlett are bridesmaids.

1990 Billy spends six months in Los Angeles filming the sitcom Head Of The Class. He tells Alan Franks of the Evening Times, "Some of my old audience would definitely think this spells sell-out ... But even in the old days, when I drove to gigs, I would look out of the car window and see wee fat women, and think, 'I want them, I don't want the duffle-coated hairies.'

"I never wanted to be a trendy, and I don't want to be a trendy American. I want the working class and the middle class and the upper class, and in Britain I've got it. I've got everybody."

1991 Sitcom Head Of The Class comes to an end. Billy talks to Michael Parkinson about his childhood. "My aunts constantly told me I was stupid, which still affects me today pretty badly, you know. It's just a belief that I'm not quite as good as anyone else. It gets worse as you get older. I'm a happy man now but I still have the scars of that, very much so."

1992 The Head Of The Class spin-off, Billy, begins on ABC but is not a success. The Connollys buy a second home in Beverly Hills. This from the man who once said he would rather live "doon a stank in Govan" than in America.

1993 Shooting begins on Peter McDougall's Down Among The Big Boys, which contains the immortal line "Wet Wet Wet? More like pish pish pish. I wouldn't open the curtains to watch them if they were playing in the back garden."

1994 The Bigger Picture, Billy's guide to Scottish painting, begins on the BBC, followed by his World Tour of Scotland.

1995Down Among The Big Boys, World Tour of Scotland, and The Bigger Picture all win BAFTA awards. Billy tours Australia, proving that he is still big Down Under.

1996 Billy stars in The Life and Crimes of Deacon Brodie, and makes Mrs Brown with Dame Judi Dench. "We share the same sense of humour," she says. "Very blue!" Pamela Stephenson qualifies as a clinical psychologist.

1997 In interviews for Mrs Brown, Billy attacks the Royal Family: "A dead monarchy would be as good as a live one. The tourists would still come if they were dead."

1998 The Connollys sell Gruntfuttock Hall and buy Candacraig House in Strathdon, Aberdeenshire. Billy insists that he will maintain the local custom of giving a dram to the Men of Lonach when they march by en route to Strathdon.

The following year - and every year since - he makes good on his promise, inviting Hollywood mates including Robin Williams and Steve Martin (a fellow banjo enthusiast) along to enjoy the festivities. Scotland barfs at the sight of Mork in a kilt.

1999 Billy makes The Debt Collector and uses promotional interviews to indulge in his new favourite pastime - bashing devolution and the Scottish Nationalist Party: "It's entirely their fault, this new racism in Scotland, this anti-Englishness ... there's a viciousness to it now that I really loathe and it is their fault entirely."

2000 Filming Cletis Trout in Toronto, Billy plays a coroner and films in a working mortuary, an experience which finally settles his lifelong attraction to suicide.

2001 Pamela Stephenson's biography, Billy, is published. A huge bestseller, it reveals for the first time that Billy was sexually abused by his father. "That was not generally known even in the family," she says.

"And there were people who needed to be told. It was very healing for Billy to be able to bust those secrets which just propagate darkness and sadness and trauma."

Billy tells The Observer that not confronting his father about the abuse is the "biggest disappointment of my life".

In March, he becomes a grandfather when Cara has a baby son, Walter. He is also awarded an honourary degree from Glasgow University.

2002 Celebrating his 60th birthday early with a bash at Candacraig in August, Billy's party is attended by Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles.

In September, he plays three nights at the Clyde Auditorium, with profits going to victims of the recent Glasgow floods, which particularly affected Shettleston and Easterhouse. Referring to his imminent birthday, he muses that "It's sad when you're too old to die young."

Billy is currently in Japan, filming The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise, making this his biggest movie role to date. But how exactly will he mark his 60th year? "I'm gonna get another tattoo," he says. "I'd like to have flower feet and a banjo on my knee.

"When I'm old, I want to be all flowers, to be a very colourful old man."

Copyright 2002 SMG Sunday Newspapers Ltd.
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