Rambling Man by Billy Connolly

Author:Billy Connolly [Connolly, Billy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-08-06T23:00:00+00:00

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I built my act in an informal way – I never wrote anything down, except a few headings to remind me to tell this story or that one. And I was unusual, being a hairy Glaswegian guy. The comedians I admired – like Max Wall and Frankie Howerd – were not like me. When we listened to the radio or watched TV the popular comedians were Charlie Chester, Jimmy Wheeler and Dave King – and they were all Englishmen. But when I went to the theatre in Glasgow and saw Jimmy Logan being extremely funny in my accent, singing parodies, funny songs about things I knew – the coalman and the journeyman, the street I walked along every day – it had a profound effect on me. I thought maybe I could take a leaf out of his book. I decided then I would like to be a comedian. And there were other Scottish comedians who inspired me, like Jack Radcliffe and Chic Murray. Chic used to say: ‘I was at the Olympic Games and a man came along carrying a big thing on his shoulder. I said, “Are you a pole vaulter?” He said, “No – I’m a German. How’d you know my name was Walter?”’ That kind of nonsense really makes me laugh. They should have a statue to Chic in Edinburgh. Never mind those Roman fuckers – nobody knows who the fuck they were, anyway. Put one up of Chic!

Most of what I did onstage was spontaneous. It just came out of my head – which was terrifying because I had to more or less repeat it every night. Somebody once told me that after Tony Hancock had just done the famous ‘blood donor’ sketch he was in his dressing room, really depressed, moaning: ‘Ohhh! How am I gonna follow that?’ I understand that perfectly. The way I operate, you have to follow yourself every night. When you do really well you go to bed and you say, ‘Oh God, I have to do it tomorrow again.’ And the next night and the next – in my case, it could be fifty-four nights in a row.

Even the thought of touring makes me very nervous, which is actually a good thing. It helps. The worst is to go on feeling completely confident. To get the best out of yourself you should always be jumpy. Comedians and boxers are very, very alike. We need to be keyed up before taking on the fight. If the boxer comes off alone, he’s done well. And if the comedian comes off with laughter still ringing in his ears, then he’s done well. I used to come on a bit like a boxer and stride around the stage, with ideas going round in my head, putting out little feelers – to see what they’re like, what they found funny, how far I could push the little adventurous boat out. And once it’s flowing, once it settles, it achieves a certain rhythm. Mind you, a boxer can train with a sparring partner, but comedians can’t rehearse in the same way.

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