| Billy was already attending St. Gerard's Secondary School in Govan,
when the family moved to Drumchapel in 1956. Prior to this, Billy had somehow
managed to stay away from the real criminal elements, and was considered
a bit of an odd character, prone to visiting graveyards and funerals at
the crematorium.
The move away from the city centre did not make much of a difference
- Billy simply got the bus in to Glasgow, and caught the ferry across the
Clyde to St. Gerards in Govan. 'The Drum', as Drumchapel is called locally,
was one of the new overspill council estates planned in the 50s, in order
to easy the slum squalor in the city centre. Based on Soviet housing schemes,
the materials used were shoddy, the workmanship poor, and they were soon
turned into worse versions of the slums which had been left behind.
Billy has been scathing about 'The Drum' in some of his comedy
routines, but admits that he actually quite enjoyed his time there. |
| 'To be quite honest, I quite liked it when I lived there. When I
moved to Drumchapel, I was fourteen and there was a bluebell wood there,
and it was in great condition then - I don't think it's in quite so good
condition now - but it was lovely then. We had rabbits and pheasants' odds
and ends, and I really quite liked it. I just started to dislike it when
I got older, into my teens and things. In my late teens, when I was stuck
out there, it cost me a lot of money to go anyplace. It was a kind of cowboy
town, but I liked that aspect of it, buying stuff out of vans, a ragman
coming in a wee green van.' |
| Billy remarked in World Tour of Scotland that the oldest house
in Glasgow, the Provand's Lordship was built in 1471 and is still standing,
though his Drumchapel home, built in the 50s has since been demolished
as uninhabitable. |
| 'What did they know about building houses in 1471 that they don't
know now?' |
| Billy started off well at St. Gerards, which was looked upon as the
best school for working-class boys, coming seventh in a class of forty-three
after resitting the eleven-plus. At the end of the first year, he was still
tenth out of thirty-five, but he fell in with the 'bad boys' and began
going to the pictures instead of school, and gazing at the pigeons outside
the classroom window. He admits he didn't do homework for two years: |
| 'I got belted every day for it, but when I weighed it up, I would
much rather have the belt than do the homework. I started to develop this
way of thinking: be your individual self and just forget the rest. Not
so much that I thought school was wrong, I just knew I wasn't happy in
what I was doing.' |
 In those days,
Billy was getting interested in Rock and Roll. His tastes were Chuck Berry
and Jerry Lee Lewis. As a fourteen year old boy, he would go into Woolworths
when on school trips and buy cover versions of all the hits.
Billy left school at fifteen, with his J1 and J2 engineering certificates.
On enquiring at the school secretary's office, he was presented with his
own, and the certificate of a boy called Connell, by mistake.
And so, Billy went out to work.
|
|
