 Billy soon
named his show Connolly's Glasgow Flourish and it was well
received all over Scotland. After one of the Glasgow shows, Billy met poet
Tom Buchan, and they decided to co-write a musical play, called The
Great Northern Welly Boot Show, with sketches, jokes and songs.
The show was an immediate success all over Scotland and England, except
in Glasgow, where it died. The show played at the 1972 Edinburgh Fringe,
and the Young Vic in London, and led to a recording contract for Billy,
with Polydor.
Billy had his first taste of America when he was offered a tour
of the Boston Irish folk clubs with Hamish Imlach, a moderately successful
folkie. Unfortunately for Billy, the middle-class Irish Americans did not
appreciate him and had trouble understanding his accent.
It was around this time that Billy made it onto British television
for the first time - a local programme called Dateline Scotland.
One of the booked guests hadn't turned up, and there was only Billy to
fill the slot. But Billy's stories of Glasgow life filled up the time wonderfully.
Billy still considered himself a funny folk singer during the
early seventies, but he soon realised that people were flocking to see
him for the comedy rather than the music, and the songs began to be less
important to him. Some of the Folkies started to think that Billy was 'selling
out'.
Billy rapidly became the popular cult hero of Scotland, a spokesman
for all things Scottish. Billy however, has plans of his own, being a self-professed
Anglophile. England, to him, was an untapped wilderness, far away from
public squabbling about him 'selling out' or getting 'too big for himself'.
Also, the Scottish Nationalist Party had been trying to get Billy on their
side, and they viewed his increasing popularity in England as a betrayal
of some sort. Billy did not want to be associated with them.
 Billy's fame
happened at the same time as other Scots hitting the headlines. The
Bay City Rollers with their legions of screaming girl fans, Pilot,
and The Average White Band were all having national and international
success. Scotland, and Scottish performers were beginning to realise that
they could contribute to the world scene, and Billy was part of this revival.
He had his eye on bigger things, however.
But Billy still liked Scotland and it still loved him, and his
new manager Frank Lynch carefully managed his image in Scotland, ensuring
he was always in the public eye. It was 1974 when his second child, Cara,
was born. His album Solo Concert had just been released,
and it contained a sketch about The Last Supper being held in Gallowgate,
not Galilee, and that the apostles were all Glaswegians. Jesus was constantly
referred to as The Big Yin, a fact which irritated some of the more staunchly
devout, since this appeared to be a reference to himself.
This is when Pastor Jack Glass began his ranting and raving about
Billy: |
| 'In this cassette recording, Connolly depicts Christ as wearing
a jaggy bunnet and entering a pub, steamin' drunk. Christ is further depicted
as urinating on a Roman soldier who pierced him with a spear on the Cross.
We call upon every Christian who loves The Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ
to organize a protest outside the halls in Scotland where Connolly - the
blasphemous buffoon - will be performing.' |
| Billy began to look on Glass and his picketers as a good luck token,
since the more he ranted and raved, the bigger Billy's audiences became.
In 1974, Billy and Iris were forced to move out of their posh
west-end flat in Redlands Road simply because he had become too famous,
people were beginning to hang around outside the close. They moved into
a luxurious country home in the village of Drymen, near the south east
shore of Loch Lomond, Stirlingshire. Making good money now, Billy could
begin indulging in his passion for sports cars, boats, and fishing. In
1975 Billy's single D.I.V.O.R.C.E. was a number one hit, and the
album Cop Yer Whack For This went gold.
1975 was also the year that Billy made his first famous appearance
on the Parkinson television show. Unlike his previous TV appearance,
this show was a national cult at the time, and Billy told what is arguably
the most important funny of his career: |
| 'This guy was going out to meet his friend in the pub, and he went
down, he said "Oh hallo, how's it going?" He said, "Fine, fine." "How's
the wife" He said, "Oh, she's dead. I murdered her this morning. Dead."
He said, "You're kidding me?" He said, "No, I'm not." He said, "I'm not
talking to you if you keep talking like that." He said, "Please yourself.
I'll show you if you like." He said, "Show me." So they went up to the
tenement building through the close (that's the entrance to the tenement)
into the back green into the wash house, and, sure enough, there's a big
mound of earth. There was a bum sticking out. He says, "Is that her?" He
says, "Aye." He says, "What did you leave her bum sticking out for?" He
says, "I need somewhere to park my bike." ' |
The joke made Billy as a national star, but just before he went on,
Frank Lynch advised Billy not to tell that joke, thinking that a joke about
bums and murdering the wife on prime-time television could quite easily
blow Billy's chances. Billy, as ever, did what he wanted, and this time
the gamble paid off.
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