Early Life
Connolly was born at 69 Dover Street ("on the linoleum, three floors up" "at six o'clock in the evening") in Anderston, Glasgow, to William Connolly and his wife Mary "Mamie" (McLean) Connolly, a hospital cafeteria worker. Connolly's grandfather was an Irish immigrant. In 1946, when he was barely four years old, Connolly's mother abandoned her children when his father was still away in the army. Connolly and his sister, Florence, were cared for by two aunts, Margaret and Mona Connolly, his father's sisters. His biography, written by wife Pamela Stephenson, documented years of physical and sexual abuse by his father, which began when he was ten and lasted until he was about fifteen.
"Twice in my life, little birds have flown in and made a huge difference," explained Connolly in 1996. When he was seven, the Connolly family went to Rothesay on holiday. He was sent to get some milk and bread rolls. On his way back with his hands full, a bird landed on his head. Connolly immediately thought God had called him and "nearly had a coronary". "It was a jackdaw, and I didn't know you could teach jackdaws to speak. But I was walking along, and this thing landed on my head and said hello. I nearly passed away. I learned subsequently that it was a tame bird, and we became friends and I got used to the idea: the bird would land on me and I was quite happy. My life had changed forever." Connolly said the second "bird" was Brett Whiteley, an Australian artist he met through Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits in the 1980s.
Between the ages of fourteen and twenty, Connolly was brought up in a tenement in the Anderston district of Glasgow. He later lived in Partick.
He attended St. Peter's Primary School in Glasgow and St. Gerard's Secondary School in Govan. At age 12, Connolly decided he wanted to become a comedian but did not think he fitted the mould, feeling he needed to become more "windswept and interesting". At 15, he left school with two engineering qualifications, one collected by mistake which belonged to a boy named Connell.
Connolly was a year too young to work in the shipyards. He became a delivery boy until he was sixteen, when he was deemed overqualified (due to his J1 and J2 certificates) to become an engineer. Instead, he worked as a boilermaker at Alexander Stephen and Sons Shipyard in Linthouse.
Connolly also joined the Territorial Army Reserve 15th (Scottish) Battalion, the Parachute Regiment (15 PARA). He later commemorated his experiences in the song "Weekend Soldier".
Read more about this topic: Billy Connolly
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“If a walker is indeed an individualist there is nowhere he can’t go at dawn and not many places he can’t go at noon. But just as it demeans life to live alongside a great river you can no longer swim in or drink from, to be crowded into safer areas and hours takes much of the gloss off walking—one sport you shouldn’t have to reserve a time and a court for.”
—Edward Hoagland (b. 1932)