Fri. May 7

    It doesn’t matter what’s written in this space as far as one person is concerned. That would be its subject, Billy Connolly. He won’t be reading it. As far as what goes down in print he avers, “I don’t care.” The 67-year-old Scottish comic never reads anything written about him, figuring “the good is worse than the bad.” He briefly considers whatever public perceptions, or misconceptions, might be floating out there, and says, “No idea. Haven’t a fucking clue. I don’t particularly care. I don’t give a fuck. Before I was 50, maybe I would have been bothered; now it just irritates me like a stone in the shoe. Fuck off. It’s too late to dislike me.”
    Lest you sense antipathy or conflict here, let me assure you, there’s not a trace. Connolly establishes a fabulous rapport, has boundless energy. Palpable warmth and shares laughs big and small. It’s not unlike his act, which is unscripted. There are core themes, topics he’s likely to strike upon, but where he goes no one knows. When he takes the stage, he says he’s driven by three things: “adrenaline, anger and coffee.”
     Think of the funniest comics standing and I’d say: Eddie Izzard, Chris Rock, Kathy Griffin, Russell Brand and Billy Connolly.  Connolly has acted but standup comedy is his metier. On a 2005 DVD recorded in New York, Connolly describes the Scots as “a kind of mentally ill Irish tribe – ‘C’mon lads, let’s go to an even rainier place!’” He muses about the aging process, his own and others, opining that the shaven head is simply “the comb-over of the millennium.” He lambastes fat America, discusses how many times he’s been puked upon (three) and spares no detail about his days as a drinker. He riffs extensively on opera and wrests humor out of people dying in hospital beds. He may do some, or none of it when he plays the Shubert Theatre Friday May 7.
   
    All these years as a comic and you never write.
    I’ve never written anything down.
    How many hours do you have to call upon?
    Great huge lumps of it disappear. I did one on the Crucifixion and the Last Supper [years ago] in Britain and I couldn’t do it with a gun to my head. I know people who know it all by heart, and I can easily ask them. But I have no interest. [The show] constantly moves along.
    It’s depressing when a comedian does a “greatest hits” set and the audience cries out for “classic hits” jokes.
     People calling out “Hey, bits! Jokes!” I did a joke once called “Ivan the Terrible.” I couldn’t believe my ears [when people yelled for it] You know it! It’s not like a song! You want to hear my ?
     Those big story bits that I do, they’re born of ad-lib, that’s what they’re made of. I’ll be talking about something and ad-lib on top of that. It goes well. It stays in. Do it tomorrow night, ad-lib on top of that, subtract, add. It becomes a big story. I’ve done it for years. I don’t know how you do it, it just kind of happens. If it ever becomes a bit unwieldy, sometimes I’ll lop a big chunk off it.
    Ever forget the main thread?
    Oh, all the time! That’s what it’s made of, trying to remember what it is.
    I’ve noticed The British tabloids have had a run a you for a while now.
     They always see me as some kind of rebellious stranger. See, the tabloids in Britain are different because they’re like newspapers, so you get Iraq on one page and that stuff on the other, so it carries a hint of truth about it.
    And you had the temerity to a) leave the country and b) be become very successful.
     Yeah, they don’t like either of those things. And they don’t like it if you don’t walk in line. I don’t know what it takes for them to like them and I’m kind of don’t care anymore. You notice that you dislike all the people they like. I don’t want to be one of them. And they meet you at a football match or big dinner or something, you think ‘Oh god, he likes me,’ I hope he doesn’t print that he likes me. Of course, they love you when you’re dead. I can’t have a plaque [put where I grew up] because they pulled down the building I was born in. I had a hangover and I was putting water on my face with a friend, I looked out a window across the street, and saw the building I was born in fall down. I was looking at it. Now, there’s a wee garden place. I think they’re not sure what to do with it. It was a terrible slum and they pulled it down and put down some trees, so now you’ve got part slum/part trees.
    It’s funnier, looking back, isn’t it?
    It is. Eventually, time and distance give you certain clarity. You think ‘Why was I worried what they thought of it?’ Because in all the years, I’ve been attacked by them I’ve grown and grown and grown, so it hasn’t affected me.
      I know it’s commonplace now, but back then, they didn’t like your swearing.
    When I started, I was very original and kind of unique. There was this Glaswegian language I used very deeply, all the slang, and I chose various off the wall things to talk about. I got into hemorrhoids and venereal disease and I dwelled very much on this little bit here, between the belly button and the crotch. It’s where I lived. Back and front. I remember I was doing a concert in London [that was going out the BBC]. The director said “What are you going to talk about?” and I said, “I don’t know. I know roughly what I’ll be doing.” And he started to panic as the time got closer – he’d been following me around, watching the shows – and he said “Are you going to do that hemorrhoid thing?” and I said, “Well, it’s new and I love it.” He said “We may have to get permission on that.” So he talked to the BBC, whoever the high head was at the time, and a note came back says, “Bottoms are fine. As long as nothing is going into them or coming out of them.”
  Where does that leave hemorrhoids?
  That leaves hemorrhoids in no man’s land. They’re neither going in or going out; they’re just kind of there. The audience loved it.
  From what I’ve read about your youth, it sounds like Oliver Twist.
   It does, yeah. It’s pretty unfortunate. I seemed to need 12 assholes in the road as I was going through life, one after another - a nightmare at home and you’d go to school to meet this other fucking nightmare. I was just very unfortunate.  I would go to [other kids] houses, these happy houses where there was so much life. Great places, with funny parents who would make jokes. Mine just happens to be fucking hellish, for no reason of my own. My mother fucked off when I was four with another guy. [Connolly details more abuse from aunts and his father who came back only to sexually abuse him.] I would be 15 when I left school. Worked in a bookshop, then I delivered some bread, then I became an apprentice welder. I went to shipyards and started to become a man. It was another world, a whole world full of adults, funny, weird, sad wonderful people. My whole life exploded. I’m sure I discovered the comedy that I now have, just being funny instead of telling jokes.
   Did drinking fuel your humor?
   It did certainly when I was young. I was a funny schoolboy, but  the drinking happened before the big hippie movement started. I’d  been drinking four, five, six years and when the hippie thing started. I didn’t do much dope. I was high already, I was born high. I know it sounds like I get high on life. I don’t mean that. When I got stoned, I don’t like it. I go away. It was too much for me. I came to the conclusion that people were doing it to get like I was. I thought I was the luckiest man on earth. I had long hair, I was in a band, the Beatles and Stones were there. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. Then, drink came. It was lovely. To the general melee that was going on in the ‘60s, the new morality, the make love not war, or get drunk and full around and be a crazy man, the more crazy you got, the more people wanted to watch this craziness. When I got in my 30s, the fun went away. That was the first symptom. [He’s been sober a quarter-century.}
     Pivotal moment in deciding to quit?
      I do it onstage. I’m drunk, locked in a phone box and I couldn’t get out. Alcohol doesn’t make your clever. I think a mechanical thing happens in your forties. You either listen to it or don’t at your peril. Your body says – whoa, whoa, whoa! I was two distinct guys at this time, the drinking guy and the sober guy. The drunk guy – and I’ve read it about other people – where you’re horrible to people who love you, and delightful to people you don’t know. And I had that in spades. But the one that frightened me most was – I always had blackouts, for years, bits I didn’t remember from the night before. Over two or three days, it would come back – “Oh shit, I remember throwing my trousers over the wall, I remember dancing on the table.” And then this period came where they wouldn’t come back at all. We’d separated. The drunk guy and me had become two guys with different personalities. And to get his memory back I had to drink.
   Where is he now?
   I don’t know where he is. Walking around. I was at a detox place - but it wasn’t me, it was my son and I went in as the daddy - and I got all these lectures and the most frightening thing was, the progression of your drinking, it you stop at point D, and take it up at point M, your alcoholism continues and starts from where you would have been. So, the other guy gallops along. He’s still getting pissed in the ether somewhere. And if I start again, I join up.
   You’ve certainly had your fun with religion.
    Oh, I love to savage religion. All of them, all those dedicated non-thinking bastards and their imaginary friends. I grew up Catholic. When I was a little boy I loved it/ I still love the smell and the music and the incense; the sadness of it is fabulous, too. But I had a little spurt [of faith] around the age of 14. Then I went from that feel to right over nothing. I just stopped believing. There wasn’t a seminal moment. I just thought, “This guy never shows up. Why doesn’t he show up when children are being burned to death? Or why doesn’t he show up in the middle of war and stay “Stop it you fucking Nazis!” Just once. … Jesus was such an astonishing man. Whether you believe he’s the Son of God, that’s another thing. He was an astounding person. He was fantastic. What they do in his name! Did you ever here that bit I did? Jesus lives in K-Mart. When people find Jesus, they also find K-Mart. These guys would be all hippie and then show up in this shit, you know. But Jesus was exciting, the company he chose, the things he chose to do. … I always wanted to be assumed bodily into heaven.  I always felt sorry for the Virgin Mary. Her assumed body is up there, but there’s nobody else. She’s wondering about on her own.
    How many wars have been fought In His Name! You European guys all had god on your side.
    And the king used to go to war, as well. I think that’s a good idea, You declare war, you go. And you get a special hat.
   Pamela Stephenson, your wife, was a comic-actress and is now a psychologist. Does she help edit you?
     I try things on her. I’ll give you an example. There was a thing recently. She’s too politically correct; she worries too much.  If I say “dwarf,” she says, “No, no, it’s little person.” I say, “I have to say dwarf, I’ll tell you why at the end.’ I’ll talk about the situation of the two names and she says, “Oh, they’ll be offended. “ I don’t care. When it becomes a time whether it be in politics or life or the creative life, whether you’re writing a book or a play or a song, at some point you have to say “I couldn’t give a fuck what you think, this is what I’m writing.” Or you get nothing done at all. Especially in comedy. If you play within the boundaries, you’re gonna be going around the stage saying [to the audience] ‘Where are you from?’ You’re going to be one of them.
    On your DVD, I noticed your increasing frustration when you mention a place and people cheer.
    Hey! I could have brought a road map and just gone through the names and gotten a standing ovation.
   You remind me of George Carlin. Have others said that to you?
That has happened to me. I had to go and buy George Carlin albums because I’d never heard of him. This was way in the ‘70s. His progression from straight comic to hippie comic to, now, it was so acerbic So angry! I think it’s lovely. … It’s a very difficult thing to do to is make fun, invent fun, and mean anything when you say it.  Nobody knows why they’re laughing, I don’t know why they’re laughing.
   Ever analyze or read about it?
   Oh no, and I hate the people that do it. I feel sorry for them, cause it stops them from being funny. I do this bit about looking for a scarf in my sister’s house and I’d given her a scare ‘cause she didn’t know I was in the house and I say to them, ‘I don’t know why this is funny I have no idea, but I’ll try it on you.” I do it and they always end up laughing. I don’t care. I don’t know why it’s funny and I don’t care. I don’t care. Basically, people don’t know why you go hahaha at a certain arrangement of words or why some guys look funny and others don’t or some people look amiable funny or freakish or cocky. It’s a waste of energy.
   Like Eddie Izzard, you have deep knowledge of history, the world at large, far beyond comedy. It brings a lot to what you do.
   I think you have to. You don’t have to when you start. You can just be funny with your own local stuff and your own culture. I did it. But if you’re going to have any longevity to your career, you’re going to have know more than just where you came from. But knowing where you come from is a very good thing and knowing your own culture makes you international, in as much it can’t become international without knowing your own culture. I’ve read avidly since I was a wee boy; I didn’t have to make an effort to know the world better. It all comes in and became this soup and these strange bedfellows appear together in the middle of a story. I don’t know quite why. I think if you’re going to be funny you should know your subject. Bob Dylan said know you’re song well before you start singing. Otherwise, you just become a dilettante, sniping. “Margaret Thatcher, what a bitch!” It’s ok but it’s not good enough. You have to take it and make something else.
    Can you do this forever?
    I’m at an absolutely wonderful time in my life as I’m enjoying it now. More than I did. I never really enjoyed it. I’ve always disliked the thought of doing it. It’s a bit like sports, boxing, running or cycling. It’s not pleasant, it’s pleasant to win, but when you’re actually doing it, it’s not the most pleasant thing Acting isn’t pleasant. Reflecting on it is pleasant. They used to say to John McEnroe, “You don’t look happy,” and he’d say do you know any other athletes who smile when they’re doing it? The conception is that you’re doing a happy thing, because it’s show business.
   But when you’re up there it seems like fun.
   Yes, when it’s rolling along. But the thought of getting from here to there, it’s adrenaline and coffee and anger and all sorts of stuff - and having the light on you.  Once you say you’re a comedian and you walk on stage you’re saying you’re the funniest guy in the room. It’s a responsibility. Barry Humphries - Dame Edna - said “Sometimes, I walk on with 3000 people in the room and I think ‘Alone at last’” and I understand that.

(This interview/feature is an extended version of a piece written for the Boston Phoenix, www.thephoenix.com in 2007.) Showtime: 8 p.m. Tickets: 453-$53.

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