Billy Connolly

William Connolly was born on 24 November 1942 in Anderston, a working-class district of Glasgow, and raised in Partick by aunts after his mother left and his father was away with the RAF; he later spoke publicly about childhood abuse. He left school at fifteen and served an apprenticeship as a welder in the Clyde shipyards, an experience that would later provide him with an entire universe of characters, cadences and comic material. The shipyards, he often said, were where he learned to tell a story properly, because a boring one got you laughed off the scaffolding.

In the mid-1960s Connolly picked up a banjo and joined the Glasgow folk scene, playing with Tam Harvey as The Humblebums and later with a young Gerry Rafferty. His between-songs patter grew longer and funnier than the songs themselves, until audiences were coming for the talk. By 1972 he had made the leap to solo stand-up, and in 1975 an appearance on Michael Parkinson's chat show — anchored by a now-legendary joke involving a murdered wife and a bicycle — turned him into an overnight national name.

Across the next four decades Connolly redefined what a live comedy show could be. His concerts stretched to two, three, sometimes four hours, wandering from childhood memory to windswept anecdote to sudden philosophical detour, all in a broad Glaswegian brogue punctuated by delighted laughter at his own thoughts. He toured relentlessly across the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States, becoming one of the first British comics to operate as a genuinely international arena-level live act.

Alongside stand-up he built a substantial screen career, from Hollywood roles in Mrs Brown opposite Judi Dench and The Last Samurai with Tom Cruise to major travel series including the BBC's World Tour of Scotland and ITV's Journey to the Edge of the World. Diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2013, Connolly formally retired from live performance in 2018, but continued to write, paint and appear in documentaries. He was knighted in 2017 for services to entertainment and charity, a Glasgow welder finally, unmistakably, Sir Billy.