Billy Connolly

One of my favorite human beings on this planet is the Glaswegian comedian Billy Connolly. I first saw him on HBO, in a concert arranged, I think, by Whoopi Goldberg. I feared that her patronage did not bode well for whoever followed her introduction, but I was dead wrong.

I once spent six weeks on National Geographic’s dime touring Scotland, and so enjoyed Scots’ ribald, irreverent company and infectious brogue that I lost my bearings. A couple of the gents I sat around with in pubs were bigoted, rabid sons-of-bitches, but I rarely recognized it until I stepped out into the street. The Auld Kirkers on the Isle of Lewis were some of the grimmest people I ever encountered, chuckling darkly at the tourists who try to employ public restrooms of a Sunday, only to find them locked up for the duration of the Sabbath. And there were some unseemly Anglicized lairds who it seemed to me, were cashing in on the culture of the very Highlanders their ancestors evicted so they could make their fortunes in sheep.

They were the exceptions, however. On the opposite end of the spectrum were the Glaswegians who were generally as bright and funny as their city was dim and dour. The penultimate Glaswegian is Billy Connolly, and I’ve expended many a profitable hour scrounging clips of him on YouTube, performing his riffs on folk music, airplanes, and breaking wind.

Then, to my great dismay, I came upon clips of him being tele-psychoanalyzed by a woman who turned out to be his wife. Now, it seems to me that nothing can ruin a comedian like a shrink’s embrace. My open-and-shut proof of this is John Cleese, whose delvings into his own and everybody else’s psyche have apparently turned him into a singularly pompous ass. They take the terrible risk of taking themselves seriously, which is death for anyone, but especially for a comedian. And yet here was Billy Connolly taking that very same risk, and with his own wife, for God’s sake.

But I needn’t have worried, for however willingly and even cheerfully he entertained his wife’s inquiries, and whatever measure of self-acceptance he has attained, he remains himself in these interviews: a large-hearted free spirit perplexed and fascinated by the world around him.

In one exchange he talked about reaching the conclusion late in life that there were people, movies, musical genres, and much else that he simply didn’t get. Not that they were unworthy of his attention, necessarily, but that they were simply not on his wavelength. And at the same time he decided not to be embarrassed by what he did like, even if it was a Big Mac, Rodney Dangerfield, a reality show, a snippet of Musak in an elevator.

He made me think about all the people and movies and musical genres I have disparaged over the years, and how perhaps their only vice was that I did not get them. I still feel the need to stand up for certain of my deprecations that bear, I think, an almost biblical timelessness. By any objective measure, for instance, Keanu Reeves can’t act.

But, sticking with actors for the moment, just because I can’t stomach Whoopi Goldberg, Kevin Costner, Mickey Rourke, Greer Garson, Jeff Goldblum, and on and on, doesn’t mean that they’re beneath contempt, necessarily. It may simply be that I don’t get them, or they me. Of course, Connolly’s insight is at odds with the immutable fact that I am the center of the universe. Nevertheless even I, arbiter of all things, should probably lighten up occasionally.