When legendary Scottish comedian Billy Connolly went to perform in Belfast in 1975, the Troubles were at their height. “It was only five weeks after the Miami band got shot dead,” filmmaker Murray Grigor, who accompanied Connolly on the Irish tour, refers to the horrific incident in late July 1975 when members of the much-loved Miami Showband were murdered by a Loyalist paramilitary group.
The ‘Big Yin,’ as Connolly was nicknamed, reasoned that people in Northern Ireland bought his records and therefore deserved to see him perform.
Billy Connolly: Big Banana Feet, the 1976 documentary Grigor and Paddy Higson made about Connolly’s Irish tour, has already sold out for its screenings at the Glasgow Film Festival. It will also be in cinemas from May 10 and released by the BFI on DVD and Blu-Ray later that month.
“Something like 35 guns were taken off people in Belfast [before Connolly’s performance]. I never quite got to the bottom of that. Billy knew all about this. That’s why the scenes in the dressing room are really quite tough,” Grigor says of the fraught atmosphere before the comedian went on stage.
The film was self-consciously modelled on Don’t Look Back (1967), DA Pennebaker’s classic verité film about Bob Dylan’s tour to England in 1965. It was also influenced by the work of Roger Graef, the so-called “fly on the wall” master, whom Grigor had met when he was on the BFI Production Board.
The documentary followed Connolly as he performed first in Dublin and then north of the border in Belfast. The budget was £10,000. Distribution was handled at the time by Brent Walker, referred to Grigor as “a terrible distribution company,” Most of the prints were later destroyed. The director himself had a copy of the film which he gave to the Pacific Film Archive.
“They [the Archive] were very ungracious,” Grigor remembers of how, in later years, he tried to get the film back. He had given it for nothing to the archive but they were demanding money to allow him access to it even though it was his own movie. A restored version of the film was shown in Glasgow in 2012 but then the movie vanished from sight again. The only way to see it was to pay a hefty fee to the archive, Grigor says.
The director credits Douglas Weir, a film re-mastering and technical wizard at the British Film Institute, with getting the documentary back into public circulation. Weir, a “film ferret” as Grigor characterises him, put out notices on Ebay and eventually received a positive response. A copy turned up that had previously screened in a hall in the Falkland Islands. “He got it for £40. That’s what has made it possible to release it,” Grigor says.
Connolly, now in his 80s and living in Florida, is fully behind the re-release. Grigor had collaborated with Connolly on an earlier project, Clydescope (1974), made by the Clyde Tourist Association and Films of Scotland. Writer John Byrne (later to write Tutti Frutti and The Slab Boys Trilogy) did the animation.
The short celebrated the idiosyncrasies of communities in Largs, Dunoon and Glasgow itself. Grigor talks of the “witty psychotic surrealism” associated with comedians from the region, among them the legendary Chic Murray. “Billy plays off that. He was very much influenced by Chic.”
Ask Grigor what makes Connolly so special and he suggests: “he is really a master because he doesn’t really tell jokes so much as [give an] observation of life. My late wife said he was almost like a therapist the way he was talking to people.”
Religious and right-wing groups labelled the comedian as a subversive “blasphemer” but Grigor argues that audiences found it cathartic to listen to his monologues about everything from religion to bodily functions.
The filmmaker credits comedian turned therapist Pamela Stephenson with “really rescuing” Connolly. She met him at a time when he was drinking self-destructively but since they’ve been together, he has been teetotal.
Grigor also marvels at Connolly’s abilities as an artist and sculptor. Now in his 80s and suffering from Parkinson’s Disease, the ‘Big Yin’ still remains a creative force.
Alongside his collaborations with Connolly, Grigor also worked with Sean Connery, an equally significant character in Scottish popular culture. When Grigor ran the Edinburgh Film Festival, Connery agreed to become “patron” of the event. They worked together on Connery’s book, ‘Being A Scot.’
Grigor has remained in touch with Connolly and sometimes would visit him when Connolly and Stephenson were living in Candacraig, a country house in Aberdeenshire close to Balmoral.
“He [Connolly] was very pally with the Queen. The Queen liked lavvy [lavatorial] jokes,” Grigor remembers of the friendship that sprang up between Elizabeth II and the ‘Big Yin.’
Weir and Grigor will be on stage discussing the film after the Glasgow premiere. Connolly himself won’t be there. “Billy is really quite ill. He won’t leave Florida now, I don’t think. It’s sad, really,” Grigor says.
Among prolific Grigor’s other current projects is a planned book about the two fires that razed the Glasgow School of Art, the first in 2014 and the second four years later, in 2018. He has long been obsessed with Scottish architectural genius architect Charles Rennie Macintosh who designed the building. Grigor’s award-winning 1968 film Macintosh is credited with reviving the public’s interest in the (then) largely forgotten architect.
“It [the School of Art] survived two World Wars. There was a Zeppelin raid…During the Second World War, there was also a bomb,” Grigor notes. He speculates that the second fire may have been arson.
The book is some way from completion. At the moment, his focus is more on Connolly and the Glasgow Film Festival premiere. Ask for his own favourite moments from the comedian’s performances and he rattles off several.
“Between The Humblebums [the folk group that Connolly was part of] and his stand-up stuff, he wrote this thing with Tom Buchan called the Great Northern Welly Boot Show. Instead of having ships on the Clyde, they were building welly [Wellington] boots….”
Grigor reminisces about Connolly’s parody songs, among them ‘In The Brownies’ [lampooning the Village People disco hits of the 70s] and his comedy routines such as his account of how the Crucifixion actually took place in Glasgow. “He’s kind of genius really…” the director signs off.
