Some home truths from a big jessie

else he could tell us about himself, asked the Big Yin of an audience of

Scottish actors and performers, such as Elaine C. Smith and Jan Wilson,

who had come to sit at the cowboy-booted feet of the 51-year-old comic,

briefly in Glasgow for a masterclass in the art of comedy and comic

acting at the proposed new actors' studio. Ostensibly the intention was

to explore the nature of comedy: in reality what Connolly's audience of

fellow practitioners got was a king-sized Connolly-fest, a remembrance

of Glasgow times past. JACKIE McGLONE listened in to his one-man

celebration of laughter unlimited.

''WHEN I was a wee boy in church they told me about grace and that

grace flowed from God. And they said it made you feel wonderful when

God's grace flowed into your soul. If you search your body, they said,

you'll never find it because it is an invisible thing. I thought, 'no,

it's not, it's yellow'. I don't know why, but as a child I always

assumed that heaven was blue and grace was yellow. I can't explain it.

But I do know now that grace is yellow and it flows into you and you

feel damned good.

That's what happens to me when I am onstage. It's weird because I

don't believe in God, but I do believe that you can create grace, that

you can manufacture grace by the way you think. I know it sounds silly,

ageing hippy and all that. I don't believe in cosmic energy, any

'ology', I think it's s***. I feel the same as Patrick Moore, it's proof

there's one born every minute. But I do feel there's an energy.

Years ago I was in America touring and I phoned home. Daisy, my

10-year-old, was just wee at the time. She picked up the phone and

started asking me where I was. I said, 'I'm at work, but you don't know

what it is I do, do you? Ask your mamma'. I heard Pamela say, 'he's a

comedian'. Daisy came back on the line and said, 'you're a comedium'.

And I thought, 'yes! you got it in one kid'. Because that's exactly how

I feel when a good line comes through that you've never thought of in

your life.

You get this idea, your mouth moves and everybody laughs. Well, let me

tell you, orgasm has a lot going for it, but this comes a very close

second. I think that's maybe why people would desire to be comedians. I

know a lot of actors would like to be comedians because they are hooked

on laughter. A laugh is proof that you are doing it right. Like Robin

Williams and Lenny Bruce, if I get a new minute onstage on any given

night I go, 'thank you, thank you, whoever you are'.

I've never written my act down. I ad lib when I am doing things. I

keep the good bits in and the old bits fall off the end. If I hear a

joke, I tell it because it's nice for the audience to have something to

take home with them. It proves they've been out. But with my show you

can remember very little. It's like candy floss; it's an illusion; it's

hardly there at all. If you ask me to define humour, there's funny and

there's not funny, although communications are making all humour the

same. We are the poorer for satellite comedy shows from Montreal which

to me are like staring into an open grave. I have never seen so many

desperately unfunny carbon paper salesmen in my life. Unfunny enough to

have a series on Channel 4.

Incidentally, when I said I didn't believe in God, I think belief in

God creates God. If you believe in God, there is one and that's okay

with me. I'm not an anti-God guy. I'm also not a Buddhist (the Daily

Record, whom I don't talk to, will keep telling you that I am, also they

say that I'm gay. I'm not, but I have nothing against people who are). I

find angels very difficult. I don't think there are people flying around

telling God that people on earth are masturbating. Having had a

childhood where I had to balance my guardian angel on my shoulder while

riding my bike and always having not to go round a corner too fast in

case he fell off, I still find angels a problem.

But I do think my Catholic upbringing had a great deal to do with what

I do onstage. My father brought me up with my two aunties (my mother

split when I was four and went off with a guy called Adams and lived in

Dunoon). My upbringing with my aunties, two f***ing psychopaths, has a

lot to do with what I do. One of my aunts was a f***ing headcase, the

other one just went along with it because she was scared. She thought

there was people tape-recording her under the f***ing floor. What they

would tape-record this p**** for, I don't know. There wasn't anything

worth listening to. What a f***ing life I had! I left school at 15 and I

didn't look back.

I'm so f***ing proud. I walked out and I didn't look back. When I left

I knew more about the sex life of pigeons than anything else because I

used to gaze out of the classroom window at the roof opposite and watch

the pigeons. In those days there was full employment. The shipyard gates

were open. I went in. I wanted to be an engineer, but guys with posh

accents got the gig, so I became a welder. I worked on the Clyde and in

Nigeria and in Jersey. Then I started to play the folk clubs, but I

deperately wanted to be a comedian. I was always funny. I was funny at

school, I was a funny apprentice, I was in the Territorial Army and I

was a funny paratrooper. At least I thought I was. But I didn't know how

you became a comedian.

As a boy, I always loved Jimmy Logan. I haven't seen him doing

stand-up since I became an adult. I adored him. I went to the Five Past

Eight shows and I couldn't believe my luck. At the time there was a

religious cult called the Nameless Ones. F***ing weird mob! They were

led by a woman who claimed to be the daughter of George Bernard Shaw.

Jimmy Logan would have these sketches of this crowd of Glasgow urchins

and they were the Hameless Ones. I thought that was the funniest thing.

I slid off my chair. I couldn't believe it, there were guys being funny

in my accent and using the same words as me! Until then it had been

Billy Cotton and Charlie Chester and Jimmy Wheeler. I was in ecstasy, I

can't tell you. It was unbelievable.

By the time I got back from Nigeria I had made a few quid, so I went

to Jersey and played my banjo. By then I was a hippy. I was too hairy

for nightclubs, so they put me on in folk clubs. Then I did the Ashfield

Cabaret Club and the rest is . . . well, I'm here now. I just rumbled on

from there. I have always tried very, very hard to be as funny as

regular, ordinary guys are. I have always tried to nail that thing, the

stuff my father could never understand. I have no idea how I do what I

do. It's a bit like being an accident. I go out there and do it to the

best of my ability, and it feels brilliant but I'm still not sure how I

do it. I haven't a f***ing clue. It is such an unnatural act, to walk

out in front of all those people.

My mother's disappearance has a lot to do with what I do, that and my

upbringing with my aunties, my Catholic education with extraordinarily

cruel teachers also has a lot to do with it. I was very unlucky. I had a

lot of real nutters in a row. I had a schoolteacher who used to call

kids who wore glasses 'Four-Eyes'. Flora McDonald, a f***ing bitch of

hell! And she had glasses on!

So all that and Jimmy Logan on top drove me to it. I have always felt

driven to it. I don't miss it when I am not doing it, but I like it when

I am doing it. When I first talked on television to Melvyn Bragg about

the damage done to me by my aunts I thought I'd look like a wally. My

father called me a jessie all my life. 'You big jessie!' It haunts me,

especially since my forties.

If I have made my childhood sound awful, there were great moments in

it, too. My grandmother loved me and her sons were very good to me. And

I got by on that. There was lot of love and jollity in that department.

Often when I talk on TV or radio, I tend to lean on the weirdness of my

childhood, but since my mid-forties it has played on my mind. Why, I'll

never know, but it has kind of bugged me. But it wasn't all awful. There

were some bright moments. Religion. I loved it when I was a child. I was

a member of the Children of Mary and we used to go round saying the

rosary in people's houses with the Lady of Lourdes in a shoebox. We'd

turn up at people's doors and you'd just watch them losing the will to

live. So that was probably my first audience.

If you have had such a strange life and a strange and violent

childhood as I have had, then you have this little protective mechanism

within you. It's a defensive thing. Onstage it guides me, too, so it

makes me a wee bit dangerous from time to time, but not really. I'm a

lot less dangerous than I might appear. I have no wish to shock. I think

it's facile. There is no joy in shocking comedy. Good comedy needs joy.

Lately, I have had some wee bashes at acting, but I don't know

anything deep about it. I can learn words and avoid the furniture.

Beyond that, f*** it! I tried very hard on Down Among the Big Boys. My

wife gave me a quick lesson in Method acting, so I learned my lines and

asked the crew not to talk to me when I walked from the caravan to the

set. They thought I was a pretentious old queen. But I tried my very

best on that and I think I succeeded to a degree. I haven't seen it. I

don't watch things I am in. I don't see rushes because I'm incurably

vain. I like looking at myself. I can't help it. I just do.''