Billy Connolly. Pamela Stephenson
On 8 May 1949, when Billy was six and a half, Mona mysteriously produced a baby son whom she named Michael. Her paramour was a local man who had no inclination to marry Mona; his identity remained a puzzle to his own son until adulthood. No one ever explained the situation to the growing Michael at all; as a matter of fact, he was presented to the world as a brother to Billy and Florence and nobody seemed to question it. In those postwar years, there were many similar situations and, curiously enough, the otherwise judgemental society seemed to tolerate it.
Today, having a famous ‘brother’ has hardly helped Michael to ward off speculation about his birth circumstances. At first he thoroughly resented those who drew attention to his situation. ‘But I’ve learned to just shrug it off,’ he says now, with questionable insistence. ‘Whatever people say about me, Billy or the family … I don’t care.’
Michael’s arrival at Stewartville Street was, in many ways, received as a great blessing to the Connollys. The group of uncomfortably related individuals that made up their family were able to focus their love and attention onto the tiny, innocent being who was unconnected to Mamie and provided biological motherhood for Mona. He was an angelic baby, doted on by his mother. Billy was enchanted by him too and would heave him around in a ‘circus-carry’. Even William could love him, without interference from the past; when he looked at his own children he saw Mamie, but that thorn was absent in his relationship with Michael.
‘I think we were a normal family,’ Michael maintains. ‘I had a great childhood.’ In contrast to the experience of Florence and Billy, Michael received plenty of positive attention, gifts and special treatment. Looking back now, Michael believes he was spoiled, but I think he just received what children rightfully deserve, a sense of being loved and appreciated.
Everything Michael did was magical to the adults in the household. ‘Listen to him sing!’ they would chime. ‘Look at the way he eats!’ As a toddler, Michael did have one interesting talent. There was a collection of ‘seventy-eight’ records in the flat and people would say to him. ‘Fetch me the record of Mario Lanza singing “O Sole Mio’” and Michael could always select the correct one, even though he couldn’t read.
Michael was unaware of his mother’s treatment of Billy, for Mona was very secretive about it, and, understandably, he still finds it difficult to accept. Billy is convinced that his father also did not know about all the beating and neglect that was going on at home. William was absent most of the time, for he worked long hours at the Singer sewing-machine parts factory and was then out most evenings. Florence experienced William as a shadowy figure, coming and going with irregularity. ‘He just thought home life was boring, I think, and pissed off,’ is how Billy explains it now. ‘Fuck knows where he was going … I have no idea.’
When he wasn’t working. William was usually off playing billiards and having a great time with his mates. This was fairly typical for men in those days. It was the job of women to raise children and, besides, who wouldn’t have wanted to escape that household? William was a member of a club of men who’d been friends since childhood. The ‘Partick Corner Boys’ rented a room behind the cinema. On the bottom floor was the meeting room of a secret society called the ‘Buffs’, the Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes, and upstairs was William’s club, which was always jam-packed with drinking men playing billiards. William would take the children up there after twelve o’clock Mass on a Sunday so Florence could practise on the piano. Billy would roll the balls around the billiard table and William would chat with his friends.
This relaxed atmosphere was a stark contrast to life at home. There, the normal misunderstandings of childhood were tolerated in Michael, but not in Billy or Florence. One day, Jesus had come into conversation at home and Billy referred to Jesus as having been a Catholic, which was his seven-year-old misunderstanding. Aunt Margaret corrected him. ‘Jesus wasn’t a Catholic, Jesus was a Jew.’
‘Oh,’ he said with innocent surprise, ‘does that mean we’re Jews?’
‘Where did you come up with that one?’ she sneered, and continued to ridicule him about that until he was in his teens. ‘Does that mean we’re Jewish?’ she would mimic him.
Even Billy’s friends who were much poorer seemed at least to have love in their houses. Frankie McBride had a mother and granddad who loved him; the McGregors down the road were a wild bunch, but their parents adored them and their house was fun. They were always shouting and laughing, and they were rejoiced in for things Billy and Florence were being pilloried for. Of an evening, the oldest girl would be going out with her boyfriend and her younger siblings would be teasing her:
‘Your boyfriend’s skelly [cross-eyed]!’
‘No he’s not!’
Their mother would intervene: ‘He’s a lovely boy. Don’t you say that!’
Then the father would stir: ‘He’s a big bloody Jessie!’
‘No he’s not!’
In the Connolly household, the children daren’t say ‘boyfriend’: there would have been an explosion. It would definitely have been unwise for Billy to have mentioned the kiss he got from pretty blonde Gracie McClintock. It happened in Plantation Park, known to Billy and his pals as ‘Planting Park’, in front of the Queen Mother maternity hospital. The Cleansing Department had a dump there where the boys would find all kinds of interesting rubbish, bits of bikes, old rags and even machine parts. One day, when he was foraging there, some friends called to him: ‘Billy! Grade’s in the bushes! If you come down here, you can get a kiss!’
So Billy joined the line of five or six youngsters and eventually it was his turn to have a totally new experience. ‘It was the nicest thing I remember from my childhood.’ he says now. ‘It was like a bird landing on my mouth. Nobody had ever kissed me before: adults, children, anyone. I used to hear boys at school complaining about their mothers kissing them, and I remember thinking, “That must be amazing! No one ever kisses me …”’
As Billy sat in his school classroom, doing battle with Rosie, he could see the windows of his home across the street, and the prospect of returning there in the evening was far from appealing. He loved having school dinners because it meant he didn’t have to go home. Mona couldn’t cook to save her life, and Margaret was worse. Billy and Florence ate mostly fried foods and foul stews, and pudding would usually be a piece of dried-up cake smothered in Bird’s Custard. Mona specialized in repulsive sprouts, and Billy was beaten in the face until he ate them. ‘Billy tried Mother’s patience,’ reports Michael. ‘She wanted things organized and she was loud about it. She would say, “It’s Billy’s turn to do the dishes” and he would say “No!” and run out.’
No doubt Billy was viewed as an ornery child. He is still disorganized and oppositional, the former being a wired-in state and the latter a coping style. Typical early difficulties for people with learning differences include tying shoes and telling the time. Billy could do neither of those things until he was around twelve years old, and he was absolutely pounded for it. Everybody tried to teach him to tie his shoes, but they all eventually lost patience. One fateful summer day, he was with his father on holiday in Rothesay. On the pier there was a clock next to a garish light display of a juggling giraffe. William was peering at it. ‘Eh, Billy, what’s the time on the clock over there?’
Billy began to reply, but never finished the sentence. ‘The big hand is on the …’
WHACK! ‘That’s not the time! What’s the time?’
‘I don’t know.’ Billy can still remember the very spot on the pavement.
‘You don’t know?’ William exploded. ‘What do you mean, you don’t know? How old are you?’
William’s remoteness and constant absence from home meant he knew little about his children. His role became pretty much reduced to that of ‘Special Executioner’, administering extra-harsh beatings for especially vile sins. ‘Sometimes.’ recollects Billy, ‘when father hit me, I flew over the settee backwards, in a sitting position. It was fabulous. Just like real flying, except you didn’t get a cup of tea or