So that’s where Billy got the dimple in his chin! His grandfather, Jack Connolly, with bride Jane McLuskey.
So that’s where Billy got the dimple in his chin! His grandfather, Jack Connolly, with bride Jane McLuskey.
Billy’s parents’ wedding day. Best man Barney McConville is on the right, and bridesmaid (left) has managed to upstage the bride.
The man who gave Billy that ‘head transplant’ look. Billy's father, William, shows off Florence, his first-born.
Defining the ‘sonsie face’! One-year-old Yin (foreground) in pale blue and white, holding his sister’s hand.
A couple of gooseberries: Billy and Florence with Mona (right), Margaret, and gentlemen friends Mick McGowan (left) and Mick Conway.
The ‘cheeky wee devil’. Billy at four, at Big Neilly’s tenement in Stobcross Street.
Off to school: Billy, Florence and tiny pal in Stewartville Street. Their tenement was to the right.
His little guardian: Florence at six shields Billy in the ‘Botanic’ Gardens in Glasgow’s West End. Taken by their father.
Off to Mass in the drizzle. Mona and Florence beside Aunt Margaret wheeling Michael’s pram, while Billy grins on the left.
Wearing his first suit, of itchy grey flannel, Billy kicks around Kelvingrove Park.
The Patrick gang in a bomb site they named ‘Bumbee Park’… Back row: Gerald McGee, Frankie McBride, Tom Laurie, Billy. Front row: Johnny McBride, Michael, Tom Mackie.
Billy, in his favourite T-shirt with racing cars on it, and his Aunt Mona on their family holidays in Rothesay, 1954.
Florence at sixteen strolling down the promenade in Rothesay, known as ‘the prom’.
‘Ha ha!’ says Billy, now a Doctor of Letters from Glasgow University.
St Gerard’s school photograph. Spot the thirteen-year-old Billy (second row from the front, second from the right).
Shipbuilding on the Clyde in Billy’s apprentice days. Now only the cranes remain.
‘Look at my wee skinny body!’ Billy (front in white T-shirt) on a ‘bucket’ in Nigeria, being hoisted up from work on the oil rig, 1966.
At a Queen’s Park demonstration by the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders, when the company wanted to close down the yard. The workers themselves eventually took over the shipyard. Tam Harvey is on Billy’s right. Cara calls this picture ‘The Chosen One’.
Billy serenades the‘talking sausage’. With Jamie at Mick Quinn’s house.
The ‘Artful Dodger’ look: Billy throws some rubbish into the White Street midden, in an artful photograph taken by Michael.
Some Mariachi band leader is missing his blouse. Pre-Gerry Rafferty Humblebums: Billy and Tam Harvey on stage at the Kelvin Hall.
Billy surreptitiously unzipping his fly while posing for a publicity still with Gerry Rafferty. Taken on Hampstead Heath.
Would you vote for the man on the right? Ho Chi Minh meets Harold Wilson, then Leader of the Opposition, at a Labour Party rally at the Apollo, Glasgow.
No one ever told Billy you’re not supposed to wear checks and stripes together! The trousers are red, white and blue and the funky shoes are black and silver. Publicity shot outside Buckingham Palace, July 1974.
Billy the ‘Half-Stoned Cowboy’ on his ‘Seaside Extravaganza Tour’ of 1977. He is wearing the tour T-shirt, displaying a cariacature of Billy with a large belly, like the seaside postcard artist McGill's famous image ‘Where’s my little willie?’
Billy with Iris (left) and Jamie, taken by Jamie Wark whose mother is beside Billy.
First day at school. Five-year-old Cara posing in front of Billy’s new Mercedes, taken at the house in Drymen.
‘I can see all of Glasgow from up here’. Pink satin crucifixion with platform shoes, taken for an album sleeve at the Kings Theatre in Glasgow.
‘Myself, I find those Carmen Rollers very effective, don’t you?’ The Parkinson Show, just after Hogmanay in 1977.
Visual proof that Billy is much smaller in real life! As a ‘holier than thou’ minister, spoofing the TV epilogue.
With Richard Burton in Absolution, only one of them was ‘on the wagon’.
‘Anything that moves is mine’,
on tour in Ireland.
First meeting: our ‘Janet
Street-Porter’ sketch on Not the Nine O’Clock News, just before my ‘Janet’ teeth fell out and Billy cracked up.
The Not the Nine O’Clock News gang, 1980. (Left to right:) Sean Hardie (producer), Mel Smith, me, Rowan Atkinson, Griff Rhys Jones, John Lloyd (producer) and Bill Wilson (director). My T-shirt reads ‘Honi Soit Qui Malibu’
Happy in the rice fields of Penestanan, Bali, 1980.
A cleaned-up version of Billy’s former self: at a movie premiere, Piccadilly, 1983. I borrowed the dress from Zandra Rhodes, but found out afterwards I’d worn it back to front.
1983: Introducing our first born, Daisy, taken at the Fish Factory.
The whole family in Fiji. A little too much Kava Kava had caused my headdress to slip.
Humblebums III? PR shot with George Harrison for ‘Parents For Safe Food’, a campaign I launched, at Gruntfuttock Hall.
Duelling duo: Scarlett (with guitar) and
Amy (with banjo) at Gruntfuttock Hall in summer, 1995. Billy’s snowstorm collection is hanging on the wall by the curtain.
Braving the midges at sunset: on holiday in Wick, Scotland, 1992.
At the Isle of Bute Folk Festival in 1994. Organizer
Danny Kyle (left) makes fun of Billy in mid-flow, flanked by folk singers Arthur Johnston (far right) and Jimmy McGregor. Danny is wearing a rubber tie Billy bought him in Los Angeles.
Windswept and interesting? Cuddling a koala: a still from the Robert Redford movie, Indecent Proposal.
A feather of friendship: Billy and Judi Dench in Mrs
Brown – the beginning of a great on- and offscreen friendship.
Mozambique, 1998 – or ‘Nose and Beak’ as it was christened by Daisy.
A scene from Brigadoon: Billy and his sister Florence at her son’s wedding.
Lunch with Mattie in London, Ontario, 1998.
Sporting a velvet coat in the team colours, Billy opens the new Celtic grandstand, 1999.
Mail muddle pending: The Doctors Connolly! Glasgow University, 2001.