Billy Connolly retains his sparkle in touching, celebratory documentary

The interesting thing about watching old television footage, Billy Connolly notes midway through In My Own Words (BBC One, Monday), is that you find yourself keeping a running tally of all the people who have died. He says this while watching clips from his best years as a comedian, where those laughing at his blasphemous anecdotes include Michael Parkinson, Dennis Waterman and Eamonn Andrews – household names at the time but all long gone.

Connolly is equally emotional when he talks about his friendship with the late Robin Williams, who supported the Glaswegian during his early attempts to break into American comedy. With a lump in his throat, he recalls Williams contacting him a few days before his suicide in 2014. “He rang me and asked me to have dinner,” Connolly recalls. “He said, ‘I love you.’ I said, ‘That’s great.’ He died last weekend.”

Irish viewers of a certain era will remember Connolly’s frequent appearances on The Late Late Show, where he effortlessly reduced Gay Byrne to a pile of laughter. In this moving survey of his life, we see the comedian work similar magic on British talk show host Parkinson in an instantly famous appearance in 1975, which Connolly credits with making him a household name outside Scotland. “That was a great moment. To see Parky melt like that – that made me a star.”

( Billy Connolly: Old age is a strange and unpleasant surprise. I don’t know if we should tell people about it.Opens in a new window )

In the 1970s and 1980s, Connolly was known for his crude style. Revisited today, it is the surreal side of his humor that is most striking. For example, the joke that made him famous in Parkinson was about a man who had murdered his wife and used her buttocks as a bike rack—a joke that, in 2024, is reminiscent of that of Flann O’Brien, an X-rated actor.

Connolly is now 81 and lives in Key West, Florida, with his wife, Pamela Stephenson. It’s a far cry from the Glasgow slums where he grew up. “Key West is great. Nobody bothers you. They don’t care if you’re rich or poor. Everyone gets along,” he says.

He is phlegmatic about his past and inclined to forgive those who have hurt him. He is shown footage from the 1990s in which he speaks to arts presenter Melvyn Bragg about the abusive aunt who raised him, saying: “Quite frankly, I would have preferred to go to a children’s home.”

Thirty years later, he has changed his mind. He remembers a man who was raised in a home who told Connolly how lucky he was not to have been sent there. He tends to agree, but that doesn’t mean he has forgotten the suffering he endured as a child. “It was cruel, it wasn’t right. I wanted to be an adult.”

But adulthood has also brought its share of problems. His first marriage failed just as he was becoming famous. And his second, to comedian Stephenson, was nearly ruined by his chronic alcoholism. “I thought I might lose my wild side,” he says of his renunciation of alcohol. “It’s not wildness, it’s fake wildness. I have no regrets.”

At 80, Connolly has lost none of his sparkle. He has struggled with health, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2013, and retired six years ago. But he has not been consumed by melancholy, and while he finds the past interesting to revisit, he does not pine for it. This moving documentary is a light and informative celebration of his life and times, and a refreshing portrait of the artist as an old man who continues to face the world with the vivacity of youth.