I failed to see what the draw was. A loud mouth Scottish guy who laughed at his own jokes and sang what seemed to be silly songs had little appeal for me. No shortage of the type hanging around the pubs of Glasgow's Sauchiehall Street, so no reason that I could see for someone in Cage F to have a Long Playing record of one of his concerts.
For years I never got into him. Even now I could not call myself a Billy Connolly fan, having paid insufficient attention to him over the decades. I eventually warmed to him not as a result of his comedy but because of a role he played in a film about Glaswegian gangsters. He struck me as having an aptitude for acting. Slowly, his wickedly facetious sense of humour cut through whatever barrier I had erected and I grew to appreciate him.
So when my sister gave me a book by him as a Christmas present shortly after it was published and highly recommended it, I thought I would give it a try. I completed it last week, reading a hundred pages on a bus from Galway to Dublin which left me only five or six pages to get through on the train from Dublin to Drogheda. Prior to that it had been read in hotel rooms in Limerick, Kilkenny and Cork. Not the worst way to read a book with the title Rambling Man.
At the stage in life where I have read more books than I will ever get to read I tend to be choosy about what I pick up, always mindful of that great John McGuffin quip, made when he was dying: there are so many good books to read and still there's bastards writing more. When it comes to autobiographies my preference is for the political kind or those that trace the lives of military people operating in political conflict. Their lives, despite the narrow focus, offer a window on a broader social and political context.
Rambling Man, I read for pleasure, and there was plenty that was pleasurable in its pages. Billy Connolly is no stranger to a life rambling along the road from one country or continent to another. It has imbued him with a respect for other peoples and their cultures. Not a religious person he values the spiritual view of the people he met in Africa or India, where he discovered belief systems that were 'a step up from the threat of roasting in hellfire for touching your willy.' Connolly has little tolerance for those who believe Jesus came not to keep you from starving but to keep you from wanking, the type that HL Mencken had such strong disdain for.
Living in Florida, having rambled the globe, the contrast feeds his disdain for the Calvinist type. He bristles at Mark Twain books being on a banned list for Floridians who at the same time 'are allowed to ride a motorcycle without helmet or shoes.' The Lord works in mysterious ways. He even mysteriously prompted Pastor Jack Glass, a hate vendor even more trenchant than the big Bigot who once served as First Minister in the North, to picket his concerts and throw missiles at Connolly.
Rambling Man is replete with Connolly's adventures from baking deserts to freezing ice caps. He writes about farting cows and farting dogs, takes his readers on a journey of wit and and work, the symbiosis of which has kept him on the road. He leaves his reader spoiled for choice. Pick of the bunch might be about a friend who gave his wife a large glass of whiskey at Christmas. She spat it out, asking how he could drink it. His response: 'See? You think I am out enjoying myself every night.'
That one is trumped by an even more delicious delicacy:
Australia’s got to be the luckiest country on Earth. When one of their prime ministers was apparently eaten by a shark, people in the UK went: Why didn’t we think of that? All those years we had to put up with Margaret Thatcher – and all those sharks doing nothing.
That alone makes the book worth reading, all the while hoping that Donald Trump takes a swim in the Pacific. On second thoughts, feeding sharks a bag of shit might just be considered as cruel as feeding them a pastor.
Billy Connolly, 2023, Rambling Man: My Life On The Road. Publisher - Two Roads. ISBN: 978-1-399-80257-4
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