Tall Tales and Wee Stories: The Best of Billy Connolly
£6.30£9.50 (-34%)
THE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER
80TH BIRTHDAY EDITION – NOW WITH 10 NEW TALL TALES!
‘Connolly’s raucous run through his life is as furious, funny and foul-mouthed as you’d expect’ Sunday Times
In December 2018, after fifty years of belly-laughs, energy and outrage, Billy Connolly announced his retirement from live stand-up comedy. It had been an extraordinary career.
When he first started out in the late sixties, Billy played the banjo in the folk clubs of Scotland. Between songs, he would improvise a bit, telling anecdotes from the Clyde shipyard where he’d worked. In the process, he made all kinds of discoveries about what audiences found funny, from his own brilliant mimes to the power of speaking irreverently about politics or explicitly about sex. He began to understand the craft of great storytelling. Soon the songs became shorter and the monologues longer, and Billy quickly became recognised as one of the most exciting comedians of his generation.
Billy’s routines always felt spontaneous. He never wrote scripts, always creating his comedy freshly on stage in the presence of a live audience. A brilliant comic story might be subsequently discarded, adapted or embellished. A quick observation or short anecdote one night, could become a twenty-minute segment by the next night of a tour.
Billy always brought a beautiful sense of the absurd to his shows as he riffed on his family, hecklers, swimming in the North Sea or naked bungee jumping. But his comedy can be laced with anger too. He hates pretentiousness and calls out hypocrisy wherever he sees it. His insights about the human condition have shocked many people, while his unique talent and startling appearance on stage gave him license to say anything he damn well pleased about sex, politics or religion.
Billy got away with it because he has always had the popular touch. His comedy spans generations and different social tribes in a way that few others have ever managed.
Tall Tales and Wee Stories brings together the very best of Billy’s storytelling for the first time and includes his most famous routines including, The Last Supper, Jojoba Shampoo, Incontinence Pants and Shouting at Wildebeest. With an introduction and original illustrations by Billy throughout, it is an inspirational, energetic and riotously funny read, and a fitting celebration of our greatest ever comedian.
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by Scampdog1
Such funny tales typical of Billy
by Amazon Customer
This book is the best tonic ever!
I was feeling a little downcast but after reading a couple of chapters, my mood changed completely.
Bless you Billy, your book should be prescribed on the nhs!
by PSF
I found the book very amusing.
by Whiskygolf
My wife was cracking up at my outbursts of laughter. Billy Connelly at his best,Great reading.
by Aries Cat
I love BC but somehow could not get through the whole of this book. Some funny stories but others not so much.
by Audrey Haylins
Have you ever laughed out loud at something you’re reading? And I don’t mean a snigger, or a giggle, or even a chuckle. I mean an explosive, snort of a laugh. A joyous, spontaneous release. The kind of laugh that makes everyone else around you smile, even though they have no idea what the joke is.
Well, this gem from the master raconteur Billy Connolly will have you cackling like a hyena on almost every page.
Nobody, and I mean nobody, tells stories like Billy Connolly. And this collection, curated from the thousands he’s told on stage, is the best of the best. Many of them you will have heard in one version or another. Here, they are retold almost as transcripts of a live performance, complete with all the weird and wonderful diversions and exclamations he’s famous for.
And, amazingly, the essence of Billy Connolly is so well contained in these pages, that you cannot help but hear his voice in your head as you read. No matter whether you’re Scottish or not, this is a book that demands to be read in a broad Glaswegian accent.
Billy’s genius is that he views life through an unfiltered lens. He talks about what he sees and asks the questions that nobody else would dare. He speaks with unabashed candor about anything and everything. No subject is taboo, his observations on people and life shrewd and relentlessly funny.
I’m so happy to have all these wonderful anecdotes collated and saved for posterity. This is a book I will return to time and again whenever I need a pick-me-up. And it’s one I’d highly recommend to each and every Big Yin fan.
Thanks for reading my review. I hope you found it helpful. You can find more candid book reviews on my Amazon profile page.
by Margaret N.
There’s everything to like about the Big Yin!
by Victor Meldrew Mk2
Oh Billy I know that you are still around, if not doing live performances, your stuff still is.
Introduced to you in the early 1970’s when I joined the Army; lots of Scottish lads raving about this comedian known as the Big Yun. Once I had learned to interpret the dialect, what a hoot. It was vinyl then and we listened over and over to Billy with timeless comments such as “away and Polish that bolt in your neck” to a heckler, tales of “the middling” the last supper and the like.
I have purchased this book for my kindle. Absolutely brilliant and a timely reminder of the wit of this man. I never got to see him live, other than live shows on tv: which at the time were very much toned down. Bill needs to swear and like it or hate it, as he shared with us his views on profanity, you can’t say “f off” nicely.
Billy is a genius and his tales of normal life in Scotland were a revelation – even to Scots. His views then were ever topical and whilst it isn’t in the book, his story of the Jew visiting Belfast is one of the funniest tales I have ever heard. Whilst many of the hysterical stories are not shared in this book, for me it sparked a reminder of an absolute genius, who transformed comedy in Scotland and brought an element of humour into the rest of the UK. Broad, gritty and with real humour. The Welsh had max Boyce, the English had Jasper Carrot: both good in their own way, but Billy is a genius and this book shares with his readers, a hint of that.