Where D'Ya Go, Rho? Ep6 Billy's Big Banana Feet at the GFT

This week I have spent a fair few hours up at the GFT. For the non Glaswegian reading this, the GFT is the Glasgow Film Theatre, a divine art deco cinema that has been a hub for cinematic culture in the town for nearly a hundred years. I was there as this week was part of the Glasgow Film Festival whereby The five day event brings together Film and TV professionals from the UK, Europe and worldwide for a packed programme of panel discussions, workshops, screenings and networking, with a focus on female-identifying talent across all aspects of the industry. That’s not my words but those of Screen Scotland.

I do like films but I tend to get my kicks down at Cineworld with my unlimited card with only the odd smattering of the more niche ones that bring out the West End Wendies like flies around a kopi luwak coffee. If you don't know what a kopi luwak is then I’ll let you google and ponder that metaphor in your own time. I have tried to find myself again down at the cinema, forcing myself out of the house and down to the pictures just to get away from staring at the 4 walls of my bedroom. As a result I have watched most of the Oscar nominated films. Now, I’m no Barry Norman but I know what I like.

My recent online review for Saltburn, burned more than salt would if Barry Keoghan was to accidentally get some on his tadger after having pumped a few graves, sooked a few baths and waggled his wang about a posh mansion to Sophie Ellis Bextor. I didn’t get the hype and thought it was meh… but I did find a few absolute gems in my solitary sojourns via the silver screen.

Poor Things was a gloriously entertaining trip of self discovery for Bella Baxter played by Emma Stone. |It’s based upon the Alasdair Gray book but sadly there was a deviation away from Glasgow as a setting. All the poorer for it if you ask me. That said, the cast of Defoe, Ruffalo and Stone made for tanalising viewing as this frankenstein figure of a woman with a baby brain inserted into her as she matured, gained confidence and self sufficiency finding her feet to walk and finding her feet to secure her place in the world. Yes, I could talk about the nudity and the glorious scenes with Mark Ruffalo that give me plenty of pennies for the wank bank of an evening when I need a fantasy figure to ponder my lust upon when I’m on my own (laminated list as they say on Friends- just watch Begin Again and tell me even as a drunken has been he’s not still the mutts). Sorry, that was a terrible slight on a wonderful actor reducing him down to looks alone but I genuinely like all the facets of the Ruffalo not just the hairy bits. Mark Ruffalo aside, the costume and set design of the film is bright, beautiful and an exaggerated sight to behold and deserves all the accolades it’s due. I really connected with Bella and her journey. The bambi like steps and the trial and error of just eating correctly to fit in with society's norms. I currently feel like I am on a reboot and I’m trepidation on shaky limbs too. I feel I make mistakes left right and centre. I’m Paula Abdul- one step forwards yet two steps back. I’m a nobody trying to be a somebody in a world where it feels like at 30 you are by your best before if you're not hitting the high notes by then.

I’m 46 and I feel like I’m barely scratching the surface- knocked but not out by every obstacle and set back until I succumbed to the pressure and hid in my room for those 4 walls were my only safety from the world outside. Many ‘ableds’ really suffered in lockdown, their social artery was cut and some bled out badly, taking to insta or tik tok to show the carnage unfolding. Welcome to the world of everyday Disabled restriction. Let us show you the ropes.

I went to a caravan by the coast and sat it out as having a Disability makes you uniquely qualified at handling lockdown life. I had spent years physically restricted from a full existence. Access issues making many areas a no go zone. Foiled by stairs like an old school dalek. I’ve spent time in hospital wards staring at the pale ceilings and the pale walls with only the beeps of monitors for entertainment. My Mum couldn’t afford to visit me daily in hospital as she was trying to hold down work for the family and the 30 mile trek to the local hospital was a half day event by local, rural transport in the 80’s. I say it as though it’s improved but tbh if you’re skint it doesn’t get much better than it was back in Thatcher’s Britain. I spent weeks at a time trying to make small talk with busy nurses, sick weans and any passing priest or pastor that visited the ward. When it comes to company I didn’t discriminate. I’d have shalomed the Rabbi if there was one to talk to or A’righted the Imam but in rural south west Scotland I took whatever denomination was there for the taking.

This brings me to my next belter of a film, The Holdovers. I love Paul Giamatti and think he is truly an actor’s actor. He is often the support but stands out in the role as a key player. From teeny roles like the producer next to the director, Ed Harris in The Truman Show he shone. A personal favourite of mine is American Splendor as he takes dour comic book writer, Harvey Pekar and morphs so well into him that it’s hard to tell the real Harvey, who is in the film as himself now from the adaptation of the younger Harvey that he portrays.

In The Holdovers, Giamatti carries this film as the lead as he guides this group of unfortunate Barton School boys abandoned by their families for various reasons over the holiday season. This sense of isolation and otherness is something I can relate to well but the film gave me a sense of hope in what seems like a desperate situation. Maybe all is not lost for me. I just need to find a spark to light up my dark. As I type, Paul was pipped at the post by Cillian Murphy for best actor but the divine Da’Vine Joy Randolph took best supporting actress for her role as Mary the housekeeper, a grieving mum lost after the loss of her son, a Barton boy drafted to Vietnam.

The final film I will look at for now is American Fiction, a story highlighting the frequent faux pas of whites and their misperceptions of black people. A story of a family full of high achievers with a matriarchal Mum who is becoming lost and fading due to dementia. Jeffrey Wright who is the main protagonist, early on in the film has to deal with a dead sister, who was the family glue, a demented mother and a brother, Clyde played by the amazing Sterling K Brown who has just left his family as he has come out of the closet and is now free to live his true self but in the process kind of left his brother to shoulder the burden on his lonesome as he tries to place his mother in a home.

The narrative also has Thelonious Ellison AKA Monk, a critically acclaimed writer, balance the high brow nature of his craft and previous work with the lowbrow demands placed on him by a majority white audience. The need to pigeon hole the black experience as ghetto and rough jars with his middle class experience of black life. After much wrangling he bows to pressure, writes a trashy novel under a pseudonym of Stagg R. Leigh which he despises yet is lapped up by the masses and lauded by those apparently in the know -the trendsetters of culture and taste. Much humour ensues that is so good it hits bone many times triggering my own misconceptions of people and experiences that are not my own. It also makes me chuckle as I realise that I too may have been pigeonholed against my will due to class, Disability, age, accent or gender. It’s a film I know I will rewatch and while it won for adapted screenplay I feel both Jeffrey Wright and Sterling K Brown would have been worthy winners too.

I really do wander off when I am writing. Anyway, I’m at the GFT. My first film is watching Billy Connolly’s Big Banana Feet, a previously lost and now lovingly restored classic documentary film of Billy in the mid sixties going on the Dublin and Belfast leg of his Big Banana Feet tour. My love for Connolly has endured a lifetime. As a product of G51 stock my house had Billy Connolly vinyl in the stereogram. We had a fair few comedy vinyl including the likes of older style Scottish humour Hector Nicol and the newer stylings of the shipyard welder turned folk singer turned comedian as his stories between the songs lengthened due to their mass appeal.

The language on these records was choice but even as a nipper I knew these records were gold. Sitting with headphones on in our dining room listening to Billy’s concerts were some of the happiest times of my childhood. My house was chaotic and it was before Jeremy Kyle was invented so we had nowhere to show this dysfunction to the world at large. We kept it all inside and behind closed doors so I sought refuge anywhere that felt safe. Billy felt safe to me. I loved his songs especially and memorised them verbatim. I was a rare turn when I would sing DIVORCE and get laughs not knowing it was because I was swearing without knowing, singing effing b at the top of my lungs. Weirdly though it turns out I did know the real words from in house but I never connected the effing b with the full pelt wording. All I knew is I sang these songs and I got laughs. I got attention and wasn’t overlooked by the adults. They fell silent to listen to me perform. That feeling was warm and fuzzy. It enveloped me like a hug and I loved it.

I have many great moments as a result of Billy Connolly, a long trip to France on a school trip to the alps made much shorter by singing 3 Men From Carntyne on a loop which is a vocal gymnastics feat by the end. My pal, Lynn and I laughed and snorted as we tried to fit the lyrics in without losing our breath before finishing on “And it wiz SHUUUUUUUUUT!” Lynn knows me so well that she surprised me on my hen night with a beautiful cake quoting Connolly- Marriage is a wonderful invention, then again so is a bicycle repair kit.

My first realisation that I was pregnant with my eldest was at a Connolly gig. I had an inkling but hadn’t told a soul, not even the soon to be Dad. I went to see Connolly at the Armadillo and was there with my school English teacher, Iz. I have a photo from that night where I have a protective hand over my stomach. I was in hysterics watching BC that night and hoped that if I was to have a kid it would have a sense of humour that loved Connolly and enjoyed nothing more than a good laugh. Thankfully genetics and God didn’t disappoint as she is a comedy junkie who loves nothing more than a day out at the Fringe with her auld mammy.

Connolly connects me just as tight to my Mam, having told us stories of our shipbuilding history, her attendance at the proddy school across from a catholic one that none other than the one Billy himself went to. So when I listened to his tales of going to school it didn't feel unfamiliar to the ones we heard at home. I knew stories from the shipyards that my own family worked in and the humour that you needed to work in such harsh environments. They were built of shipyard steel, not just the boats that left the yard. Their lives were patched together with welds that made them stronger than most. Connolly was not only a maternal joy but also one I enjoyed with my Dad and his side of the family. I spent a wonderful time in Ireland, down in Tipperary with my cousins and my Dad’s sister, my Auntie Helen. We had a VHS copy of An Audience With Billy Connolly and we all roared with laughter at the incontinence pants worn to the discotheque, the zombie drink that got you drunk from the bottom up, the crazy items that can be bought in the paper like the space suit, the big slipper or the lethal hair cutting comb. It was such a bonding moment to see my Dad wiping back tears of joy and hanging with my cousins and aunt I didn't see nearly as often as I would have liked.

My love of Billy Connolly was evident in the GFT as I sat in the dark on my own, yet felt connected to something bigger as I recalled every lyric as though it was soldered onto my heart and soul. I have adored Billy from the cradle and will love him to the grave. He signifies for me my history and what has made me tough in life. His life was not easy as a child and I could identify with that. His comedy linked me to my Glasgowness. His tales of Shipyards took me to my late Granddad, a man I was too late to know but hearing Billy’s shipbuilding stories tethered me to him in a way that made him alive. I could see him among the crowds pouring out the huge metal doors as the whistle blew at the end of a day. His religious material linked me to my maternal Granny and my Catholic heritage. A woman who passed when I was very young but represented the tales Billy told of the priest coming to the home and the kids playing in the coats…sorry eiderdown. Billy’s humour cut through what was taboo like my staunch proddie side marrying into this different faith. Both believe in God but are at odds as to how they connected to the Big Man. I couldn’t see the need to fight about it as a child, watching the news as a kid in the 80s. Calling a war ‘The Troubles’ dumbed down what was barbaric but I felt even as a youngster that there was more that united them than divided them. One of the main things that connected them was Billy. Humour linked people together. I could imagine that Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley both had Connolly LPs although each would deny anything that would gel these diametrically opposed men. I never got to know stories from my Granny but the joy of the comedy that Billy gave to his catholic upbringing I felt I had colourful images to understand that unknown of my heritage. Even the very protestant part of my family was in Connolly’s comedy. My family worked at Ibrox and were linked to the club from birth so football stories went back through generations and again Billy telling hilarious stories of standing at the game and someone peeing on yer coat was real as I had other stories from my Mum and Gran to add more colour to the image.

I was from a Govan Mammy and a Drumoyne Dad, and this windswept and interesting Anderston funny man mixed all my family together and brought out the humour in a childhood filled with moments of division and difference as I sat in the middle of a divorce, where I was seen and definitely not heard. Where my early years were tainted by fear and anxiety, witnessing violence, heartbreak and rows. What saved me were wee moments enveloped in Billy Connolly, who I later found had experienced some of what I had gone through too and yet came out the other end using his humour as armour and becoming a force that could unite even the massive rifts that I saw unfold in front of me. Even if only providing short respite it was always welcomed.

Billy also made me feel not alone. His routine about being left outside with his big sister, Flo when another Dad stupidly gathers them up as he collects his massive brood in out the cold and the next thing they are in bed in a strange house, while outside there are two kids unable to go home because the bed’s full. I related to how Billy describes how scared he was but that his sister was there to reassure him that he was okay in what would be a scary scenario for any child but especially one who was already vulnerable given his upbringing. Where he had Flo, I had my youngest big brother, 2 years older than his baby sister but almost like a twin, We were spoken of by adults in the same breath as though we only had a joint identity. He was my anchor when things got rough but sometimes I still felt out at sea on my own and my lifebelt was Billy.

Headphones on to drown out the noise, listening to the comedy of a banjo twanging welder and the laughter of strangers to comfort me. A man who went through a lot yet found community in making others laugh. I really felt affinity with that. So much so I stood back on a stage this week with no new material as such and held court.

I think comedy is one of my routes out of this emptiness I feel. I am in my mid forties and feel like time has slipped away from me. I threw away all of my good chances as I fell into an abyss of self loathing and inner hatred. I am pulling at the threads of hope I am finding again whether that be medication, counselling, therapy in other forms, work and for me, comedy. I feel part of a community on stage, I connect viscerally with those that have to tell their stiry no matter the consequences but those who tell it with levity and rip the piss from the pissy situations they are in. When at my lowest ebb, comedy has always been the buoy that I could cling to and Connolly was the bhoy that I used as a buoy the most. Not to say there aren’t others. I have a list of comedians that I adored and fed off as a kid. They could take me from the worst of life and transport me into another world whether that be Victoria Wood, The Two Ronnies, Dave Allen, Marcambe and Wise, when I was little right through to my teens with Bill Hicks, Newman and Baddiel, Mark Thomas, Jo Brand and now with more modern acts that make me want to return to stand up and be in the game again, this time not as a fearful young woman, still carrying a little kid on her should but as an invisible middle aged woman who refuses to go out the door anymore. Who stands her ground and deserves to be heard just as much as anyone else.

As a daily reminder to myself and as a mark of respect to those I adore, I took a trip yesterday to a wee barge on the canal at Maryhill and met a fellow comedian Ian TC (the TC stands for The Comedian, I shit you not). He is an award winning tattoo artist and has a studio in his very own home, a canal boat. I decided to start on a collection of ink that marks why I am serious about comedy and why laughter means the most to me and recognise what has gotten through the bad times. Gotten through- that's what I have to remember I have always gotten through. I may have been knocked down but I have always gotten back up. This time it has knocked me for a fair wee while but I am back on my feet and I am finding answers and getting stronger with each avenue I search for clues.

Thanks to my perimenopause journey, Aunt Irma my monthly pal unwantedly and unexpectedly came along too. Cheers, Hen. Turns out this can make the tattoo process more painful. Thankfully pain and I are close personal friends so I was dandy throughout. Not saying to some it wouldn’t have been sore but my mental override kicked in like when I have a bone break and I was able to then ignore it and be a good sitter for Ian as he worked. At least I hope I was.

I know some may not like this tattoo, but it's not for anyone other than me. It’s a personal choice and one I have made alone. I don’t mind if you hate it but I love it and it means something to me. That’s what I’m figuring out. While I will respect your opinion I don’t necessarily need to carry it. You live your life with your choices and I’ll live mine. I've spent a lot of time worrying about what others think and feel adjusting to make others feel more comfortable and causing myself discomfort or pain in the process. This tattoo will be a comedy montage dedicated to all those that have given me the passion to go on and keep going. I feel like I was soldered yesterday, I was scarred by the tattoo gun and as a result I am left with a permanent weld, a strong bond and a mark to remind me of the wounds but also of the growth and healing that comes from that.

The search for myself continues but with some Billy and a couple of Ronnies to boot. Thanks Ian TC for the amazing work. Highly recommended- 5 stars.