Unlike other celeb books, this book doesn’t come across as a vanity project although it is indeed Billy’s story, but he intercepts it with jokes and anecdotes, much the way he does on stage. Billy takes you through his experiences of being in bands, friendships, comedy and eventual stardom.

They say the best comedians have a background of sadness and perhaps this is true - it certainly appears to be in Billy's case, something his psychologist wife and biographer states herself more than once in the book.Barnum was not only one of the founders of modern day circus performance, he was also the author of the second most printed book of the 19th century. This is in spite of many difficulties experienced in childhood including physical and sexual abuse and a later problem with drinking (no doubt caused by this trauma). From a troubled and desperately poor childhood in the docklands of Glasgow he is now the intimate of household names the world over. He could have turned out so differently by letting those who were supposed to have raised him get to him, instead he pushed on and had the great delight of proving them all wrong.

about her husband, but seeing Billy Connolly on the final Parkinson show compelled me to find out a little more about this man who could make me laugh so hard. Such is our familiarity with the Big Yin’s saga, you’d be forgiven for thinking that he’s already written his memoir. Documentaries, Hollywood films, and TV shows were aplenty as well countless stand-up appearances, but following a Parkinson's and cancer diagnosis the much-loved comic's live performances were to come to an end. There was jokes in it I'd heard before, he's previously used them in concert; I'm not saying it's a bad thing because they were essential to the stories of his background he was describing. Even his health problems with hearing loss, prostate cancer and Parkinson’s disease, have not kept him down long.Actually, the casual sadism of 1940s and 1950s Scottish schoolteachers isn’t so much of a shock because as you read you can hear Connolly in his stage shows impersonating these chalkdust-flecked monsters, making them seem funny. Famous people will hang about with other famous people, just as you will hang about with the people that you have things in common with or work with.