Pamela Stephenson Livres

Biography of Billy Connolly, written by his wife Pamela Stephenson.

Mrs Billy Connolly's tale of a more-than-usually extraordinary year in the life of living with her husband offers an insider's view of his filming, his charity works, his 60th birthday party and TV work, and includes personal insight into what makes him tick - and what makes her tick (it's her year too). he does and what she does (the contrast between the inherent seriousness of what she does, compared to the zaniness of what he does). The nature of fame, the challenges of age and triumph-over-adversity are all themes underlying the many anecdotes collected in this book.

"This is the story of two resourceful women. The one, Pamela Stephenson--biographer, mother, wife of Billy Connolly, psychologist and ex-comedienne--the other Fanny Stevenson--'the Wild Woman of the West', as her husband Robert Louis called her. Both married to maverick Scottish men, both in search of adventure and a kind of epiphany, both drawn for a myriad of reasons to the coral islands, lagoons, natives and customs of the South Seas"--P. [4] of cover.

<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/212635.Billy_Connolly" rel="nofollow noopener">Billy Connolly</a> is loud, hilarious and contradictory. His biography, written by his wife, former comedian and practising psychotherapist Pamela Stephenson, is pretty much the same. Over the years <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/212635.Billy_Connolly" rel="nofollow noopener">Connolly</a> has grown from Glasgow shipyard welder to folk-singing beardy hard man (yes there is such a thing) to darling of the good and great (or at least famous) around the world. That he is so many things to so many people while in no way compromising his core self can only be good. It would be no mean feat for Stephenson, then, to pen a history to that would satisfy <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/212635.Billy_Connolly" rel="nofollow noopener">Connolly</a> audiences of fans and contemporaries from all periods of his life's journey. In most places, but in truth, not all, the author manages to do this well.<p>The first half of the biography is somewhat anthropological in tone. Not surprisingly, a post-war Glasgow upbringing is somewhat alien to the antipodean author and Stephenson errs towards <i>Angela's Ashes</i> intonation as she describes her husband's tenement childhood (Scots readers may also find her regular translation of seemingly self-explanatory Scots phrases--which Connolly would use--obtuse). In contrast her examination of her experience of living with the comedian and his life from that point on is much better. Anecdotes which <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/212635.Billy_Connolly" rel="nofollow noopener">Connolly</a> uses in his live shows pepper the text and laughs are raised as he tells of the time he was mistaken as a drug dealer on Speyside, of his cheeky friendships with cinema's elite and even through the more difficult times; the difficulty of balancing an almost manic humour with a troubled life. Pages turn quickly as we grow to understand more of what makes the man tick.</p><p>Certainly fans of <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/212635.Billy_Connolly" rel="nofollow noopener">Billy Connolly</a> will enjoy this book. It is not perfect but it is certainly entertaining and should fill a gap in the market until Billy--with his half-remembered stories and off-centre view of the world--decides to let us into his head as well as his history. There's surely one ideal way to do this and that's by writing his story himself. --<i>Helen Lamont</i></p>