Big Banana Feet
Glasgow Film Festival
There’s a seminal moment in this long-lost fly-on-the-wall documentary about Billy Connolly’s 1975 tour to Dublin and Belfast where the Big Yin, sporting his iconic banana boots, picks up a rose from the stage at the ABC Cinema in Belfast only to pretend it’s a bomb.
It’s a dark, edgy, off-the-cuff moment. (To put it in context, only weeks earlier, three members of The Miami Showband cabaret group had been murdered by a paramilitary group during their tour of Ireland.)
It’s also a stroke of comedy genius that shows Connolly at his iconoclastic best – a jester holding up a mirror to the volatile nature and horrors of the time, while defusing any tension in the audience.
Still from Big Banana Feet, the Billy Connolly documentary, which is being shown at this year’s Glasgow Film Festival
Billy Connolly on stage wearing big banana boots. He was clearly nervous about performing in Northern Ireland
Shot over a weekend on a hand-held camera, filmmaker Murray Grigor took his cue from D A Pennebaker’s iconic Bob Dylan rockumentary, Don’t Look Back
The film, being shown in a restored print, was thought to be lost after its distributor went bust. Almost 50 years on, an archivist spotted a copy on eBay and got it for £50.
It was made at the height of the Troubles, and Connolly is clearly nervous at playing the North. Clips show soldiers patrolling outside and inside the venue.
But quizzed in Dublin about the fact he could be blown up in Belfast, the Big Yin replies: ‘I’m frightened to think about it really. I don’t feel like a crusader or anything. But I sell a lot of records there and they asked me, so I thought, “what the hell?”‘
Shot over a weekend on a hand-held camera, filmmaker Murray Grigor took his cue from D A Pennebaker’s iconic Bob Dylan rockumentary, Don’t Look Back.
The film tracks Connolly both onstage and off, offering up a fascinating insight into his early work, and the down-to-earth attitude of the welder turned comedian just as he’s on the cusp of stardom.
But while Don’t Look Back unmasked Dylan as a bit of a prima donna, Big Banana Feet shows Connolly’s common touch.
The film tracks Connolly both onstage and off, offering up a fascinating insight into his early work
On arriving in Dublin and being told he’s ‘a bigger fella than I thought,’ the Big Yin cheekily responds’ Oh, I’m very big in Glasgow’
Billy Connolly Tartan Day Parade, New York, USA in 2019
On arriving in Dublin and being told he’s ‘a bigger fella than I thought,’ quick as a flash the Big Yin cheekily responds’ Oh, I’m very big in Glasgow.’
At his most easy going when charming the tea ladies behind the scenes at his show, he seems non-plussed at having a list of all the big stars (Burton and Taylor; Kim Novak; Rod Stewart) who have stayed in his swanky hotel suite rhymed off by its manager.
The film also features the hilarious comedy songs – pastiches of Oh Boy and Help Me Make It Through the Night – that the former folk singer used to pepper his act and early albums with.
It’s also interesting to witness routines fresh out of the box that have since passed into folklore such as the Glasgow drunk getting nowhere fast as only one leg is working. Now 81, the comedian retired from stand-up in 2018 as Parkinson’s disease took its increasingly debilitating toll.
Which makes this look back at one of Scotland’s favourite sons in all his glory a joy to behold as he takes his first steps towards conquering the world in his own irrepressible style. If anything, at 77 minutes, this glimpse of the beginnings of a comedy legend and national treasure, is too short.