We all have our favourite roll fillings and it would seem Sir Billy Connolly is no different, according to Deborah Anderson in the recently renamed Glasgow Times.
The Big Yin has revealed he is partial to a roll and slice – sliced sausage.
Speaking in the Great Scot podcast series led by broadcaster Janice Forsyth, Sir Billy said: “Square slice sausage in a roll is a joy and it’s a food I would hold against any food in the world, against any smorgasbord or, whatever they call it.
“I get sandwiches in America that you can’t get your mouth over – gigantic things, corned beef and deli sandwiches. And when you bite one end it all spews out the other end – things that are impossible to eat, like a taco. Unless you’re wearing waterproofed trousers. A roll and sausage is just such a joy.”
These words were rolling around in my head when I visited Helensburgh on Friday morning, and at a time when I was feeling a wee bit peckish.
When I’m in Helensburgh, I like to call into Callaghan the Butcher’s in Sinclair Street for one of their famous steak pies.
The young man behind the Covid-protected counter asked me kindly if there was anything else I would like.
And I spotted a nice stack of square sliced in the counter display cabinet.
I’ll have two of those square sausages, I said before having my debit card swiped for the cash that has been replaced for currency by plastic cards.
But, as I stepped out on to the pavement, the sunshine and the chill wind blowing in off the Firth of Clyde, I was left wondering what to do with my purchases.
I knew that “her indoors” wouldn’t be sharing them and the square slice would not be getting the old cead mile faite under the grill in the kitchen which must be kept pristine during the pandemic. Now wash your hands and all that.
Then I noticed the magic sign above a shop across the Street. GREGGS.
It was here I would purchase the rolls in which to slap the square sliced sausages.
Greggs was only 25 yards or so away from Callaghan’s, but my journey across the street was soon swamped with nostalgia.
As at Callaghan’s, only two people were allowed inside the shop at the one time. Social distancing was being kept impeccably on the pavement.
Then from outside the door I perused the Greggs’ display of cakes and buns, including Belgian buns, and that took me back to my years spent in the editor’s chair at the Lennox Herald in Dumbarton High Street.
Almost every day in life, I had a Belgian bun and a warm sausage roll for my lunch. I’m a creature of habit.
The big iced bun with the thick white icing and a cherry on top reminded me of an incident which involved Sir Billy Connolly.
I was half way up Mount Kenya in East Africa when one of the officers in the climbing party of Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders said: “I have been trying to work out your accent ever since we were introduced, Bill.”
“And,” I said, hoping to hear the name of some famous person whose dulcet tones and accent were similar to my own.
“Billy Connolly,” the officer said in the clipped tones of his English public school accent. “I love the accent,” he said,” and I love the Big Yin even more.”
Additionally, Sir Billy, who once with his Humblebums mate Gerry Rafferty, they are pictured together in the montage above) slept on the carpet at a party I was at in the West End, remarkably told Janice Forsyth on BBC Scotland about his terrible moments of stage fright and the fear he couldn’t think of anything funny.
He said: “I can’t perform the way I used to. It doesn’t roll the way it used to. It’s difficult to explain – there’s a process from leaving the dressing room to getting to the stage where the nerves disappear. Like, I was tortured with nervousness before a show.
“One of the symptoms of it is that everything you are thinking disappears, all the funny lines that you had in mind have gone and the ideas. So you have nothing. I would phone home to my daughter, to my wife and said, I can’t think of anything funny. Can you think of anything funny I’ve said in the last couple of days?
“And then my manager would come in and say, right, Billy we’d walk from the dressing room to the edge of the stage and it was wearing off during that walk. And then on the walk from the side of the stage to the microphone, it went completely.
“And I would change into this other guy mentally. I would be in a different mood and words would come easily and ideas come easily. And I don’t know if that would come back.”
He is no stranger to being asked for a selfie when back in Glasgow, but he doesn’t get the same treatment in America.
Sir Billy said: “In America they think I’m an actor. And they treat me with distance that actors get. Comedians get “hello! How are you?! Actors get “Oh, I love your work.”
“There’s a weird thing that happens in America. It’s a very pleasant thing. You can be in a restaurant having your dinner and there’s a table full of people next to you and you think everything’s okay. Hunky dory, get your dinner and the family is OK, because that autograph time, you worry about your family. You’ve broken up the conversation. You’ve ended the story because you have to sign your name on a menu. Blah, blah, blah.
“Well, suppose this table doesn’t look your way, and then you’ll be talking to your wife or whoever at the end of the dinner, and this table will get up and walk to the door. And as they’re going out the door, they look over towards you and give you a little salute, a nod – “I know who you are.” And it’s a very pleasant thing. Because what they’re saying is “I know who you are and I left you alone.”
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