I’ve long been a fan of his, enjoying his his hilarious storytelling stand-up comedy, entertaining travel documentaries as well as his more serious acting in movies like ‘ What we did on our Holiday’.

I had not realised what a tragic, abusive childhood he had endured and it is evident throughout the entire book that the results of this have had an effect on his entire life, into adulthood and beyond.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. He does so in a self-deprecating, warm way, that only sometimes veers off course into somewhat uninteresting (for me anyway) banalities and trivia, such as his favourite TV programs. I also learnt to my surprise and astonishment that Billy does not prepare material for his stand-up shows, but pretty much just gets up on stage and starts talking. only with the teeth kept in a glass - caused him to be scared of most things, not least the opposite sex. Stephenson at one point remarks that audiences relate to Billy partly because we recognise his rage.

You’ll learn “wee interesting things” about Billy here, some you’ll already know as if it’s your own autobiography, but you won’t care because it’s Billy. His comedy is about real-life situations that we've all been through or things our relatives, particularly our mums and dads have said to us when we were young. While William was fighting in Burma, their mother, Mary, would leave the children alone in the house with the fire open and blazing, Florence once falling into burning ashes and permanently damaging an eye. It is of course a sign of Connolly’s strength of character, his tenacity and warm-heartedness that he does not allow such awful events to dominate his life, though those dark memories do fuel his excessive drinking.While I loved reading about Billies early life, I would have much rather heard it in his own words, with all the humour he could have brought to it. I was fascinated reading about the making of the man and learning of his background and experiences. I recently read Braveheart, the 2nd biography of Billy by his wife, Pamela, so I knew I had to read this one. In an exciting new development, Sir Billy Connolly's witty and wise art has been collected in a deluxe coffee table book, Born on a Rainy Day, which comes with a hand-signed, limited edition giclée self-portrait.