There is an air of Nick Park’s Creature Comforts about Gary McNair’s “love letter” to Billy Connolly. The performer builds his joyful one-man show from interviews with ordinary people about what they think of the shipyard welder turned national treasure. He recalls as many as 50 of them, each delivered with careful attention to the pauses, mistakes and digressions of everyday speech.
He shows us people losing the thread, mixing up their words or going on surreal flights of fancy. Ask a stranger about Connolly and you will, it seems, be told about sheep thrown into the sea, the pleasure of Flumps and something about the Wombles. Like Park’s animation, which put human voices into the mouths of clay animals, Dear Billy delights in the quirks of conversation.
