Billy Connolly: I discovered out I had Parkinson"s and cancer on the same day

‘I believe they are really closely relevant, deep despair and laughing,’ says Billy Connolly. Photograph: Luke Macgregor/PA

Billy Connolly has disclosed that he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s illness and prostate cancer on the exact same day.

The 71-yr-old comedian, who is married to the psychologist Pamela Stephenson, described how the mobile phone phone telling him he had Parkinson’s came only hours following medical professionals had broken the information of his prostate cancer last September.

“I remember I went by means of to the bedroom to answer the mobile phone,” Connolly told the Radio Occasions. “Pamela was behind me – I considered she was gonna catch me. And she type of held me and I went, ‘Oh Jesus’.”

However, Connolly stated the double-diagnosis had not dented his very good humour.

“Aye, it just took place,” he mentioned. “I consider they are extremely closely related, deep despair and laughing. And I was not in any ache.”

Describing the second he was told he had cancer, Connolly extra: “When he said ‘First of all, you are not gonna die,’ I was shocked. I said, ‘Of program I’m not going to fucking die.’ It by no means crossed my mind. It was all really businesslike.”

Connolly, who has five youngsters, underwent profitable surgical procedure on his prostate in the US – which he described simply as “in and out, completed” – and was provided the all-clear in October.

However, it was the discovery that he had Parkinson’s – soon after a possibility encounter with a physician in a hotel lobby in Australia who advised him he was exhibiting symptoms of the incurable degenerative brain ailment – that prompted Connolly to embark on his latest documentary, exploring the taboos close to death.

In the two-component programme, Billy Connolly’s Large Send Off, the comedian and actor visits a convention of funeral directors in Texas, a pet cemetery in San Francisco, a drive-thru funeral parlour in Los Angeles, and ultimately his favourite cemetery in his hometown of Glasgow.

Jo Clinton-Davis, who commissioned the documentary for ITV, stated: “Billy Connolly’s a huge fan of existence he is effervescent, energised and inspired by it, but he’s also genuinely fascinated by the way we as people treat death – a topic that is quite actually the greatest universal knowledge, but so often prevented.”

Connolly says he has integrated his Parkinson’s signs into his stand-up demonstrates. Holding up his left hand, he informed the Radio Times: “We had been laughing about it because when the strain will get massive, this hand commences to shake. And I am like ‘look, look, seem, look’. And I do it on stage – I present the audience this hand creeps up on me.”

In an interview last month, Connolly unveiled he stopped taking his medication for Parkinson’s. “It is a weird medicine,” he informed a US chat present. “Medical professionals took me off … they reckon the side effects have been more powerful than the results.”

Connolly informed the Radio Times it was “early days” and he would go back on the medication “when the signs come back”.

The documentary, which will air on Wednesday on ITV, will also see Connolly candidly examine his very own thoughts on death. “I will not feel I want a resting spot,” he explained. “I want to be scattered on the wind.”

Billy Connolly: I discovered out I had Parkinson"s and cancer on the same day