Billy Connolly's wife Pamela Stephenson reveals why she doesn't go on tour with the 'Big Yin'

•  27 MAR 2016
• BY MARK JEFFERY'S

The comedian-turned-psychologist has revealed the real reason they are rarely seen together and given an update on his battle against Parkinson's disease

Billy and Pamela are as close as ever

Pamela Stephenson has revealed the real reason she doesn’t go on tour with hubby Billy Connolly is because he likes to poke fun at her on stage.

The couple have not been pictured together for almost a year while 73-year-old comedian Billy toured the UK – despite him battling Parkinson’s disease.

And eyebrows were raised when she failed to accompany him to the National TV Awards to pick up a lifetime achievement gong. Billy, nicknamed the Big Yin, did not mention her in his acceptance speech and took three of their daughters along to the bash instead.

But quashing rumours of cracks in their 26-year marriage, Pamela, 66, revealed the real reason why they are rarely seen together.

Billy, Pamela and their girls pictured in 1996

Writing in Woman & Home magazine, she explained: “He hates me showing up when he’s on tour. I imagine that’s because on stage he’s often funny at my expense.” She jokingly added: “B*****d!”

In the article the comedian-turned-psychologist also gave an update on his health. She said: “Billy is actually doing really well. He continues the voice exercises that help to maintain his vocal texture, but that would be necessary even if he didn’t have Parkinson’s.

“He trains hard in the gym. He continues to tour, to do movies and TV series, and is frankly as funny as he’s ever been.”

Billy, who has starred in a string of hit movies including Mrs Brown, is back on the road again next month, playing stand-up dates in America including New York, which the couple now call home after selling Candacraig House in Strathdon, Aberdeenshire, for £2.75million in 2014.

Opening up about how his disease had rocked their family – Daisy, 32, Amy, 29, Scarlett, 27, and Billy’s son and daughter from his first marriage to Iris Pressagh, Jamie, 46, and Cara, 42 – Pamela admitted: “To say Billy’s diagnosis of Parkinson’s was a shock is an understatement.

“No one in our family really knew what it meant. To be honest, we still don’t.”

She also revealed she had missed the early signs of his Parkinson’s, partly because she was in denial and also because of ignorance of the symptoms.

“Being a psychologist made me see some of Billy’s ­symptoms through the wrong lens. I know now, for example, that the disturbed sleep, violent thrashing around and ­unintelligible, aggressive shouting is a sleep ­behaviour disorder known to co-exist with Parkinson’s. His mood, too, was up and down but there were usually plausible explanations, including the stresses of being famous.”

Initially, she linked the violent symptoms to his traumatic childhood, as he was sexually abused by his father as a child.

Revealing how Billy initially struggled to cope after being diagnosed, she went on: “There is no doubt he has been shaken psychologically by the idea of having a creeping disease for which there is no cure.

“But physically we had seen very little change in him. Even now, I rarely notice his hand shaking and we have been informed that the disease is on his left side, a blessing for a right-handed person. Even Billy’s specialist remarked that the average person would never know he had it.”

Billy, who met Pam on the set of BBC comedy Not The Nine O’Clock News in 1979, said in a statement he was suffering from Parkinson’s in September 2013, at the same time announcing he had had surgery for early-stage prostate cancer.

The star, who found fame after ditching his job as a welder in a Glasgow shipyard, previously declared Pamela had “saved him” as she helped him quit booze.

In an interview earlier this year, he told how she had become like a carer to him at times. “She’s very supportive,” he said. Of the disease, he added: “I think about it every morning. It’s for ever, isn’t it?” But speaking last year, he said his positive attitude helped him keep going: “Parkinson’s is scary if you want it to be, but you mustn’t let it take control.”

http://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/billy-connollys-wife-pamela-stephenson-7639195