Billy Connolly receives arts honour

Connolly was accompanied by wife Pamela Stephenson

Comedian Billy Connolly has been awarded an honorary degree by Glasgow University for his contribution to Scottish arts and popular culture.

The 59-year-old Glasgow-born funnyman flew from his home in America to pick up a Doctor of Letters on Wednesday.

Wearing a red and purple gown, Connolly accepted the award to cheers from students attending the Bute Hall ceremony.

Connolly: Came back from America for the ceremony

His second wife Pamela Stephenson, and their three daughters, Daisy, Amy and Scarlett, were in the audience.

Connolly left school at the age of 15 to start an apprenticeship as a welder in the Glasgow shipyards.

Speaking after the ceremony, he threw his support behind shipyard workers on Clydeside who face losing their jobs.

"It is a very difficult time for the shipyard workers, it is a terrible thing.

"I have been made redundant before and it is a terrible blow, redundant is a rotten word because it makes you think you are useless."

Inspirations

But music and comedy were Connolly's big inspirations and he soon received his break on the Parkinson show in the mid-1970s.

He moved to the US in the early 1990s where he has developed his comedy and acting career.

John Caughie, Dean of the Faculty of Art at the university, said during the ceremony: "School did not figure largely in Billy's education and he developed a highly sophisticated theory of homework - 'I got belted for it every day', he says, 'but when I weighed it up I would much rather get the belt than do the homework'."

Celebrity

The Dean added: "Contrary to those who mutter 'sell out', one of the things we might most admire about Billy Connolly is his ability to reinvent himself without losing what it was he started with.

"He has refused to be a professional Scotsman using his celebrity to instruct us from afar in how it is to be Scottish."

Glasgow University will mark its 550th anniversary this year and Connolly is the latest in a long line of honorary fellows.

Others have included the Prince of Wales and Graca Michel, wife of former South African President Nelson Mandela.