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Billy Connolly at 80: Big Yin took first steps to stardom in his wellies alongside Dundee actress

Billy Connolly in London in the 1970s which was where he took to the stage in the West End. Image: Shutterstock.
Billy Connolly in London in the 1970s which was where he took to the stage in the West End. Image: Shutterstock.

Dundee actress Lesley Mackie will never forget her big break on stage alongside Billy Connolly and the only stripper in Britain with an Equity card.

It was her first professional job in theatre and the nightly shenanigans were as dramatic as theatre itself.

But did she really miss out on having dinner after the show with Michael Jackson and Liberace?

Our story starts in 1971.

Connolly, who turns 80 today, and Baker Street singer-songwriter Gerry Rafferty had decided to split up after performing on the Scottish folk scene as The Humblebums.

Billy Connolly pictured with his famous Banana boots. Image: Shutterstock.

Rafferty went on to form Stealers Wheel before emerging as a major solo artist but Connolly initially toyed with the idea that his future lay in theatre.

That’s when the Big Yin and Glasgow poet Tom Buchan wrote The Great Northern Welly Boot Show in 1972, which satirised the shipbuilding industry.

Former Harris Academy pupil Lesley got the part of Connolly’s wife in the political satire, which showed shipbuilders making wellington boots.

Billy Connolly, the Welly Boot song and a Striptease from Brandy

Connolly played Big Jimmy Littlejohn and Lesley was Hairy Mary from the Gorbals when the stage musical was performed in Glasgow and the Edinburgh Festival.

The Welly Boot Song became an instant favourite and a woman with the unlikely title of Brandy Di Franc was one of the play’s most popular stars.

Brandy would strip to her undies during the show while dancing between two actors wearing gigantic masks of Prime Minister Ted Heath and Labour leader Harold Wilson.

Billy Connolly thought his future lay in the theatre when his folk days ended in 1971. Image: DC Thomson.
Billy Connolly thought his future lay in the theatre when his folk days ended in 1971. Image: DC Thomson.

Lesley wrote in her memoir: “My boyfriend in the show was to be played by Billy Connolly, so whatever else was in store, I was certainly assured of a few laughs.

“The cast of The Great Northern Welly Boot Show was an uneasy mix of actors and variety artistes.

“Actors tend to abide by a fairly strict code, observing rules such as ‘the half-hour call’, which means that you have to be in the theatre 35 minutes before the curtain goes up.

“But with characters like Hamish Imlach in the cast, they turned up when they felt like it. Usually in very high spirits indeed!

“The show was loosely based on the Upper Clyde Shipbuilders strike, and I do mean loosely!

“An unusual element was introduced by the addition of a novelty act – a stripper, to be precise!

“Before rehearsals began there had been a nationwide search for the right lady to fill this ‘spot’ and the part was finally offered to a Miss Brandy Di Frank from Nottingham.

“Her act consisted of a tasteful strip undertaken in the presence of two large cut-out heads of Harold Wilson and Edward Heath.

“What all this had to do with shipbuilders, or even welly-boots, I cannot recall, but Brandy’s act, to the strains of Amazing Grace, was a highlight of the show.”

Lesley said they played to bigger audiences than might otherwise have been expected!

She said: “I enjoyed playing Hairy Mary alongside Billy Connolly’s Big Jimmy.

“His only stage experience at that time had been with the Humblebums, and as a solo folk singer, so he had no basic stagecraft, but he was a lovely, funny bloke to have around and got on well with everyone.

“Little did any of us know that he was but a few years away from his rise to mega-stardom.

“We would never have thought that one day he would play an acclaimed acting role in the successful movie, Mrs Brown, formidably starring opposite the wonderful actress, Dame Judi Dench.”

Young Vic switch

At the time, Connolly was still living with his first wife, Iris, and their two young children, and Lesley spent quite a few evenings back at their place after the show.

Actor Patrick Malahide, another of the Welly Boot cast, found fame as DS Albert Chisholm in Minder and went on to star in The Singing Detective.

He negotiated the show’s move to the Young Vic in London four months later.

In between the Edinburgh and Glasgow run and the move to the West End, Lesley had gone on to be cast as the schoolgirl Daisy in the cult horror classic The Wicker Man, alongside Christopher Lee, Edward Woodward and future Bond Girl Britt Ekland.

So, as soon as she had finished filming The Wicker Man in Newton Stewart, she caught the sleeper and headed to join the cast for the three-week season at the Young Vic.

Lesley Mackie in 1972 when she was performing in the West End with Billy Connolly.
Lesley Mackie in 1972 when she was performing in the West End with Billy Connolly. Image: DC Thomson.

“It had been fairly well received in Glasgow and even at the Edinburgh Festival, but that’s where it should really have ended,” she said.

“Instead, four months later, London audiences were now to have the privilege of seeing this uncompromisingly Glaswegian extravaganza.

“Well, we had to laugh, as the show was not exactly a smash hit. It must have been totally incomprehensible to the English, who stayed away in their droves.

“Due to the uncertainty of a London run, we had all agreed to a profit-share contract.

“As things turned out, we made about ÂŁ11 a week each. I stayed with our director, Tony Palmer, and his wife, in an affluent area of London.

“I was, of course, grateful for the accommodation, although I have no idea why he was so accommodating as he hadn’t been asked to re-direct the London production.

“Perhaps he wanted to vent his spleen, and chose me to vent it on.

“It certainly seemed that way at times.

“When he invited the Welly Boot crowd round for supper, he sent me to do the shopping, which I paid for, mentally adding it to the ÂŁ1 he had already borrowed from me to pay his cleaning lady.

“Because the company were just a little late arriving after the performance, he had already retired to his bed, rather reluctantly getting up to give us all a can of beer each.

“That was the beginning and the end of his generosity. Billy Connolly made a few well-pointed remarks, but our ex-director was nothing if not thick-skinned!”

Beer with Liberace?

Lesley, who lives in Perth, said she noticed the director was something of a “social climber” who would make a big thing out of entertaining international stars.

She said: “When I arrived back each night, he took great delight in slipping out of the lounge, closing the door, and telling me in hushed tones just who was in tonight.

“It was Frank Zappa on one occasion, then the Jackson Five and the Osmonds.

“He even bought a candelabra for his piano when Liberace accepted an invitation.

Liberace at his piano in 1978 alongside his famous candelabra. Image: Shutterstock.
Liberace at his piano in 1978 alongside his famous candelabra. Image: Shutterstock.

“Much to Tony’s chagrin, though, his illustrious guest could not be persuaded to tickle the ivories. Curiously, throughout my entire stay, he never once invited me through to meet any of his visitors, and I have since wondered if he told me about them just to make me feel excluded.

“But then, since I never set eyes on any of them, they might equally well have been a figment of his imagination.

“After all, I can’t see Liberace making do with a can of beer!

“But if the goings-on in the Palmer household were peculiar, to say the least, they were as nothing compared with the nightly shenanigans taking place at the Young Vic Theatre!”

The London audiences didn’t quite know what to make of it but Connolly turned court jester and went on to become a superstar in the world of comedy.

Lesley Mackie never looked back after performing with Billy Connolly in 1972.
Lesley Mackie never looked back after performing with Billy Connolly in 1972. Image: Shutterstock.

The rest is history.

Meanwhile, Lesley continued to tread the boards.

The highlight of her career over the next five decades was a Laurence Olivier Award in 1986 for her portrayal of Judy Garland at the Strand Theatre.

Other highlights were playing Edith Piaf in Piaf in four separate productions.

But who knows how life would have turned out if it wisnae for their wellies?

More like this:

How Dundee actress sang her way into the spotlight in The Wicker Man

Billy Connolly in Dundee: When the Big Yin belted a heckler

Were you at the Arbroath folk club where Billy Connolly and Gerry Rafferty performed for ÂŁ28?

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