16 GABRIEL RDPictured at Edinburgh's Sheraton Grand Hotel today ( Monday 13/8/01 ) is star of the new UK film Gabriel And Me, Billy Connolly . The film has it's UK premier in Edinburgh tonight as part of the Edinburgh Film Festival.
© 2001 Roger Donovan, Media Photos

A slight change from the norm with this post. Not only have I included the portrait shot that is the main subject of the post but also included the historical images that complete the story.

I couldn’t publish pictures from my time in Scotland without including a shot of The Big Yin, aka Billy Connolly, a true comedy giant.

This portrait was taken in 2001 in Edinburgh during the Film Festival when he was at the launch of his film film “Gabriel And Me”.

I had photographed Billy many years earlier whilst working at The Western Mail and Echo in Cardiff. He was attending the wedding of the daughter of Chic Murray, another Scottish Comedy Great, at a church in Cyncoed, Cardiff in1986. He was great to photograph and did all he could to give me a good set of pictures.

It shows what a small world it is when twelve years later when I was working in Scotland and I was commissioned to photograph a mother and daughter Maidie and Annabelle for a piece about a comedy great who turned out to be their husband and father Chic Murray. I hadn’t made the connection but when I walked in I was so surprised to be recognised by Annabelle, the daughter as the photographer who had taken the wedding pictures of her with Billy ten years earlier.

ARCHIVE299Maidie Murray and her daughter Annabelle with some of their Chic Murray memorabilia.
© 1998 Roger Donovan, Media Photos ARCHIVE302Maidie Murray and her daughter Annabelle with Chic Murray bill from the Capitol Theatre, Aberdeen.
© 1998 Roger Donovan, Media Photos CONNOLLY1 CONNOLLY2