Peter Kay spoke about his comedy hero, Billy Connoll,y during a BBC Radio 2 interview
Bethany Whittingham Showbiz & TV Reporter and Abbie Bray Deputy Editor for Screen Time
15:31, 02 Dec 2025Updated 15:49, 02 Dec 2025
Comedian Peter Kay has provided a health update regarding his “hero”, Billy Connolly, during his continuing health struggle. The Max and Paddy star disclosed that the Scottish comic is “not doing well” whilst speaking with Sara Cox.
During BBC Radio 2’s special programme, broadcast from Manchester’s Lyric Theatre, the entertainer reflected on his encounters with comedy legends throughout his career. And he said one he has stayed in contact with is Billy.
Kay enthused: “I met Billy Connolly. I still keep in touch with Billy Connolly now, and he’s not so good now, but he would still message and that. I think a lot of comedians in this country would not be doing what they do if it weren’t for him. I think so much of it is influenced by him, heavily. Amazing.”
The broadcaster confessed he’s met many of his “heroes” throughout his career(Image: BBC Radio 2)
The performer received a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis in 2013 and stepped away from live shows just five years afterwards. However, Connolly wasn’t the sole comedy legend the Phoenix Nights creator has encountered over the years.
He revealed: “I have been really lucky because I have met them all. I met Ronnie Barker. I’d always absolutely adored Porridge, and used to watch Porridge. Oh, anyway, I wrote to him, and he wrote back. I mentioned I loved Porridge, and I’d said how much it meant to me,” reports the Express.
“One day, this letter came, and iT said ‘Prison’, and I thought, ‘Who’s written to me from prison?’ And I opened it, and it was Her Majesty’s Prison Slade, and he’d written to me in character as Norman Fletcher.
“And he wrote about – I were crying my eyes out – he wrote about nicking this paper from the library when MacKay wasn’t looking and Barrowclough, and he wrote this two-page letter all about being in prison.”
Peter Kay has issued a candid health update about Billy Connolly(Image: PA)
Chatting to his audience, he revealed that he had even managed to meet some of his musical heroes, including Billy Joel. He told Sara: “I’ve always loved Billy Joel, ever since my dad bought a 12-inch of Uptown Girl and he’d come back with a four-track EP, Uptown Girl, My Life, Still Rock and Roll to Me and Just the Way You Are – come home with it from town on bonfire night, 1983. I were thrilled to bits.”
He continued: “And the maddest thing was, I had all these LPs that I’d bought, second hand, from X Records, and I had these LPs, and he was up in Glasgow. I went u,p and I said, ‘Listen, if I bring me LPs, would you sign them?’ And then he said, ‘Yeah, no problem’.
“So, I brought them all up to Glasgow, and I sat in his dressing room, and he wrote messages on each – ‘This one’s crap’, ‘This one shouldn’t have been made’, ‘This was to pay for divorce number one’. He put messages on these – ‘I like this one, this isn’t bad’, and oh, I absolutely treasure them!”
The funnyman appeared on the programme to plug his latest publication, Peter Kay’s Diary: The Monthly Memoir of a Boy from Bolton. He has also expanded his tour dates, with the final performances next year seeing earnings from his Better Late Than Never shows donated to 12 cancer charities.