Billy Connolly thinks wearing pink as a teenager made him "popular with the ladies".

Billy Connolly

Billy Connolly

The legendary Scottish comedian has admitted that "much to [his] father's horror" once he started his first job as a welder at a shipyard, he was able to buy some "nice clothes" including pink shirts and underwear which helped him impress girls.

In an extract from his memoir 'Made In Scotland: My Grand Adventures In A Wee Country' published in the Daily Mail newspaper, he recalled: "Having a wage meant that in my late teens when I started going out drinking and dancing, I could buy some nice clothes.

"I wore American shirts with long pointed collars, like in the mafia movies, and a three-button suit with vents at the bottom of the trousers. My shoes would be winkle pickers or white moccasins until I got a pair of basketweave shoes with Cuban heels.

"I also bought some pink shirts and pink underwear, much to my father's horror. The weird thing was that wearing pink made me popular with the ladies, even as it made me deeply suspect among the men."

After getting dressed up in his fancy threads, Billy, now 76, would hit the pubs in Glasgow and then head to head to Barrowland to the local dance to try and attract a young lady

He said: "After we'd made our breath stink of Scrumpy and cigarettes in the Sarrie, we'd go across the road to the Barrowland to dance. Or, if I am honest, to try and pull a girl.

"The women all stood along the wall and the men stood along the edge of the dance floor. You would pick one and then have to get your nerve up to walk across to no man's land and ask that all-important timeless question, are you dancing? I didn't have too bad a success rate at getting the lasses to dance with me - it must have been my three button shirt and Cuban heels."

Billy - who is living with Parkinson's disease - has been married to his second wife, comedian-and-psychologist Pamela Stephenson since 1989.


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