Billy Connolly’s ‘wonderful’ brain ‘dulled’ by Parkinson’s

Parkinson’s disease has “dulled” the “wonderful brain” of beloved comedian Sir Billy Connolly, according to his longtime friend and TV presenter Sir Michael Parkinson.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies actor, who was knighted last October (17), went public with his diagnosis in 2013, when he revealed he was being treated for early signs of the progressive nervous system disorder, while he had also been suffering from prostate cancer.
Connolly, who was given the cancer all-clear in the autumn of 2013, continued to work throughout his heath crisis, but now his old pal Michael has revealed the 75 year old’s memory is in steady decline, and he’s struggling to recognise his close friends and family.
“The sadness of Billy now is that wonderful brain is dulled,” the retired talk show host said on Britain’s Saturday Morning with James Martin.
Recalling a “very sad” visit to present Billy with an award at a recent event in his adopted home of America, Michael continued, “We had an awkward dinner together because I wasn’t quite sure if he knew who I was or not.
“But we were walking out after the presentation to go down and have our picture taken and he turned to me and put his hands on my shoulders. He said to me, ‘How long have we known each other?'”
The funnyman was apparently unsure of the “context” of their friendship: “To know someone as long as I knew and loved Billy, it was an awful thing to contemplate, that that had been taken from him,” Michael lamented.