Sir Billy Connolly started his legendary comedy career in the 1970s
(Picture: BBC)Sir Billy Connolly surprised fans after he was spotted at a Glasgow restaurant on Monday.
The 79-year-old, who now lives in Florida, had customers doing a double take inside Italian eatery Mediterraneo when he sat down to enjoy a meal in his hometown.
Marking his time at the restaurant, the venue shared a photo with the comedy icon on its social media, which quickly racked up more than 26,000 likes and in excess of 555 comments at the time of writing.
Mediterraneo wrote: "Serving a Glasgow Legend! Billy Connolly at Mediterraneo".
Fans were thrilled to see the hometown hero in his native Glasgow and commented in their droves about his return.
One fan wrote: "Can’t believe he is in Glasgow. Amazing. I love our Billy."
“Aw gutted! I was in today wished I had seen him! Met him few times other the years he’s brilliant,” another remarked.
A third quipped: “Hope you gave him a freebie for all the laughter he has given the world.”
“I was in that area the day before Billy,” another fan said. “If it would have been yesterday, I could have bumped inti him too. That would have been awesome. Lucky Med Lounge Staff!”
In 2020, the Scottish comic, who started out in the business back in the 1970s, announced that he would no longer do stand-up comedy.
He was hoping to keep performing in some capacity after officially retiring in 2018 but said his Parkinson’s diagnosis, which he revealed publicly in 2013, had made “his brain work differently.”
“I’m finished with stand-up,” he told Sky News at the time. “It was lovely, and it was lovely being good at it. It was the first thing I was ever good at, and I’m delighted and grateful to it.
“The Parkinson’s has made my brain work differently, and you need a good brain for comedy. [Stand-up] is a madly exciting thing to do, it’s a delight and it’s a privilege.”
Connolly’s zany brand of off-the-cuff observational comedy won him a legion of fans and accolades. For instance, he was voted the greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4’s 100 Greatest Stand-Ups in both 2007 and 2010.
