I agree with Billy: don’t depend on your Scottishness

What’s particularly interesting is that some of the pupils’ questions focused on issues that – sadly, painfully – have become more and more relevant since the ‘80s, including nationality and the “damage” comedy can do. One girl asked Billy if he felt he was treated differently because of his Scottish nationality. Another asked why he always portrayed Glaswegians as bigoted morons.

His replies were brilliant. “If you’re going to depend on your Scottish nationality to get you along,” he said, “you’re in deep trouble.” What really kept him going, he said, was the fact he was a comedian, and a good one: “My Scottishness doesn’t buy my breakfast I can assure you.”

The response Billy gave to the point about showing Glaswegians in a bad light was also interesting. “Scots have a bee in their bonnet that the only people you see on TV are all playing hard men and drunks,” he said. “It’s just not true.” He added that this was something he continually found when he came to Scotland: he was always on the defensive.

I remember, a few years later, Billy saying something similar about Glasgow when I met him in the city in 2010. He was being made a freeman and was looking good in Comme des Garcons trews in red-and-black Japanese tartan. But I remember him saying that being Glaswegian was something he never focused on. It’s a trap, he said. He described how he meets guys all over the world, particularly from Govan and the Gorbals, who say “never forget where you come from”, and he said that in a way they’re right. But here’s the point: it’s a mistake to dwell on it.

More recently, Billy appears to have softened his stance somewhat – he certainly seems to be more open than he was to the idea of independence. But the point he makes about focusing unduly on where you come from still stands. I am from Aberdeen. I am Scottish. But on the list of things that matter to me, and should matter to you, they are somewhere near the bottom.

The sad truth however is that, based on our politics and public conversations, we appear to be heading in the opposite direction and perhaps the seeds of it can be seen in those chippy teenagers in the BBC clip. They were worried Billy was portraying Glaswegians as morons and 40 years later, comedy is dominated by the fatuous idea that we shouldn’t “harm” an audience or “punch down”. Billy knew that was nonsense then, and it still is. And oh, how we laughed.

I think the same applies also to the nationality question. It has always mattered as an issue and it mattered in the 1980s – of course it did. But it’s important to keep the emotional, nostalgic, sentimental, or even angry reaction you might have to your nationality in its proper place. Billy was pretty sentimental about Glasgow – I remember him telling me about the beauty of a rainy day on Renfield Street – but his status as a Glaswegian or a Scot had very little to do with his views on politics and the world. He described himself as an internationalist and I hope he still does.

My worry now is that if we were to repeat the experiment of putting Billy in front of an audience of Scots these days, the questioners would be even more chippy and there’d be an even greater focus on nationality than there was in the 1980s. We’re supposed to be heading towards a situation where national differences matter less – and there was a time when I thought we were. But I fear progress on the ideal has stalled, or reversed.

Maybe there’s still hope. Maybe we’ll realise we shouldn’t depend on our Scottishness. Maybe we’ll listen to Billy.

Read more by Mark Smith:

• Dear Nicola Sturgeon, we are not who you say we are
• Why are so many of our historic places still closed?
• Are we about to tear down a Scottish icon?