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Scots funnyman Billy Connolly has spoken passionately about the Parkinson’s disease which is consuming him, including his willingness to act as a guinea pig to find a cure.
The 75-year-old Glaswegian, now living in Florida, has been suffering from Parkinson’s since being diagnosed five years ago.
Two months ago, broadcaster Michael Parkinson attracted criticism when he claimed that his old friend Sir Billy failed to recognise him because of his worsening neurological condition. READ MORE: Billy Connolly’s ‘wonderful brain is dulled’, says Michael Parkinson
In reply, he was described as “an old fart” by the comedian’s wife, Pamela Stephenson.
READ MORE: Michael Parkinson wrong about Billy Connolly’s brain, says his wife
Now, in an extract from a new book, Connolly has revealed he has been in touch with scientists at Harvard University in Massachusetts, USA, whose world-renowned stem cell institute is a key leader in research into Parkinson’s.
In the book he poignantly reveals the extent to which the disease – currently incurable – now dominates his life and has even forced him to stop driving or performing shows.
The Glaswegian says: ‘Researchers are making progress on curing the disease. I’ve spoken to guys working on it at Harvard and told them I’ll be a guinea pig for them. I think they are going to take me up on that.’
Last year, researchers announced that primates with Parkinson’s symptoms regained significant mobility after induced Pluripotent Stem (iPS) cells – which have the potential to develop into any cell in the body — were inserted into their brains.
Two months ago, Japanese researchers at Kyoto University began the first human trial with seven participants aged between 50 and 69.
The two-year experiment follows collaboration with other research teams worldwide, as many including Harvard Stem Cell Institute race to find a cure.
Billy was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and prostate cancer – for which he had successful surgery – in the same week in December 2013,
Almost five years on, he admits the disease is the first thing he thinks of every morning when he wakes up.
He says: ‘It occupies a lot of my thinking time every single day. The thing that I find hardest is coming to grips with the fact that it’s never going to go away. Everything that has ever been wrong with me in the past always went away, eventually. It was either operated on or it cured itself. This isn’t going anywhere: in fact, it’s going to get worse.’
But he adds: ‘I’ve learned to take it easier and to look out for when the shaking starts. I’m coping with it and I’m hanging in there.’
In the book, Made in Scotland, which is a mix of memoir and travelogue, he discusses the progress of his symptoms with Professor Sir Ian Wilmut, the retired University of Edinburgh scientist who led the team that created Dolly the sheep, the world’s first animal clone.
Sir Ian Wilmut, who was himself diagnosed with Parkinson’s in December last year, says research into the disease – which affects 10 million people worldwide – is reaching a point where ‘we think we understand enough about what’s causing Parkinson’s and how we can cure it’.
Former shipyard worker Billy, who also suffers from deafness and now wears hearing aids, tells Sir Ian: ‘I’m a shadow of my former self. My left arm and left leg aren’t the same as my right, any more. I went to physiotherapy in Florida, where I live, and there’s a special course for Parkinson’s disease sufferers and I do it every day. It’s loosened me up.
‘I try everything. I get massages and mess around generally. I find it helps me and then that lasts a little while and then I get worse, again. I have to go and do something else as the disease creeps merrily forward. It seems relentless.’
He adds: ‘I have come off the road now and I haven’t been playing any shows because of the Parkinson’s, but I would like to do more. I don’t know what the future holds in that respect because I don’t know what state I will be in. Having Parkinson’s – and being 75 – has inevitably made me think sometimes about my death, but those thoughts go away as quickly as they come. I tend not to dwell on them.’
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