Big Yin’s tears flowed as he scattered his ex-wife’s ashes in River Don
GRIEVING Billy Connolly broke down in tears as he scattered the ashes of his tragic ex-wife in a river near his Scottish mansion, it has been revealed.
Reclusive alcoholic Iris Connolly died two years ago aged 67 and the Big Yin agreed to spread her remains near Candacraig House — where he lived with second missus Pamela Stephenson.
Iris and Billy’s kids Jamie, 42, and Cara, 38, are thought to have been at the emotional ceremony on the banks of the River Don in Aberdeenshire with Billy’s cherished grandson Walter, now 11.
Pamela, 62, revealed her husband’s devastation over the death of Iris — who he was married to for 16 years — in a new introduction to her bestselling biography of the Glasgow-born star, ‘Billy’.
She writes: “Billy had felt great compassion for her struggle with alcoholism and, although he had not seen her for many years, he was greatly shocked and saddened by her passing.”
And inside the new edition she recalls Billy said: “It didn’t strike me till this summer, when I put her ashes in the River Don and Walter saw me crying.
Iris’ father had given her a wee book about Russia called ‘And Quiet Flows the Don’ so I thought it might be nice to actually float her there.”
Interior designer Iris Pressagh, from Clydebank, was introduced to shipyard welder Billy — then a struggling folk musician playing Glasgow pubs — by his banjo teacher Ron Duff.
In their early days together she fled to France to pick grapes after having a furious row and after four months Billy sent her a letter saying: “Come home now or don’t bother coming home at all.”
Iris hitchhiked back to Glasgow and the couple tied the knot at a city registry office in 1969.
She backed him financially while he tried to crack the comedy circuit — until he became a household name overnight thanks to an outrageous turn as a guest on the BBC’s Parkinson chat show in 1975.
His primetime TV appearance won him a huge new following and he went on to release hit albums of his live shows and score hit novelty singles ‘D.I.V.O.R.C.E’ and ‘In the Brownies’.
The pair moved from Glasgow to a plush house in Drymen, Stirlingshire — but both hit the bottle as Billy’s celebrity grew and he quit Scotland for London in 1981, divorcing Iris four years later.
Shortly after his move down south he met Pamela, then a star of cult BBC TV comedy Not The Nine O’Clock News, and they were married on the South Pacific
paradise isle of Fiji in 1989. Billy’s new love helped him beat the booze and he gave up meat. The couple moved to Los Angeles where the Scots comic launched his US career with a TV special — then went on to land hit telly and film roles.
Speaking about the impact Pamela — now a trained clinical psychologist — had on his life, Billy later said: “Iris was a very nice woman but this was, from the outset, a different relationship.
With Pam I discovered that you could not get away with anything, could not get away from her intelligence.”
Iris, who latterly lived in Bonhill, Dunbartonshire, left the UK to live as a virtual recluse in a single-storey home near Benidorm on Spain’s Costa Blanca in 1991. Billy, 69 — a millionaire with houses in the US and Scotland who counts royalty and Hollywood stars among his pals — won custody of their children following a court fight in Edinburgh.
He went on to have three daughters with Stephenson — Daisy, 28, Amy, 26, and Scarlett, 23.
Years after dumping Iris he admitted: “It was a nightmare. I couldn’t believe it.
“Oh Jesus, I’ll never forget it as long as I live. You know, divorce is an unbelievably painful affair. You used to love this person and you’ve now come to the conclusion you don’t.
“You have to admit it. You have to come out and say “this is awful but I love someone else.”
“It is a desperate thing and you feel like a cheat.”
New Zealand-born Pamela reveals in the new edition of her book that Iris was also battling a mental affliction — and says she wishes Billy’s former love had been given help for her problem.
She writes: “Personally I had not understood that Iris had suffered from a serious hoarding disorder (we all learned this after her death) and felt very sorry she had struggled so much without receiving the kind of psychological treatment that might have helped her.”
During her only interview — given to a reporter from behind a padlocked gate at her Spanish hideaway in the Nineties — heartbroken Iris said: “People have written so much rubbish about myself and Billy.
“I’ve been told that somebody wrote I was getting as much as £40,000 a year.
The truth is that when I came here the money situation was very difficult.
“People think I got a fortune, but that’s not true.
“The real reason I’m here is because I wanted to get away from it all.”