<\/p>
Comedian Billy Connolly is clear what kind of relative he hopes to find when he traces his family tree. \u201cThe best-case scenario would be to find someone I\u2019m descended from who impressed me by their wildness, someone whose behaviour I thoroughly approved of,\u201d he says.<\/strong><\/p> Thanks to family stories, Billy half-expects to locate such a character in Ireland. Instead, he travels to India to hear tales of military forbears on his mother\u2019s side of the family.<\/p> First up, after briefly checking records in Glasgow, that means heading for Wellington in the south of India. In the 19th century, this was a garrison town, and it\u2019s still the base of the Madras Regiment. Here, at the wonderfully named Wellington Gymkhana Club, Billy meets historian Dr Rosie Llewellyn-Jones, who has information about his great-great grandfather, Daniel O\u2019Brien.<\/p> Hailing from County Wicklow, labourer Daniel joined up and initially enjoyed a successful military career in India. Serving with the prestigious Royal Horse Artillery, he was promoted to corporal in 1863. However, he was later stripped of his new rank and he repeatedly appears in the defaulter\u2019s book, which recorded when soldiers had broken the rules.<\/p> Billy, who\u2019s survived his own battles with the bottle, suspects Daniel may have been a heavy drinker, a suspicion confirmed when he sees his forebear\u2019s hospital records in Bangalore. These show Daniel suffering from alcoholism (\u201cIt\u2019s a family tradition\u201d), dysentery and, at a time when around one in three troops had the disease, syphilis.<\/p> However, Daniel somehow escaped this downward spiral and got married in 1869. In 1873, he was described as a \u201cregular, good and temperate\u201d man. Billy likes Daniel, whom he sees as essentially vulnerable. He\u2019s saddened to learn Daniel and family fell into poverty when he returned home.<\/p> But Daniel isn\u2019t the only relative with Indian connections. Daniel\u2019s father-in-law, John O\u2019Brien, served with the First Madras Fusiliers. In 1857, he was at the centre of horrific events when Indians rose up against colonial rule. In Cawnpore, northern India, he saw the aftermath of a massacre where women and children were butchered and disremembered, their bodies thrown into a well.<\/p> In a conflict where atrocities were committed on both sides, John would have taken part in meting out cruel punishments against those deemed responsible, including making them clean up blood with their tongues prior to being hanged.<\/p> From Cawnpore, John went to Lucknow, where he found himself besieged because his regiment couldn\u2019t fight its way out of the town after going to the aid of British residents. He suffered a serious gunshot wound in a prolonged and brutal defence. \u201cIt\u2019s dead easy for me sitting here, Joe the hippy, peace and love and save the whale, but when you\u2019re there it\u2019s a different sausage,\u201d says Billy, as he looks back on what he\u2019s learnt about John\u2019s life.<\/p> John was pensioned out of the army in 1859, but there\u2019s still one more twist in the tale as, via the records of St Patrick\u2019s Church in Bangalore, Billy learns that John\u2019s wife, Matilda, was Indian. Not only that, but she was just 13 when she married.<\/p> Reflecting on what he\u2019s learnt, Billy says he\u2019s probably more like wild Daniel than dutiful John. He\u2019s delighted to have Indian blood. \u201cIn my heart I have a little bit of India and I\u2019m going to keep it very close to me,\u201d he says.<\/p> <\/body><\/html>\n By Rich Marshall Published: Friday, 24 November 2023 at 08:58 AM Comedian Billy Connolly is clear what kind of relative he hopes to find when he traces his family tree. \u201cThe best-case scenario would be to find someone I\u2019m descended from who impressed me by their wildness, someone whose behaviour I thoroughly approved of,\u201d he […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":29447,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"3"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/billy-connolly-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know.jpg",1920,1080,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/billy-connolly-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/billy-connolly-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-300x169.jpg",300,169,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/billy-connolly-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-768x432.jpg",768,432,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/billy-connolly-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-1024x576.jpg",800,450,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/billy-connolly-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know-1536x864.jpg",1536,864,true],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/36\/2023\/11\/billy-connolly-on-who-do-you-think-you-are-everything-you-need-to-know.jpg",1920,1080,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"By Rich Marshall Published: Friday, 24 November 2023 at 08:58 AM Comedian Billy Connolly is clear what kind of relative he hopes to find when he traces his family tree. \u201cThe best-case scenario would be to find someone I\u2019m descended from who impressed me by their wildness, someone whose behaviour I thoroughly approved of,\u201d he…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/29446"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29446"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/wdytya\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29446"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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