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COMEDIAN BILLY CONNOLLY has said he has “no regrets” after he reportedly verbally abused a photographer at a comedy gig in Kerry on Thursday night.
The female photographer was working at the INEC at the Gleneagle Hotel in Killarney during Connolly’s performance when the comedian told her to leave. “I told her to go away properly, in a Glaswegian way,” he said. “It only takes two words”.
The Irish Examiner reports that Connolly told photographer Valerie O’Sullivan to “get the f**k out of here” and called her an abusive name.
One person who attended the performance wrote on the INEC’s Facebook page that it “killed the show”. “We were sorry we didn’t leave,” she wrote.
O’Sullivan, who has worked as a photographer for the INEC and Gleneagle Hotel for twenty years, has not spoken publicly about the matter and has asked for her privacy to be respected.
Patrick O’Donoghue of the Gleneagle Hotel said that O’Sullivan had permission to photograph the Billy Connolly performance. He described her as a highly regarded professional photographer and a highly respected member of the Killarney community.
“The numerous messages of goodwill and support that we have received is testament to the high regard in which she is held within the local community,” he said in a statement. “The INEC regret any upset caused to Valerie”.
Connolly is famous for his direct observational humour.
Speaking to Marian Finucane on RTE Radio One this morning, Billy Connolly said he had not realised the photographer was a woman as he could only see her in the shadows.
“She was half way up the hall taking pictures of me and I told her to go away and she wouldn’t, so I told her to go away properly, in a Glaswegian way,” he said. “It only takes two words”.
Do I regret it? Certainly not, I’m very proud of it.
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Sure wasn’t it the same reason they banned those ads when all those people started eating 3 shredded wheat in the morning.
@Tony Gordon: ABSOLUTE NONSENSE! It’s just an add ffs, unfortunately people are still going to jump off cliffs whether this add is aired or not. NONSENSE!!
@paddyirishman: I guess the hope is that one of them might not and that they’ll seek help sooner than throw themselves to their death.
There’s something really ironic about seeing someone like yourself throw a wobbler online about an add being pulled, screaming that it’s nonsense… I mean, calm down, it’s just an add right?
Jeez what a snowflake. Someone please warn him about the add where Nicole Scherzinger walks into the door, don’t have a panic attack cos she makes a full recovery!
Amended ?????
The only way to amend this is to cut out everything before he gets out of the water …… The advertising agency behind this should have been hit with a hefty fine.
@Passing through this life: this kind of nonsense makes me want to jump off a cliff
@Passing through this life: just change the tag line “buy a Kia before you die (low km nearly new models on sale)”
@David Edwards: It might not cause you or for that matter me to do something stupid …… but this world is full of the truly stupid. Last year we had the incident of the guy who died from a fall from the cliff in Co Clare ….. and then there were the idiots during the storms …..
These people should not be encouraged or given ideas …… if only because of the financial cost to the Irish taxpayer ….
@David Edwards: Grow up, that’s not really too clever a thing to say now is it?
@Passing through this life: nice use of 5 ? You must have been really confused
@Passing through this life: Yes, because in the case of a person committing suicide all that matters is the taxpayer!
@Dotty Dunleary: Sorry if you missed my point …. my reference to “cost to the taxpayer” …. was to make a point to the idiots who think that it doesn’t effect them . I don’t begrudge this spending …. I also intended to make the point of the danger they put our rescue service personal in …. but accidently hit post.
@Passing through this life: It’s why the emergency services exist, and the personnel are trained to deal with dangerous situations. Hopefully they are never put in a position where there lives are endangered though!
@Passing through this life: is this not just called natural selection, using your analogy, think of how much money we could save trying not to swaddle the lemmings, But seriously its just an ad.
@Passing through this life: surely it would be cheaper for us not to swaddle every lemming from cradle to grave. But seriously its just an ad
7 year warranty though
Here we go again more PC bull
Snowflakes triggered again…
Fantastic
How does Superman get away with everything?
Some people just have too much time
idiotic ad
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