Billa O'Connell: A funny man, a family man and a gentleman
Billa O'Connell with his wife Nell in 2013 after he was conferred with the Freedom of the City of Cork. Picture: Eddie O'Hare
‘Come in, ya witch!’ were the words greeting me as I hesitated at the door of the late Pat Murray’s hospital room. The welcome came from Pat’s other visitor, Billa O’Connell, who in the past might have had, indeed, some reason to berate me. Except that he never did.
Equally, his greeting that evening in the Bon Secours Hospital in Cork was more one of affection than malice; the hilarity it provoked was much needed and fed more laughter for the next thirty minutes because, like so many others, I never minded being the butt of Billa’s humour. For Pat, a theatre designer who had worked with Billa for many years and in all kinds of circumstances, the entertainment was that of being the audience.
To be honoured with the Freedom of the City of Cork in 2013 was no token award for Billa, or for his wife Nell, and their six children. Looking back over fifty years he was not the only man adding to what could be called the gaiety of nations but formed part of a quartet, perhaps even a quintet, of local satirists and comedians. To mention them makes this a paragraph of ‘lates’. The late Michael Twomey, the late Paddy Comerford, now the late Billa ( formally William O’Connell).
Almost until his death in 2010, Comerford partnered Billa in pantomime after pantomime, revel after Summer Revel for as many as 32 pantos and perhaps 21 Revels. Thin Paddy and rotund Billa were almost synonymous with the Cork Opera House in a partnership to rival the pairing of Frank Duggan and Michael Twomey. With family and professional working lives of their own hidden from the common gaze, Michael, Billa and Paddy each had an alter ego which had much of the alter about them, and little enough of the ego.
Michael, too, while most recently directing and producing, had done some remarkable work as actor and director in straight theatre, including a memorable performance in an Everyman production of Quartermaine’s Terms.
Paddy and Billa had their own variations. On stage Paddy, who could present a face resembling, in Billa’s phrase, "a bag of chisels", was always an elegant performer, pithy even in his most despondent characterisations.
In valuable contrast, Billa loved to chew a script and spit out the pieces, announcing on occasion that "the Pope wouldn’t be safe with me!". Audiences loved him for it, delighting in his appearances and utterances – often impromptu – in a glorious catalogue of Dames.
While Paddy could adopt the style of Noel Coward or Sean O’Casey, Billa, a fine singer, had a bravura confidence which allowed him float through performances even when he had forgotten his lines. Having forgotten his lines, or distracted by an uproarious audience, he could always produce something to fill the gap often with a typical audacity by appealing to the audience itself.
"Where was I?" he would ask, turning full-skirted, bewigged and lipsticked to his colleagues on stage. Who could tell, for we were transported.
Meeting Billa informally, even in the hospital room of a dear friend, was a reminder of the way he could invest ordinary conversation with something valuable and lasting. His greeting on that evening with Pat Murray was no insult; it acknowledged the way in which our different lives collided.
Some time later there was another collision. We had both decided to leave an event of many civic speeches at the same time, and jovially accompanied one another in the drizzling dark up the South Main Street towards our cars.
On the way we were stopped several times by people who recognised Billa but who must have wondered what this giggling couple of septuagenarians were up to. We giddily invented improbable scenarios until at last, close to the now lamented Beamish and Crawford brewery where Billa had worked for most of his adult life, we reached my car and said goodbye.
Fitting the key into the ignition and pulling on the seatbelt I thought of what a life tied to the theatre allows us to know. We knew this above all: Billa was never just a funny man, never just a Dame, but fundamentally a family man, always a gentleman.
And that evening I drove home grateful, like thousands of others lucky enough to have encountered Billa, on or off the stage. As that fine, multifaceted career has closed with a sense that our revels now are ended, and with, it seems, the entire city of Cork, I mourn this great departure, but with a smile.
