Comedian Connolly sexually abused as a child, it emerged today.

Comedian Billy Connolly was sexually abused as a child, it emerged today.

The Glasgow born comic has disclosed he was only able to confess his dark secret to his wife Pamela Stephenson, after his father William died in the early 1980s.

In a biography, written by his wife, a fellow comedian who later became a psychologist, Connolly, 59, said he was haunted by a sense that his father had been ‘disloyal’.

He said, ‘I have no lack of love for my father. I love his memory now, as much as I loved him when he was alive.

‘It was disloyal of him to do that to me. But there were facets of his character that were great.’

Connolly said he was abused for five years from the age of ten, part of a disruptive childhood which saw his mother leave home when he was three years old, leaving him and his sister Florence in the care of their two aunts.