Billy Connolly

The Big Yin has made a career out of laughing in the face of propriety, proving time and again with wit and intellect that he's far more than just a larger-than-life swearing Scottish shock-monger.

While Billy can bring laughter to many people, often just by turning up and saying hello, his own life began in much unhappier circumstances. Born in Glasgow and brought up in the rawest of poverty, Billy was abandoned by his mother at the age of three and raised at the home of two aunts who regularly handed out beatings.

Despite such difficult origins, Billy soon discovered his gift for making people laugh, while serving an apprenticeship as a welder in the Clyde shipyards. While it was music that provided his first entrance into showbiz, playing the banjo in a band called The Humblebums (alongside Gerry Rafferty, incidentally), Billy soon noticed that audiences loved his between-song banter. So when the band split up in 1970, he decided to go solo as a comedian - and never looked back.

From Govan to Hollywood, Billy has of course come a long way. Paradoxically, his gallows humour and x-rated material has not stopped him from becoming a firm, almost cosy, establishment figure, resulting in the award of a CBE in 2003. Despite behaving himself in front of the Queen, Billy still managed to turn the air blue after the ceremony, ticking off a photographer who attempted to take his award out of the box with the words: "Get the f away from my medal. F off."