Comedy legend Billy Connolly says that he has put himself forward to become a stem cell research "guinea pig" to help to find a cure for Parkinson's disease.
According to a report in the Mail on Sunday, the 75-year-old stand-up icon has been in touch with scientists at Harvard University in Massachusetts whose stem cell institute is a key leader in research into Parkinson's: "I've spoken to guys working on it at Harvard and told them I'll be a guinea pig for them. I think they are going to take me up on that."
He said having Parkinson's is the first thing he thinks about every day and that the hardest part of it is "coming to grips with the fact that it's never going to go away".
Connolly was told he had Parkinson's in 2013. In the ITV documentary Billy Connolly & Me: A Celebration in 2017 he talked about the condition. At the time he told Weekend magazine that his sense of humour helps him to cope. "A sense of humour is absolutely essential...there’s no escape. It’s the first thing I think about in the morning because getting out of bed is quite hard. It’s a weird thing because it stopped me playing the banjo and it stopped me smoking cigars."
Talking about Parkinson's he said: "There’s a whole lot of shaking going on. It’s kind of weird, this instability. The only time it stops is when I’m in bed and then I can’t roll over. I’m like a big log."
