The doctor, a fan of the Scottish star, observed Connolly’s hunched gait as he walked past and recognised the tell-tale early onset symptom of the degenerative disease that attacks the central nervous system.
Billy was speaking about his recent health battles, which also include prostate cancer for which he underwent surgery last year, during a US radio interview.
“It was the strangest thing of all,” Billy, 71, recalled. “I was walking through the lobby and every time I had gone through there was a crowd of boys and girls and a couple of adults. It turned out they were dancers from Australia.
“The guy who was in charge of them came over to me one day and said ‘Billy, I’m a big fan, I’m from Tasmania’. He said, ‘I’m a surgeon and I have been watching you walking, you have a strange gait’. That was the way he put it.
“He said, ‘You’re showing distinct signs of early onset Parkinson’s disease, see your doctor’. I think it was the way I held myself when I was walking. Then they did blood tests and various other little bits and pieces and told me I had it.”
