As research for meeting Pamela Stephenson, I watch clips of Not The Nine O’Clock News, the early Eighties satirical show that made her famous and much desired. There she is playing a hot-panted hitch-hiker, singing I Like Trucking, while suggestively fondling the gearstick of a lorry driven by Rowan Atkinson.

Dr Stephenson Connolly, as she now is, winces to learn that her comedic past is preserved forever on YouTube. “I fear the irony of that song might be lost on the internet,” she says primly. I had expected her cerebral, distinguished, psychotherapist self to overlay her zany, exuberant persona of old. Instead, the Pamela who debagged chat show hosts, flashed her breasts, stormed Prince Andrew’s stag night with Diana, Princess of Wales, and Sarah Ferguson dressed as WPCs and stood in a general election for the I Want to Drop a Blancmange Down Terry Wogan’s Y-fronts Party is gone, utterly.

All that remains is her unchanged hairstyle, somewhat incongruously plonked on this unsmiling, grave person, clad in expensive black. Hunched forward, eyes anxious, at 57 she has the put-upon air of someone who finds life a hefty burden. But then she is party to a great deal of its pain. Since Billy, her bestselling biography of her husband Billy Connolly, was published in 2001, Stephenson has received thousands of letters from those who identified with some aspect of his traumatic life: childhood sexual abuse and violence, abandonment by his mother at the age 4, alcoholism and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

“Very often they would say ‘I’ve never told anyone this’,” she says. “And I’d think ‘how come?’ and I’d write back recommending they get a therapist. But it was shocking to me, that it took me writing Billy to get them to pour this out.” Her response was to produce a 500-page self-help book Head Case. This is no waffly work, but in essence the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders rewritten into layman’s language. Stephenson’s intention is to demystify mental illness, to teach us to distinguish between, say, ordinary human sadness and clinical depression in the same way we can commonly tell when a cold turns to pneumonia.

She wants an army of NHS psychotherapists

It is vital, she stresses, to explain that many mental illnesses are physiological. “For example, many men don’t seek treatment for depression – and even subsequently commit suicide – because they consider it a sign of weakness. But if they can understand that the neurones in their brain are not firing, possibly there would be less stigma.”

And the book suggests strategies for overcoming conditions as diverse as bulimia, bipolar disorder, panic attacks and insomnia. Although self-help is second best; she would rather an army of psychotherapists were recruited and made available free on the NHS. Yet this defies the British tradition of silent endurance and muddling through. Does Stephenson, who trained and practised in analysis-happy LA, latterly as a sex therapist, believe everyone needs a shrink? “No, absolutely not,” she says. “There is a very different sensibility in California. People would sometimes come in because it was a smart business decision. For example, if they were working with a boss who was the key to their next rung on the ladder and he had a personality disorder, they might come in to learn how to get on with that personality and not lose the promotion.”

I suggest Head Case will inevitably be most widely read by women, the customary guardians of family health. Stephenson has taken this role since she met Billy Connolly 25 years ago when he was a fall-down alcoholic, who drank a gutful of brandy before he dared to join her in bed. Yet, in love with his quicksilver intelligence and underlying sensitivity, she turned to psychology texts to learn how best to help him.

“I had to do a lot of learning to figure out what my stance should be,” she recalls. “I learnt that you can’t stop anyone drinking or being self-destructive. You can avoid letting them get you down. You cannot tolerate it and not be an enabler; you can offer comfort and love.”

Connolly has said of his wife: “Marriage to Pam didn’t change me; it saved me.” But Stephenson responds: “You can’t save someone, they have to be ready to heal themselves.” Yet clearly her strength and stability became the bedrock for his recovery. He has been clean of booze and cocaine since 1985 and later quit smoking and red meat to practise meditation. With such a suitable case for treatment as a lover, Stephenson’s interest in psychology grew – just as her interest in comedy palled – and she decided to study for her PhD. In a sense she has reverted to type, the bookish girl, daughter of two university academics, who grew up in New Zealand and Australia fascinated by Arthur Janov’s seminal work Primal Scream.

Billy and the sequel Bravemouth were attempts to analyse Connolly’s undefinable personality. “It is wonderful having a husband who is a mystery,” she says. “Even though I’m a psychologist and know quite a lot about the brain, I have no idea how his mind works.” Connolly, currently in the midst of a UK tour, performs for two unbroken hours alone on stage without ever writing down his material. “It frightens the life out of me. He really is . . . the word genius comes to mind. It is so unprepared, so un-thought-out, it just happens. He’ll talk about something from four days ago, but it goes round in this incredible computer of his brain and comes out funny. He is like a savant.”

Great comedy emerges from troubled souls. And comics who have sought psychotherapy to address their pain – such as John Cleese and Steve Martin – seem to emerge happier but less funny. And Billy Connolly was concerned that therapy would murder his muse. “But he was so self-destructive,” says Stephenson, “that without help he wouldn’t be alive today. And I remember when he went on stage after he stopped drinking and it was a revelation to him that he could still do it and still be brilliant.”

But one can’t help conclude that analysis certainly sucked the funny out of Stephenson. I wonder where her teasing, wacky self has gone. “When I did mad things, I considered it improvisation: comedy in vivo. I was serious then about my comedy. I have a playful side now.” She adds, unconvincingly, that she plays practical jokes, has a giggle with her girlfriends. But when she laughs it seems mirthless.

Not being taken seriously was the reason she left comedy. It was assumed that the male Not The Nine O’Clock Newstrio – Oxbridge alumni Griff Rhys Jones, Mel Smith and Rowan Atkinson – were the writers and she was just the hired crumpet. There was no precedent for a woman performer being sexy, funny and clever.

More prosaically, as her family grew – she and Billy have three daughters, and also gained custody of his two children by a first marriage – someone needed to keep house. And it wasn’t Billy, always on tour or filming as his movie career took flight. Although long separations have strengthened their marriage: “Sometimes people are too connected; you always know what the other person is thinking. But it is never like that with Billy and me. We have enough experiences to be able to bring something fresh into the relationship. We maintain our individuality, as opposed to being one unit.”

Early on in their partnership, she had a tendency to give too much, to be too available to her family. Their demands (one of her daughters has special needs), combined with the emotional load of her patients, many of whom had terminal illnesses, left her so spent that in 2003 she took a year-long voyage around the South Seas. “There is such a thing as needing a break from caretaking. The buck does stop with us [women] often. I think it’s great to have a spa treatment or whatever you can do to get away. People can get overly dependent on us if we don’t set boundaries. When I came back I noticed that all my teenagers were much more independent.”

“There should be a master class in fame”

Now Stephenson feels refreshed and is in the second year of a sabbatical from clinical practice. After a decade in LA, she and Connolly recently moved to Manhattan to be close to two of their children at East Coast colleges. They flit between there and a 13-acre estate near Balmoral, near their two grandchildren (by Billy’s daughter Cara) in Glasgow. When not on tour, Connolly, 64, is a reader, currently piling through Russian novels after a phase of Proust.

While Stephenson dislikes being recognised, she accepts that her husband has an aura which invites fans to speak to him. “Billy is incredibly comfortable in his fame,” she says. And perhaps no one is better placed to understand celebrity culture than Stephenson, who not only mixes with royals and Hollywood A-listers, but chose fame as the subject of her PhD thesis, referencing the psychoanalytical theorist Jacques Lacan, who believed that the evolutionary moment human beings first recognised themselves in a mirror or a pool had a profound effect on the human psyche.

“If you take celebrities who are constantly seeing images of themselves, they begin to form a relationship with their public persona. There is a greater separation between the inner self and that idealised self. We tell each other in our society that fame will bring you untold riches, happiness and love. That is the lie. I don’t think anyone really tells people how to handle it. There is no masterclass in handling fame. There should be,” she says, then adds thoughtfully. “Maybe I’ll teach it.”

Head Case: Treat Yourself to Better Mental Health , by Dr Pamela Stephenson Connolly (Headline, £20), is available from Times BooksFirst for £18, free p&p. 0870 1608080; timesonline.co.uk/booksfirstbuy

Pamela’s top tips for staying sane

Soothing touch. The warmth of human contact. We all need it, especially when we are sad or in pain.

Cry if you need to. Allow yourself to sob; it is a marvellous, healing release.

Exercise. There are many psychological benefits to be gained, including reduced feelings of depression and anxiety.

Seek humour in your life. It is very healing to laugh. Humour reduces stress and sadness.

Keep learning. We thrive on mental stimulation, and it can help protect us against dementia and mental atrophy as we age.

Write. Writing down your thoughts, and especially feelings, helps to soothe and organise emotions.

Eat nutritious, well-balanced meals. There is a relationship between mental health and a decent diet. Feed your brain.

Don’t abuse alcohol and drugs, and keep use to a minimum. Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant.

Contact nature. A visit to the botanical gardens or even peeking at the stars will provide us with a calming sense of our place on the planet.

Learn to give and receive love.

Taken from Head Case: Treat Yourself to Better Mental Health

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