From Footlights to Fame — Billy Strachan

Well, you don't just dive into talk from footlights to faith without first telling you how you got into the footlights to begin with. Although I have a bit of a Scottish Glasgow accent, I'm really not from Glasgow.

Childhood in Wartime Scotland

I was born a way up in the highlands of Scotland. And whatever it was I did wrong, I'm not sure, but I was a rebel right from birth. Because the first thing I remember was them holding me upside down and spanking my backside.

I wasn't sure what for, but they've been spanking it a lot after that, you know, and ever since. And life was a struggle for me right from the start, because you see, it so happened that my mother never did want me.

And apparently that can be communicated to a baby in the womb. And I didn't know it at that time, but it could be, to the extent that when I was born, I rejected the mother's feeding and rejected the mother.

So I spent the first year in the Aberdeen Sick Children's Hospital. And so life was tough, right, to begin with. Then they moved down into the Glasgow area. And of course, life for me there was six of us in one room, and it was the survival of the fittest.

And so there was lots of poverty and lots of unhappiness. And of course, I was a Second World War kid. And so night after night, it was under the bed while the bombs dropped, going out to see whose houses get flattened, and rummaging around to see if you could salvage anything before you were stopped salvaging anything.

You would be made to, in one occasion, help to black out the lights in a room that a drunk man had left the light on, planes going over, could see the light. And the most horrible moment of the day was when the postman turned the corner.

The whole street vacated. Everyone sat in their houses quiet. And then as a boy, you could hear the wail go up. As one after another of households opened letters to discover that their father had been killed in the war, or their son had been shot in the war.

And so there was nothing but death, destruction, unhappiness. And then I remember on the occasion that the Germans made an attempt to bomb the shipyards at Clyde Bank, and the people in Clyde Bank made the supreme sacrifice by switching on the lights in the city and not in the yards, and the Germans bombed Clyde Bank instead of the yards and saved the shipping.

Well, my father, the next day, took me to see the devastation, to show me what man could do to man. It left a very, very profound impression upon me, and even though I was a small lad, I was already asking the questions, why?

Why am I alive? Why bring me into a world that threatens my life? Why have people so unhappy all the time? And I began to look for a reason for living. What am I here for? What's all this about? Now, of course, you're told that at that age, you can't think, you know.

Ah, what would he know? You know, at that age, they don't think at that age, you know, what a load of rubbish. Of course you think. And I remember when I was five, that I went to school. No, that's not true.

When I was five, I was taken to school. And thereafter, the police escorted me there daily if they could catch me. I must have been very religious, though, because I helped all the teachers in their prayer life.

They used to pray every morning that I wouldn't come to school. But I usually ended up going. And at the end of that first year, the teacher taught me a nursery rhyme for the annual school concert. And I went along that big night of the program, and my mother gave me a bath that night, whether I needed one that year or whether I didn't, and greased my hair down with lard, and had velvet pants and a wee bow tie.

And so off I went to the school concert, and the teacher said, okay, Willie, it's your turn. So I marched onto the platform. I'd never been on a platform before, people in my life before, you know. And here's all these parents and people crammed into the hall, and they're all looking up at me.

You see? Ah, that was very nice, especially when I looked around and saw there was nobody else up there but myself and realized they were looking at me, so I looked back. Well, they kept looking at me, so I kept looking at them.

And we were having a nice time, really, until the teacher said, pfft, get on with it! And I couldn't remember what it was I was to get on with, you know. But the thing is, I liked it there because there was much more light out there than there was offstage, you know, so I decided to stay there.

And I started pulling faces, you see. Now, the more ridiculous the face I pulled, the more the audience laughed, the more they laughed, the worse I got. And there was only one person didn't seem to take to it too kindly.

That was the headmaster. And the audience saw his hand coming in to get me. And just as it about reached my neck, I moved this way, you see. And so an infuriated audience saw him rattling behind the curtains in the other direction, and the hand came in from that side, so I moved back this way until he had no alternative but to march on, pick me up, carry me off, and apply some punishment to the seat of my knowledge.

Well, that night when I was back in what we call home, and my brother and two sisters and I, we were all in the bed in the corner, as it were, sort of trying to sleep. But you could never sleep when people were in drinking me a Fox and visiting.

But one of the neighbors said to my mother, was that your wee fella that nearly killed the concert? And my mother said, was it? I could have killed him, you see. And the neighbor said, oh, I wouldn't do that.

They hang you for that. Besides that, I must tell you this, for as long as your wee fella was out there, I forgot my trouble. Now, I heard that. Five years of age, and I heard that. And I lay there in bed, and I thought, what better and more noble thing could you do in life than to make people forget their troubles?

So I decided to dedicate myself to the task of making sure people got a good laugh in the midst of pressure. Now, that meant that I became obsessed with every conceivable avenue of entry into the entertainment world.

And of course, we had already seen away in the distance coming up modern things. And the idea of having one act that would last 60 years was dying. And you had to be prepared to produce new material, do new things.

And so I was foresighted enough to know that I had to be able to try and do everything. And so you tried everything. You did everything from pantomime, ventriloquism. You did tap dance, singing. You learned all that you could.

Of course, I neglected my schooling because of this. One of the earliest functions I actually portrayed until my parents found out was I actually sat on a man's knee as his ventriloquist dummy. And maybe that accounts for my dumbness ever since.

But one night, my parents saw the actual performance and stopped it because they had no idea that that's the kind of thing I was doing. But the people actually thought the man was a ventriloquist. He had somebody under the seat reading his lines, not my lines.

And I just sat on his knee and opened my mouth, you see. But I was a real fella and they thought it was a living doll. People have said I've been a living doll ever since. But anyway, I tried and fought and fought.

The Price of Entertainment and Moral Ruin

And then of course, it meant that I spent most of my free time in and around the show business haunts and I found that the show business people were very keen to see you on the road to stardom. It really amazed me that they were all very interested in helping a wee fella like me to reach the top.

The only thing was it did have a price. And that was that the road to stardom always seemed to go through a bedroom. And so by the time I was 14, I was a moral wreck. Things that you think are new and are labeled permissive, were doing it even in my day.

But in my day, they were more hypocritical. They used to pull the curtains. Today's generation are not hypocrites. They just do it in the open. Sometimes I think that today's generation are to be admired because everybody thought that didn't happen in my day, but it was happening.

They stuffed the keyhole, pulled the curtain, put the light out, but were still permissive. You can't change the nature of the beast. And so of course my life was ruined, but then you see there was no God, so it doesn't matter.

And I grew up in a family that didn't seem to care too much about the existence of God. No leadership from my father in the things of God. In fact, his philosophy still today is your old man doesn't need God, so neither do you.

And I believe them. But the funny thing is that in the midst of all that fight to get up in the entertainment world, there was all of this immorality and drunkenness and debauchery. To the extent that I had always a sneaky suspicion that somewhere down the line, it was like the credit system.

You enjoy now, but you're gonna pay later. Somewhere there was gonna be a reckoning. Well, at 15, mother died. And I was asked to come home because by that time I was living away from home. And they were quite glad I was living away from home.

And so I went out to the funeral. And that was the first time I came in contact with anything religious because, well, you don't want to be mistaken for a pagan, so you have to pay somebody to do the funeral and get the thing done properly, you know.

So father had managed to get a minister to come and he stood there in the house and he talked about this wonderful woman, this wonderful mother, this wonderful woman. The time he was finished, I thought, you got the wrong one in there.

I wonder if my father knows, you know. And so I took one look at this guy and I said to myself, well, if that's religion, you can keep it. You're a liar for a start. And, but anyway, we buried her and we went to the cemetery.

And as I looked down into the grave and I saw there a casket with a birth date and a death date on it, something very deep happened inside me that nobody else noticed. Just a real flash went right across my mind that life cannot add up to a wooden box with your name on it, with your birth date and death date.

There must be more to life than that. And she was only 43. And so from that day, a great search began in me that other people never knew was going on because I still kept up the other life too. But I decided in my misery that maybe what I needed was a religion.

Searching for God in Church Religion

Now I was so ignorant of the religion game that I thought they'd run the churches like they run the theaters, you know. The bigger the theater, the better it is. So I actually went around the streets of Glasgow measuring up the churches till I found a big one.

And what really impressed me was the billing that this minister had outside the church. It said, Scotland's most worldwide traveled minister, the Reverend Leslie J .P. Hope M .A .B .D. Ph .D. D .D .T.

And so I thought, I thought, well, if anybody can help me, this guy can. So I marched along there one Sunday. I managed to stay sober and I borrowed a suit because the fancy stuff you used on stage, the theater belonged to that.

You walked home in your rags and lived alone. And boy, from midnight to the morning, I couldn't sleep. I hadn't slept in years. Some of you will know what that's like. Some of you haven't slept for years.

And you get your pill to knock you out at night and the other one to wake you up in the morning. So you know what I'm talking about. Where just the sheer loneliness is just chewing you up to bits. Well, I was there.

I had all that lonely business. And I thought, maybe what I need is a religion. So I'll try it. So I stayed sober, borrowed a suit. And I went up this massive flight of stairs to the door. And there was the usual welcoming committee at the door, a fellow with a pile of hymn books and a face like a squashed violin, you know.

So I talked to him about the weather. And I talked to him about rangers and Celtic. I talked to him about all the, you know, the great political issues of the day. And at 11 o 'clock, he took this chain out of his pocket and looked at his watch and said, well, you'll have to forgive me, I says, and excuse me, but I've got to go in now.

So he went in and I stayed out and went home. He never asked me in. And all the time I was talking to him, I was screaming inside myself, ask me in, ask me in. I've never been in one of those places. If I could just get myself through the door, just ask me in.

But he never asked me in, so I didn't go in. And I actually was so determined, I went back five or six weeks on the trot to the same door. The seventh week I went in, he wasn't on the door. Nobody was.

So I quickly marched in and sat behind a massive pillar, just like that thing there. And I sat behind it and I thought, I'll pretend I've been coming for years. But I think everybody knew it was my first time because when they stood, I sat, and when they sat, I stood.

And when they asked us to turn to the book of Genesis, I asked the person next to me who he was. And so I think I gave myself away. But at any rate, I was fascinated by the service. I'd never been in the Church of Scotland in my life before.

And in came the Beagle. And he was wearing a bow hat and tails and white shirt. And he had the trousers as well, of course. And he was carrying the Bible, you see. And he carried the Bible in ceremoniously, and the whole congregation stood as it came in for a respect for the word.

And they carried it up into the pulpit and he opened the massive book there. And then he came down and stepped to the side as the minister came in. And he'd come in in massive big robes, you know, and two little white bits sticking out here.

And I thought, what funny team colours, you know. But people are different. So he marched up the stairs into his pulpit. And then what really got me was that this Beagle went up and shut the door behind him and locked him in.

And I thought, are they scared he runs away without doing the job or something, you know? But at any rate, by that time, I sank way down in my seat because I was sure that if he opened his eyes after his great prayer and suddenly looked at me, he'd say, you, out for a start.

We don't have your trash here. But I didn't have to worry, you see, because he never looked at me. As a matter of fact, he never looked at anybody. He said, dearly beloved, we are gathered here this morning.

And me, I kept looking up, you know, sort of wondering, is there a second audience I don't know anything about, you know? And, you know, he never even looked at the people. And I thought, I'm down here, man.

Why don't you get in touch with me? And when it came to the sermon, I thought, this is it. He'll just look at me and say, sinner, hell, damnation. But he didn't. He talked about Florence Nightingale's hand.

For 30 minutes. And I thought, it's very nice, you know. I got it at school, but I don't know what we're getting it in church for. And when do you start talking about God? Well, he never did. He pronounced his benediction.

And out came the beadle, came up and opened the door, came down, the minister came down and stood there. The beadle went up, and the minute he lifted the Bible and started counting it down, everybody stood up.

And then there was this processional of the minister, the Bible, and the beadle went out behind the organ. And so being a dissatisfied customer, I got up out of my seat and followed the pair of them out behind the organ.

Now, I think that was the first time in the history of the Church of Scotland anybody had ever followed the beadle, the Bible, and the minister out. In fact, when I got behind the organ, the beadle nearly dropped his glass eye.

And he put his hand across my chest, and he says, where are you going? I said, I want to see that man. He said, you mean the doctor? I said, I didn't know he was a doctor. Not medical, theological. I said, what's that?

He says, it doesn't matter. Do you have an appointment? I said, do I need one? He says, just a moment, now I'll see if he can see you. So this Jeeves-like character went to him, came back out and said, the minister will spare you a moment.

Now listen, I had never been that near to a minister in my life, except to throw a brick at his hat. And so I went into his study, and there he is sitting behind this big old desk with his hands on it, looking like Dr. Doom.

And I went up there, and I was glad I didn't have my kilt on. It would have sounded like Maracas, you know? And here was my knees knocking like mad, you know? And I was, I meant everything, from the depth of my heart.

And he said to me, what can I do for you? And I said, I want to be religious. Gregory Graham, send you here? And I said to him, is that that wee man that was carrying that book up into my heart? And he says, don't you know who Billy Graham is?

And I said, no. And you know, I, get this, I lived in a flat in Suckey Hall Street, 300 yards along from the entrance to Kelvin Hall, where Billy Graham held a Tell Scotland crusade for six or eight weeks, and I never even knew he was in the city.

Shows you how blind you can be. The advertising must have been all over, and I never saw a thing. Never knew it was going on. Shows you how blind a person can be in life, and think you know everything.

And so he said, well, don't worry about it. He said, you've come to the right place, and next week I have a special service for making Christians. And you come along next week and join all the other young people in the front row, and at some time during the service, I'll come down and I shall ask you three questions, you nod your head three times, and you're in.

And I thought that was marvelous, you know? So I stayed sober another week and went along and stood with all the other young men, really priding myself that I was feeling cleaner than I had all my life, and he came down and he asked me questions.

I had no clue what he was talking about. But if you think in front of, if you think in front of all those people, they were gonna nod, and I was gonna do that. You'd had it, so I nodded too, see? So they came down and presented me a lovely little card, all crimped in silver, just like a wedding invitation, that told me they'd now made me a Christian.

I'd promised to upkeep the tradition of church going in Scotland. So when the service ended, I went out to the steps of the church, and I just stood there, and I deliberately tore the card up into little strips, and then I tore it up into little bits like confetti, and I just threw it up in the air and let it all go down on the doorstep and said goodbye.

And I went home and I got goofed and drunk, really blottle. And you see, they might have said they'd made me a Christian but I knew I was as rotten when I came out as I was when I went in. They did nothing for me.

And I wasn't, you know, that's one thing about the entertainment world. You know what it is to con people. We're professional conners. And we know how to pull the wool over your eyes in a performance, so the one thing we're not gullible, and we don't suffer fools lightly, and there's one thing I wasn't gonna bite was a religious kick that was unreal.

So I never bothered going back. But the thing that I did get in that church was why make all that fuss about the book and not read it? So I decided to buy a Bible, and I went to Mingus's bookshop in Glasgow, and I marched in and I walked around to make sure that I could see a section that had Bibles, and then I made sure nobody was looking in case it might get out that I was reading the Bible.

So I went up to the shopkeeper and I said, excuse me, miss, but do you sell pots? And she was a typical Glasgow shopkeeper, and you're like, ooh, what's a Bible? And I was man alive. I dived under the table and pretended I was a bookend.

And when I was sure nobody was looking, I come out and I said, yes. And she would go and get a ladder, and she'd come down this big tooled leather thing with buckles on the end of it, you know? Oh, I said, look, you're getting about five bob in those there, you're getting five bob, just put some in a paper bag, quick.

So I had this thing in a paper bag, and all the way up the street, I was sure everybody was watching my paper bag and knew what was in it, you know? I felt so guilty at carrying this. And I got to my flat and I put it under the mattress, and I decided to come in early that night and read it.

Well, when I came in at three o 'clock in the morning, well, that was early for me, I got it out and I thought, let's see what this thing says. So I opened it and it said, and so-and-so begat so-and-so and he died.

And when he begat somebody else, they died. And when they died, the others died. And you know, about 40 people kicked the bucket and 12 died. And here was me looking for life. And I began to say, it's no wonder people never read the thing, you know?

And then the next night you felt depressed, you'd come in and open it and you'd read it. The number of them that were numbered were numbered fourscore thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight to the east side, eastward, and fourscore thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight to the west side.

I thought, what's this, the capacity of Hamden Park? So I thought, no wonder people never read this thing, you see. But it's funny that every time I got depressed, and there was three times between 15 and 20 years of age that I attempted suicide, that I would get this thing out and read it.

And I remember in one very, very low period, I got it out and I stood there in my flat and I actually thought I was going mad. And I said, God, you're really cracking up, saying a thing like that. And I said, God, if you're there, and this is really your book, this is your last chance, because I'm not afraid to die.

That's the only certainty there is in life, that we're all gonna die. I mean, there might be a war, there might not be, there might be bad weather tomorrow, there might be good weather tomorrow. We can never predict these things, but there's one thing you can certainly say, and that is you're gonna die.

And so I knew that. So I was never afraid of dying, I was scared to death of living. Living was my problem, not dying. And so I said, God, if this is your book, you either make me aware of that tonight, and it has a life changing effect on me, or I'm quitting.

And I picked it up and I opened it, what I thought was random. And I read, whoever calls in the name of the Lord shall be saved. I thought, whoever? That means anybody, and I'm anybody. Calls, and I've just shouted, God, shall be saved.

Saved? Saved, I thought, I wonder what that means. Saved from who? So I looked at the top of the page and it said, Romans. Wonder what the Romans have to do with me. So I settled down that night to read this thing called Romans, and by the time I'd read the third chapter, I went back to find that when they printed the thing, I was sure somebody had put a chapter in about me, because I suddenly knew that I'd lived all my life as though God didn't exist, and I didn't need him, and I could be a big man without him, and that I was a sinner, and God's judgment was upon me.

Conversion and New Life in Christ

Well, I said that night, God, this is it, come and save me. And I waited. And nothing happened, so I just went to bed. But something did happen, I slept, and that was a new experience for me. When I woke up in the morning and found out I'd been asleep, you know, it was such a surprise.

And then all sorts of things began to happen to me, but two or three days later, I was knocking on the door, and there was an inquiry after me asking if my name was Billy Strachan, and I said yes. I had two names in those days, you see.

They'd been looking under another name for me, and it was to let me know that Her Majesty was very interested in me being responsible for the defense of the whole country, and that they wondered if I wouldn't mind serving in the military forces, you know.

They'd been looking for me for quite some time to do that, apparently. I never knew the Queen had such an interest in me, really. But anyway, I was sort of thrilled to bits. I had to be, they picked me up, and within hours, they had me medically examined and stuck on a train and sent, would you believe it, across the border.

Oh, it was like, oh, well, I shan't tell you. And so I came down, and here I was in England. And then I went to an RAF hut, and they fitted me up in a uniform, and that night I was in a room with men that hated the whole world, absolutely hated the world.

And boy, I was really in a mess. And so I got ready and jumped into bed to bury my sorrows. And as I got in bed, I suddenly saw the fellow on this side of me kneel down. And I looked and I saw the fellow on that side of me kneel down.

Now, I had never seen grown men kneel down in public in my life before. And everybody else saw them at the same time as I did, and there was just a fraction of silence, and then all pandemonium let loose.

They threw everything at these two fellows. Anything that moved got chucked. And I suddenly found myself lying in bed between two mountains of rubbish. But, you know, I was deeply moved because I knew that they knew the God I was looking for.

So I started to watch them, and I wanted to get near them. And being an actor, I thought, I'll pretend I am one. And one day they were going down a cafeteria line just like this, getting their food. Now, I don't know if you've ever seen military food being served by fellows that never wanted to be in the military, and never wanted to be cooks, you know?

And so, you know, the fellow was standing there with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth and a ladle, and he'd take the porridge, you know, and he'd go. Sometimes it hit the plate, sometimes it hit you, you know?

And so this Christian fellow went down there, and he went, and some of it landed on his uniform, and he smiled and said, thank you. And I thought, smile? Say thanks? If he does that to me, I'll put the boot in, you know?

I thought, let's pretend. So I went down the line, and he went, and I got some of it in my tie, and I said, thanks. As much as if I meet you in the dark afterwards, you're for it, you know? And then I watched these two fellows go over to a wooden table and sit down, and then they bowed their heads and prayed over it.

And I thought, prayed over that? What are they asking for, courage to eat it? So I went to the end of the same table so that they would see me. I went to the end of the same table, so I sat down, and I bowed my head and counted to 10.

Well, I mean, I didn't know what to say. And so when I finished, they came along beside me, and one of them said, good morning, brother. Well, I felt terrific, you know? So I said, good morning, brother, back, you know?

And then I began to talk to them. You know, I said, have you ever called in the name of the Lord to be saved? And he said, well, of course, you wouldn't be a Christian unless you were saved. You need to have the Lord Jesus, as the one that died on the cross to forgive you, in your life.

He rose again, and you used to ask him in, and he comes into your life and gives you the power of a new life. So I thought, well, I've been reading through. And so I thought, hmm, must remember that. But just at that moment, as I was getting interested, the RAF discovered who I was.

So they immediately whipped me out of there and whipped me into the Royal Air Force Variety Group and gave me a rank to keep me out of trouble, which, of course, gave me access to alcohol again. And I started traveling the country in a show called Bells and Bells for the restoration of St. Clement Dane's Church on the Strand, which was the Air Force patron church.

It was to make money for that. And so I was in that show. And so out the window went all the thoughts about Christianity and religion again. And then from there, I started going on to further programs and had a radio go with Sam Costa, Cherry Lynn, Ken Platt, Richard Murdoch.

And that was good. And so I was beginning to get places, but also there was the alcohol. And so that was ruining me again. And so one night I thought, that's it. This has just got to stop. And so I knelt down by my bedside in the hut.

I suppose I knelt because I'd seen those two fellas kneeling and I decided to pray. That's as far as I got, because the fellas all looked at me the new kind of pig I was, you see. And so one of them jumped over his bed, jumped over mine, picked me up by the throat and smashed me straight in the face and knocked me clean across the room.

And then he came and stood with his foot in my chest and said, Strachan, I don't believe there is a God, but if there should accidentally be one, you're the last rat he'd ever help. So he picked me up and threw me on the bed and they all walked out to go and get fish and chips or something.

So I lay there with gaps that I've still got in my mouth where my teeth came out and blood coming out of my mouth and a sore jaw and tears coming out of my eyes. I asked the Lord Jesus to be my savior.

And of course, you know, now 25 years later, people are asking me, Brother Billy, when you became a Christian, was it an emotional one? And of course, my response is, oh yes, it was. I was in absolute agony.

But the amazing thing is Christ came in. He came in and I found that within 24 hours, I had led my first friend in the hut to Christ. And so there was two of us. And life began to be different. And I knew that there was great changes taking place within that I couldn't even account for.

And neither could they. They tried every day to stop me from having faith, but they couldn't. And so when they saw that I was determined to stick to this new faith, they were determined I would too. There's many a night I came in tired, had been on stage, and then I would be on an all-night duty and on all the next day duty.

And I'd come in that night and I'd just want to flop my bed and I'd get under the mattress and the fellows would come over and just pull the blankets off and say, hey, prayers. And they made me pray. They'd never let me forget my prayers.

And they'd say, pray for us when you're down there. It was great, great. And of course, just at that time, having received Christ and tasted newness and things, and I moved into the, do a play, The White Sheep of the Family by Elpida Pesh for the Air Force Drama Group.

And they gave me the part of the 98-year-old absent-minded Church of England vicar in the play. And, but that night, one of the opening nights that I was on, God held a conversation with me. He said, what are you doing?

I'm using these people. Why? So they get relief from the pressures and problems. For how long? Till the show's finished. Then what happens to their problems? I suppose they come back again. Where's your problem?

You've got them. So what's the answer? And I suddenly thought, hey God, the answer's tell them about you. Not just jokes. Good Lord. So I came off and went to my dressing room and I said, Father, are you telling me to preach?

And he said, yes. So I said, get lost. I don't mind getting respectability. I don't mind being forgiven. I don't mind getting guarantees of getting to heaven, but just keep your finger off my career. I've worked at this since I was a kid and I'm aiming at Hollywood, Times Square, Broadway, the lot.

And don't start telling me to be a preacher. It's crazy, God. Because if I stay on the stage, I can make much more money for you and me. And, you know, we'll have a great time. But the Lord just persisted.

And so I decided I wasn't gonna be a Christian anymore. But it was no use because every morning I woke up, the Lord said in my heart, good morning. And I couldn't get rid of him. And then to boot, BBC One gave me my first edition for television in Aston Green Studios in Birmingham in 1956.

And I had a promissory note of contract to begin television as soon as I would leave the Air Force. But of course, in that intervening period, the Lord got me to give it up and to go into the ministry.

And so I said farewell to show business. And what I thought I was giving up, I discovered was freedom. I was actually being released from something. And it's amazing how quick it took me. I think about three weeks to start saying in meetings that I gave up television for Christ, you know.