Elderly should be cared for by their children, Billy Connolly says " (Pensioners) are getting less and less valued as people sell their houses and stick them in these places," he told Reader's Digest. I don't think they're kept in their own homes long enough; I don't think they're loved enough. The Glaswegian comedian has been married to comedian and psychologist Pamela Stephenson for 23 years. They have three daughters, Daisy, 28, Amy, 26, and Scarlett, 23 and he has a son, Jamie, 42, and a daughter, Cara, 38, from his first marriage. He never had the chance to care for his own parents. His mother Mary, abandoned him aged four and he was raised by two aunts and his father, William, an RAF technician who he has subsequently revealed beat and sexually abused him. He died from a stroke in 1989. Connolly insisted he did not fear old age and said he felt exactly the same as he did when he was 37. He said he had always liked old people and had always wanted to be one, because when he was young, they had knives, smoked old black tobacco and played dominoes in the park. He admitted that as he got older, he had become more aware of the consequences of his comedy and other people's feelings. "I remember I said something terrible about Margaret Thatcher (at a 1991 gig) and her daughter was in the audience," he said. She stomped out in high dudgeon. I remember I wasn't sorry for saying it but in my heart, I was kind of sorry for hurting her. In the earlier days, that would never have crossed my mind. Connolly confessed that he felt "scared" when Dustin Hoffman, the director of Quartet, told him he would be starring alongside Maggie Smith. But he said he would love to do more films and had wanted the role of Albus Dumbledore in Harry Potter when Richard Harris died, a part that eventually went to Sir Michael Gambon, who also stars in Quartet. The full interview appears in January issue of Reader's Digest, out 18th December