The multi-talented, omnipresent star of tv, radio, film and stage talks about work, touring and his West End show, Larks in Transit

By Ben West

Like most people in the western world (and probably several in places like Sri Lanka, Suriname and the Sudan also) I know who Bill Bailey is. I’ve seen him on tv and stuff. I know he’s funny, inventive, original. But I didn’t know just how funny, inventive, original, skilled and quick-witted he was until I saw him live.

I thought that seeing his current show, Larks in Transit was going to be a quite good evening.

So I wasn’t prepared for a show where I was laughing in pain the complete two hours through, at the same time marvelling at his master of the French, German and West Country languages, history, politics, the classics, anecdote, comic timing, a multitude of musical instruments and much, much more.

I also marvelled at how he can seague instantly from satire to surrealism, impersonating anything from wild birds to heavy metal guitarists along the way, whilst throwing a few impressive dance moves into the mix for good measure. He melds everything from a Tom Waits-style Old MacDonald Had a Farm to quotes from an hilarious Indonesian phrase book, observations on a hopeless falconry instructor, the difference between the call of a tawny and a barn owl, throwing things on subject like Trump and Brexit along the way.

An evening like this is a rarity, to be sure, and I urge you to see it.

When I interviewed Bailey, before seeing the show, which is inspired by his misadventures travelling around the world the last 20 years, I asked him how he kept the show fresh, having been dragging it around the world for a good many months. Indeed, 150,000 people had seen it before this London run.

“I think that because I’m writing all the time it means the show changes all the time, and I try to make things interesting for myself,” he explains. “I always like to build a bit of conversation into the shows. In this particular show I ask the audience a few questions and there’s a specific answer, but its quite difficult to get to, so it provokes a bit of a lively debate. It’s different every night and those kinds of things keep the show unfixed, which is how I like it.”

That might sort of imply that there’s quite a lot of audience interaction, which is bollocks really, as whenever he asks the audience a question, almost every time he answers it himself a second later. Which is hilarious in itself.

“Also, events change all the time, and there’s a section at the start of the show which is open ended and allows for bringing in momentous things that have happened that day, week, or month, and then I incorporate it. So I don’t like to keep the show too set. There are certainly set pieces in the show, but room for new things too.”

More than three decades into his career, he knows how to effortlessly take an audience wherever he wants to go. He’s very slick at presenting himself as unslick and meandering, and is completely at ease with performing such a demanding couple of hours, which somewhat belies the huge amount of skill and preparation that goes into a show like this.

He’s admitted before that invariably when doing a show night after night a lull can appear, although something always tips him out of that. So does he like touring?

“I have come to accept it. I do like it, there are parts of it I like. I like to see places, to go all around Britain. I feel quite lucky to do that. Most people’s work or lives don’t allow them to do that. They just see new places on holiday or for work, but I’ve been able to see all of the UK, every corner of it, several times. It does give you real insight into your own country.”

He’s branched out into so many things – comedy, music, nature programmes, panel shows, acting, documentaries. How would he describe himself?

“I’m as you say all of those things. I’ve recently had to think about a new passport, I thought, ‘what am I going to put on my passport? A comedian?’ All these things perhaps comedy has allowed me to do. I’ve no pretentions other than that, I’m just a simple comic.”

But he’s clearly nowhere near being a simple comic. Apart from the many skills he employs in the show and in his career, at school he was academic, good at sports and music, he possesses perfect pitch. I ask him how he copes with the day to day seething envy people must feel the whole time.

“I don’t get that much at all really,” he laughs. “I get a healthy irreverence from most of my family and mainly they are pointing out the things I’m rubbish at. I think that’s very healthy.”

Is there an area of his work that he prefers?

“All these different things I do in my work cross-pollinate. The experience of doing standup allows you to process information and to write in a distinct way, which helps if you’re writing a book, or a script for a documentary, for example. I wrote a book about birders, and I made a documentary about Alfred Wallace, the Victorian naturalist, and the degree of vigour that had to go into that I hope might help with my writing comedy. I think all aspects of my career I try to make mutually beneficial, I try to gain a benefit from one that I can use in another.

“I’m most proud of the documentary I did about Wallace I suppose. A lot of work went into into it, many years of travel in the area in Indonesia where he travelled. It was a real labour of love. I think we all, the whole team, did Wallace proud, and I’m very proud of that. I was very pleased that his family were pleased. It did him justice, the recognition of his name.”

Despite so much to be proud of in his career, Bailey is certainly not resting on his laurels anytime soon. His next ambition is to take on a longer writing project, a stage show or musical, for example. He relishes the need for more effort, discipline and dogged determination.

Bailey’s Wikipedia page states that ‘Until 24 February 2018, nobody was quite sure when Bill Bailey was born,’ which suggests that perhaps he wrote his page himself.

“Not at all. I’m always baffled by this Wikipedia page, that there are people assuming I am obsessing over it. I don’t know how it came about, it’s a mystery to me, honestly. I’m intrigued that people think I have the time or the inclination to pore over every single detail of it. I don’t know, someone’s done a good job, though some of the details are a little sketchy.”

Is there anything people would be surprised to know about him, that he’s an obsessive knitter or keeper of bees or something, for example?

“Bees no, but we do have a lot of chickens. We’ve just had a huge batch of new chicks hatch out, which we’re donating to a farm, so I suppose I might call myself a poultry breeder.”

Well, Bernard Matthews is dead now, and someone had to take over.

“Exactly, yes.”

Early on, Bailey nearly left comedy to work in telesales. What did he learn from that experience? Did it teach him that persistence pays, and how the direction of life can take incredible turns?

“It taught me that I really didn’t like doing telesales. That I really like doing comedy a lot more. It was something, in the end I couldn’t do because I refused to wear a tie. I kept saying to the boss, ‘they can’t see me’ and he’d say this is a job where you have to be smart and wear a tie and I’d say ‘but they can’t see me, I’m on the phone. You might be wearing a tie, but I’m not wearing a tie,’ and that was it, I wasn’t cut out for it.

“All comedians have done jobs, Perhaps that’s why they end up doing comedy, if you have a comedic sensibility you often see the absurdity in your own situation, and I certainly did there. I think it confirmed to me what my calling in life was to be.”

What would be his advice to someone with a similar calling, starting out in comedy or music?

“If you’re into performing live try and get as much stage time as possible, take on as many gigs as you can manage. And find out what you want to do, really, and you can only do that by performing. All sorts of things happen in a performance, there are so many variables: your nerves, your ability to improvise, you have to be prepared to take a risk. Just keep at it. It can take a while to find your own voice, but when you have it it is a very precious thing, your unique take on things. It takes a while but its wort pursuing if it’s what you want to do. Again, with writing you just have to keep at it, it’s a tough business. There’s a lot of competition, but also there’s a lot of opportunities to be seen or heard now, more than ever before.”

Politics invariably crops up in Bailey’s shows from time to time, and he has long been a Labour supporter.

“It’s very hard to be a Labour supporter right now, especially with the current administration. I describe it as a band you’re into that you’ve been loyal to over the years and suddenly they go into a really weird experimental stage. You know, releasing these really weird experimental albums, and its a hard listen, and you think well maybe this is just a phase, you’re hoping they’ll get back to doing the kind of album you used to like.

“It’s hard for a lot of poor old school Labour supporters at a time when we would have all imagined that this current government is so comically inept, you think surely this is when the opposition should be scoring points. It’s a terrible situation at the moment, not just for Labour supporters but us as a country. Sadly, there’s just this state of inertia around the country. The ideas that I believed in that are important to society are lost in all the noise of Westminster, and chaos of government, and trying to get a deal on Brexit and then Labour dealing with its own problems. What progressive government looks like is very hard to see at the moment.”

Does he think Britain is in a terrible state now, or are all times we live in both simultaneously terrible and great?

“People like to talk up a catastrophe. It’s probably not as bad as people think, but it is still pretty bad. You look around, the country is still functioning just about, and I think it will continue to function, but are there not better people to run it? Surely. We must have.

“Very occasionally I think of being politician but there are many reasons not to. As a comic you satirise all parties. If you pick one it’s then difficult to be objective, as a writer or a satirist or a commenter or a comic – you have to have that distance.”

So for now, Parliament will have to get by without Bailey’s involvement. There’s no doubt his main preoccupation remains comedy.

“Comedy is very subjective. You don’t quite know how it works. You can’t quite put a finger on it – thats one reason I love it. I still don’t know how it works, I have no better idea now than I did 30 years ago.”

See Bill Bailey’s live at the Event Apollo Hammersmith on 31.8.19
His 2015/2016 live show, Limboland, has recently been released on DVD and Digital Download. More details at billbailey.co.uk

@benwestwriter