As his five-month tour winds round to Swansea, Bill Bailey chats to Carl Marsh about the creative process, Idris Elba’s comedy chops, and social media sensitivity.
You have toured many, many times before, so how have you made this tour fresh, what will be different about this new tour?
This tour is a personal show in many ways as there are a lot of stories, accounts and recollections of the last 20 years of doing comedy – and also things that comedy has led me into, like documentaries, film and TV. It’s quite new territory for me, a personal account which I’ve not really ventured into before.
You’ve often mixed music with comedy. What comes to you first when writing; is it selecting the music around the comedy or the comedy around the music?
Well, the first thing that happens is that I think up an idea and then work it out musically, whereas standup tends to happen organically – I will set aside a time to write, think up some ideas, some stories, and then one thing leads to another and it gradually happens in a haphazard sort of way to the point where you accumulate a body of material. A feature of the creative process is you have to narrow it down to the stories in the narrative line that you want to take: that’s the really hard bit of it. Finding things to think about, well there’s no shortage of that these days, God, we live in strange times but the trick of it is how you put all the material together; that is the real key, then refining it. I am still in that process, to be honest.
Would you say that today’s audience has become a bit too sensitive, in your opinion?
That is certainly an issue when it comes to being online and using social media and being trigger-happy but audiences tend to be quite robust in terms of a live situation. People who read something online, they can take it the wrong way; in a live context, the person is right in front of you – this is comedy, this isn’t a lecture, this isn’t meant to be anything other than a bit of fun and a night out. Most people are able to see that and make their own judgements but I take your point, we are living in a more over-hyper-sensitised culture that you have to be aware of.
You’ve just finished shooting a new show for Sky with Idris Elba called In The Long Run. What did you like most about performing in this show?
It was a very good working environment and Idris is a very instinctive and fine actor. He’s got great sensibilities and was very much up for improvising scenes and getting the most out of it, so it was great fun to work with him.
Were you given much comedic freedom with your role?
I was involved with the show from a very early stage with the scripts – I was invited and encouraged to make suggestions to put comedic ideas in, and be able to rewrite little scenes. So there was a lot of creative freedom afforded to me, which was brilliant.
Do you now also see yourself as an actor that happens to be a comedian or just a comedian performing as an actor?
I am just a comedian. I do love getting hired as an actor, and that can be a counterpoint to doing standup, which is very solitary – but working with other people is a relief because the pressure is off a little bit. It’s not all about you, so you can focus a bit more on your performance. And that was the case with In The Long Run. I’m intrigued to see how it will come out and how it all hangs together.
Bill Bailey: Larks In Transit, Grand Theatre, Swansea, Tue 8-Thurs 10 May. Tickets: £28. Info: www.swanseagrand.co.uk