Already a man of many enviable talents, household comedy fave Bill Bailey added ‘award-winning dancer’ to his C.V after lifting the Strictly Glitterball in 2020. But as he tells Amy Wild, music is still close to his heart and intrinsic to his comedy, including his latest tour, Thoughtifier.
“POPCORN FOR SALE! POPCORN!” Bill Bailey greets me in his conservatory, seated next to a large plant and with a popcorn tricycle sitting in the corner. “I got it off eBay,” he tells me. “The idea was that I would cycle up and down the street in the summer and sell popcorn – just as a sort of side hustle – but it’s a bit cold out these days. It’s quite exciting if you like popcorn and cycling equally. Which I do.” He goes on to imagine himself in the snack-hawking role. “POPCORN FOR SALE, POPCORN!”
Bill Bailey is quite the jack of all trades, adept in music, writing, comedy, acting, dancing, presenting and – less obviously – being a keen standup paddleboarder. This jack is a master of all of these disciplines, yet somehow remains approachable and seemingly unaffected by fame. Over the years, he’s appeared on QI, Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Have I Got News For You and as the spaced-out Manny in Black Books. (He also failed an audition to play a dwarf in the Lord Of The Rings film trilogy.)
During February and March, Bailey will be touring the UK with his latest show, Thoughtifier. “The show is an electronic, music, techno, thought-based, immersive experience,” Bill explains, “with lots of connections about the history of music.”
It comes as no surprise that Bill’s stage show is filled with musical elements: reputedly, he not only has perfect pitch but has learned to play 63 instruments. “We were trying to figure out how many I can play,” he says, “but it’s difficult to know the exact number. I can play things with keyboards, and things that sound or look like a guitar; a lot of percussion. And the recorder. Someone presented me with 63 as the amount. And I just thought… that sounds about right.”
Does he have a current instrument of interest? “The bagpipes! They’re quite difficult,” chuckles Bill. “There are two elements to bagpipes. There’s pumping up the air – and keeping it pumped up while playing – and there’s the chanter. And the chanter is quite similar to the descant recorder from our school days. There’s a lot going on.
“When I was learning the bagpipes in New Zealand, I would take them up a mountain. You can fit them in your backpack. I would just walk up a hill and just…” – here, Bill proceeds to make bagpipe noises – “there’s something quite romantic about hearing bagpipes on the top of a hill. If you’re on a walk and you hear someone piping, I think that would be quite inspiring. You’d rather hear them there than from a hotel room.”
During 2023, Bill was living in Western Australia, filming his Channel 4 series Bill Bailey’s Australian Adventure. In one episode, he purchases an accordion from a quaint second-hand store, before serenading the forest with it; now, the accordion is the next instrument Bill aims to master. “The accordion gets two parts of the brain working at the same time,” he notes; “balancing the pumping motion with pressing the keys creates a bit of a mental challenge, much like solving a musical puzzle.”
From his earliest ventures onto the UK standup circuit, in the 1980s, Bill Bailey’s stage shows have included music; today, considering musical comedians, he expresses admiration for the likes of Tim Minchin, Bo Burnham and Jack Black. “We all combine music and comedy. This is, and always has been, very unfashionable, almost looked down on as a lesser form of the comedian’s art. It wasn’t pure standup.
“People would say, ‘ah, well it’s easy when you play guitar,’ and I’d respond, ‘if it’s so easy, why don’t you have a go?’ It’s not easy! It’s harder to do, because when standup is what people expect you have to figure out a way to put your comedy into whatever you are doing. And it’s great fun. It’s always a challenge when you are doing a new show.”
Who does Bill listen to for inspiration? “I’ve just been listening to the new Peter Gabriel album, I/O, which is brilliant. I’ve been a fan of his for years. People like that are always coming up with new ideas, embracing new technology, using things like AI. Anyone that is always looking to use new things, like David Byrne from Talking Heads.”
Indeed, Bill himself will incorporate AI in the Thoughtifier show. “I have got a screen where I am using AI – making fun of it really,” he shares. “I haven’t had that for a few tours, but now it felt like the right time to do it.”
Crafting comedy with music is, for Bill, a nuanced process. “It starts with ideas, which I string together over time. Sometimes I have a whole idea in one day – think ‘that will be a fun idea’ and write a song about it. A lot of it is just trying things out. I’ve been touring New Zealand and Singapore and every show is slightly different – I put something else in it or take something out, so it’s a gradual morphing from one show into another.
“My family are great judges for new jokes – especially my son, who watches a lot of comedy. But you never quite know what the audience will think. That’s what I love about it.”
In 2020, Bill won Strictly Come Dancing, becoming the oldest celebrity to lift the glitterball trophy. Many initially categorised him as just another ‘dad dancer,’ but he proved them all wrong. Did his background in music help him on the dancefloor?
“If you know music you can usually keep your time,” he says. “You have a natural sense of rhythm. It’s not like you are dancing to a track that has been studio processed – you’re dancing to a live band, so you have to be able to adapt slightly to the rhythm and predict whether you are really going to land at certain times. Having a sense of rhythm does help!”
Yet, the journey wasn’t just about rhythm and musicality. “It’s very tough physically – terribly demanding. I don’t think people realise quite how hard it is: on TV, you see bits of rehearsals and the finished dance, but not the hours and hours of training and practice. And getting it wrong…”
Since Strictly, Bill’s dance moves are far from forgotten. “I have thrown a bit of dancing into the show. There’s always going to be dancing now because I just love doing it. Every time I hear a bit of music – an unexpected pop tune that you wouldn’t necessarily connect with a dance – I am thinking, ‘ooh, that’s a cha-cha, isn’t it?’ or ‘is this a pasodoble?’ So, all the music I’ve been listening to for years, Metallica, Foo Fighters – I listen to it now and think, ‘I reckon I could tango to that’.”
Bill Bailey’s imminent UK tour includes two dates at Cardiff’s Utilita Arena. Whether he plays the bagpipes remains to be seen. And heard.
Bill Bailey, Utilita Arena Cardiff, Sat 24 Feb + Wed 6 Mar.
Tickets: £25-£60. Info: here
words AMY WILD
