Jeeves Verma
Ladies and Gentlemen, this is Jeeves. You’re listening to Blitz and and delighted to be here talking to one of my all-time comedy heros: the pitch-perfect, musical genius, Bill Bailey. Thank you so much joining me today!
Bill Bailey
You’re welcome! Good to speak to you, Jeeves!
JV
So I understand you’re in Perth at the moment?
BB
That’s correct. Yes, I am.
JV
And you’re going to be gracing us in Sydney for the end of your tour?
BB
Yes, that’s right. Exactly – the wonderful venues you have there – the iconic Opera House and the gracious State Theatre. Two of my favourite venues in Australia.
JV
Yes and this is obviously not the first time you’ve been in Australia. You’re almost a local!
BB
I’m a regular visitor, yes. I do crop up every couple of years. And over the last 15 years I’ve been here every two or three years, but prior to that when I first came to Australia I was returning every year. The very first time I performed in Australia was in Melbourne doing the Comedy Festival. Must have been over 20 years ago, now. It was quite a big deal of me, back then because this was the first time I’d performed really outside of the UK. We’d done a couple of gigs just in Holland but the Dutch are very similar to the Brits.. there were quite a lot of Brits in the audience so it didn’t really feel like an overseas gig. So the Melbourne gig felt like “this is a big deal”. And it was almost like… feeling like this was a test of my comedy to see how it would fair overseas. Actually, I was thinking about this the other day – it was quiet nerve racking because yes, we share the same language and very often a lot of the same cultural touchstones, a lot of TV and film and so on, you know, its very similar…
JV
Yeah.
BB
But even so it’s still a long way – there could be some differences. I just think “is the comedy land over here?” and I remember thinking that quite a lot before the shows and I think in those initial few shows I realized that firstly, it would work overseas but also that the audiences were responsive to it. Gradually over the years I realized that Australian audiences had a very similar sense of humour to British audiences
JV
I think almost exactly, to be honest, yeh.
BB
I think, yeh.. there’s a sort of similar.. there’s two strides, I think.. there’s a similar kind of irreverence for authority figures and also I think there’s a love of the absurd and the odd and the tangential, and I think that’s something which defines my shows over the years. So I guess that’s why I found a very enthusiastic and loyal following here
JV
You’ve obviously made a massive fan base here in Australia, so we’re really excited that you’re touring. Most of our listeners, Bill, are actually uni students – I think they’d be really interested in knowing, you grew up studying music?
BB
Yes! That’s correct, yeh. I studied music at, we have, well, A levels – what would the equivalent in Australia be?
JV
We have the HSC, I think?
BB
Ok so it would be the Advanced level – that all that the A stands for. There was the O Level (Ordinary Level) and A (Advanced) Level. I was the only Music A Level student in my school. It was good and bad in some ways. Mainly good because I had one-on-one tuition with my piano teacher and A Level tutor. Because it was only me, I think a lot of the school took a slightly, rather disparaging view of the whole idea of it as a subject. I always felt I was getting a little side-lined a bit, or the subject was getting side-lined. In fact other tutors would, I remember, they’d have rows with my tutor “you’re spending too long doing this”. And it was never really given the full sense of, I think, respect, really, that it deserved. I think there was a lot more focus on other subjects that would perhaps lead to some other degree or something or to university and so it was a hard thing to do but I’m so glad I did it because it gave me a very deep understanding of music – because you go into such depth. And then I pursued my musical career at school and I went onto get a diploma a the London College of Music which was effectively sort of a performance/ teaching diploma which meant I could pursue wither of those two disciplines. And it was tough, it was a lot of work preparing a musical recital. I had to choose piano pieces, perform them, put a recital together. I had to do very detailed work on how you write musical theories and so on. So it was great and its given me a huge amount of love and understanding for music since then
JV
Now you can go back and say “look I’ve proved all you wrong! It was important! Look at my career now!
BB[chuckles] Well sometimes, yeh, I do get the odd newsletter… but yeh [chuckles] but I don’t know, the events always seem to coincide with me being in Australia – so it’s not a bad thing.
JV
Can I ask you, Bill… I may have read this somewhere and I’d just like you to confirm for me – were you in a boy band?
BB
A boy band?
JV
Yeh.
BB
No.
Jeeves: Ok.
BB
I was in a band when I was at school, certainly. It was a pop band that was based in Bath in the west country where I grew up. And they were called the Famous Five. And we did actually record a few.. we had a deal, management, a we recorded some stuff, did a little tour, did some gigs and so it was me and another guy – the bass player, Callum – and we I guess, 16 or 17, but the rest of the band were much older – they had jobs and houses and lives and were just along for the ride, really. But it was good fun. It was great fun.
JV
And how did you make that leap from being in a band to comedy, then?
BB
Well, actually it was the venue that we performed in with the little club in Bath, where I grew up. It was a great place, actually, it was in this showcase for local bands as well as touring bands. And local bands could often get a gig there. And then I persuaded the owner to put on a comedy night because me and a mate from school, we just loved comedy – we listened to comedy albums, we did sketches at school – so eventually he let us put this gig on and of course it was like a shambles – a sort of ram shackled selection of sketches, stupid props and daft stuff but there was something about it, there was a few moments – I mean, there literally were moments where everyone was… we were all connected – like the idea, the delivery. The comedy produced this absolute electric kind of jolt of comedy that ran through everybody. And that’s the thing – It’s almost like you touched this live wire and then you think “I have to do this again. There’s something about this which is absolutely compelling”.
JV
That’s wonderful.
BB
And you don’t quite know what it is, but you’re hooked – you get a glimpse of what comedy and connecting with people is about.
Jeeves: Bill, I think, without a doubt that you’re one of the most adored comedians worldwide. And I’m not just saying that to be flattering I do believe it, which sort of begs the question… have you ever been heckled?
BB
Well yes, of course. This happens to all comics, regardless of what they tell you (chuckles). Everyone has bad gigs. Everyone gets heckled. It’s a part it – a sort of occupational hazard. And the thing is, I think, how you approach it is – when I look back at those times you have to be very critical of yourself - I think that that’s the thing, I’m my harshest critique of my own work - and that is, when you analyse those situations and think “why did it happen?”, its easy to say “oh this person was drunk, whatever” and sometimes they genuinely are just people who are slightly intoxicated that they lose all impulse control and start shouting. I tend to kind of discount those because they aren’t really indicative of heckling. Heckling is, traditionally was done… the word comes from when people would stand on speakers corner and shout political ideas and people would shout at them and say “I disagree” in a quite aggressive and combative way. And that does happen. And when I look back at those cases, I think “yeh because, you know what it was – I was probably underprepared”. I was probably not entirely, completely confident. I wasn’t really on top of the material. I was a bit nervous – something was going a bit awry and somebody in the audience was just frustrated or something – and I look back and I think “yeh, that’s why that happened”. And I think that you have to be that critical if you’re going to get up on stage in front of people, this reckless, full-hardy profession that I’ve chosen, you a) have to have a thick skin, but you have to also be very self-aware. You have to be mentally strong and tough because there will be times when you question what you’re doing. There’ll be times when you question, “well, Is this any good? I don’t even know. People were heckling. The gig didn’t go well” and then you have to think, “well, no because of this x, y, z”. You have to be cold and analytical about it and I think that’s the way you’re able to carry on.
Jeeves: Yeh, absolutely. Um, I’m a bit weary of time, I think you’ve got calls after me but I’ve got some quick-fire questions and then I want to ask you a question about Earl of Whimsy?
BB
Ok!
JV
Ok, quickfire questions, here we go! What’s your favourite genre of music that you like to play?
BB
Oh the music I like to play… is.. loud rock (Chuckles) ..on my guitar.
JV
Beautiful I love it! What’s an instrument you’ve always wanted to learn?
BB
The violin. I would love to play the violin but the practicing would be painful.
JV
Yeh I bought a violin the other day and it’s sitting there doing nothing
BB
Yeh, I’ve discovered I can actually play, there’s a beautiful Chinese, stringed guitar instrument called the 二胡.E-R-H-U. And it sounds extraordinary and it does sound a bit like a violin. I’ve discovered that on my iPad there’s an app for it on my Garage Band app, and that I can play it on the iPad. So maybe I don’t have to go through the whole torturous process.
JV
What’s your favourite dinosaur?
BB
The dinosaur is the.. I think that the – oh what was that called? The one that looks like a hedgehog.. Ankylosaurus. Its covered in big bony plates and it had a big sort of like a big sort of like a medieval mace for its tail.
JV
Yes, yeh! I know that one you’re talking about… and can you do its mating call?
BB
[makes true-to-life Ankylosaurus mating call]
JV
I love it! Great! Also, oh! I’m writing a musical, Bill and I would be remiss if I didn’t ask you as my final quickfire question: May I send it to you for you seal of approval after I’m done with it?
BB
Absolutely! Of yes of course!! Well I’d be delighted to look at it, yeh!!
JV
Wonderful! I will hold you to that!! Ok, Earl of Whimsy. I’m really excited about it. everything I’ve read has made me excited about it but what I want to know is what are YOU most excited for about this show?
BB
Well, actually what I realise I most like about this show is that its really making me consider a lot about who I am and my own personal ancestry, what makes me a comedian – what’s made me a comic over the last 20 years – and in that regard it’s the most personal show I’ve ever done in many years. And I think that also I like to keep it quite open-ended – there’s sections of the show where I don’t really know what’s going to happen, and that’s what I like about it. I ask questions of the audience. I ask questions of myself. I want to get to the nub of the history of comedy – I talk about history, I talk about language – and the audience are involved in all of this. And every night, something comes up. Some weird confluence of circumstance and answers and the way people respond to my questions is so different, all the time. And that’s what’s really exciting, because the shows different, every night it’s different. There’s some different combination of responses, so to me, that’s what the essence of what live comedy is all about. There’s prep, there’s routine’s that I’ve worked out, there’s the music that I’ve worked out – these are set pieces that take a bit of time and they’re the more polished and sort of set sections of the show, but amongst that I like to seed all these other parts of the show, because to me, that’s what, in terms of a live comedy experience to me, the perfect show (well, there’s never a perfect show) or a show which is as near as I can get to being what exactly I want to do, is that it contains elements that are unknown – it sort of celebrates the mercurial nature of what comedy and how difficult it is to pin down. You never quite know what it is, I guess that’s why I love it so much. You never quite know what’s going to hit and what’s going to be funny and that’s the sort of unpredictable nature of it but that’s why we love It, I guess.
JV
You’ve just made me love it even more and I cannot wait to see this, Bill. I’m really, really excited for it and I hope you enjoy your stay in Sydney.
BB
Thank you.
JV
So its going to be a the Opera House, November 19 and 20. And then I think you’ve got November 21, 22, 23 at the State Theatre. Tickets on sale now – Ladies and Gentlemen make sure you buy your tickets! Bill Bailey its been an absolutely pleasure talking to you, thank you so much for your time!
BB
Thank you.
