Barnacles are the work of vandals: Bill Bailey at Dublin’s Olympia

Comedians can be hit and miss, I find. Their live shows are rarely as good as their DVDs, their personalities in person rarely as enticing as they appear on TV and their shows, though funny are often so scripted that any deviation causes a disruption in the flow. The apparent stream of consciousness is carefully worded, timed and or orchestrated that even the apparent adlibbing is just a repeat of another show. If there’s anything I’ve learned from the shows at The Cat Laughs Festival, it’s that, especially seeing comedians repeat their gigs often word for word.

I really hoped that wouldn’t be the same with Bill Bailey on Wednesday. A big fan of Bewilderness, Cosmic Jam and Part Troll, an appreciator of his role as Manny Bianco in the wonderful Black Books and a catch-it-when-I-could viewer of him on Never Mind The Buzzcocks, Have I Got News For You and QI (where despite his infrequent appearances, I’d consider him one of the highlights) as well as his turns as Bilbo Bagshot on Spaced (great character) and in Skins and briefly Hot Fuzz, I had high hopes of this comedian, someone I’d first caught playing piano, singing and doing stand-up on The End, that Friday and Saturday night show on Network 2 presented by Barry Murphy and Sean Moncrieff.

Lucky so and so I am, Sinead had bought us great tickets in the fourth row of the Olympia where we got a brilliant view of the stage. Near enough to watch the action and far enough away to avoid looking up Bill’s nostrils, I was as close as I wanted to be to the stage. Dublin’s Olympia Theatre always impresses me as a venue - the acoustics were perfect, the seats comfortable and the auditorium big enough to avoid a cramped feeling, despite this being a full house.

The set was simple. Backlit by a huge screen bearing a projected lightbulb (and animated moth), an armchair beside a table bearing a large plant, a bacardi bottle and a stuffed monkey; a marshall amp beside an electric guitar, an accoustic guitar towards the front, the familiar two keyboards, a sound and drum board and the brilliant theremin. Rugs completed the set with a random construct of small foam pieces, later revealed to be foamhenge.

Admittedly, despite a long day in the office and a hasty trip to the Carlsberg Comedy Carnival launch, I wasn’t sure I could switch off for this. I rarely can. I need distraction, sensory feeding, mental stimulation, random cognitive dissonance. My thoughts are easily derailed, my mind wanders. It’s probably why I’m online as much. Though prepared to be amused, I don’t know if I expected to be entertained. I hadn’t seen Tinselworm, a show this was apparently based on or around, and I’m glad I didn’t - much of the material seemed fresh and new.

This show, Bill’s (a nickname given to Mark Bailey by his music teacher) alternative to Glastonbury was billed a celebration of 150 years of Darwin’s seminal work, ‘On the Origin of Species‘, something you’d expect from an intellectual like Bailey, whose peculiar brand of amiable intelligence has become synonymous with his self deprecating apparent unawareness of same.

The music from the start, Strauss’s Also Sprach Zarathustra, accompanied a well thought out animation, possibly from Tinselworm, was engaging, and the man himself appeared to rapturous applause, bowing, waving and riffing to an audience hungry to hear his words. I was entranced. The man has such strength of charisma, character and presence that even his being on the stage could elicit a warm reaction from those there. I think it’s his eyes,a storyteller’s eyes that betray the madness behind them, a mania we all want to share.

From the off it’s a wonderful use of language that involves us. “I think it’s important we remain optimistic at all times” he says about the show, “it’s so essential to the survival of humanity. Hello, I’m Bill Bailey, thank you for attending, well done, this is the correct place.“

His opening material gets him and us warmed up. Ross Kemp; pirates; well we’re all going to die either from a virus, the BNP or the return of the Nolans; politicans expenses; clearing out the snuff in the staff jacuzzi; James Brown - he’s getting into the stride of things. When he asks the audience if we’re ready to rock, the roar of approval back surprises him - “I love Ireland - only in Dublin are people ready to rock this early. In fact, you caught me on the hop - I actually wasn’t ready to rock there” he laughs, the audience cheering his admission. The longer he delays the inevitable musical contribution, the louder the audience’s cheers for same.

He starts the music. Requesting we all click our fingers, he laughs at the sound produced - “it’s like a weasel eating chipstix”. He shares with us his ideas of a new Germany in northern Australia before actually stopping to talk about his background, including the admission of stopping his stint in Buzzcocks because “I got tired of humming tunes like Britney’s Toxic to some gormless Indie halfwit”.

He’s not a tolerant man, he tells us - an important fact for the rest of the show, before heading on to another riff involving being the Mayor of England, the abhorrent false modesty of Jennifer Lopez (J-Lo) and the complete hedonistic opposite in Elton John (El-Jo - “You there, go carve me a swan from a block of ice. That’s not a swan, that’s a chaffinch, you’re fired!”) before his talk on losing his west country Somerset accent because he wanted to be taken seriously in life.

The delivery is expertly timed with incisive wit, elegantly turned phrases and an eclectisism to keep even the most disinterested amused. The audience barely had time to stop laughing for most of the gig. I was almost deafened by the loud,screeching laughter of the woman directly behind me who found him hilarious. I was glad of the intermission.

As polished and well delivered as his humour was, laced with equal mixes of the absurd, the observational, the political and a cynical parody, it was his interaction with the audience that kept this Wednesday show alight. His sing-along La Bamba was fantastic (who can sing all the words?) but a two minute interlude, caused by an audience member taking a bathroom break and requesting he wait, where he took to the piano to treat us to some lounge piano and a quickly improvised two minute song allowed him to indulge in a straying away from the script and have some fun. He enjoyed the randomness as much as we did, frequently distracted by where new shouts or heckles led his train of thought.

Bailey seems to have more random material in one show than most comedians would in four. I’d wonder how he comes up with some of it - his evolution through crisps theory - cheese bacteria, female, onion thoil bacteria, male - is nothing short of genius while his musical parodies - Lily Allen, James Blunt - and his own creations are applauded with an appreciation of the craft behind them. Switching from piano to guitar to oode (is that it?) and back, his only disruption comes from the audience member who cheerfully admits he knew what the instrument was because his friend was there the night before and had told him.

His powers of description are extremely vivid. Answers to his questions about barnacles amuse him greatly “Glue? Like someone sticks them on to the end of boats?” while I’m particularly tickled by his thoughts on questions not to ask in interviews when they ask if you have any for them “Have you ever crossed the road using an old woman as a human shield?”

He brings us back through his early career as a lounge pianist - notes reading “Dear pianist, please play…” got responses like “somewhere else” or “with yourself”. He hates Lionel Richie’s music - though tells us of a butcher shop in West London called “Halal, is it meat you’re looking for?” and, while his rendition of what he told us the Belarussian National Anthem was great, it was one of his trademark comments about the perils of a two bar electric fire “I’m sorry, I can’t concentrate, my shins are melting” that had one of the biggest laughs of the night. That and the emo song of love and Starbucks “there weren’t enough noticeboard pins for oblivion” were two of my personal favourites.

He’d also somehow replaced foamhenge with phonehenge, using old nokias to emulate the famous formation.

Bailey live is a visual treat. He uses interactive projections to great effect, his music punctuates the cleverness of his spoken material and his own curious mind, diction and speech ensures the audience is kept enraptured. “It’s like the sound a mouse would make if it discovered it had a little more cheese than it thought” was a particular favourite of mine, but it seemed to describe - and appropriately encapsulate - the audience’s experience as well. The material kept on coming - PGP is morketing’s way of describing Christmas - the Primary Gift Period. His admission on the Nazi Gold gig was hilarious and the idea of wearing a bucket to maintain the mystery of Revels is one that will no doubt be attemped at a party some time.

At times I wished I had a camera to capture certain expressions, certain moments, certain genuine smiles he gave but it would ultimately have taken away from my enjoyment, my participation, my involvement in the gig. I grabbed the photo above at the end of the gig. All around us people were laughing genuinely hard, delighting in his arsenal of meandering entertainment. I savored the reaction of those around me as much as I did the genius of the man on stage. Most importantly, I was never bored. He hopped with ease around subjects and I never knew where I was going to be from one minute to the next. It was perfect for me.

All in all I’m the very opposite of “disappointed” by this gig - not disappointed though seems too bland a phrase to encapsulate my enthusiasm for Bailey. I’d have happily gone again the next night and those after. He’s retained everything I remember from those early sketches I watched and improved on everything else, while remaining simply, profoundly and wonderfully himself. He was awarded three standing ovations after his three encores Wednesday night - one with a great Kraftwerk tribute - and the Dublin twitter stream has been filled with praise and adulation after all his gigs. It was more than a show, it was a pleasure and an experience. One I’d say enjoyed by many.

Ooh and look who he met tonight…

You lucky sod.

Bill Bailey is a guy I’d love to interview. One day hopefully. I look forward to it. Hope it’s as good as this five minutes.

His new DVD, Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra is due out in November. You can see current tour dates here, find him on twitter here and buy his merchandise here. Keep an eye out for reviews from other culchers - as you can guess from the photo above, some were there tonight - I’m hoping they’ll share their experiences too.