Soaking In The Hoisin Of Your Lies

The last time artslondon attempted to get a slice of the rambling musical (he’s got perfect pitch you know) and comedy genius of Bill Bailey, the weather conspired against us. Glastonbury’s traditional rain and mud (plus some bad planning on our part) made us late arrivals to his climatic set, stuck at the back of the crowd with only the chuckles of those lucky buggers at the front as an indicator of where the jokes were supposed to be.

Trudging down the sodden banks of Wembley Way on our way to Bill’s sold out Tinselworm tour, we began to think we’d done something to anger the comedy weather gods. “This was supposed to be super happy fun,” one of our companions complained.

Even without the poor weather, the sheer size of Wembley Arena can make it a cold venue at the best of times, but judging by the cheers and welcome Bill Bailey got as he came on stage, he’s such a national treasure now that it’s hard not to be warmed by the familiar sight of his beard and, according to Bill, what one celebrity magazine called ‘the worst haircut in showbiz’. Well, either that or an arena’s worth of people collectively thought ‘bugger this I’ve paid £27.50 and been soaked to the skin for this so I’m damn well going to enjoy it now’.

Not that there aren’t a few niggles with his current set. A lot of the material is quite familiar – the fan favourite and mixed metaphor-tastic Love Ballad (My heart was cold /It was a stoneMy soul was lonely/Like a stone/There was no moss) ending the evening – and there is the sense that he’s playing it safe, with the messing around with music bits filling out a large chunk of the set. However, when you’re being entertained by someone with as good a comic timing and musical ability as Bill Bailey, it seems churlish to complain that he’s sticking to what he’s best at.

This isn’t to say that the show (and it is a Show, with Flashing Lights and Loud Music and Mobile Trousers Presses and Other Special Effects) isn’t varied in its topics. In the space of two hours he takes us from the childish (manipulating pictures of Margaret Thatcher and James Blunt to say ‘I AM EVIL’) to the political (the moral dilemmas faced by the modern comedian when faced with a big wad of cash and an advertising contract, resulting in the war-cry ‘Hey! Asda! I ain’t gonna be your bitch!’ echoing around Wembley) to the sublime – bringing on a bhangra group (previously seen on a Never Mind The Buzzcocks Christmas special) to collaborate on a strangely moving cover of Radiohead’s ‘Creep’.

Sadly, Bill has no London dates scheduled in the near future. However, you can amuse yourself for at least five minutes, just by playing around on his silly website here.

Kelly Arnstein wrote this.