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Mark “Bill” Bailey (born 24 February 1964, Bath, Somerset) is an English comedian, actor, and musician known for appearing on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, QI, Have I Got News for You, and Black Books as well as his stand up comedy. He is a self proclaimed “confused hippy” known for his thin goatee and long hair.

Bailey was listed by The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy, in 2003.

Personal life

Bailey spent the majority of his childhood in Bath where he attended King Edward’s School.<ref name=”KES”></ref> He excelled in music, but also claims to have been good at sport, which often surprised his teachers. It was here that he was given his nickname Bill, when a music teacher, Ian Phipps, once sang the song “Won’t You Come Home Bill Bailey” in class.

He spent his early years listening to Monty Python records, and rehearsing with a band called the “Famous Five”,<ref></ref> who he himself confesses were very bad but still much better than him and who, unexpectedly, had only four members.<ref></ref> However, he is a classically trained musician and received an associateship with the London College of Music. Despite this, he has said that he always had the temptation to be silly with music, a trait that influences his stand-up shows.

Bailey often mythologises his early years in his stand-up. In his show Bewilderness, he claims to have attended Bovington Gurney School of Performing Arts and Owl Sanctuary. He talks about a succession of jobs he had before becoming a comedian, including lounge pianist, door-to-door door-salesman and accompaniment for a mind-reading dog. The third is verifiable, as a clip was shown during his Room 101 appearance.

He also talks about his role as a Disenfranchised Owl in an experimental Welsh theatre troupe (mentioned in an interview with Australian newspaper Post). Other acting roles included a part in a Workers’ Revolutionary Party stage production called The Printers, which also featured Vanessa Redgrave and Frances de la Tour. His trivia page on IMDb also claims that he was awarded Best Actor in the 1986 Institut Français awards.

An avid Star Trek fan, he named his son Dax after the character Jadzia Dax and often refers to himself as a Klingon (speaking in Klingon language).

Career

Early stand-up

Bailey began touring the country with other comedians such as Mark Lamarr and Phill Jupitus. In 1986 he formed a double act, the Rubber Bishops, with Toby Longworth who was replaced in 1988 by Martin Stubbs. They achieved a certain amount of success on the club circuit, partly due to their rigorous schedule — sometimes as many as three or four gigs a night. It was here that Bailey began developing his own unique style, mixing in musical parodies with deconstructions or variations of traditional jokes (”How many amoebas does it take to change a lightbulb? One, no two! No four! No eight…”) - according to comedy folklore, after a reviewer once criticised his act for its lack of jokes, Bailey returned the following night to perform a set composed entirely of punchlines.

Stubbs later quit to pursue a more serious career, and in 1994 Bailey performed Rock at the Edinburgh Fringe with Sean Lock, a show about an ageing rockstar and his roadie, script-edited by comedy writer Jim Miller. It was later serialised for the Mark Radcliffe show on BBC Radio 1. However, the show’s attendances were not impressive and on one occasion the only person in the audience was comedian Dominic Holland. Bailey confessed in an interview with The Independent that he almost gave it up to do a telesales job.

He persevered, however, and went solo the next year with the one man show Bill Bailey’s Cosmic Jam. The show was very well received and led to a recording at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London which was broadcast in 1996 on Channel 4 as a one-hour special called Bill Bailey Live. It was not until 2005 that this was released in DVD uncut and under its original title. It marked the first time that Bailey had been able to tie together his music and post-modern gags with the whimsical rambling style he is now known for.

After supporting Donna McPhail in 1995 and winning a Time Out award, he returned to Edinburgh in 1996 with a critically acclaimed show that was nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award. Amongst the other nominees was future Black Books co-star Dylan Moran, who narrowly beat him in the closest vote in the award’s history.

Bailey won the Best Live Stand-Up award at the British Comedy Awards, 1999.

Television

Though he had not won the Perrier in 1996, the nomination was enough to get him noticed, and in 1998 the BBC gave him his own television show, Is It Bill Bailey?

This was not Bailey’s first foray into television. As early as 1991, he was appearing in stand-up shows such as The Happening, Packing Them In, The Stand Up Show, and The Comedy Store. He also appeared as captain on two panel games, an ITV music quiz pilot called Pop Dogs, and the poorly received Channel 4 sci-fi quiz show, Space Cadets. However Is it Bill Bailey? was the first time he had written and presented his own show.

With his star on the rise and gaining public recognition, over the next few years, Bailey made well received guest appearances on shows such as Have I Got News For You, World Cup Comedy, Room 101, Des O’Connor Tonight, Coast to Coast and three episodes of off-beat Channel 4 sitcom Spaced, in which he played comic-shop manager Bilbo Bagshot.

In 1998, Dylan Moran approached him with the pilot script for Black Books, a Channel 4 sitcom about a grumpy bookshop owner, his put-upon assistant, and their neurotic female friend. It was commissioned in 2000, and Bailey took the part of the assistant Manny Bianco, with Moran playing the owner Bernard, and Tamsin Greig the friend, Fran. Three series of six episodes were made, building up a large cult fanbase, providing the public awareness on which Bailey would build a successful national tour in 2001.

When Sean Hughes left his long-term role as a captain on Never Mind the Buzzcocks in 2002, Bailey became his successor. His style quickly blended into the show, possibly helped by his background in music. He soon developed a rapport of sorts with host Mark Lamarr, who continually teased him about his looks and his pre-occupation with woodland animals.

Bailey has appeared frequently on the intellectual panel game QI since it began in 2003, appearing alongside host Stephen Fry and regular panellist Alan Davies. Other television appearances include a cameo role in Alan Davies’ drama series Jonathan Creek as failing street magician Kenny Starkiss and obsessed guitar teacher in the “Holiday” episode of Sean Lock’s Fifteen Storeys High. He later appeared with Lock again as a guest on his show TV Heaven, Telly Hell. He has also appeared twice on Friday Night with Jonathan Ross, and is in demand as a guest on shows such as Richard & Judy and BBC News.

Bailey also presents Wild Thing I Love You which began on Channel 4 on October 15 2006. The series focuses on the protection of Britain’s wild animals, and has included rehoming badgers, owls, and water voles.

He is set to appear in the second season of Skins (TV series) as Maxxie’s Dad.

International tours

In 2001, Bailey began touring the globe with Bewilderness, which became a huge success. A recording of a performance in Swansea was released on DVD the same year, and the show was broadcast on Channel 4 that Christmas. A modified version of it also proved successful in America, and in 2002 Bill released a CD of a recording at the WestBeth Theatre in New York. The show contained all his trademarks, popular music parodies (such as Unisex Chip Shop, a Billy Bragg tribute which he actually performed with Billy Bragg at the 2005 Glastonbury Festival), “three men in a pub” jokes (including one in the style of Geoffrey Chaucer) and deconstructions of television themes such as Countdown and The Magic Roundabout. A ‘Bewilderness’ CD was sold outside gigs, which was actually just a mixture of studio recordings of songs and monologues Bill had performed in the past - it was later released in shops as Bill Bailey: The Ultimate Collection… Ever!. That same year he also presented a Channel 4 countdown, Top Ten Prog Rock.

Bailey premiered his show Part Troll at the Edinburgh Fringe in the summer of 2003. A critical and commercial success, he then transferred it to the West End where tickets sold out in under 24 hours, and new dates had to be added. Since then he has toured it all over the UK as well as in America, Australia and New Zealand. The show marked the first time Bill had really tackled political material, as he expanded on subjects such as the war on Iraq, which he had only touched upon before in his Bewilderness New York show. He also talks extensively on drugs, at one point asking the audience to name different ways of baking cannabis. A DVD was released in 2004.

2005 finally saw the release of his 1996 show Bill Bailey’s Cosmic Jam. The 2-disc set also contained a director’s cut of Bewilderness, which featured a routine on Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time not seen in the original version.

In March 2007, Bill Bailey was recognised as the 7th greatest stand-up comedian of all time, part of the 100 Greatest Stand-Ups show on Channel 4.

Other appearances

In 2000 he had a small role in British comedy film Saving Grace, and also voiced the sperm whale in 2005’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie.

Bailey has also proved to be a talented dramatic actor in two Edinburgh Fringe shows directed by Guy Masterson. He played Juror Number 4 in a 2003 version of Twelve Angry Men featuring 12 comedians, and also co-starred as Oscar in a 2005 production of The Odd Couple, alongside Alan Davies and several other comedians, including Owen O’Neill and Ian Coppinger. Both of these performances received generally good reviews.

Radio appearances include two episodes each of The 99p Challenge, I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, and Just a Minute, as well as presenting Good Vibrations: The History of the Theremin, and appearing on Loose Ends.

In 2005, he appeared in Birmingham, as an act for “Jasper Carrott’s Rock with Laughter”. He appeared alongside performers such as Bonnie Tyler, Jasper Carrott, Lenny Henry, Bobby Davro and the Lord of the Dance troupe.

Many people have believed that Bill Bailey is in Shaun of the Dead, thought to be a zombie in the background somewhere, but in the commentary included with the DVD Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright confirm he is not in the film because he was busy with other commitments at the time. He did however have two minor roles as a police receptionist in Pegg and Wright’s 2007 film Hot Fuzz.

In February 2007 Bailey organised, produced and starred in a West End show called Pinter’s People, a collection of sketches by playwright Harold Pinter. The show also starred Kevin Eldon, Sally Phillips and Geraldine McNulty.

In March 2007, Bill Bailey appeared at the International Human Beatbox Convention at the South Bank Centre in London, introducing Shlomo to the stage for the climax of the concert, as well as showing off his own beatboxing.

On 4th May 2007, he appeared as the guest presenter of BBC One’s Have I Got News For You.

In 2002, Bailey provided the voice for a BMW Mini advertising campaign, as well as writing and performing a series of British Airways adverts in which, through the use of music, he took a humorous look at several locations around the world.

Bill will be playing Maxxie’s dad in the second series of E4 teen drama Skins.

Music

Bailey is a talented pianist and guitarist and has absolute pitch. His stand-up routines often feature music from genres such as jazz, rock (most notably prog rock from the early seventies) and classical, usually for comedic value. Favourite instruments include the keyboard, guitar, theremin, kazoo and bongos. He was also part of punk band Beergut 100,<ref name=”scots”></ref> which he founded in 1995 with comedy writer Jim Miller, and which also featured Martin Trenaman and Phil Welans, with Kevin Eldon as lead singer.<ref name=”eldon”></ref> The band performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2006.<ref name=”guardian”></ref> Trenaman and Welans had previously appeared in Cosmic Jam under the name “The Stan Ellis Experiment”, and Trenaman and Eldon later featured with John Moloney in the Kraftwerk homage “Das Hokey Kokey” on the Part Troll tour. Bill claims that himself and the 3 other performers are a Kraftwerk tribute band called Augenblick. To mark the final gig of the Part Troll tour on 1 January 2005 the band reappeared on stage after the “Das Hokey Kokey” joke to play an hour-long encore of music.

In February 2007, Bill appeared on two occasions with the BBC Concert Orchestra and Anne Dudley in a show entitled Cosmic Shindig. Performed in The Colosseum in Watford on February 24th and in the Queen Elizabeth Hall on February 26th, the show contained orchestrally accompanied versions of many of Bill’s previously performed songs, an exploration of the instruments of the orchestra and a number of new pieces of music. The Queen Elizabeth Hall performance was aired on BBC Radio 3 on March 16th 2007 as a part of Comic Relief 2007.

Future

An Australian tour for April/May 2007 was announced on Bill’s website, but has been postponed until early 2008, along with a 10-date UK tour named Tinselworm in November 2007, with the possibility of further dates.

Bill is due to appear on a new BBC Radio 4 comedy programme, The Professor of Curiosities and is appearing as a panellist in episodes of series E of QI.

Bill appeared at the Beautiful Days festival in August 2007.

Bill is planning to put himself forward as Britain’s Eurovision entry in 2008, as a result of several fan petitions encouraging him to do so.<ref></ref>

Selected works

Tours

• Bill Bailey’s Cosmic Jam (1995)
• Bewilderness’ (2000–2002)
• Part Troll (2003–2004)
• Steampunk (Aug 2006)
• Tinselworm (Nov 2007)

TV/Film

• Is It Bill Bailey? (1998)
• Spaced (1999–2001)
• Have I Got News for You (Guest - 1999,2001,2005, Guest Presenter - 2007)
• Saving Grace (2000)
• Black Books (2000–2004)
• Wild West (2002–2004)
• Never Mind the Buzzcocks (2002–present) (Regular team captain)
• QI (2003–present) (Frequent guest)
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (2005) (Voice of the Sperm Whale)
• Wild Thing I Love You (2006) (Presenter)
• Top Gear (A Star in a Reasonably-Priced Car)
• Hot Fuzz (2007)
• Run, Fat Boy, Run (2007)- Cameo

DVDs

• Bewilderness (2001)
• Part Troll (2004)
• Cosmic Jam (2005)
• Cosmic Jam (special two part with bonus disk featuring Bewilderness as performed in Swansea, 2005)
• The Classic Collection (This is the Bill Bailey boxset featuring Bewilderness, Part Troll And Cosmic Jam, 2006)

CDs

• Bewilderness New York (2002)
• The Ultimate Collection… Ever! (2003)
• Part Troll (2004)
• Cosmic Jam (2006)

References

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External links

• Bill Bailey’s official personal site
• Bill Bailey Myspace Page
• Bill Bailey Biogrpahy

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