This piece originally appeared in The Demon newspaper Issue 108.
On the 15th October Bill Bailey, the eccentric, charming, maestro metal-head, came to De Montfort Hall to peddle his qualms in his latest stand-up tour.
He was joined on stage by a set up fit for a large, eclectic band. There were two keyboards, an electric guitar, a kick drum and several exotic instruments I can’t spell, all in front of a large screen which showed a colourful illustration of a communist regime. But the show wasn’t cluttered with cheap prop gags and attempts to shoe-horn in musical gimmicks. Bill (can I call him ‘Bill’? It seems over familiar, but ‘Bailey’ sounds oddly cold and condescending. I’ll just use his full name) demonstrated his incredible musical abilities by effortlessly incorporating instruments into the show. He used music as fluently as English; sharing musical observations which were both deconstructive and gleefully silly, such as slowing the Match of the Day theme tune down to create a Jewish folk song and playing a long form jazz version of the sound an Apple Mac makes when it’s finished burning a disk.
The screen was also put to great use to surprisingly validate a touching, yet surreal tale about an owl and some Sellotape, as well as to illustrate Bill Bailey’s observations about internet acronyms such as “lol”. This is a subject which no longer feels topical and has been covered by many comedians (the acronyms, not the owl-Sellotape shenanigans) so it is a credit to Bill Bailey that he still has a fresh and original take on it, including his own rival acronym he hopes to promote. The material in the show was eclectic in subject matter and style; jumping between observational, political and musical, but if there was a theme then it was the aforementioned blending of the gleefully silly and the philosophical and intellectual. A prime example of this was a piece of material which combined the concept of cognitive dissonance, renaissance art and a ‘celebrity’ called Chantelle. To see how they can possibly belong in the same sentence, I recommend you either pre-order the DVD or go and see the show for yourself!