Interview: Bill Bailey

The marvellous musical comedian and actor Bill Bailey speaks exclusively with Victoria Nangle about his current live show Larks In Transit, his involvement with Idris Elba’s new television project In The Long Run, and a love of gongs.

You’re very playful with musical instruments in Larks In Transit. Are there any instruments that you’d like to persue, because you seem to adventure from one to another?
Yes, certainly, that’s right. There’s a couple of things that I’m trying to master in terms of to work into the tour as it goes on. One of them is the accordion, an instrument I’ve wanted to play for a long time. And it seems to make perfect logical sense to me, as a keyboard which is something I can find my way around now, but also there’s – for me anyway as a solo performer – there’s quite a pleasing visual aspect to it as well. You know, walking around with it, accordion round me neck, reminiscent of street performers… It’s something I wanted to try and master.

It is a lot harder than it looks to be honest. It’s a lot trickier. It requires a lot more concentration, hand to eye co-ordination – it’s eluded me up to now, but I’m really enjoying making an effort to get a hold of it.

And the other thing is a new technique – well, it’s not a new technique, it’s been around for a while, but a new technique to me – which is to play the electric guitar with a violin bow.

The Larks tour you’re taking out – is it similar to Christmas Larks, or the show you were doing before Christmas at all?
It’ll be Christmas Larks, with some more elements, and with almost certainly the more Christmassy elements, weeded out.

I have to say, I so much enjoyed playing ‘God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen’ I’m tempted to just keep going with that. See how far into the tour I can go, and people are going: “What?! We’re still singing carols in May?!” I think carols throughout the year – they only come out at Christmas – but they’re great songs, great singsongs, so I don’t know. We’ll see.

He (Idris Elba) was also very up for a bit of comic improvisation

In The Long Run is hitting our screens soon. I was wondering what you thought of Idris Elba’s comic timing…
I think he’s a very good actor anyway, but he’s got a very sort of, yeah… great sensitivity towards it. I was really impressed. He was also very up for a bit of comic improvisation as well. He would take the script and then say “well, why don’t you try this”? He was always up for changing it, improving it, improvising scenes. It was really good fun.

What do you think the role of comedian is in modern politics at the moment?
Well, you know I think you can’t ignore it because it’s so front and centre – it’s on the news, in social media, people are much more involved. Particularly now in Britain after Brexit. It dominates the whole debate – there’s barely a day when it isn’t in the news for some reason. And so it’s very hard to avoid that.

It’s part of the job of comedy to mirror what is around us and to try and almost filter it in a way. To make it accessible, try and pick apart the absurdity of it, and show it back to an audience. Something familiar but, you know, you’ve put it through a comic filter just to make sense of it, or make fun of it, poke fun at hypocrisy or absurdity. That, I think, has always been the role of comedy. I think that’s probably one of its main roles.

Finally, do you still have that segway and gong from your Tinselworm tour, years ago (Bill sped across the Brighton Centre’s stage on a segway to hit the gong at the other side)?
Well sadly the segways – and this is something that I’ve come to regret – were rented. But in all the palaver and the kerfuffle and renting of it I could’ve just bought one and just kept it. I sort of do regret that.
But the gong – which you rightly remember. Well, the gong again was rented. I mean these things, there are very few of them about. In fact, that wasn’t the largest gong available. The largest one was a much bigger one, that was on tour with Roger Taylor (of Queen). So again, it’s something I’d love to have.
I have actually got a gong – it’s not quite as impressive at that, it’s more sort of an aesthetic an item. It’s not really a practical gong. I think if I was to use a gong…
In fact I am actually writing a song which includes a gong right now, which is sort of kind of a real bit of a piss-take of Ed Sheeran’s ‘Galway Girl’.
Because, you know, (sings) ‘Oh, me pretty little Galway Girl’ (sings) ‘ooh de doodle doodle doo doo doo’ – kind of like that. So I’ve got a song where he falls in love with a girl who works in a percussion ensemble so (sings) ‘my lovely little percussion ensemble girl’, and then he whacks a gong and you can’t really hear anything I sing for about five minutes.

Bill Bailey: Larks In Transit, Brighton Centre, Friday 20 April, 7pm,
from £30.65