Bill Bailey: Tinselworm

Bill Bailey: Tinselworm

18 December, 2008
by: Emma

The callback is a powerful tool in comedy and somehow this simple device of referencing an earlier joke at a later stage in the set makes us feel like the comic is doing something very clever, especially when it's used in a different context.  We are familiar with the joke so it's even better second time round when we recognise it straight away and we can feel like we're included in a sort of in-joke at the same time.  This is effective enough when it's just a throw-away line here and there but tonight Bill Bailey really uses the callback to its full potential and transports what was a good show into the Ivy League.

This West End run of Tinselworm, which first toured the country over a year ago, will be the last before it finishes in January for good.  Consequently, there are parts that feel a bit dated here like a James Blunt song spoof and a reference to tsunami victims but Bailey clearly isn't keen to drop this material and why not when it can still get such hearty laughs?  The Killers aren't a band you hear much about these days but his dig at their nonsensical lyrics is still worth keeping: "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier?!  You may as well be singing I've got ham but I'm not a hamster."

Bailey, it appears after the first ten minutes, is not very well.  When asking the audience nonchalantly whether any of us happen to work in the barnacle industry, he is taken by surprise when someone shouts out a yes.  "What do you do with the barnacles?," he asks.  "We show them to children" is the answer and produces a spluttering wheeze from Bailey who then curls up under the stage carpet with a mug of Lemsip.  A comic legend performing with a terrible cough is sometimes all you need to restore your faith in their status but luckily he has the material to validate it as well. 

Some straight (i.e. non-musical) jokes are brilliant.  Comparing Beckham playing for LA Galaxy with Hitler turning up to a BNP conference in Tiverton has the audience cackling long after the joke has finished.  He shows off his intellect and wit with a quip on creationism: "Thank God for Darwin."  He also demonstrates his childish, silly side by making pictures of Gordon Brown and Margaret Thatcher talk with some clever visual effects displayed on a big screen.

I find though that it is the musical sequences I enjoy the most.  The keyboard effects with the Star Wars Death March in Scat London Jazz mode and the Pink Panther theme repackaged as our national anthem are inspired. His vision of the cringe-fest that will be the 2012 Olympics is also priceless, with a big Churchill balloon drifting down the Thames to the sound of a Dad's Army/hip hop mash-up to give it that 'edge'.  All demonstrate his remarkable ability to blend music, culture and comedy into one thoroughly entertaining soundbite.

Up until the last fifteen minutes the show has been really good fun but for the legend that Bailey is, it hadn't quite blown me away.  He finishes, we all clap and then the encore begins.  But what an encore it is.  With each return to the stage, Bailey plays a different instrument and type of music.  He starts his famed 'Emo' song on the keyboard, strums a lightning-quick ditty on the Iranian Ude (you might well ask) and ends up with a love ballad on the electric guitar.

Earlier on in the set he voiced his concern about ending up as 'one of those nutters you see on the streets holding two Tescos shopping bags and yelling at the traffic'.  This produced a chuckle first time round but it is when he plays a video montage comprised of literal callback scenes, including him carrying said Tescos bags and shouting at traffic, that the technique can be fully appreciated.  Finally he is abducted by an enormous spaceship that comes down from the ceiling; a nod to his Close Encounters Of The Third Kind doorbell sequence.  The show accelerated from an enjoyable amble with a funny Uncle to a rollercoaster ride with a rock god. Tinselworm might not be the best show Bailey's ever done but there is no doubt that he still knows how to use the tools that made him a legend in the first place.

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Emma