Sinéad watches the master of musical comedy kick off his mammoth West End residency.
Bill Bailey is your embarrassing uncle air-guitaring on the dance floor at a family wedding. He's your tweed-coated lecturer trying to 'get down' with his students at the faculty Christmas party. He's your dad lecturing you on the dangers of drugs even though you know he was a pothead like everyone else back in the '60s.
But despite being all these things rolled into one, we still love Bill Bailey. Because Bill Bailey is still cool, no matter how hard he tries not to be, with his flowing locks and his nerdy enthusiasm for weird and wonderful musical instruments. Don't know what an Oud is? You will do after tonight.
Bailey has just begun a West End run at the beautiful Wyndhams Theatre, which has been extended through the Christmas period and into the new year. Taking my seat (next to Jarvis Cocker no less – that distracted me for a while, I can tell you), it's easy to see the excitement buzzing around the room – even amongst the hardened press types, a Bill Bailey gig is a joyous occasion indeed.
Dandelion Mind is an apt title for the show, as it sums up Bailey's propensity to float on the breeze of his internal wanderings: subjects include religion, football and politics, all captured with Bailey's thesaurus-trumping turn of phrase. Rooney is a “prostitute-bothering turnip” whose face looks like the “closed top of a rucksack”. The Lib Dems are “furry hamsters, hanging on to the ear of the Tory warthog”. Every sentence provides visual imagery that hits the comedy jackpot time and time again.
Much of Bailey's material is standard comic fare, but he delivers it with such wit and intelligence that even the most obvious of targets are given a new lease of life. Moreover, Bailey likes to find the funny in the things already there, like when he plainly reads out the lyrics of the Akon track 'Smack That' in order to get his audience to consider its inherent absurdity; or laughing at the various depictions of Doubting Thomas inspecting Christ's wounds, from the gruesome to the downright camp and ridiculous.
Musical comedy is obviously Bailey's forte, and he's so comfortable moving between his own instruments, either when lampooning adverts for moisturiser or working musical snippets into longer jokes. But Bailey shines the most when subverting his own intelligence, be it on the subject of history, art or music. His prolific musical talent is well known, and he loves turning it on its head – hence this year's 'it has to be seen to be believed' rendition of 'Cars' by Gary Numan on bicycle horns. Even Jarvis got a chuckle out of that one.
Bill Bailey is at Wyndham's Theatre until January 2011.
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