It was a long time waiting for Bill Bailey, but his ninety minute set, commencing at 9pm, was fantastic.
By Miles Salter
Photos courtesy of Cuffe and Taylor/The Piece Hall
The two support acts, Tom Toal and The Jennifer Ewan Band, were uneven openers. Toal did his best to rev up the audience, but sexual jokes were not appropriate for the younger audience members – he swerved away from an adult joke after realising a ten-year-old was in the audience. The Jennifer Ewan Band played middle of the road folk music in an acoustic band setting, but the songs were tame and rather bland.
Bill Bailey, though, is a dream performer. Decades of stand up have turned him into a comedian with panache and intelligence – the current tour is called Thoughifier. Unlike other stand ups, he doesn’t swear much, avoids toilet humour or sexual innuendo, and doesn’t take the mick out of audience members as many do – although the moment he got musically challenged members of the front row to join in with a version of Phil Collins’ In The Air Tonight, using electronic percussion instruments, was a highlight.
Bailey starts by acknowledging his change in appearance – his hair is mostly gone now, leaving some white traces. He quotes a couple of comments made about this. One is that Bailey resembles ‘a bad AI version of Peter Gabriel’s brother’. He shares his fears about climate change and a world in trouble, before heading into a potpourri of humour. His riff on why people from the west country don’t voice adverts for technology is side-splitting, and much of the set is dotted with daft tunes. ‘This is a song about regret in crabs,’ he says. ‘You won’t get this at a Taylor Swift concert.’ There are moments of showbiz gossip – he recalls meeting Gwyneth Paltrow once before a bad tempered exchanges with Chris Martin set in. ‘I was three sheets to the wind,’ says Bailey. ‘Except it was more like a laundry and a hurricane.’
Bailey’s personality is intellectual professor meets big kid. In Bailey’s world, everything is curious, everything is interesting and worthy of notice. Clutching a comedic pipe, he discusses Nuclear Physics with a man in the audience and, later, provides a mini lecture on Pachelbel’s Canon and it’s influence on contemporary music. He wonders what domestic life would be like if set to heavy metal music. He provides a Eurovision Song Contest entry in French with ludicrous song subtitles on the screen behind him. He plays a Metallica song using car horns. Bailey’s house must be full of gadgets, all to be enjoyed, played with, delved into.
People go to gigs for a lift, a little escape. And Bailey knows how to provide that lift – it’s wonderful, relatable escapism. His comedy is life-affirming. I laughed for ninety minutes. And for that brief window, a darkening world, beset by calamitous wars and climate change, receded into the background.
Tom Toal, The Jennifer Ewan Band and Billy Bailey performed at Scarborough Open Air Theatre on Friday 2 August 2024.