A night of grins and tears of laughter

"Hello NP, can I call you that? Or Nak? What do you prefer?’’ comedian Bill Bailey asked the crowd at his New Plymouth show on Thursday night.

‘‘Naki!’’ the audience exclaimed. Fans snort-laughed the whole way through the almost three hour show and left the TSB Showplace with a big grin on their face and wiping tears of laughter away.

‘‘You’re an eccentric place aren’t you?’’ he said to the hundreds of excited fans.

‘‘You’ve got that wibbley wand thing that almost knocked me off my bike.’’

He often references the ‘idyllic’ lifestyle he believes New Zealanders have and how much better than Britain we are.

‘‘Oh you probably pick cherries from your tree while surfing to work on a dolphin, don’t you?’’

Going to a Bill Bailey show is a mixture of stand-up comedy and Womad. Instruments litter the stage and he balances his time between jokes, songs, and quizzing.

At one point he turns into a DJ playing house music over Teresa May speeches and jumps across the stage.

He tried to stay away from political content declaring he wouldn’t say Donald Trump’s name. Instead referring to him as the manic mandarin and other orange things.

At one point he even brushed his trademark long hair forward to fashion a Trump-like do.

Bailey is an impressive performer and all-round human being.

He’s funny, musically talented, and a wealth of information.

It can actually be quite infuriating to see how talented he is at multiple things when you yourself have no talents.

Throughout the show he tested the crowd on their general knowledge.

No one was quite up to his level of intelligence but it proved for some good laughs, especially when he didn’t quite understand the Kiwi accent.

‘‘Does anyone know how the knock knock joke started?’’ he asked.

‘‘Dad,’’ one audience member yelled.

‘‘Dab?’’

‘‘Dad!’’

‘‘What?’’

‘‘Father.’’

‘‘Farmer?’’

And off Bailey went on a tangent about farmers starting knock knock jokes. The answer was in fact Shakespeare.

It was audience members like this that led Bailey to award New Plymouth his favourite audience ever.