Pommie comedian game for a giggle
TOOT-TOOT chugga-chugga big red car! Bill Bailey has noticed that there’s only two international acts touring Aotearoa during these plague times.
Him, and The Wiggles. ‘‘But that’s all your entertainment needs catered for, surely,’’ says the British comedian from an Auckland hotel. ‘‘The Wiggles cover the youngsters while I cater to the older ones.’’
Bailey, 56, first found fame 20 years ago in British sitcom Black Books. The look of him was the first punchline: limp goatee, pasty skin, wispy mullet draping from his otherwise bald head like a threadbare hair curtain.
He’s leaner now, fitter, the mullet elegantly razored, and has just gone through managed isolation in order to tour his latest stand-up show, En Route
To Normal.
While here,
Bailey also shot new TV panel show,
Patriot Brains, in which comedians from Australia and New Zealand compete to demonstrate the deepest knowledge of their own country.
Did the Australians face gnarly questions about who’s ultimately responsible for Russell Crowe? Did you grill them about that shameful ‘‘underarm incident’’? Were they invited to surmise whether a passing dingo really ‘‘ate my baby!’’?
‘‘No, we avoided the more traditional bones of contention in favour of a very lively and spirited freewheeling debate,’’ he says.
Bailey has been contestant or host on every British comedy panel show worth watching. He has also fronted nature docos galore. Bailey loves woodland critters, and looks like one, too: a down-on-itsluck barn owl, perhaps, or a quizzical water vole.
Actor, writer, comic, TV host, former crematorium organist: to the long list of Bailey’s skills we must now add ‘‘dancer’’. He recently won UK dance show Strictly Come Dancing and was ‘‘completely surprised by my own agility’’, he says.
Bailey reckons comedy is more important than ever in these troubled times; it offers escapism and a sense of community. Almost a year ago to the day he was forced to abandon his last European tour as one country after another closed its borders.
‘‘This is the first time in around 20 years that I feel quite apprehensive about doing my live show,’’ he says. ‘‘I might get overwhelmed. People will say, ‘Bill Bailey was pretty good, but there was an awful lot of weeping in the first half!’ ’’
is on Wednesday, 8.30pm, on TVNZ 2.