BEARDS, BIRDS AND BILLIANCE
BILL BAILEY CAME UP WITH THE TITLE OF HIS NEW SHOW BEFORE WE’D EVEN HEARD OF COVID. ASHLEY DAVIES DELVES DEEPER
BILL Bailey got his hair stuck in an underground train door about 12 years ago and, to avoid being scalped, had to stand still until the next stop. It was then that he seriously considered having it cut, but his son, who was about seven at the time, talked him out of it, insisting it was a cool look. But the little boy did suggest that when he turned 18, perhaps his dad could shave it off so he could wear it as a fake beard.
That hair has been a mainstay of the multi-talented comedian’s look for decades. And that’s whether he’s being witty and knowledgeable on Never Mind The Buzzcocks; blowing everyone’s minds on Strictly Come Dancing, which he famously won last year; inhabiting the gloriously innocent character of Manny in Black Books; fronting countless nature documentaries or performing his acclaimed comedy show.
He’s about to begin a new stage show called En Route To
Normal, which he named even before the pandemic began; before he was aware of just how abnormal life would become. He’d been contemplating the strangeness of the
Trump era, the rise of nationalism and the growing divisions within Britain, Europe and further afield.
‘As well as all that, the planet was on fire, experiencing extreme weather,’ he recalls. ‘We were heading for a strange, uncharted bit of our lives on Earth and I was wondering, “What is normal?” It didn’t seem to be something I could identify any more.’
Just as he was getting his head around it all, we were plunged into a pandemic, which gave the title even greater resonance. ‘Perhaps we won’t ever return to what we thought was normal, and maybe that’s not even a bad thing,’ he suggests. Part of this new show will involve Bill looking back at some of the most chaotic moments in history, and examining how society dealt with enormous upheavals. ‘In times of strife we like to talk about the old days,’ he explains. ‘Nostalgia is a comforting thing. We like to talk about how great the old days were but, actually, they probably weren’t that great,
really. Back then we were probably saying, “Well, we’ll get back to normal sooner or later,” but of course that never happens.’
Using the Black Death as an example, he says: ‘It’s depressingly similar in terms of how it manifested itself in Europe. When the virus first turned up, the Italians were warning the British about it in the 1340s. And Britain was like, “Nah, it’s just an Italian thing – we’ll be fine.” So, I’ll be talking about that sort of thing: trying to understand the strangeness, and the way our lives are changing and have changed through the prism of the past.’
There will, of course, be music. It wouldn’t be a Bill Bailey show without it. In the past he’s created brilliantly hilarious moments, including pimping up the BBC News pips, demonstrating how much better songs feel when they’re performed to sound like death metal, and singing the Hokey Cokey in the style of Kraftwerk.
But this show will incorporate his deep love of the natural world. In the early days of the pandemic, he noticed he was able to hear a lot more birdsong than normal, and finches and tits, for example, were no longer being drowned out by louder birds like blackbirds, wrens and robins. He started recording them, then focused on the noises made by wrens.
‘It’s an amazing sound, a series of metallic whirrs and clicks and song,’ he says. ‘It sounds almost like a natural representation of electronic music, so I decided to set it to music. I messed around with different beats and found a dubstep beat that matched it perfectly, and found myself in my studio setting wren sounds to dubstep. That seemed to me to represent the sound of this era.’ This led him to research classical composers who’d been inspired by birdsong, and found a rich seam of inspiration, such as work by Bruckner that has parts incorporating the calls of the great tit and the goldfinch.
‘It occurred to me that what we were hearing was what the world sounded like 130-odd years ago when there was less ambient sound. It made perfect sense that a composer would have heard this. And finding connection with modern life and the past can provide comfort.’
It’ll come as no surprise that Bill’s home is filled with animals (at the moment it’s dogs, ducks and chickens), as well as loads of musical instruments, and he spent some of his lockdown time perfecting the mandola. But are there any instruments he’s been unable to master?
His neighbours know the answer to that, when last Christmas, the Bailey household had a competition to see who could get the best sound out of his bagpipes. ‘A couple of people complained: “Stop playing the bloody bagpipes. You’re ruining our Christmas!”’ he recalls. ‘I’ve been struggling with them for a while. I will persevere, though. I might take them with me on a long walk, and sit under a tree.’ And what about Bill’s hair? Well, his son turns 18 next month, so if you see Bill without his trademark wispy bit at the back, chances are that familial agreement has been honoured.
Bill Bailey’s En Route To Normal starts at Plymouth Pavilions on Dec 12, and touring, billbailey.co.uk