WORST of TIMES

THE WORST PART OF BEING ON STRICTLY

We didn’t have an audience so it was very difficult because there was no atmosphere. I’m so used to performing to an audience and getting the energy from a crowd, but some weeks it was hard to grasp the sense of occasion without that crowd being there. We had no idea of how this was being perceived by the public at large because we never went out. We would dance, do the show and go home. But there was an enormous audience watching at home because people couldn’t go out on a Saturday night, so this provided a bit of sparkly sequined escapism.

MY WORST-EVER GIG

I did this one gig when I was just starting out as a stand-up, where I had 20 minutes of material – or so I thought – and I went on and did all of the material in the first five minutes, and that was it. The whole lot. It was a disaster, so I tried to make up something, and then I basically did the same gig another three times. That was a chastening moment. It taught me a valuable lesson that you have to prepare.

THE WORST THING ABOUT MY JOB

There are huge rewards to be gained from it – you can be very successful and you can have huge highs – but it’s a reckless and foolhardy profession in some ways. You never know what’s around the corner – like the pandemic. It has completely devastated live comedy – as with all the live arts – because there’s no substitute for it. I tried doing gigs on Zoom but it didn’t work. With comedy, there’s something you create – you and the audience together – that’s unique. It’s a shared experience, a communal sense of “we created this gig”. You can’t get that when you’re looking at a phone screen.

MY WORST CELEBRITY ENCOUNTER

A few years ago I met Paul McCartney. I was a huge fan and I thought, I can’t just say: “You’re really great”. He’s in the Beatles, for God’s sake. So I prepared this speech for him which was… a bit pretentious. I thought I’d say: “Your songs are more than songs – they’re actually woven into a collective memory. So if you combine all of those memories in one place, you have this incredibly rich, almost a cultural tapestry borne out of all of these memories.” And when you say it like that, you think that’s a lovely thing. Of course it all went totally wrong because I was nervous and I didn’t expect him to come over and say hello and shake my hand. That completely threw me and put me on the back foot, so I’m launching into this speech: “Paul McCartney, your songs, like, you know, with all the tapestry and that…” And it all just went out the window. It turned into absolute gibberish.

THE WORST MISTAKE I’VE EVER MADE

Not having the confidence to launch into a comedy career earlier than I did. I did my first gig when I was 18 and it was great fun and I should have just kept doing that – instead I travelled and did jobs in theatre and as an actor. I think it was probably down to confidence and thinking that this wasn’t a proper career. I was doing the odd gig now and again, but it wasn’t really until 10 years later that I started to really take it seriously.

THE ABSOLUTE WORST...

Bad manners really drive me up the wall. In restaurants when someone snaps their fingers at the waiter, it gets my goat. I just want to go over there and say, “Excuse me!” Or people chucking litter out of a car window in the road. I’ve actually picked up a crisp bag and followed someone up the road with it and said, “Excuse me, you’ve dropped this.” They were so shocked they just took it! They must have thought I was a nutter.

Bill Bailey will perform Summer Larks at the Royal Opera House from August 2-8 and appears in Cabaret All Stars at London’s Proud Embankment throughout August and September