A scenic route to normal with Bill Bailey

British comedian, Bill Bailey is in a hotel room in Melbourne as the world turns the page on a monumental chapter in history.

“It’s a sad day, undoubtedly… I mean, it’s an end of an era…it’s also, I gotta say, quite surreal to imagine the Queen not being there. I mean, the Queen has been a constant, a presence throughout my entire life, and so not having her there feels like we’re into unchartered territory.”

It is Friday, September 9 and Queen Elizabeth II has just died. Bailey is on the opposite side of the globe, far from home, feeling sightly melancholy. He speaks with reverence and affection for the late Queen, revealing a strong sense of patriotic pride.

“She was the last link, really, with Britain’s past, with the end of empire. She presided over a peaceful transition to independence for so many countries and she still conjures up stirrings of nostalgia and pride in Great Britain and, you know, everything that Britain represented. And the images of her as a young woman – a very beautiful young woman – at the coronation and vestiture, still resonate with people in Britain very, very  powerfully, and I guess around the world.”

At the same time, he’s very aware that not everyone feels the same way, and he’s still considering whether and how to include any discussion about the Queen in his upcoming shows. 

“I guess I just have to be led by instinct on this one.”

Current affairs, politics, social issues, snails – it’s all grist for the mill for a comedian like Bailey. The show he is currently touring, En Route To Normal, was written pre-COVID, when the world was starting to feel like it was shifting off its axis.  

“The initial idea, the thought behind the show was about the strangeness…I mean, at the time of writing we were still with a Trump presidency and there was a kind of, this rise in populism and nativism, authoritarianism in Europe and a sort of strange inversion of what I imagine the kind of calm future was going to be.”

His content was unexpectedly prescient. The pandemic arrived and “normal” disappeared into obscurity, as did any hope of touring. Bailey, who suddenly realised that much of his material was derived from his travel escapades, was forced to journey inwards instead, and trek back through memories, ruminate on childhood, contemplate deeper, personal things. 

What came out of all that introspection was a book called Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to Happiness. It seems like a counter-intuitive thing to write, but for Bailey it was actually quite natural. 

“At a time of great crisis that we were in, it makes you reassess what’s important, what’s truly important to you. It makes you prioritise a little bit, and of course happiness is right up there, so in the end it seems like a perfectly logical thing to do.”

After producing a guide to happiness, Bailey returned to finding a route to normal. “Getting back to normal” was becoming something of a mantra for the general population, but there wasn’t a clear definition nor any concept of what “normal” actually meant. Bailey’s show probably won’t answer that question, but it may just include a madrigal about Anne of Cleves and a musical improvisation on the Skype tone.  

“It’s quite personal accounts of emerging from lockdown, the creative process during lockdown, the kinds of things I was writing – I was sampling birdsong and trying to write music around that…I started to write a musical in cockney style…”

There’s not doubt that Bailey is a very funny man, but that’s not even the half of it; he is a true polymath. A classically trained musician, he plays piano, guitar, ude, mandola, theremin, congas, kazoo, clarinet – practically any instrument you can think of including the Bible (a guitar made from a bible box). He also composes music.

“I think music – I’ve realised over the last few years – it’s actually my great love other than spoken word…There’s more music perhaps in this show than there has been in many, many shows over the past few years. I found a sort of creative spurt in the last year.”

He is also a seasoned and adventurous traveller, philosopher, activist, writer, and champion of the endangered gastropod. 

“There’s a long section in the show where I talk about the disastrous medling in French Polynesian and the almost zoological debacle of trying to save the Polynesian Tree Snail, which I was asked to be part of.”

Comedy is a medium that allows Bailey to talk about all those things in a format that is digestable, accessible, and entertaining; he values his comic skills as much as any other skills he has.  

“At a very basic level, it’s a great thing to be able to make people laugh, I never take that for granted.”

During breaks on his Australian tour, Bailey will try to get some diving, trekking, birding and other activities in. There may be some adventures of the palate, too. He once ate fruit bat, but that wasn’t the weirdest thing he’s ever had. 

“Sago grubs were pretty strange. They don’t look that appetising but they were actually alright.”

Bill Bailey, En Route To Normal

Australian Tour – Sydney dates

State Theatre, 49 Market St, Sydney:   October 26, 27, 28, 29;  November 9, 10

Sydney Coliseum Theatre: 33 Railway St, Rooty Hill,  1 Nov 2022

www.bohmpresents.com