A medieval roadie. The Gandalf of gags. Bill Bailey has probably heard every description. Just because he is slightly portly, hairy and retains a faint West Country accent, he seems to be pigeonholed as a Tolkien-fixated dropout. Which is harsh, because the co-star of the sitcom Black Books has now reached the stand-up premier league.
Bailey's speciality is musical comedy. Hardly unique in a world of Otis Lee Crenshaw, Rainer Hersch and Brian Appleton, but nobody does it better. The music - mainly keyboard and guitar - is in perfect harmony with the verbals, whether obvious daft conceits, such as doing The Wurzels covering Chris De Burgh, or revealing the missing section of the Magic Roundabout theme, where Zebedee turns out to be a spring-driven despot. References in passing to Stephen Hawking and Jane Austen suggest a well-read brain at work.
Sometimes, though, the simple jokes are best and this wizard has plenty. A favourite recreation is sticking four chunky Kit-Kats together and imagining he is a pixie eating a normal Kit-Kat, revealing a fondness for whimsy.
