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Bill Bailey: The man, the musician, the comic, the troll, the legend

20 years on from taking the Time Out Comedy Award

Bookish appeal

After a few years Longworth’s replacement, Martin Stubbs, opted for a more straightforward career and Bailey’s momentum again seemed to be slipping. He was then, however, offered the chance to perform the play Rock, a music-related comedy, with Sean Lock.

Despite getting some good critical notices at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the crowds still stayed away – one night the crowd were outnumbered by the performers since the audience consisted of a single punter. Still, the play – about a fading rock star and his roadie – would eventually have its day being later successfully serialised for Radio One’s Mark Radcliffe Show.

After being seriously tempted to give it all up and just make a quiet living from telesales, Bailey opted to go for broke instead, launching a one-man solo show the very next year. Bill Bailey’s Cosmic Jam was a hit, showcasing his comedy brilliantly as he came on like everyone’s favourite (ex) stoner.

Here was a man who could ramble amusingly and yet also do skilful, sometimes surreal, lampoons of everything from modern manners to Chas’n’Dave type Cockney pop singalongs ...

Bill Bailey - Cockney Rock

He deservedly won the 1995 Time Out Comedy Award and later had the show recorded on film at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre. It was then broadcast nationwide by Channel 4 the next year as part of the station’s Bill Bailey Live programme, a much-trailed one hour special.

Despite the fact that its unkempt long-haired star looked, in the words of one hack, “like a Druid on the dole”, the Bill Bailey Live show garnered some pretty good press reviews and, at the age of 32, the man himself had finally arrived.

After narrowly losing the Perrier Comedy Award to one Dylan Moran, his Is It Bill Bailey? series began broadcasting on the BBC in 1998 – the same year he married his wife Kristin. It was also in 1998 that his one-time rival Dylan Moran got in contact over a possible TV sitcom concerning a crumbling but independent London bookshop.

Bill Bailey - Black Books

Black Books cast Tamsin Greig, Dylan Moran and Bill Bailey

The chain-smoking, hard-drinking Moran was to naturally play the hung-over, dissolute boss Bernard Black, with Bailey being his friendly, vulnerable assistant Manny. Throw in Tamsin Grieg as Fran, the tense, neurotic shopgirl-next-door, and you have all the ingredients for the BAFTA award-winning Black Books, a Channel 4 show which ran for three series before an increasingly unhappy Moran pulled the plug.

Next page: Owls of laughter

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