Билл Бэйли: от комика до победителя Strictly Come Dancing

British musician and comedian (born 1965)

Mark Robert Bailey (born 13 January 1965), known professionally as Bill Bailey, is an English musician, comedian, actor and television presenter. He is known for his role as Manny in the sitcom Black Books and for his regular appearances on the panel shows Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News for You, and QI, as well as for his stand up comedy work. He plays a variety of musical instruments and incorporates music into his performances. Bailey was listed by The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy in 2003. In 2007, and again in 2010, he was voted the seventh greatest stand up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand Ups. In 2020 Bailey won the 18th series of the televised BBC dancing competition Strictly Come Dancing with his professional partner Oti Mabuse. At 55, he was the oldest winner in the show's history.

Mark Robert Bailey was born on 13 January 1965 in Bath, Somerset, son of Christopher and Madryn Bailey. His father was an NHS general practitioner "who ran a little surgery in the front of the house", and his mother a hospital ward nurse. Until 2018, when he revealed the correct date, his birthday was wrongly recorded by the media as 24 February. He spent most of his childhood in Keynsham, a town between Bath and Bristol. His maternal grandparents lived in an annexe built on the side of the house by his maternal grandfather, who was a stonemason and builder. Two rooms at the front of the family house were for his father's surgery. Bailey was educated at King Edward's School, an independent school in Bath, where he was initially a highly academic pupil. At about the age of 15, he started to become distracted from school work when he realised the thrill of performance as a member of a school band called Behind Closed Doors, which played mostly original work. He is a classically trained musician and was the only pupil at his school to study A level music, which he passed with an A grade. He also states he was good at sport and was the captain of the KES 2nd XI cricket team in 1982, which often surprised his teachers. He would often combine music and sport by leading the singing on the long coach trip back from away rugby fixtures. It was here that he was given the nickname Bill by his music teacher for being able to play the song "Won't You Come Home Bill Bailey" so well on the guitar. He received an Associate Diploma from the London College of Music. He was also made an honorary member of the Society of Crematorium Organists. He performed with a boy band called The Famous Five. Acting roles included a part in a Workers' Revolutionary Party stage production called The Printers with Vanessa Redgrave and Frances de la Tour.

Bailey began touring the country with comedians such as Mark Lamarr. In 1984, he formed a double act, the Rubber Bishops, with Toby Longworth (a fellow former pupil at King Edward's, Bath). It was there that Bailey began developing his own style, mixing in musical parodies with deconstructions of or variations on traditional jokes ("How many amoebas does it take to change a lightbulb? One, no two! No four! No eight "). Longworth left to join the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) in 1989 and was replaced by Martin Stubbs. Stubbs later quit to pursue a more serious career, and in 1994 Bailey performed Rock at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with Sean Lock, a show about an ageing rockstar and his roadie, script edited by comedy writer Jim Miller. It was later serialised for the Mark Radcliffe show on BBC Radio 1. The show's attendances were not impressive and on one occasion the only person in the audience was comedian Dominic Holland. Bailey almost gave up comedy to take up a telesales job. He went solo the next year with the one man show Bill Bailey's Cosmic Jam. The show led to a recording at the Bloomsbury Theatre in London which was broadcast in 1997 on Channel 4 as a one hour special called Bill Bailey Live. It was not until 2005 that this was released on DVD uncut and under its original title. It marked the first time that Bailey had been able to tie together his music and post modern gags with the whimsical rambling style he is now known for. After supporting Donna McPhail in 1995 and winning a Time Out award, he returned to Edinburgh in 1996 with a show that was nominated for the Perrier Comedy Award. Amongst the other nominees was future Black Books co star Dylan Moran, who narrowly beat him in the closest vote in the award's history. Bailey won the Best Live Stand Up award at the British Comedy Awards in 1999.

In 2001, Bailey began touring the globe with Bewilderness. A recording of a performance in Swansea was released on DVD the same year, and the show was broadcast on Channel 4 that Christmas. A modified version of it also proved successful in America, and in 2002 Bailey released a CD of a recording at the WestBeth Theatre in New York City. The show contained his popular music parodies (such as Unisex Chip Shop, a Billy Bragg tribute, which he also performed with Bragg himself at the 2005 Glastonbury Festival), "three men in a pub" jokes (including one in the style of Geoffrey Chaucer) and deconstructions of television themes such as Countdown and The Magic Roundabout. A Bewilderness CD was sold outside gigs, a mixture of studio recordings of songs and monologues Bailey had performed in the past; it was later released in shops as Bill Bailey: The Ultimate Collection Ever! That same year he also presented a Channel 4 countdown, Top Ten Prog Rock. Bailey premiered his show Part Troll at the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. A critical and commercial success, he then transferred it to the West End, where tickets sold out in under 24 hours, and new dates had to be added. He continued to tour it all over the UK as well as in Australia, New Zealand and the US. Bailey expanded on subjects such as the war on Iraq. He also talks extensively about drugs, at one point asking the audience to name different ways of baking cannabis. A DVD was released in 2004.2005 saw the release of his 1995 show Bill Bailey's Cosmic Jam. The two disc set also contained a director's cut of Bewilderness, which featured a routine on Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time not seen in the original version. Bailey performed a show at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe entitled Steampunk. Bailey appeared at the Beautiful Days festival in August 2007. The UK leg of the Tinselworm tour enjoyed three sell out nights at the MEN Arena in Manchester, Europe's largest indoor arena, and culminated with a sell out performance at Wembley Arena. Early in 2007, a petition was started to express fans' wishes to see him cast as a dwarf in The Hobbit films, after his stand up routine mentioned auditioning for Gimli in The Lord of the Rings. The petition reached its goal in the early days of January, and was sent to the producers. It was hoped that as the Tinselworm tour took him to Wellington where the film was in pre production, that he would be able to audition. Dandelion Mind was released on DVD on 22 November 2010. In 2012, his world tour was entitled Qualmpeddler, which toured the UK as well as returning to Australia and New Zealand in August and September 2012. In September and October 2018, Bailey toured his show, The Earl of Whimsy, to seven venues within New Zealand. In December 2021, Bailey started touring his new show, En Route To Normal, to venues in the United Kingdom and Ireland. In 2022 Bailey took the tour to venues in Europe, and in October to Australia.

Bailey plays numerous musical instruments, and incorporates music into his comedy. He has perfect pitch. His stand up routines often feature music
from genres such as jazz, rock (most notably prog rock from the early seventies), drum'n'bass, classical, and even theme songs, usually for comic value. Favourite instruments include the keyboard, guitar, theremin, kazoo and bongos. He also mentioned in an interview that he has achieved Grade 6 Clarinet. He was part of punk band Beergut 100, which he founded in 1995 with comedy writer Jim Miller and also featured Martin Trenaman and Phil Whelans, with Kevin Eldon as lead singer. The band performed at the 2006 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. His musical routines include performing "The Star Spangled Banner" in a minor key and performing the Hokey Cokey in the style of the electronic band Kraftwerk. In October 2008, he performed Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall with the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Anne Dudley. In November 2009 he was a guest on Private Passions, the biographical music discussion programme on BBC Radio 3. In July 2011, Bailey performed at the Sonisphere Festival in Knebworth, headlining the Saturn Stage. He released an album, In Metal, using songs played at Sonisphere, later that year. In June 2014, The Music House for Children announced Bailey would become their patron alongside Sophie Ellis Bextor in celebration of their 20th anniversary.

Bailey lives in the Hammersmith area of London with his wife Kristin, whom he married in 1998, on a whim, in Indonesia. In 2009 he said: "We were travelling around Asia and sailed into a place called Banda, with a beautiful lagoon, and a smoking volcano on one side and a Dutch colonial fort, an old church and remains of a little town on the other. We decided to get married there and then." Their son Dax was born in 2003. and describes himself as an avid fan of Star Trek. Bailey has a carnivorous pitcher plant named after him, Nepenthes x Bill Bailey, created by Borneo Exotics in Sri Lanka. His sporting interests include standup paddleboarding (SUP). He is an active supporter of British Canoeing.

Bailey is a lifelong supporter of the Labour Party and appeared in its fifth party election broadcast of the 2010 general election campaign. In 2015, he endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election, saying, "Corbyn's nomination showed there is a kind of craving for a bit of honest speaking, a bit of principled plain speaking. But I think he is in a bit of a bind. Nuanced debate doesn't cut it in the toxic, political atmosphere. He’s having a fast forward of his own political evolution, having to become 'a politician' – the thing he never was." Bailey is a feminist and a supporter of the Fawcett Society. He is also a prominent advocate of men's issues, most notably raising awareness of prostate cancer and the Men United campaign. He is a patron of International Animal Rescue and has been instrumental in the organisation's campaign to rescue dancing bears. He has also campaigned for the Sumatran Orangutan Society. For his work in environmental conservation, he received an honorary doctorate in conservation and sustainability from the Australian University of the Sunshine Coast in October 2014.

Title Released Notes Bewilderness 2000 The Ultimate Collection Ever! 2005 Re release of Bewilderness with an extra track Das Hokey Kokey 2006 CD Single In Metal 2011 Metal style re recordings of Bill Bailey songs Billy and the Minpins 2017 Roald Dahl Audiobook with The Magic Finger read by Kate Winslet