Bill Bailey: Bring a fruit flan – I'll be delighted

Steve Bull, Slade, The Civic: Wolverhampton in a nutshell for most. Not Bill Bailey.

There's only one thing that springs to mind when the comedian thinks of good old Wulfrunia – fruit flans.

"When I first started out with the Rubber Bishops, we did a student gig at Wolverhampton uni and they tempted us there with promises of food and drink backstage, some sort of primitive rider," he recalls.

"When we got there, it was just one really big fruit flan. 'Welcome to Wolverhampton – have a fruit flan'. Of course, we thought that was the most decadent thing ever back then."

That was back in the 1980s, when Bill – along with Rubber Bishops partner-in-crime Toby Longworth – would cram as many gigs as possible into one night and became something of a leading authority on motorway service stations.

Now, at the age of 49 and one of the biggest and most bankable names in comedy, things have (thankfully) changed. Although he was back in sunny Wolverhampton last weekend with his new show Qualmpeddler.

"It's totally different now to how it was when I was in my 20s," Bill tells the Star. "Back then, you could go out to a party and get up in the morning and do whatever you want but I can't do that anymore. You have to stay well – that's the key. You can't get ill on tour, it's impossible to shake off.

"You have to stay healthy and watch what you eat, so no Ginster's pasties and bottles of absinthe. You've got to get out and about too. Being on tour and the cycle of hotel, airport, cab can send you crazy. I have days out and get out in the countryside. You have to feed your brain. I read a lot. I've got a few books on the go. You have to stay mentally sharp because you've got a different show every night, a different audience to work with."

But is he still an expert on service stations?

"No! Avoid at all costs There is too much temptation to buy some God-awful food at some God-awful hour. I plan things much more now. It is less haphazard."

Raised in the West Country, his father was a doctor, his mother a hospital ward sister, Bills first ventured on to the stage with his band The Famous Five. There were four of them.

And it was in between songs that he began slipping in the odd joke, much to the annoyance of the other members but the delight of the crowd.

Stints with an experimental theatre group, as a lounge pianist and keyboard player in a jazz trio followed but it was a John Hegley gig that inspired him to fuse his exceptional musical talent, jokes and theatricality to become a stand-up comedian.

He worked as part of the Rubber Bishops – first with Longworth and then Martin Stubbs – until 1994 before going solo, with Edinburgh rave reviews and Perrier nominations following. By the late 90s, he was a genuine comedy star, with TV shows and successful tours under his belt.

And now, after the monster tours that were Bewilderness, Part Troll and Tinselworm, he's back on the road with Qualmpeddler. As well as being at the Civic last night and this, he will bring the show back to the West Mids with an appearance at Birmingham Symphony Hall on September 22.

As ever, fans can expect off-the-wall humour, musical interludes and silliness on a grand scale. It comes to these shores after a sell-out run in Australia and New Zealand, which produced reviews labelling him a "true 21st century polymath – a unique comedy gift, pitch-perfect musician and talented actor".

"The new show talks about politics, the coalition government, the recession, reality TV and there's a reggae Downton Abbey and an Eastern Europe-inspired Match of the Day theme tune," Bill says.

"I have lots of Eastern European instruments and lutes and mandolins. I also have a set of tuned horns that I'm very proud of. They are things of beauty. The are tuned over two octaves and I attempt to play the 1812 Overture on them. I say attempt because it really is testing the upper realms of my ability."

Lutes? Horns? Mandolins? Just how has Bill come to be in possession of such a unique collection of instruments?

"I've collected them since childhood. People would go on holiday and bring me back a strange looking African drum. Once you've mentioned that you like and collect instruments, people just bring you them. 'Bill, I saw these bongos and thought of you', 'Bill, how about this thumb piano?'.

"I have a huge collection of guitars, Persian instruments, percussion, Medieval instruments, old electronic keyboards. I get terrible grief from my wife if I bring them into the house so I keep them in a lock-up. I have a studio in my office too so I have some of the stuff there."

And it's clearly a passion he's passed on to his nine-year-old son Dax.

"My son plays the piano and the cello and he's got his eye on the car horns too, when he comes to watch the shows he's like 'Dad, can I come on at the end and play the horns?'.

"He's got the sense of humour too. He writes poems and has some pretty hilarious ideas. Even when he was three, four, five he was making up jokes that went off at really strange tangents, I was like 'Aha, there is some family resemblance then'. He's now talking about doing his first stand-up."

For Bill – and Dax – stand-up is about finding the extraordinary in the ordinary. After all, this is the man who branded the Argos catalogue the laminated book of dreams and jazz as sounding like "an armadillo let loose on a keyboard". Don't even get him started on James Blunt.

"Life is remarkably ordinary but it's not just what you see," he says. "You have to look through a prism at the day-to-day world. You can find the surreal in anything, see the oddities. As my old aunt used to say 'There's nowt as queer as folk'.

"You can find the surreal in anything though, like backstage at gigs there's always signs that say things like 'This sink does not work' or 'This door should be kept closed forever and never opened'.

"I was on the train coming into Euston and a voice came over the intercom and said "Good morning and welcome aboard. My name is Debbie and I'll be in charge of the buffet service on this train. There will be no buffet service on this train today." Well why are you here then? Just come along for a free trip have you?

"It's only when you travel that you realise just how managed and observed and tested and safety-conscious Britain is. These signs, these red pointing arrows, they're not in other countries, you know. Overseas, if there's a cliff edge then there's a cliff edge, there's nothing around it. Here, there would be signs and fences and pictures of little men falling over the cliff. It's ridiculous."

It's these doubts and concerns about the modern world that form the basis of Qualmpeddler. But Bill himself has been the subject of many musings – people, it seems, are obsessed with his physical appearance."Reviewers like to put strange things in about me being a wizard or a hobbit. I get those things all the time. They talk about my big forehead, long hair or googly eyes. I suppose it's so they don't just have to keep writing 'He's a funny guy. He tells funny jokes.' But I think most people are used to me by now."

Well, what should we call you?

"How about a Wizard Klingon Hobbit Elf?" he replies instantly.

Away from his life on the road, Bill is never far from our TV screens.

Starting off with BBC 2's Is it Bill Bailey? before the genius award-winning sitcom Black Books, Bill then popped up in Spaced before becoming a regular and then team captain on music quiz Never Mind The Buzzcocks. His subsequent departure after 11 series in 2008 is said to be down to the mind-numbing personalities of some of the pop stars that appeared on the panel (he once said "there's more evil in the charts than in an Al-Qaeda suggestion box").

These days, he's more likely to be on QI or fronting his own wildlife shows, such as Bill Bailey's Birdwatching Bonanza and Baboons With Bill Bailey.

But it is comedy that remains his true passion and one he is extremely dedicated to – there's more than 70 shows on the Qualmpeddler tour.

He leaves us with a message to his fans.

"Just come along to one of the shows and have a laugh. Bring a fruit flan if you're in Wolverhampton, I'll be delighted."

And there you have it. Bill Bailey: flan lover, horn player, Wizard Klingon Hobbit Elf.

By Elizabeth Joyce

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