Comedian Bill Bailey delves into disaster to find rich vein of comedy gold
BRITISH comedy stalwart Bill Bailey returns with new show, Larks in Transit — detailing mishaps and misadventures from abroad.
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NEVER underestimate a comedian. While you’re laughing at his jokes, he’s busy watching you — and you’re giving a lot away.
Bill Bailey has mastered this trick of quiet observation. A stalwart of British comedy, Bailey has long used his wry, detailed humour to highlight the small absurdities of life.
“I think comedy is quite mercurial, it gets into lots of areas of people’s lives and it lets you know how people tick, what people think about or talk about in a country or a culture and what makes them laugh. So, you have almost a speeded up learning process,” he said.
The comedian has spent years absorbing these cultures as he travels around the globe — ask him for his opinion about Soviet humour, politics in Prague or the fate of US democracy and chances are it will be layered with both wit and truth.
These experiences form the basis of his newest show Larks in Transit, a culmination of the mishaps and waylaid adventures which have plagued Bailey his whole life.
While unlucky tendencies might be a burden for many, for Bailey they are a rich ground to pluck comedy from.
“You hope everything goes fine but inevitably it doesn’t,” Bailey said.
“It’s one of the things of comedy even when things are going terribly badly, like I was on this dog-sledding trip with my dad and elderly in-laws and one of them had disappeared into the night and my dad was buried in the snow drift and I thought, ‘oh this is awful’, it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened — but there’s another little voice in your head going ‘I think I might get 10 minutes out of this’,” he said.
While he stops short of hoping everything will go to hell in a handbasket, “you do have to be alive to those opportunities”.
Fans of Bailey’s character Manny in the cult series Black Books will be familiar with his gently probing brand of comedy.
While his somewhat hapless alter ego often appears bewildered by life, the undeniable and often painfully observed humour in the sitcom comes from watching very, very closely.
“You can’t discount any experience small or large — just the minutiae sometimes of daily life can be quite productive and fruitful in terms of stand-up and observation,” Bailey said.
The truth in comedy comes from unpicking “something that’s almost daily, normal, dull but actually you reveal it’s absurdities”, he said.
Bill Bailey will be performing at the State Theatre on Wednesday, November 30.
Details and bookings at statetheatre.com.au.
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