Bill Bailey Quotes

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London is a great place to be over Christmas.

I used to live on a houseboat near Hammersmith Bridge.

As a young man, the temptation was to drink the minibar dry. I did all that - now I prefer to get outdoors.

I discovered I'm 60 per cent Viking. Well, more Danish, I suppose. I'm also two-and-a-half per cent Neanderthal.

My earliest memory is feeling soil between my fingers when I was around three years old.

I grew up in a little town between Bath and Bristol with my parents and grandparents in the same house. It was rural and idyllic.

People perceive me as this kind of hippy intellectual, reflecting and communing with nature or in a pyramid somewhere chanting. Really, no. I love speed, fast things, quad and road bikes, and bombing down a mountain.

Fatherhood made everything more straightforward. I was relieved that no longer did I have to agonise over what meaning I had in my life.

If you really push yourself you can perhaps achieve something you didn't think you could.

Comedy can be quite all consuming at times, and if you're not careful you end up doing a tour, then a DVD, then another tour then a DVD. Suddenly the years have just flown by.

Having a break from comedy is quite good.

The point with me is that it's always been, even with the stand-up, that the music has to be right. You have to take it seriously. You have to try and play it as faithfully as possible. That way it helps the comedy. Rather than just playing it in a silly way.

I'm an omnivore, although I am trying to eat less meat. I went vegetarian for about two years, then I suddenly got a craving one morning and that was it.

The two worst enemies of comedy are lack of sleep and not having had a decent meal.

I am pretty laid-back as a parent, but I do like a lot of activity. So I am constantly suggesting things to do that involve some physical activity: cycling, mountain biking and paddleboarding.

I love to watch birds and wildlife.

I get a lot of nutters in my audiences.

The Lib Dems are such terrible ditherers.

As a comedian and satirist you have to be neutral, because everyone's fair game. Once you show bias, you lose that.

Somehow the Tories have deflected the righteous anger at the bankers who we bailed out. The Tories manage to take that outrage and direct it at benefit claimants. It's genius. Evil genius.

My comedy comes from the actual music itself - they're observational musical gags. I could take the music away and it would just be some words.

I think people are quite refreshed with politicians who aren't concerned with what Arctic Monkeys track they like, but with the day-to-day, dull business of politics.

I have sold stuff door-to-door, but not doors.

There is something very poignant about plastic bags. These lonely plastic bags that gradually disintegrate.

When I was 15, I went to see the Stranglers at Bath Pavilion. I saw Jean-Jacques Burnel take off his bass and whack a skinhead over the head with it because he gave a Nazi salute. I thought: 'This is brilliant!'

In my twenties, I floated around for years, doing the odd theatre job but mainly leading a hedonistic lifestyle, getting intoxicated in plenty of different ways in plenty of different places.

As I get older, I have a very strong urge to know about stuff. I want to learn the names of trees and birds; that's the sort of knowledge I want to pass on to my son.

At yoga you get some sense of spiritual space so that people don't intrude. You can go there and close your eyes and no one will talk to you. People are too worried about not fainting to bother with some bloke who was on the telly.

Comedy should be fluid. It should be both Left and Right wing.

Comedy is an indoors thing, so I take every opportunity to go outside. A lot of that involves finding places that are remote, or places where you can look at birds, or do mountain biking or paddle boarding or walking.

One of the things I do really appreciate is that my audiences tend to be a wide range of ages and backgrounds, and I ascribe that to putting in the hours.

If I'm a national treasure, does that mean I'm like the Elgin Marbles and will get repatriated at some point?

The worst thing is when people try and take pictures surreptitiously. I always say, 'Look, you can ask me for a photograph. You will get a much better one than just the side of my face.' Sometimes they just run off. They can't cope.

All kinds of things have gone into my shows - cajun and rock bands, Bollywood, Kraftwerk tributes, effects and so on. As long as it services the comedy, everything is up for grabs.

I realised that the 'future' is different to how I imagined it. When I was a kid I thought it would be a bright, shiny Tomorrow's World. It isn't.

In a way, I wish none of it had ever happened - Facebook, Twitter - if it had never happened the world would have just carried on serenely. It's utterly redundant and yet we all have to be involved in it somehow.

My grandparents lived with us. And I remember watching 'Doctor Who' with my granddad on his new telly. These were the days before remote controls but my granddad, being quite a resourceful sort of chap, had fashioned his own remote control - which was a length of bamboo pole with a bit of cork that he'd glued on the end.

Paddle boarding: it's the closest you get to walking on water.

Normally, with stand-up, it's quite solitary, you write the material on your own, you perform it on your own, it's all very much on you. Your own thoughts. You have to sort of modulate your own performance.

For me, audio books was about when you can't actually physically get hold of a book, like when you're driving. It's a fantastic companion on a long journey.

A lot of the time, you need to find the right home for ideas. You know, sometimes you think 'oh this'd be a sitcom, oh, no it wouldn't, it'd be a drama, or an educational thing, or a doco or something.' I've got loads of ideas and you just have to keep sending them and pitching them.

You spend a lot more time on your own as an only child. And there's space to allow your imagination to take flight.

At school, I was bored with the teachers, and there were moments where I felt they were singling me out.

I don't think any comic could say there isn't a bit of them that doesn't want to show off.

You have to have a thick skin, yes. If you're going to do something as foolhardy as standup, you've got to be able to take it on the chin if someone has a go at you.

I quite like confounding people's expectations.

I think that generally there's a pressure to live the best life you can.

I'm one for new things: I like new technology, I like new music, I'm not entrenched in some view of what culture should be. I like the fact that it's constantly changing and that language is changing, that behaviour changes.

I think happiness really happens when you least expect it: it's when you're not really thinking about it, when you're not trying to achieve it, when you're not trying to get the perfect holiday, the perfect life, the perfect body, the perfect existence.

People are obsessed by how I look.

Twenty-two years I've been doing this comedy lark, so it's been like a meteoric rise to fame... if the meteor was being dragged by an arthritic donkey across a ploughed field, in northern Poland.

If you're going to perform, you're going to attract criticism. You can't please everyone all the time. You don't know how things are going to come out. But that's part of the fun of it, the adventure of doing any kind of art.

I didn't have any brothers or sisters, so I did a lot of stuff where I entertained myself playing games, reading a lot, a lot of fantasy novel stuff.

I think gaming has influenced popular culture in a huge way. It's worked its way into novels, and blockbuster movies.

When you're a birder, you have all sorts of reference books, and you know about migratory patterns and technical stuff. Most people just look out the window, and say 'is that a pigeon?'

Films and gaming are blurring together, and it makes for brilliant popcorn entertainment.

I play the piano and that's how I learned about music. I then taught myself the guitar, drums, percussion and various other things, such as the bazooka, the mandolin, the Theremin, the alpine horn, the didgeridoo.

The devil's in the detail and sometimes if you're thinking too big, you can miss the detail.

In 1994 I was doing a two-hander with Sean Lock in Edinburgh and there were more people in the cast than the audience. It was pretty grim, quite a chastening experience.

I've always been reasonably upbeat about most things.

I've always been envious of certainty, of people who always seemed to have a plan for their lives.

I hate getting ill, it irritates me so I try to stay reasonably healthy.

I've started doing Bikram yoga. You're in a boiling hot room, bending over pretending to be a locust, you can't do that at the gym.

I used to like beer, but it makes me feel slightly queasy.

I said to my wife that if I had enough money I'd have my arms lengthened. Slightly longer arms would be great.

I don't like labels. I have always fought against that as a stand-up.

There was something about stand-up that music wouldn't give me, which was my love of the spoken word and the mercurial tendency of language to respond to what happens to you.

My grandparents would have big, long arguments that were entertaining and that's where I first noticed, and was thrilled by, political discourse.

It's been Bill for so long people think my name is William, but it's not, it's Mark.

We live in the age of entitlement, as opposed to enlightenment.

If you become famous but haven't actually achieved anything, then your life has no real meaning - unless you're spectacularly shallow.

I'm really grateful for the fact that I have full artistic control over my career. I can choose what film or TV projects I'm interested in doing.

Great music and great artists create their own music and look and are not manufactured.

Some musicians are a bit humourless about their art: they lose sight of the fact that as well as exercising their muse, they're there to entertain.

Now, with the success of musical comedy like the Mighty Boosh, Flight of the Conchords and Bo Burnham, I feel vindicated.

I had this plan that David Byrne was going to come through the West Country one day, think, 'Who's that guy?' and ask me to go on tour with them.

I was always part of the end-of-term review at school. We would mercilessly mock any slight weakness in the teachers.

When you say 'Hello Wembley!' you're not just saying hello to a large shed. You're saying, 'Hello, I'm following all the greats that have played here before.'

I was asked to perform at the Olympics Opening Ceremony. But I was up a tree in Borneo filming a documentary about Alfred Russel Wallace! So it couldn't be done.

When the sun shines in Britain there's no finer place on Earth.

I have anti-establishment hair.

My grandfather had strong opinions. He was an argumentative character and quite staunchly socialist.

My mother was a classic matriarchal figure. She'd sing round the house and always had music on.

I was an only child but I never longed for a sibling. It just didn't occur to me.

Family helps you make clearer choices about things. Your priorities become clearer. Your obligations become clearer, and that is something I welcome.

We are almost in a time beyond jokes, beyond satire. When the Trump era is called the 'post-truth' period, then this is the greatest joke of all, albeit quite depressing.

Doing comedy around the world is a way of finding out how people tick.

I did a show in this tiny town called Longyearbyen. We went snowmobiling around Svalbard and saw Arctic foxes, snow bunting, polar bear footprints and almost got lost in a blizzard.

Melbourne has great eateries and you can go birdwatching.

The Dutch do have a slightly odd sense of humour.

There was an existential moment - I don't know if I want to call it crisis - when I turned 50 and I felt 'this is interesting; how did this happen?' It affected me in a way I wasn't expecting. It made me pause for reflection.

I prefer the simple things and I love walking in the countryside, or going camping... but simplicity is hard. It's easier to over-complicate things.

Riding a horse and using a phone camera is tricky but if you don't take pictures or record the moment, you lose it. You want to have a record of it.

I hate all those celebrity sculptures like Tussauds, where everyone is dressed in spangly suits and they are all smiling.

I met Amy Winehouse a few times and she was always funny, charming and self-deprecating - just a delight to be around.

I was asked to do an ad campaign for a supermarket once. I was baffled. It's strange when you realise your popularity or reputation is a marketable commodity; it's a stock, a currency.

When I was in Cardiff, playing with the National Orchestra of Wales, they said they get letters from people complaining if they're smiling during the concert. Nuts, isn't it? As if you have to respect the solemnity of the music by not smiling. Music is this joyful thing that enriches our lives, and you're not supposed to smile?

It's a lovely moment when everyone's part of something greater than the sum of its parts. That encapsulates what a comedy gig should be, with the comic as the lightning rod, the Norse mischief god, getting the audience to do something they wouldn't necessarily do.

But being in 'Doctor Who' is a dream come true. I've been a fan since I can remember watching TV.

You have to go to Scotland at all times of the year - in order to appreciate the times when the sun does come out.

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