"ANNOUNCER:" "Good evening, people of London!" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "Let the qualms commence." "Radiation, population... pollution." "Greek holidays, whistle-blowers... evil." "Evil, evil, double evil, cleansing fire." "Please welcome to the stage, peddler of qualms, Bill Bailey!" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "Whoa!" "Yes, so, Hammersmith, hello!" "AUDIENCE:" "Hello!" "Yes, you look upon me, "Oh, it's that bloke, innit," ""off 'Never Mind the Black Books QI Have I Got For You.'"" "Yeah, and you'd be right." "I used to do a pop quiz called Never Mind the Buzzcocks." "Yeah, thank you very much, don't do it any more, because..." "Well, dignity took a stand and I couldn't stand there humming the introduction to Toxic by Britney Spears to some gormless indie halfwit, so..." "You know, that's what happened." "One night I was on the show with Fearne Cotton and I thought to myself..." ""I've got grade-6 clarinet, I'm better than this."" "Good point, Bill, well made." "You're all London, are you?" "Don't..." "That's a rhetorical, you didn't have to answer that." "That's a question I've saved for a show I've pitched to the BBC," "Rhetorical Question Time." "Good evening, welcome to Rhetorical Question Time..." "Or is it?" "They didn't go with it, no." "They didn't go with Arab Spring Watch either, so..." "(CHUCKLES)" "Okay. (CHUCKLES)" "So I am Bill Bailey." "I'm not just some kind of flibbertigibbet, oh, no." "I've been immortalised in plant form." "Yeah." "You're thinking, "What, was it a rose, maybe, Bill, a begonia," ""a variegated milk thistle perhaps," ""maybe even some sort of hallucinogenic mushroom?"" "But no." "I'll show you what it was." "It was this." "This!" "Yes." "A Sumatran carnivorous pitcher plant, yes." "This is Nepenthes Bill Bailey." "Look upon it and tremble." "That's enough of that." "(AUDIENCE CHUCKLES)" "So, yeah, I'm Bill Bailey and I grew up in the west of England," " the West Country..." " (AUDIENCE MEMBERS CHEER)" "Oh, right, you from the West Country?" "Oh, what part?" "Oh, brilliant." "Ah, well..." "Time's a-wastin'." "(LAUGHING)" "I don't have the accent any more because, uh..." "well, I wanted to get on in life really." " Now I live here in West London, yes!" " (AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "That's it, long-time resident, yeah." "(WHISTLES) You may join in, shepherds, that's good." "Uh..." "I live in Hammersmith and I've started to realise" "I'm talking a little bit" "(IN LONDON 'YOUTH' ACCENT) with the West London swagger, like that." "I'm talking a little bit like that." "I've noticed my mannerisms have started to, like, become the West London mannerisms when you're talking." "You wind forward the cotton reel and then you wind it back like that." "Yeah, that's what I was saying, yeah." "No, is that what you were saying?" "That's exactly what I was saying." "(IN NORMAL VOICE) Everyone speaks like that in West London." "Even elderly spinsters talk like that." "There's these two old dears in my street discussing their roses." "And one of them went," "(IN WEST LONDON ACCENT) "These aphids, yeah?" ""These aphids is gettin' well on my tits, yeah."" "And one of them goes, "Is it?"" "(IN NORMAL VOICE) Yeah." "A lot of the young people are starting to imitate the rappers and their... their gestures and the way they talk and the fact that a lot of rappers, they point to the side when they're making a point." "(IN WEST LONDON ACCENT) "I'm going up Westfield later on, yeah, get some threads..." ""Up the Topshop looking fresh like that."" "(CHUCKLES)" "Pointing to the side." "And these people are often getting the wrong cheese in delis, right?" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "(IN WEST LONDON ACCENT) "Yeah, yeah, I'll have some of that, yeah." ""No, no, man, not the Wensleydale low-fat with chive!" ""I ain't no batty-man." ""I want Taleggio, the cheese of a player, man." ""I'm going to have to stand a little bit to the side." ""I'll have some of that, yeah."" "(IN NORMAL VOICE) What kind of a strange country is this?" "A strange internet-obsessed, maybe attention-deficit country, an instant-gratification country." "I was in a restaurant the other day and on the menu, "soup of the moment", right?" "I was like, "Oh, so what is it?"" "He went, "Minestrone." "I'll have some of that."" ""No, it's French onion." "Come on!" I went..." ""Your window of soup opportunity is too narrow."" "And I looked round, it wasn't a restaurant any more, I was in Poundland." "And I'd had one of me turns, you know, so I had to go home and relax." "So what I did was I googled "tangents", and I was off." "Yeah?" "Yeah..." "And what kind of strange government is this, as well, this coalition, this consolation prize of a government which nobody knows quite what it is." "It's like being ruled by a black hole, a question mark and a parsnip." "Nobody really knows what it is." "This ideological mismatch between the Tories and Lib Dems, like a waxjacket and Jesus sandals kind of arrangement." "Yeah." "(CHUCKLES)" "It was a Faustian pact by the Lib Dems, wasn't it?" "Because there's going to be no Lib Dems left at the next election." "It's just going to be a bunch of flowers sellotaped to a railing." "You know, and what of Nick Clegg?" "What of the tiny Clegg?" "What's that, Cleggy?" "What's that, Cleggy?" "(MAKES CHIRPING NOISES)" "You don't think people are taking you seriously?" "(MAKES CHIRPING NOISES)" "And this depiction of you isn't exactly helping?" "(MAKES CHIRPING NOISES)" " (CHUCKLES) Well, I'm so sorry." " (MAKES SQUISHED CHIRP)" "Well... (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "Yeah, and what of the others?" "What of the other colossi that rule over us?" "Well, there's Miliband, the strange pale panda-faced ghoul who I should like, but it's very hard to like someone who you forget everything they say a nanosecond after they've said it." "(SPEAKS GIBBERISH) What?" "Eh?" "It's like his words are sucked back into his mouth like a dementor." "(SPEAKS GIBBERISH) (MAKES SUCKING NOISE)" "What?" "What did he say?" "(SPEAKS GIBBERISH) Uh?" "He leaves no trace." "He's like a strand of cress in a vindaloo." "Huh?" "(SMACKING LIPS)" "No, nothing!" "(SMACKING LIPS)" "Nothing of any consequence." "He's like a key change at a One Direction concert." "Yeah?" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "He doesn't look like someone about to seize the reins of power, does he?" "He looks like a bloke who's just caught the bouquet at a funeral." "Yeah?" "And what of the strange Cameron android, this eerie ageless thing?" "Doesn't seem to be getting any older." "Maybe there's a portrait of him in an attic getting horribly disfigured, I don't know." "He's got this weird smooth face, he's like a Botoxed walnut." "You know?" "He's just... like a sand-blasted goblin or some kind of weird weasel that's been held against a lathe for too long." "You know, just..." "What is he?" "You know..." "He's got a face like a magic pebble." "Like if you rubbed it, glitter would come out of his ears." "He's got a sort of strange ethereal quality." "I can't pin him down." "He has this kind of, this sort of odd pantomime-villain-esque air to him." "Every time I see him near a hospital, I expect to hear this music... (PLAYING SUSPENSEFUL PIANO MUSIC)" "(LAUGHING MANICALLY)" "We don't need these AE departments, people cluttering up the place bleeding." "Good Lord!" "Put some flats up." "It's well known that blood congeals in the presence of luxury." "(LAUGHING MANICALLY)" "This spare-room tax, that's a bit harsh, taxing something you don't use that often, like big spoons." "Or your initiative, or something." "(CHUCKLES)" "But what this has done is driven people to UKIP, hasn't it?" "The Tory coalition, they've managed to terrify Middle England into thinking that zombie Bulgarian benefit scroungers are coming to eat their friends." "And UKIP, they're my favourite party, they're hilarious." "They're just four sozzled berks from the golf club." ""Hello, we're UKIP." (LAUGHS GOOFILY)" ""Policy?" "Oh, really, do we have to?" ""On, okay." ""Smoking in hospitals, electrified fence at Dover," ""no women in the bar area, there we go!" (LAUGHS)" "That was easy." "No more Thatcher. (SIGHS) Oh, never mind." "Uh... 10 million quid on that funeral, that was a bit lame, wasn't it?" "For 10 million quid, I want to lie in state on a robot crystal swan pulled by Shakira and Beyoncé." "Yeah?" "We're a country that's obsessed with the C-word, and I don't mean that word, I mean the one that is far worse." ""Celebrity", right?" "That's a mark of Cain now, innit?" ""Celebrity." It's... it's an insult." "You know?" "It's like casting me into Dante's Seventh Circle of Hell." "Presenters and narcissists and killers and murderers and Fearne-bleedin'" "Cotton, and... some other dur-brained, porridge-brained irritatrix, or someone off Strictly who was crying because she didn't know that Africa was a poor country, she just thought it was hot and far away like Mercury or the Crab Nebula." "Hashtag, "Just sayin'."" "She wouldn't know what a Crab Nebula is, Bill, what are you talking about?" "You've just thrown a linguistic bolus around your ankles, tripped yourself up in the long grass of pointless over-analysis." "They're not even listening." "Er... (CHUCKLES)" "I saw a photograph of Peter Andre in the paper, right, next to a kangaroo's arsehole, right?" "And I thought it was a still from I'm a Celebrity..." "No!" "He was, he was hosting a new literacy campaign and the paper had put a still and it said "Can you guess which one of them knows what a colon is?"" "Now, I thought that was a bit harsh." "But that's what we're like." "We like to build the celebrities up there and then we knock them down." "We want more, more, more..." "Constantly more, more, more." "But they're not the brightest, are they?" "There was a bloke off The Only Way Is Essex, and they were going past the Houses of Parliament, and he said, "Is that where the king lives?"" "And the interviewer said, "No, that's the Houses of Parliament," ""and anyway, we've got a queen."" "And he went, "Oh, I don't know anything about history."" "(CHUCKLES GOOFILY)" "No, and you're struggling with the present as well, you muppet!" "Seems a bit harsh to pick on him, but I will because it's easy, and..." "But he's just an example, right?" "An exemplar, if you will, an avatar for the thinking-intolerant, because... (AUDIENCE CHUCKLING)" "You need a bit more time with that?" "Okay..." "I'll give you an example, 'cause we're not getting a lot of wisdom off them, are we, really?" "I mean, Chantelle, there's an example, right?" "Chantelle, she was a Paris Hilton lookalike." "She was a Paris Hilton thinkalike, a Paris-ite if you will." "And..." "She was a non-celebrity and then she went into the Big Brother house and she won Celebrity Big Brother." ""Wow, wow!" you may say." "No, that's not surprising because she was, she was just nicer and more normal and more girl-next-door than all the rancid leaky vessels of DNA that constitute modern celebrity." "So then the worst thing that could happen, happened." "(IN MOCKING TONE) She becomes an actual celebrity." "(IN NORMAL VOICE) And the next minute she's on the Daily Mail sidebar talking about handbags." "It's a tragedy." "She doesn't need that amount of focus on her life because, you know, God bless her, or the secular equivalent, she isn't the brightest bulb in the tulip patch, you know'?" "In fact, we're getting a bit of secondary idiot off them, we're getting passive stupid off them." "They're incretinating us with their moronic blatherings." "I'll give you an example of what she said, right?" " (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING SOFTLY)" " Oh!" "People trying out applause for the first time, seemingly, in their lives." "This is what Chantelle said, and I swear to Dawkins this is true, right?" "What she said was... (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "Okay." "Yeah..." "She said this, she said, "I thought the sun and the moon were the same thing."" "Huh?" "Okay, so... (SHOUTING) How could you be that flaming stupid?" "(CHUCKLES)" "That's what you're thinking, innit?" "And the thing is, this implies this is someone that calls something by a different name at different times of the day." "I'm like that with my leg." "By day this is my knee, by night the elbow of my leg." "By day my thumbs, by night the Pillars of Hercules." "And then she said, "Turns out they're not", right?" ""Turns out"?" "Like that's one of a series of possible outcomes?" "That is not a legitimate use of the phrase "turns out"." "I'll give you a legitimate use, Hammersmith, right?" "Sausages." "When I was a kid, I thought you were supposed to prick sausages before you cook them." "No." "Turns out... you're not supposed to prick them." "Huh?" "Who was withholding that bit of knowledge?" "For years I was pricking them like an idiot, spearing them away like some deluded Neptune..." "I call them the wasted years." "Turns out... you're not supposed to prick 'em." "That's a legitimate use." "Not about cosmic certainties in the sky!" "Astral fixtures which for six months of the year are visible at the same time!" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "Hashtag, "Just sayin'."" "I mean, did she think that a man had walked on the sun?" "(IN SILLY VOICE) "But at night, when it was a bit cooler."" "(CHUCKLES)" "And then she said something that annoyed me even more, right." "Because it was quite interesting and that's, that's bothered me." "You know?" "It was intriguing, and it irritated me because I had sort of," "I'd already pigeonholed her as one of those people who has to draw an "e"" "on their elbow so they know where their arse is, you know." "But turns out, no, she was actually quite interesting." "And the thing is, right, it gave me a buzzing in my head, you know?" "It gave me..." "Because life's like that." "It's not all black and white, is it?" "You know, it's grey, "a mad weir of tigerish waters"," "I think Peter Andre said, or it might have been Louis MacNeice, one of the two." "And the thing is, this intriguing nature of what she said gave me this anxiety, a buzzing in my head." "I don't mind telling you, Hammersmith, cognitive dissonance is what it gave me." "Yeah, and you've all suffered from it, you know what I'm talking about." "Yeah..." "So..." "Cognitive dissonance, right, cognitive dissonance is, is a kind of..." "Well, let's break it down." "Dissonance is a musical term, isn't it, meaning any kind of disharmonious racket." " (PLAYING DISSONANT CHORDS)" " Like that, or anything by Sting." "Er..." "The insufferable Tantric lute-botherer." "Or anything by that other talent-free little tit, whats his name, will.i.am." "Some of those rhymes he comes out with, "You make me crazy, baby!"" "I mean, come on!" "You know, I like rap and hip-hop as much as the next man, yeah." "But at least make it about something, you know?" "Make it just something," " more than that, maybe a bit of this." " (HIP-HOP MUSIC PLAYING)" "♪ This is the First Law of Thermodynamics" "♪ Get your geek on while I explainerise the mechanics" "♪ It's all about energy and where it doth go It's all about transfer of energy" "♪ All about the flow" "♪ The total amount of energy in the universe will never change" "♪ Never waiver" "♪ It's constant, yeah, got an eternal flavour Not the band, obviously." "♪ Nuclear, solar, horse-drawn or synthetic" "♪ Energy comes in many forms, potential and kinetic" "♪ A bag of sugar is energy in potential guise" "♪ Burn it with a flamethrower and it'll caramelise" "♪ So when energy is released the amount don't change" "♪ It's just transferred from one form to another" "♪ It's like love that flows between one man and another" "♪ You could be that man ♪" "Or maybe not." "Okay." "(MUSIC STOPS)" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "Yeah." "We as humans have got this unique facility to be able to hold two conflicting opinions at the same time, and these conflicting opinions are totally not mutually compatible." "Yet these binary freaks that we are, are able to somehow reconcile these two opinions." "And I'll give you an example, right?" "Anyone that smokes here, anyone smokes a cigarette?" "Yeah, okay." "Here's the two opinions. "I like smoking." "Smoking's bad for you." All right?" "(INHALES) Mmm!" "(COUGHING)" "(INHALES) (SIGHS) (COUGHING)" "Mmm-mmm-mmm!" "(GROANS)" "(KISSING)" "Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, yum, I'm going to die." "Those are the two opinions." "Okay, this is what Chantelle gave me." "She gave me the buzzing, the dissonance in my head, because this is what she said." "She said, "Why is there no word for the top of your foot?"" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "It's a puzzle, innit?" "I've struggled to this age by just calling it the top of my foot, but..." "Apparently there must be a word for it." "I don't know." "I've consulted some medical personnel over this." "They've offered a few suggestions, but maybe someone here in the audience tonight, in Hammersmith, anyone here suggest a word for the top of your foot?" " WOMAN 1:" "Dorsum." " "Dorsum" you say, madam." "Are you of medical persuasion?" "WOMAN 2:" "She went on Google." "She went on Google?" "What... (LAUGHS)" "You, you have the fingers, you have lightning fingers, madam." "Top of your foot... (GRUNTING)" "What kind of server are you using?" "I want that." "Okay, all right." " Anyone else?" " WOMAN 3:" "Instep." "Instep, yeah, no, I think that's your instep, isn't it?" "Don't want to shoot you down there." "(CHUCKLES)" "MAN 1:" "Foot scalp!" "Foot scalp!" "That's the first time that's ever been shouted out in a public place." "And also, I don't want to be pedantic, but that's two words." "So... (MAN 1 SHOUTING INDISTINCTLY)" " What did you say?" " MAN 1:" "Hyphenate it." ""Hyphenate it"?" "All right, then." "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "I tell you what, you get a better class of heckler in West London." " You really do." " (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "By hyphenating a word, does it make it two words or one?" "Is it a portmanteau word or is it one word?" "Beg your pardon?" "WOMAN 3:" "Compound word." "It's a compound word, excellent, thank you, madam!" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)" "Okay, so, this is the word I was told, the medical personnel with whom I discussed said that dorsum - madam, you were right- dorsum is a word for the top of your foot." "But they also said that the back of your hand can sometimes be called dorsum as well." "So it would appear that Chantelle has hit upon a medical anomaly." "There doesn't seem to be one specific word for the top of your foot, which she knows like the back of her, top of her foot, er..." "(LAUGHING) Right!" "Who would have thought it would be Chantelle to isolate this particular oddity, you know?" "I can't imagine the scenario where she asks the question," ""Why is there no word for the top of your foot?"" "Perhaps she went for a job interview and at the end of it they said, "Anything you'd like to ask us?"" ""Yeah, there is something that's been bothering me, yeah." ""Yeah, I read it in The Moon, uh, so..."" "Now... (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "Someone else who gives me the cognitive-dissonance-arios and that is..." "Just a word I just made up." "And that is David Cameron." "Because I don't agree with him on everything on a molecular level, but..." "I have to agree that I share his taste in TV." "He says he likes The Killing, the Danish crime drama, and I like the Danish crime drama, The Killing." "So does that mean I'm a little bit like him?" "I'm in the Venn diagram with Cameron." "If I went on Amazon to buy the box set of The Killing, would it say, "If you like The Killing, you'd like cutting the benefit" ""of disabled single mothers"?" "Oh!" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)" "Well, yes, I do." "Because I don't trust any politicians, but I certainly don't trust the ones that come out with these vague homilies like," ""We're for hard-working families."" "Oh, yeah?" "What, the whole family's working?" "The baby's working as well, David?" "The baby's in the treadmill, powering a tanning salon, two toilet brushes gaffered to the outside?" "A rusk in a fish hook at the top of a chimney, the baby's going up and down like a Dickensian pipe cleaner?" "(CHUCKLES)" "I've been mistrustful of those things since I was a kid." "When I was a kid, I had a lapel badge which said, "Atomkraft?" "Nein, danke!"" "And I was very pleased with it." "Very German, very upbeat, you know, very grown-up and all that." "But then I found out the English translation, which is, "Nuclear power?" "No, thanks", which is a bit lame and weedy by comparison, innit?" ""Nuclear power?" "No, thanks."" "(LAUGHING AWKWARDLY) Yeah, that told them." "It's like getting black pepper in a restaurant." ""Nuclear power?"" ""Oh, no, thanks."" ""A minute on the lips, a lifetime of degenerative disease." (CHUCKLES)" "So..." "I'm not keen on slogans." "There's one of them which just doesn't work at all, you know, that anti-drug one." ""Just Say No." That doesn't work, does it?" "It only works if somebody offers you drugs and you just go, "No." "No, I don't."" "If the question is nuanced in any way, it falls apart, doesn't it?" ""Do you mind if I blow this hallucinogenic powder up your nose?"" ""No."" ""Crack or heroin, any preference?"" ""No." (CHUCKLES)" "And the thing is, right, I do like The Killing." "I mean, I'm sure you've all watched it." "It's hypnotic, I find." "You know, the sort of... the atmosphere." "The Danish language is mesmerising." "It's sort of, it's opaque." "It's almost, you know, it's impenetrable." "It's this kind of sound and occasionally the odd English word seems to sort of glint through the fog of Danish." "You're hearing... (SPEAKING MOCK DANISH) "...wheelbarrow."" "What?" "Er..." "There was a scene in the police station where the subtitles said, "Thanks for the coffee," ""see you tomorrow." And the actor just went "Tak fer coffee," ""see you tomorrow."" "When they find the body..." "(SPEAKING MOCK DANISH) "...body..." ""Somebody come and stab, bleed to death, uh..."" ""How long about him being there in the road?"" ""Oh, it's..." (SPEAKING MOCK DANISH) "...six months, eh."" ""Oh, the six months?" (SPEAKING MOCK DANISH)" ""...hiding..." (SPEAKING MOCK DANISH) "...dental records, uh..."" ""Who found the body?"" ""It's a man, he walk dog..."" "(SPEAKING MOCK DANISH) "...dog..."" "(BARKS)" ""What's his name?" (SPEAKING MOCK DANISH)" ""...forensic."" ""What kind of dog?" ""I wonder what kind..." (SPEAKING MOCK DANISH) "..." "Jack Russell."" ""What does..." {SPEAKING MOCK DANISH) "...matter what kind of dog?" ""It's stupid..." (SPEAKING MOCK DANISH) "Transfer don't come soon enough, er..." ""Ja, tak fer coffee, ja." "See you tomorrow, see you tomorrow."" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "And I thought this was some new kind of acting, some sort of Danish mumblecore, but, no, it's been around for decades." "I found a bit of footage here from 1952, of a production of Hamlet by the Copenhagen Players." "Here, check it out." "(OMINOUS MUSIC PLAYING)" "Alas, poor Yorick!" "(SPEAKING MOCK DANISH) ...my imagination..." "(SPEAKING MOCK DANISH)" "Where be your gibes now, your gambols..." "(SPEAKING MOCK DANISH)" "(SPEAKING MOCK DANISH)" "Tak fer coffee." "See you tomorrow." "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "So..." "Oh, that was a very productive day." "I've had less productive days." "Like the day I spent a whole day trying to figure out how many Gummi Bears" "I could fit into a remote-controlled helicopter before it compromised its airborne stability." "Turns out, one." "Er..." "I like popular culture." "I mean, I do." "I mean, I try and sort of understand it at the very least." "I don't mind some of the trashy stuff like Twilight." "I tell you why I like that, because that cleared up for me something that's been bothering me for a long time, and that is, what is the vehicle of choice of vampires?" "All right?" "Turns out, the Volvo XC60." "I'd have thought the undead would have gone for something a little bit more racy, but no, they are immortal, they are going to rack up the miles, so..." "And I tell you what, I've been thinking a bit about that recently, about, you know, about doing the right thing by the environment, so that led me inexorably to test-drive a Toyota Prius." "Now, I don't know if you've ever been on the white-knuckle ride that is a Prius, but I had this guy who was driving along and, you know, he was the demonstrator, and then we were driving along and then he suddenly went," "(DRAMATICALLY) "I'm hungry", like that, in this really weird affected way." "So I went, (DRAMATICALLY) "Okay," ""let's stop at a café."" "And then he was going, "No, shush, I'm talking to the car" ""because it's got voice-activated satnav," ""and you have to say it in this ridiculously affected way," ""otherwise it won't recognise what you're saying." ""If you just go, (MUMBLING) 'I'm hungry', it'll go, 'What?" "'"" "It's like Danish, you'd get nowhere." "So (DRAMATICALLY) "I'm hungry", and..." "And then a load of, like, Nando's and restaurants came up on the screen." "And he went, "it's brilliant, innit?"" "I went, "Yeah, all right."" "He said..." "I said I'll have a go." "So we're driving along and I went, (DRAMATICALLY) "I'm lonely."" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "And it calculated a route to Switzerland." "I'm thinking, "Whoa, whoa, I'm not that lonely."" "Yeah, you're jumping the gun there, Toyota." "Right, okay then, so..." "Yes." "(LAUGHING)" "I know what you're thinking, Gandalf, BQ." ""Come for an upgrade, O Grey One?" "Yeah..."" ""15-mil a bit light for serious wizard work?"" ""Yeah, you're right there." "You want 25-mil for a Balrog." ""If it's your work, it's a false economy, innit?" ""We had Thor in last week, he bought a cheap mallet." ""I said, 'You'll be back." Er..." "All right, then, it's poking time." "This is not a Facebook poking, it's an old-fashioned analogue poking." "Yes!" "Yeah, you got poked by Bill Bailey." "Remember the context, right?" ""He poked you on Facebook?" "No, he actually poked me with a stick."" ""Oh, right."" "I don't get this obsession with the social media." "There's people on Twitter following car parks." "I mean, I just don't understand it." "There's a bloke on Twitter pretending to be Big Ben, and every hour he writes, "Bong!"" "All right?" "That's just deranged, isn't it?" "And this sort of social media is actually affecting language." "Language is evolving to fit the social media." "I actually heard a young person, for it was he, actually vocalise the acronym LOL, "Laughing Out Loud", instead of laughing!" "Thais a terrifying step into the Orwellian abyss, to choose not to laugh, to release endorphins, connect to the cosmic consciousness." ""LOL!" That's enough, is it?" "Let's do an experiment." "After three, I want you to say "LOL" with as little expression as you can muster." "Here we go, one, two, three..." " ALL:" "LOL." " That's the future of comedy!" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "I see this vision, huge arenas filled with audiences watching comics going "LOL, PMSL"," "and it's just terrifying." "A pox on LOL, I say." "Enough of LOL, right?" "We have, we have to FAWA, "Fight Acronym With Acronym"." "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "If anyone gives you a LOL in any format, immediately text them back this:" "NELI, "Not Even Laughing Inwardly"." "This is all part of an internet campaign, ANTY, or "Acronyms, No Thank You"." "Okay, this one is a hateful one, isn't it?" "LMAO." "It's like the Chinese introduction by a French ambassador," ""Et maintenant, LMAO."" ""Laughing My Arse Off"." "It's not even physically possible, is it?" "(MOCK LAUGHING) OMG!" "Let's reclaim it for the birding community." "There, see, that's what we want." ""Let's Marvel At Owls."" "This, self-explanatory." "Now, this one, right." "This is Chantelle's." ""Turns Out They're Not." Er..." "This is a hateful one." "DILLIGAS, "Does It Look Like I Give A Shit?"" " I mean, that's just..." " (AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "Hateful." "That's someone who can't even be bothered to say, "I can't be bothered."" "I mean, that's like a Zen level of laziness, isn't it?" "DILLIGAS." "Let's reclaim it as a beautiful Japanese proverb..." ""Duty Is Learned, Loyalty Is Gained, Ah, So!"" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "I know what you're saying:" ""Hey, Bill, language is evolving," ""you've got to move with the times, yeah?"" "I say, "Yeah, fine, I don't mind that."" "I don't mind things that help us remember words, like mnemonics." "I've got no problem with that." "That's a tricky word to remember as well, "mnemonics"." "I remember it like this, "Many Naughty Elephants" ""Make Our Nice Inuit Cardboard Something."" "And..." "And..." "But some of these are not fit for purpose, right?" "I'll give you an example." "There's this one mnemonic that we've been using for years and I think that it was probably written by a bloke, because there's a kind of, a sense of gleeful sort of joy at the beginning" "and then it quickly descends into abject failure because it doesn't work." "This is the one that goes, "Thirty days hath September," ""April, June and November, all the rest have 31," ""except February, which has got 28," ""except in a leap year, where it's got 29."" "Oh, Christ!" "What is my life!" "And there's a lot of sayings which I've had to re-evaluate from childhood which just don't make any sense now." "Like that little chit-chat you've got to have with your kids about sexual reproduction," ""The birds and the bees."" "That is just not fit for purpose." "The birds bit just about scrapes under the radar." "Birds, you know, there's an egg fertilisation, a nest, evidence of nurture, independence, abandonment and death." "Yeah, that sort of works." "But bees?" "That doesn't work, that is not a template for human behaviour, is it?" ""Son, we're all sexless lackeys for a monstrous sugar giant."" "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "I'm not telling him that, it'd freak him out." "No, I'll give you an example of a mnemonic that actually works." "This one, right?" "Now, that's a good one." "See?" "Snappy, innit?" "North, East, South, West, "Never Eat Shredded Wheat"." "Brilliant." "If you're at sea a little bit longer, you want a little bit more complicated thing, they've got 'Never Never Eat Eat Shredded Eat Shredded Shredded Wheat" ""Wheat Never Wheat Never."" "And if you're at sea a bit longer then of course you've got "Never Never Never Eat Never Eat Eat Never Eat Eat Shredded Eat" ""Shredded Shredded Eat Shredded Shredded Shredded Wheat Shredded Wheat Wheat" ""Shredded..." "Wheat Shredded..."" "Start again! "Never Never Eat Never Eat Eat Never Eat Eat Shredded Eat Shredded Eat" ""Shredded Shredded Eat Shredded Shredded Shredded Wheat Shredded Wheat" ""Wheat Shredded Wheat Wheat Never Wheat Never Never Wheat Never!"" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "So..." "Hands up who doesn't like being tricked into surveys?" "I can actually hear your synapses whirring." "Uh... (MUTTERING)" "I was driving home from London one night, it was quite late, 2:00, 3:00 in the morning, and I was driving past Buckingham Palace, you know, and as I was driving past," "I saw something in the street." "It was flapping in the road, and it was a goose that had been hit by a car and it was still alive." "So I got out of the car, and I had a blanket in the back of the car, and I wrapped the goose in the blanket." "All of this is in the police report." "And, uh..." "And I placed the goose in the back of the car, and just as I was closing the boot, a cocked pistol was held to my forehead, four plainclothes officers appeared just out the bushes and just said, "Stop!"" "And I went... (WHIMPERS) And they went, "Hands up!"" "And then he goes, "What are you doing?"" "And I get a bit of asthma when I'm stressed, so I went... (WHEEZES)" "All the air flew out of my lungs." "(WHEEZING) "I got a goose." ""A goose, a goose." "It was a goose."" ""What?" "What?"" "(WHEEZING) "A goose, a goose."" "And eventually I said, "A goose", right?" "And I thought that would be terrible last words." "If I just was killed then." "In your obituary, "Yes, Bill Bailey was shot, apprehended while taking a goose." ""His last words were 'A goose', slightly in a wheezy way."" "So he said, "Was it a goose?"" "Then they went, "Okay", and he went, "Show me." "Easy, easy!"" "So I went to reveal the goose from under the blanket and another officer then tracked the goose with his pistol like this, and as the goose emerged from the blanket, its head came round to meet the cocked pistol." "And at that point the first guy did the lapel thing and went, "Stand down." ""It's just a goose."" "I was thinking, "'Stand down'!" "What do you mean, 'Stand down'?" ""What other weapons have you got trained on this vehicle?"" "It's four guys with guns, an unarmed hippie and a goose." "How many more weapons do you need?" "A Taser or something?" "A laser?" "What is this red dot on my forehead?" "Was the queen bored that night, she was scuffling around in Buckingham Palace... (HUMMING)" ""I'll go to the surveillance suite." "Oh, suspicious activity in Quadrant Four." ""Use maximum force, commander."" "And..." "She had a snipers rifle trained on my forehead." ""Stand down, ma'am, just a goose." "Oh, bollocks!" And..." "I've tried to like Downton Abbey, but it's hard, isn't it?" "Because nothing much happens, you know." "I mean, in one scene, moss grows on a butler in real time, you know, and... (CHUCKLES)" "I like the theme tune, right, but I can't play you the theme tune because the Downton lawyers have got" "(IN WEST LONDON ACCENT) a bit Downton on my ass, right?" "So I have to play you a sound-alikey version of the Downton Abbey theme, which I think is a pretty good approximation." "Check it out." "(DRAMATIC THEME MUSIC PLAYING)" "(SNAPS FINGERS)" "Pretty good, innit?" "But I'm going to get round it by playing it in the Jamaican dub reggae style." "(DRAMATIC THEME MUSIC PLAYING)" "(ADDING REGGAE BEAT)" "And here it is, Uptown Abbey." "(MUSIC CONTINUES PLAYING)" "(DUB REGGAE VOCALS)" "CARSON:" "I wouldn't fight the idea of a second footman, milady." "MAN:" "Check it." "CARSON:" "You're too tall to be a footman." "No footman should be over 6'1"." "RASTA:" "Me 5'9", check it!" "SIR ANTHONY:" "Have you done something jolly with your hair?" "MATTHEW:" "I've got a job in Ripon." "MRS PATMORE:" "What's it to be, lobster, duck or asparagus?" "RASTA:" "Give me the lobster, man." "Me no want no arse-paragus." "ALFRED:" "Teaspoon, egg spoon, melon spoon, grapefruit spoon, jam spoon, teaspoon, egg spoon, melon spoon, grapefruit spoon, jam spoon." "RASTA:" "What kind of spoon is this?" "CARSON:" "A bouillon spoon." "MAN:" "Me knew it was a bouillon spoon." "CARSON:" "A bouillon spoon." "A bouillon spoon. (ECHOING)" "May I ask why you are holding Lady Sybil's biscuit jar?" "RASTA:" "Jah, Rastafari!" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "(PLAYING JAZZ MUSIC)" "(AUDIENCE WHOOPING)" "Yow!" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "(CONTINUES PLAYING)" "Yow!" "Give me some jazz." "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "(MUSIC STOPS)" "Right..." "Look..." "I know this is some sort of whimsical entertainment for you, right, but this is my life, all right?" "And when I say, "Give me some jazz", I don't want... (MIMICS INEFFECTUAL RESPONSE)" "This isn't some sort of pantomime." "SOME AUDIENCE MEMBERS:" "Oh, yes, it is!" "Oh, God..." "Look..." "I chipped that one up for you." "All you had to do was nod it into the net." "Lets try that again." "This isn't some sort of pantomime!" "AUDIENCE:" "Oh, yes, it is!" "There we go." "(MUTTERS)" "I see, metropolitan audiences, yes, you tire of such panto call-and-response cliché." "You're looking for something extra, something to deconstruct." "All right, let's try this." "When I say, "This isn't some sort of pantomime", you say, "No, you're right, this isn't some sort of pantomime."" "Let's try that This isn't some sort of pantomime, you know!" "AUDIENCE:" "No, you're right, this isn't some sort of pantomime." "Just for me, next time you go and see a panto, shout that out to whoever's on the stage." "The poor muppets from Hollyoaks won't know what hit 'em." "All right, let's deconstruct it a little bit further, right?" ""Behind you!" "What?"" ""Your colonial past." Ooh." "And the first instrument on the planet, the trumpet, er, was... was used in a military capacity to issue orders on the battlefield, like the order to advance." "(FAN FARE PLAYING)" "Or perhaps the order to sort of hang about for a bit." "(DOWNBEAT FANFARE PLAYING)" "Or a rather baffling order to just do a weird dance." "(RHYTHMIC TUNE PLAYING)" "The trumpet was perfectly adapted for this function." "The clear bright sound of the trumpet cut across the clamour of battle, issuing life-saving orders, like the order to retreat." "(FANFARE ENDING ON DOWNBEAT NOTE)" "In a way that perhaps the harp wouldn't have been so effective." "(PLAYING SOFT HARP MUSIC)" "♪ Retreat, retreat, move backwards with your feet ♪" "Now, this functionality, you can find it in classical music." "The classical genre has a lot of that." "It's not all about soaring themes and recurring leitmotifs, no." "A lot of it is just sonic ballast, like this." "(PLAYING LILTING CLASSICAL MUSIC)" "Now, that is the Alberti bass, and that was pioneered by Domenico Alberti, a rather obscure composer, whose music is sadly a bit rubbish, but this was his gift to the world." "(PLAYING ALBERTI BASS)" "You see, that's just a major chord..." " (PLAYING CHORD) - ...just spun out a little bit, you know." "Yes, it's quite dull like that, but if you..." " (ADDING ALBERTI BASS)" " Yeah, the Alberti bass, it's like making the music go further." "It's like cutting your blancmange with Angel Delight." "Now..." "(CHUCKLES) A few middle-class people going, "Who does that?"" "You see, the Alberti bass was favoured by Mozart." "Mozart was a great exponent of the Alberti bass, and actually a lot of his music was enhanced by it, so it wasn't just all about fun, it was quite workmanlike, but useful." "Mozart's work without the Alberti bass, quite dull." "(PLAYS SIMPLE MELODY)" "Put the Alberti in... (PLAYING WELL KNOWN MOZART MOTIF)" "You see?" "It can enliven rather dull music, like Match of the Day." "(PLAYING FUSION OF MATCH OF THE DAY THEME WITH ALBERTI BASS)" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "Actually, though, when it comes to the Match of the Day theme, my guilty pleasure is I actually prefer the lounge version." "(PLAYING LOUNGE VERSION OF MATCH OF THE DAY THEME)" "(PIECE ENDS)" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "Times are a-changing." "The Match of the Day theme is a very bold theme." "It's in a major key, but if you transpose it to the minor key, then you get something totally different." "You get a very melancholy kind of theme." "You get the soundtrack to an Eastern European cartoon." "(PLAYING DOWNBEAT, MELANCHOLY VERSION OF MATCH OF THE DAY THEME)" "♪ The tractor would not start ♪" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "It's a very bold theme in a major key, it's got a marching vibe to it, you know, a brassy, marching vibe, you know." "(PLAYING STRIDENT VERSION OF MATCH OF THE DAY THEME)" "I'm guessing you might want to see that again." "It's got a bold marching vibe to it." "(RESUMES PLAYING TUNE)" "I wish they'd show just a nanosecond of that on Match of the Day." "That would be brilliant, wouldn't it?" ""What was that?"" "But the mark of a good tune is its versatility, and if you transpose it to the minor key and slow the tempo right down, then you get something totally different again." "Then you get a Jewish folk song." "(PLAYING SLOW-STARTING FOLK-STYLE VERSION OF MATCH OF THE DAY THEME)" "(TEMPO QUICKENS)" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "(MUSIC CONTINUES)" "(AUDIENCE CLAPPING ALONG)" "Hey!" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING LOUDLY)" "So anyway, I was in South Africa and..." "Oh, you made me drop my pipe." "(IN SCOTTISH ACCENT) You made me drop my pipe." "(IN NORMAL VOICE) Don't know why I said that." "So... (CHUCKLES)" "I said it in that weird Scottish way," "(IN SCOTTISH ACCENT) You made me drop my pipe." "(IN NORMAL VOICE) Must have been in a Stornoway pub somewhere." "(CHUCKLES)" "Some bloke was in a pub." "I walked in, he went..." ""You made me drop my pipe."" "(SNIGGERING)" "I really like doing that." "I'm going to do it again." "How many times am I going to do that?" "I can't do it any more." "Right, so..." "So I was in South Africa and I was in Cape Town, and the recession's got everywhere, you know, and it is recession." "It's not austerity, let's not kid ourselves." "The "austerity package" - sounds like a Victorian game of pass the parcel, doesn't it, yeah?" "And eventually you get a little slip of paper that says, "Stop this frivolous nonsense."" "I was in Cape Town and I, I was in the harbour there and I saw a sign, it said "cut-price shark diving", right?" "Now, that's not the sort of thing I want to skimp on, really." "I want the deluxe package, you know." "I don't want the value shark diving where they lower you down in a wheelie bin with a shopping trolley over your head." "And some bloke going," "(IN SOUTH AFRICAN ACCENT) "If the shark comes near, hit it with this golf putter." ""They hate that." ""Just flick it in the eye with the toe of the putter" ""and the shark will become disorientated and back off." ""Or it might become enraged." ""In which case the putter is no good to you." ""You're going to need something like a five iron."" "I didn't do it, but it gave me a new idea for a wildlife/golfing show." "Hi, I'm Bill Bailey, I'm high in the Hindu Kush, and these rare Peshwari voles have got to get to the other side of the valley." "I'd put it in a Kevlar jacket, I'm not a monster." "So I was in America, obviously, and..." "My arrival was a little bit, well, it was inauspicious to say the least." "I got stuck in a revolving door in Atlanta Airport." "That's always embarrassing, isn't it?" "It was a voice-activated door." "It said, "Caution, door may..." (MUMBLES)" "And then there was like a mumbled thing, like a Danish announcement." "And then... 'Cause after "caution", you want clear, precise instructions, don't you?" ""Caution!" "What?" (MUMBLING)" "And then, pfft!" "Searing pain." "The door hit me on the side of the head, knocked me out, and as I was coming to," "I just heard, "Door may stop suddenly." I know that now!" "And in the central concourse of Atlanta Airport, there's an extraordinary sight." "There's a life-size dinosaur skeleton, seemingly facing off the interfaith chapel, right?" "There's a lot of dissonance going on there." "A lot of Americans coming out of the plane all confused." "(IN AMERICAN ACCENT) "Oh, my, do I choose the Lord or reason?"" "(IN NORMAL VOICE) And... (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "(CHUCKLES)" "Because a lot of them believe in this idea of intelligent design, but look around, you know, there's a lot of design flaws in nature." "I mean, you know, you know." "The cormorant, right?" "The cormorant is a water bird." "It hunts in water, it lives in water." "It's a water bird." "Its wings, not waterproof." "So when you see a cormorant drying its wings out on a rock for the millionth time, and you catch its eye, it's looking at you going," ""You think you've got problems!"" "(growls)" "I'm thinking those wouldn't be bad last words, would they, huh?" "If you were just about to peg it, you know," ""How's he doing?" "You think you've got problems!"" "And then you die." "(CHUCKLES)" "And that's better than, "A goose", isn't it?" "I mean..." "Mozart had brilliant last words." "His last words were..." "I mean, he could have done something crass like," ""You owe me, Alberti, you slag", but, you know..." "If he was a cockney, Bill, yes." "No, his last words were, "I feel something that is not of this earth."" "And if you say something beautiful and cool like that, there's quite a lot of pressure on you to die quite soon after that." "Not cling on for a couple of hours and ruin it by saying something like," ""Is there a potato in the bed?" "What's that scratching?" ""These aphids!" You know, ruin it." "My favourite last words were by my favourite biologist, coincidentally," "JBS Haldane." "I'm sure yours as well." "And, uh..." "His last words, he wrote a poem about his own cancer." "I mean, that is "in your face, cancer!", isn't it?" "That is brilliant." "What chutzpah of the man." "His last words were," ""I wish I had the voice of Homer To sing of rectal carcinoma."" "Now that..." "Fair play." "JBS Haldane was asked about God." "Did he believe in God?" "And he said, you know what, and he thought for a minute and he said," ""Well, if there is a God, he must be inordinately fond of beetles."" "(CHUCKLES)" "Which is brilliant, and it's also kind of how I imagine God to be, this avuncular eccentric old gent in a leather high wing-backed chair in a gentlemen's club somewhere, reminiscing about his life." ""Yes, beetles, marvellous things." "Ha!" ""Yes, I knock out a few every year, yeah." ""Huh!" "Tuck them away in Guatemala, nobody knows."" "(GUFFAWING)" ""They think it's evolution."" "(LAUGHING)" ""Idiots." ""Dinosaurs, that was a mistake." "Yes, well," ""I was a kid, you know, and all kids love dinosaurs." ""These are my two boys, Jesus and Graham." ""Graham's the elder." ""He was going to do the whole, you know, son of God thing," ""but, you know, he's a little..." "He's not quite the full..." ""He's a bit hard of hearing." "He hasn't got any arms," ""poor thing, yes," ""Yes, he thought I said, 'Lay hands on leopards.'"" "(LAUGHING)" "(growls)" "You should have seen his face!" ""But I mean, he'd have been no good as the son of God." ""It wouldn't have a cross, would it?" "More of a telegraph pole."" "(GUFFAWING)" ""Jesus, fit as a fiddle, yes." ""He faked his own death to push the book sales along."" "(LAUGHING)" " (AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" " Hmm..." "I like America, you know." "It's this seething barrel of invention and paranoia." "And America spends a lot of money willy-nilly trying to stop nuclear proliferation and terrorism around the world." "And America gave Pakistan $20 billion to fight terrorism, and Pakistan spent $34 of it on a poster campaign which said," ""Terrorism?" "No, thanks."" "And the rest of it on a nuclear bomb." "Now, it's not even a very good bomb, it doesn't really work." "If they want to deploy it as a weapon, they have to wheel it somewhere in a barrow and get some work-experience bloke to whack it with a cricket bat while they hide behind a boulder." "A bit reminiscent of that scene in the dentist's when you're getting an X-ray and the dentist says, "Yes, it's perfectly safe," ""I'm just going behind these blast doors." ""Yes, you'll be fine in a minute, yes, there we go." ""Yes, there's just a bit of residual luminescence," ""that'll wear off after about, uh, 20 years."" "So I was in China, obviously, and, uh..." "I wanted to learn the language." "And I don't know if you've ever tried to learn Mandarin, but it's very hard, devilishly tricky, very sinuous, very exotic, very other." "The sounds required to speak Mandarin are so unlike anything in our language... (MAKING EXAGGERATED TYPICAL CHINESE SOUNDS)" "Wonderful sounds we make only at moments of revulsion or disgust." "(GROANING)" "It's often handy to have a carton of off milk with you when learning Mandarin." "(SNIFFS)" "(GROANS)" "(SNIFFS) (GROANS)" ""Hmm, nice pronunciation." "Thank you."" "And the other problem, of course, is the tones, the intonation." "You know, if you get that wrong, that could radically alter the meaning of the word." "I'll give you an example." "The word maa in Mandarin in the different tones," "(USING DIFFERENT TONES) "Maa, maa, maa, maaaa."" "That means, "mother", "hemp", "horse" or "disappointment."" "That is a social disaster waiting to happen right there." ""Yes, since your horse died, I've been smoking a lot of your mother."" "And I just wanted a bit of conversation, you know, a bit of chit-chat." "I wanted to order some food off a street seller in Beijing, so I learnt the word for dumpling, which is "tsao-tsu"." "That's the lovely quality of Mandarin, it's got a sound of like, "I know what I'm talking about, no, I don't."" "And I learned the word hello, which is "ni-hao"." "So to help me pronounce it, I sort of physicalise the words." "As I went up to her, I said, "Ni-hao." "Tsao-tsu"." "She looked terrified out of her wits, because I'd presumably said, "I want to laminate a cat."" "And if you think speaking it's hard, the written Chinese is an enigma wrapped in a puzzle cloaked in a mystery." "Because Chinese characters, of which there are many thousands, contain all these elaborate pictograms and stories and sub-stories." "The pictogram meaning, "I'm thirsty", when you literally translate it, it means," ""I wasn't thirsty before, but now I am thirsty."" "So each one contains an elaborate back story to the thing that you actually want." "Like, uh, "painkiller" is," ""I didn't really like David Bowie's later work, I wouldn't mind some Nurofen."" "or, "I threw a stone into the pond, the ripples bounced off the bank," ""they met in the middle in a beautiful helix." "A water vole and I shared a moment." ""Anyway, all that being the case, would you mind calling me an ambulance?"" "While we were there, we went to a Chinese restaurant, because there was loads of them." "And in the window, there were the familiar sights, crabs, prawns bubbling away in tanks." "But there amongst this familiar stuff was more exotic fare, a salamander in a bath, civet cats in cages, snakes slithering on the floor and there was a cormorant looking doubly pissed off." "And amongst these things, on the menu in the front of the restaurant, was an owl, and not just an ordinary owl, a Eurasian eagle owl, an enormous magnificent beast just waiting to be on the buffet." "And I'm thinking, if this is the stuff they've got out the front, what have they got out the back?" "Special order, a bigfoot, a pushmi-pullyu, a Lorax..." "A phoenix - mind you, that would be tricky to cook, though, wouldn't it?" "You'd have to trick it, poach it or something." "So we tried to buy the owl." "I thought I can't leave this owl here, you know?" "I mean, I was, there was something inside me." "You know, I had to do the right thing, you know, because the goose didn't make it, you know." "So, yeah, it was always weighing on my heart." "So if we can get this owl out of here, that would be a good thing, a Private Ryan moment." "So there was a bit of haggling, and some almost, some disastrous haggling, 'cause, you know, if the only word you know is "dumpling", then trying to buy an owl in a restaurant and not get it cooked into a dumpling" "is quite hard." "But eventually they agreed, and it was all smiles then." "It was like, "These crazy westerners want a take-away owl."" "So they wrapped it in Sellotape from beak to claw." "Now, that's quite undignified for an owl." "And I'm not an expert, but I don't think that's the correct way of moving owls around." "This owl was so angry," "I mean, it was..." "I've never seen a creature so pissed off." "It was like, it was like a bloke who'd just got a paper cut off his eviction notice, you know, what I mean?" "It was like... (STRAINING)" "We put it in a cardboard box marked "suitable for microwave oven", the ultimate indignity, and then we put it in a taxi and drove off." "And through the medium of pointing, we told the taxi driver to take us to the woods, take us up to the woods where we can release the owl." "And so we got to the woods, it was getting dark, there was the dusk." "And by the light of the taxi we tried to get the owl out of the box and it was a bit of a struggle." "It was pretty brutal, I'm thrashing around with it and the owl's fixing me with this glare, like," ""Is this what you do on your holidays, beardy?"" ""Sellotape up owls and drive them around in the woods?" ""What you doing next year, gaffering up a gazelle," ""chucking it down a waterslide?"" "And while I was thrashing with it, I was thinking this is the point I look up and see the headmaster of my son's school on a cycling holiday of Southern China." ""Oh." And he, "Oh, Mr Bailey." "Oh..." "Er..."" ""It's not what it looks like." ""It's Bill Oddie's birthday party." ""We're playing pass the parcel or something."" "I was looking round for something to cut the Sellotape off." "We had nothing." "We looked in the boot of the taxi." "He had an oven glove in his boot and some nail scissors in his glove box." "And I'm thinking is this just a scam, is this an owl-homing scam and we've just blundered into it?" "No, I can't think like that." "So I said to him, although he didn't speak a word of English," "I said, "You hold the owl's talons with the oven glove" ""and I'll cut the Sellotape off the owl with the nail scissors."" "Now, there's not a phrase book in the world..." "Not even in the "Getting to Know You" section." "I tried "tsao-tsu"." "Nothing, you know." "So I was just trying to do the right thing, you know, because, well, I felt responsible." "My family there, my son's there, got to set a good example." "And I'm not the most organised of parents, I'll be the first to admit, you know." "A lot of other parents seem way more organised." "They ask me questions to which I do not know the answer, things like, "How old is your son now?"" "And..." "I go, "I don't know, nine, 13, 23, it's an odd number, I think."" "And right now I'm supposed to be photographing sites of historical interest for his school history project, but so far all I've got is this." "Now..." "All that is, is a futile act of defiance, but it did feel good, I have to say." "While I was on the island of Orkney," "I thought I'll get something here, I'll get Neolithic settlements, standing stones, but a terrible childish compunction took over and all I got was that." "So..." "Now, you'd have done the same." "This is now my passport photo, I'm quite proud of that." "But when I drop my son off at school, the other parents are so much more organised." "It's a different world, you know'?" " They turn up and the kids are immaculate." " (GONG STRIKES)" " (WHIMSICAL MUSIC PLAYING)" " Their hair is combed, blazer's pressed, tie on, two matching shoes." "How do you do that?" ""There's your lunch, organic couscous and some wheatgrass juice."" ""Thank you, Mama." And..." "As they waft towards the school, they present them with a laminated agenda for the rest of their lives." "When I turn up with my son, it's a different scenario." "We're just scuffling towards the school, late." ""Come on!" He's wrapped in a dog blanket... held on with a Stranglers lapel badge from 1981." "I'm cracking open a Glade Plugln with a claw hammer and putting it in his pocket to get the smell of cat piss out of his blazer." ""There's your lunch, Peperami and a Red Bull, there you go." ""That's all your food groups represented."" "His homework's on the back of a pizza box." "I look down and he's only got one shoe on, so I draw a shoe on his bare foot with a marker pen." "I've forgotten his hockey kit, so I give him a nine iron and an onion." ""There you go."" "Bag of Haribo and a sleeping bag in case I forget to pick him up again." "And we're returning the school hamster, which hasn't made it over the weekend." "The cat's had it, so we've made a decoy out of a scotch egg and four cigarette butts." ""Here you are, just put that right down in the cage," ""cover it up with straw." "If anyone asks, it was like that when we found it."" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "So I'm just trying to do the right thing, and that's all you can do, you know?" "I go to religious occasions, family religious occasions." "I'm not particularly religious, you know, but, you know, I like churches." "I like the singing of hymns and all of that." "It's just the God bit I have a slight problem with." "And I was at a family christening and the vicar, or God's bouncer as I call him," "was getting up in God's grille, yeah." "And he was invoking the Old Testament, the blood of Christ, the dorsum of Christ, and..." "He asked this rhetorical question." "He said, "What would you say to Christ if he walked in that door today?"" "And I thought to myself, "Bad luck, mate, you're in Croydon."" "And..." "My wife jabbed me in the ribs and said, "You've just said that out loud."" "And..." "I can never go back." "Thing about churches, I just think the music is a bit austere, a bit intimidating." "(PLAYING OMINOUS ORGAN MUSIC)" "It sort of says... ♪ You have sinned ♪" "(LAUGHING MANICALLY)" "It needs to be a bit more friendly, you know, a bit like..." " (PLAYING UPBEAT POP MUSIC)" " Yeah, that's it, yeah." "♪ We've got God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit" "♪ A little bit to the side, yeah ♪" "Or maybe a bit of dubstep, you know." "(PLAYING DUBSTEP)" "Maybe a dubstep hymn or something... ♪ And did those feet" "♪ In ancient times..." "And then go a bit wub-wub, you know... ♪ Walk upon... (THROBBING "WUB-WUB" BEAT)" "♪ Bring me my wub-wub-wub- wub-wub-wub-wub" "♪ Bring me my... ♪" "(SONG ENDS)" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "It's not just the music." "The problem with the Church has always been for me the personnel, you know." "See, that's not a face saying, "Come on in, join the party!"" "I put together a bit of a promotional video for the Church." "Get the Church to re-engage with the youth, yeah?" "It's a bit of church music, bit of dubstep, yeah?" "I call it nunstep." "(PLAYING RAPID ORGAN MUSIC)" "(UP-TEMPO ELECTRONIC MUSIC PLAYING)" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "Thank you, Hammersmith!" "Cheers." "(AUDIENCE CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)" "(CANCAN MUSIC PLAYING)" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "(PLAYING CANCAN ON HORNS)" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)" "All right!" "Thank you!" "All right, then, let's metal it up, Hammersmith." "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "Any death metal fans in?" "There's always a few." "(PLAYING DEATH METAL MUSIC)" "There's two things you need for death metal." "You need this sound... (growls)" "And this chord... (PLAYING DEATH METAL CHORD)" "The chord of Satan!" "That's pretty much all of death metal." " (GROWLING) - (PLAYING DEATH METAL MUSIC)" "That's a death-metal rowing team." "(PLAYING AND GROWLING RHYTHMICALLY)" "All rowing like this." "Certain accents work better with the death-metal genre, and certain languages." "The German language works great." "WOMAN:" "Rammstein!" "Yes, yes!" "Yes, you will be honoured with such." "Before we do that, let's just remind ourselves of a lovely old folk song." "(PLAYING SOFT GUITAR)" "♪ Are you going to Scarborough Fair?" "♪ Parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme" "♪ Remember me to one who lives there" "♪ She once was a true love of mine ♪" "But I prefer the Rammstein version." "(PLAYING DEATH METAL TUNE)" "♪ Sind Sie gehen" "♪ nach Scarborough Fair?" "♪ Petersilie, Salbei, Sumpfporst und Thymian" "♪ Grüßen Sie mir dort jemanden denn sie wollen dahin" "♪ Sie war einmal mein echter Liebling" "(CLAPPING IN UNISON)" "♪ Erzählen sie ihr, zu finden mir einen Acker von Land" "♪ Petersilie, Salbei, Sumpfporst und Thymian" "♪ Zwischen Salzwasser an der See am Strand" "♪ Dann wird sie mein Liebling sein ♪" "Danke!" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING AND CHEERING)" "But certain accents don't work well with the death-metal genre, like the Welsh accent." "(PLAYING DEATH-METAL TUNE)" "(IN WELSH ACCENT) Hello." "We're from Swansea." "And we are the Bridesmaids of Beelzebub." "The Australian accent's too upbeat." "(IN AUSTRALIAN ACCENT) G'day." "We're from the Sunshine Coast." "And we are the Rotting Corpse of Rasputin." "No." "But the West Country accent, that doesn't work, does it?" "(IN WEST COUNTRY ACCENT) Hello, there!" "We're from Shepton Mallet." "And we are Ripped Apart By Badgers." "Here's the new single." "(PLAYING DEATH-METAL MUSIC)" "♪ Ripped apart by badgers" "♪ Tiny eyes, full of hate" "♪ Clear your steel, eviscerate" "♪ Monochromic vicious rippers" "♪ Straight down the high street up like kippers" "♪ Faces" "♪ Hedges" "♪ Small businesses" "♪ Ripped apart by badgers" "♪ Trash it with a spade" "♪ Stab him with a blade" "♪ Get this badger off me now" "♪ Ripped apart by badgers ♪" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING)" "(FEEDBACK)" "(SONG ENDS)" "Cheers!" "You know what?" "Yeah..." "Death metal gets a bad press, you know." "Whenever there's any badness in America, they always blame the metal bands for the torture and the violence." "No, the violence is right under their nose, in country-and-western music." "And, uh..." "I'd like to play tribute to that now, with the ultimate country-and-western instrument, the Bible." "(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "(PLAYING COUNTRY MUSIC)" "This is a little ditty called" "I'm Going to Kill You So I Can Ignore You in Heaven." "♪ When you left me I did more than just cry" "♪ I injected battery acid into my eye" "♪ I hope my pain" "♪ My excruciating pain and my subsequent blindness" "♪ Will deter you from any further acts of unkindness" "♪ I'm going to follow you every day till you die" "♪ I'll be watching you at your work place" "♪ Through my one working eye" "♪ I'll be outside your house" "♪ And down at the grocery store" "♪ You'll be signing so many restraining orders" "♪ That your fingers'll get sore" "♪ And one day we'll both be dead" "♪ I'll make it look like an accident" "♪ A double suicide" "♪ There's no way we could survive" "♪ As our car plunged into the quarry" "♪ And now we're in heaven" "♪ I'll ignore you" "♪ And then you'll be sorry ♪" "(PLAYING UPBEAT MUSIC)" "(AUDIENCE CLAPPING ALONG)" "(SONG ENDS)" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "Once I thought I might be an actor, yeah?" "And I put my details into the actors' directory, Spotlight, and you had to put in things like your height, weight, eye colour, hair colour, all that sort of thing, special skills." "And being childish, I put in things like "can hover"," ""is magnetic", all right?" "Which they never printed." "But gradually, over the years," "I slipped things through the net which they did print, like "I'm okay round poultry'," ""will work up stepladders", 'will dress as a Beefeater and play the tuba if pushed"." "And one of the things they printed, which I can't believe they did, was "I can do a Japanese accent", right?" "Which, if you think about it, is a bit dubious, isn't it?" "A white Caucasian male doing a Japanese accent is a bit racist, innit?" "(IN JAPANESE ACCENT) "Oh, herro." You know?" "But..." "I did get quite a lot of work out of it and..." "While I was in Tokyo, I saw perhaps one of the greatest things I've ever seen." "It was a Japanese Beatles tribute act, one of the most glorious thing I've ever seen." "Tears of pure joy flowed down my face." "I thought I would die of pleasure as four earnest Japanese men pretended to be the Beatles." "Arigato, akuda mas, akudesta, so desne... (IN JAPANESE ACCENT) "I Want-a To Hold Your Hand-u."" "Oh..." "Joy unbridled." "Made a thousand times better by the fact the bloke playing John Lennon was the spit of Yoko Ono, right?" "And while I was there, I made a TV commercial for Japanese TV." "I still don't know what it's about." "Here, check it out." "(SPEAKING JAPANESE)" "Skimbo?" "(SHOUTING IN JAPANESE)" "(ALL GASP)" " Skimbo!" " STUDENTS:" "Skimbo!" "(STUDENTS CHEERING)" "(PLAYING TUBA)" " Skimbo!" " (STUDENTS CHEERING)" "Skimbo!" " (GONG SOUNDS)" " BILL:" "Skimbo!" "(CHICKEN CLUCKS)" "(PLAYING TUBA)" "(IN JAPANESE ACCENT) I do not like conflict." "All right." "All right." "Let's try to end tonight on a high cultural note." "This is a painting by JMW Turner." "This is Rain, Steam, Speed or, as I like to call it," "Bottle of Port in Drizzle." "Now, Turner, or Old Smudger as he was known to his friends... was in great demand as a portrait artist, and, hard though it is to believe, this is actually a privately commissioned portrait by Admiral John Beaumont and his wife, Mary." "Needless to say, they were a little bit disappointed with the result." "But if you look closely, you can actually see they are in..." "There they are, very disappointed." "Now, this is Turner's masterpiece, this is The Fighting Temeraire." "And that's the Temeraire of the title, the old warship, being towed away to be broken up by the steam tug." "Sail giving way to steam, a potent metaphor for the decline of British naval dominance." "It is at once elegiac, beautiful, wistful, melancholy." "Critics agree, one of the greatest paintings in the world." "I have another name for it," "Chantelle's Paradox, because in it the sun and the moon are clearly visible at the same time!" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)" "Thank you!" "Wait, there's just one more thing." "This is a short film about an owl." "(PLAYING ETHEREAL TUNE)" "(SONG ENDS)" "(AUDIENCE APPLAUDING)" "Thank you!" "(UP-TEMPO MUSIC PLAYING)" "Thanks for coming." "You've been a great crowd, Hammersmith." "I'm Bill Bailey." "Good night!" "(DUBSTEP MUSIC PLAYING)" "Thank you!" "Good night!" "Thank you!" "(AUDIENCE CHEERING AND APPLAUDING)"