Bill Bailey (I)

Review: Funny Valentines - Bill Bailey: Love Song

Bill Bailey is known as a nature-loving, eco-friendly comedian so maybe that's why he has recycled a song he has been doing for over a decade for the BBC iPlayer's Funny Valentines series. That's not a negative criticism. Far from it.

Bill Bailey & Sean Lock top Altitude 2015 line-up

Bill Bailey and Sean Lock have just been announced as the headliners at this year's Altitude Festival. The annual festival, which combines stand-up with skiing and snowboarding, takes place in Mayrhofen, Austria, from March 23 - 27.

The human labrador puppy that is Alan Davies hosts spontaneous roundtable discussions in this Dave-commissioned chat show. Circumventing the kind of smug backslapping to which the format is often prone, it's a blend of arch spontaneity and languid patter that works thanks largely to the excellent curation of guests, mostly drawn from the broadsheet/Channel 4 school of cerebral comedy - Richard Herring, Josie Long and Bill Bailey amongst them.

Radio Times review

There's nothing quite like the literate, deliciously surreal, controlled madness of a Bill Bailey gig. He's brilliant, as deft with music as he is with words, and he makes it all look so easy.

Qualmpeddler was his 2012-13 tour and it's a hilarious stew of stand-up and musical numbers that transcend anything that can be classed as a "comedy musical pastiche". Like Bailey's version of the Downton Abbey theme, which is a reggae/trance anthem accompanying characters listing types of spoon; "tea spoon, egg spoon, grapefruit spoon".

Another highlight is Bailey's reworking of the Match of the Day tune that sounds like it's the harpsichord centrepiece of a musical evening in a Georgian drawing room. Glorious.

I have been enjoying Grace Dent's Saturday morning series on the history of radio comedy, The Frequency of Laughter. She's worked her way from 1975 to 2005, just by talking to two people who were involved in each five-year era. Her questions are insightful, and she creates a relaxed, slightly naughty atmosphere that brings out the best in her interviewees. A couple of them have been quite indiscreet, and what's made those indiscretions more enjoyable is that the producers have tracked down whoever they've been rude about and asked them what they remember. So, in the show that covered 1995-2000, radio producer Paul Schlesinger recalled Sean Lock and Bill Bailey being forced to read out episodes from 15 Storeys High to a reluctant commissioner, who said "I don't understand why this is funny", but grudgingly gave them a few episodes. And then we heard from that very commissioner, who insisted that this was "one of the most joyful moments" he'd ever had in his career, when Bill Bailey read for him. No mention of Lock, whose show it was. Hmm.

In the previous programme, covering 1990-95, Sarah Smith, another Radio 4 producer, admitted that she used to favour certain writers for the satirical sketch show Week Ending: new talent such as Richard Herring and Stewart Lee. Other producers didn't, and lo, we heard from one, Diane Messias. She explained clearly that she believed that topical satire should make a political point and that Lee and Herring didn't do this, creating their jokes by laughing at a situation. "Both methods are valid," she said firmly. "Except I'm right."

Radio Times review

Stephen Fry is absolutely lethal tonight. Partly because that's the theme of this week's show, but also because he's on fire comedically. After a lengthy dissertation about a particular marsupial's energetic but ultimately deadly sex life, he solemnly wags his finger and says, "Russell Brand take note."

Sandi Toksvig, Jason Manford and Bill Bailey join Alan Davies to try to answer questions about laptop fatalities, the perils of sugar-free confectionery, unusual duelling weapons and the possibility of taking a bullet for someone. They also learn a nifty method of extracting a cork that's dropped down inside a glass bottle using a plastic bag. How handy.

Radio Times review

You can debate the virtues of the ideal QI guest, but this is a pretty perfect line-up. Sara Pascoe, Bill Bailey and Rev Richard Coles all have so much to chip in and riff about that the programme reaches that QI plateau where the questions feel almost like an interruption to the general flow of drollery.

Pascoe has astonishing facts about rats' love lives, Bailey objects to the phrase "the birds and the bees" on the basis that bees are "sexless lackeys for a monstrous sugar giant" and Coles ponders the uselessness of a tie rack in a vicarage. He also enlightens us on what it means to be soundly firked. That's firked.

Bill Bailey review

It's a rare beast that can please the masses while remaining uncompromisingly intelligent, but the unfailingly affable Bill Bailey is that creature.