Although most comedians would happily sell their soul (supposing they had one) to the devil to get their own television programme, few have profited from the move. The attraction is simple: getting your mug on the telly means you can start playing theatres instead of grimy above-the-pub rooms, the dosh is good, and you can start hanging around London's Groucho Club with the other "celebrities". But the legion of comics who have submitted themselves to the whims of a television producer soon find out that a good stand-up does not necessarily make good telly, and once they've used all their best material in front of a nationwide audience, they're back to where they started.
Bill Bailey, one of the most gifted comics of his generation, turned down the coy flirtation of TV land for many a year but when he finally succumbed to the BBC earlier this year with his Is It Bill Bailey show, he managed to emerge with his dignity intact and the sort of ratings that have propelled him into star status. But all that is not important to Bailey, as he explains: "Being on television means people know your face and the other day I was getting a tube train and the driver recognised me. He brought me up to his front-of-train place - quite illegally - as a gesture of appreciation. Now that was a really big moment for me," he says. Only 33, but looking older, Bailey's flamboyant hair and wide girth leads him to introduce himself at the start of each gig as "the regional semi-finalist in the 1987 Stars In Their Eyes Meat Loaf lookalike special." From a nice, middle-class background in Bath, he was a good enough pianist growing up to qualify for an associateship with the London College of Music but his mini-obsessions with rock music and in particular 1970's prog rock led to him dropping out of college and becoming an actor: "I was in a children's theatre group" he says, "and there was a lot of going around Wales dressed up as owls." He followed this up with a bit of agitprop theatre: "I was in a play about the history of the trade unions with Vanessa Redgrave. It was very good actually and the people were great to work with but we opened on the day of the World Cup Final in '86 so not that many people came."
His first foray into comedy came as part of a double act called The Rubber Bishops, who toured around the student circuit for many a year while they were trying to work out a plan to become more popular. "There was a lot of philosophising under the influence," he says, "a lot of sitting in dark rooms listening to the Ozric Tentacles. I also lived in a boat on the Thames for a while and held rum tastings, which was basically a euphemism for a drink-up. And then came a time when I thought `there has to be more than this'."
Disbanding The Rubber Bishops, he went solo and within a year had built up a following among those in the know as the one to watch - to this day he remains one of the few comics who other comics go and see. With his casual monologues about an eclectic range of subjects, all delivered in a slightly bemused way, he would warm his audiences up before devastating them with some really inspired musical pastiches. The problem with musical comedy is that people automatically think of drivel like Richard Stillgoe but Bailey reclaimed the form and whether he was demonstrating how Bach concertos were inspired by cockney knees-up songs or showing how the Pot Black theme tune would sound if written by Kurt Cobain, he won over a massive new audience.
He's currently very excited about a parody rock opera (full-length) he has written called Insect Nation, which is about insects taking over the world, logically enough. Such is his stature now, that he openly wonders if he can get Insect Nation staged in a West End theatre: "If you did it straight, it would really work. I want to use 20 foot ants ..."
Bill Bailey performs at the Watergate, Sunday 9.30 p.m.; Kyteler's, Monday 6.30 p.m.
