Howdy, Bill. You were born Mark Bailey but nicknamed “Bill” by your high school music teacher. Is that because “Mark Bailey” sounds like the kind of bloke who’d steal your car?
Yes. It doesn’t sound that trustworthy, does it? Mark Bailey is the sort of name you’d read in the paper — “He seemed normal, said neighbours...”

You were once an accompanist for a mind-reading dog. What were you thinking? Or should we ask him?
One of my high points, definitely. A real career triumph. I turned up at the studio and the dog had a dressing room — he was called Collywobbles, so they’d actually printed up a nameplate for the door that said “Collywobbles”. And mine was just a scribbled bit of paper in biro that said “pianist for dog.” So, yeah, I knew my place…

You also played a “disenfranchised owl” in an experimental Welsh Theatre group — was that a hoot?
It was. It was exactly that, and I like what you’ve done there.

Er, we’re pretty ashamed of what we’ve done there.
Don’t be, because, hey, you’re bringing light to where there is darkness. Actually, the owl costume started out as kind of the costume of shame. Like, “Oh. Bill’s got to be in the owl costume! Ha ha!” And then we realised we were touring Wales in the winter, and suddenly the owl costume wasn’t so silly after all. It was the warmest thing we had in the van. People would secretly put it on at night.

Just one at a time?
Well… yeah. It wasn’t that kind of thing, it wasn’t free love. There was none of that in Wales.

Has anyone ever told you you look like Lars Ulrich from Metallica, except balder and more beardy?
Many, many times. In fact, I’ve actually had people stop me and say, “You are Lars! You’re Lars, aren’t you?” I say, “No”. But they go, “Only the real Lars would deny that he is Lars.” And then they follow me around and get me to sign Metallica albums. In the end, it’s easiest just to go, “Yeah, yeah, okay, I am, alright,” just to get them off your back.

Unlike Lars, you have perfect pitch. Does that mean everytime you stub your toe and scream, you stop yourself and go, “Wow, that was a C-sharp under high-E with some nice vibrato…”
Not every time, but, say, with mostly domestic appliances, I’ll be able to pick out the tone of it. And if someone screams like, “Aaah!” I’ll occasionally go “Hmm, nice E-flat”. It’s annoying, actually. It’s irritating. It’s a curse.

You publicly backed Labour in the UK election, which they lost. Do you think if you’d kept your mouth shut they would have had a chance?
I think it’s my fault, yes. It was the kiss of death: “Oh no, Bailey’s got involved. That’s wrecked it!” It takes me a while to get roused politically, and I got roused just as Labour were being booted out. I went, “Yeah, I think I should get behind…uh, oh, woopsy-daisy… they’re a publicly discredited party and the people hate them. Umm, maybe I should have weighed into this a bit earlier.” By the time we got to the election, Gordon Brown had already had some terrible incident where his microphone was left on in a car and he slagged off some old woman, y’know? It was just a disaster. So I backed a disaster, how ’bout that? 

Dylan Moran beat you for comedy’s Perrier Award in ’96, and then went on to beat you with a variety of objects in Black Books. One day, will you finally snap and have him killed?
I’m planning it as we speak. It will be revenge, which, as the Klingons say, is a dish best served cold. And it’ll be sweet and come when he least expects it.

Have you got a method in mind?
It’ll be a complicated system of revenge. I’ll entice him into being in a sitcom, we’ll make about two or three seasons, and then I’ll manage to kill him. We’ll set it on a boat or something. But the trick is, none of it will really be filmed — but he won’t know that. It’s just for my own pure, malicious enjoyment! [Breaks into evil high-pitched cackle]

Er, that’ll cut him to the bone.
It will, the grumpy-faced, wine-swilling old fool. ..

We hear fans are petitioning for you to be cast as a dwarf in Lord Of The Rings prequel The Hobbit.
Yes. Most of my work I get by petition now — I go and check into a hotel, and they say, “No, sorry, there’s no rooms”, and then they go, “Wait... there’s a Facebook petition to get you a hotel room! Okay, alright, you can come in.” It’s kind of a modern phenomenon.

The Snakes on a Plane effect?
Exactly that. I don’t know if this is something that’s good or bad, though. It might be having a negative effect, I feel. Casting directors are going, “Uh, oh, it’s that petition guy again.”

There was a push to get you up for the Eurovision contest, but we hear you were foiled by your own talent.
Hmm, yes, sadly. I wrote this song and sent it into the BBC and they actually said, “This is too silly, we might get humiliated.” Heaven forbid!

Who did they go with instead?
Some bloke that had a dog’s name or something: Price, or Rocky, or Wooky, or Josh? And the song was so irredeemably bad that it sucked out your brain and turned it into sludge. And we came dead last. Again. So, y’know, it’s lucky we weren’t humiliated with a silly song. We could have been an international laughing stock.

You’ve said that growing up as an only child you lived largely in your imagination. At what point did you become real?
I think I became like Skynet — I became self-aware. Then I sent back a version of myself from the future, to tell myself to shape up. So I think I became real retrospectively in later life. It is interesting being on your own as a child — you do live very much in your own mind. But I’m fine now. [More deranged laughter] Perfectly fine...

As a touring comic, is it true that what happens on tour stays on tour?
It is true, yes. Because that’s when it happens. And, y’know, there’s no other time that it happens. But you’re implying that there’s all kinds of shenanigans. Getting shenaniganised. And yes. Right now, I’m eating grapes. I’m not cutting them off with the scissors, I’m just pulling them right off the stem. That’s the kind of rock ’n’ roll lifestyle we lead.

That is decadent.
It’s mad. I might unwrap some little bits of soap in a sec and not put them back. Sometimes, I just do mad stuff like that.

Your “Chris de Burgh” song recommends rescuing pretty women from dangerous situations and letting ugly ones die, even “hunting them down without clemency”. Could we ever use that song as a form of defence in court?
Good luck! That’s fine. That’ll work, so long as you play a portion of a de Burgh song in court. And then people will go, “Fair enough”. You have my blessing.

Catch Bill Bailey live in Australia through July — tour dates are at www.billbailey.co.uk. Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra is out now on DVD

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