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When you enter Bill Bailey’s studio, you feel like you’ve entered Bill Bailey’s mind. It’s on the ground floor of a townhouse in Hammersmith, the sort of block of flats where you’d expect to find a young family, rather than the nerve center of one of Britain’s most popular entertainers.
He posed in his garden, which is half Zen-style light gray gravel and half astroturf. Through the circular partition—a Japanese moon gate, as Bailey explains—is a shed with a recording studio inside. More interestingly, there is another narrow shed on one side of the garden, the contents of which are protected from view by silver foil and bubble wrap.
“The birdhouse,” Bailey says as if it’s the most normal thing in the world. “We have fig parrots, frogs, some iguanas. Because of winter we have this bubble wrap which is great insulation. Talk about Insulate Britain, think of all the bubble wrap kicking around – we could insulate the city. It’s impractical for your house because you can’t see out, but it looks pretty cool and works great.” The aviary is warm and humid. I see a small emerald bird hanging on the roof. A tree frog stares at eye level, its slimy green throat relentlessly inflating and deflating.
“Because my wife and I take care of animals, people call and say, ‘we have this bird, can you take care of it?'” Bailey explains. “They’re all from collections or zoos that can’t care for them, or birds that have been traded. We find them a home. We kept a few of them and among them was a breeding pair, so we became accidental parrot breeders. It kind of happened. Over the years we have had parrots, giant pigeons, a turtle, an armadillo, partridges, hummingbirds, pigeons. Quite a few have finished breeding. We seem to be a fertile city, but the reason is that they came from zoos. Animals are stressed when people bang on the glass. We give them a little privacy.”
If the animals aren’t an audience pleaser, he certainly is. At 57, the comic has achieved an impressive position as perhaps Britain’s greatest alternative act – an Edinburgh Fringe attraction that has somehow become a national treasure, seemingly without troubling anyone. The goatee may be a little grayer, the mane a bit thinner at the back, but Bailey’s funny yet thoughtful aesthetic is the same as ever. He’s part Harley Street consultant, part heavy metal roadie. (Or part troll, as the title of one of his tours read.) While Bailey may be self-absorbed to the point of eccentricity, he also embodies the English archetype: open-minded but skeptical, goofy but serious, big-hearted but suspicious of received wisdom. In the corner of every English pub is someone like Bailey – or someone who thinks they’re like Bailey.
The museum of his interests continues within David Rose. There are half a dozen guitars, a framed photograph of him dancing with Oti Mabuse on Strictly Come Dancing and a large poster from one of his sold-out stand-up tours. There’s a Wes Anderson coffee table book, a bust of his own head, and a number of well-preserved potted plants. A jar of keys, for some reason. Most incongruously, there is a full-sized popcorn machine on the back of the red wheel. “People are flogging all sorts of things on the internet,” he says. “It’s a working popcorn machine. If it all goes wrong, I’ll go to Lyric Square and make a fortune.”
There’s also a pad of white paper on which Bailey wrote “Marbled White” dozens of times like a schoolboy practicing his signature, next to a framed pencil drawing of a marbled white butterfly. This is a Christmas present for Anoushka, the widow of Bailey’s good friend and fellow comedian Sean Lock, who died of lung cancer August 2021.
“There’s a place in Buckinghamshire called Ivinghoe Beacon,” he says. “It’s a place that Sean and I loved and used to go there with our families. Then last year he was quite sick, but he wanted to go up, so we went to the top. On the way down we saw a butterfly and he asked me what it was. I used to collect butterflies so it’s one of those things I know. I told him it was marbled white. This is a gift for his wife.”
In August, Bailey undertook a seven-day, 100-mile walk in Devon, from Bude to Combe Martin, to mark the anniversary of Locke’s death. During breaks from their schedules, they went on long rambles together in the countryside and organized the world. So far, the August walk has raised more than £160,000 for Macmillan Cancer Support, one of the four charities. The Telegraph’s Christmas Charity Appeal supports this year. Lock has been private about his battle with the disease. His death was confirmed to the public by Bailey.
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