Bill Bailey: Dandelion Mind

Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.

Welcome to the O2 Dublin.

Please welcome on stage Bill Bailey.

Good evening!

Hello, Dublin.

Welcome to the O2.

A unique building in Dublin, in that it is actually finished.

Every time I've been to any historical building in Ireland,

and just after five minutes, you'll see something on the wall,

and it said, "And then the English came and ruined it."

No. It'll say,

"Yeah, so this building was built

"before the English came."

And then you realise you just got to get out of there.

Yeah. "Shall we stop for the gift shop?" "No, let's just keep going."

Not so great in England at the moment.

In an online poll, we came last.

We came actually bottom of European countries for quality of life.

Right. Because of things like the weather, obviously.

You know, late retirement, poor holiday,

poor public services, poor health service.

It's basically just a kind of a grey, godless wilderness

full of cold pies and broken dreams.

And that's why I didn't get the gig doing the tourist campaign because...

Other countries have got great tourist campaigns.

Like Malaysia is, "Malaysia, Truly Asia."

You see what we did there?

New Zealand is a "100% pure."

It's like it's some kind of narcotic, you know.

Yeah, 100% pure. That's not cut with Vanuatu.

All right. Australia is like, you know,

"Where the bloody hell are you?"

Followed by a terrifying scream.

I've actually thought of one for Ireland. I don't know. See what you think, all right?

I've just sort of mucking around with it. See what you think, right.

Okay, it goes, here we go, something like this.

Come to Ireland.

A magical place.

Where euros mysteriously disappear

by their millions.

Strange structures known as bank headquarters blow in the wind.

Visit the jungles, the beaches, the rainforests.

All right. Ireland.

It's not Brazil, but it's not as shit as Greece.

Something like that.

Yeah. I was actually on tour in Australia.

And Australians are very optimistic and helpful,

and I'm very distrustful of that, you know.

I find that somebody's got an angle, they're being devious.

You know, "What do you mean, you're helpful?" "What?"

And there's an Australian expression which is "Too easy."

Which is meaning, you know, no problem, no worries.

Yeah. "Can you help me?" "Too easy."

I didn't realise that. I thought it was an aggressive thing.

I was in a hotel and a package arrived for me.

The bloke phoned up, he said, "There's a package here for Mr Bailey."

I said, "Oh, thanks very much." He said, "Do you want me to send it up?"

I went, "Oh, yes. Thank you very much." He went, "Too easy."

So I said, "Well, all right, train an ibis to fly it up then,"

"if that constitutes more of a challenge."

I was a little bit surly with him.

Australia is vast. Every time I go there I realise what a vast country it is.

Australia could have been invaded during the Second World War.

Nobody would have noticed, right.

Germany could have set up an entire reich up in the Northern territory somewhere,

they would have been oblivious to it for two years.

Eventually some rural country copper would have blundered across it like that,

"What's going on here?"

"This is the new Germany.

"We have set up a reich in your country."

"All right."

"Oh, carry on."

"You haven't got any fruit, or vegetables or potpourri on you at all, have you?"

The thing is, when I was in Australia, there was a coup, right.

The government was ousted,

the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, was chucked out.

Julia Gillard came in, in his place, all in a matter of days.

And it was very harsh and very brutal,

but it did actually really make a point to me that, you know,

it's what we've all known for many years outside of Australia,

you can't have a world leader called Kevin.

All right. You just can't.

It doesn't really convey any statesman-like gravitas.

Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel. "Uh, Kevin, hello."

And now, today, like we have in Britain now, a coalition government.

It seems to be a bit of a mishmash.

We didn't have the unifying moment of Obama.

You see, Obama unified America,

and he is to me an inspirational figure.

He's intelligent, articulate.

He seems genuinely engaged in the world.

My only problem with Obama is that

some of this phraseology is uplifting but vague.

You know. You hear it and you think, "Oh, cor! Eh, what?"

You know, "Well, I better applaud, you know."

Mainly out of white liberal guilt, I suppose, you know.

I mean, his book title, The Audacity of Hope.

I mean, it sounds very noble and uplifting, doesn't it? The Audacity of Hope.

But it's not really the way I would describe hope.

I wouldn't describe hope with audacity.

Maybe the mundanity of hope, perhaps, you know.

The depressing, inevitability of hope.

The pointless, day-to-day, crushing jackboot of history on the face of hope.

The pointless, uselessness of hope

but not the audacity of hope.

When you think of hope in Britain, you just see the face of Rooney.

Rooney's face is not the face of hope.

It looks like a child's drawing of a cabbage.

All his features are drawing together

in the middle of this face like the top of a duffle bag.

In fact, all the English footballers,

a bunch of useless turf-kicking,

knuckle-dragging, mono-browed

millionaire illiterates.

Every one of them look like some ageing warehousemen

who'd been given conflicting storage instructions.

And, okay, even the pundits were lost for words at how appalling it was.

One of the pundits on BBC, Mark Lawrenson,

you know, the one who looks like a melted rabbit, you know.

Watership Dali, I call him.

He said, "They've got to try and get the ball into the corridor of uncertainty."

Yeah, what's that? Pass the half way line of unknowing,

in the six yard box of tremulous ambiguity.

Manager Fabio Capello. Okay, English not really his strong point.

He was shouting from the touchline, partly in Italian.

Rooney's face, all his features disappeared now, like a black hole.

In his first game in charge of England,

Fabio Capello said it was, "Una partita all'inglese."

"An English-style game."

Which is such... Damning with faint praise, innit?

So, "all'inglese" becomes this terrible negative adjunct.

Yes. "All'inglese" sounds like a very disappointing pasta dish, isn't it?

Pasta all'inglese.

Yes, overcooked rigatoni and marmite.

Bellissimo!

So, Obama gave us a good kicking over the oil spill,

which apparently now has been finally capped.

But what they've done apparently, what they've done is,

they've packed the oil well with Dan Brown novels, right.

Because they're very absorbent apparently.

I've seen people go into Waterstones and order a kilo of Dan Brown.

They don't even know what it is. "I've got to cut a bit off the end."

"You'll miss the ending." 'Well, whatever."

He's another one, pudding-faced, currant-eyed, murderer of prose.

But I would never condone the burning of a Dan Brown book, okay.

Much though I loathe and detest his work...

Well, his I say work, you know,

words randomly arranged to form millions of dollars.

Not bitter at all.

So, hey.

I tell you what I hate, though,

are those sort of whimsical, girly singer/songwriters, you know, the ones...

You know, the ones that kind of, they sing songs like this.

Tonight's show is about doubt.

Or maybe it isn't. I haven't made my mind up yet.

One of the ways that music finds its way into our consciousness

is through advertising.

And advertisers are very keen to banish doubt

from your minds when you're selecting a product.

That's why the music always surreptitiously, subconsciously

leads you to believe in the trustworthiness

of the product in question.

Something, perhaps, you know, you may have heard something of this nature,

like in the advert for makeup.

"Life never stops and that can take a toll on your skin.

"That's why new super youthful face shaper ointmenty stuff

"can smooth those troubles away.

"Our unique atom rearranging pro-dermitiser

"contains our de-uglification technology that

"re-lovelifies your actual face off.

"And replaces it with a newer, kinder one

"which eventually seeps all the way into your brain.

"Kinder face marmalade from L'Oréal. Because you need it."

All right then, you cheeky scamps.

All right, so, anyone familiar with this particular instrument?

Lute? No.

Did you say banjo? No.

- Mandolin! - Mandolin. No.

- Balalaika! - Balalaika, no.

- Bouzouki. - An acorn? What?

Bouzouki. No.

Oud.

Who said, "Oud"?

Oud!

Oud!

That was one of the strangest things I've ever heard.

"Is this an oud?" "Oud!"

See, that's not the right answer to that question, is it, really.

Yes, but no. "Is this an oud?" "Oud!"

"The prophecy..."

"Is this an oud?" "Oud!"

"No, is this an oud?" "Oud!"

"No, is this an oud?" "Oud!"

"No, but is it an oud?" "Oud!"

Time slows in the O2 to a glacial drip.

"Is this an oud?" "Oud!"

"Is this an oud?" "Oud!"

Outside the O2, empires rise and fall.

Huge winged crabs hold dominion

over a blasted post-apocalyptic wilderness.