Bill Bailey: Qualmpeddler

Good evening, people of London!

Let the qualms commence.

Radiation, population...

pollution.

Greek holidays, whistle-blowers...

evil.

Evil, evil, double evil, cleansing fire.

Please welcome to the stage, peddler of qualms, Bill Bailey!

Whoa!

Yes, so, Hammersmith, hello!

Hello!

Yes, you look upon me, "Oh, it's that bloke, innit,

"off "Never Mind the Black Books Q! Who Have I Got For You- "

Yeah, and you'd be right. I used to do a pop quiz called Never Mind the Buzzcocks.

Yeah, thank you very much, don't do it any more, because...

Well, dignity took a stand

and I couldn't stand there humming the introduction to Toxic by Britney Spears

to some gormless indie halfwit, so...

You know, that's what happened.

One night I was on the show with Fearne Cotton and I thought to myself...

I've got grade-6 clarinet, I'm better than this.

Good point, Bill, well made.

You're all London, are you?

Don't... That's a rhetorical, you didn't have to answer that.

That's a question I've saved for a show I've pitched to the BBC,

Rhetorical Question Time.

Good evening, welcome to Rhetorical Question Time...

Or is it?

They didn't go with it, no.

They didn't go with Arab Spring Watch either, so...

Okay. (CHUCKLES)

So I am Bill Bailey.

I'm not just some kind of flibbertigibbet, oh, no.

I've been immortalised in plant form.

Yeah.

You're thinking, what, was it a rose, maybe, Bill, a begonia,

a variegated milk thistle perhaps,

maybe even some sort of hallucinogenic mushroom?

But no.

I'll show you what it was. It was this. This!

Yes.

A Sumatran carnivorous pitcher plant, yes.

This is a Nepenthes Bill Bailey.

Look upon it and tremble.

That's enough of that.

So, yeah, I'm Bill Bailey and I grew up in the west of England,

-the West Country... -(AUDIENCE MEMBERS CHEER)

Oh, right, you from the West Country?

Oh, what part? Oh, brilliant.

Ah, Well...

Time's a-wasting.

I don't have the accent any more because, well, I wanted to get on in life really.

- Now I live here in West London, yes! -(AUDIENCE CHEERING)

That's it, long-time resident, yeah.

You may join in, shepherds, that's good. Uh...

I live in Hammersmith and I've started to realise

I'm talking a little bit

with the West London swagger, like that.

I'm talking a little bit like that, I've noticed my mannerisms have started

to, like, become the West London mannerisms when you're talking.

You wind forward the cotton reel and then you wind it back like that.

Yeah, that's what I was saying, yeah.

No, is that what you were saying?

That's exactly what I was saying.

Everyone speaks like that in West London.

Even elderly spinsters talk like that.

There's these two old dears in my street discussing their roses. And one of them went,

"These aphids, yeah?

"These aphids is getting well on my tits, yeah."

And one of them goes, "Is it?"

Yeah.

A lot of the young people are starting to imitate the rappers

and their, their gestures and the way they talk and the fact that a lot of rappers,

they point to the side when they're making a point.

"I'm going up Westfield later on, yeah, get some threads...

"Up the Topshop looking fresh like that."

Pointing to the side.

And these people are often getting the wrong cheese in delis, right?

"Yeah, yeah, I'll have some of that, yeah.

"No, no, man, not the Wensleydale low-fat with chive!

"I ain't no batty-man.

"I want Taleggio, the cheese of a player, man.

"I'm going to have to stand a little bit to the side.

"I'll have some of that, yeah."

What kind of a strange country is this?

A strange internet-obsessed, maybe attention-deficit country,

an instant-gratification country.

I was in a restaurant the other day and on the menu, "soup of the moment", right?

I was like, "Oh, so what is it?"

He went, "Minestrone." "I'll have some of that."

"No, it's French onion. Come on!" I went...

"Your window of soup opportunity is too narrow."

And I looked round, it wasn't a restaurant any more, I was in Poundland.

And I'd had one of me turns, you know, so I had to go home and relax.

So what I did was I googled "tangents", and I was off.

Yeah?

Yeah...

And what kind of strange government is this, as well, this coalition,

this consolation prize of a government which nobody knows quite what it is.

It's like being ruled by a black hole, a question mark and a parsnip.

Nobody really knows what it is.

This ideological mismatch between the Tories and Lib Dems,

like a wax jacket and Jesus sandals kind of arrangement. Yeah.

It was a Faustian pact by the Lib Dems, wasn't it?

Because there's going to be no Lib Dems left at the next election.

It's just going to be a bunch of flowers sellotaped to a railing.

You know, and what of Nick Clegg?

What of the tiny Clegg?

What's that, (leggy?

What's that, (leggy?

You don't think people are taking you seriously?

And this depiction of you isn't exactly helping?

-(CHUCKLES) Well, I'm so sorry. -(MAKES SQUISHED CHIRP)

Well...

Yeah, and what of the others?

What of the other colossi that rule over us?

Well, there's Miliband, the strange pale panda-faced ghoul who I should like,

but it's very hard to like someone who you forget everything they say

a nanosecond after they've said it.

What? Eh?

It's like his words are sucked back into his mouth like a dementor.

What?

What did he say?

Uh?

He leaves no trace.

He's like a strand of cress in a vindaloo.

Huh?

No, nothing!

Nothing of any consequence.

He's like a key change at a One Direction concert.

Yeah?

He doesn't look like someone about to seize the reins of power, does he?

He looks like a bloke who's just caught the bouquet at a funeral.

Yeah?

And what of the strange Cameron android,

this eerie ageless thing?

Doesn't seem to be getting any older.

Maybe there's a portrait of him in an attic getting horribly disfigured, I don't know.

He's got this weird smooth face, he's like a Botoxed walnut.

You know? He's just...

like a sand-blasted goblin or some kind of weird weasel

that's been held against a lathe for too long. You know, just...

What is he? You know... He's got a face like a magic pebble.

Like if you rubbed it, glitter would come out of his ears.

He's got a sort of strange ethereal quality.

I can't pin him down.

He has this kind of, this sort of odd pantomime-villain-esque air to him.

Every time I see him near a hospital, I expect to hear this music...

We don't need these A&E departments, people cluttering up the place bleeding.

Good Lord! Put some flats up.

It's well known that blood congeals in the presence of luxury.

This spare-room tax, that's a bit harsh, taxing something you don't use that often,

like big spoons.

Or your initiative, or something.

But what this has done is driven people to UKIP, hasn't it?

The Tory coalition, they've managed to terrify Middle England

into thinking that zombie Bulgarian benefit scroungers

are coming to eat their friends.

And UKIP, they're my favourite party, they're hilarious.

They're just four sozzled berks from the golf club.

"Hello, we're UKIP."

"Policy? Oh, really, do we have to?

"Oh, okay.

"Smoking in hospitals, electrified fence at Dover,

"no women in the bar area, there we go!"

That was easy.

No more Thatcher. (SIGHS) Oh, never mind. Uh...

10 million quid on that funeral, that was a bit lame, wasn't it?

For 10 million quid, I want to lie in state on a robot crystal swan

pulled by Shakira and Beyoncé.

Yeah?

We're a country that's obsessed with the C-word,

and I don't mean that word, I mean the one that is far worse.

"Celebrity", right?

That's a mark of Cain now, innit?

"Celebrity." It's, it's an insult.

You know? It's like casting me into Dante's Seventh Circle of Hell.

Presenters and narcissists and killers and murderers and Fearne-bleedin'-Cotton,

and... some other dur-brained, porridge-brained irritatrix,

or someone off Strictly who was crying

because she didn't know that Africa was a poor country,

she just thought it was hot and far away like Mercury or the Crab Nebula.

Hashtag, "Just sayin'."

She wouldn't know what a Crab Nebula is, Bill, what are you talking about?

You've just thrown a linguistic bolus around your ankles,

tripped yourself up in the long grass of pointless over-analysis.

They're not even listening. Er...

I saw a photograph of Peter Andre in the paper,

right, next to a kangaroo's arsehole, right?

And I thought it was a still from I'm a Celebrity...

No! He was, he was hosting a new literacy campaign

and the paper had put a still

and it said can you guess which one of them knows what a colon is?

Now, I thought that was a bit harsh.