Bill Bailey, Wolverhampton Civic Hall – 15th June 2013

Bill Bailey - Qualmpedler 2013
Bill Bailey – Qualmpedler 2013

I’ve always liked watching Bill Bailey on TV, mainly for the musical humour as well as briefly watching him on QI etc. and obviously Blacks Books.

So it was for my birthday that I was presented with tickets to see him on the 15th June 2013 at Wolverhampton Civic Hall.

Being honest I wasn’t sure what to expect from the comedy part of it.

However Bill Baileys routine was just excellent. Although I was anticipating a rendition of Enter Sandman (which we never got – boo), it was still a thoroughly entertaining evening. He engaged with the audience quite a bit and reacted very well to heckles showing he can adapt very well to the heckles and dynamics of the audience rather than follow a scripted routine, also – refreshingly – no swearing was needed or used throughout the whole evening.

I was not so keen on the venue. I don’t have long legs – not short either – but the seats downstairs in the ‘stalls’ if you like felt like they were just thrown in and were like narrow school chairs. Also no thought had been put into staggering the chairs to ensure most people have a good view especially if you had a someone tall in front of you. Perhaps if booking here again I may choose the balcony if. My other major gripe is that we were forced to discard (or drink quickly) a bottle of water which we took – just so you can spend the £3 or whatever they were ripping people off for it!

The only technical issue with regards to sound was that the volume for speech was not great, but thankfully we were close enough to the stage it didn’t affect us but had we been elsewhere we would have struggles to hear it at times.

Having said all that, getting lost watching the performance the flaws with the venue were fairly unnoticeable.

There were too many moments to comment on but here is just a few:

  • A reggae performance of Downton Abbey’s theme music!
  • Lounge music play in for late comers – classic!
  • Effortlessly blended the Match Of The Day theme tune into a Jewish folk song and a lounge re-mix.
  • In a witty parody of musical styles, he discussed why he believes the Welsh accent is “too soft and lilting” for death metal, as he performed a song about killer badgers in “the Welsh death metal style”.
  • Dub-step church ‘promotional’ video!
  • Talking about his war against mnemonics and the sadness of the text-speak ‘lol’ taking the place of actual laughter in real life.
  • And the OWL rescue… I won’t give away the ending, but Bill’s tale of a real life encounter he had with a live owl he saw being sold for food in a restaurant in China was thought provoking.

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