...and a bird book, and more!

Bill Bailey is writing a sitcom set in a safari park.

The animal-loving comic revealed the news on Mark Radcliffe and Stuart Maconie’s BBC 6 Music show.

Stating that he’s ‘been quite prolific on the writing front’ recently, Bailey also disclosed that he’s written a book on British birds, ‘another book option, and I’ve written a comedy-drama as well, so there’s a few things, irons in the fire’.

Chortle understands that the safari comedy is at an early stage of development. But if commissioned, it would mark the Black Books star’s sitcom writing debut.

Currently touring his Limboland show around the UK, Bailey’s only prior sitcom scripting was additional material contributions for Sean Lock’s 15 Storeys High and Asylum, the 1996 Paramount Comedy Channel stand-up showcase-cum-sitcom, which starred Simon Pegg, Jessica Hynes, David Walliams, Julian Barrett, Adam Bloom and Norman Lovett.

Following several nature documentaries and a BBC Two mini-series about the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, Bailey is also making a documentary about German biologist Georg Steller, who discovered Alaska, and has been trying to write a musical.

He is not the first writer to set a sitcom in a zoological setting.

The first series of The Mighty Boosh was set in a zoo owned by Rich Fulcher’s Bob Fossil. And former zoo keeper Sam Simmons wrote and starred in the Australian mockumentary shorts The Urban Monkey, which drew parallels between human and animal behaviour.

-by Jay Richardson

Published: 4 May 2016