Review by Steve Bennett

Bill Bailey surely goes down well in most environments – but festivals especially, given his muso sensibilities and mash-up talents.

That said, when he asked for an unlikely track to be covered in a heavy metal style, one punter in Latitude’s packed-to-the-gills comedy arena suggested Motörhead, thus missing the entire point of the exercise. It’s been a long festival…

Bailey himself confessed to being ‘discombobulated’, the result not of a heavy weekend but of the shock of the Brexit vote that so stunned him, and many others. All the comedians who had previously asked their Latitude crowds who voted Out received a near-solitary reply.

The feeling of bemusement and anger that swept over Remain supporters on June 24 is a good match for Bailey’s comedy of intelligent bewilderment… some good coming out of the result, though hardly succour for those who think it a brutal self-harming blow to the nation.

Surrealism is perhaps the only valid response in such strange times, so Bailey used his headlining set to let out his exasperation via an extended metaphor about battered vans, delivered with a passion beyond his soft beardy-weirdy persona.

Could his beloved Labour provide the opposition we need in this political ominishambles? He doubts it, likening the choice of Jeremy Corbyn as leader as ‘like when a band I've been into for a long time release an experimental album’, testing his loyalty.

This astute but distinctively peculiar take on the crisis of leadership was an aperitif for musical elements of the 50-minute set.  It’s quite possible Bailey had more kit on stage than any other performer at the festival – full bands included – leading to a 15-minute delay for soundchecks. Kudos, or at least sympathy, ought to go to compere David Morgan for not being crushed by the task of talking to an uninterested crowd while all this was going on. He was given so little respect that music was being played through the comedy stage’s own speakers while he was trying to host.

Bailey – a very modern incarnation of a one-man band – used all this to mock  Adele; sing a sinister version of Happy Birthday; offer metal versions of The Birdie Song (once the audience got the gist of what was happening to make a meaningful suggestion) and I've Got A Brand New Combine Harvester (a tune he’s previously done in the style of Kraftwerk); and remix the iPhone ringtone into an EDM floor-filler, from iOS music to house music. All guaranteed to make the crowd happy.

Indeed, the elusive idea of happiness was another strand of his stand-up – well that and an anecdote about  being recognised from Black Books by Talin’s airport security. 

He might mock the British attitude of feeling ‘not too bad’, via a wondrously extended riff, but rather celebrates finding joy in the smallest things amid a pall of mild disappointment. ‘Contentment is knowing you're right. Happiness is knowing someone else is wrong,’ he says, coining a phrase that deserves to be etched in stone somewhere.

Naturally he stormed it, though audiences in Latitude’s comedy tent have learned no to expect an encore – so when Bailey hastily shuffled back on to the stage after less than a minute away, the crowds were already dispersing. But they stopped in their tracks to hear Stairway To Heaven on the cowbells – who wouldn’t? and Bailey's roadies hadn’t dragged the instuments  all the way to this Suffolk field for nothing. And the closing  Irish reel on the mandola would have got everyone on their feet…. had it not already been standing room only to pack as many people into the tent as possible.

Review date: 18 Jul 2016
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Latitude