One of Bill Bailey’s most vivid memories of growing up in the West Country town of Keynsham is gazing at the walls of his family home, which were covered with art. “I’d look at all these incredible drawings, pastels and paintings,” he recalls. “They were so lovely. I remember asking my mum ‘Where did all these come from?’ and she said ‘Your dad did those.’ I thought that was normal. I’d go around to other people’s houses and say, ‘Well, where’s all your dad’s stuff then?’”
Bailey credits his lifelong interest in art to a childhood spent watching his father drawing, painting and illustrating manuscripts, as well as to visits to the Holburne Museum in nearby Bath. His dad, 93, still paints; the two men recently went to the Tate Britain to see the Turner and Constable exhibition.
No doubt Bailey Sr also tunes in to watch his son presenting Extraordinary Portraits, which returns for a new series this March, where people with remarkable stories (such as the former convict who stopped a terrorist attack in London using a narwhal tusk) sit for professional artists.
The process of sitting prompts “all kinds of conversations, which makes it more than a programme just about art,” Bailey tells me. “I also love that it democratises portraiture, which is often seen as something for the wealthy, well-connected and well-heeled… In our case, it’s about ordinary people who were in extraordinary situations.” A good portrait, he believes, is “more than a likeness. It tells you something about that person and elicits an emotion in you.”
Bailey himself doesn’t paint, but he sketches “a lot of nature: insects, butterflies, birds, moths, beetles… It’s a great love of mine. I take my pencils everywhere I go.”
On the walls of his west London home, there are copies of portraits by Frida Kahlo. He’s also taken with Johannes Vermeer, whose “beautiful studies of ordinary life” he recently saw at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. Bailey remembers standing in front of Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, transfixed by the way the light was captured. “Great paintings are little portals into another era.”
His first love remains comedy, though. Growing up in Somerset, he was hooked from a young age, listening to Monty Python and Pete and Dud, and performing comedy sketches with friends at school. Later, he visited London’s comedy clubs and was “completely enthralled” by the stand-up comedians, subversive magicians and musical acts. “It was a revelation. It was one of those moments where you think ‘I don’t know how I’m going to do this, but this is what I want to do.’”
When he began performing in the 1980s and 1990s, he was often presented by critics and television hosts as an oddball. “I was into strange bands, metal and hippyish music. I read profusely, a lot of fantasy literature. I was in my own world a lot of the time. I had long hair and a beard. In reviews, people would say, ‘He lives in Middle Earth.’ People love to put a label on you.”
Alongside his award-winning tours combining stand-up comedy and music, he is also known for appearing on panel shows including Have I Got News for You and QI, acting in Black Books and Hot Fuzz, and winning the 2020 series of Strictly Come Dancing.
As of yet, though, he doesn’t have his own podcast. Bailey groans. “I keep getting asked to do podcasts. Everyone has got a podcast, and I just think ‘Really?!’ Sometimes I think I ought to have one just because everyone else has got one. But I’m very busy, constantly going on to the next project.”
At 61, he sees a dramatically different comedy landscape than when he started. “We toured up and down the country. If you wanted to get on, the only route was television, and there weren’t many opportunities. Now, comics can post short videos of themselves on Instagram or TikTok and build up a big audience quite quickly. But it’s a precarious profession, whatever era you’re in.”
Extraordinary Portraits with Bill Bailey is on BBC One and iPlayer from March 27.
