Bill Bailey: Bewilderness (2001 Video)

Bill Bailey: Self

Quotes 

• Bill Bailey : [explaining through song what it's like to be an owl]  I am death. A wingèd beast. I am born on the velvet wings of night and I'm hungry for a feast. I am the nemesis of the vole. My heart is black as coal. You could kill me with a trowel. I am an owl.

• Bill Bailey : [in Welsh accent]  "We've got a big ambassadorial reception", "oh, right, I'll get the grill on. Do you want a bit of chutney on it?" "no, don't go mad Rhodri, it's only Fiji".

• Bill Bailey : [about the Welsh assembly]  "Right. Good morning. Later this morning we'll look at financial restructuring in the Rhondda, but first we've got a nice policeman here who's going to give a little talk on road safety".

• Bill Bailey : I'm English and as such I crave disappointment. That's why I buy Kinder Surprise.

• Bill Bailey : [the Celtic Experience Centre]  "You enter the vortex", what? the door? "travel down the corridor of time, into the other world", looks like a café, "you will be met by Gwidion and the druid". I just assumed it was some local magic act. "I'm Gwidion", "and I'm the druid. And together we present the history of the celtic people through the medium of balloon modelling".

• Bill Bailey : Service stations. Cathedrals of despair as I like to call them.

• Bill Bailey : There's only one band that can do the west country accent justice and that's the Worzels.

  [cheers from audience] 

  Bill Bailey : Strange reaction, or perhaps you knew them when I did, when they were a German Techno band - Die Würzels.

• Bill Bailey : Not even De Burgh can do the west country, not even De Burgh, not even the monobrowed purveyor of ultimate filth "I drove my tractor through your haystack last night, ooh arr ooh arr".

• Bill Bailey : You're all looking a bit nervous. And with very good reason.

• Bill Bailey : The national dish? Cheese on toast!

• Bill Bailey : I'm from the west country.

  audience member : [cheer] 

  Bill Bailey : Oh, hypnotised or actually? What are you doing here?

  audience member : Well, I had to come, didn't I.

  Bill Bailey : What do you mean, you had to come? You're on some dark purpose? "I had to come, the voices told me to come for you are the great bearded one and I must dance".

• Bill Bailey : The scariest heckle I ever received was in Scotland, Arbroath. It's very cold there so I was just pacing up and down, primarily to keep warm and this chilling voice from the back said "stand still".

• Bill Bailey : [after the Jean-Michel Jarre number]  I used to get a member of the audience to do that bit but I stopped after a gig in Newcastle when I asked a guy to say Jean-Michel Jarre then an insult and he said "Jean-Michel Jarre, you long-haired bastard".

• Bill Bailey : [Unisex Chip Shop - a tribute to Billy Bragg]  I used to buy my chips from an oppressive chip shop regime. The girl who worked there, she seemed happy, But I knew it was not what it seemed. Do you want salt and vinegar, was what they made her say, But in the language of the ghetto, That means, Help, I'm a woman in chains. I wanted to free her. In my dreams I would see her. Running naked through the woods round Rainham, If I had some tigers I'd train them. To protect her From the sexual fascism that was lurking, round the gherkins. I'd lean across the counter and we would talk, I carved the name Debbie on a little wooden fork. But into the shop came a skinhead gang, They snatched the fork from my hand. Debbie, she looked at me, to assert my masculinity. I said Oi!, they said What?, I said Nothing.