Went to see Bill Bailey’s new show Tinselworm at Nottingham Arena Saturday night.
I have to say overall I was disappointed , it seemed to me a show by someone who has lost his comedy direction and was grasping in many directions to find it again. It felt like he had a “oh my god – I am doing a stadium tour , I got to try harder to please such a huge audience” and in the process tried too hard and alot of it was just not funny.
I first saw Bill Bailey live during his Part Troll tour. This was a clever and surreal mix of stand up comedy with him using his musical skills to weave into and out of gags was pure genius and hilariously funny and still rates as one of the best stand up comedy gigs I have seen – that finished with an side splitting finale video piece where he was seen to be looking into his washing up bowl using one of the trays from his fridge.
That was the past , his new tour has lost it. Whilst he had a few funny video moments and some cracking surreal stand up pieces these were in the minority rather than the majority. His act now is heavily peppered with music numbers which must be filling his life long desire to play to an arena which on the whole were not funny and a number fell flat. He had numerous video sections most of which looked like comedy rejects off Youtube rather than from one of Britains best comedy talents , especially the ones where he is saying silly things and making peoples mouths move – would be funny if what he was doing was actually funny rather than his attempt at political comedy. This leads me to final part of my rant , for some reason all of a sudden Bill is doing poltical comedy and really badly – what that all about ??
Overall a disappointing 6 out of 10