'So nerve-wracking' - Bill Bailey on playing the typewriter at the BBC Proms
He's no stranger to strange musical instruments, but a typewriter put comedian Bill Bailey to the test at the Royal Albert Hall this September.
Although he's played with British orchestras many times, music-loving comedian Bill Bailey felt "a slight scepticism" from the BBC Concert Orchestra when he arrived at rehearsal for this year's BBC Proms.
"Was I going to play the watering cans? Were they going to have to put on silly hats?
"Then they realised, actually, no, this guy's serious about music, and the musical jokes are clever, sophisticated musical jokes," he tells RNZ Concert's Nick Tipping.
The musical typewriter Bailey played on the last night of the "quintessentially British" concert series was based on a novelty instrument designed by American composer Leroy Anderson in the 1950s.
While Anderson's typewriter had all but the two keys used to play the notes disabled, Bailey's version had a fully functioning set, and hitting just two keys demanded intense concentration.
Because the BBC didn't like the "aesthetics" of a bell sitting on the table, Bailey's foot operated one via a pedal under the table.
In rehearsal, he'd worn "very light" trainers to operate this pedal, but at the Proms concert, with his feet in heavy-soled dress shoes, controlling its tone proved a bit more challenging.
"The whole thing was like, 'Oh my god'."
This November, Bill Bailey brings his Vaudevillian tour to Dunedin, Christchurch, Wellington, Auckland and Rotorua.
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After 30-odd years as a live musical comedian, Bailey is the proud owner of a huge collection of "extraordinary and eclectic" musical instruments, often gifted by fans.
These include a nyckelharpa (keyed Swedish violin), an ektara (an Indian lute), and an "old bluesy guitar" made from the binding of a King James Bible.
Bailey discovered the power of combining music and comedy as a very young boy, while watching a Danish musician seatbelt himself to a piano stool on TV with his parents and grandparents in the late '60s.
"Everyone was laughing. That left a very, very deep impression on me as a kid, and something which I think has continued on into my adult life."
Watch Bill Bailey playing the mandola - a rare ancestor of the mandolin - on The Graham Norton Show in 2021:
Performing around the world for the last 30 years, the two creative forms have become inseparable for Bailey.
"If you're delivering a story or a joke or a quip or whatever it is, there is a kind of shape to it, like there is with music."
Just as comedy is a great way to connect with musical audiences, the reverse is also true, Bailey says.
"When you bring [unusual] instruments to a comedy audience, they appreciate it in a different way; they can see the connection between what ordinary people would have enjoyed hundreds of years ago, as they are doing now. It's almost a window into the past."
Watch Bill Bailey play 'Auld lang syne' at the 2025 BBC Proms:
In Bailey's new comedy show Vaudeville, which he brings to New Zealand next month, audiences will be treated to 15th-century Swedish folk music, Indian devotional music from the 1400s and also a bit of typewriter as he revisits his 2025 BBC Proms performance.
At this year's Proms, which attracted over 10 million TV viewers, Bailey not only pulled off the typewriter, he also played 'Auld Lang Syne' on the Royal Albert Hall Organ, famous for its 9,999 pipes.
"It wouldn't have killed them to put one more in."
