Bill Bailey Quotes

Mark Robert Bailey , known by his stage name Bill Bailey, is an English comedian, musician and actor. Bailey is known for his role in Black Books and for his appearances on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Have I Got News for You and QI, as well as his stand-up work.

Bailey was listed by The Observer as one of the 50 funniest acts in British comedy in 2003. In 2007, and again in 2010, he was voted the seventh greatest stand-up comic on Channel 4's 100 Greatest Stand-Ups. Wikipedia

✵ 13. January 1965

Bill Bailey photo

Dash, bill bailey / CC BY-SA 2.0

Bill Bailey: 93 quotes2 likes

Famous Bill Bailey Quotes

“I tried to like it. For me, it was like being smacked around the head by a piece of IKEA furniture: it hurts, but you've got to admire the workmanship.”

Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2008)

“[as George W. Bush] I will tame evil, I will get the evil ones, We must find the evil ones. We must get evil, we must laminate evil, we must wear it round our necks, at the backstage party in paradise!”

Part Troll (2004)

“BB: So, who here has a guinea pig?Various Audience Members cheerBB: What kind of guinea pig? Muffled suggestions from audience members BB: Nah, you're not serious about it! (Imitates guniea pig owners) "I dunno, some brown thing…". So what breed? Audience Member: Crested! BB: (misunderstands) A what? A crusty… a crusty guinea pig? (Imitates owner) I think you should take it to the vet as soon as possible! "Gah, it's crusting over again, it's crusting up Captain!!" (understands) Ah, crested? What you have there is a newt I think, madam! Some bloke in a pub sold you that! (as man in pub) "Yeah, that's a crested guinea pig, they're lovely, them…"”

Tinselworm (2008)

“Thank God for Darwin, eh?”

Dandelion Mind (2010)

“I know that to be a true fact because I read it in Heat magazine”

Tinselworm (2008)

“Or I get my navel fluff out and weave it into wigs so that fleas can act out Victorian melodramas. [On relaxation]”

Dandelion Mind (2010)

Bill Bailey Quotes about the world

“Anyway, beards and drugs leads me neatly to the Taliban; were they really that backward, or were they the finest minds of the fourteenth century? Nobody seems to know or care. That ideology was never going to work, was it? It was just cobbled together from different beliefs: The anti-intellectualism of the Khmer Rouge, the religious persecution of the Nazis, the enforced beard-wearing from the world of folk music, and the segregation and humiliation of women from the world of golf.”

Part Troll (2004)

“(Imitating a Belarus citizen commenting on their national flag) Stupid National Anthem…. Look at this flag; Two bears fighting over a pineapple. What kind of message does that send to the world? "Come to Belarus, where wild animals will steal your fruit"”

Tinselworm (2008)

“Creationists mainly are Americans who think the world was created in 1982 to coincide with the rise of Supertramp, but you can very easily dispute this by playing some of Supertramp's earlier albums.”

Dandelion Mind (2010)

“(After asking the audience about their negative experiences with Marijuana)
BB: So, what form did these experiences take?
Audience Member: Swimming with dolphins! (mentioned earlier on the show)
BB: (misunderstands) Dolby? What, you hear everything with a slightly reduced hiss? (As Audience Member) I like to hear the world in Dolby, it's fantastic! Mind you, it means that no snake will I ever hear. And I said that in a very strange way. [As Yoda] No snake will I ever hear, mmm! [Normally] Never put Dolby on snake detectors, that's what we must remember.”

Part Troll (2004)

“Orchestras have often been used to conjure up the natural world: Swans, sharks, trout, but not, as far as I know, the often maligned jellyfish.”

Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2008)

“It's always been my long-held belief that eventually insects will take over the world.”

Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2008)

Bill Bailey Quotes about thinking

“But we won't have any genetically modified food, oooh no, we won't have any GM. Which is a shame, I think we've missed a trick there. We could develop wheat with the properties of Velcro… to catch whatever it is that's forming those crop circles! But then the spaceship would have to have the corresponding Velcro, so it's a bit of a long shot.”

Part Troll (2004)

“A lot of people say there's a fine line between genius and insanity. I don't think there's a fine line, I actually think there's a yawning gulf. You see some poor bugger scuffling up the road with balloons tied to his ears, he's not going home to invent a rocket, is he?”

Is It Bill Bailey? (TV, 1998)

“(On bizarre Conspiracy Theories)
- Countries are actually closer than you think…Pilots just fly aeroplanes around longer to make you THINK they're far away
- There are tiny cameras in ham…They're called 'Hameras”

Tinselworm (2008)

“I feel sorry for James Blunt, he has to wake up every morning and think 'Oh my God, I'm James Blunt, what have I done?”

Tinselworm (2008)

“You're absolutely right, Hitler was a vegetarian. It's very unseemly to think so, but there he was. Just goes to show, vegetarianism, not always a good thing. Can in some extreme cases lead to genocide.”

Part Troll (2004)

“Aldous Huxley took the drug mescaline and then chronicled his experience in the book The Doors of Perception. Now, I don't actually think that's the first thing he wrote: he probably wrote 'my brain is melting' ten thousand times, but it was the book that the critics latched on to.”

Is It Bill Bailey? (TV, 1998)

Bill Bailey: Trending quotes

“But our country's equivalent of gritty reality is more like "Look out Sarge, he's got a shooter!"”

Cosmic Jam (tour 1995, DVD 2005, 2006)

“God, I'm in the same studio as de Burgh! He may have stood right where I'm standing now… and just thought his mad thoughts. Like "I am brilliant."”

Lyrics, Misc.

“Without the beat in the background, Jazz basically sounds like an armadillo was let loose on the keyboard”

Tinselworm (2008)

Bill Bailey Quotes

“Talking of white supremacist violent types, I was in America, recently… [Wild laughter and applause from audience]”

Part Troll (2004)

“There's more evil in the charts than in an Al-Qaeda suggestion box.”

Part Troll (2004)

“Was he a Swiss nationalist, or a nutso with a crossbow? I don't know.”

Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2008)

“It's the augmented fourth, or diminished fifth, depending on your outlook on life…”

Tinselworm (2008)

“Juxtaposition, you can't handle the juxtaposition!”

Tinselworm (2008)

“Grey and grey and grey and grey”

Lyrics, Misc.

“Beautiful ladies in danger. Danger all around the world. But I will protect them, because I am Chris de Burgh! Beautiful ladies in emergency situations. Beautiful ladies are lovely but sometimes they don't take care
They're too busy with their makeup and combing their lovely hairTo take basic safety precautions But I will protect them I will save the pretty onesWith their smiles and their beautiful eyesBut let the ugly ones dieI have no place for them in my new world orderI won't waste my seed on hideous trollsKill kill kill kill kill the trolls hunt them down there shall be no clemencyKill kill kill kill kill the trollsLook under the bridges that's where they hideThat's where they hideAnd beauty shall be my bride.”

Lyrics

“What I'd like to do now - well, what I'd like to do now is grow my beard very long, weave it into my pubes and strum it like a harp.”

Cosmic Jam (tour 1995, DVD 2005, 2006)

“Or, as I call it, a Cheesel, it's a Weasel with a Cheese finish.”

Lyrics, Misc.

“There we go, that's it. I just hold my hand in this position for the next couple of hours.”

Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2008)

“James Blunt - a man who recently got voted more annoying than paper cuts.”

Dandelion Mind (2010)

“There’s this one celebrity, Rosie O’Donnell, a talk show host, and she said this: “I don’t know anything about Afghanistan, but I know it’s full of terrorists, speaking as a mother.” So what is this "speaking as a mother" then? Is that a euphemism for "talking out of my arse"? "Suspending rational thought for a moment"? As a rational human being, Al-Qaeda are a loose association of psychopathic zealots who could be rounded up with a sustained police investigation. But speaking as a parent, they’re all eight foot tall, they’ve got lasers under their moustaches, a huge eye in their foreheads and the only way to kill them is to NUKE every country that hasn’t sent us a Christmas card in the the last 20 years!! "Speaking as a mother".”

Part Troll (2004)

“(Quoting his three year old son on a James Blunt song) "Daddy, turn it off, it's spoiling my brain"”

Tinselworm (2008)

“This is the news theme, but it sounds like pure Hollywood entertainment. It sounds like E. T. on a horse being chased by Darth Vader, which is something I'd love to see.”

Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2008)

“… have a banana!”

Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2008)

“"God save our gracious Queen": Why would we invoke a non-specific deity to bail out these unelected spongers? [Audience wildly applauds]”

Part Troll (2004)

“Not a very well-known fact, but on planes they always carry a trombone just in case there's a disaster and they need to keep morale up. All cabin crew - fully proficient in the trombone. And of course there's a double facility: if you ditch at sea, it can be used as a snorkel.”

Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2008)

“I was digging with a fork out of the kitchen drawer, sewing tictacs, I didn't know what the hell I was doing. After a bit I got bored and just started burying cheap spoons to baffle the archaeologists of the future. [On gardening]”

Dandelion Mind (2010)

“There is one language I can't understand, because it's from another planet, another dimension - that is the language of dentists. They speak in some kind of code, it's quite disturbing and sinister. They'll talk to you perfectly normally. You'll be sitting there like that Saloth Sar!' Just to let them know I'm onto them I always freak them out right back - they look down and say 'Everything alright?' and I look up and I say (in chair, psychotic voice) 'The pheasant has no agenda'.
Ch. 23, 51:53”

Bewilderness (DVD, 2001)

“And just as he said that a feminist jumped out of a manhole - just jumped up and oh, and she didn't like that.”

That she didn't like that.
Cosmic Jam (tour 1995, DVD 2005, 2006)

“[Singing as U2, in Irish accent] Hello! Some old Celtic bollocks!”

Part Troll (2004)

“[responding to scattered audience applause] Ah, lovely: the ripple, the ripple there. That's nearly the Zen clap of acceptance there, wasn't it?”

Part Troll (2004)

“I'm amazed by how compliant people are in this country. They go into service stations - 'cathedrals of despair', as I call them - where baseball-capped ghouls of the night lord it over their congealed bean kingdoms, their fried-bread twilights, their neon demi-mondes, tempting you to enter to become them, undead. "Ooh, beans on toast, £18.95, very reasonable. Oh no, I'm not going to complain. They probably pump them up from London in special tubes." God, £18.95? If that was the price, for my money, each bean would have to be carried over in a heron's beak and laid on an orchid and then placed on a very rare train set and carried all the way to my table on the train set and then pinged off by a tiny little rare vole and it rolls onto a beautiful silk leaf and I eat it with a Fabergé egg. Then you'd get your money's worth.
Ch. 16, 26:40”

Bewilderness (DVD, 2001)

“You knew exactly who the good guys were and who were the bad guys just by the chord: the good guys got a perfect fifth - strong, compassionate - the bad guys got an augmented fourth… Just a semitone, but sometimes in life when you make the wrong choices, it's just a semitone out.”

Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2008)

“Nostalgia: How long's that been around?”

Is It Bill Bailey? (TV, 1998)

“It's like a mohican on your pancreas, man!”

Lyrics, Misc.

“"I texted you on a Monday,
But you did not get my text 'till the Tuesday,
Because of a network problem.
I texted you on a Wednesday,
But I did not know that you'd called
Because your SIM card was not correctly installed.
Oh no no no.
You texted me on a Thursday
To say that you would meet me at the Shopping Centre
And i texted you back and said
"Where should i meet you?"
And you said Dixons
But i did not know which Dixons you meant
Was it the one inside the door
Or was it the one further up by Currys
These are my worries.
You texted me on a Monday
To tell me it was over
But i did not understand
Because you used Predictive Text
And it was Jrrg gruuh nnmmg guu hmmg doo doo doo".”

Lyrics

“(Commenting on band The Killers' lyrics from the song 'All These Things I've Done') Deep down, it really is just a meaningless lyric, isn't it? [Sings] "I got soul, but I'm not a soldier". I mean, you may as well be saying "I got ham, but I'm not a hamster"”

Tinselworm (2008)

“Three blokes go into a pub. Something happens. The outcome was hilarious!
Episode 1, 1:36”

Is It Bill Bailey? (TV, 1998)

“At parties, sometimes, for a laugh, I introduce myself - people say 'What do you do?' and I say 'I'm Aled Jones, its all gone wrong for me. No, look, I've still got it! (drunken bawl) I'M WALKING THROUGH THE AIIIIIIR, HAAAAAAHAHAHA.'
Ch. 19, 32:55”

Bewilderness (DVD, 2001)

“The actual quote attributed to Russell is, "Everything is vague to a degree you do not realise till you have tried to make it precise."”

The Museum of Curiosity (BBC Radio 4, 2008)

“I'm English, and as such I crave disappointment. I actively seek it out.”

Part Troll (2004)

“I am a confectionary-based existentialist.”

Is It Bill Bailey? (TV, 1998)

“It's not a beard, it's an animal I've trained to sit very still.”

Bewilderness: New York (audio CD, 2002)

“Three blokes go into a pub. Well, I say three; could be four or five. Could be nine or ten, doesn't matter. Could have been fifteen, twenty - fifty. Round it up. Hundred. Let's go mad, eh - two-fifty. Tell you what, double it up - five hundred. Thousand! Oh, I've gone mad! Two thousand! Five thousand! (adopting auctioneer persona) Anyone? Five thousand, six thou, six thousand, ten thousand! Small town in Hertfordshire goes into a pub! Fifteen thousand blokes! Alright, let's go - population of Rotterdam. The Hague. Whole of Northern Holland. Mainland U. K. Let's go all the way to the top - Europe, alright? Whole of Europe goes - I say Europe. Could be Eurasia. Not the band, obviously, that's just two of them. Alright, continents - North America! Plus South America! Plus Antartica - that's just eight blokes in a weather station. Not a good example. Alright, make it a lot simpler, all the blokes on the planet go into the pub, right? And the first bloke goes up to the bar and he says "I'll get these in."”

What an idiot!
Cosmic Jam (tour 1995, DVD 2005, 2006)

“You get somebody to explain the Trinity to you, they'll say "Well God, he's God, and Jesus is God as well, and the Holy Spirit is… [mumbles indistinctly]". "What?" "He's the fecund spirit of the Lord who impregnates Mary, then gets a bit up himself and is reduced to light clerical duties?" Let's examine that in joke form: three male divine natures go into a cosmic essence, giving and receiving love, but not in a gay bishop way, to which the whole of Islam goes "Wha?"; Hinduism: "Nah!"; or Buddhism: "Ssh!".”

Part Troll (2004)

“BB: I'm actually from the West Country…
[solitary cheer from audience]
BB: Hypnotized, or actually? What are you doing here?
Audience member: I had to come.
BB: What do you mean you had to come here? What, you were on some dark purpose?
Ch. 4, 07:38”

Bewilderness (DVD, 2001)

“Tonight's show is about doubt. Or maybe it isn't - haven't made my mind up yet.”

Dandelion Mind (2010)

“The reason we'd stopped was that the buffet car was on fire, that was the reason we stopped. One of the giant biscuits spontaneously combusted out of boredom. Whoever was charged with making the announcement momentarily lost all sense of procedure and we got this tantalizing glimpse into the chaos on the trains, and all we could hear was (bangs on microphone) "Gary, it's burning, what we gonna do?!" And everyone on the carriage just cheered, "Hooray! We're rubbish!"”

Part Troll (2004)

“Where did we all go wrong?
The insects used to be our brothers.
Along came pesticide
And on that day our friendship died
And pouring boiling water down ants nests couldn't have helped.”

Lyrics

“They will take us
And they'll make us
Human slaves! In an Insect Nation!”

Lyrics

“Song for Prince Charles, performed with Robin Williams on We Are Most Amused”

2008
Lyrics

“This is a song inspired by the work of Phil Collins; the nasty, whining little git.
Ch. 36, 1:18:46”

Bewilderness (DVD, 2001)

“When I was a child, I was terrified by this. (plays theme from The Magic Roundabout) It was very sinister, wasn't it? It just went on and on, like Dante's seventh circle of Hell. I recently found out there was a secret middle section deemed unsuitable for small children. There's about four hours of this, then it all starts to go a bit weird.
(plays discordant music)
(Booming echoing voice) I am Zebedee, lord of the woods! Bow down snail, I have dominion!
Ch. 38, 1:24:37”

Bewilderness (DVD, 2001)

“Even if you’re not particularly religious, then you have to admit that religion surrounds us even in the most mundane aspects of our lives. I was trying to rent a car, and the bloke said to me: "You’re not covered for acts of God."
I said: "What do you mean by that?", he said: [waving arms] "Woooooh!"
I said, "Can you be a bit more specific?", and he went, [vaguely gesticulating] "Eh… ooooh… uh?"
I said, "I’m intrigued because you said 'acts of God', and not gods, or spirits, or jinn, or nymphs, but 'God', a capital God, a monotheistic religion, maybe a Judeo-Christian religion, which would imply a belief system, which would perhaps lead to free-will and determinism, so logically anything that man does directly or indirectly is in fact an act of God, so I’m not covered for anything!"
He said, "I’ll get the manager."
Then I said, "What do you mean by an act of God? What do you mean by that?"
He said, "I dunno, a plague of locusts or something."
"'A plague of locusts'? They swarm round the vehicle, rip the wing mirrors off, and I’m liable for a fifty pound excess?”
And he said, "No, like, rain or something."
I said, "Yeah, but how much rain? It’s drizzling a bit now, is that an act of God? At what point does the rain reach a certain level beyond which it takes on the more apocalyptic mantle of the water-based punishment of the Lord!?"
And he said, [despairing] "I just work Saturdays."
I said "You can’t answer me, can you? Your policy is riddled with theological inconsistency. You disgust me. You twist and turn. You remind me of the Siberian hunting spider, which adopts a highly-convincing limp in three of its eight legs in order to attract its main prey, the so-called Samaritan squirrel, which takes pity on the spider, and then the spider jumps on it and injects the paralysing venom, and the squirrel remains bafflingly philosophical about the whole thing. Not to be confused with the Ukrainian hunting spider, which actually has got a limp and is, as such, completely harmless, and a little bit bitter about the whole thing: [imitating spider] 'Siberian spider have good leg, have nice day, can catch fly, can make web, can catch fly for family, I can do nothing, my leg, it drags behind! It drags! [audience laughs] And you laugh! You make fun! Oh, ha, big joke! I am failure! I am freak! [singing] But in my dreams I can fly, I'm the greatest spider in town. But I wake and it's cold, and I feel so old, and my legs are dragging me down.'"
And then the manager came out, and he said: “Stop all that spider singing."”

Pointed to a sign on the wall: a spider with a line through it. "Oh, fair enough."
He said "I can offer you an upgrade, fifty quid, and we can include in it policies set in place by the Marquis de Laplace, the French scientist who declared that all things in the universe are predetermined, so you would be covered even if time-travel was invented during the period of rental.”
I said, "Nah, probably leave it."
Part Troll (2004)

“Toughest job I ever had: selling doors, door to door.”

Is It Bill Bailey? (TV, 1998)

“"So go into your local branch of UBS, and say "I'd like to open an account please.", and when they say "What with?" take out a loud hailer and say "NAZI GOLD! Just like you did!"”

Tinselworm (2008)

“I'm a vegetarian. I'm not strict; I eat fish, and duck. Well, they're nearly fish, aren't they? They're semi-submerged a lot of the time, they spend a lot of time in the water, they're virtually fish, really. And pigs, cows, sheep, anything that lives near water, I'm not strict. I'm sort of like a post-modern vegetarian; I eat meat ironically.”

Part Troll (2004)

“You picked me up from school
You attended all my sporting functions
You bought me a car
Gave me use of a credit card
But how can I feel pain,
How can I feel pain,
How can I feel pain
When you're being so supportive?”

Lyrics

“Three blokes go into a pub. One of them is a little bit stupid, and the whole scene unfolds with a tedious inevitability. [seems to drift off in a daydream out of disenchantment, then comes back]”

Part Troll (2004)

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