A biography for Bill Baileyhasn’t been written yet.
“Somehow the Tories have deflected the righteous anger at the bankers who we bailed out. The Tories manage to take that outrage and direct it at benefit claimants. It's genius. Evil genius.”
“I think people are quite refreshed with politicians who aren't concerned with what Arctic Monkeys track they like, but with the day-to-day, dull business of politics.”
“When you say 'Hello Wembley!' you're not just saying hello to a large shed. You're saying, 'Hello, I'm following all the greats that have played here before.'”
“I'm one for new things: I like new technology, I like new music, I'm not entrenched in some view of what culture should be. I like the fact that it's constantly changing and that language is changing, that behaviour changes.”
“Comedy should be fluid. It should be both Left and Right wing.”
“At school, I was bored with the teachers, and there were moments where I felt they were singling me out.”
“I grew up in a little town between Bath and Bristol with my parents and grandparents in the same house. It was rural and idyllic.”
“Family helps you make clearer choices about things. Your priorities become clearer. Your obligations become clearer, and that is something I welcome.”
“In a way, I wish none of it had ever happened - Facebook, Twitter - if it had never happened the world would have just carried on serenely. It's utterly redundant and yet we all have to be involved in it somehow.”
“I quite like confounding people's expectations.”
“I get a lot of nutters in my audiences.”
“We live in the age of entitlement, as opposed to enlightenment.”
“In 1994 I was doing a two-hander with Sean Lock in Edinburgh and there were more people in the cast than the audience. It was pretty grim, quite a chastening experience.”
“My comedy comes from the actual music itself - they're observational musical gags. I could take the music away and it would just be some words.”
“I don't think any comic could say there isn't a bit of them that doesn't want to show off.”
“I have anti-establishment hair.”
“My grandparents would have big, long arguments that were entertaining and that's where I first noticed, and was thrilled by, political discourse.”
“I think happiness really happens when you least expect it: it's when you're not really thinking about it, when you're not trying to achieve it, when you're not trying to get the perfect holiday, the perfect life, the perfect body, the perfect existence.”
“If you become famous but haven't actually achieved anything, then your life has no real meaning - unless you're spectacularly shallow.”
“As I get older, I have a very strong urge to know about stuff. I want to learn the names of trees and birds; that's the sort of knowledge I want to pass on to my son.”