Bill Bailey looks back: ‘My comedy audience is similar to Strictly’s demographic – an eight-year-old next to an 80-year-old’

The comedian on his punk years, being the ‘wurzel’ on Buzzcocks, and his late pal Sean Lock’s Strictly warning

Born in Bath in 1965, Bill Bailey is a comedian, actor and writer. Combining his multi-instrumentalism with humour, he was nominated for the Perrier award at the 1996 Edinburgh fringe and went on to star in Black Books, as well as being a panellist on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and QI. He became the BBC’s oldest winner of Strictly Come Dancing in 2020, aged 55. The UK leg of his latest tour, Thoughtifier, begins in February. He is married with a son, and lives in London.

Mum was a prodigious photo taker. Every Christmas she’d make us pose with our presents, and this was a special one: my very first guitar – a Spanish one with nylon strings that I got from my parents. I’m 12 and in the lounge of our house, an old Elizabethan building that was so draughty the windows would rattle. Hence why I’m wearing so many cardigans.

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