Comedian and classically trained musician, Bill Bailey joins forces with the brilliantly versatile BBC Concert Orchestra and musical maestro Anne Dudley, one of the UK’s most celebrated composers and arrangers. The show, recorded at London’s magnificent Royal Albert Hall, is Bill’s own uniquely hilarious and irreverent guide to the sounds, styles, and instruments of the orchestra, with a wide and eclectic range of subjects, including music for 70’s cop shows, sci-fi films, horror movies, news themes, plus some of Bill’s own songs re-imagined for an orchestra, and including Anne’s own specially written new works.

Asylum was a British comedy series shown on Paramount Comedy Channel in 1996. Set in a mental asylum, it ran for one series of six episodes. Unlike traditional sitcoms or comedy television shows, it was to some extent an opportunity for stand-up routines by various comedians, mixed with an overall story involving much black humour. It is significant for involving a large number of British comedians, many who have gone on to work on some of the most successful comedy programmes of the last decade. It marked the first collaboration of Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Jessica Stevenson, who would go on to make cult sitcom Spaced. Many of the characters names were the same as those of the actors who portrayed them.

E01 Katy Wix: Dear Jean-Pierre
E02 Romesh Ranganathan: Rom Com
E03 Sara Pascoe: Music Lovers
E04 Modern Toss: Lady and the Fly
E05 Limmy: A Wee Video! For The Lassies!
E06 Nick Helm: Elephant
E07 Matt Berry: Wild Love
E08 Bill Bailey: Love Song
E09 Russ Abbot: Last Chance

A live stand-up show featuring musical comedian Bill Bailey.

Jumping around from musing about the disappointment of Kinder Surprise eggs to medieval porn to men's tendency not to admit ignorance to a brilliant take-off of Chris de Burgh, which comes out of nowhere. Yes, Bailey lacks an inherent structure--unlike Harry Hill or Al Murray--so you could walk in half way through and not miss any underlying subtleties.

Featuring Bill’s trademark musical interludes, observations and stories of the road, Dandelion Mind will be based loosely on the theme of doubt (or will it?), as we follow Bill from his real-life saga of being trapped by the ash cloud, to his barely contained rants about celebrity, TV, creationism and Michael Winner. He demonstrates new instruments, both ancient and modern, he sings an internet love song, a lament about punk heroes, Iranian hip-hop, and plays a mean folk-bouzouki. Thomas the Doubter gets a new look, and Darwin’s curious obsessions and the myth of intelligent design are all worked over in Bailey’s own surreal style. He revisits the music of his youth, with a brand-new French Disco re-working of Gary Numan’s hit, Cars, played in his own inimitable way, and maybe some Wurzels-based remixes of classic German techno. Just your normal Bill Bailey gig, then. Filmed at The O2 in Dublin in October 2010

Bill Bailey meets orangutans and flying frogs in his journey through Borneo.