How To Fail With Elizabeth Day - Bill Bailey - ‘Rejection Made Me A Better Performer’

Episode Date: October 21, 2026

Bill Bailey is a comedian, musician, writer, actor, director and presenter, known for his brilliant live tours and panel appearances on shows including Never Mind the Buzzcocks and QI. In this episode, Bill discusses being rejected from drama school, an Edinburgh Fringe show which flopped and the death of his best friend Sean Lock. Plus: the moment he decided to cut off his legendary hair (after it got stuck in some train doors). Now, Bill is back on the road with his new UK arena tour, Bill Bailey: Vaudevillian, culminating in a two-month residency at London’s Theatre Royal Haymarket. IN THIS EPISODE 00:00 Introduction 03:05 Live Shows vs Screens 06:30 Love Letters and Marriage 10:24 Drama School Rejection 15:30 Music Teacher and Confidence 19:49 Haircut and Next Failure 22:51 Comeback Rocker Concept 23:20 Bill Best Backstory 24:28 Props Songs and Craft 25:16 Great Reviews No Crowd 25:46 One Person Audience Night 28:06 Friendship and Grief 34:22 Leaving Academia Behind 41:51 Animals Curiosity and Wallace 💬 QUOTES TO REMEMBER: Being on stage in front of an audience - there's nothing quite like it. There isn't really anything that replicates that experience. You have to cherish every moment. Cherish those friendships that you have. Cultivate them. Cultivate relationships with everyone that you feel a bond with, because you never know when they're not gonna be around. 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Get tickets for Bill’s tour, Vaudevillean, here: www.billbailey.co.uk/live Join the How To Fail community: www.howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content Elizabeth’s Substack: www.theelizabethday.substack.com 📚 WANT MORE? Stephen Merchant - swap.fm/l/Lta5mlFbVnPHyFb8R1n2 Miranda Hart - swap.fm/l/oTScN30b80GflJtO4rgu 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod Podcast Instagram: @howtofailpod Website: www.elizabethday.org Elizabeth and Bill answer listener questions in our subscriber series, Failing with Friends. Join our community of subscribers here: https://lnk.to/7i0moR Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: askhowtofail.com Production & Post Production Coordinator: Eric Ryan Engineer: Matias Torres Assistant Producer: Shania Manderson Senior Producer: Hannah Talbot Executive Producer: Alex Lawless How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This month on How to Fail, we're all about celebrating wellness from the inside. If you'd like to hear more on this, go and listen to my episode with Bella Mackey. I don't mind talking about it. I mind people's reactions imagining that they, like, know what's going on in my womb. Like, what's going on in my womb is like everything is pecking it up and leaving town, baby. How to Fail is brought to you by Ala Lacto-free. Delicious Dairy, with all the taste, easier to digest. Link in the episode description.

But we didn't get an audience. That was a simpler thing. We just didn't get an audience and we lost money. We lost a lot of money. And I realised that. It's a huge gap in my life. There's that relationship that's missing. You keep a mini zoo of around 50 rescue animals,

including an armadillo, a guinea pig, a rabbit, ducks, chickens and previously a large Malay cockerel. Is that correct? Yeah. How to Fail is brought to you by Arla Lacto-free. Delicious Dairy with all the taste, easier to digest. Hello and welcome to How to Fail with me, Elizabeth Day. Most interviews concentrate on all of the success stories, but they leave out the part that actually shapes us, which is failure and

how we cope with it. This is where How to Fail comes in. I really hope you enjoy this conversation and please do remember to like, follow and subscribe so that you never miss a single episode. Confession time. I have a tendency to postpone certain decisions for far longer than is sensible. Not the big life decisions, oddly enough, those I can usually handle. It's the smaller ones that somehow become disproportionately complicated. For me, rugs fall squarely into that category. I've known for a long time that a rug can completely change how a room feels, but I've always found sizing for a space tricky. That's why Ernestor appealed to me. Ernestor makes designer quality rugs custom cut to the exact dimensions of your space. So instead of making do with something that

that's close enough. You're choosing something made specifically for your home. I also love the fact that you can order five oversized 12 by 12 samples for just $10 before committing, and Anesta's design team will help with sizing completely free of charge. Visit Anesta.com and order five samples for only $10, and you'll get $50 towards any rug of your choice. That's Anester, E-R-N-E-S-T-A.com. This episode is brought to you by Americans United for separation of church and state. Hey everyone, this is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal.

That's why Americans United for separation of church and state is fighting for something that affects all of us. The freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose so long as you don't harm others. because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not. And it surely isn't about having one forced government-sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, this is what I believe, while your neighbor says, I believe something completely different. And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want,

learn more at a.u.org slash getting better. Because your beliefs are yours, and theirs are theirs. Bill Bailey is a comedian, musician, writer, actor, director, presenter, and according to his own website, a keen paddleboarder. The Times calls him the finest stand-up comedian this country has to offer, known for his live tours and his work on TV quiz shows, Nevermind the Buzzcocks and QI. He was raised by medical parents.

His father was a GP, his mother, a nurse, and lived in the same house as his grandparents for many years. An only child, his early experiences of intergenerational living, led to a lively curiosity. He was often encouraged by his grandfather to share his opinions at the kitchen table. At school, Bailey excelled in both academia and music. But after leaving his English degree at the University of London after 36 hours, he took on an array of jobs, ranging from cremars.

auditorium organist to telesales marketer, before alighting on stand-up comedy as a way of fusing his interests. He took his first solo show to Edinburgh in 1995. From there, he became a household name, known for his quizzical intelligence on stage. He even won Strictly Come Dancing in 2020. Now he returns with a new UK arena tour, Bill Bailey vaudevillian, which kicks off in November, finishing with a two-month residency at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. It's easier to watch something on your phone or on your tablet, Bailey says. But vaudevillian is a tribute to an entertainment you cannot consume at home.

Bill Bailey, welcome to How to Fail. Thank you very much. Thank you for being here. We've already had a great chat prompted by your baseball cap, which has an embroidered picture of a marmot on it. Yes. And it's a delight to have a marmot-wearing comedian in the How to Fail Studio. It's a first for us.

Is it a first good? I always love to be, you know, they're a trailblazer. You are a trailblazer. And I am so in agreement with you about the ease of entertainment consumed on a screen at home. And by comparison, the thrill of seeing something live. Yes. Is that something that you think we grapple with increasingly as a culture? Well, I think that it's true to say that we have increasingly changed our habits about how we consume culture.

I mean, that has definitely changed, especially, you know, watching TV, watching comedy, film, anything really. We listen to music through headphones via phones or tablets. And that has in itself changed the way music's been produced. The method of consumption is actually now starting to affect how music is even made. I find that to be quite worrying. I find that alarming. It seems to be a barrier to innovation, creativity and originality. Whereas live performance is, I think, the opposite of that.

Live is where all of those things can happen. In fact, I don't consider it to be an entirely rounded show unless there's been some kind of audience involvement, I think that's an integral part of it. You say rightly that it's changed the way that music is made. Has it changed the way that comedy is made? Do you feel the pressure to be on TikTok? Well, I know that a lot of comedians now build an audience via TikTok

in a way that we, as a person of my vintage, we could ever have imagined. you know, the way we built audiences was up and down the motorway, you know, going to little gigs all around the country, learning how to do it. It's not to say that that is not necessarily a bad thing. I mean, I think that what that does provide is another outlet for people to perform comedy. The one that we perhaps we didn't have, you know, ours was growing up doing comedy where the only way to reach a bigger audience was TV. and TV slots were sort of few and far between. You couldn't just get on TV.

It was very difficult. So now you can record yourself doing some comedy, put it on your channel. And thousands, perhaps millions, perhaps tens of millions of people will see it. And you can build an audience that way. So I don't necessarily think it's a bad thing. I think it's just a different way of reaching an audience. You have so many different strings to your impressive bow. When you are on stage, what does that feel like?

Well, it feels like this is my natural habitat, if I'm honest. I do lots of different things and increasingly over the years of diversified a bit. If a TV project comes along, I'll want to get involved in it. And so I've turned my hand to presenting things and doing travel documentaries and writing books. But being on stage in front of an audience is something, there's nothing quite like it. There isn't really anything that replicates that experience. You have been married to your wife, Kristen, for coming on 30 years, I think. It is, yes.

Is it true that you courted her by writing her daily letters? Well, that is partly true, yes. I mean, I think that this story has become slightly elaborated, embellished, embroidered over the years. But we did certainly write to each other. Not every day, perhaps. I don't think that. I think that might be a bit of an exaggeration. But we certainly did communicate via letter.

I met her by chance in a show in Edinburgh. And I was doing. And she came. She was at the show. and she'd watched it and enjoyed it. I'd gone upstairs to get a drink. I was coming back down the stairs and she was coming up the stairs. We met on the stairs.

And she said, I loved her show, I thought it was great. I went, oh, thanks. And we chatted. I ended up sort of joining her group of friends and we went off and had a night out. I got sort of separated from my group of friends and then she, I ended up kipping on the floor in their flat. and in the morning she woke up and I was just crashed out on the sofa

and she made me some tea some cheese on toast which I thought was great and really great I mean I was so so nice it was so nice I was like

but also I thought who makes cheese on toast for breakfast but I'm not complaining a legend this is great a legend literally so I sent us some flowers

saying thanks and so she wrote to me saying thanks for the lesson I wrote back and we just communicated like this for a year back and forth. She would do little cartoons. She was a brilliant artist. So she'd draw these little cartoons and write to me.

And I would write back and tell her about life. I was living on a houseboat at the time. In fact, recently we went back to the very same bar where we met and we recreated our meeting on the stairs. That's so romantic. This is a podcast all about a failure on what we learned from it. But clearly your marriage is such a success. Yeah.

What advice, if any, would you give someone who is just setting out on this journey? I think that part of the, I'd say the foundations of a good marriage are you need to get to know someone really well. You know, I think you need to, you know, take your time. I mean, it's always this kind of, I don't know, it's something sort of out of kind of Jane Austen. novel. Yes, well, my dear, my div is a bit. I mean, it was quite sweet in a way. But when I think about it now, it's quite unusual, really, to communicate like that.

I mean, most relationships communicate via some of, you know, phones, texts, you know, not letters, not physical letters that you have to write out longhand. I mean, that sort of doesn't. No, it's like archaic. But you know what? Actually, I did some research about this. when I was writing a book on happiness and cursive writing

which is obviously the kind of formal term for writing with a pen it activates a part of the brain connected to memory and recall so that if you write things down you're you are activating the brain

to remember it so I just I think those moments I remember them very well I can even remember some of the phrases that she wrote I can remember what I wrote. But that's not to say that, you know, whirlwind romances don't work as well. I think we're just lucky.

Cheese on toast and writing letters. Well, congratulations. Yeah, I recommend both of those two. This episode is brought to you by Americans United for separation of church and state. Hey, everyone. This is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe.

Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't you. your thing. Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for separation of church and state is fighting for something that affects all of us. The freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose so long as you don't harm others. Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not. And it surely isn't about having one forced government-sanctioned religion. It's about protecting

your right to say, this is what I believe. While your neighbor says, believe something completely different. And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at AU.org slash getting better because your beliefs are yours and theirs are theirs. Let's get on to your failures. Your first failure is being rejected from drama school, Bristol-Old Vic. Yes. So you've left school at this stage. Yeah. Okay, talk us through this rejection? Well, I thought that's what I was going to do. I thought because I was always acting at school.

I was always in the school play. I'd always have the lead, the sixth form, I think it was. I was the lead in the school play, which was the resistible rise of Arturo Oui, which was quite a sort of ambitious thing to take on. And I was Owee. And for those of you, that your listeners, subscribers, will perhaps know that if you don't,

it's an allegory of the, rise of Nazism and Hitler, seen through the eyes of the, soon through the actions of the Chicago gangsters and prohibition. And so I really went full method, you know, I went, I actually had quite a lot of hair then and I cut it in the side part and dyed it black, you know, and I came home and my mum, she looked at me and I walked in because I had had sort of blonde hair. I went through lots of different colors. I had blonde hair and I had the black hair. side parting. And I walked in

and she went, and then she said, oh my God, she goes, you look lovely. I said, Mom, I suppose I suppose I'm supposed to be Hitler. I don't care.

You're very smart. And that's a mum, a mother's love for you. I don't care, even if you're Hitler. I love you. So I thought this was it. This was what I was going to do. And I was very confident, perhaps too confident, I think.

And I thought, well, this is clearly what I'm supposed to do. I'm supposed to perform in some context. And I'll go along, do the edition, one, two, three, bing, bang, bong, that's it. And, of course, it's nothing like that. And I was, you know, that sort of slight arrogance of youth where you just assume that you're going to be good enough to do something. and of course there were lots of other people there who were very, very good as well and perhaps better placed at that point and better cut out for that intake.

And I was so shocked. You know, it was kind of like a real, what? You know, like a moment where I thought, clearly this is just a shoe in. And I wrote to them actually and I sort of said, And actually, I was so, is there any, you know, have you any advice? You know, like, I mean, obviously this is something I love to do. I don't know.

Any pointers you might be to give me where it went wrong or what did I do that wasn't really. And it was a very sort of kind of bland sort of non-answer really was like, well, we just take in a certain number of people and you just went right for it. And it was that. And so it never really gave me a definitive. answer like there's this thing is you know you it's lacking it's failing and I guess that's what was the grit that actually drove me on to to do more performing and get better at it I think there are possibly generalising hugely but two reasons why this kind of early rejection feels so shocking one is potentially that you can

inflate success with a kind of love. So you fear that by being rejected, you're unlovable. The other potentially is that you have had smooth sailing up to this point. You've been a high achiever. You've managed incredibly well through school. And then this is your first experience of being told for whatever reason we don't think you're good enough. Which one applies to you? Or do they both apply to you?

Oh, I think they do. Neither. Yes, I think they do. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's a true sort of depiction of what my life at school was. I mean, I found academic work to be easy. You know, I mean, I'm not going to lie. I was good at it.

And I would, you know, there would be an end of year prize. And I would win the prize. And I would win prizes for all the different subjects. And that's not to say, that's not, I'm not just bragging about it. It just, that's what happened. I wanted to prove something to myself or I wanted to make my parents proud or something. I don't know. Or I just had a facility for it for subjects.

And so, you know, and also then I was in the, I was capturing the cricket team. I was in the school play. But school is very much a, it's not real life. And when you come into contact with reality, it is a bit of a shock. And I think that's what happened. You were a very gifted musician and still are as well at school, weren't you? You were the only one at your school who did A level music. A level music, that's right.

Yeah, and I was very fortunate in as much that I had a fantastic teacher. She was an amazing woman, Linda Phipps. And she was my music A-level tutor, and there was no one else doing it at school, just me. So I had this brilliant one-on-one tutor. She was a powerhouse, you know. But she crackle with energy and laughter. And she had a small baby. And the baby would sit on her lap while she was playing the keyboard.

The baby bouncing up and down, watching these hands, you know, rippling over the keys. And she encouraged me to do so much. She was a very pivotal figure in my time at school. and she said to me, you know, you should do a concert and encouraged me to do a concert with this orchestra as a pianist. So I did a solo play.

I played a Mozart piano concerto with an orchestra at a recital at the museum, the Holman Museum in Bath at the end of Pulte Street. It's a huge, kind of quite a massive deal when I think about it now. I can't imagine. the nerves I must have felt then and pulled it off

and I would never have done it without her encouragement and she would say things that you're capable of this you can do this you are capable of more than you imagine you can do and her voice

always would come back to me for years and yet still does you know I remember the first time I played Wembley I'm just about a step out to stage Wembley Arena 13,000 people and I'm hearing

Linda's voice saying you know you can do more than you thought and I just thought yeah you know this is this is partly down to her that voice of encouragement that you need it's so important at that age yes the power of an extraordinary teacher

that's so important to talk about having been rejected from drama school how did you then set about getting better at performing? I took a year off school and during that time, me and a friend from school, we set up a comedy club in Bath and called it the Cactus Club. Every month we hosted an evening of comedy and we had invited acts from local area to come along, perform.

We would host it. They would come on and then we'd have amateurs have come on. We have an open mic night. We had the gong show. You know, like, people get gonged off. Okay, right. So it's like, you know, they come on, they do it for a bit. And then the audience are going, go, go, gong, there we go.

The next one, come on. It was great fun and learned a lot in that time. And then did some stand-up gigs, early, very, very early gigs in clubs in the West Country. and got a sort of feel for it. And I remember one particular one where we persuaded the club owner to let us have a comedy night and so we put on some sketches

and some stand-up and it was a bit of a shambles as you can imagine. But there was one moment in it where I'd written a bit of stand-up and it just somehow connected with the crowd and it was only a few minutes

but it was electric. It was like gripping a live wire and you know and then you let go and you think what was that

what just happened but you think when do I oh that was extraordinary intoxicating how do I get that again and then you try again

and then you try again and it doesn't work and you think oh I need to figure out what that was because that was it that was the moment when I was

became absolutely hooked on it I'm glad that you mentioned your hair when you were playing Arturoo. Yes. Because your hair in many ways for many years defined you. Everyone always mentioned it.

You're longer hair. Yes. You've cut your hair. Yes, I have. Can I say you look fantastic? Oh, that's very kind. You really look great. Why did you decide to cut your hair though? Well, it was a gradual sort of realisation that this was the time was right. You know, there was the time when I

when I was on a crowded tube train and the doors closed on the back of my hair and I couldn't move my head. That was a little early warning sign. That is scary. And I was pressed against the door like this. And I didn't wait until we got to the next station. But it was quite recently a couple of years ago

and I was hiking in Scotland. We were walking the Cape Rath Trail, which is quite a tough old hike. And we've been walking. There's three weeks of walking. And we've gone a bit, feral. You sort of sleep, wild camp,

sleeping boffies, you know, you're a little bit sort of beards, a bit raggedy. My hair got very raggedy and I was cooking up something over a fire one night and a strand of hair got flu into fire and sort

and the whole head nearly went up and I thought, no, that's the universe telling me no, no. Time to get your air cut, you're silly old full. Did it feel good? Did it feel kind of liberating?

Yeah, it was very liberating. As you say, it's been part of my image. I mean, every review mentioned, every, you know, his hair, he looks like this, he's an old wizard, he's this, he's there, he's from middle earth on and on and on, it went. And so, you know, I went to my local barbers at the end of the road, and I just told him about it. And this guy, he didn't really know, I mean, I think he had a vague notion of who I was, but he was from, you know, he's from the Lebanon. And, you know, he's not interested, really. And he had the clippers going, buh, and I said, this is a big moment for me because, you know, this hair has become sort of part of my image.

It's kind of, I suppose you could say it's iconic, you know. This has been my look for many, many years since my 20s when I said, I haven't really cut my hair since then. So today is quite a, it's a big moment for me. And he just went, yeah, whatever, mate. And it was all off. There are so many things I wish I'd known when I started this podcast and my production company, Daylight. Like, why am I spending hours trying to make a website look good? Why am I designing everything from scratch?

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Hey everyone, this is Jonathan Van Ness from Getting Better. You know what you believe. Maybe your faith is at the center of your life. Maybe you're still figuring it out. Maybe religion just isn't your thing. Those choices are personal, and in America, they should stay personal. That's why Americans United for separation of church and state is fighting for something that affects all of us. the freedom to live as yourself and believe as you choose so long as you don't harm others.

Because religious freedom isn't just about protecting your right to practice or not. And it surely isn't about having one forced government-sanctioned religion. It's about protecting your right to say, this is what I believe. While your neighbor says, I believe something completely different. And honestly, that's the whole point. If that sounds like the kind of America you want, learn more at a.u.org Getting Better. Because your beliefs are yours and theirs are theirs. A few seconds. Yeah, well, yeah. I know, my. And I looked at this sort of pathetic amount of hair that was tangled around.

It looked like a mouse that got caught in the clippers all that. Yeah. You know what? I'm glad. You didn't keep it? No. Okay. No, that's just, that would be. It really suits you. Thanks. Yeah. Cheers. Okay. Just to prove it. There you go. Your second failure is rock. Rock. It's a stage show that you wrote and performed with the late great Sean Locke, who I know was the best friend of yours.

And you took it to the Edinburgh Fringe in 1994. What happened? Well, we had this idea that I would be an old rocker who was trying to make a comeback. And Sean would play my roadie, the loyal rody who stuck with him too thick and thin. And he would facilitate this gig, and this would be the big success, the big comeback gig.

My character was a sort of West Country rocker, Bill Best, based on the idea of Pete Best, the guy who was in the Beatles and then wasn't. The drama. Yeah. And so kind of a bit of like one of rock and roll's failures sort of thing, you know. And so he'd done something terrible at Live Aid. We never actually said what it was.

But it was some terrible thing that happened to one of the biggest TV audiences in history. and he said something, did something horrific. Love that you never revealed it. We never revealed it. It was just always alluded to. And he was then persona non grata. But Sean played, I mean, we didn't, we didn't, this is how much work we did on the names. He was Big Sean.

He was playing the Rodee. And again, he was a sort of slightly tragic figure because he hadn't kept up with modern tech. you know so he couldn't actually get another job because you know he could only work with big with old bill best because you know all this new fangle tech was beyond him so they were sort of bound together they couldn't escape this relationship which was this symbiotic relationship when they were sort of like they couldn't break out of this this sort of you know the past really but we were just playing it for laughs you know we we had a we wrote a lot of songs for it we had we had crazy props made because Bill Best was like, you know, he said, I'm a man of the people. I don't want to lose that, you know. I didn't even know I'm a rock star.

I don't want to be like some flash rock star. And so he had made a stretch shopping trolley. And we made this thing for him to go shopping with. And it was two trolleys cut in half and welded together with smoke glass and an aerial. I mean, it was a thing of great beauty. And so, Chawin would wheel him around in this trolley.

I mean, and then we wrote songs for it, one of the songs that became one of the kind of staples of my set in the end, the leg of time. It was like a sort of prog rock anthem. It was one of the best, certainly the best reviewed shows that we've ever done. People loved it.

Audiences that we showed it to absolutely loved it. Critics loved it. But we just, the marketing of it, the word, the name. At this time, we went, that well known at all and so trying to get someone to come and see a show

very difficult in a crowded marketplace which Edinburgh is, you know, with thousands of shows and we just didn't get an audience. Is it true that you did it for one person in the audience? Well, it did.

We were sort of, the show started with me off stage and Sean would go on stage and then talk to the audience and this was a kind of warm-up thing he would do and he would do a chat and banter for the audience and and do a health and safety spoof health and safety check and then I would come on and and on that particular occasion there was no one in the audience

apart from one person who was a friend of ours who was a comedian called Dominic Holland and Dominic was sitting in the audience and Sean went out there and then gradually as he became accustomed to the light in the room I could hear him he was going yeah so come at me right health and safety health and safety And he was doing all this stick. And then his voice dropped and he just went, oh, fuck's sake. Oh, no, no, no.

And I just thought, what's, what's going on? I went, what's going on? Think Sean? No, Bill, he said, no, come out. You come out, mate. I went, what do you mean? He goes, no, no. He said, come out.

And I'm still in character because I'm off stage. What do you mean? Come out? Come out, no. And he goes, no. Bill, forget it. Just, so I came out. And there was one.

person. And we spoke to him and we said, look, we're not doing it. And he said, no, just let do it. Do the show, lads. Have fun. And we were like, no, we're not doing it just for one person. We'll take you to the pub. We'll go at the pub. We'll talk you through the highlights of it. We're not going to do the whole bloody show. That'd be weird. But we didn't get an audience. That was a simpler thing. We just didn't get an audience and we lost money. We lost a lot of money. And we had to spend weeks, months, months, earning back. all the money. I think that's such an important failure to share because clearly it was very high quality.

What you had created was actually objectively brilliant. And to realise that that is no guarantee of success is so helpful, I think. To a lot of people listening and watching this, they'll find that really helpful. That actually the response isn't always a validation of something. things greatness. No. Can we talk a little bit about Sean and your friendship? Yeah.

I want to preface this by saying, I'm so sorry for your loss. He died in 2021. Yeah. I know that grief doesn't go. It just becomes really, doesn't it? And I just wonder how you're doing today with it. Well, I think about him a lot. Obviously thinking about him a lot when I was thinking.

about this show, I have very fond memories of that show, very fond memories of performing with Sean in Edinburgh. What a laugh. We laughed and laughed until we were helpless writing that show, performing it. And we thought that this was, we thought this was the kind of the way we were going to go. we were going to write more shows like this and in fact we did we wrote a lot together but it wasn't just about the professional relationship

about doing comedy together we become we were very close and we would be almost like confidence we talk about everything we talk about anything and everything if I was doing a gig and it didn't hadn't gone well I would find Sean and it wouldn't matter if it was 3 a.m. He would be there on the phone he would say well look You know, we all have these gigs. Don't worry about it, calm down.

We talked a lot outside of performing. We became very good friends. We went away on trips together. We went on adventures together around the world. We went trekking in Colombia. We went walking holidays all over the world, Indonesia and Spain and all around Europe. And then we got older. We had families and, you know, our families would go on holidays together.

And Sean was very much, I saw him, I realize now that because I'm an only child, he was a couple years older than me. I saw him in that role as an older brother, like a sibling, you know, and we perhaps had a very similar relationship to brothers in as much that, you know, I know that sometimes siblings can sort of, there's a bit of chate, you know, sometimes you fall out, sometimes you, you know, but you feel a bond. and that's what we had and it was a huge loss I've got to say because you know his

his friendship but it was more than that it was more of a kind of an understanding it was a bond and you sometimes get that with people and not everyone not all your friends you have that with

and I honestly I do miss him very much I think friendship is one of those deeply important things that we don't talk about enough, but particularly losing a friend in that way. There's no easy term or label you can reach for

to express really what it means other than comparing it to something else, like being a brother. And I just want to acknowledge that because there are so few rituals for friendship, both the presence of it and the loss of it, and it's a difficult thing. Yeah, it is.

And like you say, it's very important. You know, it's, dare I say, it's one of those things you sometimes take for granted, you know, until it's not there. And I realize that. It's a huge gap in my life. There's a, there's that relationship that's missing. You know, now, you know, I had this relationship with my wife, which is fantastic. And, you know, we have this wonderful bond and understanding. with my son, a father,

all of these are slightly different. But a relationship with a friend, a friendship is a separate thing, I think. I thought we would just carry on until we were old geysers sitting on a porch remembering how we did this stupid show. But, yeah, it wasn't a bee.

And I think it's very important. What that taught me really was you have to cherish every moment. Cherish those friendships that you have. Cultivate them. Cultivate relationships with everyone that you feel a bond with because you never know when they're not going to be around. Would you ever bring Rock back with other people in the roles? I have thought about it.

It sounds brilliant, Bill. It was. Well, look, it was a honesty. And I'm, you know, look, I'm not. of saying that. Of course I'm going to say this great show but it was a great show. It was funny but it was also inherently slightly tragic

which I suppose one of the things that adds depth and heft to comedy and it had a kind of there was points in it where genuinely audiences were sort of we'd have to stop the show

because they were laughing so much people were hysterical you know there was a bit where where they both take truth drugs and builds his truths you know, it's supposed to be like revealing these great truths about yourselves

and all it he came out with all with all these foods that he liked I really like peas I've always liked peas and he's going is that it? Is that what you've got? We wrote some great songs I would.

Okay, great then. I'll do that. Do it. Thanks. I really think you should Also, talking about loss, it's such an important way of keeping someone as part of your life. Remembering and talking and performing with Sean kind of by your side still. I think it would be a beautiful thing and I would like to watch it. All right, then. Thank you. I will do that. Your final failure is that you didn't pursue an academic career.

Yeah. So I mentioned in the introduction that you left the University of London. I thought it was after a year, but then I listened to an interview. interview with you and you said it was after 36 hours. I mean, I think I was being slightly mischievous there, but you know, I think I did actually stick it out for a year technically, but in my head

I'd left after a couple of days or so. I just thought this is not for me. It's just isn't, you know, by that point I'd already left home, I'd started a comedy club, I'd traveled

on my own a lot I'd busked all through Europe I'd seen a bit of life and I'd decided that comedy was what I wanted to do and almost sort of started to kind of catch hold of my own destiny in a way and this felt like letting that go again this felt like going back to school

this felt like a backward step and it didn't help with the fact that a couple of lectures were seemed to me this is stuff we did we've covered this you know years ago talking about iambic pentamer come on and it's again

down to the people I think down to your lecturers down to individuals I had such as I was so lucky that I'd met someone like Linda you don't meet people like that very often in fact it's very rare she was a rarity and there was no one like that and I felt somehow that this was lacking

it wasn't giving me what I wanted it to be. And so I immediately started to pursue other interests. And I got involved in a French-speaking theatre company, and I got very heavily involved with them, and we put on shows in French for students of French, A-level students, university students. You know, we put on Racine Marseille. We performed these at the Shaw Theatre in London.

And it was great. And I thought, this is what I did you learn French just on the job? No, I've always loved languages. You've got an incredibly good accent. Well, the accent, I mean, I spent some, I went on a, what do you call it, called exchange. And I love French. Again, that was down to a French teacher we had very briefly, who was brilliant.

And she was absolutely brilliant. And also very young. and very attractive. Classic French. But so suddenly all these boys in the class were paying attention and trying to impress her. But I just loved the language. Through that, then I ended up entering a competition.

I went, it was at the Concord Dramatique, at the Institute Francier in Kensington. And I performed this piece. It was a fantastic play, again, which doesn't get put on that often. the Batissers of Empire by Vion, Boris Vion and it's an extraordinary

amazing play I was playing this central character Leone, DuPont Leone age 49-dantantitian Dantitian, bien-entrettoned Oh my God, I just, I want to just listen to you speaking for us. Vaccine, illegame to repartier

on the mons. So, and this play was very well received. I won the prize the prize for the best actor at this competition and my the part of the prize was going to Avignon to perform at the festival there and I thought and this was what I wanted to do so suddenly from being at college and going to lectures and all that I just like eh I want to do other stuff I want to

perform I want to get out there I want to prove the old Vic wrong. Yes. Wrong. I can relate to that desire to prove people wrong. And I think fuel is fuel. And whatever gets you to where you need to be,

you can use it in that way. Do you feel, I mean, you're clearly an extraordinarily talented person in multiple different directions. You're highly intelligent, you're very musical, turns out you're fluent at French,

you know all about marmots. I mean, what else you want? What else do you want? You're a perfect person. But do you feel that it left you with an inferiority complex not having done academia? And do you feel it still? It does, yeah. I feel that I was too hasty, that I was impatient and I was not willing to see it through.

Because it was only three years. I mean, three years now just zipped by in a flash in a blink of an eye. But then it seemed like an eternity. And I suppose it was also partly because I was up in London from living in the West Country. So London was a great adventure. You know, it was a place to explore, a place of opportunity. And so these lectures and college life seems desperately dull by comparison.

And so, yes, I think perhaps, again, I was too much in a hurry and I wanted to just get on. I wanted to earn money. I wanted to have a job. I wanted to be independent. I wanted all those things that those things give you. They give you a sense of self-reliance and independence and all of that. And I still now, but now I think, yeah, I have somehow, I feel that I lost something along the way. And that was I didn't pursue.

I didn't get that, get to the end. I didn't see it through. And that's what annoys me. That's not like me now. like to see things through now. And that's probably what this has taught me is that you have to see something through. You have a plan, you see it through. I was too quick to dismiss it as something that wasn't going to be of value. But I think ultimately long term, it gives you a sense of satisfaction personally that you've achieved something. And I think that's what I was

lacking. And I did feel that slight sense of I haven't quite I haven't done this, I haven't seen it through. And so what that has driven me on is to incorporate elements of what the work that I would have probably done as an academic

into my stand-up. So you know, history and philosophy and language and all of those subjects which interest me, I've somehow found a way to weave that into comedy, make it entertaining, make it fun, but maybe a little bit educational as well.

So I think maybe that's, I've used that sort of sense of, that kind of annoying sense of like I haven't quite seen this through and channeled that into the work that I do now. And actually I think one of your greater strengths is your curiosity. It's such a precious quality to carry on asking questions of yourself and the world. It's a wonderful thing. We have to. That's all we can do. My final question is going to be about animals, because I know you are an animal lover, and I don't know whether this is still correct this list,

that you keep a mini zoo of around 50 rescue animals, including an armadillo, a guinea pig, a rabbit, ducks, chickens, and previously a large Malay cockerel. Is that correct? Yeah. Okay. So my question is, which animal do you think has taught you the most? Well, I mean I love dogs

I've always loved dogs And there's this sort of There's a kind of straight big Dopey faces Lolloping up to you That constancy Empathy You can learn a lot from them

I've learned a lot from We took on some rescue parrots And one of them was a Melluccan cockatoo And it's named because of the area it comes from in the eastern archipelago of Indonesia, the Malacca's. And largely

because of that, because of this extraordinary bird, which was funny and temperamental and she would have a fit one minute and then she would be very sweet and very affectionate one minute and then have a great big wig out and start dancing and flapping her wings

and head banging to metal music. We travel to the Malacca's. and we went to see them in the wild. And it's sort of almost, this bird opened up a whole avenue of travel and interest to us. And there's really been a huge influence on me, not just personally, but just the kind of my professional life. Because where we went to, where this bird comes from

is an island in Seram in eastern Indonesia. And the whole area is called Walleresey. and it was when I went there when we went to try and see this bird in the wild I discovered Wallacea and what the hell is Wallace oh it's named after this bloke Wallace who's this guy who's Wallace

oh yeah he he's a Victorian naturalist explorer co originated the idea of the theory of evolution with Darwin you know natural selection what how do I not know about him Wallace here is the size of Germany it's like

this guy's got a name a place the size of of Germany named after him and I don't know who it is. And like you say, the curiosity started to go into overload. And I now wrote this show, this documentary about Wallace. And we made it for the BBC and it was broadcast in a centenary of his death. And as really precipitated a lifelong love of that area and that country. Best answer ever. What's the bird's name? Molly.

Molly. Thank you Chapo Chapo to Molly thank you so much Bill for coming on How to Fail and being so relentlessly

curious and inspiring to the rest of us it's been a real honour Thank you my pleasure I hope you got as much out of this episode of How to Fail as I did brought to you by Arna Lacto-free

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