The comedian and musician (58) talks about performing live, his love for the great outdoors and that Strictly win
WORDS: ALISON JAMES
● I get inspiration from what’s happening in the world around me. For instance, for my next UK tour which starts early next year, I’ve written a lot of stuff about artificial intelligence.
● The starting point was the fear it’s been generating – the panic that we’re all going to be replaced and robots are going to take over. I don’t think that’s the case. AI isn’t about generating original thought and new ideas, it can only work with what’s already out there. It’s about replicating the information we, as humans, give it.
● It’s about absolutes but people aren’t like that. We are wonderfully contradictory and nuanced and random. We’re odd and unpredictable. Robots are never going to be able to replicate that. I’m optimistic about AI in that there are potentially huge benefits – especially when it comes to medical matters.
● I can get writer’s block.
It’s sometimes very difficult to get in the right frame of mind to write comedy because you have to be open to all sorts of ideas and thoughts, and you have to be quite playful, almost a bit childish, really. That’s when you come up with daft ideas that can be developed.
● I write every day even though I know that some of the material won’t make it into my show. It’s good practice. Fortunately, most of the time the ideas instinctively flow because I’ve been writing and performing comedy for so long.
Find tour details at www.billbailey.co.uk/live
Having A Laugh!
● I like watching other comedians perform live. I don’t get to see as much as I’d like but I
