Bill's Latest News

A limited number of tickets for Bill’s much anticipated show at Ashton Gate Stadium (home of Bristol City Football Club) on Tuesday June 15th 2010 are now available from £20.

They can be purchased online at ashtongatestadium.co.uk, seetickets.com or ticketmaster.co.uk; or by phoning the stadium hotline 0871 222 66 66 (option 1, listening out for “concert tickets”).

Seats will be available for limited time frame only at £20, £25 and £30 – the latter for seats closest to the stage. See seating plan for full details.

Tickets will be on sale by phone and online ONLY via the above methods – although wheelchair/carer tickets should be purchased direct from the stadium.

NB Calls to the 0871 number cost 10p per minute plus network extras.

The Meningitis Trust are aiming to raise in excess of £50,000 to support their work providing professional care and support to those whose lives have been devastated by meningitis and you’re invited to attend an exclusive Art & Celebrity Photograph Exhibition & Sale in June at Fairfax Gallery, in Chelsea, London.

Bill is featured in a unique photographic collection of celebrities alongside a treasured item or in a special location from their childhood, photographed by John Dawson.

Public viewing: Wednesday 23rd – Saturday 26th June 2010
Opening hours: Wed-Fri 10.30-6pm, Sat 11-5pm

M0re information can be found at:

www.meningitis-trust.org/art-sale/index.html

Are you sure about our world? How many things do you actually know for certain?

There’s not much about the world that is simply black and white, apart from pandas maybe and OK, skunks but that’s about it. Most of our world is a grey area, and this is where Bill Bailey is going on his next tour. A magical musical, mystery tour through a human history filled with doubt, to a place where certainty reigns and where religion, death, egg-custard, twigs, and Giant African Land Snails are here to stay. So do you refuse to accept there are things you don’t understand, do you desire to see the world only in black and white, or do you accept doubt into your life, make uncertainty your friend, do you embrace the greyness?

There is a also a complex subtext about clouds, squirrels and getting older, but you’ll have to figure that out for yourself.

Tickets for Bill’s new tour will go on sale on Friday 9th April at 10am. All tickets are £15 excluding booking fees where applicable.

Details of all of the dates being played and ticket booking contact details can be found on the Tour page.

We can confirm that Bill will be playing at Ashton Gate Stadium – the home of Bristol City Football Club – on Tuesday June 15th 2010.

A total of 15,000 tickets go on sale from 9am Friday April 9th priced between £30 and £40.

Seats can be purchased online at www.ashtongatestadium.co.uk or www.seetickets.com; or by phoning the stadium hotline 0871 222 66 66 (option 1, and then option 2 listening out for “concert tickets”).

Raised in the West Country, the Ashton Gate show will be a real homecoming for Bill. He says: “Performing at Ashton Gate is a great thrill for me, because it’s a combination of two of my favourite elements in a show – it’s outdoors and it’s in the West Country.

“I always feel that any shows I do in the West Country are homecoming gigs. But there’s also something special about doing a show outdoors in England.

“I’ve played to outdoor crowds at the Glastonbury Festival and recently at the Eden Project, and there’s always a terrific atmosphere, almost anarchic, which I really enjoy.”

He says the Bristol show will include references to nuclear power, beetles, the future of the internet, worms, hawks and Lady Gaga; “basically a guide to modern living and the all important musical marriage of Kraftwerk and The Wurzels”.

Channel 4 assembles 24 of the nation’s best-known and most loved comedians to appear in this two-hour extravaganza in aid of Great Ormond Street Hospital Children’s Charity.

Keep your eyes peeled for a man called Bill Bailey and The Actor Kevin Eldon.

Tomorrow sees the release of Emma Thompson’s latest film about a nanny, which premiered in London’s Leicester Square last night. Bill is in it.

Click here to see a video of Bill being fed a biscuit by a journalist:

http://www.itn.co.uk/f903f3213c35b70928944cc5c9089df7.html

Now that the Oscar huff and puffery has died down,  it’s time to judge the glories, the gaffes, the frocks, the speeches.. the…blah, di blah… yawwwwn.

Sorry, almost put myself to sleep there.

I watched The Hurt Locker again, and while I quite enjoyed it the first time, it’s just another unremarkable war film.. one-note performances, clichéd dialogue, action and characters.  I thought District 9 was a far better film – witty, gripping and ambitious. And every year I  cringe at the patronizing and insulting category Best Foreign Language Film.. foreign for who? For timid, parochial west-coast ninnies who think that an adventurous holiday is  a hotel in Hawaii, that isn’t full board. Weirdly, English is a foreign language in some parts of the world…

Avatar is a big simplistic wagging dog of a film, so it’s hard not like it, and even though it’s as morally complex as an episode of Last of the Summer Wine, it still is an extraordinary spectacle in the cinema.

But really, Oscars are like any awards, they shine a light for a moment, and then we’re back to reality, and the reality is, people will watch what they want, you can only influence them up to a point because the most powerful tool in marketing a film is word of mouth.  No amount of critical garlands heaped on a film will sustain it if people come out saying it was boring.

Up rightly won Best Animated Feature, and is a joy to behold – the opening 10 minutes are probably the most moving and ambitious of any animated film I’ve ever seen.

But as always, I  feel that we in the UK are like the kid who doesn’t know about the party, when films which haven’t even been released here are up for Oscars.

So now I’m away to watch District 9 again, those fookin prawns, man!

BB  March 2010

Bill joins Rich Hall and Barry Humphries as panelists on the next episode in the ‘G’ series. This week, it’s Gravity.

When life is beginning to get you down, you could always try watching a DVD. Here’s Damon Albarn with a copy of Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra.

Please let us know if you spot other people going about their daily lives under the influence of Bill Bailey.

Some of you may have seen Bill on the ITN News earlier today, but whilst in the studio, Bill took the opportunity to try out an alternative viewpoint!