Bill Bailey – Limboland


This evening I had my first birthday present of the year, two weeks early: tickets to go see Bill Bailey perform at the NUS Cultural Centre. These were ludicrously expensive; $150 each, although we were in the second-to-front row. It was something we didn’t feel too much guilt over, because I’d been given $250 of vouchers for a cultural event as my leaving present from Expedia, but it still felt like a lot.

The Cultural Centre is miles from anywhere, except for the rest of the NUS campus. Taxi uncles find it difficult to locate. Once we got inside, we found a huge queue for drinks and food. I had a fever coming on and hadn’t eaten properly all day, so I was desperate for food. After ten minutes waiting for the line to move and it being completely stationary, I walked to the other end of the foyer and found a second food outlet, with no queue at all, and brought back the nutritious combination of a chicken sandwich for my wife and a chocolate cookie and a cupcake. And thence to the show…

I’ve never seen Bill Bailey live before, subsisting instead on a series of DVDs over the years. The stage was set with the beloved theremin, a bass drum, a Marshall amplifier and a brace of guitars. Bill strode on stage about 8:15, a troll-like man dressed entirely in black, like a English Johnny Cash gone to seed. My migraine continued, but at least I was laughing hard enough to be able to ignore it.

The first half of the show had a lot more talking from Bill than I was expecting, rather than just music; there was an extended bit on One Direction, which I didn’t really understand as I’m in that strange hinterland between being young enough to know who One Direction are, and being old enough to have to endure taking La Serpiente Aquatica Negra to see One Direction.

There was also a long and inspired part about English optimism, as demonstrated by people observing their weekend ‘could have been worse” which I can’t do justice here.

But what one really goes to see Bill Bailey for is the musical stuff, and this didn’t disappoint. There was a lovely bit about how bad it is to see a guitarist sticking their tongue out: an awe-inspiring demonstration of playing Stairway To Heaven badly, which must take a huge amount of work to do so badly, so consistently.

The second half had more music than the first, less mention of Singapore. Things finished with a tremendous Kraftwerk-styled rendition of Miley Cyrus’ Wrecking Ball, and then in the encore, Rammstein doing Abba’s Waterloo.

I’m not clear by the end of it why the show was called Limboland – that wasn’t something that Bill referenced at any point Appropiately enough, I was in that strange limbo, between being very happy and feeling terribly sorry for myself, as my fever rose and my migraine intensified.

Leaving the Cultural Centre was a struggle. The exit doors at the front of the hall were locked (as if somebody deliberately wanted to make things unsafe) and then as the Cultural Centre is so far from public transport, there was a massive crowd waiting for a taxi. Thankfully we called and got one within 15 minutes, and fled home, where I shivered in the ice cold car, and then lay myself down on the sofa to sleep.


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