Bill Bailey
He calls himself "part troll" but he's also dubbed himself "a kind of klingon". However you see him, Bill Bailey is as funny as his hair is unfortunate. Which is to say he's a very funny man indeed.
As the self-styled 'bug-eyed wizard of comedy' Bailey combines meandering tales with gigantic, bizarre leaps of logic. His subjects swing through a whole galaxy of weirdness, from geopolitical theories, to snack food (Pringle sandwich anyone?) and theoretical astrophysics.
Every once in a while he'll throw in a song: Zip-a-di-do-da as performed by Portishead; a rave version of the BBC News theme; or a drum 'n' bass remix of George Bush's speeches.
The list of milestones in Bill's career starts well and steadily improves. In 1989, he formed a double act called the Rubber Bishops, but abandoned it to write his first Edinburgh festival show, Rock, a collaboration comedian Sean Lock. In 1995, he did his first one-man show, Bill Bailey's Cosmic Jam. It won the Time Out award at the festival. The next year, his show won the festival's Critic's Award, and was filmed and aired as a special on Channel 4. And, in 1999, he won a British Comedy Award for Best Live Stand-up.
For all his success, Bill once made a serious effort to quit stand up. The realisation that his life was wacked out came one late night on the motorway when he discovered that he had driven around so much that he had favourite motorway services. So he quit and took a job selling ad space in a magazine. One argument with his boss about wearing a tie to work later, and he was back on the comedy circuit.
TV success soon followed with QI, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Spaced, The Stand-Up-Show and his own series, Is it Bill Bailey? The movies also favour a funny man, and he's appeared in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (as the voice of Sperm Whale) and Saving Grace. But his biggest, and funniest TV role to date is as Manny in Black Books. He got the part through the Channel 4 Sitcom Festival, where he agreed to appear in a skit with Dylan Moran (Bernard Black). It worked so well that Moran sat down and wrote the idea up into a series with the co-creator of Father Ted, Graham Linehan.
