Up through the ranks
Life wasn't always hee hee ha ha for Bill Bailey though. At school he wanted to be a musician and put together a band called The Famous Five. But it didn't really work out, he says. "I would keep putting musical jokes in - like a bit of the Dynasty theme. So I got into comedy because I failed at everything else."

Weighed down by awards
The list of milestones in his 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.

Stand-up guy
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.

Ties that bind
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.

Telly tubby
But, with his level of fame, Bailey soon found he didn't have to slog the way he used to. Instead, he took roles on QI, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Spaced, The Stand-Up-Show and had a crack at 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.

Buy the Books
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.

Bill loved the script, the situation and the character. But most of all he loved the set, filled with real books. "I remember one was called The Big Book of Swamps. Fabulous read. Another was by the former darts champion, John Lowe. It was full of hilarious diagrams on how and how not to hold a dart. They all looked the same."