Hackney Empire 21/02/04.

Bill Bailey is, these days, undoubtedly best known in the households of Great Britain for resuscitating the moribund Never Mind the Buzzcocks, as well as his co-starring role in Black Books and his eerily accurate portrayal of comic shop owner Bilbo Bagshawe in Spaced. Indeed, his entrance onto the stage is greeted by a shout of 'Bilbo!', following which he launches into a diatribe about his non-bitterness at not getting the part of Gimli in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings adaptation, which melds seamlessly into a piece about the seeming absurdity of the west country accent.

In fact for the just over hour and a half Bailey is on stage, it would be easy to assume that the whole thing was being made up on the spot, a stream of consciousness rant about the iniquity of film casting, the humour of regional accents, the equal parts crassness and energy of the United States, as well as many other things, but that would be a very false impression of the man and his material.

What holds the show together in a seamless strand is the music. Bailey is a consummate musician, capable of switching between country - the fact that the US spends more on porn per year than the national debt inspired the country opus I Will Not Look at Titties for a Year - to rock ballad and all points in between.

All of which would mean nothing if the music itself wasn't good enough to support the jokes - history is littered with one shot comedy songs, but Bailey goes deeper than most comedy musicians, mostly because one suspects that he has a huge and lasting affection for the music he parodies.

Certainly, he describes Tom Waits as 'a hero' before delivering a perfectly pitched pastiche of Waits performing Three Blind Mice. In the same encore he manages a note perfect rendition of Billy Bragg's Romford growl in Fascist Regime Chip Shop.

Bailey is also a good raconteur, and his material ranges from the stupidity of the charts to the 'absurdity' of his life, which lead the makers of 'Celebrity Driving School' to hire him to do the commentary (he was apparently sacked for showing too much contempt for the contenders) to the state of the national psyche - a warrior race overcome with an utter sense of futility, which leads him to muse that the country really needs a new national anthem - something upbeat, like
Zip Pah Dee Doo Dah as played by someone of suitable miserableness, such as Portishead, a joke that would mean less than nothing if he didn't then proceed to play a stunningly accurate rendition of Portishead playing Zip Pah Dee Doo Dah, complete with theremin and guitar parts played on a mandolin.

In amongst all this mayhem, Bailey finds time to take in an hilarious three men in a pub joke and finishes with a medley of songs from 'The Greatest Cockney Rock Anthems Vol III', in which he produces a scarily accurate impression of Chas'n'Dave singing such classic rock anthems as Eye of the Tiger, and most hilariously of all Bela Lugosi's Dead.

It's been a long time since I've laughed so hard for so long (not least at Bailey's eccentric dancing to his 'Drum and Bush' medley), and can only wholeheartedly advise anyone is search of a great laugh to catch Bailey next time he plays near them.

It should also be said that the evenings compere, Jocelyn Jee was impressive, and made me think that I really ought to check out '3 Non Blondes', of which she makes up one-third. Also of interest to music fansd in London at the moment is a show of Annie Leibowitz's rock photography since 1996 at The Hospital in Covent Garden. Leibowitz has long been the best photographer of music and musicians in the world and, despite the atrocious lighting of this exhibition, it cannot be denied that this is a stunning collection of work - my personal favourites being a wonderful shot of bluesman R L
Burnside, two magnificent studies of Johnny Cash (one with wife Carlene Carter, the other with daughter Roseanne Cash) and a romantic shot of Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson at Coney Island.

The exhibition runs until May 9th and I heartily recommend it to anyone interested in either music or photography who is in the London area.

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