Bill Bailey: Doing the wild thing

SINGAPORE — He’s best known for being a funny guy, but the next time you see comedian Bill Bailey on TV here, he’ll be deep in the jungles of South-east Asia for his documentary, Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero.

Bailey will be retracing the footsteps of Alfred Russel Wallace, the largely forgotten scientist who was a contemporary of Charles Darwin, and whose ideas on evolution were developed during a 12-year journey through what was then widely known as the Malay Archipelago. It was Wallace who eventually encouraged Darwin to publish his own controversial theories on evolution.

How does one of Britain’s top comedians end up trudging through rainforests? Well, blame his childhood.

“When I was kid, behind the house, there was a path with a river and I used to go play there after school,” he said over the phone from London. “And my mum and dad would take us out to wildlife or bird sanctuaries — that was a family day out. So I got to know the names of birds and all that. It was just a thing we did, but I guess that’s given me a life-long love for the natural world.”

So it’s not because there are birds out there called tits? “It’s more than because there are birds called tits — although that probably comes along at some point.”

Bailey is no stranger to the rainforests in this part of the world either. “I’ve been trekking jungles throughout South-east Asia for the past 15 to 20 years. I’ve grown to love it. I go back to Malaysia and Indonesia about two or three times a year,” he said.

For Bailey, doing Jungle Hero was “a real labour of love”. “This was a personal quest in a way, to tell the story of someone whom I don’t think many people would have heard of, outside of the academic world. When I mention Wallace to people, they immediately go, ‘Wallace and Gromit’?”

But like many presenters of natural history shows, Bailey found that the biggest challenge was trying to make sure the TV audience would understand the message he was trying to convey. “The subject matter may be a little difficult to assimilate, so you need to make sure that it is accessible, so that it doesn’t become too dry and academic.

“I think we, by and large, got the balance right. We kind of learnt as we were going along. You have to trust your instincts in a way. I spent a long time researching it — two or three years — reading all the books about Wallace, talking to scientists and I had all this stuff in my head — it’s like preparing for exams.”

Right now, though, Bailey is preparing to fulfil another dream: Writing a musical. “That should be fun. But that’s going to take some time. I’m also doing more natural history documentaries. And I’m doing a big comedy tour later in the year. I’m hoping to come to a lot of places in Asia. Singapore? Yes, I’ll see you there in the autumn.”

Bill Bailey’s Jungle Hero is on April 24, at 9.55pm on BBC Knowledge (StarHub Ch 407). For more, visit Poparazzi (http://tdy.sg/poparazziblog)