Bill Bailey's Remarkable Guide to British Birds

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I like doing Stand-up Paddleboarding. Whenever I’ve got a spare minute, I go up the Thames on my board.

He is having his picture taken in his garden, which is half zen-style light grey gravel and half astroturf. Visible through a circular partition – a Japanese moon gate, as Bailey explains – is a shed with a recording studio in it. More intriguingly, on one side of the garden is another narrow shed, its contents shielded from view by silver foil and bubble wrap. There are parts of Central Sulawesi where you can just head off into the national parks, where very few people go. Sumatra, too, has some amazing parts, with Gunung Leuser National Park at its centre, one of the few places in Indonesia where working elephants still help to build bridges. It’s amazing to see. Bailey himself has stayed remarkably clear of censure, impressive in a career of more than 30 years, perhaps because his default mode is silliness. Which isn’t to say he’s not political. As a life-long Labour voter, he says he is more optimistic about Keir Starmer than he was about his predecessor.This is a beginners guide more than anything else, Bill recommends starting bird-watching by try to find a pigeon, so if you know anybody showing an interest in birds then this will be a great gift for them. My youngest daughter is going to read this next and I think she’ll enjoy it mainly because of the interesting gruesome facts included, a bit like the horrible histories books. We enjoyed your new book, Bill Bailey’s Remarkable Guide to British Birds – it’s really useful for birdwatching novices.

There’s wildlife, too, with orangutans and leopards.Tthen there’s much further east, in the Moluccas. That’s somewhere we’ve been to quite a lot – both the northern and southern – and it has a rich history. The Portuguese were there for a while, then it was a stronghold of the Dutch East India Company and the spice trade. Wonderful remnants of its colonial past still exist and you can take off into the wild pretty easily. I’ve just done a tour of Europe and got a glimpse of the future. When I’m in the EU and travelling with all my kit, I breeze in and out. But going between [non-EU] Norway and the Netherlands, I had to declare everything. There’s all the extra queues and paperwork. This is what we’ve got to look forward to. At the festival in Knebworth, Bailey arrived on stage via a secret door in the amps, in a cape and a "terrifying Slipknot mask" of himself, before performing one of the biggest comedy gigs in the world, in front of 65,000 metal fans and on the same bill as Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax. ilmselgelt raamatu valisin lindude, mitte autori pärast, aga eks mind ahvatles küll veidi idee linnumäärajast, mille on kirjutanud niisama linnuhuviline, mitte ornitoloog. lootsin, et asju ei aeta liiga keeruliseks, ja need lootused täitusid täiega. linde oli raamatusse valitud selle järgi, keda Bailey ise näinud on ja kes talle meeldivad, ja neid polnud liiga palju. juurde oli ka kirjutatud... huvitavaid asju. näiteks et haigur lõpetas Bailey tiigist kalade püüdmise siis, kui tiigi kõrvale paigutati krokodilli kuju. või et piiritaja poja esimene lend pesast välja on kohe lõunamaale, ei ole mingit kodu ümber harjutamist.

The celebrity birders we have some evidence of…

olin muidugi sunnitud võtma ette eestikeelsete linnunimede andmebaasi ja endale tabeli tegema, sest ega ma ikka ei teadnud küll, et bittern on hüüp ja dipper vesipapp, näiteks. siin sain ka selgust, mis vahe on viul, tuuletallajal, kalakotkal, rabapistrikul ja puna-harksabal (klge, Eestis vist ei ole puna-harksaba? elus pole enne kuulnud seda nime. jääb mulle seega igaveseks meelde kui sõna, mille õppisin enne ära kõmri kui eesti keeles. barcud coch, pole tänu väärt). enne olid nad kõik mu jaoks ühed kullid kõik. Weirdly I didn't watch the match because I was at the zookeeper's symposium. We were out on the terrace of the Palace of Westminster, watching a cormorant eating an eel –an extraordinary sight.It was all very nice and civilised butevery time England scored you could hear the muffled cry somewhere." There’s not going to be a consensus on fossil fuels, Putin’s not going to capitulate. This stuff isn’t all going to happen,” he says. “As a comic, our job is to make people laugh, so they don’t have to think about any of that for a couple of hours.” You suspect his old friend Sean would have agreed.

It’s called a theremin and has been most famously used in 1950s science-fiction films such as The Day the Earth Stood Still. Bill is one of the few modern representatives of the instrument, and has presented a Radio 4 show called “Good Vibrations: The Story of the Theremin”, and written an article on the subject for the Guardian. Beardy UK comedian Rory McGrath likens birdwatching to a couple of things here in the Birmingham Post in 2008. One of them is Leonard Cohen, the other is a bit more specialist. Either way, he says that it’s the sort of thing people own up to once someone else has the courage to out themselves. Jimi GoodwinWe saw recent polar bear footprints, but no bears. We did see an Arctic fox, and lots of birds were starting to arrive, as it was getting into late spring. Earl of Whimsy is very much about delving into a bit of English history, partly because, I think, for every comic in Britain the last two years have been quite a torrid time after Brexit... We're still in a state of chaos, limbo.Throw into that mix Trump and it's a strange time. In a way what I have done is retreat to some nostalgia, looking at what's great and not great... Britain'sfractious relationship with the rest of the world."