Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1487 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-11-10
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 91 minutes

Synopsis
From the imagination of Bill Bailey, experience Tinselworm--a visually stunning comedy and music extravaganza. Filmed at Wembley Arena at the end of a sell-out tour of the UK, it’s everything you expect from Bill, and more. Using huge screens, films and animation by award-winning film-maker Joe Magee, plus Bill’s trademark musical inventiveness and verbal brilliance, this is quite simply the most spectacular one-man comedy show ever staged in the UK.

Customer Reviews

Disappointing
There is no doubt that Bill Bailey is a unique talent. Disappointingly this show held at Wembley does not show him at his best.

Personally I dislike large arenas and refuse to go to any venue unless I am close enough to the stage to see the performer's eyes. This is especially important for comedy where crowd participation and interaction are fundamental to a good show. Why people flock to see the likes of Lee Evans at huge arenas is beyond me. If you can only watch the performer on the big screen why bother to go and see them live at all. You might as well wait for the DVD release!

Frank Skinner recently wrote that he decided on his last tour to avoid huge venues (even though he has the fanbase to do so) because they made him feel dislocated from his audience. I think a lot of the big names in comedy should learn from this approach and think of the fans before their pockets.

Anyway back to the review, Bill Bailey appears to view this performance as a fitting climax to his career. Unfortunately the location appears to have gone to his head and instead of delighting his audience with the quirky, unusual comedy for which he is renowned, we get light shows galore, special effects, recycled material and even Bill Bailey: the "rock god". At an hour and a half the show feels very long (not helped by some fairly weak material) and parts of the show definitely outstay their welcome (the Hindi Creep.. why?).

I would only recommend this to diehard fans who have everything else he has done and are desperate for more. Newbies should try Bewilderness first.

Good, but disappointing
So, as a big fan of Bill Bailey in whatever he chooses to do (Buzzcocks, Black Books and his previous stand up gigs) I found this to be extremely hollow, and crucially not very funny.

Example, I'm all for a musical number in a Bill Bailey gig, as long as it's a funny musical number (and no, wheeling out a song from another gig does not count).

Too much time spent on the video screens behind Bill rather than Bill himself. And the viedo screen stuff wasn't even that funny either. From the extras on this DVD it seems like the smaller gigs from the same tour were better, but for me the main Wembley gig is frankly, boring.

Not as good as Part Troll
As some others have said, this show relied too much on technology and spectacle rather than good material. As a result it lacks the usual energy and top-notch jokes that I've come to expect from Bill.
The overwhelming feeling I got from the whole DVD was that he though "I get to play Wembley, I'm gonna be a rock-star for the night". That's most obvious in the encore performances of the banjo duel from The Deliverance and Radiohead's Creep. He performed them with an Indian band and that was pretty much the only comedic element to the songs, so it felt like pure self-indulgence.

I hope that for his next tour Bill puts more effort into his material rather than gimmicky videos and filler. It would be a shame and a waste if Part Troll was his peak.