Bill Bailey, the Strictly Come Dancing champion and star of Black Books, played a winter season of his musical stand-up show Thoughtifier at the Theatre Royal Haymarket.
Bill Bailey, who won Strictly Come Dancing in 2020, played a winter season of his stand-up show Thoughtifier at the Theatre Royal Haymarket in St James’s. The run lasted from Saturday 28 December 2024 to Saturday 15 February 2025.
Bailey was born in Keynsham, Somerset, in 1965, the son of a GP and a hospital ward nurse. At King Edward’s School in Bath he was the only pupil to take A-level music, and he is a classically trained musician.
He became known on television as Manny in the Channel 4 sitcom Black Books, and as a regular on Never Mind the Buzzcocks and QI. In 2007 and 2010 he was voted seventh in Channel 4’s 100 Greatest Stand-Ups.
His Strictly win came in the 18th series, partnered by the professional dancer Oti Mabuse. At 55 he became the oldest winner in the show’s history.
Thoughtifier is a show about the human mind, told through music and stand-up, with detours into whales, biophilia and unrequited love. The London season ran six nights a week, Tuesday to Sunday.