Andrew Bailey (born 1947) is a British

performance artist Performance art is an artwork or art exhibition created through actions executed by the artist or other participants. It may be witnessed live or through documentation, spontaneously developed or written, and is traditionally presented to a pu ...

, character comedian, and musical absurdist from

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

. One of the original

alternative comedy Alternative comedy is a term coined in the 1980s for a style of comedy that makes a conscious break with the mainstream comedic style of an era. The phrase has had different connotations in different contexts: in the UK, it was used to describe ...

pioneers at London's seminal

Comedy Store The Comedy Store is an American comedy club opened in April 1972. It is located in West Hollywood, California, at 8433 Sunset Boulevard on the Sunset Strip. An associated club is located in La Jolla, San Diego, California. History The Comedy ...

in the early 80s, alongside

Rik Mayall Richard Michael Mayall (7 March 1958 – 9 June 2014) was an English actor, stand-up comedian and writer. He formed a close partnership with Ade Edmondson while they were students at Manchester University and was a pioneer of alternative ...

French & Saunders ''French and Saunders'' is a British sketch comedy television series written by and starring comedy duo and namesake Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders that originally broadcast on BBC2 from 1987 to 1993, and later on BBC One until 2017. It is a ...

and

Ben Elton Benjamin Charles Elton (born 3 May 1959) is an English comedian, actor, author, playwright, lyricist and director. He was a part of London's alternative comedy movement of the 1980s and became a writer on the sitcoms '' The Young Ones'' and ''Bla ...

. He has performed at the

Royal National Theatre The Royal National Theatre in London, commonly known as the National Theatre (NT), is one of the United Kingdom's three most prominent publicly funded performing arts venues, alongside the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Royal Opera House. I ...

in London, supported the

Eurythmics Eurythmics were a British pop duo consisting of Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart. They were both previously in The Tourists, a band which broke up in 1980. The duo released their first studio album, '' In the Garden'', in 1981 to little succ ...

and

John Hegley John Richard Hegley (born 1 October 1953) is an English performance poet, comedian, musician and songwriter. Early life He was born in the Newington Green area of Islington, London, England, into a Roman Catholic household. He was brought up i ...

and others, he has influenced the work of

Jerry Sadowitz Jerry Sadowitz (born June 1961) is an American-born Scottish stand-up comedian and magician. Notorious for his frequently controversial brand of black comedy, Sadowitz has said that audiences going to see a comedian should suspend their beliefs ...

and

Simon Munnery Simon Munnery, also known as his characters "Alan Parker: Urban Warrior" and "The League Against Tedium", is an English comedian. He performs mainly to an alternative audience but has pierced the mainstream both with his BBC Radio 1 show in 19 ...

. Andrew Bailey has been known to create highly visual performances that take risks on stage in order to provoke audiences. One such example of this is his character Podomovski, whom spoke in gibberish that was translated offstage, by

Paul Merton Paul James Martin (born 9 July 1957), known under the stage name Paul Merton, is an English writer, actor, comedian and radio and television presenter. Known for his improvisation skill, Merton's humour is rooted in deadpan, surreal and someti ...

, and as his performance went on it continued to get weirder. However, the audience were with him every step of the way. Described as being on the "lunatic fringe" and "the King of Dysfunctional

Doo Wop Doo-wop (also spelled doowop and doo wop) is a genre of rhythm and blues music that originated in African-American communities during the 1940s, mainly in the large cities of the United States, including New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Chica ...

", Bailey has performed regularly at the

Edinburgh Fringe The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as The Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, or Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest arts and media festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 dif ...

, and on British television.The Scotsman
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References

1947 births Living people Comedians from Manchester People from Islington (district) Edinburgh Comedy Festival British performance artists English male comedians 20th-century English comedians 21st-century English comedians {{UK-comedian-stub