Podcasts have certainly come a long way from being recorded in bedrooms on laptops. For their latest live serving of the award-winning Dish from Waitrose, presenters Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett OBE took over the Royal Opera House for a Sunday afternoon of fun, food and chat. They've done this before with Jack Whitehall. This time the guest was another arena-filling comedian, Bill Bailey.
And Bailey had every reason to feel at home here despite a spot of jetlag having just arrived from Australia. He was the first British comedian to do their show at the Royal Opera House when he performed here in 2021. He's not know for his opera oeuvre but he couldn't resist joining the onstage band for a musical interlude during the recording.
After Martinis had been served and Hartnett confessed to dropping a steak on the floor on a previous outing, the first half was mainly Bailey having a genial chinwag with Grimshaw and Hartnett about subjects ranging from his fondness for toasted rice to the animals he keeps in his garden/mini-zoo in Hammersmith. Bailey is so amiable it was a shock to discover that he once had a chicken that took an instant dislike to him and he had to protect himself with a broom whenever he saw it.
Bailey is one of the most well-travelled comedians so had plenty of entertaining anecdotes as the trio tucked into their freshly cooked food onstage. He once went to a restaurant in Guangdong in China where owl was on the menu and when he saw that the bird was still alive he paid for it, took it away and liberated it. He just hoped it wasn't a homing owl who immediately returned to the same place...
After the interval the audience got a bonus feature of bare-chested flamenco tap dancing and a Q&A facilitated by a roving Sophie Willan, who is always good value. Celebrity Traitor Amol Rajan just happened to be one of those who popped up with a question before Willan joined Grimmy and the gang onstage for more light bites of appetising grub gossip.
It's not often I go to a podcast recording and I'm glad I've had lunch beforehand, but I was certainly relieved I'd eaten on this occasion. Tasty talk in a very tasteful venue.
Dish from Waitrose with Bill Bailey will be released at a later date.
Picture by Alex Brenner
