After two sold-out gigs at the Apollo last year, comedy maestro Bill Bailey is back for an even bigger appointment at Manchester Arena this weekend.
Still at the top of his game, expect plenty of surreal stories, whimsical asides and – of course – his genius musical deconstructions.
Performing at the venue is always a privilege, he told CityLife when we caught up with him ahead of the tour.
"I started out just performing to a small audience in sweaty, and I mean really physically sweaty, pubs and clubs in little towns and villages around Manchester," he said.
"To then go on to the biggest venue in the city, performing to thousands of people is just, well it’s just an absolute privilege."
Manchester was also the setting for what Bailey describes as a seminal point in his youth, when he appeared in a play called The Printers while at university.
Written by Vanessa Redgrave, it told the story of the WRP (the Workers Revolutionary Party) and the strikes that followed the Wapping dispute in the mid 1980s.
"This was a subject that I had never heard anything about and it was just fascinating for me to learn about the start of the unions and the formation of the Labour Party," he said.
"It was a real education for me, one that I didn’t learn at school."
"An absolute privilege:" Bill Bailey tells us what he loves about our city
He added: "We put on a performance of the play at the Bridgewater Hall, which was just an amazing experience, to be in such a beautiful building and be performing at the age of 19 or 20 was just surreal and it really made quite an impression on me.
"It was also great because I met other actors, activists and various people and students and it was a real education, a really intense experience.
"After our performance we would go and drink cheap beer and watch comedy nights in the old clubs which doesn’t exist anymore.
"Then we’d go clubbing and drinking and we’d hang out in the square until the trams came and listen to Buzz radio. They were such good times, great memories."
He's back in the city on Friday on his Larks in Transit tour, billed as 'a compendium of travellers’ tales and the general shenanigans of twenty years as a travelling comedian', exploring politics, philosophy and the pursuit of happiness.
A handful of tickets are still available from Ticketmaster priced from £40.60.
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