A thought occurred to Bill Bailey in the wake of his aptly titled Thoughtifier tour.
The realisation bloomed in the fertile mind of the musically-inclined comedian. He was a vaudeville act.
Bailey had been unwittingly keeping the spirit of vaudeville alive throughout his five-decade-spanning career.
The comic's multifarious shows are madcap spectacles - wry observations, surrealist left-turns and side-splitting sonic set pieces. In other words, vaudeville.
The impish British comedian and actor, loved by many for playing Manny from cult TV series Black Books, is the first to admit that this notion was curiously late to the party.
"It seems like it should be obvious but it only occurred to me in the last year," Bailey admits from London.
The Somerset native explores his craft on 16th tour, Vaudevillean, which will visit Newcastle this September.
"I've set myself a challenge, and that is to try and tell the story of vaudeville as a central thread, a structure on which to hang the show because it's a fascinating story," Bailey says.
"[Vaudevillean] is about the history of showbiz and entertainment, where it comes from and why this entertainment was the way it was - and how it became so popular."
Bailey's inquisitive mind has informed both his stand-up and his retention of rare facts and trivia tidbits on British game show institutions QI and Never Mind the Buzzcocks.
So it's no surprise that Bailey, ever the autodidact, has now acquired an expansive knowledge of his new subject of interest.
Bailey even learned how vaudeville made its way Down Under.
"It was hugely popular in Australia," he says.
"It was known as the Tivoli Circuit and started in Sydney, and it was a London-based comedian, a Cockney vaudevillian [Harry Rickards], who took over the Garrick Theatre in Sydney in the 1890s, and turned it into the Tivoli Theatre. And it was immensely successful. He would hire acts from all over the world."
The Tivoli Circuit spanned numerous venues and featured a lively mix of revue, opera, ballet, dance, singing and musical comedy, enduring until 1956 when the introduction of television proved its undoing.
"It was family based, broad mainstream entertainment before radio, film, TV and streaming," Bailey says.
"There was only live [performance]. And I want to really lean into and celebrate that, and to also tell the story of how it's come full circle, in a way, because now live entertainment is perhaps as popular as it's ever been.
"And maybe that seems ironic, doesn't it? That so much of our lives are spent online. We can order food and we can stay in our houses. We can binge-watch TV series. We don't have to leave our homes to get entertainment.
"And yet people do, in huge numbers, because it's a human need. It's a desire to feel that sense of community and a shared experience."
And Bailey should know. The comedian, multi-instrumentalist and animal lover has written and toured shows with rare fervour since first appearing on the British comedy circuit in the mid-'80s.
He tours far and wide, in venues big and very big, and has a particularly avid fanbase throughout Australia and New Zealand.
And Bailey has observed that during this particularly strange moment in human history, the world needs a good laugh more than ever.
"It's a good job to be in," Bailey enthuses.
"As long as there's stupidity, hypocrisy and absurdity in our lives and modern life, then there'll always be a market for comedy. And I can't see that changing, sadly, anytime soon.
"I sensed it very much in the years post the pandemic. There was an almost palpable increase in people's reactions, as an audience. But this delight at being in a crowd, at sharing an experience - I don't think there's anything quite like it. There's a sense of desire to be in a crowd, in a live experience, that cannot be replicated. It's unique. And long may it continue, I say."
Bailey reveals plans to travel to the French birthplace of vaudeville, the Vire River Valley (or "Vaux-de-Vire"), to speak to the locals and possibly film his interactions.
"The name 'vaudeville' comes from a town in Normandy in northern France," Bailey explains.
"I would love to go there and film it and talk to people there and get a sense if they realise this is the birthplace of modern entertainment."
Vaudeville would later experience a three-decade reign as the most popular form of entertainment in America from the 1890s to the 1920s. But Bailey's Vaudevillean will take his audience all the way back to its emergence in Normandy in the 1400s.
"The first documented writer of what were known as vaudeville songs was a chap called Olivier Basselin," Bailey says.
"And he was a miller. He worked in a wool mill, stretching out fabric all day long, which was very dull, physical work. And then he would go to the tavern in the evening and sing songs, taking the mickey out of, probably, the employers, the situation. And he spoke to ordinary people."
It was this accessibility to the common person that saw vaudeville become a sensation - an antidote to highbrow forms of entertainment.
"It was a way of mirroring people's lives," Bailey says.
"There's a thread running through the whole history of vaudeville which mimics exactly that thing. When vaudeville took off, it went to Paris, and it became hugely popular in Paris. But the reason it was popular originally was that theatre was quite stuffy. It was quite an upper-middle-class thing to go and see a bit of classical music and opera. It was all very genteel.
"And vaudeville was a counterpoint to that. It was about ordinary life. And similarly, when it came to Australia, it was very much that Harry Rickards, who started the Tivoli Circuit, was up against established theatre impresarios who had put on rather well-heeled shows for the genteel parts of society.
"Vaudeville was very much seen as almost lowbrow entertainment. It was seen as the working-man's entertainment. And, as such, it was seen as something vulgar, without value. And yet I see it as a kind of a mirroring of daily life."
But times change and what's old becomes new. Vaudeville has, to some degree, made a comeback - and Bailey intends to move the dial further.
"It's something that has persisted over the centuries," he says.
"And you could say now it's finally garnered the respect that it never got back in the day. It's now seen as something worthy. It can hold its own against the opera and ballet and the theatre and what's considered high-brow entertainment. Comedy fills the same venues as these shows do now."
Like any great showman, Bailey doesn't want to spoil Vaudevillean, so he reveals little of what his fans can expect on stage. However, when pressed, the comedian drops a few hints and confirms that the show will be noticeably different to anyone lucky enough to see the tour when it passed through New Zealand in October last year.
"It will be changed quite radically by the time it gets to Australia," Bailey reveals.
"Already there's whole new sections to it, new music, new instruments. I don't want to give too much away, but I'm working with a dance coach and someone who creates stage illusions. So it's recreating that [vaudeville] world, but with a modern take on it - a modern twist."
