Hilarious Bailey is on a troll

There's clearly nothing wrong with the Wyndham's that a great gig cannot fix. Following Michael Barrymore's curtailed fiasco, Bill Bailey made comedy look like a doddle there last night with a mixture of musical pastiches, philosophical wisecracks and beard gags.

Bailey's previous West End show, Bewilderness, took a while to get going, but Part Troll hits the ground running with an unlikely quip about entropy.

The Never Mind The Buzzcocks star then wondered why you never hear funky West Country accents, illustrating his thesis with a version of Madonna's Music in The Wurzels' brogue.

Dressed in black and looking like a cross between Johnny Cash and a garden gnome, Bailey pushes comedy into new pastures.

A yarn about Diogenes is hardly topical, but certainly the mark of a fertile mind. For those who prefer their surrealism more accessible there's also a positively spooky send-up of a Disneyfied Portishead.

A leitmotif is exquisitely honed eccentricity. "I'm British and as such I crave disappointment. Could fluff from Saturn be slowing down trains?"

Elsewhere he tackles subjects from the Taliban - combining the worst excesses of the Nazis, Khmer Rouge, folk and golf - to drug laws.

Apparently, cannabis remains illegal because the pro-dope lobby is too stoned to mount a persuasive case.

Naturally, the Tolkien, Star Wars and Glastonbury references are present among the rehashed elements, but dismiss Bailey as a one-track hippy at your peril.

His drum 'n' bass sampling of George Bush is a rare example of danceable satire. Only a section on Bali felt ill-judged, a jarring gear change just as he was really motoring. Stardom can make performers lose their edge.