''Comedy is like a safety valve, a safety net to a lot of static...|'' Bill Bayley explains what gets him going and why it’s hard to avoid feeling angry some days. Charles Hutchinson listens in.

BILL Bailey already had doubts about the modern world. Now they have grown into qualms, a word that sounds calmer than its meaning.

“Maybe I should have upped the ante to anxiety or feeling like we’re in a bit of palaver,” says the Somerset sage, surrealist stand-up, satirical musician, comic actor, presenter and… Qualmpeddler, the title of his latest touring show.

“I work slowly and sometimes it takes me a long time to rile the hippy, but once you do, it takes me a long time to wind down again.”

Bill Bailey will be stirring his “broth of anxiety” at York Barbican on Wednesday and Thursday, when he will mull over his religious doubts, his moral imperative and his shortcomings as a parent in a more confessional show.

While Qualmpeddler will have his trademark musical mash-ups, multilingual riffs, surreal imagery, films, songs, philosophising and silliness on a grand scale, Bill also feels the need to channel his unease and apprehension into direct political comment.

“Actually you almost get to the point where you can’t not talk about it, because I get so angry about the inherent cruelty of the bedroom tax, for example; something that is very serious and impacts on people and is one of the most unfair things a government has imposed on people since the war,” he says.

“So that gets you worked up and from there, it throws up a lot of other targets and channels a sense of injustice that’s impossible to keep out of the show.”

Age shall not wither him. Instead, at 49, Bill finds “a torrent” of comment pouring out of him. “People say to me that all this cruelty, pomposity and absurdity needs to be shown up, and there’s a great sense of connection at this show, of chiming with what people are thinking. That’s something comedy can do,” says Bill.

“Comedy is like a safety valve, a safety net to a lot of static; or qualms [ah, that word again] about the way we live. Comedy is like…,” pauses Bill, searching for the definitive simile. “A lightning conductor.”

He chose the name Qualmpeddler for the show as a “euphemism for a stand-up comedian”. “It’s a medieval name for what we would have been doing back then; it’s a link to those times; those peddlers,” he says.

“Every word has to be checked and double checked in my show because you get pedants challenging what you say, but to my delight I found that peddlers would not only sell their wares but also sang songs, like rather bawdy songs about the local landlord.”

Rather than medieval bawdiness, multi-instrumentalist Bill’s musical contributions will vary from religious dubstep to his folk bouzouki, horntallica, and perhaps a dub version of Downton Abbey.

He also promises a reappraisal of great works of art. “This has come about because in the last show I was intrigued by the image I used of The Doubting Of Thomas as the show was about doubt,” he says.

“I thought I should investigate it, and it seems this one scene of Thomas doubting Jesus was painted thousands of times by artists and it fascinated me that it had become the subject of so much art.

“I then realised that showing a painting on a screen at a show would be a new way to appraise art when normally you’re in a gallery and have to move on after a while. In my show, I use images 25ft wide by 20ft high or 60ft high in an arena, and when you show an artwork like that in a public forum, there’s something else that happens beyond a gallery because you don’t normally show them in this fashion.”

Qualmpeddler is so broad-ranging that its subject matter will encompass the consequences of lies – “the truth can be harder to take, so sometimes we don’t want that,” says Bill – and the rescue of an eagle owl from a restaurant in China.

“When I was on holiday in China, we came across an owl in a restaurant window that was on sale on the menu… as a meal, so I felt I had to do something about it,” says the nature programme maker in Bill. “I promptly bought the owl and when I released it into the wild there was such a sense of utter euphoria as it flew off. We were on a high for days.

“My son filmed it on his little camera and after I looked at the footage we made a little film that when we show it in the show, audiences tend to weep, which is amazing to see.”

The eagle owl is now the subject of a DVD extra, entitled Nemesis Of The Vole, on Bill’s imminent DVD release of Qualmpeddler, in which he relates the bird’s back story and visits a bird sanctuary in China.

Such a story of good deeds and a return to freedom runs counter to Bailey’s “broth of anxiety”, but will the tide ever turn? Can the Qualmpeddler ever become the calm peddler? “I’ll get there when there’s no conflict in the world,” says Bill. “So, that’s never.”

• Bill Bailey, Qualmpeddler, York Barbican, Wednesday and Thursday, 8pm prompt; no support act; latecomers not admitted. Tickets update: still available for both nights on 0844 854 2757 or at yorkbarbican.co.uk

• Qualmpeddler will be available on DVD and Blu-Ray from November 18 and as a digital download from November 4, recorded at Hammersmith Apollo and released through Universal Pictures.