Bill Bailey fell in love at a young age – not with a girl, but with Stonehenge. The hirsute comedian, who, in a certain light, could be mistaken for a wizard, reveals that “my bond with the place started when I was just a youngster. I remember at that time there was a big battle at Stonehenge between the police and the hippies. It was quite a dramatic scene. There were lots of beardy, long-haired people hanging out of the back of Transit vans, smoking funny cigarettes and dancing in a silly way. Sadly, it got quite unpleasant. All the hippies were bundled into police vans, and afterwards the authorities said, ‘Right, that’s enough of that. Let’s put up a fence and keep the hippies back’. I wasn’t actually there in person – I was at home diligently doing my geography homework. But I was there in spirit, and I thought, ‘Those hippies are my kind of people’. I’ve felt an affinity with Stonehenge ever since.”So it was Bailey’s “dream job” when the History Channel asked him to front a documentary on Stonehenge. The first episode of a new series entitled My Favourite Place, it homes in on the monument’s mystique. Nobody knows what this conglomeration of about 60 stones is for – and that’s just the way Bailey likes it, reports James Rampton
The 44-year-old – who made his name as one of the team captains in the enduringly likeable BBC Two pop quiz Never Mind the Buzzcocks and is a rare example of a comedian who is as funny off screen as on it – is delighted that the monument can’t be rationalised. “Even as a child, I had a sense of the anarchy of Stonehenge,” he muses. “It’s a maverick, anti-Establishment monument. It’s become synonymous with alternative lifestyles and been claimed as their own by Druids and pagans. I like the fact that you can’t enclose it. You can put up railings, but Stonehenge is still there for all to see. It’s not cloistered away.
“What are the stones for? Aliens, perhaps, dropped them there and used them as a beacon, a landing platform, or a pod. The Arthurian legend is that giants brought them from Africa to Ireland as healing stones, and then Merlin carried them across the Irish Sea using some special, wizardy telekinetic skill.” Or, Bailey posits with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, Stonehenge “could be one giant musical instrument, a huge windchime. That puts those nasty little bamboo ones into perspective, doesn’t it? My own theory is that it was all one massive stone at one stage, and it’s just been chiselled out by ants.”
Another proposition is that Stonehenge, which is a Unesco World Heritage Site, has significance because it lines up directly with the sunrise at the summer solstice. “Could it be a giant calendar for worshipping the midsummer sun?” asks Bailey. But, the comedian affirms with satisfaction, “one can only speculate so far. What is great is that it will always be a mystery. No one knows what really went on at that site, but Stonehenge is still there. It’s been standing there for 5,000 years – and it endures. I love the fact that after so many millennia, it remains such an enigmatic and charismatic place. I’ve got a feeling Stonehenge will always keep some of its secrets.”
In the film, Bailey digs out some of the remarkable stories surrounding this astonishing feat of prehistoric engineering that has fascinated everyone from Charles Darwin to Spinal Tap. The presenter is tickled, for instance, that in 1913 Sir Cecil Chubb gave Stonehenge as a present to his wife, having purchased it through the estate agents, Knight Frank and Rutley. “I’d love to know what the estate agent’s blurb was,” says Bailey with a smile. “For sale. Henge. Pleasant outlook. Good local travel links. Needs attention. 24 bedrooms. Would suit wizard, hermit or wild man. No chain.”
Making My Favourite Place gave the comedian the opportunity to get up close and personal with the stone circles – something that is now forbidden to the rest of us. “In the past, Stonehenge was so accessible – you could just pitch up and wander around the stones,” Bailey recalls. “But I suppose it was inevitable that one day the British Establishment bureaucracy would say, ‘This isn’t right. We need a guard rail and a gift shop. For any national monument to function properly, you need to be able to buy tea towels and key rings!”
Looking back on the project, there is just one thing Bailey would have done differently. “It was so cold, I wore a hoody. The problem is, on screen I look like an unsavoury character let loose at the monument. I appear to be the sort of person David Cameron wants to hug. It was an ill-advised fashion choice. Next time I’ll wear a three-piece suit.”
Bailey concludes that, despite the hoody, “the best thing about making this documentary was the chance to walk around Stonehenge when no one else was there. We had to get there before the official opening. It was six in the morning and it was wet and freezing, but it was so worth it. Nothing beats the feeling of having the place to yourself.”
My Favourite Place, The History Channel, 8pm/11pm, Thur May 8
