Bill Bailey’s latest entertaining and wide-ranging show finds the veteran comic leaning into his beatnik professorial persona. The scholarly aura of Thoughtifier is strong, as he feigns to puff and prod his smoking pipe for emphasis at subjects as weighty as nuclear fusion, the natural world, artificial intelligence, classical music and stoic philosophy. He offloads some grumbles at the top, concerning the tax inspector’s ineptitude, an erroneous announcement of his death on social media, and the absolute state of this Tory government, with his cartoonish visual descriptions of Rishi Sunak, Boris Johnson etc matched by the self-mocking but droll caricatures he suggests of himself.

Chiefly though, he holds forth infectiously on science and the arts. Irrespective of his scepticism about AI’s capacity to surpass human creativity, he deploys it judiciously for some amusing visual window dressing. As always, music is the bassline of a Bailey performance; he unveils his varied collection of exotic instruments with the loving indulgence of a proud parent, ranging from a 3000-year-old Zimbabwean finger piano and Turkish saz, to Bluetooth-enabled percussion balls and a laser harp rendering a disco classic.

Accompanied by opera singer Florence Hvorostovsky on occasion, the overall effect is of a potted history of human-made sound and ingenuity. So it’s a shame that, notwithstanding a few quickies and a superb bluegrassy encounter with Satan, few of the original songs and pastiches truly linger in the memory. Elsewhere, the tutorial back-and-forth he enjoys with an audience member about nuclear fission’s potential is fun and interesting enough. But it hardly justifies itself comedically as an early cornerstone of the show.

Don’t get me wrong, more than two hours of Bill Bailey’s light-hearted pedagogy is rarely less than diverting and delightful. But Thoughtifier is too broad, too scattergun in scope, when fewer ideas interrogated in greater detail would be more compelling. 

Bill Bailey: Thoughtifier tour runs until Monday 11 March; reviewed at SEC, Glasgow.