“Alice Cooper or Bill Bailey?” ask the car-park attendants at the SECC. It’s the first night of his tour, and the loveable long-haired comedy musician – this is Bailey we’re talking about – has entered the world of the arena. Tonight Cooper is playing the big room and Bailey the 3,500-seater annexe, but soon he’ll be playing to 10,000 people a night as this show heads south.

No one would argue that comedy is enhanced by being put in rooms of this size. But at least Bailey, made so commercial by his fine turns on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, knows that he needs to put on a show. “Thought I’d go a bit showbiz for a change,” he says of the white suit/white trainers combo that he sports for the first half (black suit/black trainers for the second). Behind him, a five-part screen relays giant pictures of our slightly sweaty entertainer in action; a keyboardcam captures his fingers at play; during one great set piece, prerecorded images of Bailey upstage the man onstage.

Bailey’s cosmic blokeishness makes the evening tick along nicely. Reprising parts of his Steampunk show from last year’s Edinburgh Fringe, Bailey gets behind one of his two banks of keyboards to play a scat-jazz rejig of the Star Wars death march; to offer up the Pink Panther theme as an improved national anthem; on his guitar, he sets Kant’s categorical imperative to the Match of the Day theme.

But this is a show with more album tracks than hit singles. Bailey’s techno cut-up using Blair and Bush’s voices is tired, and his Kraftwerk parody, with guest star Kevin Eldon, is a paler version of his earlier Kraftwerk Hokey Cokey.

Bailey has always dabbed at his material – his ability to segue between unlikely notions is his fortune. But the bittiness is frustrating here. After an exciting Thus Spake Zarathustra opening sequence, he lolls around as if to assuage our fears that he has gone too showbiz. He needs to give his anger more air. His stand-up is torn between making intellectualism funny (tricky one, that) and saying that James Blunt is crap (too easy). At his best, Bailey offers a perfect fusion between a bloke’s confusion, a musician’s florid inventiveness and a freak’s fabulous furry thinking.

There are moments here, such as a Terminator action sequence set to the Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em theme, that are as wonderful as anything he has done. But Bailey isn’t quite giving enough of himself away to turn a bunch of good ideas into the seriously amazing show of which he is capable.

Fri Nov 9, 2007 at the SECC, Glasgow; Sat Nov10, 2007 at Metro Radio Arena, Newcastle. Tour details: www.billbailey.co.uk

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