My animals and other animals: a memoir of sorts. Bill Bailey. 2024.

Bill Bailey has always had dogs, including a Patterdale terrier called Rocky who would travel with him in the van to his first shows and occasionally join him on stage. Fast forward a few decades and Bill has shared his home with a variety of birds, dogs, frogs, chameleons and an armadillo called Tommy. ‘ We even had a giant chicken, a huge Malay cockerel called Kid Creole. After a few stand-offs he took against me. He had to go in the end. I was being stalked in my own back garden.’

That chicken apart, animals have always been at the heart of an extraordinary life as one of the nation’s favourite comedians, actors, musicians and (thanks to Strictly Come Dancing) dancers: from terriers to the orangutans of Sumatra, Australian minke whales and the parrots that share his breakfast every morning in west London.