Comedian Stewart Lee on Derek Bailey

Great Lives

BBC

History, Documentary, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.2 • 1.2K Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"The area I mostly work in is generally known as free - the free music area. And free is one of those four letter words, like rock or jazz or punk maybe. It started out meaning something." Derek Bailey

Born in 1930 in Sheffield, Bailey worked as a session musician in dance bands and orchestras before turning his back on that world. Free improvisation was where he made his name, and he took inspiration from whatever he heard. Stewart Lee first heard him in the 1990s and spoke at his funeral in 2005.

"Are there any parallels between his approach and yours?" "There probably are ... in that I've copied him."

Also contains the voices of Ian Greaves and Tim Fletcher, a brief clip of Mastermind, and a recording of Derek Bailey's collaborator in the Joseph Holbrooke Trio, Gavin Bryars. Stewart Lee is a comedian and writer, the presenter is Matthew Parris and the producer for BBC Studios is Miles Warde.

We regret that this description barely scrapes the surface of the wonder of this episode - the ideas, the music, the archive, the brief row.

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:06.1	Can I just say?
0:07.6	You're about to listen to a BBC podcast.
0:10.0	It's such a wonderful listen.
0:11.7	So nice.
0:12.5	There are loads more like it on BBC Sounds.
0:14.8	Different paces, different heights, the roof is buckling.
0:17.9	Where you can also listen to live sports commentary.
0:20.2	It's right foot goes for goal.
0:22.6	And then enjoy even more podcasts full of analysis and reaction to the big stories.
0:27.7	The stat that is astonishing is they ended with the lowest amount of possession.
0:31.2	And she's had to live with that.
0:32.8	So if you love sport, a passion, it's almost like a religion.
0:35.8	Listen on BBC Sounds.
0:38.7	Sort of expecting that every week now. People sometimes wonder how we choose our great lives. Do we find an interesting
0:45.5	subject and then search for a guest to champion their life? That would be really tricky
0:50.3	and difficult to make work every week. Or do we write to interesting guests and see if there's anyone they'd like to pick?
0:57.5	That would be really tricky and difficult to make work every week.
1:00.5	Surprisingly, that is nevertheless what we do.
1:03.6	The producer writes to people we think are interesting and sometimes they write back and
1:08.4	tell us who the programme should be about.
1:11.1	Take, for example, Sir David Attenborough, who wanted the life to be the first man who
	...

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