Comedy superstar Bill Bailey has recalled how he once did a gig with Sean Lock and only one person turned up – Spiderman's dad!

Bailey was talking to Chris Moyles on his morning Radio X show. Here is an extract from the conversation:

Chris Moyles: “I want to clear up a couple of things. I don’t know whether these are myths, whether they are true or not. One of them was when you were in Edinburgh playing back in the day, was there a show you did where there was one person in the audience?”

Bill Bailey: “Ha, it’s true! It was a show that I wrote with me lovely, old friend who is no longer with us: Sean Lock.”

CM: “Bless him.”

BB: “We wrote this show called Rock, and it was about this old rocker who was trying to make a comeback, and I was the rocker and Sean was my faithful roadie. So, what would happen is at the beginning of the show, Sean would go out there as the roadie character and he would gee the audience up and bit. And he would go, ‘right, come on,’ he goes. ‘Come on!’ And he would do this thing: ‘Right, oh I’ve got to do security. Come at me, come at me, just come at me, I can handle it, I can handle it!’ And he would do all these kung fu moves – ‘Ah yeah, I can handle it, just come at me!’ Anyway, so he went out there in character, and I was backstage, and he was going, ‘come at me!’ and then he said, ‘come at… Oh for goodness sake.’”

CM: “Hahaha.”

BB: “And he went, ‘just come out, Bill.’ And I was in character still, and I went, ‘what do you mean?’ I was a West Country rocker, and I was going, ‘what do you mean, Big Sean?’ That was his name, we didn’t think too much about names. ‘What do you mean, Big Sean?’ And he goes, ‘no, Bill. Honestly, come out, mate. There’s no one here.’ I went, ‘don’t be daft, don’t be daft, Big Sean.’ And he went, ‘No, no. It’s just me, Bill. There’s no one here.’

So, I came out, and there literally was just one person in the audience, and it was the comedian Dominic Holland. Our mate, Dominic Holland. And he was just sitting there in the audience, and he said, ‘no, just relax, lads. Just enjoy yourselves, do the show.’ And we went, ‘No. No, Dominic. We’re not doing it for you, this is weird. We’ll take you to the bar and talk you through the highlights.’”

CM: “Isn’t it lovely that now when you tell that story, the person who is sat in the audience, the only person there, is Spiderman’s dad? Because he is, his son played Spiderman. Spiderman’s dad is better than Spiderman if you’ve only got one person at the crowd.”

BB: “One hundred per cent.”

Tune into The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X weekdays from 6:30am – 10am and on Global Player**