BILL Bailey is an avid birdwatcher but wants to dispel any ornithological misconceptions about his Larks in Transit tour.

“This is not a show about transporting songbirds around Britain in a white van,” he said.

“It is about larks as in revels. It’s to try to sum up what the experience of touring in professional comedy over the last 20 years is.”

The tour’s Swindon gig is on Tuesday, June 4 at the Oasis Leisure Centre, and tickets are still available.

The 20 or so years the show covers have seen the Bath-born performer and classically-trained musician become instantly recognisable not just for his stand-up comedy but as an author, actor, presenter and perennial panel show presence.

His acting roles have ranged from Black Books, the cult classic sitcom created by Dylan Moran, to an appearance as twin police sergeants in Shaun of the Dead follow-up Hot Fuzz.

Music has always been a cornerstone of his live work, and Larks in Transit is no exception.

Audiences are promised, among other things, a symphony crafted from a ringtone.

Other highlights include revelations about Old MacDonald, the famed nursery rhyme agriculturalist, and a re-imagining of the Stars and Stripes.

A ringtone symphony? Bill is fascinated by sounds so familiar that we might not even notice them, let alone make a conscious effort to listen to.

“I think I use these things because I like to draw from a wide range of sounds and the music that we hear every day.

“Technology is a big part of that.It’s universal. Pretty much everybody has a phone or a tablet or a computer.

“Music just seems to be around us - that’s the sort of thing I like to think about.”

Larks in Transit first saw the light of day in January of last year, when a five-month round of UK venues was was followed by tours of Australia and New Zealand and then a sold-out five-week residency at Wyndham’s Theatre in London. The total audience stands at more than 170,000.

Since the 1990s, Bill has noticed some changes in the comedy world. It used to be quite common, for example, for comics to tailor some of their material for individual regions and even cities and towns.

“I think that was a feature of performing some time ago - years ago.

“You could ascribe certain differences to the regions of Britain, but I don’t think that really holds up these days.

“I think comedy has become so ubiquitous that people can see it anywhere. They can watch comedy any time of the day or night.”

Gone are the days, he believes, when it was useful for stand-ups to keep a note of which material worked best in certain places.

And the reason? “I think YouTube has a lot to do with it.

“The thing is that YouTube has morphed into something that it was never intended to be.”

As just about everybody with access to the internet knows, what was originally intended as little more than a convenient way for people to share home videos has become a global entertainment force in its own right.

Countless clips of comics - and often entire DVDs or clips recorded from TV appearances - are uploaded every day, and some performers condemn it outright.

Bill acknowledges that the technology is contributing to the decline in DVD sales and perhaps to the death of the format, but balances that against the potential to draw new interest from people across the world.

Tickets for the June 4 Oasis gig are priced at £39.50. The box office can be contacted on 01793 524481 and via swindontheatres.co.uk