“WON’T you come home, Bill Bailey?” Yes, they’re the opening words of one of the most popular songs in the “trad” repertoire, but they also explain how English comedian, musician and author Bill Bailey got his working name.

“When I was about seven or eight, my teacher George quoted this old song at me,” the man born Mark Robert Bailey tells me, “and even though Bill Bailey doesn’t come out of things too well in the song, it stuck with me all through school.”

In those days Bailey was already a gifted pianist and guitarist, so he was a sitting duck for musical jokes. But after years being trained as a classical musician, he became much more famous for presenting on TV and tearing around the world making wildlife documentaries and performing his own comedy show, as he will so do in Canberra.

Bailey prefers to be known as a comedian who takes up important issues of politics, wildlife and the environment.

“These are things close to my heart, I think I would have been involved with them regardless of being a comedian,” he says. “It’s tough to get the right balance, because there’s a tremendous amount of cynicism out there in the public, who think you’re involved in a cause for personal gain.”

Bailey cites the example of singer Lily Allen, who went to the Calais “Jungle” camp and got an enormous lambasting as the press politicised the action and turned against her.

“You have to navigate it, you are a public figure, but you have to follow your own conscience – it’s almost a duty,” he says.

Duty? It’s not what you immediately associate with one of the world’s funniest men. But he’s more than that, he explains, saying: “People who are not politicians can access part of the population that might not listen to politicians.”

What’s more, he says, “Immanuel Kant said in ‘The Critique of Pure Reason’ that purity of intention confers morality on our deeds.”

Bailey may be fond of quoting Kant, but he’s just as fond of appearing on TV and has become a household name in Australia for the part he plays in Stephen Fry’s “QI”.

“I started in ‘QI’ at its very inception, in the pilot episode and I’ve been part of the show for many years,” he reflects.

“I enjoy doing it because there’s not a great deal of preparation, you show up and the conversation flows, so much television is pre-scripted on panel shows.”

Bailey comes across as almost a performance polymath. He is known, for instance, for his perfect musical pitch – and, yes, there is such a thing, he assures “CityNews”. He claims to have discovered his talent by picking the notes of domestic appliances such as vacuum cleaners and washing machines and humming along.

“I don’t know why, but it’s a real thing, that ability to pluck a note from out of the air,” he says, but he believes that a lot of people have it but don’t know because they can’t play an instrument.

“It’s probably something you can learn, by tuning a muscle,” he says.

Then there’s the serious underbelly to the documentaries he’s made about jaguars, baboons and the explorer and naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, after whom the “Wallace line” was named, the latter reflected in his TV series in Sumatra, Java and Borneo. He’s even had a plant named after him.

You can fairly bet that the show Bailey is bringing to Canberra will focus on the human variety of wildlife.

“It’s ostensibly a collection of tales and a compendium of stories and incidents that have occurred to me as a touring comedian,” he says.

“A slow trek of jokes, observations, music and audience involvement.”

Oh, no, I venture, so should Canberrans worry about sitting in rows A and B as they might when Barry Humphries comes to town?

“No, not at all,” he assures me, “I don’t like to make fun of people. I just like them to join in singing.