by Bishop, John
Most of what I remember of my childhood happened outdoors. All we ever did was go out and play, and mums would stand on their steps shouting for us when our tea was ready. I should explain to people not from the North, or who may be too wealthy to understand what I mean by the word ‘tea’, that I am referring to the evening meal, which you call dinner, which is what we call the meal in the middle of the day, which you call lunch. It is important we clear this up, as I would not want you to think I am using ‘tea’ in the cricket sense, and that after a few hours’ play we retired for a beverage and a slice of cake. Instead, the call for tea was an important signal to let you know the main meal of the day was ready. The shout was not something to be ignored, or your portion of scouse (stew) or corned beef hash would end up in one of the other children in the family. Or the dog.
But if you didn’t hear it, someone on the estate would let you know. It is a great illustration of the sense of community we had that all communication was communal. If a mum shouted that her child’s tea was ready, all the other children would pass it on until that particular offspring was located and dispatched home. It was also a great way of getting rid of someone you didn’t like, but while kids can be cruel they can also be stupid. The estate wasn’t that big and everyone knew all the favourite hang-out spots, so when the now-hungry child returned to the gang you had to remember to blame the prank on whichever other kid had gone home for his tea.
I learnt what the place meant to me in 2010 when I was doing my ‘Sunshine’ tour. I was in the dressing room of the Echo Arena in Liverpool, about to perform for the sixth night. The venue had just presented me with an award for the most tickets ever sold there for a single tour: apparently I beat Mamma Mia! by 15,000 tickets. I was having a coffee in the dressing room and chatting with Lisa, my agent, when Alex, my tour manager, said my brother Eddie wanted to have a chat.
When family come to shows, I always see them either before or in the interval, as often I find it easier to do that than at the end of a show. At the end of shows I prefer to be on the road quickly; there is something very exciting and rock ’n’ roll about walking off the stage and straight into a waiting car. Eddie walked in with a gift-wrapped long, thin object. After kissing Lisa hello, he turned to me.
‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked, pointing to the fully stocked fridge that rarely opened as I only drink coffee and water before a show.
‘No. I just wanted to give you this. But don’t open it till I’m gone.’
‘Don’t be daft, you’re there now. I’ll just open it.’
‘No, wait. You’ll see. I’ll see you after.’
With that he walked out, leaving Lisa and me in the room with the parcel. I didn’t know what to make of it, so looked at the message on it, which read:
‘We are all very proud of you, but something so you don’t forget where you are from.’
I looked at it for a moment before Lisa broke into my thoughts. ‘Do you want me to leave whilst you open it?’
‘Don’t be daft,’ I replied. ‘It’s the wrong shape for a blow-up doll, so there can’t be anything embarrassing about it.’
I tore back the paper and realised why Eddie hadn’t wanted to be there when I opened it as a lump climbed into my throat.
‘What is it?’ asked Lisa, concerned that I was supposed to go and perform in front of 10,000 people but looked like I was about to start blubbering over the parcel contents.
‘It’s who I am,’ I said, and showed her the street sign for Severn Walk, which Eddie had nicked from the end of the block.
When I revisited the street to get my bearings for this book, it was nice to see a block of houses built in the sixties with a brand-new street sign. The old one now hangs in my kitchen, in pride of place. You can’t return to your childhood, but you don’t have to leave it, either.
Football was the game of choice for all the boys on the estate. In the seventies, girls did things that involved skipping whilst singing songs, hopscotch on a course drawn in chalk on the pavement, Morris dancing with pom-poms, and being in the kitchen. I am sure my sisters Kathy and Carol did loads of other things, but if they did I never saw them. I was a boy, and boys played football and scrapped. Later, when I was given a second-hand Chopper from my uncle, Stephen, I added trying to be Evel Knievel to my list of activities. Along with the Six Million Dollar Man, Steve Austin, Evel was my first non-footballer hero – quite unusual choices, as one had bionic legs, and the other one was always trying his best to get some by crashing all the time. If you do not know either of the gentlemen to whom I just referred, then you missed out in the seventies, when a man worth $6 million was much more impressive than a person worth the same amount now, i.e. someone playing left back in League One. And, back then, the absence of YouTube meant that seeing a man crash his motorbike whilst trying jump over a queue of buses was classed as global entertainment. It basically meant that, during my childhood, I was attracted to taking risks by crashing my bike after jumping over ramps or jumping off things. Most of the time this was OK, but it did also inadvertently lead to my first discovery that I could make people laugh, more of which later.
Having an older brother who occasionally let me play football with him and his mates meant that when I played with my own age group I was a decent player, and, like any child who finds they are good at anything, I wanted to keep doing it. In terms of sport, this single-minded approach explains why I am rubbish at everything else: I didn’t do anything else. There was the odd game of tennis if we could sneak onto the courts at the park without the attendant charging us, but it seemed a daft idea to play anything else when all you needed for football was a ball and some space – ideally, a space away from house windows and dog shit but, if not, you could play around that. That is one of the great things about being a boy: you can find something you enjoy like football and you don’t have to stop playing it as you grow up. I played it continually for years, and I still play it occasionally now. I haven’t seen either of my sisters play hopscotch since I was 10.
Football was great, but cricket was also an option. People used to spray-paint cricket stumps onto the walls of end-of-terrace houses around the estate. This meant that we always had cricket stumps, but it also meant that we always had cricket stumps that never moved. This caused untold arguments because the bowler and the fielders would often claim that the stumps had been hit, but with no physical proof of this the batter nearly always argued against the decision. This generally caused a row that resulted in a stand-off, which, more often than not, the batsman won – he was holding a cricket bat, after all. I think this is probably the reason why I don’t like cricket – any game where as a child you are threatened with a lump of wood on a regular basis ends up feeling like it’s not worth the hassle.
There was also the odd dalliance with boxing which was something virtually every boy I knew on the estate did from time to time; my cousin, Freddie, achieving some level of success by fighting for England. I didn’t mind fighting as a boy; it was just something we did. My brother Eddie had taken it upon himself to toughen me up, a process that involved him taunting me till I got angry and flew at him, upon which he would then batter me. Older brothers never realise that they are natural heroes to their younger siblings and it was great when Eddie allowed me to hang around with him and his mates, but I would have given anything just to win one of our fights as a kid.
As a child, I would actively seek fights. If I started a new school or club, I would pinpoint the bully in the room and then challenge them to a fight. When I ran out of people in my year at school, I started looking for people a year or two above me. A challenge would be given, an arrangement made and, after school, I would be fighting someone for no reason whatsoever whilst other children stood around and chanted: ‘Zigga-zagga-ooo-ooo-ooo.’ While I never understood what that meant, I also never grasped the concept that by going around looking for a bully to fight I might actually have been the bully, but I did think I was doing the right thing. I was taking
on the baddy and more often than not winning, whereupon I would go home and let Eddie know his attempts to toughen me up were working. Eddie, however, would usually say he wasn’t interested and give me a dead leg.
As I type this as an adult, I realise this reads awfully, but that is what life was like on an estate, and none of us thought it should be different. Eddie and I were also acutely aware that my dad had a reputation for being a tough man. He had been taught as a child by his mother, whose matriarchal influence on the family was immense, that you had to stand up for yourself. My nan outlived three husbands and three of her own nine children, and her life and that of her children was one of hardship and battles. Some she won and some she didn’t, but the fight was always there till the very end. She must have been in her seventies when I had to restrain her from getting involved in a fight that had broken out in the room next door to my cousin Gary’s 21st birthday party in Rainhill.
As I grew up and moved in different circles, I learnt that violence very rarely resolves anything and I began to associate with more and more like-minded people. The extent of this change became apparent when I received a call from my dad to say that there was a need for a ‘show of strength’ at my nan’s house. At the time, the council had moved a young family next door and they were basically scumbags: one mum, multiple children and two dads – the kind of neighbours from hell you see on television programmes where you can’t believe such low-grade people exist. There had been a row, and a threat made to my uncle, Jimmy, and my nan, so it was decided that uncles and cousins should arrive at the house to ensure it was known they would face more than just two pensioners should the arguments escalate.
It was a Sunday night and, as a young father, I had been looking forward to going to the pub with my mates. Instead, I asked them to come with me. We arrived at the house and walked in to find it full of the adult men in the family. I looked around the room at battle-ready faces of cousins and uncles, and then back at my mates – Paul, Mickey Duff and Big Derry Gav – and realised that if it kicked off I had perhaps not brought the best team. Paul was an accountant whose hair was rarely out of place; Big Derry Gav got his name from being from Derry, being big and being called Gavin, but as a trainee infant-school teacher the best he could do would be to create weapons from papier-mâchè; while Mickey Duff had perhaps the best contribution to make, if not in the physical sense – he spent most of his time hiding behind my nan – but in the sense that he was the logistics manager in a toilet-roll factory.
As it happened, the police arrived and the situation didn’t escalate. After far too long, the scumbags were moved on, but I have a slight tinge of regret that the success I gained later on had not happened by then, as money and celebrity does bring you the means to resolve such matters. Or the phone numbers of those who can.
Eddie and my dad used to do circuit training in our living room, so I would join them. From the age of seven I found could do more sit-ups than anyone else in the family. This bordered on an obsession for a period, as I would forever be doing sit-ups, one night doing 200 straight, which is a bit mental for a seven-year-old child who is not in a Chinese gymnastic school. We would often then end with a boxing match. This involved my dad going onto his knees and from this position we would hit him, wearing boxing gloves, while he would just jab us away wearing the one glove that was his size. Eddie and I would then spar. One time, Eddie knocked me flat out with a right hook. I got up, dazed, but instead of stopping the session my dad just put on his glove and put Eddie on the floor. We both learnt a lesson that day: neither of us would ever be able to beat my dad.
My dad and his twin brother, Freddie, played football locally, where it was clear they had some form of a reputation. I don’t think they ever sought a fight, but you can tell when people think your dad is hard; it’s just the way people talk when he is around, and the sense of protection that we had as a family when we went anywhere with him. I still have that feeling now, and he is 72. My dad always told us as kids that you should never look for trouble, but never walk away, particularly if you’re in the right. He also said we should never use weapons (Uncle Freddie had nearly bled to death as a youth after being stabbed in the leg), never kick someone when they are down, and, if you’re not sure what is going to happen next, you’re probably best hitting someone.
I think for the life we lived at that time that was sound advice, but it’s not a conversation I have had to have with my sons – they have not lived the same life. To be fair, I have not lived the life that my dad lived, but he could only pass on what he had learnt. My nan had been married before to a Mr Berry and had had three sons: Charlie, Billy and Jimmy. By the time Mr Berry died, Charlie had also died, aged nine, of diphtheria, and been buried in an unmarked pauper’s grave, and my uncle, Billy, had lost a lung to TB. She then married my dad’s father, Fred Bishop, and had Janet, Mary, Edna, Carol and the twins: my dad and Freddie. With eight children in post-war austerity, things were inevitably tough – in one of the few photographs my dad has of himself and Freddie as children, only one of them has shoes on. There had been only one pair of shoes to go around, so they had a fight and the winner wore them for the picture.
Although my mum lived just around the corner, growing up, she never seemed to suffer the same degree of hardship. She was one of three for a start, with older siblings (in the form of John and Josie), and fewer mouths to feed makes a difference to any family. Her mum and dad divorced and her father died the same year I was born, which is one reason why I am named after him. Her mum, my other nan, was married to Granddad Bill, a caretaker of a block of flats in Toxteth, for all the time that I knew her. As children, Eddie and I would play for hours around the flats with Stephen, my uncle, who was in fact not much older than us. Pictures of my mum in her youth reveal a slim, beautiful, dark-haired girl with plaits who grew to be a slim, beautiful woman with a beehive. My mum has always stayed in shape, and I would guess that her dress size has hardly changed in the more than fifty years that she has been married to my dad.
There are not many pictures of my parents before we started to come along, but I love the ones there are. My mum was as close to a film star in looks as could be without actually being one. There is a softness to her features that belies the toughness inside, a toughness that would often hold the family together in years to come. My dad looks strong in all the pictures, with a handsome face and tattoos on his arms and a stocky frame that suggests that he was made to carry things. My dad is of the generation of working-class men who have swallows tattooed on the backs of their hands. He has often said that he regrets getting them done as they give people an impression of him as someone who wants to look tough before they actually get to know him. The reality is, he said he got them done so that people could tell him and his identical twin Freddie apart – not the greatest of strategies, as I don’t know anyone who looks at a person’s hands first, but at least it beats a tattoo on the face. Personally, I would have just worn glasses or perhaps a hat. In truth, my dad has the hands of a man who suits such tattoos. He was born into a world where social mobility was limited and it was essential that you protected what you had, as there was nothing left to fall back on.
If men like my dad were to ever progress through the social order, it was to be through hard graft, and by being prepared to fight your corner in whatever form that fight took. It was the week before Christmas in 1972 when I became completely aware of what it meant to be a family and the cost of standing by your principles. I was six years old and I recall my uncle, John, my mum’s brother, sitting us all down in the living room. My mum was sitting next to him, and we four children were squashed up on the couch.
‘Your dad has gone to prison.’
The words hit me like a train. I didn’t completely understand what they meant, but as everyone else seemed upset I knew it couldn’t be a good thing. One thing I don’t remember is anyone crying; it was as if it was another thing you just had to deal with. My mum sat there with the same inner strength th
at I always associate with her. No matter what was to follow, I knew she would make sure everything was going to be all right. She had managed to hold the family together when Carol was literally starving to death in hospital and her own father was dying of cancer. She had managed to move as a young mother away from all she had ever known for the benefit of a better life for her children. Her husband going to prison was not going to break my mum, particularly as she supported everything my dad had done.
Uncle John, his voice clear and strong, carried on: ‘Some people may say bad things to you, but never forget your dad did the right thing. You need to be proud, and you boys have to stand up for your mum and sisters.’ For the first time ever, I was given more responsibility than just being able to dress myself in the morning.
My dad had been sentenced to a year in prison as a result of an altercation with two men outside a chip shop. He had had a run-in with the same two men the week before, so when he’d stopped with my mum to get chips on the way home from a night out they had started another argument. When my mum had intervened, they had pushed her so hard she had bounced off the bonnet of a car onto the ground. My dad had reacted to the provocation and, as had happened the week before, both men ended up on the ground and my dad walked away.
To this day my dad is very bitter about the sentence, and even the arresting officers said the case should have been thrown out. On both occasions, my dad was not the aggressor and was defending himself, and on the second occasion was defending his wife. But for his defence he had not been advised very well, which is something that can happen when you are limited financially in the professional advice you can seek.
Months earlier, my dad and Uncle Freddie had been playing in the same football team, and my dad was sent off by the referee for something his identical twin had done. They appealed against the decision and the local FA had upheld their claim that the referee had sent the wrong man off because he could not tell who had committed the offence.