by Bishop, John
As the youngest, I was the last to leave home, and despite all children thinking that their parents have nothing better to do than to take care of them forever, as the last one leaves, I am sure they have a ‘Oh, will you just sod off and get on with your life?’ sort of feeling. I know this, as my lads are coming closer to moving on – or at least reaching the age where I will be saying, ‘Isn’t it time you moved on?’
After a few weeks it seemed right that I should again leave and ‘have my own space’. I moved into a house with my brother Eddie on a neighbouring estate and started looking for work.
The old adage that it is not what you know, it’s who you know proved true as I moved on to the next phase of my life. My friend Mark had a sister who worked for a pharmaceutical company, and she in turn knew someone who had a vacancy for a sales rep calling on GPs in the Liverpool area.
It seemed to tick all the boxes. There was a car; pharmaceutical sales had a reputation for being one of the better-paid sales jobs you could get, so I could earn enough to clear my debt; and it was close to where I lived so I could carry on playing football and seeing Melanie. All I had to do was convince the company I was the man for the job and add a few more science O-levels to my CV. In fact, I realised it was surprisingly easy to gain an O-level in biology and chemistry once you’d left school: you just added them to your CV and hoped nobody checked. As I had nothing to lose, I put them down and went to have an interview with the area manager of Syntex Pharmaceuticals, Mark Scrutton, in the Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool.
I borrowed a suit from my friend Jimmy, which was slightly too small, but which managed to look OK as long I didn’t stand up: once on my feet, everyone could see the trousers were too short and were only held shut with the aid of a belt, because doing up the button made the waist too tight. Coupled with this, the jacket shoulders began before my collar bone ended, so the sleeves barely reached my wrist; and if I moved my arm forward, the jacket sleeve shot up to my elbow, so that I looked like I belonged in a Wham! video.
The suit looked smart on Jimmy, which was why I had borrowed it; on me, it looked like I had fallen into a washing machine on a hot wash. I should have tried it on prior to the morning of the interview but, as I stood in front of the bathroom mirror, I knew I had no choice but to wear it. Unless I went dressed as I had been for the previous three years, as a student or in a tracksuit, I had no other option.
I arrived at the Adelphi Hotel before Mark and took a seat in the impressive lounge area. The Adelphi was for many years the premier hotel in Liverpool, and though it was past its best in the 1980s my mum and dad were still impressed by the fact that I was meeting someone there to discuss a job.
‘If he wants to meet in the Aldephi, it must be a good job,’ my mum said.
‘It’s just a first interview, it may not go any further.’
‘Well, even if you don’t get the job, you’re still going places by going to the Adelphi.’
I did think of saying to my dad that everywhere was in fact a place, but I didn’t think trying to be clever when I was jobless was such a good idea. They were just being more optimistic than I was.
One tradition that the hotel had continued into the 1980s was the serving of tea in the lounge by waiters in tuxedos with starched white aprons. It was a touch of Edwardian grandeur that had persisted, in marked contrast to the recession-blighted city in which the hotel stood.
I took a seat in the lounge and, within a few minutes, one of the waiters approached me. I was a jobless, 22-year-old man in debt, sitting in a borrowed suit that didn’t fit, so I half-expected him to tell me that I didn’t belong in such a place and that I should just leave.
Instead he asked, ‘Can I get you anything, sir?’
I automatically looked over my shoulder as I assumed he was talking to someone else. When it became apparent that I was the ‘sir’ to whom he was talking, I asked for some tea and sat swimming in the reality that I was growing up. Whatever was to happen with the interview, someone had called me ‘sir’. Even today, I am not keen on being called ‘Mr Bishop’ – if people know my name, I would rather they call me ‘John’. But the first time someone calls you ‘sir’ sends a message that at least on some level you have acquired a status of respectability.
Shortly afterwards, the waiter returned with a tray containing a china cup and saucer, a matching jug of milk and a traditional stainless-steel teapot which looked very impressive to a person who had only seen such things on Upstairs, Downstairs. He placed the tray and the bill on the table. I took the only £5 I had in the world out of my pocket and gave it to him for the £1.50 requested on the bill. He left to get change, and I tried to pretend that I had not nearly fainted at the idea of paying so much for a cup of tea.
I then tried to pour myself a drink, at which point I discovered the design fault inherent in making a teapot completely out of a material that conducts heat: the handle was as hot as the rest of the pot, so that I nearly dropped it as it burnt my hand, while my resulting loud, ‘Fuck’s sake!’ punctured the hum of low, polite chatter in the lounge.
Before I could consider a way of pouring a cup of tea without suffering third-degree burns, the man I was waiting for arrived. Mark had said he would be identifiable as he would be wearing a red tie and a grey suit and, sure enough, he walked in looking every inch you’d expect a Liverpool-based businessman to look: he had dark, neat hair, a moustache, his suit fitted much better than mine did, and he was carrying a Filofax.
For those people reading this who are not aware of what a Filofax is, imagine putting everything you hold dear – your Facebook contacts, your work diary, your innermost thoughts and your receipts – into a leather-bound folder: that’s what a Filofax is. In the mid-eighties it was used as the barometer of success and importance. If you had a big one, you were top of the tree, or at least wanted the world to think you were. Mark’s was nearly the size of the table. He sat down just as the waiter returned my £3.50 change. I thought it would be rude to pocket it straight away as Mark and I were exchanging introductions and I was trying to shake his hand without ripping my suit.
I had experienced one formal interview in America for the coaching job; this was my first interview for a ‘proper’ job with someone I had never met before. Though I was slightly nervous, within a few minutes I relaxed, as Mark seemed such an easy person to talk to. I perhaps relaxed too much as, after we had been talking for around 40 minutes, the waiter returned to collect the remains of the now cold pot of tea and, spying the £3.50 that had been left where he had placed it, took it upon himself to assume it was a tip.
The final money I had to my name jangled as it fell into the waiter’s pocket, making a noise as if to remind me of what I had lost.
‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, as he turned to walk away.
I suddenly realised that being called ‘sir’ wasn’t always a good thing. It had disarmed me, but I was in the middle of a job interview and I didn’t feel able to turn around and say, ‘Hey, you robbing bastard, give me my £3.50 back!’ Nobody who had just been called ‘sir’ could say that. So I just watched my money walk away, and vowed to myself that if I didn’t get the job I would come back and kill the waiter.
Fortunately, I was successful and entered the pharmaceutical industry, a place where I would stay until I left to become a full-time comedian at the age of 40.
• • •
The only break I took from work during that time came in 1992. I had been in the job for nearly three years at that point and was enjoying it. I was out of debt; I was enjoying my football; I had some money in my pocket and I had a ‘proper’ girlfriend. By ‘proper’, I mean I was at the stage where we were invited to things as a couple, relatives knew Melanie’s name and everyone was waiting for something to happen.
By ‘something’ I mean a commitment of some sort. Clearly I had a different view of what ‘commitment’ was, as I thought I had shown an enormous amount of it by spending every Saturday night with her after playing f
ootball. This didn’t involve clubbing or all the things we should have perhaps been doing, but involved going to the pictures or Pizza Hut, then back to the house she shared with her friend, Jane, where I would stay before getting up in the morning to play Sunday league football.
Little did I know such an arrangement was not being enjoyed as much by Melanie as it was by me. Women, I often find, have a relationship sat-nav in their brain that lets them know where they should be, at what stage, with a voice telling them what to do if the relationship is going the wrong way. Men tend to approach relationships in the way we approach directions: we carry on convinced we are right and refusing to ask anyone the way until we are completely lost.
This is what happened with us. I had a decent job, a nice company car, a gorgeous girlfriend and, with my football, had all I felt I needed. I never considered what Melanie wanted because I never had to.
Then it happened. Jane got engaged. Suddenly, all the conversations I had been trying to avoid – the ‘Where are we going?’ conversations – were back on the agenda. Melanie was ready for a commitment, and I wasn’t. Something had to give.
I still had a feeling that there was more I wanted to do before settling down into the pre-ordained route of marriage, kids, mortgage, two holidays a year, job, pension, death. I had travelled all over America and kept coming back to the idea of travelling to or from Australia over land. I saw myself riding a motorbike with a flowing beard and a sleeping bag on the pillion, sleeping under the stars, as I let the road decide where I spent the night.
I suggested to Melanie that this might be something we could do together, as a life-affirming adventure, with her riding pillion to my dreams. I am not sure if she said ‘Fuck off’ straight away or took a breath first, but basically it was a non-starter.
Melanie then applied to work as an air hostess for Emirates, an airline that had recently started and was based in Dubai. I thought she was trying to call my bluff, but when she got the job and decided she was going, it was me who began to think we should have at least got engaged. I now risked losing her for ever and all because I couldn’t commit.
I also knew that if I was to get married I would want children; I always knew I wanted children, so I suppose I feared that any commitment would be life-long as kids would come shortly after and then any bohemian ideas I had whilst driving round in my Marks and Spencer suit in my company car with my salesman’s bag would be well and truly squashed. Like a lot of men, I didn’t want to commit in case there was a better life around the corner. I just didn’t have the bottle to go round the corner and look.
It was a horrible day when I took her to the airport. We were both in tears as we said goodbye. Neither of us knew what was to become of our relationship, but we both knew that we loved each other. Due to my wanderlust, I just couldn’t make the commitment that Melanie was after, and she couldn’t wait any longer. We resolved to try to keep a long-distance relationship going and see how it would work out. Melanie had a two-year contract, and I had that time to get whatever was holding me back out of my system or let the relationship die.
I left Melanie as she walked through the departures terminal at Manchester airport and set off to drive to the Syntex office in Maidenhead.
Timing in life is everything. Those small decisions that at the time seem fairly innocuous can change the whole course of your life. On the way, I stopped for a cup of tea at Solihull, where Jimmy was living with his new wife, Diane. Jimmy was a friend I often went to for help or advice, although often that advice made little sense. (Jimmy was the person who told me that being shot at by a gang in LA did not automatically mean I would be killed, and he was also the person who lent me the ill-fitting suit for my first interview knowing full well it wouldn’t fit, but explained later he thought it would make me look more desperate for the job.) Basically he was the person who always gave me a different perspective, whether I wanted it or not.
‘Well, you’ve dropped a bollock there, son. She was the best girlfriend I’ve ever seen you with,’ were the words he consoled me with as he poured me a cup of tea. Jimmy has always had the ability to tell me what I already knew, and once again he was right. But, on the other hand, something told me I had to follow through with my plans to travel.
After the refreshment of tea, which for anyone English immediately makes the world a better place, I started to drive back towards the M6, where I saw a hitchhiker.
Having hitched around the country myself a few times in the past, I used to have a policy of always picking hitchhikers up. I still do it, although I am now much more selective after picking someone up a few years ago who was returning home from a festival where he had clearly not used any washing facilities for days. He smelt so much, I had to kick him out at the next junction. I did try to pretend that I had changed my route, but in the end I had to say, ‘Mate, you stink, and if I keep you in my car I will be sick. So get out and hope a tractor transporting sheep comes along. You’ll fit right in there.’
On the day that Melanie left, I had no such problem. The hitchhiker was not only clean, he was a very nice man and we fell into easy conversation. His name was Tim Sumner and he was returning home to his mum’s house in Oxford, having been to see some friends in Birmingham.
Within minutes, I was telling Tim about Melanie leaving, about the fact that I was in a good job, but felt I wanted to do more travelling before settling down, so had resolved to ride a motorbike from or to Australia, even though I had never ridden any other motorbike apart from the odd scooter we used to nick to ride around the estate.
I could have picked up any hitchhiker that day. Tim could have been picked up by the car in front of me. A million things could have happened that would have resulted in us never meeting. But meet we did, and it changed everything.
Tim had recently returned from a trip where he had ridden a bicycle the length of South America with some friends for charity. He suggested that as I had never owned a motorbike, why didn’t I go on a bicycle and do it for charity, like him.
The suggestion hit me like a lightning bolt. That was what I would do! A bicycle seemed so much simpler to manage than a motorbike and, as I owned neither of them, it would make sense to use the easier – and cheaper – one. The charity element gave it a purpose beyond not just wanting to get married yet, and if I rode back towards England it would always feel I was coming home.
When I told Melanie and my mates, there was a general consensus that this sounded like a good idea, but as I was probably talking out of my arse nobody got overly excited. My mum and dad reacted in much the same way. It was rather as if I had told everyone that I had decided to become an astronaut. If that had been the case, my dad would never have said I could not be an astronaut, but he would have suggested I get a rocket first. In this case, he simply said, ‘Get a bike and go for a ride. See if you like it and then decide.’ Sound advice, but something I didn’t manage to do till two weeks before I left, by which point it was a bit too late to change my mind.
The point when it became a reality and was not just me talking hot air was when I told my boss, Mark. Once I had told him I was leaving, I knew I could not change my mind. He listened, then said he would speak to his boss about my resignation. Amazingly, he gained the agreement of his boss to keep my job open for me until I planned to return, in ten months. Not only that, but Nic Holliday, the CEO, said they would contribute to my expenses and make a donation to the charity. It was far more support than I could ever have anticipated, but it also meant there was now no turning back.
Now I had to find a suitable charity. I settled on the Save the Children Fund and wrote to them asking, ‘Can I raise money for you, and would your chairperson, Princess Anne, be a patron of my trip?’ They wrote back saying, ‘No, thanks.’ Apparently, people often claimed they were doing things for charity when actually all they just wanted was a bit of a holiday. As if …!
I was disappointed they had said no, and it didn’t help that the day the letter arrived I was to meet
the Lord Mayor of Liverpool, Trevor Smith, as I had written to him to ask for his support, too.
Although I felt embarrassed about not having a charity to do the ride for, I kept the appointment and I am so glad I did, as it transformed everything. Trevor was the kind of Lord Mayor you get in cities like Liverpool, where there is a history of a strong Labour council. He was in his early fifties, had an accent thicker than mine and, despite the suit he was wearing, looked like he had driven himself to the town hall in his own van.
I explained to Trevor that I now had no charity to raise the money for, but still wanted to do the ride for the benefit of someone, ideally a children’s charity.
Trevor listened whilst stroking the thick moustache on his top lip. He then picked up the phone and organised a meeting between myself and Arthur Johnson from the Liverpool Echo, drafted a fax to his counterpart in Sydney, and agreed to be a patron of the ride. In 10 minutes he had put plans into place and shown more enthusiasm than anyone, and I started believing again it was going to happen.
I met Arthur that same week and he introduced me to Rick Myers of the NSPCC, which became the designated charity. Arthur was a complete star. He put wheels in motion for me to meet people in Australia, including Scouse ex-pat groups and Rotary clubs along my route. He got support from companies like BT and made everything come together. He even kept the public interest up during my time away with regular pieces in the Echo and by organising radio calls with the Linda McDermott show on Radio Merseyside. There is no doubt that without his support I would never have got the trip off the ground.
I spent so much time organising the trip, in fact, that I neglected to deal with the essential factor, which my dad had noted: weeks before I was due to leave, I still didn’t have a bicycle. This was resolved by Quinn’s Bike Centre, a shop based in Liverpool and run at the time by two brothers, Mal and Mel Vasey. They gave me one of their own-branded bikes on the basis that when I brought it back they would sell it to me as a second-hand bike.