How Did All This Happen?

by Bishop, John

  The deal was done, and I was booked to appear on the Manchester show of Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow. It was being recorded in May and would go out in June. As I was going to the Edinburgh Festival in August, and then starting a tour of small venues in October, which would run for the rest of 2009, it was potentially a great platform for me to generate some ticket sales.

  Television is so fickle that I knew, if I messed up, the likelihood of being able to get on TV again would be massively diminished. I was still deemed unsuitable for telly by some TV execs, and the reality was that had the show not required at least four comedians for each episode I would not have got on. Nobody knew if the show was going to be popular, but it had a primetime slot, so if you did well, millions of people would see it. If you did badly … even with clever editing, a death on stage is a death on stage.

  It was filmed at the Manchester Apollo, a great venue for comedy. After a sound check, I was standing outside at the catering truck having a cup of tea with Anthony, the show’s producer, when Addison came out.

  ‘Bish, my son. I told you I would get you on the telly.’

  For a moment, I didn’t know if he had remembered that I had left his agency two years earlier, but I decided to make the most of his apparent good mood.

  ‘This is nearly telly. You don’t know if people will watch this, so if you want to put me on telly, put me on Live at the Apollo.’

  There was a slight moment of silence as Anthony looked into his teacup. He also produced Live at the Apollo, and had suggested my name on a few occasions, only for it be rejected by the BBC or, perhaps, by Addison.

  After a moment’s thought, Addison broke. ‘OK, you wanker. If you do well tonight, we’ll have a think about it.’

  He turned around and walked back into the theatre, and I just assumed I had been given another one of those, ‘Don’t call us, we’ll call you’ brush-offs, which I had heard for years.

  That night I went on stage and decided that, regardless of the potential consequences, I should just treat it as a normal gig. Anything else would mean I was trying to be something that I wasn’t.

  Sometimes in life things are all as they should be, and so it was on that night. Jason Manford was the headline act and Michael the host. Those two names ensured that the venue was full with an enthusiastic audience. The line-up was very strong, and I went on after Sarah Millican and Mick Ferry who had compèred my first ever gig and now we were sharing our first prime-time TV slot together. The headliner was Jason Manford. It meant that the show was already going well, and everyone was enjoying it.

  The Apollo is a brilliant place for comedy so, as I walked on, I knew that the only thing that could go wrong would be me. My only other television appearance as a stand-up had been interrupted by the magician’s puppy getting out of his bag, so I felt on this occasion I had more of a fighting chance.

  My mum and dad came to watch with Eddie, Kathy and Carol, and Melanie was also there with a few friends, so I knew I had support in the audience. But I also knew there was near enough 3,000 people who may never have heard of me, and a potential audience of millions of people watching at home.

  If it was going to be a bad gig, it was going to be a really bad gig.

  Michael introduced me and I walked on to warm applause. I paused to take a moment and began to feel my mouth go slightly dry, the first sign of nerves. To calm myself, I put one hand in my pocket, tried to be casual and said, ‘Hello, good evening. How are you?’

  There was a small reaction from the audience.

  ‘Good, good, good. Don’t worry, I’ve never heard of me, either.’

  This got a decent laugh.

  ‘Got to be honest with you, ladies and gentlemen, it’s lovely to be here, and for those who haven’t yet worked it out, I’m from Liverpool.’

  This was greeted with some cheers and boos in equal measure.

  ‘It just shows the BBC’s commitment to ethnic diversity.’

  There was a decent laugh at that.

  ‘They could have put me on anywhere but they thought, “No, let’s put him on in Manchester and see what happens.”’

  A huge laugh that moved to applause. My dry mouth was gone and I felt at home. I was doing a gig, something I had done perhaps thousands of times before. But no matter what the stakes are, all you can do is make the people in the room laugh, and I seemed to be doing that.

  The gig went much better than I had allowed myself to hope for. Lisa had come to watch, but apologised afterwards, telling me she hadn’t been able to see all of my set: halfway through her phone had rung; it was Addison, calling to say he wanted to book me for the next series of Live at the Apollo.

  Had Jonathan and Russell not engaged in their misjudged banter on Russell’s radio show, then Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow would never have been commissioned and, without it, I would not have been booked for Live at the Apollo. And if it weren’t for Live at the Apollo, I wouldn’t have been invited to be a guest on Jonathan Ross’s show when he returned to the air the following February.

  It was an exciting time for all of the family. We sat and watched Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow together – Melanie, the three boys and I. Melanie had been to the recording so she knew what to expect, but the boys – then aged 14, 13 and 11 – hadn’t and I wanted to be there when they saw the show.

  My part came on and they did laugh in the right places – although I don’t know if Melanie was kicking them under the table, as sometimes their response was half a second after she laughed.

  The show ended and, together, the three of them got up to leave. I couldn’t believe it! They were just going to go and do whatever kids do these days, and I couldn’t help myself.

  ME:

  ‘Well, what did you think?’

  THEM THREE:

  ‘What?’

  ME:

  ‘What did you think about the show?’

  JOE:

  ‘Michael McIntyre’s really funny.’

  LUKE:

  ‘And the man with the long hair.’

  ME:

  ‘Mick.’

  LUKE:

  ‘Yes, and the Sarah woman. She’s funny.’

  DANIEL:

  ‘I like Jason Manford.’

  JOE/LUKE:

  ‘I liked him, too.’

  I just looked at Melanie. My own kids were now my biggest critics. Then Joe laughed.

  JOE:

  ‘You were great, Dad.’

  LUKE:

  ‘Yes, you were really funny.’

  DANIEL:

  ‘Yes, Dad, you were dead good.’

  MELANIE:

  ‘But you weren’t on long.’

  So I was nearly as funny as everyone else, but hadn’t been on very long.

  I was on tour by the time The Jonathan Ross Show was aired in February 2010, so I never got to watch it as it was transmitted. By this point, I would not say that the family had become used to me being on TV; I am not sure that ever becomes normal. But the text I received from Melanie when I got off stage perhaps reflected how life was becoming for us:

  ‘Saw you on Jonathan Ross. It was very good :-) I think the dog has worms :-( x’

  3) ELVIS

  At the start of 2009, I was 42 years old which, I discovered, was the age that Elvis died. This gave me pause for thought. It made me reflect on my own life: what I was doing, where I was going and what I hoped for in the future. These thoughts were to develop into the show I took to Edinburgh that year, ‘Elvis Has Left the Building’.

  This time I had arguably the best venue at the Festival, the Cabaret Bar, which all comedians love because it feels like a comedy club. The stage is small, the audience is close and, with standing room, you can get in about 175 people. That means that if you sell out there is a chance that not only will you not lose money, you may even make a profit for the month. I also had a great time slot of 9.30 p.m. so, once again, everything was as good as it could be. The only thing that could go wrong woul
d be me.

  The show marked the first time I received more positive than negative reviews. Every night sold out, and I was nominated for the main comedy award at the Festival. It was great to feel that I was making strides. It wasn’t so much recognition as validation: audiences were enjoying it, as were critics, and the judges of what is arguably the biggest award for comedians thought I was amongst the best there that year. It felt like all the hard work from the previous years was now worth it. The award used to be called the Perrier and, when it was that, people knew what was meant by it. Unfortunately, the year I was nominated there was no sponsor, so it was just called the ‘Main Award’ which, to be honest, sounds a bit like Employee of the Month.

  All these things were positive, but for me the best thing about the Edinburgh Festival that year was that it was the first time the boys came to see me perform. In previous years they had been too young and the time slots too late for them to attend. Also, nobody would like their children to see them perform in venues where they would represent a sizeable proportion of the audience: it is hard enough to impress your children; imagine what it would be like if they came to see you in a converted shipping container as you struggled to try and make half a dozen people laugh. But, that year, with the shows selling out, it felt like the best possible opportunity I was going to have.

  Melanie brought them along and they sat at the back whilst I turned our domestic life into material to make strangers laugh. I could see them laughing and occasionally nudging each other when I referred to something that had happened in our home. For any father, ‘performing’ in front of your kids is an odd thing to do. You are taking your standing as the head of the household and giving it up as you publicly seek the approval of others. There is a vulnerability in performing that really does break down the mystique of superiority that most parenting is built upon, but for me that gig was one of the most important ones I have ever done. Having my family sitting watching me in a room full of people was the point of no return. It was me saying to my sons, ‘This is what I do,’ and once you do that there is no changing your mind.

  Their dad was now a comedian.

  CHAPTER 34

  2010 … NO GOING BACK

  The momentum of 2009 carried on into 2010 and I brought out my first DVD, called Elvis Has Left the Building, filmed at the Liverpool Empire Theatre. It sold well, so well that it recouped the entire advance I had been given to make it.

  Having a DVD in the shops suddenly took me out of the relatively niche comedy environment to the high street, and it was strange that Christmas when I did my annual last-minute dash one evening around HMV to get stocking-fillers for the boys and Melanie to see my face on the front of my own DVD.

  It was bloody cold, so I was wearing a woollen beanie hat with a scarf around my chin. As I went to the DVD chart to pick something for the boys, I was stunned to see that I was Number 1 in the overall DVD chart. Without thinking, I reached up and took my DVD off the shelf.

  I was looking at the back, remembering the night of the recording in the Liverpool Empire, when a man aged about 20, with a crew-cut hairstyle, wearing a black hoodie, washed-out grey tracksuit bottoms with black training shoes – a combination which, as far as I can see, is the most public way of telling the world you don’t care what they think of you – leaned into me and said:

  ‘I wouldn’t buy that. He’s shite.’

  I laughed it off, assuming he knew who I was, until an old lady at the till made a similar assertion. It made me realise no matter how successful you may become, someone, somewhere still thinks you’re rubbish.

  Not only did the success of the first DVD bring home to me that things had changed, but it did for all the family, too. You cannot walk into HMV and see your dad on posters on the walls without it entering your head that some people think he is worth spending money on, even if you don’t. It never occurred to us how deep these changes were likely to be and that we would have to get used to the things you normally associate with other famous people, like being stopped for autographs. I am proud about the way Melanie and the boys have adjusted. I think we are as down-to-earth now as we would have been had none of the impending fame happened. I’ve never stopped thinking that this could all end at any moment and, though we should enjoy it for what it is, we should also recognise that it could disappear tomorrow.

  One aspect of the DVD’s success was that I could pay off our mortgage, and move my mum and dad out of the council house they had lived in for the last 30 years. These two things had been my biggest material ambitions and, once achieved, I didn’t need to do any more.

  I am not a very materialistic person. There is not a single thing that I own that I would not give up tomorrow. Of course, I like pleasant things, but I am not driven by them. When I realised I was in a position to buy my mum and dad a nice house, I asked to meet with Eddie, Kathy and Carol to ask them what they thought: the last thing I wanted to do was to act without their support. Helping my mum and dad would have been something any of us would have done; it just so happened I was able to do it first, but this had to be a joint thing.

  We met at Eddie’s house and, as we sat around the table, I suddenly realised that the last time I had done anything like this was to let them know Melanie and I had split up, so I wanted to clear that up:

  ‘Melanie and I are not splitting up.’

  They all just looked at each other. Why would anyone get their siblings together just to say, ‘Everything’s OK’?

  Before anyone could ask what I was going on about, I said: ‘I have some money, and I was thinking of buying Mum and Dad a house, unless you object.’

  Again they just looked at each other.

  ‘Why would we object?‘ Eddie said.

  ‘I don’t know, in case you thought I was being flash and you thought I was a dick.’

  ‘Driving a flash sports car and leaving Mum and Dad in a council house – that would be being a dick.’

  Kathy and Carol agreed. I was not a dick, and we went out for a walk looking at homes together that evening. It was the first time the four of us had walked anywhere alone since childhood, and we were looking to see if we could find a nice place for our parents to live. It felt good. Like the most natural thing in the world, as if we had all been waiting to do it one day.

  Mum and Dad took the offer in the way I expected. The estate was very good, but the option to have a detached home had always been a dream. If any of the children helped to make that happen, then in many ways we had all achieved something as a family. There are not many things I allow myself to be proud of, but the day they moved I have to admit to pulling over in the car when they called to tell me they had the keys. I got out and leaned on the bonnet and, after speaking to them both, took a deep breath. I breathed in the moment. I had done all I had ever wanted, and as I breathed out, trying to suppress the rising lump in my throat, I remembered the doors of Preston Prison being shut behind us, and the look of the guards as they checked who we were visiting. Nobody would look at any of us again that way.

  • • •

  Within two years of becoming my agent, Lisa had changed my life. She had put me in a position that I could never have imagined possible when I left my job to try and earn enough money to cover the bills by making people laugh. The Elvis tour ran until June 2010, and then I immediately started work on ‘Sunshine’, the next show that I was taking to Edinburgh that summer.

  A comedian like me tends to use his own life for the comedy – if something happens to me, then I talk about it. The previous 12 months had been a whirlwind, so to try to put it in perspective I talked about it on stage, being very careful not to fall into the trap of appearing to be bragging, or boring people with tales of the famous folk I now knew.

  At that year’s Festival I was to be in a new venue, the McEwan Hall, which had a staggering 1,100 seats – a massive leap from the Cabaret Bar, the 175-seater venue I had been in the year before. Once again, it emphasised how far I’d come in such a short space of
time.

  Although I was concerned beforehand about filling the McEwan Hall throughout the month, in the event I had no reason to be worried. ‘Sunshine’ had virtually sold out before I arrived, and I ended up doing extra shows. This was helped by the fact I was by now a familiar face from television, as the first series of my own show on BBC1, John Bishop’s Britain, had aired earlier in the year. It was a programme I was proud of, particularly the second series the following year, where I was able to apply some of the lessons I had learnt from the first – such as don’t wear shiny suits.

  By the end of that summer in Edinburgh, I was told that ‘Sunshine’ had sold the most tickets ever for a single run at the Festival. I am not sure if this is actually true, but it felt nice to hear it when I could still recall so vividly the empty seats that had looked back at me just a few years before.

  ‘Sunshine’ graduated from theatres into arenas and catapulted me to a higher level in terms of ticket sales. Being in an arena I think gives you a responsibility to try to do something you cannot do in a theatre, and in this show that involved a dance routine at the end – a dance routine that involved my son Luke, who was allowed to take time off school to do it as part of his work experience. There are surely not many work experience placements that involve you taking a bow in front of thousands of people with your dad dressed as John Travolta.

  Lisa bought me a watch to commemorate the success of the show, and every time I look at it I think of performing in The Hut to five people. It seems a lifetime ago, and like it was yesterday, all at the same time.

  CHAPTER 35

  SPORT RELIEF

  When James Corden rang me one morning in July 2011 and suggested we do a sporting challenge together, I have to admit it was not a phone call I ever expected.

  During 2010 I had appeared on a sports-based panel show called A League of Their Own on Sky. It had very little to do with sport and often ended up with me sitting in an ice bath, but I loved it. I was on every show with Freddie Flintoff, Jamie Redknapp and Georgie Thompson, with James as the host.