by Bishop, John
I realised that the advice of running with someone made sense. Gordon was still ahead on his bicycle checking the route was OK, and Greg, for his sins, was also running virtually the full distance – just for fun, and to be there in case I needed a pep talk, a quick reaction to an injury or simply company.
However, there is a point, I find, when you are running long distance, that it is best to be alone. I never trained with headphones, so even when I had nobody with me I never played any music. I just wanted to concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other. As I had done all those years earlier on the bike ride home from Australia, I wanted to get to the state of mind where I moved without thinking about it.
Around lunchtime, we made a quick pit stop in a village to get some food and for Dot to have a look at some niggles I was feeling in my Achilles’ tendons. Lisa had visited for the day and Melanie was due to come and join me in the hotel that night, so I asked if Lisa had heard from her. Just as I opened my mouth, her phone bleeped on the table in front of me. It was a text from Melanie. We both laughed at the timing, and Lisa said I may as well read it.
The text began with the words, ‘Whatever you do, don’t tell John …’ Clearly, a sentence like that is never going to be good news but I had to read on. It transpired that Joe had been involved in an accident in which he had crashed head-on into a bus whilst riding his bicycle in Cape Town, where he was at college.
The previous few years had not been easy for Joe. He had been diagnosed with a rare auto-immune condition that affected his hearing: some days he would wake up deaf, and this could last for hours or days. The fluctuations meant that hearing aids could not easily be set and the constant tinnitus kept him awake some nights, so that it was difficult to know how much sleep he had had.
Joe was 15, and would raise his voice when he was talking to me, which drove me mad as I just assumed he was being a disrespectful pain-in-the-arse teenager. ‘Who do you think you’re shouting at?’ would be replied to with, ‘I’m not shouting at anybody,’ and then him walking away. Not coming back when I told him to would send me into a further rage. But, of course, he didn’t know he was shouting because he didn’t know he was losing his hearing. You know that you can’t see, but you don’t know that you can’t hear, so what I took to be defiance was just a symptom of his deteriorating hearing. He simply couldn’t hear me when he walked away.
Whilst I had been touring and making television programmes, smiling for promotional posters, signing new DVDs and receiving applause, Melanie had been sitting in hospital waiting-rooms hoping to find someone who could help give our son his hearing back. She had been holding the family together and battling to keep our priorities right. Nobody receives applause for being a mum. Some people have said that being alone on a stage as a comedian is a lonely place – sometimes being at home is a lot lonelier.
Attempting to remain calm, I tried to call Melanie, but her phone went straight to voicemail. I phoned Joe’s phone but it, too, just rang until the voicemail kicked in. Then I realised I had no other numbers with me to call, and my heart sank. In a world with a myriad of communication methods I didn’t know anyone who I could contact.
I didn’t want to make a scene or create a drama because it had become apparent to me that this challenge was bigger than me, but nothing is more important than your own children. We had to start running again to keep up with the schedule, which couldn’t afford any delays – to delay would alert the world to the fact that something was wrong. I had no choice: I had to start running without knowing what had happened to my son.
I asked Lisa to keep calling them and to see if she could discover what hospital Joe had been taken to. Then I went outside, smiled for a few photographers, waved to the crowd and started running. I just didn’t know what else to do.
By the time I reached Faversham, the place where I was going to end the day, two hours later, Lisa had spoken to Melanie. Somehow Joe had managed to smash the windscreen of the bus, but, apart from being shaken, he was fine. After an examination for any serious problems, he had been released from hospital and would make it over for the end of the challenge on Friday, but would not be able to run with me as the other two planned to do.
I ran into the centre of Faversham tired, but feeling so much lighter than the previous 15 miles. The knowledge had lifted a weight of my shoulders, and as I began to allow myself the belief that I could complete this challenge I started to notice the crowds lining the streets, cheering as I went past. And, when we turned the corner, it was clear we had literally stopped the traffic. The town was full of people cheering. I was greeted by the mayor, someone tried to give me a beer and others tried to push cash into my hand. Any doubt that the beeping was for me was now well and truly gone. This was already bigger than I thought it would ever be.
Any charity event is measured by the money it raises and you can only know what this is at the end, but by the time I reached Faversham it was clear that we were capturing people’s attention, and this could only mean that donations would come in. Beyond thinking I could do it physically, I began to believe the support we were being given would result in a decent amount of money being raised. Basically, I began to think it would all be worth it.
That night, when Melanie arrived, it felt as if I hadn’t seen her for weeks, so much had happened. I was stiff and was walking with a slight limp as we approached each other in the corridor outside my room.
She held on to me tighter than I can recall her ever doing. ‘He’s OK. I’ve spoken to him and he’s OK,’ she said.
‘I know,’ I replied.
‘You look shit,’ she said, as she wiped a tear away from her eyes. I am not sure it was there to indicate her relief about Joe or because I looked so ‘shit’, but we both laughed.
After the ice bath and massage, I put on my compression tights which, I have to say, did nothing to inject spice into a 19-year marriage. I was like an exhausted Max Wall (again, if you’re too young, Google him), and would have slept heavily had my stomach not decided to reject everything that I had eaten for dinner that night.
At breakfast the next day, when I told Greg and Dr Matt about throwing up, Greg simply said, ‘We thought that might happen.’ Apparently, when your body is exhausted, the blood in the stomach exits to feed the overworked muscles, leaving a higher concentration of acid, too high to digest food.
With that knowledge on board, but nothing else, I started my run from Faversham to Gravesend, a distance of around 28 miles. Melanie joined me for the first half of it, which was good, but without any food inside me I was running out of energy and was also becoming increasingly affected by the pain coming from my Achilles’ tendons. They were both incredibly tight, and each kerb-stone I had to step over sent a stabbing sensation up the back of my legs. What was worse was that the treatment Dot favoured involved the use of blue tape and, when I say blue, I mean Smurf blue. I had the tape all the way up the rear of my legs as I ran. They looked like the oddest varicose veins known to man.
That day I was helped along by Frank Skinner, whom I had never met before but really liked, and Chris Moyles, who surprised me by turning up. He had done so much for the appeal, it was great that he was there whilst I did it.
I was tired when we reached Gravesend, but was also on a high. I knew I only had one day left, and then it was all over. The following morning I started from the town centre in Gravesend where I had finished the previous evening and, as a small crowd waved me off, I began running. Within a few hundred yards there was sharp pain in my right shin – an excruciating stab that felt like a burning knife, but I knew I couldn’t stop: I was still in sight of everyone who had just waved me off. You could call it pride, you could call it ego or you could call a desire not to let anyone down, but I didn’t want to stop after they had all made the effort to come and cheer.
I carried on, then hobbled around a car and, when I was sure nobody could see, I stopped. Greg, Matt and Dot came to look and decided that it was probably shin splints
– anything worse and I would need to stop. There was no way I was going to stop, so we decided I should run to the scheduled pit stop nine miles away and see how I was when I got there.
Before I got there, I was joined by Greg James, the Radio 1 DJ who had interviewed me on the boat, when I could hardly speak. He had come to run a few miles, but I think also to see if I was as close to death as I had sounded.
I also had another surprise. As I was running, someone came to run alongside me. This had happened a few times and I had engaged in pleasantries, although this time I was in too much pain. So I just said, ‘All right, mate,’ and glanced over – to see my own face staring back at me. The person running alongside was wearing a mask of my face. Before I could decide if this was funny or not, he lifted the mask and I saw that it was my brother Eddie, who ran the next nine miles with me and gave me a great lift.
I reached the pit stop and received what treatment they could offer. The shin was causing some concern, the type of concern where people say it’s not causing them any concern but then whisper to each other. I heard ‘hairline fracture’ being mentioned and decided to let everyone know that, no matter what it was, there was no way that with 15 miles to go before the end I was going to quit.
Dot did what he could, and I was back on the road and heading to the big city. Robbie Savage joined us for a section, which at first I hadn’t been keen on. Everyone else who had run with me I either knew or I liked, and he didn’t fall into either of those two categories. For some reason, as a footballer he always wound me up, and as a person I always envisaged he would be annoying. However, he is another person to be added to the list of those I got wrong before I met them. He was funny, and had played football against many of the people Eddie had when he was a professional, so I was able to direct my concentration away from my legs to listen to their anecdotes.
The problem with London is that it is simply too big for anyone to give much of a toss about anything that anyone else is doing. After two days where whole towns had seemed to come and greet me, I was now entering London where, apart from the odd shout from a builder on scaffolding – and, to be fair, that could have been directed more at Robbie than me – there was no reaction. We could have been a very slow jogging club who happened to be getting followed by a camera crew for all the people of South London cared.
As we entered Greenwich, my sister Carol met us to hand over Luke and Daniel, who ran with us for a few miles. It was great to see them, as I’d been so preoccupied with maintaining the challenge and what had happened to Joe that I had hardly spoken to them. But although I wanted to catch up with them properly, I knew I just had to carry on going. I was in agony, but didn’t want anyone to know, and I was aware that if I stopped there was every chance I would struggle to make the final pit stop.
However, your kids know you better than you imagine.
‘You OK, Dad?’ asked Daniel, when I grimaced going down some steps.
‘He’s in agony, stupid.’
‘Don’t call me stupid, idiot.’
‘Who are you calling an idiot?’
It’s amazing how quickly domestic life can walk back into your head, even as you come to the end of the hardest week of your life.
At the final pit stop, Joe was there, slightly bruised but mainly unscathed. I had seen a photograph of the damaged bus; he was lucky to be there, and we both knew it. There was a quick hug, I called him a dickhead, and we moved on.
The shin was now extremely painful to touch, but Dot administered whatever treatment he could, and I got up to run the last seven miles into London. Before starting, I thanked as many people as I could who had been with us during the week, and then I set off with just Greg for the final leg.
I would have been happy to have run the whole way and crossed the finishing line with Greg, but the director of the documentary, Matt, kept asking Greg to move aside so he could have a solo shot of me. The third time he did this I told him where to shove his camera, and after he realised I wanted to run with Greg we were left to run side by side until we reached the Embankment.
I knew we were finishing in Trafalgar Square and that all we had to do was turn right. However, Greg said we had to split up at this point as I had to go the long way round to enter it down The Mall, but he would see me at the end.
I had been moving virtually every waking hour for the last five days and now someone had decided to add on another mile to my run so I could run down The Mall. I was fuming, thinking that if this was something Matt had set up because I had told him where to shove his camera, then I would duly complete the task when I had finished.
I had turned the corner in front of Buckingham Palace and started to run down The Mall when I noticed there were no cars on it. I looked behind me, and noticed two police cars holding up the traffic as I progressed up one of the most famous roads in the world – a road that had been closed for me. Normally when I find a road has been closed, I feel like screaming. This time, I felt like crying.
I turned into Trafalgar Square to the sound of ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and people cheering. I wanted to shake people’s hands and thank them for their support but I still hadn’t finished. Even though it was few hundred yards, I would not allow myself to stop till I crossed the finishing line, which I could see at the top of some steps. In my knackered state, I remember thinking I couldn’t believe after the week I had just endured, somebody had thought, ‘Let’s just make him climb some steps at the end.’
A yard from the finishing line, I finally stopped running. I took a step and walked over it. It was done. As I raised my hands in the air, Melanie and the boys joined me and we hugged for a moment on our own before turning to face the press and the crowds. It was our moment: for better or for worse, my ‘Week of Hell’ was over.
All of my friends and family were there, and my mum’s was amongst many of the most important faces in my life glistening with tears as I looked at the people gathered there. Jason Manford led me to the podium and revealed that the challenge had raised £1.6 million. By the time I hosted a section of Sport Relief with James Corden, the documentary had been shown and the total had reached £3.4 million, and by the time Sport Relief closed the account the challenge had raised £4.2 million. That is nearly a million children immunised.
A few weeks later, I turned up at the Comic Relief night at the BBC and everybody kept asking me how my leg was and how I was recovering. Then I saw David Walliams who, up to that point, I had only met a few times before. ‘How’s your head?’ he asked. He was the only person to ask that, because he was perhaps the only person who would know what it’s like when you take on such a huge public challenge. You take your body and you train it, prepare it to do a job, to perform a function, and it does it. What nobody sees is the weight of responsibility you try to sleep with for months before; how your whole focus is to do something which is not actually what you do and is actually something you’re not even sure you can do; and yet everybody you know and millions you don’t are going to know if you succeed or not. Then it’s over, and you get back that head-space you had devoted to completing the task. You can now think of something else; the problem is, you don’t know what.
I will always feel proud of my participation in the ‘Week of Hell’ because, while I learnt a lot about myself, I learnt more about people. Nobody had to make a single donation to Comic Relief for what I did. There are many more people who have done much harder physical challenges without the recognition, and I personally don’t think the physical side was that important. My leg wasn’t fractured, and after a few weeks with a plastic cast the swelling went down. A few months later I was jogging again, so there was no significant damage done. What will always stay with me, however, was that people chose to be involved, to phone, to make a donation to help someone they would most likely never meet to have a better life. For one week, people took a second to think of someone else, and I was part of that process; something for which I will always feel humble and proud.
P
ICTURE SECTION
My dad and some colleagues on the tugs, pulling a very big Dick.
My dad looking cool, although too many falls into the Mersey convinced him to change jobs.
My mum and dad circa 1959: a handsome couple in the Clock, West Derby, Liverpool.
My mum looking beautiful aged 16.
Kathy, Carol and me in the back yard at 9 Severn Walk. I am the one not wearing a dress.
In the front garden with Eddie and his mates. I am sat at the end wearing knitted lederhosen, for some reason, and trying to copy what the big boys are doing.
In Crewe Park, aged 4, practising my right-foot power-drivers. I love the knitted jumper too, which my mum would have made.
Great result ruined by the fact it was me rather than Redknapp who went off injured.
Halton Sports Under-15s, the best team I ever played for – although I hadn’t yet learnt how to shake hands properly.
I was 3 when me, Eddie, Kathy and Carol had this ‘posh‘ picture taken in our house. It was on the wall for the following 40-odd years and I love it.
A school picture aged 7, when my teeth had already decided to take over my head!
Dancing with my mum on New Year’s Eve, wearing the coolest T-shirt I have ever owned.
The Bishops: Mum, me, Kathy, Eddie, Carol and Dad. I am very proud to be part of this family – they laid the foundation for everything.
Coaching ‘soccer’ in America, although I cannot remember why I am wearing a nappy.