John Bishop doesn’t just tell funny stories. He also tells the sort of life story that makes you sit up and listen. He grew up on a council estate outside Liverpool and, at the age of six, visited his father in prison. By the time he was in his mid-thirties he was working in middle management at a pharmaceutical company, had three children and was going through a divorce. Today he sells out 15,000-seat arenas, is still married to his wife and no longer works in middle management.
It was a Monday night and Bishop was looking for something to do. His friends were tired of him ‘crying into his beer’ about his divorce. So, aged 34, he decided to visit a comedy club for only the third time in his life. ‘I just needed to get out the house to stop my own sinking depression,’ he says now. The bouncer at the Frog and Bucket in Manchester had to explain what an open mic night was. If he agreed to stand up on stage himself, there’d be no entry fee.
‘So I thought, “Well I’m going through a divorce, that’s four quid I’ll save.”’ He didn’t actually expect to take the stage. ‘I’d never been in amateur dramatics, I’d never been in a school play. The first time I’d ever walked on a stage with lights on me was that very night. When I got there I just immediately felt at home.’ Bishop is talking to me in his dressing-room at ITV studios after appearing on a chat show. He’s waistcoated, firmly built, has a face that shapes easily into a smile and speaks with an unmistakable Liverpool accent.
Bishop took the stage that night after a man doing chicken impressions and did well enough in front of an audience of seven to be asked to return.
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