Interview – Des Bishop

Comedian Des Bishop sits down and talks to BBM about his new personal memoir about his late father entitled ‘My Dad Was Nearly James Bond’, along with his upcoming performances in Australia and quite obviously the good and bad jokes he’s experienced within his career.

What inspired you to start a career in stand-up?

I was an insufferable kid. Once I’d made my family laugh, even reluctantly, I had to find bigger audiences. I fell into organizing events while I was at university and through some kind of weird gradual process moved from being backstage to on stage. So not so much inspiration as inevitability.

Who are your favourite comedians, and main inspirations, when performing
and writing comedy?

Growing up it was the preachers, Richard Pryor, and I guess Bill Hicks once upon a time, the ones who made you laugh and simultaneously changed the way you thought about stuff.

What inspired you to write the book My Dad Was Nearly James Bond?

My dad! Really – we’d already worked together on the stage show and it started there but there was a deeper story I wanted to tell that went further back, about dad’s childhood and how his experiences then affected everything that came afterwards. Of course it ended up being about me too. I don’t think you can write a memoir about your dad and not find yourself in there too. In embarrassing family photos if nothing else. There’s this one where a medallion and a turtleneck sweater meet and don’t get on …

I understand your father was a big part of your life, was it a hard experience writing the book?
I wrote most of it after he was gone, so yeah, I was writing right through the grief. Still not sure how I did it. Going back through the journals I kept while he was sick was tough. But we wanted to do the show to confront what was happening, to laugh at death and make other people laugh too. We’re all going there sooner or later so we may as well face it, without bowing down to it and the book is another way of doing that. It ended up being quite different to the show.

How did you find that balance of sentimentality and humour, whilst writing the show and book? Was that a hard part of the process?
Well, that was pretty much how we dealt with the experience as a family, tears and laughter, and long afternoons watching The Wire.

How are you feeling ahead of your Australian tour?
Nervous. I’ve loads of new material and I’m keen to see how it goes down. I’m also just excited to get back out for a run on the Great Ocean Road.

Is there ever anything that you think of and it makes you instantly crack
up?
(We’ve all been in an inappropriate situation before and it’s happened!) My brother Aidan, who’s also a comedian, saying “What’s with Irish ladies?” in a heavy Queens accent. That’s not part of his routine by the way.

Have you ever cracked a joke and instantly wished you hadn’t? Or had a bad reaction from someone from doing so?
If you’re not pissing some people off at least some of the time you’re probably not saying anything challenging, and that’s one of the joys of being a comedian, using your time up there to mess with the status quo, or received ideas about things. I’ve never regretted any jokes I’ve made on stage, as long as they make people laugh. A bad reaction is when they don’t laugh. The best reaction is the laugh followed by that intake of breath when people’s inner censor kicks in. There’s a joke about a dog in the My Dad show that works just like that!

You are doing so many shows in two weeks, how are you going to manage? What’s going to keep you going?
The beach! When I can make it there. Otherwise, Red Bull.

What are your plans after Australia?
Acclimatizing to bad weather again in Ireland before I hit NYC’s winter in December for some final gigs doing the My Dad show.

Plans for 2012?
To get back to Australia as soon as possible, I’ll be over again in the spring for the festivals. But come see the show now when everything’s new and raw and we can keep things intimate in a tiny room!

Quick, tell us a joke about Australia?
Aww man, my jokes take forever. We could be here for a while. Come to the show and I promise I’ll find one for you.

By David Mahoney