MAN

They say laughter is the best medicine. But Liverpool stand-up John Bishop reckons that if you’re going to be spending time in Sierra Leone maybe some real vaccines will go a long way too. So it was that February saw the 45 year-old endure a ‘Week Of Hell’, successfully completing a grueling 290 mile triathlon that took him from the Eiffel Tower to Trafalgar Square for the BBC’s Sport Relief. He raised close to three and a half million pounds, a new record.

“For a single event, yeah,” he nods matter-of-factly, sat opposite me in the Merrion Hotel not in running shorts but a fetching tailored suit. “Apparently so, I didn’t know that until I did the Graham Norton Show. But look, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter what I did. What matters is that people got off their arse and got on the phone. It started as a conversation with James Corden about doing something for Sport Relief. They came up with this idea and we put the wheels in motion. Then James couldn’t do it. At which point, they’d already got the sponsorship in place, they were looking to put the money towards vaccines. They said, ‘look, we’re hoping it could save a few hundred thousand lives... James can’t do it, do you still want to?’ Which kind of put the onus on me!”
Bit of poor form from Corden, surely? He laughs it off. “To be fair, James couldn’t do it because he went abroad with Sport Relief and obviously that’s a great excuse! So I said we might as well crack on and do it. And I’ll be honest, I just underestimated it. Oh! It killed me, it properly killed me! “
In Dublin for the day (he’s set for The Late Late Show that evening) I’d naturally presumed he’d rowed over. Once you get a taste for it and all that...
“Haha, no!” he guffaws. “I’ll never row anywhere ever again as long as I live.”
As middle-aged comedians go, however, Bishop cuts a svelte figure. The type of ‘bloke’ you imagine involved in football training most nights of the week, he doesn’t seem in bad shape – certainly better prepared for such an undertaking than, say, James Corden.
“To be honest Craig, part of the problem was age. Just age. And the fact that I’d never run a marathon before, never rode a bike that far before, never rowed before. So yeah, you can be relatively fit, you can go to the gym a couple of times a week and do a session for 40 minutes. But, this was all day. By the end I was training twice a day, six hours a day. That takes its toll.”
Was there a point somewhere in the English Channel where he thought, ‘sod this for a game of cowboys’?
“I thought that ten minutes into it! I thought, ‘Jesus this is going to be a long fucking week!’ You’ve just got to put your head down and get on with it haven’t you?”
And put his head down he did. A massive achievement, it made many people suddenly see him in a different light. Particularly his comedy cohorts. Frank Skinner ran part of the triathlon with him and recounted on his radio show, quite poetically, seeing Bishop emerge soaking wet from the water, glistening in the sunshine, hair slicked back, looking like a ‘Norse god’. Skinner got a bit wobbly-kneed but the spell was broken when that familiar Scouse accent greeted him. Bishop doubles up laughing before rolling his eyes. “Oh yeah, brilliant... Frank was running with me. Hahaha! Well to be fair, I can live with that reaction!”  
Of course, Bishop’s stand-up, his outlook and mannerisms, are inextricably tied to his hometown. Bishop might just be the most famous Liverpudlian humourist around in 2012. Is the ‘Scouse’ thing a big part of his comedic make-up? “It is and it isn’t,” he proffers. “It’s because of the accent, which I didn’t realise was as strong as it is until I left the estate and went to college. Everyone spoke like me. I grew up outside of Liverpool. I was born in Liverpool and we lived in one of the slum areas that got knocked down, so we were moved to council estates outside. In many respects the accent was bred into me as a form of identity. It’s like an Irish-American. Third generation Irish-Americans feels more “Irish” than Michael Flatley, y’know?”
At this point I fail to inform him that Flatley himself hails from Chicago. Maybe the mistake perversely proves his point.
“It’s something that I can’t ignore, I have to make reference to it. But it’s not the definition of what I am.  It’s like Billy Connolly being from Glasgow. It’s part of who he is, but it’s not just who he is. “
What it does mean is that he adores coming to Ireland, a country with a similar sensibility and wit.  
“I love the Irish,” he grins. “My style of stand-up comedy is story-telling. When I came over and started doing the Kilkenny festival and the Iveagh Gardens festival, getting involved in the Irish comedy scene, it was lovely. The audiences are receptive and enthusiastic. I think the Irish have such a good relationship with the Scouse mentality. We’re both born optimists. Everything can be shit, but Jesus we can have a laugh.  There’s always that little bit of ‘something’ll turn up’ and I think that comes across in your comedy audiences. People turn up thinking, ‘we’re here for a laugh’ – they’re halfway to laughing because they came there. Where you do a gig in London and the attitude is, ‘well, I’ve arrived. Now perform for me’.”
Given Bishop’s current status, even London crowds are likely far more enthused to see him these days. Coming late to the business, it is a decade since he was voted Best Newcomer by BBC Radio Merseyside and a mere three years since his big break came on Michael McIntyre’s Comedy Roadshow. Since then, he has been an ever-present on some of Britain’s biggest panel shows and has recently earned the only slightly tongue-in-cheek title of ‘Mr Saturday Night’ due to his BBC One show John Bishop’s Britain, where his easy, straight-to-camera style has garnered comparisons to the late Dublin comedian Dave Allen.
“That’s a massive compliment. I used to think he was brilliant, Dave Allen. Look, I’m happy to be ‘Mr. Anything’, to be honest! If it happens to be popular, that’s great, if it stops being popular, there’s nothing I can do about it. Is this the happiest I’ve ever been? Well as I say I’m an optimist. I think I’ll be happier tomorrow. That’s the way to look at life. If you say you’re at your happiest then this is it! This is the best you’re going to get! “
He seems at pains to downplay his achievements and still maintains that half his mates are funnier than he is. “Absolutely, yeah! I went on a stag do a couple of weeks ago actually, one of my mates is getting married for the second time. It was brilliant. There was seven of us out, all having known each other for 20 plus years. And if someone had been monitoring us to figure out who was the comedian in that group, I might have made the top five! Maybe. And that was only because the other two were completely hammered!”
Still, something sets him apart. He’s talked before about what a strange breed stand-up comedians are. Which, by extension, would make him a bit of an oddball?
“So I must be, mustn’t I?! It is like being a boxer or a lap dancer – you’re on your own.”
The final question is obvious. Which is it closer to?
“I think lap dancing. If you’re a boxer, you’re punching, getting punched back. But with a lap dancer, you come out and go ‘that’s me bits, do you like them?!’ That’s what it’s like with comedy: ‘here are my funny bits!’”

John Bishop comes to The O2, Dublin, on November 7, 9, 10 and 11.