In the name of his father

INTERVIEW : Comedian Des Bishop’s father was a model and actor but gave it up to work in a Burberry shop to support his family…


INTERVIEW: Comedian Des Bishop's father was a model and actor but gave it up to work in a Burberry shop to support his family. He died of cancer earlier this year, and his son has written a raw and touching account of the final 15 months of his life, writes KEVIN COURTNEY

IMAGINE HOW DES BISHOP’S life would have turned out if his dad had become James Bond. He might have spent his childhood in the Hollywood hills, hanging out with other rich movie-biz brats, instead of the blue-collar neighbourhood of Flushing, Queens, where his friends were all the sons of firemen, plumbers and cops. He may never have been sent to boarding school in Ireland at 14 – his parents’ well-meaning but doomed attempt to keep him out of trouble – and he certainly may never have gone on to become one of Ireland’s best-loved comedians. Cubby Broccoli’s loss is our gain.

Mike Bishop didn’t get the role of 007, although he did read for the part when the filmmakers were looking for a replacement for Sean Connery. But the story of how Des Bishop’s dad nearly became James Bond grew bigger in the family’s folklore, until it became a head-to-head between Des’s dad and George Lazenby, who eventually got the part. In recent times, it became the title of Des Bishop’s latest stand-up show, but anyone coming to the show looking for tales of Bond-style derring-do would have been disappointed. “When I thought of writing the stand-up show, I thought that’s where a lot of the humour would come, but I never really found the jokes,” Bishop says. The show dealt with a different type of heroism – the bravery of an ordinary family facing up to their father’s terminal lung cancer.

It's strange to be chatting to Des Bishop, and the subject is not the comedian, and it's not particularly funny. Eight months after his dad died, Bishop has written a book about the last 15 months of his life, and about how his family came together and found joy amid the sorrow and pain. It's called My Dad Was Nearly James Bond, but again, don't look for any Bond quips within the pages. Instead, expect an honest, raw, heart-rending and – yes – sometimes even funny account about one family dealing with an unbearable trauma and coming out the other side more enriched and united.

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“The show was about him being around,” says Bishop. “Even after he died, it was never about him dying. It was about three things, I guess. One, it was all about illness, and what illness does to a family. Two, it was about this double life that my father had, this life before and the life after. And then finally, it’s about the father-son relationship, that journey from hero to zero and back to hero again.”

What makes his dad a hero in Bishop’s mind is that not only did he give up the life of an actor and model in London to bring up three sons in the suburbs of Queens, New York, but that he managed to rise above his own abusive childhood to raise his family in a loving, caring environment. Mike Bishop’s mother was a paranoid schizophrenic who beat him severely with a brass stair rod, and was jailed after attempting to kill her son with a carving knife.

Comedians writing books is nothing new. But Bishop’s first book could be stacked the shelf marked family drama or even self-help, because it tracks the healing process that brought his family to a better place. Not the touchy-feely self-help section, mind, but the abrasive, honest, no-holds-barred corner of the shelf. From the start of the process, when his dad was diagnosed with cancer, Bishop knew he’d be writing a book about it – he just didn’t expect to be sitting down to write it almost immediately after his father’s death in February.

“It was always in the back of my mind to tell the story of a guy who always regretted giving up acting. When, in fact, to raise us in a peaceful house, considering what he went through, was amazing. And then when my dad got cancer, it became about getting my dad back on stage. It was about the journey finishing, and it wasn’t about what he’d gone through as a child, it was about the things he realised were important when he got sick. I didn’t want it to be a book about grief. I wanted it to be about everything we’d experienced up to that point.

“He lasted longer than we thought from when he got sick, but the time from when he stopped doing chemo to the end was actually a lot shorter than we thought. So I only had the proposal done by the time he died – I had to write the whole thing after he died. But it is what it is – it couldn’t be any rawer. I’d say it would be a lot different if I wrote it next year.”

Some readers might feel that, in these pages, they will learn more than they need to know about Bishop’s family. The accounts of caring for his dad in the hospital in Queens are as visceral as you can get, and the clashes between family members as they learned to realign their priorities would make an episode of EastEnders look like The Waltons.

“It was a very tough time for us as a family in general, and there was a lot of performance that went into my dad’s illness. But we had a lot of trust around how nice that time was for our family. The live show was one of the great things in our lives, the documentary we made, we couldn’t have been happier with that, my dad couldn’t have been happier. The whole thing was like this exciting ride that made that whole thing a lot easier. So there was no sense that the book was gonna be any different. It was continuing that journey of what we’d been through, but having said that, it’s different when you see things down on paper. It’s a much broader thing that I’m talking about, and when you’re grieving and trying to re-establish relationships, your relationship with your mother is different, your relationship with your brothers is different. But in the end it turned out to be fine.

“For Irish families, I think it’s particularly good, because as you read it, it does challenge some things. We’re American, but we’re very Irish in our dysfunction. So it’s good that people might identify with it, but some people will be challenged by it.”

There's plenty to challenge – and entertain – in Bishop's account of growing up in an Irish-American family in Queens, the eldest of three "wild boys". His dad, the son of an Irish mother and an English father, had lived the dissolute life of a male model and bit-part actor in London during the swinging 1960s (his biggest movie role was a brief appearance in the science-fiction film The Day of The Triffids).

He moved to New York to further his modelling and acting career, but didn’t get the breaks. Instead, he got a job as manager of Burberry in Manhattan, using his charm and good looks to win the loyalty of customers and staff. He married an Irish-American girl and they settled in the Queens suburb of Flushing. Des is the eldest. His youngest brother, Aidan, is also a comedian.

When Des Bishop’s wildness, and his teenage drinking, began to get out of hand, his parents sent him to St Peter’s College boarding school in Wexford, hoping the change of environment would help him shape up. It was a bit like sending someone with a sweet tooth to live in a candy shop, and he threw himself headlong into Ireland’s drink culture. After one too many wild, ecstasy-and-booze filled nights at Sir Henry’s in Cork, however, Bishop realised he would have to face up to his alcoholism.

“Sobriety was definitely the thing that bound my father and me together the most. I stopped drinking at 19 – that was a big change in our relationship. We went to AA meetings together. We understood the concept of opening up to each other. It was after that my father told me about his childhood. But more than that, my dad was like this really cool guy. Easy to get on with, and when you become an adult, you really appreciate a guy like my father. He was a good guy to just chill with, and we ended up having somewhat similar interests, and we had a pretty good open relationship.”

Bishop never went back to live in Flushing. He got his first job tending bar at his godfather Eamon Doran’s pub in Temple Bar, and his first TV gig from a pair of aliens known as Zig and Zag. He was diagnosed with testicular cancer at just 23, and has since come through it to make his reputation as a sharp observer of Irish life, through such TV series as Des Bishop’s Work Experience, in which he took menial jobs around the country; Joy In The Hood, in which he hosted comedy workshops in deprived areas; and In the Name of the Fada, in which he undertook the task of becoming a Gaeilgeoir. It was the latter that made Bishop finally feel like he finally belonged here.

“Learning the Irish language helped a lot. It made me feel more Irish. The Queen, Stephen Fry, Barack Obama, they all used a bit of the Irish language, and people might say, what does that mean to anybody? Well it’s our identity, and there was something about when the queen said it that made me cry. People dismiss the power of the Irish language, but when you’re speaking it in a way that’s natural, it has a feeling, and that feeling is quite powerful and it’s a sense of belonging.”

My Father Was Nearly JamesBond is published by Penguin (€16.99). For information on book signings around the country and his new tour see desbishop.com