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HarperCollinsPublishers 77–85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London W6 8JB
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published by HarperCollinsPublishers 2013
FIRST EDITION
© John Bishop 2013
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
All images are © the author, with the following exceptions:
Image 9 used courtesy of the Southport Visiter; Image 10 © Runcorn & Widnes World; Image 15 and 16 © Steve Porter (Potsy), Image 17 and 18 © Ged McCann; Image 32 © Daniel Sutka; Image 37 © Paul Home, Image 39 © Harvey Collard; Image 41 © Mark Taylor/tangerine; Image 42 © Hamish Brown, Image 43 © ITV/Kieron McCarron; Image 46 © Des Willie, Image 47 © Rhian Ap Gruffydd, Image 48 and 49 © Tom Dymond; Image 50 and 51 © Rhian Ap Gruffydd; Image 52, 53 and 54 © Rhian Ap Gruffydd, Image 55 © Tom Dymond.
Cover layout design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2014 Cover photographs © Rankin
John Bishop asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780007436125
Ebook Edition © October 2013 ISBN: 9780007436156
Version: 2014-07-17
This book is dedicated to Melanie and our sons Joe, Luke and Daniel.
You give me a reason for everything.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Foreword
1. Hello World
2. My Dad and Cars
3. A Boy Learning Adult Lessons
4. School and a Friend Called Kieran
5. Teenage Kicks
6. All I Learnt in School
7. Newcastle
8. I Don’t Eat Meat, or Fight Paratroopers
9. Moving On
10. The Manchester Years
11. The Great U S of A
12. Football
13. Time to Grow Up
14. Learning to Ride
15. Road to Bangkok
16. Indian Days
17. A Day in Buxton Changed Everything
18. A Yank Called Joe
19. A Town That Didn’t Exist
20. Marriage, Fatherhood and Idiot Friends
21. Babies, a Surprise I Didn’t Want and the Snip
22. Bad Hair Day, Removal Vans and Broken Hearts
23. Frog and Bucket
24. Sometimes I Try to Be Funny
25. We All Have to Die on Our Arse Some Time
26. Life Saver
27. How a Wardrobe Can Change Your Life
28. ‘Mum, I’m on Telly!’
29. Festival of Broken Dreams
30. We Are the Champions!
31. On Tour
32. It’s Always Better When It’s Full
33. Opportunity Knocks
34. 2010 … No Going Back
35. Sport Relief
36. A Family Day at Wembley
37. Week of Hell
Picture Section
Postscript
About the Publisher
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book is the book I never thought I would write, because I never imagined I would have lived the life that appears in these pages. I don’t regard my life as anything special: like everyone else, there have been times when I have been so happy I have cried and so sad that there was nothing left to do but laugh. Yet to reach the point of putting it all on paper required the help of various people, some of whom I wish to thank here. I have to thank James Rampton who helped me sift through my thoughts to make what is on the page make sense. Everyone at HarperCollins, particularly Anna Valentine for her support from the first meeting to this eventually being printed; a support that has made all the difference. Gemma Feeney at Etch PR for getting people interested in this book. Lisa Thomas, my agent, business partner and friend who took me on when nobody else wanted me and changed my world. Everyone at LTM for their support, especially Emily Saunders, who manages to know what I should be doing when I have no idea. To the lads – you know who you are and, before you worry, this is my story, not our story, so hopefully no divorces will result from these pages. Thank you for your friendship, for the memories and mostly for the material. I have to thank my mum and dad for guiding me through childhood to becoming the person I am today, and thank Eddie, Kathy and Carol for being on that journey with me as part of the Bishop family. You were the people who made the foundations of the man I am today and I will forever be grateful for that love. My wife, Melanie, I have to thank because in so many ways she is the glue that holds these pages together and without her I am not sure there would be much of a story to tell. My three sons, Joe, Luke and Daniel, to whom I am nothing more than just a pain-in-the-arse dad but who have filled my heart in ways I probably have never been the best at showing. I have to thank my dog Bilko – he doesn’t know it, but badgering me for a walk often allowed me to get my head clear when I didn’t know what to write next. I finally want to thank everyone who has ever bothered to come and see me perform. Comedy changed my life, but without an audience I would just be a man talking to himself and, having done that too many times, I will always appreciate you being there, perhaps more than you will ever know.
FOREWORD
I looked around the dressing room and all I could see were legends. There were jokes and shared banter between people who had won European Cups, FA Cups, League titles, international caps: men who were known to be part of the football elite.
The home dressing room at Anfield Football Stadium is smaller and more basic than you would imagine; it could easily pass for a changing room in any sports hall across the country. Yet few dressing rooms have been the birthplace of so many hopes and dreams; few dressing rooms have felt the vibration of the home crowd roaring ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ in order to inspire those within to prepare for battle; and few dressing rooms have ever held the mystique of this one, and been the place where millions of people would want to be a fly on the wall.
I was one of those millions of people, but I was not a fly on the wall. I was a member of a squad who was about to find out if he had been selected to play. Kenny Dalglish stood, about to read out the team sheet. So this was what it felt like sitting in the home dressing room at Anfield waiting to hear if you’d been selected. All of my dreams rested on the next few moments as King Kenny read out the team.
I was substitute. I had expected to be substitute. Surrounded by such legends as Alan Hansen, Gary McAllister, Jamie Redknapp, Steve McManaman, Ian Rush, Ronnie Whelan, Jan Mølby, John Aldridge, Peter Beardsley, Ray Houghton and Kenny Dalglish himself, I had never expected to be in the starting line-up. But at least I was putting a kit on. The magical Liverpool red. I was going to walk down the famous tunnel and touch the sacred sign that declares to all the players before they walk onto the pitch: ‘This Is Anfield’. It had been placed there by the legendary manager, Bill Shankly, as a way of gaining a psychological advantage over the opposition, a way of letting them know there is no turning back.
Having first been brought to the ground by my dad as a small boy, I had always fixated that, one day, I would make that famous walk. As a child, a football stadium was a place where men shared their passions, their ambitions and their dreams with those who played for them on the pitch. You could tell that within the confines of a football ground the stoicism that reflected how most working-class men approached their lives was left at the turnstile. Football was a place where you could scream, jump for joy, sing along with strangers, slump in frustration and hold back tears of joy or pain. Anfield to me was the cathedral through which I could pass to heaven because I knew if I could be successful there, then nothing on this earth could beat it. Within a few minutes, I was going to touch that sign as home players do for good luck and warm up in front of the famous Kop. And there was a chance, a very real chance, that I was going get to play in the game itself. This would be my début at Anfield, something I had dreamed about since I was a boy.
I was 42 years of age. The match was a charity game between ex-players of Liverpool and UK celebrities versus a rest-of-the-world team that included ex-professionals and international celebrities. The game was in aid of the Marina Dalglish Appeal and the Hillsborough Family Support Group. Sitting in that dressing room, where only a few people knew who I was, I realised things had changed for me, but little did I know I was about to embark on the craziest four years of my life.
After hearing my name being read out by the legendary Kenny Dalglish, and putting my boots on in the Liverpool dressing room, I said to myself something I often say these days: ‘How did all this happen?’
CHAPTER 1
HELLO WORLD
I entered the world at Mill Road Hospital in Liverpool on 30 November 1966. I was the fourth child to Ernie and Kathleen Bishop, with my siblings – in order of appearance – being Eddie, five years older than me, Kathy, four years older than me, and Carol, who was one year older than me. She had spent most of that year in hospital, having developed problems eating, which was eventually diagnosed as coeliac disease. In fact, on the night that I was born my dad had been in the hospital visiting my sister. I’m sure my dad would have been in the hospital anyway to welcome my arrival into the world, although in 1966 men did not participate in the birth, as is now the fashion.
Having attended the birth of my own three sons, I realise how ineffectual I was, despite spending months in antenatal classes being taught that whilst in the throes of labour my wife would really appreciate having me in her face telling her to breathe. I am not suggesting men should not participate in some way, and I am not belittling the wonderfully emotional experience, but, really, has any woman ever forgotten to breathe during childbirth? I can’t imagine there are any maternity wards around the world where expectant fathers are being handed babies by a sad-looking nurse and finding their joy of fatherhood tarnished by the nurse saying, ‘You have a beautiful new child, but I’m afraid we lost your wife. She simply forgot to breathe and because we were all busy at the other end we never noticed. If only you had been there to remind her.’
Anyway, in the 1960s men didn’t have to put themselves through all that. They just waited until mother and baby were prepared and presented.
The man to whom I was presented, my father, Edward Ernest Bishop, at the time worked on the tugs in the Liverpool docks, guiding the numerous ships that arrived in one of Europe’s busiest ports. Liverpool in the 1960s was said to be the place where it was all happening, but for my mum and dad the swinging sixties basically involved getting married and having kids.
My parents had grown up around the corner from each other on a council estate in Huyton and had not bothered with anyone else from the moment they became childhood sweethearts. My mum still has a birthday card that my dad gave her for her fifteenth birthday, which I think is a beautiful thing and something I know won’t happen in the future, as the practice of writing in cards is coming to an end. I can’t imagine young girls of today keeping text messages or Facebook posts sent to them by their boyfriend. Having said that, for the sake of the planet, the giant padded cards with teddy bears and love hearts on the front bought by the teenage boys of my generation in an attempt to get a grope on Valentine’s Day are probably best left as things of the past in order to conserve the rainforests – although the quilted fronts could always be recycled as very comfortable beds.
My parents were married as teenagers and, shortly afterwards, started having children. That seemed to be the way with everybody when I was a child – I didn’t know anybody whose parents hadn’t done the same thing. I remember being at school when I was 13 years of age and my mate, Mark, telling me that his dad was having his 60th birthday party. I fell off my chair laughing at the image of his father being the age of what I considered a granddad. My dad was young enough for me to play in the same Sunday league side as him when I was 16, although I was under strict instructions to call him Ernie. Apparently shouting, ‘Dad, pass!’ was not considered cool in the Sunday league circles of the early eighties.
Having young parents had a massive impact on the way I saw the world, and perhaps was the driving force behind me wanting to have children myself very shortly after I got married. Or, to be fair, that may well be the result of me being a better shot than I anticipated.
When I entered the world, my dad was 24 and my mum was 23. They had four children, all born in the month of November. All my life I thought the fact that we were born in November was a coincidence; it wasn’t until I was married myself and I became aware of the rhythms of marriage that I realised the month of November comes nine months after Valentine’s Day. If you’re married, you’ll know what I mean; if you’re not, you will do one day.
The first eight months of my life were spent living a few doors away from the hospital on Mill Road in a house that my dad had bought from a man in a pub for £50. You could do that sort of thing in the 1960s. The house was about a mile from the city centre and proved to be perfectly placed, as it allowed my parents the opportunity to walk to the hospital to see my sister Carol, in between looking after the rest of us.
As Carol’s coeliac disease meant she couldn’t digest gluten, throughout our childhood my mum was constantly baking separate things for her. This meant our house very often had that warm smell of baking – although if you have ever eaten gluten-free food you will know the smell is a lot better than the taste. Nice-smelling cardboard is still cardboard.
I don’t have any memory of that first house, and it is no longer there. Someone came from the council and declared it unfit for human habitation, along with many others, as the city council progressed with the slum-clearing project which changed much of the centre of Liverpool in the 1960s. The declaration was upsetting for my dad, as he had just decorated, although I am sure the rats and lack of adequate sanitation had more to do with the council’s decision than his ability to hang wallpaper.
As a result of the clearing of the slum areas, various Scouse colonies sprang up as families were moved out to places such as Skelmersdale, Kirkby, Speke and Runcorn. Getting out of Liverpool was not something my mum and dad would ever have considered; it was all they had both ever known, and Carol was still being treated in the hospital. The council offered various alternatives and, like most decisions in parenthood, my mum and dad did what they thought was best for us.
They chose to move to Winsford, out in Cheshire, the option that was the furthest from the centre of Liverpool – if not in miles, then certainly in character. Winsford had been an old market town, but now had emerging council estates that needed to be populated by people ready to work in the factories of the local, rapidly developing industrial estate.
My dad went for an interview in a cable company called ICL and received a letter saying he had a job at the weekly wage of £21.60. This was a staggering amount at the time, when he was getting £9 a week on the building sites he had moved on to after too many falls into the Mersey had convinced him that tugs were not the future. So, without further ado, we moved. When the removal van arrived, such was the exodus from Liverpool that it was already half-full with furniture from another family, the Roberts, who actually moved into the same block as us in Severn Walk on the Crook Lane estate.
When my dad received his first week’s wages, he was paid £12.60.
Yes, thanks to a typing error, my mum and dad had made the decision to move all the way out to Winsford: a simple clerical mistake was responsible for where I was to spend my formative years. However, I have to say I am glad the lady who typed it (it was 1967 – men didn’t type letters, as they were busy doing man-things like fixing washing machines or carrying heavy stuff) made the mistake, because I cannot think of a better place to have grown up.
If you were a child in the 1960s and somebody showed you the council estate where I lived, you could not have imagined a finer location in the world. Rows of terraced houses that were built out of white brick reflected the sun and made everything seem bright. We lived at 9, Severn Walk, which I always thought was a great address as it had two numbers in it, until I realised the road was actually named after a river. We spent the first ten years of my life at this address. Coming from a slum area within Liverpool, it was an exciting place to be, and my mum even today comments about the joy of discovering such modern things as central heating, a hatch from the kitchen into the living room and, the biggest thing of all, an inside toilet downstairs. Opulence beyond belief to live in a house where someone could be on the toilet upstairs and someone on the toilet downstairs, at the same time, and nobody had to put their coat on to go outside.
When I started to write this book I wanted to go back to the estate and have a look, so, six months ago, I went for a walk there. It was night-time, and I sat on the wall and remembered all the times we had had on the estate, both good and bad, and I will always be grateful for the childhood I had there.
I have to say that the town planners of our estate did a brilliant job in setting out the rows of houses in such a way that you were never more than ten steps away from grass. Every house had a back yard and a front garden, and then beyond that there would be grass. I know that ‘grass’ is a very incomplete description, but that is basically what it was. You either had enough grass to host a football match, an area big enough for a bonfire on Guy Fawkes or any other night you felt like building a fire, or you just had enough grass for your dog to have a dump on when you let it out.
As a child, I don’t recall the concept of poop-scooping existing, and I can’t imagine anything more at odds with the world that I lived in than the image of a grown adult picking up dog shit. Dog ownership involved feeding the animal and giving it somewhere to sleep. Beyond that, nobody expected anything else. Nobody took their dog for a walk – you simply opened the door and let it out. The dog would then do whatever dogs do when left to their own devices, and it would come home when it was ready. The only dogs that had leads when I was a child worked for the police or helped blind people cross the road.
I am not suggesting that we were bad dog owners; in fact, I think the dogs were having a brilliant time, although you only have to slide into dog shit once as a child playing football before you think someone, somewhere should do something. I recall being asked to do a school project about improving the community and I suggested that dog dirt was a real problem. The teacher agreed and asked me what I would suggest to improve the matter. After some thought, I came up with the idea of the dog nappy. The teacher tried to seem impressed and not laugh, but sadly the idea never caught on – as there was no Dragons’ Den in the seventies where my eight-year-old self could have pitched the idea, it became no more than a few pages in my school book. And, instead, picking it up using a plastic shopping bag has become the norm. However, I challenge anyone who has to pick up dog shit first thing in the morning not to think the nappy idea has some legs.
Most of what I remember of my childhood happened outdoors. All we ever did was go out and play, and mums would stand on their steps shouting for us when our tea was ready. I should explain to people not from the North, or who may be too wealthy to understand what I mean by the word ‘tea’, that I am referring to the evening meal, which you call dinner, which is what we call the meal in the middle of the day, which you call lunch. It is important we clear this up, as I would not want you to think I am using ‘tea’ in the cricket sense, and that after a few hours’ play we retired for a beverage and a slice of cake. Instead, the call for tea was an important signal to let you know the main meal of the day was ready. The shout was not something to be ignored, or your portion of scouse (stew) or corned beef hash would end up in one of the other children in the family. Or the dog.
But if you didn’t hear it, someone on the estate would let you know. It is a great illustration of the sense of community we had that all communication was communal. If a mum shouted that her child’s tea was ready, all the other children would pass it on until that particular offspring was located and dispatched home. It was also a great way of getting rid of someone you didn’t like, but while kids can be cruel they can also be stupid. The estate wasn’t that big and everyone knew all the favourite hang-out spots, so when the now-hungry child returned to the gang you had to remember to blame the prank on whichever other kid had gone home for his tea.
I learnt what the place meant to me in 2010 when I was doing my ‘Sunshine’ tour. I was in the dressing room of the Echo Arena in Liverpool, about to perform for the sixth night. The venue had just presented me with an award for the most tickets ever sold there for a single tour: apparently I beat Mamma Mia! by 15,000 tickets. I was having a coffee in the dressing room and chatting with Lisa, my agent, when Alex, my tour manager, said my brother Eddie wanted to have a chat.
When family come to shows, I always see them either before or in the interval, as often I find it easier to do that than at the end of a show. At the end of shows I prefer to be on the road quickly; there is something very exciting and rock ’n’ roll about walking off the stage and straight into a waiting car. Eddie walked in with a gift-wrapped long, thin object. After kissing Lisa hello, he turned to me.
‘Do you want a drink?’ I asked, pointing to the fully stocked fridge that rarely opened as I only drink coffee and water before a show.
‘No. I just wanted to give you this. But don’t open it till I’m gone.’
‘Don’t be daft, you’re there now. I’ll just open it.’
‘No, wait. You’ll see. I’ll see you after.’
With that he walked out, leaving Lisa and me in the room with the parcel. I didn’t know what to make of it, so looked at the message on it, which read: