Live At The Marquee might consider themselves a mite lucky to be catching Des Bishop at a time in his career when he’s on quite a roll, with some observers claiming that he’s the funniest comedian in Ireland right now.
Indeed, the story of Bishop’s rise to the top of the hugely competitive Irish comedy pile could almost be used to define the word “mercurial”. For you don’t have to go back too far to find a time when his name was totally unknown in comedy circles – anywhere! But he has built an apparently unstoppable upward career trajectory with an uncanny ability to erect a mirror to Irish society. That, not surprisingly in the land of saints and scholars, has enraged quite a few sensitive souls, but had the rest of us howling with laughter at our most ridiculous foibles and follies.
Many comedians do not work as well on TV as they do on stage before a live audience, but Bishop has proven quite the opposite. He has chalked up a provocative series of television appearances, while also successfully entertaining the masses through sell-out tours. His latest jaunt around the country, pointedly dubbed Fitting In, saw him do a staggering run at Vicar Street that lasted for over 30 nights and took his unique brand of comedy to over 15 venues around the country.
Ironically, Bishop hails from New York, and still considers himself a New Yorker. Much of his repertoire is inspired by his efforts to fit into his adopted country, and his outsider’s view enables him to say things about Irish people that we might not expect, or even wish, to hear from one of our own. But it is important to recognise that his success has not been confined to Irish audiences, having had crowds in stitches at various international comedy festivals in such far-flung places as Aspen in Colorado, New York City, Boston and, of course, Edinburgh.
Bishop also deserves recognition for helping to start the International Comedy Club in Dublin, which since its inception has proven to be a stimulating breeding ground for the new generation of Irish comics. In 2002 he was awarded the Tapwater Comedy Award (a rival to the Perrier comedy award), and his name is now mentioned in the same breath as Tommy Tiernan and Jason Byrne as proof of the healthy state of the Irish comedy scene.
Of course Bishop’s success has not been hampered by the fact that he’s easy on the eye and projects an image that is part indie rock star, part Premiership footballer. He usually laughs dismissively when reminded of the fact that he was once voted the fifth sexiest man in Ireland. His versatility has even seen him indulge in a spot of rapping, and he has recently joined forces with Arthur Riordan on a new stage play, following the positive response to their collaboration on Rap Eire for Bickerstaffe Theatre Company. Bishop has always been a fan of hip-hop and admits that he would have liked a career as a full-time rapper rather than using the genre to poke fun at.
His TV appearances saw him splitting sides on RTE’s satirical programme Don’t Feed The Gondolas, an extraordinary achievement given that he discovered he had testicular cancer just when he commenced working on that show. That lead to him being given his own show, The Des Bishop Work Experience, a series that saw him work incognito in various Irish workplaces, stirring up cartloads of controversy along the way.
Bishop has described his own style as “aggressively observational.” But his move into comedy was kind of accidental and followed his arrival in Ireland in 1990 at the prompting of an Irish cousin. As he told Irish Emigrant, “Soon I didn’t want to go back to the States at all. I was in Cork at the Drama Society in UCC, when a comedian friend of mine dared me to perform my own show. Hoping to expand my comedy horizons I came up to Dublin, and that’s when I started to perform at The International.”
The rest, you could say, is history, although there are undoubtedly many more chapters to be written in the Des Bishop success story. A Des Bishop performance has been described as “electric, energetic and eclectic”, with everything from world politics to work practices to water-presses coming up for discussion. Looks like the Live At The Marquee audience are in for a real treat.