Comedian John Bishop said he wants to do a gig in every county in Ireland because he credits the country as the place that jumpstarted his career.
The Liverpudlian quit his job as a pharmaceutical sales rep in 2006 to become a full-time stand-up comedian and he said that gigging around Ireland at the beginning gave him a newfound confidence.
Over a decade since he landed his first ever TV appearance on RTE’s The Panel in 2007, the 52-year-old comic said that he still feels at home in Ireland and admitted that his wife thinks he is a wannabe Irishman.
He said: “Ireland was the first place that gave me the confidence that I could do comedy as a proper job.
“It was the first place I got on TV, first in Northern Ireland and then in the south, so I was building up an audience in Ireland before I built one up in England.
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“Just the nature of the Irish audiences, they’re prepared to sit and listen to a story, and for me, when your comedy is based around stories, it just gives you a lot of confidence.
“I feel at home in Ireland, that’s always been the case. My wife thinks I want to be an Irishman!”
Bishop is embarking on a 600-mile road trip around the country for his latest series, ‘John Bishop’s Ireland’.
Explaining how the idea came about, he told: “I always had this idea about wanting to do a gig in every county in Ireland.
“I was purposely looking for places I hadn’t been to before and that meant I ended up in places I’d never even heard of.
“Like Carrick-on-Shannon and Ennis, places like that.
Comedian John Bishop will embark on a 600-mile road trip around Ireland
“We took a camera crew that followed me around Ireland doing shows at different venues, and I met lots of great Irish people along the way.
“So viewers will see the process of where a comedian gets the material from, they’ll see the incidents and the people that I talk about on stage, but also, they’ll get to learn how brilliant Ireland is.
He also said that an interaction between the Protestant and Catholic community during his show in Derry was one of the highlights of the trip.
He said: “There were so many great places. When I went up to Derry and I met both sides of the community there, I met someone from the Protestant community called Stuart Moore.
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“(He) worked at The Siege Museum and was part of the Apprentice Boys who do the marching bands - and then I met John Kelly whose brother was one of the victims of Bloody Sunday.
“I met them both in the same day to get the different sides to their experiences of the Troubles.
“Then [that] night, they both came to the gig and both sat by each other and were both laughing at the same bits - that was a particularly nice moment.”
John Bishop’s Ireland starts on ITV on Friday, April 26.
