John Bishop right at home at Live at the Marquee

Sat, 08 Jun, 2024 - 07:00

Caroline Delaney

It takes a certain skill to make a stand-up comedy act, in front of thousands of people in a packed tent, feel like a chat with a really witty, good friend.

But John Bishop aced it.

And just like so many meet-ups with friends, it opened with some travel details — and a shout-out to tractor drivers who shun the hard shoulder.

It’s election season and of course the election posters festooning every pole and fence caught Bishop’s attention as he motorbiked across Ireland. He laughs that he initially thought the posters were just a low-tech version of Tinder we must have here. He covered a fair few counties in the past week or two so it’s safe enough to note that he reckons some of the candidates look like “they should be on a register”.

When you get to a certain age then conversations typically manage to turn to health concerns so that’s just what this ‘chat’ did — taking in ageing, manopause, people who quietly suffer through menopause, equal opportunity ‘posh gynaecologist’ visits, and hormone replacements.

Then the convo veered into former schoolmate territory and family updates.

Sidenote: I feel like I wasn’t the only one in the Marquee who’d love a no-holds-barred chat with John’s wife Melanie — it’s not just a female solidarity thing here but I’d say she’s a patient woman. The John Bishop, Back At It tour is the perfect name for the show, isn’t it?

A bit of footie chat — something about someone called Jürgen Klopp — and we were back on the domestic front talking about everything from kitchen bins to life-long ambitions.

Sometimes when you hear people going on about their ‘grá’ for the Irish and how they’re Irish because their great great somebody was Irish it’s a bit of a snooze but the crowd really loved hearing about his Irish ancestry and DNA journey and his unlikely friendship with Hugh Bonneville. There were some great cheers for the ethnicity statistics he revealed too.

Hearing about his mum and their relationship again made this feel more like a good catch-up than a professional show. And then he briefed us on his travel plans and it was off stage to a standing ovation.

He’ll be back for sure but probably more often if he had an Irish passport — maybe one of the newly-elected politicians can look into that for him.

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