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From Live At The Apollo 2010

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John Bishop performed stand-up comedy for the first time in October 2000, and the following year made it to the final of all the major new act competitions, including So You Think You're Funny, the Daily Telegraph Open Mic Awards, the BBC New Comedy Awards and the City Life North West Comedian of The Year Award, which he won.

In 2002, he was named best newcomer by BBC Radio Merseyside, and in 2004 he won the North West Comedy Award for best stand-up. And in 2009, he was nominated for the Ediburgh Comedy Award

His material is drawn from his life's experiences, from fatherhood to cycling around the world, to playing semi- professional football, to working as a nightclub doorman.

Give It Up For Comic Relief
Live Review
Wembley Arena

Like so many things involving Russell Brand, Give It Up For Comic Relief was morally ambiguous.

The evening was raising funds for drug and alcohol addiction centres, yet seemed to be a veritable advert for consumption - from Noel Fielding’s tongue-in-cheek ‘Don’t Do Drugs’ reggae number, to Brand saying: ‘Many people watching this at home will be out of their minds on drugs, and that’s fine...’ Even unlikely narcotic advocate Simon Amstell, who needs little chemical help being paranoid or self-analytical,urged: ‘If you’ve never had magic mushrooms, you really must.’

How much of the pro-drugs message made it to BBC Three screens, I don’t know. But abstinence was not a popular option in Wembley Arena itself, which is odd considering the tie-in with Comic Relief. The skips full of drugs consumed by the likes of Noel Gallagher, Kasabian and Brand himself over the years are hardly likely to be Fair Trade, doing damage in the sort of Third World countries that the rest of the Comic Relief organisation works so hard to put right.

But such considerations were not for tonight. Brand wants a change in attitude to drug addiction so it’s akin to the approach to alcohol, that it’s fine to indulge as long as it’s not a dependency. That was one message of the night, the other was that viewers should text ‘give’ to 70005 and donate a fiver to treatment centres, as they watched the entertainment unfold.

And there was certainly a hell of a lot of entertainment for your £5... or £50 if you brought a ticket to the gig, which ran for three-and-a-half interval-free hours. OK, it’s not Mark Watson’s 25-hour effort of last week... but a long time to be passively viewing music and comedy. Wembley’s plastic seats weren’t built for that.

A ridiculously long running time is a hallmark of any big benefit, of course, as too is an eclectic booking policy, to maximise the appeal. There can’t be much Venn diagram overlap between fans of Kasabian and fans of Rizzle Kicks, but here they are sharing a bill. The former were the musical highlight, alongside Gallagher’s High Flying Birds , delivering a welcome reminder of just how impressive they can be with an awesomely epic version of Fire... which proved an entirely inappropriate introduction to Amstell’s low-key introspection.

Other musical acts on the bill were Emeli Sande, Paloma Faith, Jake Bugg, Jessie J and Nicole Scherzinger. The former Pussycat Doll rather gave away one reason for her involvement in the show by announcing the track Domino as: ‘This song is a positive, inspirational song. It’s also my next single.’

Besides the clumsy plug, surely you can’t tell people your own song is inspirational. I’ll decide what inspires me, and generic, club-friendly, R&B/pop sung by a girl in her pants, isn’t it.

As host, Brand warned against such ungenerous thoughts, pointing out that all the acts were performing for free. Throughout the night, he was playful about both the cause, and his own bad-boy reputation, from flirting with the girls to borrowing a female audience member’s mobile to demonstrate how to text a donation and suggesting: ‘This is the BBC and I’m playing with a phone. It’s already risky territory.’ Then turned to the woman and asked: ‘What’s your grandfather’s phone number?’

Later in the show Brand took a messianic walk among his followers in the audience, finding the most funny in banter with a young lad called Alfie, which he knew would never make the TV. ‘They’re not going to show a BBC presenter getting anywhere near a fucking kid,’ he said knowingly.

Brand was at his best, though, when padding for time from backstage as techies were setting up for bands, ad libbing like crazy yet consistently finding the funny. His banter with pal Fielding, especially, was priceless.

Fielding appeared on stage, uncredited, as hard-ass New York cop Raymond Boombox, delivering his ‘anti’-drug message, which might have been more weird than hilarious – an epitaph for much of his output – though it was entertaining watching people figure out who was behind the gaffer-tape ’tache.

He’d been preceded by Jack Whitehall, who seems to be channelling a lot of Michael McIntyre with his upper-middle-class observational incredulity. After something of a slow start, he found his pace with some material about bullying, an old and obvious gag about the campaigning wristbands notwithstanding.

Amstell injected a bold note of cynicism into proceedings. Reverting to his Pop World snidery, he questioned Jessie J’s motives in shaving her head for Red Nose Day – and even whether charity was the best way to combat the complicated problems of poverty. It was nicely contrary, but he could have used more time to expand, especially after dealing with the gear-change of following Kasabian.

After his tumultuous week at the hands of The Sun, Jason Manford delivered a solid but unspectacular observational set that probably won’t be remembered on such a packed night. Eddie Izzard was far more successful. Even if some of his initial flights of fancy into the topics of human sacrifices and Charles I’s reign didn’t quite land, his unique thought processes are always fascinating, and after padding around a while, he finally found the vein of wit, to use an entirely inappropriate metaphor.

Jimmy Carr did what Jimmy Carr does, pointed if unprincipled one-liners – some that he’s been doing for a while, and some new – accompanied by his distinctive heehaw laugh. He set a high gag-rate in the limited timeslot, and if he was setting the taste bar low, so Frankie Boyle could stomp it down through the ground.

‘I’m genuinely surprised to be here,’ he said, surely echoing the thoughts of many a BBC executive. And indeed, he was cut from the ‘almost-live’ broadcast after being brutally offensive with every perfectly-crafted line. Criticising the hypocrisy of Comic Relief while much of the West profits from Third-World strife might have touched a nerve, but it was an harsh anti-Queen setup that provoked the greatest boos of discontent among a surprisingly monarchist crowd. ‘A joke is just a proposition, a “what if”?’ he explained, as he’s probably quite used to doing. But it’s the quality of the punchlines that determine whether real offence is caused, and unlike most low-aiming wannabe shock comics, his sharp writing scores on that count.

Doc Brown, despite being the lowest-profile act on the bill, showed why he deserved to be there with a brief set featuring his boldly political comedy rap about poor tea-making technique, before the comedy was closed with John Bishop making reference to his own, more strenuous, fundraising efforts of last year. Despite spending most of his set doing the admin of emphasising the positive aspects of the night, it was Bishop, not Boyle, who caused the evening’s biggest controversy... by dissing Man Utd, since football is far more important than who rules Britain.

Still, if there was a Champions’ League for comedians, all of this line-up would be in it, ensuring the quality was maintained even if the viewer’s concentration ebbed and flowed over the long night.

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I was a contestant in the same competition back in 2001 and knew John Bishop already as he'd been a featured act at the venue a number of times previously. It made me think I had no chance of winning cos he was being unfairly championed. A few months later I went to see a friend perform at a local show and Bishop was on the bill. He spent most of the time poking fun at a member of the audience who I later found out to be me. It wasn't until he came over to apologise that I realised who he'd been referring to. Seeing his face on billboards and photoshopped DVD covers made me wonder how this guy had progressed with an act that borders on comedy. His performance on Live at the Apollo was all about him being on the show before. What a conceited man he is. Phony accent too. Pathetic

Nick, November 2010

I saw the show at Southport theatre and was not very impressed. Twenty minutes material spread out into two plus hours. He used bad language and tried to use the audience to drag the show out a bit longer by asking questions and encouraging them to call out answers, this backfired when he received an answer he did not approve of. His Liverpool accent I thought was a little to contrived so I looked up his origin it read as Runcorn now living in Manchester. I don't think Liverpool people would class Runcorn Cheshire as being in Liverpool.

Liverpool Lou, November 2010

Saw John Bishop in Southport on November 3, he was brilliant, a warm and witty comedian who really engaged with the audience. Unfortunately, in the second half, someone in the front row made some sort of very abusive remark relating to mothers and John found it very hard to recover himself from this, I felt really sorry for him (as I think many of the audience did) and he kept apologising to this guy . It slightly took the edge off for him but he is a great performer and was very popular and well liked by the audience.

Marie, November 2010

Ken and Riera obviously are cuckoo John Bishop is the best thing for a long time. If John Bishop was so rubbish why oh why has he sold out everywhere ? John Bishop is brilliant!

Natalie, October 2010

He is crap: 'Men don't like texting, do they', and so on

arthur seaton, June 2010

Was him in Norwich very funny. My daughter has not stop laughing since

James, April 2010

I forgot to say that in the Cardiff gig (and all his gigs i presume), he talked about television appearances. He explained he didnt like watching himself on tv but did so to see what of his material had been shown, so he could then remove it from his shows. True to his word, every part of the show was fresh to me and i have seen most of his tv appearances.

James, April 2010

Saw John in Cardiff few weeks ago. He was better than i was expecting, and i was already a fan. He was witty, funny and very warm. The gig in question was a re-scheduled date from a january gig which he cancelled. There were only about 200 of us crammed into the bar, very intimate. He apologised for cancelling on us in january and put on a free bar during the interval! Can't argue with that!

James, April 2010

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