If pushed, you’d have to concede that there are people who might actually
dislike Kevin Bishop. Mr and Mrs Michael Douglas, for example (the cast of
Channel 4’s Star Stories, of which he was a leading light, sent
them up beautifully not so long ago). And Scientologists (who apparently
weren’t too happy about the episode of the series in which the
actor-comedian satirised Tom Cruise). And yes, it’s likely that there’ll be
a few more non-fans by the time his self-titled series has played itself out
on the network six weeks hence. But really, it would require either a very
hard heart or a comprehensive sense-of-humour failure for you not to warm to
the gifted 28-year-old. Take me, not normally a push-over for funnymen,
despite enjoying being made to laugh. He has me a full five minutes before
we meet.
The stacked-up North London traffic is causing a heat haze. All around me
tempers are flaring. Even elderly pedestrians are making faster progress. On
the verge of being late (unprofessional), I consider trying to park up in
this unfamiliar stretch of the capital and then complete my journey on foot.
Which is when an unexpected text comes through from Bishop. “It’s Kevin. I’m
at the caff and am very chilled. No rush at all so take ur time.” “What a
nice guy!” I think, and that’s exactly what he proves to be when eventually
I find him, the sole customer at his chosen eaterie, forking down a late
lunch. Solicitation itself, he offers me coins for the meter (a visitor’s
permit if I’d prefer it), my choice from the menu and the sunnier side of
the dusty park bench to which we quickly adjourn. So where’s the catch?
Well, unless you’re of any particular religious persuasion, are over 18 and
famous or are certain that political correctness alone will protect you from
being made a figure of fun, then there isn’t one. Otherwise, prepare to be
offended. And here’s the great thing. Bishop is prepared to offend anyone
and everyone, as long as in doing so he is funny. He’s an equal
opportunities offender, you see (a repeat one, at that). Catholics like
himself come in for it on The Kevin Bishop Show. Jews and Muslims,
too. Amy Winehouse and Pete Doherty may be obvious targets meanwhile
(carry-over favourites from a Channel 4 pilot that performed well last
autumn) and again they are not spared. But, for example, you wouldn’t expect
to find yourself laughing at a Stephen Hawking sketch, would you?
You would? Then this is a brand of humour that’s right up your street. And
it’s one likely to turn the bank manager’s son/former child actor/unlikely
star of a clutch of arthouse movie favourites into the next big name in
British comedy. Not that his native public has yet picked up on the fact.
“Because of the Euro stuff [especially L’Auberge Espagnole
– The Spanish Apartment – in which he was among an
international cast that included Audrey Tautou], I get
too-cool-to-recognise-you Frenchmen sidling up to me and saying, ‘OK, so, I
saw that fee-lem, but there was one scene I was not so, how you say it?,
keen on,’ and wanting to have a contextual debate. Brits just click
their fingers in your face when they see you on the bus and say, ‘You’re off
the telly, intcha? But watcha in? Nah, don’t tell me...’”
Cheerfully swinging his sandalled feet, Bishop admits that what most people
know him for is the ongoing series of NatWest ads on TV (he plays the
common-sense young banker, the straight man foil to a pair of complete and
utter bankers). “And that character is very much my dad. He is a bank
manager, the voice of reason, very strait-laced although with a wicked sense
of humour. And I owe him everything, because for 35 years he’s come up on
the same train from Orpington each day to work in an office in order to pay
for us kids (Bishop is the eldest of five) to have the freedom to do what we
want in life.” An appreciative and loving son then, but what shaped him into
such a fearlessly naughty one? “I just always was in trouble all the time,”
he shrugs, smiling. “Never for anything sinister or bad, I hasten to add.
But at school I spent more time standing outside classrooms than I did
sitting in them. Either that, or waiting to see the headmaster.”
And, it seems, here is a classic case of a schoolboy using as a defensive
weapon his ability to make others laugh. Just 14 when chosen for the
recurring role of Sam Spalding, in the youth television series Grange Hill,
he was given leave of absence two years later to play Jim Hawkins in the
made-in-Britain film Muppet Treasure Island. Returning to his old
desk after each such excursion, he received anything but a hero’s welcome.
“I suffered terrible bullying. Really bad. Kids are cruel but at least
they’re honest and, if they don’t like you, they tend to let you know about
it. Believe me, I knew.
“Personally, I don’t ‘get’ jealousy at all. I don’t
have that component in my make-up. But I understand why it would piss the others
off, me doing algebra alongside them one day, then disappearing off the next
on to some film set. And the result was that I’d come out of school knowing
what was about to happen. I just took it as the norm, never gave in, never
complained to staff about it. ‘OK, now I’m going to have a punch-up.’ Not
just with someone from my own school, either. During those times when I was
on TV, there’d be lads in different blazers waiting there, ready to
beat me up.” An odd situation in which to find humour, or perhaps not.
“I was just constantly trying to be liked and felt that if people were
laughing at the things I did or said, then maybe they liked me. Simple as
that, really.”
It was the experience of working with Miss Piggy, Kermit and co that convinced
Bishop he wanted to act. Turning that into reality took time, and he has
supported himself along the way by working variously as a barrister’s clerk,
labourer and chef. Not that he regrets it. “It was humbling and I needed a
bit of that.” For it to be via comedy rather than acting that he is set to
make his breakthrough is a surprise, however. He’s a good actor, after all,
as his performance alongside Marianne Faithfull in the current film Irina
Palm clearly shows.
And it’s not even as if he has much time for comedians en masse. “You’ll get
the youngster who’s trying to out-funny everyone in the room to compensate
for the fact that no one knows who he is. And the known names deliberately
not being funny, either because they’re frightened of being judged and found
wanting, or ’cos they don’t want to have their material nicked. Then
there’ll be the heavyweight who’s heard every joke there is and is
determined that nothing and no one will make him laugh, ’cos he’s the one
true genius. Give me actors any day. They’re much more likely to enjoy a
mess around.” And messing around is something that Bishop does wonderfully
well, as Star Stories in 2006 showed. Though an ensemble exercise in
format and intent, he emerged its leading light.
“Which must have irritated everyone else involved no end. But I have this
chameleon thing going on, which is why I picked up so many good roles in the
first series [in addition to his aforementioned turns as Michael Douglas and
Cruise, he portrayed, among others, Sirs Alex Ferguson and Andrew Lloyd
Webber, Justin Timberlake and Simon Cowell]. I can look a bit like lots of
people, with the result that when it came time to make the second series,
people were saying, ‘You’ve got to give the lead to Kevin ’cos he’s the
star, isn’t he?’, when actually I wasn’t.” Such successful sleight of hand
persuaded Channel 4 to offer him that pilot of his own. “Great, I thought,
and told them I was working on this sitcom about a guy living on a caravan
park. ‘Stop right there,’ they said immediately.”
Fast-paced sketches was both what the network had in mind and what he went on
to deliver. Forty-plus of them, in fact, hitting viewers at scatter-gun
speed within 23 broadcast minutes, the majority laugh-out-loud funny. Now
he’s pulling off the same feat an additional six times over, and anyone and
anything is fair game (although he draws his own line at celeb offspring).
“If it makes me laugh, I’ll do it. That’s the only criterion. We live in a
society that gets more oppressive and politically correct with each passing
day and I for one feel stifled by it. Comedy is the great icebreaker, after
all. For all that it’s got me into trouble, it’s got me out of it more often
than not.” So prepare yourself, if you will, for such quick-fire delights as Guantanamo
Baywatch, Saudi Blind Date, the MTV spoof Stephen Hawking’s
Pimp My Ride and more.
Some victims have been big enough to find his portrayals of them funny. Or at
least Bishop thinks/hopes they have. “I met Mrs Andrew Ridgeley
(ex-Bananarama singer Keren Woodward) at a wedding and she told me George
Michael all but wet himself with laughter at the Star Stories about
him. But then the cameraman on this show says his daughter goes to school
with one of George’s agent’s kids and claims that no, he was furious, so I’m
not sure.” But then that’s the least of his worries. Bishop gets married
this month to his photographer-girlfriend of seven years, Casta. Big
Catholic wedding. Non-Catholic bride has been undergoing religious
instruction. And what his own mum doesn’t yet know is that the The
Kevin Bishop Show contains one or two or more Jesus jokes. Oh dear!
The Kevin Bishop Show begins on Channel 4 on Friday at 10pm
