At 43 years old, even though 2019 has thus far been treating comedian Des Bishop well, he still feels like the year doesn’t begin until September.
“I still think in academic year cycles, kind of because our job is that way!” he says. Indeed, there’s a looming dread for much of the northern hemisphere come mid-August. “And I went to boarding school so that’s the same feeling Sundays used to bring!” Des exclaims. “That’s one thing comedy does, takes away that feeling of Mondays. That’s one bit of 'normality' that being a comedian separates you from. Weekends are your work time but not your dread time, because you love the work and you love the fact that Friday and Saturday are the busiest, most fun nights.”
No Des dread allowed here, because the American-Irish comedian is back on Aussie shores for the Melbourne and Sydney Comedy Festivals with a brand new hour of stand-up. He has the best of both worlds in that he has his foot on both sides of the fence – so how does one merge themselves to merge these jokes to be understood in Australia? “I’ve asked a few people if jokes will have the same resonance in Australia and some jokes I don’t do.
“Years ago that was more of a problem for me because my stuff used to be more geared around what does an 'outsider' see in Ireland? But since I’ve been doing more stuff in New York that hasn’t been such an issue because crowds in New York [City] tend to be more diverse – however, it is a frustration when you have a killer routine that just culturally doesn’t translate. That’s just a hazard of the job.”
Sometimes Des will find an Australian quirk he can run with – but never has he had an instance where a joke has been received better, or worse, than he intended. “I guess the only thing about, say the Melbourne festival, sometimes I’ll have more storytelling jokes or like last year, I had a joke I’d been sitting on a while but didn’t want to do it in Ireland or New York because it was controversial at the time – but I felt confident that Melbourne would be open to it and appreciate the effort of talking about a difficult subject.
“Sometimes it’s more of a sense that the Melbourne Comedy Festival crowd is more savage, and feeling confident that you can explore something a bit deeper.”
Speaking of exploring things a bit deeper, Des’ new show ‘The Comments Section’ will have quite the variety of topics, even if the comic isn’t sure what those topics are just yet. “You write down what the show is going to be often before you have a clue what the f... it’s going to be,” Des says. “It’s impossible to really know that four or five months before, what you’re going to talk about.
“The description of my show was basically an aspiration! These are things I think I’m going to explore! If you were to take from it international themes, that may not be correct. But you can definitely take from it a sense that Des is going to talk about as much as is possible to talk about in an hour that people can identify with!”
