chortle.co.uk VENUE: Pleasance Courtyard
DATE: August 4th to 30th (not 16th)
Description
Des spent six months working four minimum wage jobs around Ireland and surviving off the money. His experiences were made into a television documentary for RTE. The programme was a major success and his Edinburgh show plans to bring the experience to the UK including some small segments from the programme. Many comedians do jokes about kebabs but few have ventured into the dark humour of underpaid workers who serve the drunken populace night after night.
Review
Des Bishop wanted to live like common people, wanted to do whatever common people do. So he took a series of horrible jobs on Ireland's minimum wage to experience first-hand how difficult it was to cope with the monotonous work and live on the meagre salary.
Unlike most low-paid workers, though, this smart stand-up got to make a documentary about his experiences, and had a nice Dublin flat to go home to after the ordeal was over. If only a real burger-flipper had had the gumption to strike a TV deal first.
This powerful live show draws on the same material, describing his thankless, soul-destroying, back-breaking work behind the fast food counter at Abrakebabra, stacking supermarket shelves, cleaning a hotel or working at a swimming pool with theme park pretensions.
It's the sort of relentless graft that provides plenty to get angry about, giving real fire to Bishop's rants. A month of serving unhappy meals to drunk, aggressive people who spout racist comments to his immigrant colleagues is enough to wind anybody up.
This is not solely a tirade against corporate greed, but also the demeaning way those on the bottom rung of the service industry ladder are treated by ignorant customers. A key message is simply to treat people with respect, and think twice before moaning to the guy mopping the floor rather the bosses really responsible. After all, chances are the staff hate the company much more than any customer.
None of Bishop's employers are huge multinationals, but he complains that owners of small and medium-sized businesses are equally responsible for exploiting staff, most of whom are, of course, immigrants. This adds further food for thought to Bishop's skilfully delivered material, especially for those who believe anyone who comes into the country is out to steal 'our' jobs.
To an arts festival crowd, he may be preaching to the converted - or, at least, he flatters us into believing that's the case - compared to the wider audience reached by television.
But as a stand-up show it still a revealing, fascinating, guilt-inducing glimpse into a life most people who can afford £10 a ticket do not experience; the relentless tedium not only of the unchallenging graft, but also never having enough money to do anything but stare at the passing traffic. For Bishop, the experience had a timeframe, for those stuck in this miserable netherworld, there is often no end.
Steve Bennett
Bishop's state of grace
Review - Vicar St
By Alex McNeill
Evening Herald, March 29th 2004
Irish comedy is much the richer for having Des Bishop, who at 28 has
already pushed away many of the crutches that hold back so many promising
performers.
When this reviewer first saw him more than three years ago, Bishop was
all anger and adrenaline and angling primarily on his origins: "Look!
I'm from QUEENS! GRRRR!"
Since, his aping of Bill Hicks' anti-war material was a kind of laziness
that broke little new ground.
But in Friday's opeing at Vicar Street, he demonstrated that he's come
of age (more or less).
After 13 years of living in Ireland, he's now got material and courage
to challenge, rather than pander to, the sensibilities of his audience.
His set reprised and expanded some themes from his RTE series, The Des
Bishop Work Experience, but it went well beyond.
As an outsider/insider riffing on Irish (and his own) attitudes toward
immigrants, travellers, poverty, clerical abuse and racism; Bishop has
sacrificed only a bit of energy for intelligence and in the exchange
achieves a kind of grace.
After a mind-blowingly funny spiel as commentator on a 2024 All-Ireland
Hurling Final, Bishop savaged a heckler for making a racist remark with "this
is not a BNP meeting, it's cool, just shut up. I have the mic and you
have your ignorance."
His encore - nearly half again as long as the set - was overlong and
flaccid in parts.
But we'll forgive him.
His talent, only barely developed, threatens to one day outshine the
whole of the current Irish comic pantheon.