{"id":417330,"date":"2026-01-16T17:22:16","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T17:22:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/417330\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T17:22:16","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T17:22:16","slug":"how-my-marriage-became-an-oscar-tipped-film","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/417330\/","title":{"rendered":"how my marriage became an Oscar-tipped film"},"content":{"rendered":"

When part of your life becomes an anecdote, an interview topic, the key chapter of your autobiography, a comedy routine and finally a film, then whose life is it anyway? Yours or everyone\u2019s? I ask only because I am meeting John Bishop<\/a>, and the story of a successful 33-year-old pharmaceuticals sales executive of that name finding himself on stage at an open-mic night in Manchester and discovering he can make audiences laugh has gained almost legendary status, a paradigm of second starts and belatedly unleashed talent.<\/p>\n

Just as well known is its payoff. In 2001, a year after his accidental debut, his estranged wife, Melanie \u2014 they were divorcing, with three children under six between them, having failed to find space for each other \u2014 happened to visit the Frog & Bucket Comedy Club. She was shocked, because she had no idea of her soon to be ex\u2019s second career and also, presumably, because one of his jokes involved her decapitation. Yet afterwards she approached the bar and told him she had just encountered the funny 21-year-old Manchester Poly student she had first met and fallen for.<\/p>\n

It took months at Relate, but eventually they abandoned their divorce. The Bishops have stayed together ever since, from John\u2019s new career\u2019s fitful beginnings, through his TV breakthrough to his becoming an arena-filling stand-up, Doctor Who<\/a> star and chat-show host, and therefore \u2014 like the tale of how comedy saved his marriage \u2014 national property.<\/p>\n

\"Is<\/p>\n

Will Arnett and Laura Dern in Is This Thing On?<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

Now Hollywood has co-opted their lives. The film version of the Bishops\u2019 post-split romance, Is This Thing On?, starring Arrested Development\u2019s Will Arnett<\/a>, opens in Britain this month. While missing out on a Golden Globe nomination, it has already won a prize from the Savannah Film Festival and there are hopes of an Oscar nod next week. The critics adored it.<\/p>\n

Is This Thing On? has its own origin story. About eight years ago, Bishop tells me, he was chatting to the British film producer Kris Thykier (Mr Claudia Winkleman<\/a>) after a film screening. Thykier asked how he got into comedy. Bishop explained. Thykier thought there was a movie in it. Bishop started on a script but found writing it was almost impossible because he was always correcting himself about \u201cwhether this or that really happened\u201d.<\/p>\n

Cut to the Netherlands some years later. Thykier invites Bishop to Amsterdam where he is making the Sky thriller Riviera with Arnett. Bishop retells his story to Arnett, who proposes he has a go at a screenplay with the British writer Mark Chappell. Bishop initially wants to \u201cchip in\u201d but ends up just \u201cdownloading\u201d his memories to the pair of them over a three-hour meeting in London. Finally, the actor and director Bradley Cooper (he was both in the eight-times Oscar-nominated remake of A Star Is Born in 2018) signs as director, co-writer and supporting actor. Bishop is left with a \u201cstory by\u201d co-credit but does not appear in the film, and Arnett plays not Cheshire-bred John Bishop but the American Alex Novak, with Laura Dern as his wife, Tess.<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT001051151710\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWe contributed to the story. The story\u2019s ours, but the film\u2019s theirs\u201d<\/p>\n

TOM JACKSON FOR THE TIMES MAGAZINE. SUIT, MRPORTER.COM. TOP, JOHNSMEDLEY.COM. SHOES, GORAL-SHOES.CO.UK<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like if you write a film: you hand it over to somebody else to make it. It\u2019s not yours any more,\u201d Bishop says when I meet him and Melanie in his dressing room at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham, where he will perform the final mega-gig of his 2025 arena tour, 25 Years of Stand Up. \u201cSo we contributed to the story. The story\u2019s ours, but the film\u2019s theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet, I say to Melanie, the film is still based on a difficult period of her life. Was it not triggering? \u201cActually I am really pleased,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s a beautiful film. I read the script and it\u2019s how I would have imagined it to be filmed. It\u2019s quite grainy. They did it with two cameras, so it\u2019s really up close. You\u2019re right in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whether there were tussles between the Bishops and the film-makers over their rendition of the story, who can say? Bishop denies it, but without vehemence. Both are certainly pleased that details of their real-life reconciliation made the final cut.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey filmed it in March\/April but [the year before] I got an email from Laura Dern, which again was quite strange,\u201d Melanie says. \u201cWe had lunch in Claridge\u2019s and we just didn\u2019t stop talking. I was just thinking, \u2018You were in the most amazing pivotal film of my youth,\u2019 which was Wild at Heart. \u2018Oh my gosh, it\u2019s you!\u2019 And she was just asking questions. She was really listening. We got on like a house on fire. She kept making notes, and then we parted.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Is This Thing On? review<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cAnyway, to cut a long story short, there are a couple of things I told her about my memories of when we split up and they\u2019re included. One is among the most hauntingly hard scenes in the film. It\u2019s to do with their children coming home from school with nits in their hair, which is what happened with John and I when we had split up. The kids were with me Monday to Friday, and John had them at the weekend. And I got a phone call from him saying, \u2018You\u2019ll have to come round now. The kids have all got nits.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhoever\u2019s house they\u2019d been in, you had to check their hair for nits,\u201d John explains.<\/p>\n

\""Is<\/p>\n

John Bishop and Will Arnett<\/p>\n

GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

\u201cSo we had this afternoon doing the nits, because at this point there was no contact really. And it\u2019s been worked into the film in such a beautiful way.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her husband is 30 minutes from appearing on stage and while showing no signs of nerves (and still in his jeans), he suggests we go to a room opposite and meet \u201cthe cousins\u201d, who have also come to the show. We open the door: he has an awful lot of cousins. He regales us with memories of one of his first arena appearances, back in his native Liverpool, another family affair.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more stories about comedy from our experts<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018One gig I said, invite the family. All 140 of them\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were 10,000 people in the audience and I\u2019d said to my dad, \u2018Invite the family.\u2019 So we had 140 cousins and everybody \u2014 massive guest list. Then in the second half \u2014 I\u2019d seen them all and had drinks and stuff in the interval \u2014 I was up on stage and I heard someone shout out, \u2018John! John!\u2019 I could see this figure and I went, \u2018What is it, mate?\u2019 And he said, \u2018John, I can\u2019t find my seat.\u2019 It was my Uncle Dave, thinking I\u2019d go, \u2018Oh, hang on. I know where you\u2019re sitting, Dave.\u2019 Then my Auntie Carol got up, \u2018Dave, you\u2019re embarrassing our John in front of all these people. Sit down, you dickhead.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

\"European<\/p>\n

Bishop and his wife, Melanie, centre, with their sons, Daniel, Luke and Joe, at the film\u2019s premiere in October. \u201cIf I didn\u2019t have a gay son, I\u2019d probably want one\u201d<\/p>\n

GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

I am still laughing as I make it back to the 15,000-plus seat arena and, mercifully, locate my seat unaided. The show marks the 25th anniversary of his debut, and to celebrate Bishop has decreed that all seats should sell at \u00a325. Much of the audience, I realise, will end up spending more on the arena\u2019s two-pint tumblers of beer and fancy hotdogs than on their tickets.<\/p>\n

He enters in a T-shirt under a very lightweight suit. There are routines about his accent (he was mistaken for Ukrainian in New York), his \u201cundercarriage\u201d waxing (for a charity cycle ride), and his childhood dyslexia (his father drove him to a Welsh road sign to reassure him he was not alone), and a not-nasty joke about illegal immigrants. It is a rear-view mirror routine from a man who will be 60 in November.<\/p>\n

His delivery is hugely confident, bursts with charm and comes with a surprisingly physical sequence (the waxing bit). When I first interviewed him in 2017, he called his act \u201cbroad and middle of the road\u201d and so it is. If I have a reservation it concerns his story about \u201cjoining the mile-high club single-handed\u201d after pitifully fantasising about a twentysomething air hostess; his semi-nostalgic section about grabbing girls by the hips in teen discos (\u201cthe erection section\u201d); and the moment he tells women in the audience, \u201cIf you live with a man for more than five years you have already won\u2026 He is not chatting anyone up because he does not know how.\u201d Married men do not need to, apparently: they just \u201cpress\u201d into their wives\u2019 backs and hope they say, \u201cOh, go on then.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2022 Read more film reviews, guides about what to watch and interviews<\/a><\/p>\n

These sequences contrast with the final section in which he relates the When John Got Back with Mel story with so much feeling that his voice cracks at the end, both in Birmingham and, when I watch the recording of the show on Sky, in Dublin. He performs before thousands, he tells the thousands, but Melanie is the one he most wants to make laugh. The show closes with a snowfall of confetti, a family group photo on the jumbo screen and the, by then, inevitable standing ovation.<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000700814922\"<\/p>\n

Appearing in Doctor Who alongside Jodie Whittaker<\/p>\n

BBC<\/p>\n

Five weeks later, I see a press screening of Is This Thing On? in London and find it everything the Bishops promised. It is a sober comedy of love, disappointment and no-illusions compromise. It treats the wife\u2019s career frustrations as seriously as the husband\u2019s. Its tone is nearer Bergman\u2019s Scenes from a Marriage than DeVito\u2019s The War of the Roses. In Birmingham, Bishop described it to me as \u201can adult film\u201d and Melanie added \u201cabout an adult relationship\u201d. It is both those things.<\/p>\n

I leave wondering whether it is possible that this movie, to which Bishop granted independence, is more faithful to the truth of his marriage than his own telling of it as the finale to a ribald stage show. I am glad I am to get another chance to talk about it when the compulsive performer returns from a short tour of Australia.<\/p>\n

\u2018Your testosterone levels are low\u2019<\/p>\n

Few comedians can have worked harder in the past 18 months than John Bishop. Yet two years before, he had considered quitting the comedy circuit altogether and had to be coaxed back by Melanie, who accused him of becoming a \u201cmiserable git\u201d.<\/p>\n

Was he clinically depressed, I ask one morning a few days before Christmas in a hotel near their home in Surrey.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I don\u2019t think so. I don\u2019t know. I just felt lethargic. I went with Melanie to see a gynaecologist about her HRT and so on. He did an examination, then I came back in and he said, \u2018Look, can I talk to you on your own for a minute?\u2019 I said yes and he said, \u2018How are you?\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, \u2018I\u2019m feeling lethargic. I\u2019m feeling more emotional than normal.\u2019 So he said, \u2018I\u2019m sending Melanie\u2019s bloods off to get her hormone level. I\u2019ll do the same for you.\u2019 So he sent them off, they came back and he said, \u2018Your testosterone levels are low.\u2019 So he said, \u2018I\u2019ll give you testosterone gel.\u2019 What testosterone does is\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

Control your sex drive?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no, it\u2019s brain function as well. It enhances brain connectivity. It enhances your energy levels.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a male menopause!<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, 100 per cent. I think anybody who doesn\u2019t think that is backwards. It\u2019s well documented.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"John<\/p>\n

Performing in London, in 2019. He considered quitting the comedy circuit: \u201cI felt lethargic. It was male menopause\u201d<\/p>\n

ALAMY<\/p>\n

So the gel helped, but so did the medicine Bishop prescribed for his career, which was to perform in small spaces in lands where nobody knew who he was. He had mourned, he realised, the \u201crough and tumble\u201d of his early years as a comedian. Nowadays he might turn up unannounced at a club to try out new material and the audience would be surprised and pleased to see him. \u201cBut sometimes when you\u2019re trying new material that maybe doesn\u2019t land, you get a bigger applause when you walk on than when you walk off.\u201d<\/p>\n

Playing small clubs in America<\/p>\n

He particularly wanted to perform in New York, where he was unknown, and even more particularly in its legendary Comedy Cellar. Jimmy Carr, who plays the States more than most UK stand-ups, put in a word with Estee Adoram, the comedy matriarch who has been booking acts at the Cellar for ever. She asked for a tape of his act, watched it and, ouch, offered him ten minutes. The ten minutes went well. After all, he was drawing from decades of material new to Americans. \u201cSo I did a little tour, but I\u2019d keep coming back to the Comedy Cellar.\u201d<\/p>\n

The \u201clittle\u201d tour included Philadelphia, Boston, Nashville, Chicago, Denver, Seattle and San Francisco and, as his few weeks in Australia demonstrated, it has never finished. Bishop clearly chases the dragon of his original Frog & Bucket high, but also, he insists, he missed the camaraderie of club comics. At the Cellar, he was proud to be invited to sit at the comics\u2019 table, just as Arnett\u2019s Alex does in Is This Thing On?. Although Bishop promises me comedians are not competitive, he was competitive enough to be miffed when he returned to the club and spotted on the stairs a portrait of Arnett as Alex Novak.<\/p>\n

\""Is<\/p>\n

Is This Thing On? stars Will Arnett and Bradley Cooper at the New York Film Festival last October<\/p>\n

GETTY IMAGES<\/p>\n

\u201cI went, \u2018What the f***?\u2019 So I said to Liz [Furiati, who runs the club], \u2018How can he be there? Alex Novak\u2019s not even real. I haven\u2019t got one up.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

Is he up there now?<\/p>\n

\u201cI am. Alex Novak is right next to me. So of all the things that have come out of this film, me getting my picture on the wall at the Comedy Cellar is one of the best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slated by critics at Edinburgh<\/p>\n

Bishop was there when Arnett performed his film act. \u201cHe did well. He didn\u2019t storm it. He went on and he was a good new comedian.\u201d Equally, one of the misunderstandings about Bishop is that he became an overnight success that first night at the Frog & Bucket. In reality he did not give up his \u00a370,000-a-year job and turn full-time comic until 2006, six years later, when he was almost 40. His excellent 2013 autobiography, How Did All This Happen?, recounts a series of dismal visits to the Edinburgh Fringe where he was slated by critics and attracted tiny audiences. His firstborn, Joe, handed out flyers for his dad on the cobbled streets.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou go from letting your kids see that side of things \u2014 someone following their dreams \u2014 to them seeing you as everyone else\u2019s property. You walk into an airport and you\u2019re stopped all the time and asked for photographs and someone\u2019s handing the cameras to the kids to take pictures. I very quickly stopped that.\u201d<\/p>\n

How?<\/p>\n

\"Royal<\/p>\n

In 2014, at a charity event with the Duchess of Cambridge<\/p>\n

PA<\/p>\n

\u201cMelanie and the kids would go ahead. I honestly don\u2019t mind being stopped, but when you\u2019re with young kids\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

And it was not just stand-up and the television show Live at the Apollo that kept him away from home. At the time of our first interview he was doing a series for the W channel (now U&W) called John Bishop: In Conversation With\u2026 It was extraordinarily good, with Bishop extracting candour from names such as Lindsay Lohan, James Corden and Steve Coogan. If you know only ITV\u2019s recent lightweight The John Bishop Show \u2014 which he has given up, reasoning it was unable to compete either in guests or series length with Graham Norton and Jonathan Ross\u2019s chat shows \u2014 these interviews would astound you. Sadly, he has also stopped his often revealing podcast interview series, Three Little Words, in favour of The Bishop Exchange, a harmless weekly chat with the American stand-up Des Bishop.<\/p>\n

\u2018Doing stand-up, you\u2019re vulnerable\u2019<\/p>\n

So, as Bishop prepares to enter his seventh decade, it really is once more all about stand-up. I want him to define the thrill of it. \u201cIt\u2019s disarming,\u201d he says. \u201cYou have to put your shield down. You have to put your sword away, because if you\u2019re blocking out what you\u2019re feeling or saying or blocking out the room, it\u2019s not going to work.\u201d<\/p>\n

So he feels vulnerable?<\/p>\n

\u201cOh yes. I\u2019ve often said being a comedian is like being a stripper. You build up to a big reveal, which is the punchline, and people either laugh or they don\u2019t laugh. With a stripper, you take off your top and people are either impressed or they\u2019re not. You can\u2019t put it back on and take it off again. You\u2019ve got one chance. So nobody thinks about laughing and comes back half an hour later to do so. It\u2019s instant communication. So that\u2019s vulnerable. That\u2019s the challenge of it, but it is also addictive.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000260061926\"<\/p>\n

James Corden appearing on the \u201cextraordinarily good\u201d John Bishop: In Conversation With\u2026<\/p>\n

ELLIS O\u2019BRIEN<\/p>\n

Yet in Is This Thing On?, the comedy stage appears to be Alex\u2019s safe place, one where he can confess to having slept with another woman. \u201cI never did that,\u201d Bishop says quickly, but what he did do was tell a joke about how he had cut off his wife\u2019s head and kept it in a fridge. \u201cAnd,\u201d he added winkingly, \u201cit is surprising how handy that becomes after a while.\u201d When Necrophilia Met Fellatio. Was that him channelling his anger towards Melanie after their marriage went wrong?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, it was just a gag, but I did do things. Like in the film [where Alex performs the same routine], I used to do this joke about her going out with a fireman and then this whole narrative about how I hate firemen. I hated this fictional person, just in my head.\u201d<\/p>\n

But was it an expression of a real fear?<\/p>\n

\u2018My biggest fear was there\u2019d be a stepdad\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cYes. When you split up, when you\u2019ve got kids, the biggest fear is there\u2019s going to be somebody else, a stepdad. That was my biggest fear in life.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is a much more recent joke he tells about Melanie\u2019s menopause: \u201cThat woman you thought had a hot body really has a hot body.\u201d Does she, I ask, ever take offence?<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, no. If they\u2019re funny, she doesn\u2019t mind. They either make her laugh or make her angry.\u201d<\/p>\n

I suggest, choosing my words, there is a tension between the show\u2019s knowingly sexist first two-thirds and then the third that movingly exposes his love for his wife.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll be honest with you,\u201d he says, \u201cthe last part became much more confessional and emotional than I was expecting.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, again, not even an observational comedian\u2019s life is entirely his own. In his 2022 documentary, John and Joe Bishop: Life After Deaf, about his son Joe, who at 15 contracted a virus and lost much of his hearing from an autoimmune disease, Bishop talks about using his family in his act. \u201cWe\u2019re not the Kardashians,\u201d he says plaintively. \u201cNot everything is for public consumption.\u201d There follows an agonising clip of him on stage in 2010 when he mocks the teenage Joe\u2019s breaking voice and jokes about him facing up to him, \u201clittle lion to big lion\u201d. Bishop reads in his son\u2019s eyes the thought, \u201cI can take you.\u201d But in the film, Melanie says her husband was wrong. \u201cJohn sees his role as the traditional head of the family, but I actually don\u2019t think Joe\u2026 he\u2019s never wanted to be the big lion. That\u2019s not Joe.\u201d When Joe is asked what he thinks of his father\u2019s comedy, he replies, with great timing, \u201cIt is not up my street \u2014 because I tend to be in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the film redeems John\u2019s parenting for us by showing him learning British Sign Language, not just so he can perform to a deaf audience but so he can better communicate with his son. He tells me Joe now plans to train as an actor and their relationship is solid. There is so much that is impressive about Bishop, a man who rose to stardom from the least promising beginnings \u2014 no other showbiz memoir I have read contains a sentence as striking as, \u201cMy dad had been sentenced to a year in prison as a result of an altercation with two men outside a chip shop.\u201d But the work he has put into his relationships with his boys is as impressive as anything, and it must have required sacrificing material that as a younger father he might have used.<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019m called an LGBT ally. Really all I\u2019ve been is a dad\u2019<\/p>\n

He has, I should add, never made comic capital out of his second son, Luke, a dancer, being gay. Indeed he seems almost embarrassed that in 2018 he received the Ally of the Year accolade at the LGBT Awards. \u201cI\u2019ve been celebrated as an ally when really all I\u2019ve been is a dad,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m lucky enough to have three healthy sons who are good lads and one of them happens to be gay, but if I didn\u2019t have a gay son, I\u2019d probably want one.\u201d<\/p>\n

There is one remaining family story he does want telling, but not by him. Melanie, who previously worked for an airline and then a ski company, is a good writer, he says. She is also passionate about the menagerie she keeps: three horses, two Shetland ponies, two donkeys, six pigs, six sheep, two dogs, twelve chickens and a couple of ducks. Two of the horses are mother and son; the latter they bought seven years after his mother.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo now they\u2019re stabled next to each other. They look like each other. That\u2019s a children\u2019s book story, isn\u2019t it?\u201d Bishop says hopefully. I agree. And the great thing about it is that neither of its protagonists is likely to fret about its ownership. <\/p>\n

Is This Thing On? is in cinemas from January 30<\/p>\n

Grooming: Carol Morley at Carol Hayes using Horace. Opening image: sweater, lucafaloni.com<\/a>. Trousers, moss.co.uk<\/a>. Shoes, goral-shoes.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When part of your life becomes an anecdote, an interview topic, the key chapter of your autobiography, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":417331,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[64,63,447,134],"class_list":{"0":"post-417330","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-entertainment"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417330","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=417330"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417330\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/417331"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=417330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=417330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=417330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}