The Kevin Bishop Show

Kevin Bishop talks to Benjie Goodhart  about the perils of being a child actor, how his comedy developed as a survival skill, and why he's hoping not to bump into Jason Statham anytime soon.

You started out in Grange Hill.  What was that experience like, as a first acting job?

Terrible.  It's got to be one of the worst jobs ever.  In the days when I was a child actor it was really hard work for not a great deal of money.  I'm not talking about Grange Hill, I'm talking in general.  Child actors were paid a fraction of what the adults got paid.  I danced in a pantomime when I was a kid, when I was about eight years old.  Two shows a day, all the way through the Christmas and New Year period, and at the end I got a cheque for £24.  For, what, three months work?  The workload I did as a child was probably harder than the workload I do now.  You had to be a professional performer, and if your standards slipped you got bollocked.  You weren't allowed to be a kid.  You'd be accused of being unprofessional –- aged ten.  But it was my choice. 

You weren't pushed into it?

Not at all.  I didn't have pushy parents.  I begged them to let me do all of this stuff.  My dad didn't want me to do it.  He didn't relax about the idea until I was working with The Muppets in Hollywood.  It was only then he began to think it might work out for me.  It's so difficult to keep working.  I spent years out of work, working in call centres. 

So suddenly, as a teenager, you're making feature films, working in Hollywood.  Did that go to your head?

I look back, and I think to a certain extent it must have gone to my head a little bit.  I remember going back to school and finding it really weird that I had to put my hand up to ask to go to the toilet, when I'd been working on a film set with The Muppets.  I had been acting like an adult, and now I had to act like a child.  School was really difficult for me.  Kids are cruel at the best of times.

Was there an element of jealousy?

Oh man, phenomenal jealousy.  I'd be coming out of the school and there'd be kids from other schools, in other blazers, waiting to beat me up.  It was really full on.  At the time I thought it was me.  I thought "They don't like me, I'm a dickhead, I'm a twat."  But now I look back and think it was totally understandable that they were jealous.  I was hardly ever in school, and when I was in, I was just messing about, the classroom clown.  I think the comedy side of things came as a defence mechanism to being bullied.  Being funny was a life skill.  But it got me into a lot of trouble at school.  I could take off every teacher, male and female, and that was a laugh, but it got me suspended.  I never thought, standing outside the headmaster's office all those times, that I'd ever make a career out of messing around.  So I suppose it's all been worth it in the end.

You've done other jobs - from being a labourer, to a barrister's clerk to a chef.  Did that help give you a sense of perspective?

Yeah, of course.  You've got to live.  Had I gone from Treasure Island to more fame and success, it would have destroyed me.  I hadn't had a life.  I'd not had a childhood as such –- and we know how damaging that can be.  Look at Michael Jackson.  So much as I hated it at the time, not working, I look back now and think "God, it's great that I didn't go on to do loads more."  And also, a lot of characters that I do in shows are based on people that I've met when I was doing those jobs.  I think you need to have had a life in order to be an actor in the first place.

You're known a lot for your comedy, but you've done quite a lot of serious films.  People here don't know about it, because a lot of the stuff you've done has been European films.

Yeah.  That makes me sound like a porn star!  When I was about 20-years-old, I auditioned for a French film.  They hired me for this film, and wrote this character for me, and it was brilliant.  I loved working on the film.  It was a very different atmosphere to working on a British film, which is much more efficient.  In France, everyone is an artist, everyone's got an opinion, but it's all very quiet and calm.  I loved working in European film.  That was my main thing for years, I did one or two European films every year.  No-one even knew who I was over here.  That all changed when I did an episode of My Family, which led on to Spoons, which led on to Star Stories.

Is Star Stories as much of a riot to film as it looks?

Yeah, it's one of the best jobs I've ever had.  We did three series of that, and it was the highlight of the year, filming that.  You look forward to that part of the summer so much.  The cast are such a lovely bunch.  They're my best friends, those guys.  We see each other all the time.  It's just alchemy, I think, one of those things it's the right time and the right place and everything just fits together.

You've got a new series of The Kevin Bishop show coming up.  For the uninitiated, what's it about?

It's a rapid-fire sketch show based on the world of telly.  It's set around a Sky box, with the idea that an unseen viewer is flicking channels quite regularly.  That's a concept that allows us to get in and out of sketches really quickly.

The rapid fire element of it is quite like an updated version of The Fast Show.  Were you a fan?

Yeah, massive fan.  That was my biggest influence, as a kid.  Harry Enfield and Chums, anything with Paul Whitehouse in it, I'd watch religiously. 

Who are your other comic inspirations?

They're mostly from when I was a kid.  So as much as I probably wouldn't watch it now, Russ Abbott was a big influence, I loved him.  And Rik Mayall, The Young Ones, Blackadder, anything from that 80s period.  I think it subliminally honed my comedy. 

Do you enjoy the process of writing comedy?

Yeah.  It wasn't easy at first, I didn't take to it naturally.  You need to be quite disciplined.  But once I got to the second series, I'd trained my mind to do it.  Now whenever I have a bit of time, I'll just think about situations and if I can build a sketch out of them.  It just gets you like that.

A lot of your stuff is quite near the knuckle.  Did you get a lot of complaints from the first series?

We got a few.  But in comedy you have to surprise people.  There's nothing more boring than a predictable joke.  We don't write a sketch and set out to offend people, but people have different levels of what they find offensive.  You can't please everybody.

Are there specific places where you draw the line?  Do you ever write a sketch and then think you shouldn't use it?

No, if I've written a sketch, it rarely if ever crosses a line.  But if other people try to get me to say something they've written that I think is in bad taste, that's where you need to be brave enough to ay you're not comfortable with it.  But our only real rule for the show is, if it's funny, it goes in.

Who are the new characters you're introducing this series?

We've got a new guy, Michael Rockerfeller, who works in a department store.  It's based on a guy who was working in Macy's when I was visiting New York.  I asked if he had a shirt in medium, and he said [puts on camp American voice]: 'Ohmigod, are you from London?  Oh, Princess Diana, why did they take you from us?'  And he loved English people and everything about England, but he had no idea about England at all, so he just made it all up.  He's come across really well in the show.  And we've got a couple of Trustafarians who find everything 'a bit annoying'.  I was on a train one day, and I heard these guys talking, and saying "Yah, it's a bit annoying, cos I've got this trust fund that I can't get into until I'm, like, 25, and it's a bit annoying, because I'm, like, 24."  And I remember thinking 'That's about as hard as life's got for them –- a bit annoying'.  And so the characters go on a journey that becomes more and more extreme, until they're about to be beheaded by terrorists, and they still think it's all 'a bit annoying'.

Your impressions are a very big part of the show.  Are there any celebrities you particularly enjoy playing?

I've done so many it's difficult to single any out.  I did enjoy playing Ross Kemp.  And Simon Cowell and Gordon Ramsay.  I enjoy all of them, really.  If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it.

Have you ever met anyone you've lampooned and got any feedback off them?

Osama Bin Laden –- he was pissed off!  No, Jonathan Ross, he liked his impression.  Harry Hill liked his.  Simon Cowell apparently liked his, although I've not met him, and Take That apparently loved theirs, and George Michael apparently loved his.  I dunno that Tom Cruise loved his…  I'm a bit worried Jason Statham's going to kick my arse when he sees me –- I take him off in episode one.  He's pretty hard, isn't he?

The Kevin Bishop Show is on Channel 4 on Fridays from 31st July at 10pm.