In name of the father

Des Bishop’s new book celebrates his father’s role as a loving parent despite a troubled past, Richard Fitzpatrick reports.

LIKE many comics, Des Bishop has mined his life for stage material, most memorably perhaps in side-splitting descriptions of his battle with testicular cancer in 2000. With his family memoir he has taken revelation a step further.

Entitled My Dad Was Nearly James Bond, it tells the story of his father’s extraordinary life, Bishop’s troubled relationship with his parents, and ultimately how Bishop’s family, including his two brothers, came together in the last 15 months of his father’s life before he died from lung cancer in February 2011.