Top 111 Quotes & Sayings by John Bishop - Page 2

Something can only go wrong if you know what you're doing.

I have worked hard to be all the things that I thought a family man should be, but I probably could have done better by not trying to run a family like I was picking a five-a-side football team.

I was right in the middle of a story and leading to a punch line and then I just heard 'John John' and I just looked around. I could see someone in the shadows walking forward and he said 'John I can't find me seat lad, d'ya know where me seat is?' I looked at him and it was my uncle Dave.

Comic Relief funds projects that help lift people out of poverty.

By doing the comedy you don't get heckled by your own wife.

I have fond memories of the Grand National, but in recent years, as I have become more committed to animal welfare, I have grown increasingly uncomfortable about an event that every year results in the deaths of horses.

I do get propositions, but you can't take it serious. I'm in me mid-forties, I've got teenage kids - there's no way I'm going to be caught in a Jacuzzi with some girl out of 'The Only Way Is Essex.'

I left the school sixth form after the first day because they wouldn't let me wear jeans and I couldn't go home and ask for money for trousers.

As a father I can't imagine the pain of digging my own child's grave.

I'm the type of bloke who gets a flatpack cabinet from Ikea, puts it together without reading the instructions, then gets the drill out because the holes are in the wrong place.

My kids get annoyed if you ask them what their GCSE results are.

If you have three children under the age of four, as I did, you have to make choices, because you cannot hold hands with all of them.

Oh, listen, stand-up is my home.

My generation are the neurotic ones. Therapists' offices all over the world are full of patients blaming their parents for their own failings.

There's no slowing down but I've got to be honest, I'm probably not going to learn French.

Being a family man has been the most rewarding and the most disappointing thing I have done in my life.

I mean Ireland, in all honesty I owe Ireland a lot because I think, and I'm not just saying this flippantly, Ireland is probably the reason that I do the job I do because when I started doing stand-up I came to Ireland and I just sort of gelled with the idea of doing it the way I do - telling stories.

I started at 34 and I didn't go full time until I was 40. When I say started, I mean the first time I went on stage.

What made me a comedian was staying on the stage and starting to talk.

I wasn't aware so many kids were lacking basic things like a hot meal at night and somewhere warm and safe to live.

What I found absolutely the best thing about comedy is it's a little club. You find yourself part of this strange needy society of people who want to go on stage and make people happy.

I haven't met a comedian who is judgemental of other comedians.

I am not entirely against horse racing. I even had a share in a horse syndicate with a few mates.

I normally put on Lycra or Speedos to plead with the British public to put their hands in their pocket for Red Nose Day.

There comes a time in your life when you become comfortable in your own skin.

Imagine growing up never feeling loved by your family - the most basic of human needs.

I go out with my mates and after a drink they'll ask, 'How are you a comedian? You're not the funniest among us,' And they're right - I'm not even the funniest in our house.

You can't pretend you're not part of the world that you come from.

I know what it's like to have nothing.

My job is trying to make people laugh. A room full of people laughing forget their worries, their issues, that's why I find it so joyful.

When you're 18, you might think that you're interesting. You're not, you're boring.

When I write something down it doesn't look funny to me. It's about the environment, it's all in the moment.

I'm a big believer that if you touch it, you can believe in it.

I'm not saying everyone who has a problem in their relationship should be a comedian, but I think if you're to work things out you've to get out of the bunker.

One of my sons has a tattoo on his ankle that was meant to be Africa but looks like Australia, one of my sons mumbles, and one of my sons is a gay man. I'll be honest, there's been loads of nights when me and my wife have sat up and worried and worried and worried, 'What are we going to do if he doesn't stop mumbling?'

I don't sit at home and craft a joke.

Some families out there have unimaginably tough lives.

When I was 30 we had two kids, a third on he way. I was working for a pharmaceutical company. I had been married four years.

I grew up on a council estate. No one was working in our house.

I just don't think it's acceptable that any animal should lose its life in pursuit of entertainment, which is also why I believe all blood sports should be banned.

What you have to remember, when you get to the level of seeing 10,000 people a night, is that they've all paid to have a performance. I need to make sure that they get their money's worth. I don't want to be going on stage and saying, "I'm just going to try some stuff and if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter," because it does matter.

I can only develop a stand-up show by being on stage. I can't write it. Whenever I see comedy written down, it very rarely makes me laugh.

If you're a musician, you create what you love and hope other people love it as well. Amongst musicians, the starting point is what they love, and then they bring people to them. As a comedian, you have to say something that people relate to, or nobody laughs. As an actor, you have to perform the character in the way that people relate to.

For me, a tour show should have a narrative; it should have an arc. It shouldn't just be, "Here's one joke, here's another joke." That's not my style. They all have to somehow link together.

You have to have that emotional investment in the jokes that you're saying otherwise they actually don't work. You can say exactly the same thing, but if you don't believe it's funny at the time that you're saying it, it won't be.

What you have to do as a comedian, that I suppose is quite difficult, is you have to end it. All the stuff that I've ever done in the past - all the tours - no matter how good it was last year or the year before, that's gone. What exists this year only exists in this time, and then it will be gone.

Being an England supporter is like being the over-optimistic parents of the fat kid on sports day.

I don't think interviewing people is any different than normal communication. The only thing is that it has these boundaries set upon it as to what the conversation is about.

On his teenage son: To be honest, I'm not sure the same kid comes home each night.

I refuse, whenever possible, to do shows on a Monday. I don't do gigs on a Monday, because nobody laughs on Mondays. Everybody wants Monday to be over. I just won't do 'em. But the rest of the time, in all honesty, it doesn't matter where you are: if something's funny, people laugh.

When you start doing television, you want a transcript of what you're going to say, and every time I've had to do that, I've looked at it and gone, "That's just not funny." It only comes alive when you speak it.