Des Bishop turns a turbulent past into comedy in ‘Bridge and Tunnel’

It took Des Bishop, 50, a while to find his “American voice.”

“I’ve spent the last decade trying to develop my American career,” he says.

That sounds strange from a veteran stand-up whose voice shouts New Yawker the minute he starts talking at volume. But Bishop’s journey from Queens to Greenwich Village’s Comedy Cellar, where he shot his new “Bridge & Tunnel” hour (and his previous one, “Of All People”) was as circuitous as it gets.

Bishop’s mother was Irish American and his father had been a model and actor in Britain before becoming a family man, moving to Queens and settling into a steady job. But life at home wasn’t steady for Bishop, who began drinking at 12 and got kicked out of school at 14. His parents shipped him off to boarding school in Ireland. “I could think of no better place for a young alcoholic to be,” he has joked in his stand-up.

Bishop (who returned home for Christmas and summer vacations) sank lower and lower before finally kicking alcohol and drugs at 19. He settled in Ireland and built a comedy career doing specials unlike what you’d find most young stand-ups doing in America.

His breakout was “The Des Bishop Work Experience,” a 2004 TV series in which he worked an array of minimum-wage jobs and survived on just that salary, blending documentary footage with stand-up about what he learned.

“It was a social experiment that turned me into a well-known comedian,” Bishop says, adding that this type of programming, which might be considered “highfalutin” public TV fare in America, is more mainstream there. He followed that up with “Joy in the Hood,” in which he did stand-up workshops with troubled youth in Dublin and, again, wrote material based on his experience.

Following that, he learned the Irish language and performed stand-up in that tongue for his next docu-series, “In the Name of the Fada”; later he lived in China for a year, learned Mandarin and performed in that language for locals in “Breaking China.”

“I’m good at fitting into different situations, which is probably related to the trauma of being sent off to another country,” Bishop says. “I like to immerse myself and have a real experience and hopefully make it funny so it’s like a spoonful of sugar for the audience as they learn something.”

Beyond adapting to a new culture himself, Bishop credits his parents for helping him develop his curiosity about other people and cultures as well as blending social commentary and comedy. “My father was an immigrant and my mother ran a homeless shelter and it was a socially conscious household,” he says. (He also explored grief in “My Dad Was Nearly James Bond,” a tribute to his dad before he died in 2011, and a set called “Mia Mamma” written after his mom died in 2019.)

But he also says the addicts and alcoholics he bonded with in recovery in Dublin also opened his eyes. “They helped me understand the unfairness of society,” he says. “Most had been incarcerated and people always say it’s about the choices you make but I learned it’s not about choices, it’s about chances.”

He struggled but his was still a “middle-class substance abuse journey.”

“I got sent to boarding school and when I f—ed that up I got sent to a better one,” he explains. “I did stupid stuff but always got another chance. These guys didn’t get another chance until they got clean and completely turned their life around.”

Bishop says that beyond the topics, his comedy was shaped by living in Ireland. “Storytelling is a more mainstream version of stand-up outside of the United States,” he says. “It’s more the norm in Ireland and Great Britain — we all do shows at Edinburgh Fringe, and that’s where I honed that skill.”

But when he would occasionally return to America, where his fish-out-of-Irish-water tales didn’t always translate, he felt uncomfortable onstage. After his China special in 2014, he decided to spend more time here, honing his act for American audiences.

“I had to be quicker with my punchlines and find ways to keep people engaged,” Bishop says. “The servers are dropping plates or taking checks, or you’re at the Comedy Cellar following Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle is standing in the doorway waiting.”

Talking at a New Yorker’s volume certainly helps. In one new bit he notes that people always ask, “Why are you shouting, why are you so angry,” to which he responds. “I’m not angry. I’m from Queens. This is dinner volume.”

He gradually learned to meld his storytelling with the faster pace of jokes but things didn’t fully click until he stopped focusing on his Irish life and shifted back to his home turf. “The Irish stuff is part of who I am but I’m a guy from Queens and when I embraced who the f— I am I suddenly found my American voice and the humor started flowing.”

Bishop performing at the Punchline comedy club in San Francisco.

(Jim Cambridge)

His new special is filled with jokes about his childhood in New York and as a sharp-tongued Gen Xer commenting on the foibles of both his own generation and those of young adults.

“On paper nostalgia stuff can seem lazy, but as the comedian Dylan Moran says, there are no hack subjects, only subjects not done well,” Bishop says.

But that socially conscious kid is still in there — he talks openly about his testicular cancer to reduce stigma around it and spells out why homophobia is misguided in a lengthy bit about putting pineapple on pizza. As a New Yorker, he was originally horrified by the idea of that unholy union but once he opened his mind to the concept he became a fan.

“Actually, while that bit is about my concerns about homophobia, I really love pineapple on pizza now and so it’s really just propaganda for pineapple on pizza,” he says, only half in jest.

A political joke about “Grapes of Wrath” and the old days when America’s migrant problem involved Americans is more for him than the crowd. “It’s pretentious indulgence and I’m making a condescending judgment that half the audience doesn’t have a clue about it.”

Of course, making people laugh remains his main motivation “but I’m more excited about a bit if I think there’s something more to it,” he says. “People are so much more entrenched in their opinions now but I haven’t lost the naive hope that I can get them to think about things differently. And these are the things I want to talk about.”

Ironically, Bishop’s “American journey” has now taken him back to Ireland, where he’s filming a TV show that he can’t discuss publicly; he did this interview via video from inside his car because a brutal shooting schedule ran long and he was eight minutes from home at our interview time.

Meanwhile, Bishop, who in 2022 married fellow comedian Hannah Berner, has a new tour, Gray Area, that will bring him to Irvine and Pasadena in October. While Berner talks about being married to an older man in her comedy and podcasts, he only mentions her once in the new special and is hesitant to use her better-known persona for his material.

So, while he’s learning Spanish and may eventually incorporate that into his act, he faced a “blank slate” as he left behind his earlier material. “I have nothing left to mine from my older bits,” he says. “I’m starting from scratch. I like the freedom to see where it goes. That’s exciting to me.”