Show must go on: Des Bishop talks life after father’s death

READ MORE- Des Bishop speaks of heartbreak about his father's terminal illness

READ MORE- Irish American comedian Des Bishop’s father dies of cancer

In his first show after his father’s death, Irish American comedian Des Bishop returned to the stage in Galway just over a week after his father’s untimely death back in New York.

“I thought this is going to be tough. But once I got out there, it was fine. It felt good,” said Bishop about his return to the stage.

“My Father Was Nearly James Bond” is Bishop’s latest hit show which is loosely based around the life story of his father Mike, who lost his battle with lung cancer earlier this month.

Arriving back from the U.S. the Friday morning of the show, Bishop admits a lot of Red Bull kept his energy levels up for the bittersweet performance, in which in his father had made cameo appearances in the past.

“I had a lot of very flat nights in Australia,” he recalls after the Galway show. “You know, people turning up to see a comedy show don’t expect to hear about cancer.”

Bishop’s father was born to an English father and an Irish mother, so according to the comedian “he was raised to hate himself.”

Working as a successful model in London in the 1970s, Bishop describes his late father as a “pretty sexy dude.” Also interested in acting, he lost out to George Lazenby in a screen test to succeed Sean Connery. But when he moved to the U.S., the comedian’s father gave up his acting dreams to raise his three sons with his wife Eileen.

“He was a ham,” Bishop told the audience in Galway last weekend, saying his father would find it okay to laugh.

“I heard the music for Zulu before I went on and I just thought: this is going to be tough. But once I got out there, it was fine. It felt good,” he told “The Irish Times.”