The momentum of 2009 carried on into 2010 and I brought out my first DVD, called Elvis Has Left the Building, filmed at the Liverpool Empire Theatre. It sold well, so well that it recouped the entire advance I had been given to make it.
Having a DVD in the shops suddenly took me out of the relatively niche comedy environment to the high street, and it was strange that Christmas when I did my annual last-minute dash one evening around HMV to get stocking-fillers for the boys and Melanie to see my face on the front of my own DVD.
It was bloody cold, so I was wearing a woollen beanie hat with a scarf around my chin. As I went to the DVD chart to pick something for the boys, I was stunned to see that I was Number 1 in the overall DVD chart. Without thinking, I reached up and took my DVD off the shelf.
I was looking at the back, remembering the night of the recording in the Liverpool Empire, when a man aged about 20, with a crew-cut hairstyle, wearing a black hoodie, washed-out grey tracksuit bottoms with black training shoes – a combination which, as far as I can see, is the most public way of telling the world you don’t care what they think of you – leaned into me and said:
‘I wouldn’t buy that. He’s shite.’
I laughed it off, assuming he knew who I was, until an old lady at the till made a similar assertion. It made me realise no matter how successful you may become, someone, somewhere still thinks you’re rubbish.
Not only did the success of the first DVD bring home to me that things had changed, but it did for all the family, too. You cannot walk into HMV and see your dad on posters on the walls without it entering your head that some people think he is worth spending money on, even if you don’t. It never occurred to us how deep these changes were likely to be and that we would have to get used to the things you normally associate with other famous people, like being stopped for autographs. I am proud about the way Melanie and the boys have adjusted. I think we are as down-to-earth now as we would have been had none of the impending fame happened. I’ve never stopped thinking that this could all end at any moment and, though we should enjoy it for what it is, we should also recognise that it could disappear tomorrow.
One aspect of the DVD’s success was that I could pay off our mortgage, and move my mum and dad out of the council house they had lived in for the last 30 years. These two things had been my biggest material ambitions and, once achieved, I didn’t need to do any more.
I am not a very materialistic person. There is not a single thing that I own that I would not give up tomorrow. Of course, I like pleasant things, but I am not driven by them. When I realised I was in a position to buy my mum and dad a nice house, I asked to meet with Eddie, Kathy and Carol to ask them what they thought: the last thing I wanted to do was to act without their support. Helping my mum and dad would have been something any of us would have done; it just so happened I was able to do it first, but this had to be a joint thing.
We met at Eddie’s house and, as we sat around the table, I suddenly realised that the last time I had done anything like this was to let them know Melanie and I had split up, so I wanted to clear that up:
‘Melanie and I are not splitting up.’
They all just looked at each other. Why would anyone get their siblings together just to say, ‘Everything’s OK’?
Before anyone could ask what I was going on about, I said: ‘I have some money, and I was thinking of buying Mum and Dad a house, unless you object.’
Again they just looked at each other.
‘Why would we object?‘ Eddie said.
‘I don’t know, in case you thought I was being flash and you thought I was a dick.’
‘Driving a flash sports car and leaving Mum and Dad in a council house – that would be being a dick.’
Kathy and Carol agreed. I was not a dick, and we went out for a walk looking at homes together that evening. It was the first time the four of us had walked anywhere alone since childhood, and we were looking to see if we could find a nice place for our parents to live. It felt good. Like the most natural thing in the world, as if we had all been waiting to do it one day.
Mum and Dad took the offer in the way I expected. The estate was very good, but the option to have a detached home had always been a dream. If any of the children helped to make that happen, then in many ways we had all achieved something as a family. There are not many things I allow myself to be proud of, but the day they moved I have to admit to pulling over in the car when they called to tell me they had the keys. I got out and leaned on the bonnet and, after speaking to them both, took a deep breath. I breathed in the moment. I had done all I had ever wanted, and as I breathed out, trying to suppress the rising lump in my throat, I remembered the doors of Preston Prison being shut behind us, and the look of the guards as they checked who we were visiting. Nobody would look at any of us again that way.
• • •
Within two years of becoming my agent, Lisa had changed my life. She had put me in a position that I could never have imagined possible when I left my job to try and earn enough money to cover the bills by making people laugh. The Elvis tour ran until June 2010, and then I immediately started work on ‘Sunshine’, the next show that I was taking to Edinburgh that summer.
A comedian like me tends to use his own life for the comedy – if something happens to me, then I talk about it. The previous 12 months had been a whirlwind, so to try to put it in perspective I talked about it on stage, being very careful not to fall into the trap of appearing to be bragging, or boring people with tales of the famous folk I now knew.
At that year’s Festival I was to be in a new venue, the McEwan Hall, which had a staggering 1,100 seats – a massive leap from the Cabaret Bar, the 175-seater venue I had been in the year before. Once again, it emphasised how far I’d come in such a short space of time.
Although I was concerned beforehand about filling the McEwan Hall throughout the month, in the event I had no reason to be worried. ‘Sunshine’ had virtually sold out before I arrived, and I ended up doing extra shows. This was helped by the fact I was by now a familiar face from television, as the first series of my own show on BBC1, John Bishop’s Britain, had aired earlier in the year. It was a programme I was proud of, particularly the second series the following year, where I was able to apply some of the lessons I had learnt from the first – such as don’t wear shiny suits.
By the end of that summer in Edinburgh, I was told that ‘Sunshine’ had sold the most tickets ever for a single run at the Festival. I am not sure if this is actually true, but it felt nice to hear it when I could still recall so vividly the empty seats that had looked back at me just a few years before.
‘Sunshine’ graduated from theatres into arenas and catapulted me to a higher level in terms of ticket sales. Being in an arena I think gives you a responsibility to try to do something you cannot do in a theatre, and in this show that involved a dance routine at the end – a dance routine that involved my son Luke, who was allowed to take time off school to do it as part of his work experience. There are surely not many work experience placements that involve you taking a bow in front of thousands of people with your dad dressed as John Travolta.
Lisa bought me a watch to commemorate the success of the show, and every time I look at it I think of performing in The Hut to five people. It seems a lifetime ago, and like it was yesterday, all at the same time.