Cancer survivor and one of the funniest comedians in Ireland, Des Bishop is urging Irish people to raise funds to support increased cancer awareness for the Ballygowan Gold B Part of it campaign.
There’s a good chance you’ve already noticed, but in the last few weeks, we’ve been asking our readers to send us pictures of the people that inspire them in an effort to help out a campaign by the Irish Cancer Society in association with Marie Curie Cancer Care in Northern Ireland and Ballygowan to celebrate the memorable times and inspiring people that help us to make the most out of life.
We’ve limited the request to sporting figures to date, but if you were to broaden the search to include figures in the entertainment industry in this country, then Des Bishop certainly wouldn’t be a bad place to start.
The New-York born comedian would barely be able to walk down the street in most Irish towns without being recognised having cemented his position as one of the country’s top comedians for well over a decade and he has consistently put his high profile to good use both in his comedy routine and in a number of television shows over the years.
JOE’s own Eric Lalor owes a huge debt of gratitude to Des as it was thanks to his appearance on Des Bishop’s Joy In The Hood in 2006 that he embarked on a highly successful career in comedy.
It was a show where Bishop ran comedy workshops in impoverished areas of Ireland and helped encourage greater integration between certain sections of society through the medium of humour, while in In the Name of the Fada, he spent a year learning the Irish language to the extent that he was able to perform a comedy routine as Gaeilge by the end of it.
As somebody who spent his formative years in the States, it was a remarkable achievement for Bishop to gain a command of our native language so quickly and it inspired many Irish people who had lost touch with the lingo to brush up on it all over again. Needless to say, Des was well entitled to ‘Léim Thart’ after all his good work…
Des has been good enough to lend his support to the Ballygowan Be Part of it campaign and indeed, cancer is something that is very close to his heart. Des himself is a survivor of testicular cancer and actually used his experiences as material for his stand-up routine, while his father Mike passed away from lung cancer in 2011, a subject explored by Des in a highly-acclaimed stand-up show book about their relationship, My Dad Was Nearly James Bond.
Sadly, cancer is something that touches a lot of families in Ireland and that’s why Ballygowan has teamed up with the Irish Cancer Society to increase cancer awareness through the Be part of it campaign and raise funds for specialist nursing care through limited edition Ballygowan Gold bottles.
For more information on the B Part of It campaign, check out the Ballygowan website.
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