John Bishop returns to City Varieties for one night with his sell out show Supersonic

Following last year’s hugely successful sell-out UK arena tour, John Bishop will be performing his critically acclaimed ‘Supersonic’ show, in a select few venues in March 2015 including the Leeds City Varieties.

These shows will be one of the last times John will perform Supersonic then after these warm up shows he will perform Supersonic one last time at London’s Royal Albert Hall on 2 April, when the show will be filmed for a DVD release later this year.

Announcing the show, John said: “I’m thrilled to be performing Supersonic again. The reaction to last year’s tour was amazing, so I’m really looking forward to getting back on stage and I hope the fans are too!”

The 47-year-old has been happily married to wife Melanie for the past 21 years and is the proud father of three sons. He has built up a reputation as perhaps the finest, and the funniest live comedian currently at work in the UK.

So what is it that makes John such a special stand-up? His act can be summed up by all those adjectives beginning with C: charismatic, coruscating, compelling, charming and comic. He also possesses that most valuable quality for a stand-up: a rare likability. Audiences simply love being in his company. They feel like they know him and see him as a bloke it would be great to accompany on a night out.

The stand-up, who is also a talented actor with starring roles in the teen drama Skins, Ken Loach’s movie Route Irish and Jimmy McGovern’s lauded BBC One drama series, Accused, stresses that nothing beats the buzz of performing live comedy. “How can I explain the feeling of doing stand-up? It’s where I feel more comfortable than anywhere else. It just feels such a privilege to be performing in front of an audience.

“It’s an incredible feeling to bring joy to all those people. It’s so nice to get personal messages from people afterwards. They say things like, ‘We were going through a terrible time, but watching your show gave us a real lift’. That’s very, very gratifying.”

John, who has fronted many TV programmes, including John Bishop’s Britain and John Bishop’s Only Joking, has a marvellous rapport with his fans – another factor that makes his live shows so memorable. He says that he relishes his encounters with his aficionados. “It’s all positive. The more well-known I am, the more people want to come up and chat. There is no small talk – it’s like I’m in a middle of a conversation with them.

John, who has more of a hinterland than many comedians, having played non-league football for Hyde and Southport and been a salesman in the pharmaceutical industry before taking up stand-up, carries on that, “Those fans give you a degree of responsibility. You think, ‘You’ve been before, and the show was really good. So I have to make sure it’s even better this time’.”

So what themes does John tackle in “Supersonic”? The comic, who was also a panellist on A League of Their Own and hosted Live at the Apollo, reveals that much of the show focuses on his home life. “This is me getting back to being me. The last tour was about the rollercoaster of becoming famous. But that’s happened now. So these shows are not a list of the things I’ve been doing in ‘celeb-land’. It is about the norms of domestic life. It’s about getting back to the core of what I do.”

Details of John Bishop’s “Supersonic” tour can be found at http://www.johnbishoponline.com