They’re a handsome family, the Bishops – comedian John, his wife Melanie and their 27-year-old son Joe. You would never know there was anything amiss. But there is, and has been since Joe caught a virus 12 years ago and developed Cogan’s syndrome. It’s an autoimmune disease that attacks – among other things – ear tissue. Joe lost a substantial part of his hearing overnight. The disease is progressive and it is likely that he will become completely deaf soon. He also suffers from tinnitus. “It’s loud at the moment,” he says during his first appearance on camera, “because I’m nervous.”
The ostensible subject of the hour-long documentary John and Joe Bishop: Life After Deaf (ITV) is John’s decision to start learning British Sign Language (BSL) to perform a comedy gig to a Deaf audience about his experience of life as the parent of a Deaf son. The real subject is the evocation and the beginning – just the beginning, but all the more moving for that – of those experiences.
