Former Welsh rugby player David Bishop (Image: WalesOnline/Rob Browne)
At first glance, you wouldn’t necessarily expect a rugby player with just one Wales cap to warrant writing an autobiography. However, David Bishop was far from your typical one-cap wonder.
The reality that he earned merely a single international appearance is central to his tale, considering his exceptional ability and outstanding displays for Pontypool throughout the 1980s. Simply reading the acclaim heaped upon him in his recently-released memoir – The Bish – provides insight into what an exceptional talent he truly was.
Rugby legend Bobby Windsor brands him the finest Welsh scrum-half he witnessed at club level, whilst Mark Ring declares he was “Dupont 40 years before Dupont” and seasoned rugby correspondent Peter Jackson proclaims him “the best one-cap wonder in the history of rugby or probably any sport”.
The man himself shows no hint of bashfulness either.
Even now – as he confirms during our chat – he insists he was the world’s premier No 9 at his zenith.
Therefore, the reality that he secured just one cap continues to torment him, something which becomes abundantly clear both from reading his memoir and discussing it with him.
Yet that’s merely one reason why this book deserved to be penned.
There are countless other tales – so many narratives, as browsing through the chapters demonstrates.
There’s the harrowing description of how he fractured his neck during a fixture aged 21 and overcame medical expectations to not only return to action, but reach extraordinary levels. There’s the occasion he saved a mother and baby from the raging River Taff, followed within twelve months by a stint at Her Majesty’s pleasure.
Then there’s the devastating incident where his punch in a Gwent derby saw him excluded from the Wales squad, banned from playing for 11 months and back in court. It was an episode which he says destroyed his life.
He also discusses the cocaine addiction and depression he endured after retiring from playing and the debilitating stroke he suffered four years ago.
It’s a gripping read and, at times, a challenging one, never more so than when he discusses the beatings he received as a youngster growing up in Cardiff, both at the hands of his father and in school.
His publican dad, also David, is a massive figure in the book and appears repeatedly during our chat. He was also crucial to the 64 year old Bishop waiting until now to write his autobiography.
It was assembled in collaboration with rugby journalist Brendan Gallagher over a five year period.
“It all began when Brendan said he would love to do a piece on the 30 year anniversary of when I won my one cap against Australia,” explains the Bish.
“He said he was down in Cardiff and would like to meet up for some food and a chat.
“So we went to my favourite old restaurant in town, Valentino’s, and that’s where it came up.
“He just said to me ‘Have you ever thought about writing a book?’.
“I said ‘No, I haven’t’ and I explained to him about how I couldn’t do it while my dad was alive.
“If I was going to do a book, I wanted to put it all out there and tell the truth.
“So I explained I couldn’t do it until my dad passed away.”
However, following Bishop’s father’s death in 2016, the prospect of sharing his story became a possibility.
“Brendan had put it into my mind. So I phoned him and asked if he was still interested.”
The response was affirmative and work commenced, with much of the initial preparation taking place throughout the Covid pandemic.
“We would do an hour and a half, two hours every Sunday on the phone,” reveals Bishop.
“I made it clear to him from the start that I didn’t want to do a run of the mill autobiography. I wanted to tell my life story and explain the way I was built.
“Other autobiographies are all about players’ rugby careers. With me, I was back page and front page and probably too much on the front page.
“Because I was a well known rugby player, I would hit the headlines all the time. It was an amateur game and yet they picked on me as if I was a professional.
“With my book, I just wanted to give my truthful life story, why I took certain paths and how maybe I made some wrong decisions.”
It’s evident that Bishop avoids no topics in what represents a thoroughly candid autobiography.
The memoir is brutally frank, especially regarding the brutality he and his mother suffered from his father. He discloses that he wet the bed until age 14 due to terror and distress over anticipating the next thrashing, confessing he felt intimidated and trapped like a hunted creature.
“It was hard telling the world how I grew up,” he admits.
“But where I lived, it was a common thing to have wives beaten up and to have the kids beaten. It wasn’t just happening to me.
“You say that today and people gasp. But it was just commonplace.
David Bishop with his father (Image: undefined)
“I would go down the shop with my mother and there would be a number of women there with black eyes. It always seemed like that.
“I thought it was important that I gave the whole story of my life growing up and to tell the truth.
“I am not looking for sympathy. That’s the last thing I want off anyone. This is just my life story. It’s the David Joseph Bishop story. This is what it was.”
His bond with his father emerges as an extraordinarily complex one.
In the memoir, he explains he simultaneously adored and despised him.
“In terms of the sports side of it, whether it be rugby, boxing, baseball, it was all off his direction,” he says.
“I was gifted, there was no doubt about that, but my dad was always making the right decisions for me all my life, as far as sport was concerned.
“When I needed an arm chucked round me, he was there for it.
“Saying that, in the same breath, he broke my rib and punctured my lung.
“The most important thing about the book is the way I turned out. Everything I hated about my dad, it turned out I am worse than him. He cloned me, if you like.”
Speaking about his mother Kathleen, who passed away in 1997, Bishop’s affection for her is evident.
“She was only 5ft 1ins, a half-Irish girl, she was incredible,” he shares.
“My dad tried to beat the devil out of me and she said ‘You have beaten it into him’. I will never forget that.
“My world ended when she died.”
Bishop’s memoir, which includes a foreword by Wales football manager Craig Bellamy, reveals an extraordinarily eventful life marked by significant ups and downs.
Perhaps nothing encapsulates this better than the fact that when he received a certificate from the Royal Humane Society for saving a mother and baby from drowning in The Taff, he was actually in Aylesbury Young Offenders Prison.
“It just shows how extreme and volatile my life was,” he reflects.
The promising rugby player, who had represented Wales at Youth level, spent a year in prison from March 1980 to March 1981 after being convicted of assault.
David Bishop scores for Wales (Image: undefined)
“Let me tell you, it’s not a nice place to be. It was a nightmare,” he remembers.
“I remember this one Saturday afternoon, I had my radio on and Cardiff were playing the All Blacks at the Arms Park.
“All of a sudden, my mate Peter ‘Pedro’ Souto comes on off the bench.
“It was bitter sweet. I was locked in a cage, 6ft by 10ft, and I filled up with tears. I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself. It was pride for Pedro.”
Bishop managed to continue playing rugby whilst behind bars, in scenes reminiscent of the Mean Machine film.
“The physical fitness officer saw I had played for Wales Youth and said ‘Can you build a side?’.
“I was captain, coach, rub-a-dub man, I was everything. It was really enjoyable.
“We got this team together and played the British prison officers, who had their own side, and we beat them as well.
“You tell a bunch of 18 or 19 year old murderers and bank robbers that they can have a free shot at the screws and they were queuing up to play!”.
Upon his release from prison, Bishop faced uncertainty about his rugby prospects.
He had managed just one outing for Cardiff, coming on as a substitute against Penarth in September 1979, before the club dismissed him – circumstances he details in his autobiography.
“When Cardiff kicked me out, it was the end of my world at the time,” he reveals.
A stint with Ebbw Vale followed, but then in 1981, following his imprisonment, he would join forces with Pontypool – the club where he would truly establish his reputation.
Yet in November of that year, an incident occurred which threatened to destroy his rugby career before it had properly started. While playing against Aberavon at the Talbot Athletic Ground, he suffered a broken neck, leaving him just a millimetre away from complete paralysis.
At first, doctors diagnosed torn ligaments until a spinal specialist reviewed his x-rays.
“They had put me in a plaster of paris hoodie. I was a bit like Frankenstein.
“I was walking around for a week, but then this professor came in and froze on the spot when he saw me.
“He said ‘Don’t move an inch!’.
Bishop broke his neck playing for Pontypool (Image: undefined)
“The nurses grabbed me and laid me out on a bed.”
Following this, he endured the agonising process of having a steel frame cage bolted into his skull.
“They took the plaster of paris off and pretty much put a black and decker in both sides of my head. The bone fragments were flying through the air.
“When they started drilling, I was screaming and saying I was going to pass out and they said ‘It’s going to get a lot worse than this’. It was terrifying.”
Bishop underwent surgery to have bone from his hip grafted into his neck. Doctors told him he should never play again, but he had other plans.
By the summer of 1982, he was back on the field.
The young scrum-half soon began to make a significant impact for Pontypool, under the guidance of coach Ray Prosser.
“Pross was a huge influence on my life,” he says.
“He gave me a free role. He would just tell me to fly – ‘Go fly son, fly’.
“I could talk to him and suggest things. They all thought I was the son he never had!”.
“I had an unbelievable respect for Ray Prosser. He knew how to handle me, if you like.”
Bishop’s exceptional performances earned him a Wales debut against the Wallabies in November 1984, marking the occasion with a try.
With legendary Terry Holmes departing for Rugby League the following year, it appeared certain that numerous additional caps would follow.
However, in October 1985, came the pivotal moment that transformed everything.
During a match against Gwent rivals Newbridge, Bishop struck second row Chris Jarman with his fist.
The incident escaped punishment during the match, but would result in his exclusion from Wales duty that season.
A court case also followed where he received a month’s imprisonment, briefly landing him back behind bars before an appeal saw the sentence suspended for 12 months.
David Bishop’s book is out today (Image: undefined)
Yet that wasn’t the conclusion, as the WRU imposed a ban from all rugby until August 1987.
Looking back today on the decisive Jarman incident, he remarks: “It was a derby, he was chucking his weight about. I just gave him a three inch clip which happened in most games back then.
“I’m not trying to justify what I did, it just happens. It was less than half a second, whack, done.
“That ended my career in Welsh rugby then really. It ruined my life.”
Upon returning to the field after his suspension, Bishop continued to excel with his dynamic displays for Pooler. His statistics are genuinely remarkable.
Across his 172 appearances for the club spanning 1981 to 1988, he notched up 143 tries, with his place-kicking prowess boosting his points total to 805.
However, after the Jarman affair, the Wales selectors remained silent.
“My mindset was I would make them pick me, I would put them in a position where they couldn’t not select me. But they stuck by it, they wouldn’t pick me.”
In his autobiography, Bishop confesses to being tormented by envy towards fellow scrum-half Robert Jones, who earned 54 Wales caps against his solitary appearance, and reveals this bitterness has intensified over time.
“I don’t have any qualms telling you this, I was the best rugby player in the world at the time in my position.
“I was the best in Wales by a country mile.”
So was it simply that his face didn’t fit?
“No, there was more to it than that,” he insists.
“There was something very political. I don’t know what it was.
“Maybe they didn’t feel I was the right type of person to be playing for Wales.
“When I say political, they blackballed me, if you like, with the public, while the press murdered me.
“The whole of Wales were seeing me in headlines and on the news week-in week-out, for a punch up in Cardiff town or whatever.
Former Wales rugby international, David Bishop (Image: undefined)
“I guarantee you this, I wasn’t the only rugby player in punch-ups in town. There were loads of them.
“I was picked on, there’s no doubt about that. Even if it was nothing, it would snowball. It was just beyond.”
Bishop, frustrated with his circumstances, made the decision to switch to rugby league in 1988, joining Hull Kingston Rovers.
This move allowed him to make a triumphant return to international play, earning four caps for Wales and one for Great Britain.
When rugby union turned professional in 1995, Bishop returned to his beloved Pontypool as player-coach, pushing his total club appearances to 241 before finally retiring in 1999.
Since leaving the sport, life has thrown some curveballs his way, including a stroke he suffered in 2021.
“You don’t recover fully. I am limited in what I can do.
“I am about 85 per cent. It’s the right side of my body that’s affected. There’s a lack of coordination.
“I find I am a lot clumsier doing things. It’s terrible, but it’s just one of those things.”
So, does he still follow the game in which he once excelled?
Does Welsh rugby still hold any interest for him?
“None at all. I can’t watch it, mate. It’s just so poor.
“The foundation of Wales was built on club rugby. Then, 22 years ago, they went to regions.
“You could never ask Liverpool and Everton or Man Utd and Man City to join up. You couldn’t ask Hull KR and Hull to join up. It would never happen. I was outspoken about it at the time.
“Now they are talking about bringing it down to two. How can that strengthen our Welsh senior side?”.
Finally, when asked about his reflections on writing his book and his life, Bishop had this to say:.
“There is so much I regret,” he replies.
David Bishop, right, with friend Craig Bellamy (Image: undefined)
“I probably didn’t mature properly until I was about 48 to 50.
“Up to then, when I was wrong I was right. What I mean by that is if I made a snap decision which was probably the wrong thing to do at that time, in my brain I was doing the right thing. That’s the easiest way I can explain it, if that makes sense.
“I thought I was the crown king. I started to believe in the fame and believe in the hype and everything else. I probably did take the piss.”
When asked how he believes the Welsh public perceives him today, he responds, “Oh, as a bad fella,”.
“A lot of people who don’t know me always judge me one way or the other.
“Maybe I should have walked away from situations a few times, but I didn’t. I can see now why I should have.
“But sometimes you get picked on because of who you are. So you think, why should I walk away?”.
“If people smack me, I am going to smack them back.
“That’s how I was brought up. Violence was part of my DNA.
“It was the same with most of the kids I grew up with. It was a rough area. It was beyond. There were things you wouldn’t think of today.
“That was the way it was. It only stands out with me because I made it as a sportsman.
“It didn’t matter about John Smith round the corner because he never did anything in life. It didn’t matter if he went to jail.”
The book concludes with touching words from his daughter Samara, offering insight into those who know him best.
She characterises her father as “the kind of man who can’t be explained – only felt”, further describing him as “a soul too big for the system, too wild to tame and too human to ever be easily defined”.
As our chat draws to a close, Bishop, who will celebrate his 65th birthday later this month, shares his reflections on his autobiography.
“I have tried to be honest about everything,” he asserts.
“I just hope, one way or the other, it’s an enjoyable read. That was the way it was, that was my life.”
The Bish: It’s All About Me by David Bishop is published by Y Lolfa.