Comedian John Bishop joined Off the Ball to discuss how football literally changed his life after he missed Liverpool's Champions League win in Istanbul despite having a ticket for the dramatic night.
The former pharmaceutical worker spoke to Ger Gilroy and Nathan Murphy about how being sent to a conference in Seattle and missing his club's most memorable night in recent memory, led to a change in career.
"It's (football) had many life-changing effects on me," he said, adding: "But if you're referring to Istanbul - that was the main contributing factor to me leaving my job.
"What happened was I had a ticket (for the final) because I had been to all the group games at Anfield. I had a job, I was working for a pharmaceutical company and we had a big conference going on in Seattle and he said 'you can't not go (to Seattle) - you've got to go' and I had to host a meeting that would have been the day before and with the time difference...I was actually trying to work out if I could fly the other way.
Picture by: Phil Noble/PA Archive/PA Images
"And you could, there was a change you could do through Tokyo that would have got me there landing in Istanbul at half-time. And I thought 'that's not worth it' so what I did was...I literally flew for something like 19 hours and walked through my front door as it was kicking off but all my mates had gone to the game so they sent all their wives and kids to my house!
"I was in a house full of people not bothered. So I'm sat there with girls doing cart-wheels across the telly and my mates were at the match and at half-time I'd thought I'd made a good decision.
"And at the end...I thought never again is someone going to tell me what I can do. So, at that stage I decided to leave my job.
"I was doing stand-up then, I was doing it for five years but I was doing it around the clubs so I wasn't making and breaking telly. I wasn't sure it would lead to anything but I couldn't be told I can't go to a game like that again!"
The full interview can he heard here:
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