Bishop's iPhone app moves to TV

An iPhone app of stand-up John Bishop’s analysis of the World Cup has been turned into an ITV show.

The John Bishop FC app animated the Liverpudlian comedian’s comments about key matches and delivered the clips to mobile phones overnight.

Now the 30 two-minute updates have been edited together into a half-hour show for ITV4, with some new material showing how the tournament has progressed.

John Bishop’s World Cup Diary, which is made by Mighty Boosh and Ideal producers Baby Cow, is believed to be the first TV programme to have its origins in a mobile phone application.

Baby Cow managing director Henry Normal said that the app was a way of distributing comedy without the usual rigmarole of TV commissioning, as well as being able to show ITV directly and at low cost that the idea worked.

The show will air at 10.05pm on Friday and 10.40pm on Saturday.

Published: 8 Jul 2010