WHAT does a normal Saturday look like for me now? Well, it depends. I have got season tickets for Liverpool but I also do a lot of cycling so equally I could be out on my bike in the morning or something.

Touring is the issue because when you are on the road you are a long way away. The other issue is that you can’t plan things so well any more - the games are Saturday lunchtime, Sunday, Monday, and they’ve even started a few of these ones on a Friday. It is a pain in the arse to be honest with you!

If I can’t make it to the football for whatever reason I do a little bit of checking scores on the smart phone or stuff like that but when I’m not touring I definitely get use out of my season ticket. We have got a little small holding of animals now so if I am at home and not at the match that means I am usually cleaning out the pigs. And I would rather be at the match, even watching us getting beaten, than shovelling what the pigs leave behind!

Obviously my job has made me a celebrity in some ways but I wouldn’t really say I socialise with the current set of first-team players, because at Liverpool - like most Barclays Premier League clubs - we have a new vanguard of players.

I am fairly friendly with the likes of Jamie Carragher and Stevie Gerrard. But it is difficult, particularly if you are a very big fan like me. It can be an awkward relationship. I tried to be friends with Steven Gerrard but we both agreed it wasn’t working - because I kept trying to lick his face!

As you get older there is also an age difference there. Obviously I am not going to be friends with a modern day 22-year-old footballer, but in terms of Liverpool Football Club, the generation that I supported are all great lads - guys like Kenny Dalglish, Ian Rush, and Ronny Whelan. So if there is ever an opportunity or a golf day or something where I can just go and hang around with them then that is a joy for me.

It is even more of a joy to share a pitch with these legends now, in matches for Soccer Aid or other charities. It is just a shame that it has come at a time in your life when you get asked to play because you are a comedian! Rather than saying ‘I have actually earned this’. I have played at Old Trafford a few times, I have played at Anfield, I have played at Celtic Park. If someone had said to me what is the best bit of what has happened to you with your life and your job, that is what I would say.

It was always football for me when I was growing up. With maybe a little bit of boxing thrown in, but football was the main one. I did a bit of boxing when I was younger, at the same club that I played football for. You could go and do boxing training, but you could only box OR play football for them. I chose football because I didn’t like getting punched.

You could say the way I played when I became a non-league footballer for clubs like Hyde and Southport combined them both. I played in the middle of midfield, I was a dynamo. You have got to remember when you are talking. It was not like it is now, where players trip over a blade of glass and roll over 15 times. My claim to fame was that I was the player that you had in your team to stop the other players playing.

I played non league, it was called the Northern Premier League, or the Vauxhall Conference, and they were good lads and good players too. This was before the academy system came into being, and I remember two lads I played with both getting signed by Leeds and playing in the first team three weeks later. That was when Leeds were in the first division. So it was a proper league.

Football has had many life-changing effects on me - it was even the main contributing factor to me leaving my job. I had a ticket [for the Champions League final in Istanbul] but I was working for a pharmaceutical company and we had a big conference going on in Seattle. My boss said ‘you can’t not go’. With the time difference, there was a change through Tokyo that would have got me there landing in Istanbul at half-time but I thought ‘that’s not worth it’ so 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!

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. 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.

The cycling and stuff I do, that is for fitness. I did all manner of crazy sports and challenges on panel shows like A League of their Own. But it is interviews that I do mainly now.. Anything that pays the bills.

Whenever I am on tour these days I bring my bicycle with me. When I am back in Glasgow and Edinburgh with my tour ‘Winging It’ in November I am hopefully still going to be able to go for a bike ride, although conditions might not be ideal. I keep thinking one day that I might take up golf too. But I have decided I am not boring enough.

**John Bishop was speaking at a Sir Alex Ferguson/Street Soccer Scotland event at the Hilton Hotel in Glasgow.