Transcript: Episode 168: Celery in the Hoodie
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[00:00:00] Susan Barry: This is Top Floor episode 168. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/168.
[00:00:14] Narrator: Welcome to Top Floor with Susan Barry. This weekly podcast right up to the top floor features tangible tips and excellent stories from the experts and characters who elevate hospitality. And now your host and elevator operator, Susan Barry.
[00:00:32] Susan Barry: Welcome to the show. Paul Bishop is a designer with over 28 years of experience creating hospitality and entertainment spaces across the globe. Starting his career with a leap of faith to Dubai, Paul turned an initial one year plan into a lifelong journey of creating extraordinary spaces. He is the founder of Bishop Design, which has worked with world renowned chefs and brands such as Massimo Battura, Major Food Group, and Atlantis. Paul's creations range from luxurious restaurants to dynamic entertainment venues like Wave House in Dubai and the entertainment space Playground at Luxor in Las Vegas. With a penchant for merging design with experience, he specializes in integrating entertainment with hospitality in truly unique and memorable ways. Today we're diving into his creative process and the evolution of experiential venues. But before we jump in, we need to answer the call button.
Call button rings
[00:01:38] Susan Barry: The emergency call button is our hotline for hospitality professionals who have burning questions. If you would like to submit a question, you can call or text me at 850-404-9630. Today's question was submitted by Libby. I think you're going to have such a good answer for this. I hope so. This is what Libby has to say, “We often have long lines at check in during our busy season. What can we do to make the wait less annoying for our guests?” I don't know, Paul. What do you think?
[00:02:24] Paul Bishop: Great question, right? Yeah I'm probably the most impatient person on the planet, to be totally honest. It's it's a difficult one to sort of second guess. But something that, that immerses them, something that engages with them and I think keeps that or captivates their attention. Build up that excitement and actually have something that really sort of ticks the boxes when you actually get into the venue. So I think something a little bit more engaging, get people off their phones, potentially let them engage socially with each other and the other sort of people around them. So interesting question, like I said I'm probably the worst one for that, I think. You know, I'm the most impatient person on the planet. I need things now. And if they're not now, then it's not right. So…
[00:03:08] Susan Barry: I hate waiting in line more than anything in the world. I remember learning this when I worked for Weston that in-process waits feel shorter than out-of-process waits. So like if you could even give the guests something to do to prepare for checking in, even though we don't really have like long forms to fill out and stuff like that, or even toys and games to play with, I think would make it feel less frustrating. I mean, a line — I will drive across town to do something and if there's a line, I'm driving all the way back home. Absolutely not.
[00:03:43] Paul Bishop: Exactly. Exactly. I'm with you there. I'm completely with you. And I think in the US a lot of people are more patient in that respect. You go back to the Middle East, like Dubai and the UK and I'm like, I'm not waiting in that line. And I come back here and there's people queuing out the door for a coffee, and you're like, screw that.
[00:04:02] Susan Barry: You have had a very fascinating journey from your student life to becoming a global designer. What inspired you to take that first job in Dubai? And then what kept you there?
[00:04:16] Paul Bishop: Right. It's a, again, it's an interesting one. I went for one year, like you said earlier and ended up still being there 28 years later, kind of migrated to the US over the last three years and we worked globally. But I didn't really have any sort of notion of where I was going at the time or preference to where I was. I just finished my master's degree and was lucky to have a distinction award to that. And I was knocking around making videos for bands, sort of in the bands, rock bands at the time, which were very big in Manchester. Bands like Stone Roses and Happy Mondays and The Verb and all of these sort of guys were kicking around at the same time. My best friend's father was a record producer for London Records, Clive Langer. So again, we were introduced to the likes of, Graham McPherson, Suggs from Madness, and Morrissey from the Smiths and playing football with them at the weekend. And that kind of followed with me up to Manchester, just by chance. And we sort of got in with these group of people, creators at the time, really sort of pushing the boundaries of that kind of indie Britpop type scene in Manchester. I kind of like, well, I love film. I love playing around with film. And I ended up just, playing around with videos for bands and tour managing with the bands and kind of gave up on everything I had studied for 11 years. You know, I was like, Hey, this is fun. Rock and roll.
So yeah, I got this phone call all of a sudden, I think it was in around January. And it was from an agency saying, well, we've received your CV and we're very interested to interview you for a position overseas. So I was like, okay, great. How did you get my CV? So they couldn't tell me, they just said we thought you submitted it. It turned out that my mother had submitted it, trying to get me a job, obviously. So she was like, okay, he's had enough fun. Now get a job and get working, after all these years. So I ended up meeting the guys whose company it was in Manchester, and just got chatting. And in those days, Dubai wasn't on this on the scene, it wasn't on people's sort of minds, it wasn't on the map, so to speak. It was on that threshold. I think one of the first questions was can you drink? Is there alcohol there? And he was like, yeah, of course it is. I was like, well, sign me up!
He knew I traveled a lot. I had traveled extensively through subcontinent and Asia as my time as a student. So, that was one of his questions to me. It was like, “Oh, I've seen you've traveled to these sort of demographics. I think you're you're fitting very well in the Middle East, in Dubai.” And I was like, “Well, when do I start?” And he was like, look we'll get back to you. We'll work out the arrangements and the flight details. And they flew me out on Valentine's Day, February, 1996. And as I keep saying that's when the the love affair began with Dubai.
[00:07:08] Susan Barry: What led you to founding Bishop Design?
[00:07:13] Paul Bishop: It was just a natural occurrence, really. You know, I was playing around in the market there. Like I said, I'd only gone for a year and a year turned into 28 years. I was involved in a lot of projects. I actually left Dubai for about eight months around 97, 98. And then I was in Spain and I got brought back and it was just, yeah, fell into that natural occurrence. I was getting more and more projects working with these companies that brought me out and yeah, it was just a natural thing to do. I had a few projects where I was doing them over, asked to do them and they were branching into the F&B sector where I was predominantly doing other kind of design works. There was a lot more residential projects out there on the very early onset of Dubai. Because there wasn't as much F&B or hospitality around in that region. And it started coming and presenting itself. And it was doing kind of residential through to commercial offices, then going into the F&B and hospitality industry. And that's something that really resonated with me and I really connected with it.
Dubai was growing at the time. A lot more of the the restauranteurs, the operators were coming into the region, expanding their portfolios into that region and having a foothold, let's say in the Middle East. So it was kind of a natural sort of progression was to then do something on my own. And I didn't have any investor or investment behind me. So what I did was basically work from project to project and build a team around me that could facilitate the demand from the design. So I was the creative generating all the design.
[00:08:58] Susan Barry: Has your vision or your focus changed since you started it?
[00:09:03] Paul Bishop: Not at all. No, no, no, no, not at all. I still have that. It's like we sort of approach Miami in the same kind of manner. It was like we'll go over there. We'll test the water. We'll see if we can break in. And again, we had a big reputation in the Middle East further afield internationally, but no one really knew us here. We'd never really engaged in projects in the US market, but it was something that I really wanted to do and really wanted to try out. It was like, a little bit selfish on my part was like, what if, what if we had started in the U S before we'd started in the Middle East? Where would we be now?
We're sitting here with, 50 plus people in Dubai and the international offices and around 10 in the US currently and expanding rapidly and something that, you know, you only, like I said, you only as good as your last work. And it's a true testament when people start to refer you in the industry to other like minded professionals. So you do one project for one, they're like, you've got to use Paul. You've got to use Bishop design. And I love that. I don't think I like to taste risks too much, you do have to go in wholeheartedly and really commit to it. And that's the risk that I took by coming to the US — it was like I'm doing it. There's no time to lose anymore. Let's just take the plunge and see where it takes us.
I was back in Dubai for the opening of France, then with Beyond France and the two, three star Michelin chef is going for his third three star. And we had the opening of France in Atlantis and I had gone to Sweden and met with Bjorn and say we're buddies now, we established this sort of friendship and this relationship. And you have to have that in the industry we're in. If you don't, then I don't see the projects ever being a success of what they could become because you do need that one on one trust. And it's all about trust. And I love that with every single client I have.
[00:10:57] Susan Barry: So speaking of projects, you have a project that I think sounds so cool called Playground. Can you describe that for our listeners?
[00:11:06] Paul Bishop: Playground's great. It's the gift that never stops giving. We just picked up the Global International Design Award in London last week.
[00:11:14] Susan Barry: Oh, congratulations!
[00:11:15] Paul Bishop: Yeah! It was amazing. We won for America, the region, and then we picked up the global. So it's amazing, the clients loved it. But it is a going back to childhood. It's regressing back to your childhood and engaging in social interaction and activity, giving up your phone, putting it away, engaging on social levels. This playground becomes a very tangible interaction with the end user and it's something that isn't concentrated on technology or AI or anything like that, like we have in the industry that do change the experiences we have. This is going back to our childhood, going back to the playground, these sort of over-accentuated, over-sized gamings that are tangible and we can all connect with because we've grown up with them. But on a larger, grander scale.
[00:12:04] Susan Barry: Like what? Tell me about one of them specifically.
[00:12:06] Paul Bishop: Like bullseye bounce. You put on this velcro suit, jump on the trampoline and launch yourself against this sort of inflatable and just stick there. They're ridiculous, but it's fun, and then fueling it with alcohol and everyone just lets go and you can… it's such a beauty to see people interacting together. Teamwork, people solving problems but people just having fun, letting go. The Playground is to play, it's somewhere where you can just go back to your childhood and just immerse yourself in adult gaming, so to speak. It's just fun. And we're looking at bringing it to Miami currently, we're already putting it in Nashville.
[00:12:46] Susan Barry: Lemme ask you about Nashville because how do you do a project in multiple cities and tailor them to the local culture? Like how do you make something fit in Nashville, also fit in Miami, also fit in Las Vegas, also fit in Dubai? Do you know what I mean?
[00:13:05] Paul Bishop: Absolutely. Yeah. And look, every location is challenging. I think it's inherent to that demographic, it has its own soul and spirit. And I think the challenge is that we do have some games or some sort of interactions that are generic. It's synonymous across the board, but then you have ones that are a little bit more stylized and branded to fit the environment. So what we've done is for Nashville, I went to Nashville, I've ended up bringing back three, four cowboy boots on with me. So I go there, I buy a pair of cowboy boots. But the whole thing is you go there and I love Nashville. I think it's a great city. It's great energy there, but everything's brown. Everything's brick. Everything's a warehouse type structure.
It's amazing how you can actually create something that doesn't basically respond to the area it's in. It kind of goes against it because of the use of color, because of the use of graphics and that sort of, graphic identity and how you connect back with it. But it is say, it's just oozing the spirit of play at the same time. And I think that's success when it comes to Miami, there'll be adaptations of that as well. You know, I think you can start to really localize the offering, you're bringing things that people can really connect with, resonate on a subliminal level as well. You know, the introduction of some of the colors kind of relate to the demographic we're in. Black and white relates to the keyboard, for example, because it's musically driven. It's also opposite the Titan stadium So black and white is the uniform of the umpire the referee, right? So again, you've all these sort of subliminal sort of layers coming through the red, blue, and the light blues is referencing back to the uniform of the football team.
So again, it has all of these lovely connections but it's all about that visual connectivity and those sort of graphic icons that come through it. Very sort of a tongue in cheek references back to country and Western. It's the subtlety of the variables that really sort of carries it off and resonates with the end user. Sometimes it's what you leave out that really gives it the look and feel that you're after.
[00:15:19] Susan Barry: It seems like you are in the midst of, or perhaps even leading, a shift toward blending dining, entertainment, sort of interactive elements in hospitality. What do you think is driving that trend? What is it about consumers that this is filling a need?
[00:15:43] Paul Bishop: People need more now. People strive to be entertained on all levels. I'm old school. I still love to dine. I still love to have that one on one experience, that discussion with the sommelier, or, the engagement with your sort of server of what's on the menu. What ingredient is this and have that knowledge resonate back. But people are looking for something different as well. The demographics have changed, the market positions have changed. You have to offer something else other than just a beautiful dining experience. And that's where the entertainment comes into it. It comes in very different levels. We've always had sports bars around, other things that have been there from the year dot, people want something a little bit more on engaging and the sky's the limit. You've got some great concepts coming out, swingers, flights club, that kind of repurposing old game. Cutting, darts, it's all of these things that were a bit of a faux pas. It was, “Really? darts? Wow. When did that become fashionable again?” But…
[00:16:45] Susan Barry: People love darts! They really do.
[00:16:47] Paul Bishop: I love it. It's such an entertainment. It's such an engagement and it has, you've got this new generation coming through. They love, like you say, to be engaged in the most in these things. People want more. People want to be socially engaged. They want to play, they want to have fun. And it's not just about the food anymore in some of these environments. It's all about the entertainment factor that comes with it. You look back and you look at the better part, the turn of the century, the 1920s that had all of that, it's sort of gone. It's peeps and troughs. I think everything is rhetoric. Everything is cycled. You've got just regurgitations of the same sort of movements and fashions coming round, but just reinvented in different ways that really connect with the audiences of today.
And I think — forbid the word COVID — I think that was a catalyst in some ways, we were sitting there, all worrying about how it would affect the dining experience or the social interaction or would we ever be the same? And I think it's actually got better that people are social animals. They want that interaction. They want to be around other people, other like-minded people having fun, switching off and just, enjoying the what's on offer. And I think a lot of people are tapping into that. We've done something else called The Rig as well. There's three oil rigs off the coast of Saudi Arabia, and they just full immersive entertainment venues. You've got underwater dining, you've got sky dining. You've got like deep diving, deep cores, you've got a full on entertainment venue for music entertainment venue. But all these different experiences, I think there's around 24 to 25 restaurants, there’s three hotels, everything's immersed around The Rig is kind of industrial oil concept. And there's three of them. Let's say each one offers you something unique and different. You've got go karting that goes around the outside of The Rig. You've got elevated dining where you're suspended on a crane up above over the ocean. You know, the sky's the limit.
[00:18:58] Susan Barry: Have you ever done elevated dining? When I was in San Juan recently and saw that and I thought that's either the most exciting or most terrifying thing you can do. Have you done it?
[00:19:11] Paul Bishop: Right? Yeah, I've experienced it because obviously we have to do a lot of research, but more one-offs. They were doing like one-off events. And like I say, I was back in the Middle East the other day, back in Dubai and I just got up one day. I was like, I want to jump out of a plane, let's go skydiving.
[00:19:25] Susan Barry: Oh, no, sir. Absolutely not.
[00:19:27] Paul Bishop: It was such a rush. It was unbelievable. But yeah, I can imagine trying to do that and eating. Look, someone's going to do it at some point, so let's see, watch this space.
[00:19:40] Susan Barry: It's true. Before I ask Paul another question, let me share something special with our listeners. If you are a woman looking for a solo trip that supports local communities and women in business, I have to recommend Cherish Tours. I went on their Alaska trip in 2023. I had an absolute ball. You can hear all about it in episode 100. Cherish has trips to Tanzania, Costa Rica, Iceland, and the Faroe Islands planned, among others. And you can get 250 off 2025 trips that are a week or longer. Using the code TopFloor250, visit GoCherishTours.com, use the code TopFloor250 and make lifelong memories. Okay. Back to Paul.
Paul, we like to make sure that our listeners come away from every episode of Top Floor with some specific practical tips and ideas to try. What tips do you have for staying on the cutting edge while also making your work commercially practical? I think this is the never ending quest for creative people.
[00:21:02] Paul Bishop: I think yeah, it's on everyone's website. I think it's all about having fun at the end of the day as well. You know, you've got to really enjoy what you're doing. You've got to be current. You've got to travel. Like you were just saying there about all these beautiful destinations. There's some of those on my list. I definitely want to do. So it's all about, say, immersing yourself in things that are going in and around you. And they say looking at other genres to influence you, don't just look into your own sectors of design and architecture to get inspiration — inspiration’s all around us. And I think they say travel is one of them. Go with your instincts sometimes. A beautiful saying is never go through the world with your eyes closed because you're a receiver of information and you're never old enough to stop learning. It's something that really amazes me. It's I've learned, I know everything. No, you don't, only a small amount. And there's so much more out there that will become an influence.
And like I said it's all about testimony to delivering your best. The industry where it is very cutthroat, it's a very competitive industry. I grew up in sports and stuff through school where it's all about that competition. I bring that sort of competitive spirit and edge to the work we do. I'm a perfectionist. I don't like to put anything out unless it is perfection. And that really drives me. And I try to encourage that with everyone around me in the studio. The studio is a great place to throw and bounce these ideas around. That's why I love this office environment that everyone's there and everyone has an opinion. Because no one's ever right or wrong, it's what you then do with it and how you adapt it and apply it that becomes, the final sort of conceptualization at the end of the day. But no idea is ever too silly or ever too big or ever too small. I think, you gotta be able to take on board anyone's opinions and ideas and then try to translate them in the way that you want to use them. And I think Picasso said it, is all artists sketch. And I believe in that.
[00:23:08] Susan Barry: Okay. This is maybe advice for me, but what is your advice for balancing your sort of the creative work that you do and your output with client opinions and expectations? And I'll tell you where I'm coming from on this question. From my perspective, you know, I'm a marketer, that's my day job. And because all people experience marketing in their day to day lives, they often confuse their personal taste with strategy. So how do you handle that when the same thing happens to you? If a client's like, I would never put on a velcro suit and throw myself against a wall. How do you work around to make them understand that, like every little piece doesn't have to be for them? I don't know if that is an answerable question.
[00:24:05] Paul Bishop: It's great. I love that. I love the direction. You're coming from that such a relevant question in every project we do. We're lucky that we're in an environment. That we're designing for more than one person. It's commercial, it's hospitality. But clients are very opinionated. Like I said, someone asked me once, he's like, “What's the best and worst thing about your industry?” And I said, the best thing is a client. The worst thing is the client.
[00:24:29] Susan Barry: They have every right to be opinionated. It's their money, where, what the opinions are based on that. I sometimes struggle with.
[00:24:37] Paul Bishop: I've kind of become a design therapist at some point with some of my clients I have now. And then they text me, weekends, any hour, ungodly hour during the day, but always fun because I'm passionate about it. And I can't switch off, that's probably my burden, my blessing, and my curse. But like I said, when you design more for a bigger audience, rather than a single audience, you've got to be a little bit more subjective to what you're asking for. And, I've had clients, I'll come. Can we do that? I saw it here. Can I do it? But it has no relevance. It has no reference back to the whole DNA of what we're creating here in the narrative. We can't just swap one out for the other. And I just had it literally minutes before he jumped on the call. It was like, Oh, but I wanted that graphic on the wall. Why did it change? I was like, but you changed it. Do you not remember? We forgot what we did and we forgot the process. I said, it's not that easy. If we bring that element back, we've got to change all the other things around that have changed at the same time, by changing that out in the first place. The ceiling will have to revert back to what it was. The flooring would have to revert back to what it was, the wall claddings — it's a domino effect.
So again, you got you are, you do become like this sort of therapist. Persuasion, gentle persuasion believing in what you do and saying maybe we shouldn't consider that, maybe we should look at this. This is why I did it. Don't forget the narrative. And, maybe we'll do it in the next thing. We're just park it aside a little bit, it's all about, Handling them with with feather gloves, I think, very delicate as our designers. And I went, we're very delicate people.
[00:26:15] Susan Barry: Indeed. Everyone is delicate. Well, we have reached the fortune telling portion of our show, so you have to predict the future and then we'll figure out if you were right.
[00:26:25] Paul Bishop: Global domination. Yeah, that's where we're going.
[00:26:29] Susan Barry: Of course, of course. What's a prediction that you have about the future of experiential entertainment in hospitality?
[00:26:38] Paul Bishop: I think it's going to become ever present, I think it's an omnipresent. I think a lot of venues going to rely on this other sort of offering rather than just dining experience. But you will have pure dining experiences on the flip side, but they will be a little bit more cultivated, curated, like FZN, like we're doing with, Bjorn Pranson, he has a 23 seated venue. So again, once you're in there, once you have your table, that's yours for the whole day, there's no flipping tables and you migrate between different spaces, different environments. So again, on that side of it, you can still have that beautiful three star Michelin elevated experience that just becomes this overindulgence. It's an incredible thing. Where you go between different spaces and interact with different parts of your dining experience. Where you're, you'll have your entrance, you'll go up to the lounge and a few aperitifs and a few drinks. If you can, you'll see how the ingredients then start to fuse with the experience flow. You'll go down into the kitchen. You're going to we went straight in through the kitchen, had a fresh shot, scholar, the most beautiful experience I've had, but so simple. So you're going to have these very different experiences for very two different markets. One that's going to have very immersive, where entertainment is the driving factor. And it will be on multiple levels. Through AI, through virtual and through back to tangible gaming, like what we have with Playground. But you still won't lose sight of the, the real dining experience.
[00:28:12] Susan Barry: If you could wave a magic wand and create an experience, even if it doesn't make financial sense, maybe especially if it doesn't make financial sense, what would it be like? What, for you to experience? Do you know what I mean? Do not say skydiving and eating at the same time or I am never speaking to you again.
[00:28:35] Paul Bishop: You’ve robbed me now! I've got that copyright. But hey, that would be fun, right? But No, look, you've got all of these crazy things like eating in space, have a dining experience in space, but that's not something you…. What I would love to do. And it's so indulgent, and I love sort of white weaving it into film as well as just to have something as ephemeral, as a film set, as a dining experience on that film set where it's for one time only. And then that whole space then just gets dismantled and taken away. How indulgent would that be? You put all this money into creating this wonderful environment just for one event, one moment in time that isn't, a legacy, but it becomes a legacy and it's over, right? Because it's ephemerality. And you will pay top dollar just for that one moment. I ate on that set.
[00:29:26] Susan Barry: I think that's why people like the Dinner en Blanc and pop-ups and stuff like that, because they can be one of only a handful of people that got to do the thing.
[00:29:37] Paul Bishop: Exactly. It's that moment in time, isn't it? It's about capturing that moment in time. And I love all this sort of tridimensional space and all these continuums, but if you could actually physically do that, because it's captured on film. But it isn't captured for that one moment. If you weren't there, then it wasn't your experience. And I think that just becomes so exclusive and indulgent that maybe it would be worth the money to invest in that. But let's see. It's very frivolous at the same time.
[00:30:04] Susan Barry: Sometimes that's important. Okay, folks, before we tell Paul goodbye, we are going to head down to the loading dock where all of the best stories get told.
Elevator voice announces, “Going down.”
[00:30:20] Susan Barry: Paul, what is a story that you would only tell on the loading dock?
[00:30:23] Paul Bishop: It's too many. There's too many. From very early childhood onwards, but I think I was laughing to myself when I was thinking about it. And about a few years Shenzhen in China for a project just to select a piece of stone that was on the side of a mountain. So it was like - yeah, fair faced marble. And I was like, I need just this random organic piece of mountain. So we identified - so even the journey there was like, why am I going there? It's crazy. I just want this one piece of stone that just has this sort of beautiful organic shape. And we just cut the side of the mountain off and it's for a counter. And I was on the plane, so I went to the airport, flying me on business class on Emirates, basically in and out. So an eight and a half, nine hour flight via Hong Kong over to Shenzhen, go to the mountain, cut the piece of the mountain off and come back. And so I was like, it was a late night flight and I was like, look, gonna hit the ground running. So I'm not going to have a dream, need to get some sleep. So I'm a terrible sleeper. I really don't switch off at any given time or sleep, especially on planes. So when I go back to Dubai from Miami, it's 16 hours and I'm always awake. So basically I was on the flight. And I was like, it was delayed. So I was like, okay, I might have one drink. So I had one drink got on the plane. That was a big drink. It was a big book. And they come in and they're like, I was like, don't wake me for any food. I'm going to try and get some sleep. I'll have the mattress. So they came around with the mattress, made up the bed and they're like, would you like a drink then? And I was like, okay, give me a Bloody Mary. I'll have a Bloody Mary before I take off. And I had these pills that I got for an operation. So it was like, pre-op that absolutely knock you out. They're called Dormicon and they give you these to knock you out. So being in my infinite wisdom-
[00:32:15] Susan Barry: They’re like anesthesia?
[00:32:17] Paul Bishop: I know! They’re complete. So I was like, in my infinite wisdom, I'm like, “Oh yeah, I'll take one of them. Why not?” So I, I want to remember is having the mattress made up, getting ready, putting the earphones on and saying, “Yeah, don't wake me up an hour before I land. I've only got, the day there and then I'm coming back because I don't have any time to waste." So I remember them bringing me the Bloody Mary, right? And I dropped these pills probably 20 minutes beforehand, half an hour beforehand. And I wake up half an hour before landing. They wake me up half an hour before landing. And I'm like, where's the mattress? There's no mattress under my seat. And I'm like, where's the mattress? And then I had this hoodie on and I'm like, what's that smell? And it smelled of tomato juice and Worcester sauce and vodka. And then I'm like, my God, what the hell happened? And I'm looking at my hoodie and I pulled out a bit of celery.
[00:33:16] Susan Barry: No!
[00:33:17] Paul Bishop: That was literally, I must have got given the drink and just went to drink it just went unconscious, poured it all over myself and all over the mattress and just woke up like clean, cleaned up and I'm like, I'm sorry, but what, what happened? And they were like, “Oh don't worry about it, sir. You weren't your normal self.” And I'm like, what have I done? What have I done? And then you get these flashbacks and you're like, no way. So basically I had taken these pills and I got given the drink and just threw it all over myself and woke up with a piece of celery in my hoodie and part of the job.
[00:33:56] Susan Barry: Like you do, no big deal. No big deal!
[00:33:58] Paul Bishop: Perfect deal.
[00:33:59] Susan Barry: Par for the course, when you're going to slice off the front of a mountain, that makes total sense.
[00:34:05] Paul Bishop: I was just sitting in Hong Kong waiting for the transit. I was just finding bits of the cocktail in me. It's no change of clothing. That's quite embarrassing, but it's funny at the same time when you look back at it. Great stuff.
[00:34:16] Susan Barry: And useful now for the loading dock. Paul Bishop, thank you so much for being here. I know that our listeners are all Googling where they can go to Playground. I certainly am. And I really appreciate you riding up to the top floor.
[00:34:32] Paul Bishop: Sounds amazing. Thanks for having me. Great lift.
[00:34:36] Susan Barry: Thank you for listening. You can find the show notes at topfloorpodcast.com/episode/168. Jonathan Albano is our editor, producer, and all around genius. He even wrote and performed our theme song with vocals by Cameron Albano. You can subscribe to Top Floor on Apple podcasts. Spotify or wherever you like to listen, and your rating or review will go a long way in helping us give you more of what you like.
[00:35:12] Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Top Floor Podcast at www.topfloorpodcast.com. Have a hospitality marketing question? Reach us at 850-404-9630 to be featured in a future episode.