Matt Bishop | |
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| Born | (1962-12-25)25 December 1962 (age 62) |
Matt Bishop (born 25 December 1962) is an English journalist, author, novelist and public relations executive.
Bishop was born in London to novelistBernardine Bishop and pianistStephen Kovacevich.[1] His grandmother, Barbara Wall, and ancestorsViola Meynell andAlice Meynell, were also writers.[2]
A longtime fundraiser forCLIC Sargent, Bishop donates proceeds from his novelThe Boy Made the Difference to the charity.[1][2]
As editor ofF1 Racing, Bishop played a role in exposing McLaren's 'brake-steer' system, which was later banned.[3] He also wrote columns forAutosport.[4]
The Boy Made the Difference is based on Bishop’s experience as a volunteer during theHIV/AIDS crisis.[2]
After leaving theCardinal Vaughan Memorial School,Holland Park, in 1981, he failed to qualify as aLondon bus driver and then worked as a bookmaker, a betting-shop manager, and aminicab driver until the 1990s, when he began to freelance as a writer forSporting Life and applied to university to study psychology.[1] Dropping out after a year, he began his full-time writing career atCar magazine in 1993, becoming features editor, then in September 1995 moved toFocus magazine as deputy editor then acting editor, before joiningF1 Racing (now renamedGP Racing) magazine as editor in December 1996, remaining until September 2007.[5]F1 Racing sold 1.25 million copies a month worldwide during Bishop's tenure.[5][6]
In the wake of the2007 Formula 1 espionage controversy, which resulted in theMcLarenFormula 1 team being fined an unprecedented $100 million,[7] Bishop was recruited by McLaren chairmanRon Dennis to become the company's communications director, starting work at McLaren in January 2008.[8] He left McLaren in July 2017.[9] He wrote his first novel,The Boy Made the Difference (published in 2020),[2] before returning to motorsport public relations work in 2018 as a member of the senior leadership team ofW Series, the world’s first single-seater motor racing championship for female drivers only.[citation needed]
On 10 December 2020 it was announced that Bishop had been recruited by theAston Martin Formula 1 team to be its chief communications officer, starting in 2021.[10][better source needed]
Bishop now runs his ownboutique comms, PR,social media, content creation, and digital marketing agency, Diagonal Communications, writes a weekly online column forMotor Sport and co-hosts theAnd Colossally That's History podcast.[11][12]
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