Former friend Geoff Caswell, who used to go fishing with Bishop, described him as a habitual liar. Caswell said, "He was a typical lad around town that time. He'd grown a moustache and he had this car he'd race everywhere and he was always telling lies, trying to big himself up. He was only around 5'5" tall and weighed around eight stone, and I think he suffered from 'little man syndrome'. He was always telling porkies about this and that. He was also a thief. He'd break into cars and he'd steal stuff. He had been a roofer but was going nowhere really." Bishop also claimed to have been wrongly arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Brighton bombing. "The Independent" reported that "as even his own 2018 defence barrister admitted, in 1986 Russell Bishop was 'a semi-literate, occasional, not very successful car thief … an occasional burglar.' Not a suspected IRA terrorist."