NMP Live Meets actor and comedian Alistair McGowan, best known for his BAFTA-winning show The Big Impression. We sat down with Alistair to discuss his big break, how he tailors his act for corporate audiences, and his favourite comics. Watch the full interview or read the transcript below.
In conversation with Alistair McGowan
Who was the first person you ever impersonated?
I think the first impression I started doing was Trevor Brooking when I was [Trevor’s voice] about fourteen. It was 1980 and he scored a winning goal in a cup final for West Ham against Arsenal, and I remember me Dad and me talking afterwards and we were both very amused by the way he was talking about the “rare header” that he had scored. He kept going around saying it was a “rare header”, he said it about three times in the interview, and I suppose that was the moment, really, when I started thinking about doing it.
[Own voice] But I never did teachers, or anyone at school or anything like that, certainly not when I was younger. When I was at university I went on and did a few people there because I was at university in Leeds, and I was fascinated by all the different northern accents.
I was brought up in the Midlands, and in those days you didn’t really see an awful lot of television that wasn’t presented by people with, you know, proper English, if you like – received pronunciation, standard English. And so, going to the north, in Leeds, to university, I was amazed by all this influx of people from Lancashire, who talk differently from the people from Newcastle; who talk differently from the people from Middlesbrough; and everybody seemed to talk in a different way, so I was just in linguistic heaven.
When did you realise you could make a living making people laugh?
When I was at drama school I used to do a lot of the teachers there, and a friend, who is still a friend now, said you should do more than just people that nobody knows; you should try to do famous people, you could make a good living and then you can go back in to the acting once you have made your name. So, that was really why I did it.
I started to do people at the time like [Russell’s voice] Russell Harty, who was a very, very popular interviewer and people like [John’s voice] John Peel, who was a major Radio 1 DJ in those days, and [Jonathan’s voice] Jonathan Ross, who was just starting out in television in the early ‘90s. So I was doing people like Jonathan and [Dame Edna’s voice] Dame Edna Everage as well, who I can never do darling, [Own voice] I can never just go into it because you have got to get your voice up there, but various people like that. My friend said to do those people, and I did, and started to make a name for myself on the stand-up comedy circuit, and from there on it got better and better.
Was Spitting Image your big break in to mainstream media?
Yeah, I think Spitting Image was my first major big break, if you like, but I remember at the time being thrilled to be on the programme and being on a train once and hearing people talking about a sketch they had heard the night before, and saying, “oh, John Major said this, and John Major said that”, and I was thinking ‘oh, that was me!’
Then after a couple of years of this, with people saying “oh this is great, you know, [Tony’s voice] Tony Blair puppet… the Blair puppet did this, and the Blair puppet did that, and the [Paddy’s voice] Paddy Ashdown puppet did this and that, [Chris’s voice] and there is this wonderful puppet of Chris Eubank and the Eubank puppet was saying this wonderful thing in the sketch”, [Own voice] after a while I started thinking, ’I’m getting annoyed now that nobody knows it’s me!’
So after having the delight of being the voice behind the puppets, my ego took over and I thought I want people to know that it’s me doing that. It was a long wait after that to get my own show, well it was three or four years, but it seemed like a long wait. I felt my chance had gone really because I had been around for about ten years and people had looked at me, and then suddenly I was very lucky that a chap at the BBC, Peter Simon, Head of Programmes, he just said we want you to do a programme for us. Fortunately, he was a football fan, and I suppose football has always been a major part of my act really.
Does an impressionist’s act need more than good voices?
Yeah, doing the voices is one thing, but obviously you’ve got to have something to say as them. I mean there’s very few voices, [Frank’s voice] I do do a lot of other comedians like Frank Skinner, and there is a couple of voices that you do that people just laugh at because I think it is very, very accurate, and they just go “oh my God, that’s brilliant!”. [Andy’s voice] And Andy Parsons is another one; I can’t do him quietly, because he always seems to be shouting, so I hope your microphone can adjust to the level needed to cope with the Andy Parsons. [Own voice] But, again, that voice makes people laugh, but you have still got to have something at the end of it. I think that is really important actually for corporate audiences more than comedy club audiences.
I always like to have a recognisable ending to any routine. Some comics don’t. Eddie Izzard, we used to work together years ago and he once said to me, as he said a lot, [Eddie’s voice] “you know my routines don’t need to have a punch line, they can just stop whenever you want them to stop and you just have enough”, [Own voice] and I thought, well, you can do that Eddie, but nobody else can do that because they haven’t got your charm, or your intelligence, or your brilliance. So I always like to have an ending to a joke, that really helps with corporate audiences, because they, generally, they like to know when something has finished.
How do you know when you’ve perfected an impression?
You have to just keep working and working at the impressions really. I mean, [Boris’s voice] you know somebody who I do now with great success is Boris Johnson… and let’s be honest about this, when I started out doing Boris, I had a certain… certain quality to him… but, er, I didn’t have anything else. [Own voice] And I went away and actually was asked to do a Radio 4 play as Boris, and it was half-an-hour of me and Miles Jupp – he interviewed me as Boris for half-an-hour – and so I had to know every nuance of his voice and that’s the sort of thing you can get a laugh on; a character’s basic voice.
For instance, [Louis’ voice] at the moment I do an impression of Louis. Van. Gaal. But. It. Is. I would say. Not perhaps as accurate as it could be. But it makes people laugh. [Own voice] And in time I will go away and refine that so that it still makes people laugh, but is, hopefully, dead on.
So, you are always refining them, but the audience is the biggest judge. If you don’t get somebody quite right, they let you know. And also who’s well known enough, [Keith’s voice] I mean, you know, I started trying to do Keith Lemon, but, do you know what, it’s really, really interesting, because, no, it is, don’t laugh, uh well, uh, do laugh but don’t laugh there… [Own voice] the people just don’t seem to know who he is still, which surprises me as I think they would. But maybe the impression isn’t good enough, maybe I need to refine it, maybe the joke isn’t good enough. So, I know that something is not right there, because it’s just not getting the response it deserves.
Also, you have got to work out who is well known enough. I think Keith Lemon is well known enough. [Nigel’s voice] I always enjoy watching the cookery programmes presented by Nigel Slater for instance, who is somebody I really enjoy watching and imitating; but I have tried that several times and it just doesn’t work – people don’t know who Nigel is.
Have you ever upset any celebrities?
Very few people have got upset. One or two people I think have looked quizzically and say, ”is that really how I sound?”. I have done a few things in front of Gary Lineker, and Gary used to always say, [Gary’s voice] ”not sure I really sound like that, but people seem to agree with you, so…“
[Alan’s voice] Now, Alan Shearer, I did a couple of things up in Newcastle in front of Alan, and he’s quite begrudging, but eventually suggested that, maybe, the impression was alright, so that was quite pleasing.
[Own voice] I did an event for Raymond Blanc, the chef, at his place in Oxfordshire, [Raymond’s voice] and it was very, very strange, okay, because I couldn’t work out, oh la la, whether he was amused by it or offended – he said, ”oh you are naughty boy, naughty boy, you should not do this…” but he asked me back the next year, so he must have enjoyed it.
Which comics do you most admire?
I like comics with gags. I’ve always liked Frank Skinner, I think Frank Skinner is really quick, particularly on anything he is hosting on television. And I like people like Lee Mack, I think Lee Mack is fantastic.
Lee Evans, I always really rated Lee because, you know, as if it needs to be said that Lee is brilliant, but some people, especially women, seem to think that Lee’s a bit, like Jim Carey; they write him off, and think he’s just pulling faces and throwing himself around. But Lee Evans has absolutely everything: he has good one-liners, observational stuff, plus the physical stuff, plus the fact that he can play the piano. I mean, for me, he is a total entertainer, and I used to watch Lee Evans in total awe. I also enjoy people like Milton Jones and Tim Vine nowadays, people who have got good gags.
On the observational side I think Michael McIntyre is peerless, and again I think a lot of comics are a bit jealous of him really, because he makes it look easy, and it is not easy to do good observational material, and he just gets people like that, you know, he’s terrific.
How would you describe your act?
I think my act is quite varied really. I have got, like most comics, a catalogue of things. I mean, with the impressions it means my material does date, and the voices date, so I have to keep updating those, and you leave stuff out as time goes on.
So, I have always got about an hour, an hour and a half, that I can choose from. But then you just decide, you think, okay, is this audience a more Radio 4 audience or are they more a Capital Radio audience? What sort of audience are they? Should I do a lot of sports, which I always do, for this audience, or is it fifty-fifty male-to-female, in which case I will make sure I do some other stuff to balance that out.
Sometimes I do something and it’s a tennis event or a football event, and you can do sixty- or seventy-percent of that one sport. Again, you get asked to do different lengths of material – sometimes five minutes, ten minutes, twenty, thirty, so you have got to choose. So that’s the important thing really, I think that’s what I can bring, which I enjoy, is that I am fairly adaptable.
Now and again you think, well this crowd is a bit rough-and-ready so I will throw in a few of my, it’s not even blue material, but some things that are a bit more obvious, involving swearing and whatever else, and other times you can do a whole act with nothing suggestive, no use of bad language.
Politics, I’m not Rory Bremner, but I do a little bit of stuff about politicians, some of it can be quite anti- this or anti- that party, so you’ve got to decide who in your audience can take that. Are they going to laugh at a very anti-capitalist joke, or are they going to laugh at a very anti-whatever joke? You’ve got to pick and choose.
I don’t think you need to upset your audience – you are there for them. So, as a comic, I think you have to wise up when you are doing corporate events. You’re there to entertain; they are not there to come to you, so, you’ve got to choose your material carefully.
Why book a comedian for a corporate event?
If they book the right comic I think you can bring a room together, you give them something to talk about, you give them jokes to go home with in a way, because people will always remember something that you have done and be talking about it the next day. And there’s a bit of kudos that they’re seeing somebody that they might have grown up watching, or someone that they’ve seen on TV yesterday. I don’t do a lot with the room, but I have seen other comics who do that and bring people together.
One thing I really enjoy doing with the corporate events, which I don’t think people who are non-comics would do, newsreaders or whoever, is when we do the awards, I love to have some AV back-up. You know, if they have got shots or photographs of the nominees, especially when it’s group nominees or buildings, you can really do a Have I Got News For You type thing, if I get them in advance, and you can really have a lot of fun with the people there and the buildings, or the companies, or the logos. And people love that, because they know that you have written it just for them, they know it is about them, and it’s a one-off thing. There’s a magic there that I really, really enjoy.
If you're interested in booking Alistair McGowan you can enquire online, email us or pick up the phone and speak to one of our friendly booking agents. For further information, testimonials and video clips, about Alistair view his profile.
