DOUBLE TAKE: Female impressionists

Morgana Robinson brings her talent for mimicry back to the screen in The Agency (10pm, BBC2). Here are some of our favourite female impressionists, past and present…

Scouser Faith Brown (1) was one of the big impressionists of the 1970s and 1980s, boasting her own TV show. In the early 2000s, she won acclaim in the touring production of Sunset Boulevard; she proved she’s still game in I’m A Celebrity in 2006; and until recently, she still toured the UK with her own show. Now a huge star in America, Tracey Ullman (2) first hit it big in 1981, on Brit show Three Of A Kind – which had been conceived as Six Of A Kind, and had also starred mimic/singer Karen Kay (aka Jay of Jamiroquai’s mum). After a brief dalliance with pop (she had five top 40 hits), Tracey headed Stateside, where she won her own show in 1987. She returned to UK TV in 2016 with her own impressions show. In 1987, at the age of just 14,

Debra Stephenson was an Opportunity Knocks finalist, and has seen acting and mimicry – she was in Playing The Field, Bad Girls,

Corrie and Waterloo Road – running side by side since. She contributed voices to Spitting

Image in the late 1980s, and is now doing so for puppet sketch show, Newzoids. One of the new wave of female mimics, Oxford grad Katy Brand

(3) got her own show in 2007 – performing a mix of impressions and original characters. She won a British Comedy Award in 2008, and appeared on the Strictly Christmas special in 2012.

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