RORY BREMNER
Comedian and impressionist, Rory, 57, is back on our screens now as a team captain in the new ITV panel show, The Imitation Game. He is married to sculptor Tessa Campbell Fraser and is father to Ava and Lila
The Imitation Game sounds like a lot of fun. Tell us about it?
It is and it’s odd that no-one has thought of a show like this before. Audiences love impressions of famous people and they love panel games. This marries the two in a really great new format. Debra Stephenson and I are the regular team captains and Alexander Armstrong is the host. Each week he gets us and our guest team members – established impressionists like Jon Culshaw, Alistair Mcgowan or Ronni Ancona and brilliant up-and-coming ones, like Luke Kempner – to jump through every kind of impressionist hoop. We might be reenacting famous movie scenes, revoicing news footage or blasting out cover versions of Adele.
The show’s amusing for us viewers, but it must be terrifying for you all? Yes, absolutely. It can be scary, but it’s what we do. And, as well as being frightening, it’s also exhilarating if you nail an impression and everyone loves it. It’s a game that you play more for laughs and for the sheer joy of doing impressions than playing to win.
Do you think it’s important to have a platform to take the mickey out of politicians, for example? Definitely, and I think that we wouldn’t be in nearly as much trouble now if we’d had more satire during the coalition government and in the build-up to Brexit, for example. Good impressionists should make people laugh, but they should also make them think. The Imitation Game is fun, but it also highlights your Donald Trumps and your Boris Johnsons and asks, ‘Are you ok with these people ruling the world?’.
You were a contestant on Strictly a few years ago. Do you still dance? As soon as music starts playing I think, ‘I want to dance to that.’
Strictly was exhilarating and terrifying. The sound of those first few bars when it was your turn to dance on a Saturday night – well, fear wise, it makes appearing on
The Imitation Game seem a picnic.
You were diagnosed with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) last year and made a documentary about it. Can you tell us more about the condition?
I think of ADHD as my best friend and worst enemy. On the one hand, it’s hard to be as permanently disorganised and all over the place as I am. And, yet, the flipside is that I quite like being able to flit around like a butterfly, dipping into everything. It’s made me who I am.
The Imitation Game is on ITV