WHAT IT FEELS LIKE TO …

IGUESS from an early age I did impersonations to make people laugh. When I was very young it was being cheeky to my mum, parroting her and her grandma. Being a little bastard. And then it was teachers. Not to their faces. I would have got detention.

As a career I wanted to do musical theatre or be a straight actress but the role of Little Voice came up and I didn’t want to go back to my day job which was working in a clothes shop in Oxford Street. So I lied and said I could impersonate Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe. They said, “Could you come and audition in two weeks?” So I had two weeks to learn. And luckily I could do it. But that’s what started me off – a big, big fib. It’s completely dictated the rest of my life so far.

To impersonate anyone I spend loads of time on YouTube. Instead of watching cat videos I find clips of them that I can save on my computer and split up the clips so I can record a bit of them and then I can record myself. Then I can listen back and compare. So I’ll record them, record me, listen back. Record them, record me, listen back.

Some people it doesn’t take me long at all. Nicola Sturgeon’s still a work in progress. Some don’t come for a while. Others I get straight away.

Nicola’s mouth is really interesting. Her lips are quite thin and she really uses them when she speaks. So you try to emulate that. You try to thin out your lips because her mouth is much smaller than mine. So I have to make my mouth smaller because that dictates how the sound comes out.

And the accent is very important obviously, especially in Edinburgh. No pressure. But it’s the tone of her voice as well. It’s quite in the back of her throat. And her speech patterns are very direct. She doesn’t mince her words. She doesn’t “um” and “er” a lot. She knows what she’s going to say.

My favourite thing is to make her say things she wouldn’t usually say. Getting her to sing Bohemian Rhapsody or imagining what it would be like if she did 500 Miles by the Proclaimers as a speech. It’s those silly things I like to muck about with.

Edinburgh is a really exciting time. By the third week you’re a zombie and a little bit homesick. By the fourth week you don’t want it to end.

It’s a time to see all your friends and colleagues in a way you could never do in London. It’s weird when some of them live only two miles