Impressionist Alistair McGowan tells MATTHEW JENKIN about the voices in his head and why some people are just too difficult or boring to copy.

UNLESS you count the time I wore pigtails, a blue pinafore and told everyone to follow the yellow brick road, the best impression I have ever made was when I wore a suit and tie to my job interview.

But Alistair McGowan has made a career of impersonating everyone from David Beckham to Jonathan Ross, with considerably more comedic success than me.

He started out doing stand-up before getting his big break doing impressions for ITV’s ground-breaking political satire programme Spitting Image.

But he is best known for his work with Jan Ravens and Ronni Ancona on the hit televiison sketch show The Big Impression.

In his latest act, currently touring the country and visiting Croydon’s Fairfield Halls on Monday, the star will do 120 voices in 120 minutes.

However, Alistair claims he can do around double that amount. So how does he choose which voices to use in his act out of the army of personailties in his head just bursting to get out?

He said: “I used to do stand-up years ago and obviously within the stand-up there is a huge number of voices.

“It is comments on the world, television and films which bring the voices in.

“Sometimes I take a risk and do someone that I think people wont all know, but they just have a funny or interesting voice.

“I think of a joke first, then think whose voice this would be better in than mine.

“Sometimes it is about doing people who are really in the public eye like Simon Cowell or Louis Walsh. People who are doing big ratings shows.”

It doesn’t always come naturally, however, and there are some celebrities whose voices are either too difficult to recreate or just too plain boring to get a laugh out of.

Even off the stage and on the phone to me, Alistair can’t help slipping into a dull but surprisingly soothing impression of Brian May to prove his point.

He said: “I’ve always found it difficult to get a laugh out of Alex Ferguson. I can vaguely do his voice but I can never get it.

“If I have tried any jokes about him, he just doesn’t seem to make people laugh.

“Sometimes it is about if the voice is a funny voice and slow voices frequently aren’t that funny.”

His impressions of David Beckham and Sven-Goran Eriksson are perhaps his most popular but also the most cutting.

I can imagine a few punches being thrown if ever he bumps into them in his local boozer.

Fortunately, Alistair says he rarely gets a response from his unwitting subjects and most don’t even realise what he is doing.

He said: “Adrian Chiles is one of my new ones and I have done the impression in front of him on The One Show.”

Like a man possessed, Alistair’s voice morphed into the BBC1 presenter’s and said: “Generally what people say is, ‘Is that how I talk?’ “Which is strange because they probably see themselves on television quite a lot.

“Once or twice people took offence and I realised there were limits to what one should say about people, whether they are your friends or not.”

Alistair admits this hasn’t stopped him having a mean dig at celebrities such as Chris Moyles in his current show.

But if impersonation is the greatest form of flattery, it would come as no surprise if Alistair is busier replying to celebrity fan mail than he is fighting law suits.

Alistair McGowan, Fairfield Halls, Croydon. Monday. 7.45pm. £15. 020 8688 9291.