First impressions count

The master of a million different voices is embarking on his first live tour for a decade. Alistair McGowan is back to perform a brand-new one-man show - and it's a mouth-watering prospect.

Gok Wan, Rio Ferdinand, Gary Lineker, Simon Cowell, Arsene Wenger, Frank Skinner, and Tony Adams - no, it's not an ultra-hip London restaurant on a busy night. Alistair McGowan is back.

Star of BBC1's hugely popular series, The Big Impression, the immensely gifted Alistair will be reviving some of his legendary impersonations, as well as introducing audiences to many new ones in his new stand-up show, The One and Many ... Alistair McGowan.

But there is much more to his comedy than impressions - Alistair is a man of many talents. In The One and Many Alistair McGowan, he will also be delivering sharp observations on footballers, film stars, romance, animals, and greenery. In addition, the stand-up will be displaying his trademark dazzling wordplay - he may even treat us to a spot of poetry.

The 44-year-old star doesn't need a lot of stage paraphernalia to be enormously entertaining. In the show there will be no make-up or costume changes - just one man, a microphone and an astounding array of voices, including, most importantly, his own. So what persuaded Alistair to come back to the live arena? "I did a panto at Christmas," recollects the comedian.

 

"In the middle of the show, I did a solo spot and it went really well. That made me think; it's great fun doing the voices and people obviously really love them. So I thought the time was right to go back."

Alistair, who has built up a highly acclaimed career as a stage actor in productions such as Little Shop of Horrors (for which he received an Olivier nomination), The Merry Wives of Windsor, Measure for Measure and Cabaret, was also inspired to return to stand-up by a couple of other great comedians of his generation. "I would sit at home watching most sketch shows thinking, 'I don't find this funny. If this is what makes people laugh, I don't think I can do it anymore.' In 1988, John Cleese said, 'I'm retiring from comedy because I don't know what makes people laugh anymore.' I felt the same.

"But suddenly along came Harry and Enfield and Paul Whitehouse with their fantastic BBC1 sketch show, and I instantly got it. What they do is brilliant. They're not trying to please anyone else, they're just performing what they observe. You can't try and be like the latest 22-year-old, you just have to do what you think is funny. Harry and Paul made me think, 'I can do this, you know!' So here I am, back performing live and trying to make people laugh."

Alistair has acquired many new voices in recent times, including Adrian Chiles, John Terry, Bear Grylls, Harry Redknapp, Alan Carr, Fabio Capello, Jimmy Carr and Boris Johnson.

After an absence of ten years from the stand-up arena, the comic also feels he has loads of new things to say. "I loved my time in the theatre, but I started to think 'I don't think that joke works'," reflects Alistair, who won both a Bafta and a Royal Television Society Award for The Big Impression. "I thought, 'I'd prefer to do my own jokes that don't work rather than someone else's!'

"The great thing about stand-up is you can be your own script editor and constantly re-write your material. Stand-up is about inviting the audience into your world rather than producing something homogenised. I feel that now I'm realising my own voice.

"Years ago, I'd see comedians leaving the circuit and then coming back, and I'd think, 'why?'. But now I completely understand that. There are a lot of new gags I want to tell and a lot of new ideas I want to give vent to. Since the end of the TV show, I've had four years to re-fuel, and now I'm relishing the prospect of coming back with all this fresh material."

The Alistair McGowan One and Many tour 2009 comes to the Tyne Theatre, Newcastle, on Friday, October 23. Telephone 0844 493 9999, or log on to www.tynetheatre.co.uk for details.