My First London Home: Rory Bremner

Telegraph

16-05-2025

My first London home was a bedsit, somewhere off Baker Street. It was grim. A tiny room with a sink and my heart still sinks at the thought of it. It was my first term as a student at King's College London and I realised how lonely the city could be but I got in with the drama people and became involved in all sorts of theatre and shows and very quickly life became very full and busy. Then I moved into a flat share in Cosway Street, just off the Marylebone Road, close to the Seashell fish and chip restaurant on Lisson Grove and not far from Lord's Cricket Ground, another interest.
I studied French and German for my degree, graduating in 1984. Having an ear and facility for language definitely helps you pick up on the nuances of other people's voices, making impressions possible. I don't know where it comes from, although my dad had a sense of humour I share and I started doing impersonations at a young age, developing it further at university.
The first flat I bought was on Cornwall Gardens, South Kensington in 1995, by which time I'd moved from the BBC to Channel 4 and was working with the two Johns, Bird and Fortune, on a programme called Rory Bremner… Who Else? From 1999, we focused exclusively on political satire in a new programme called Bremner, Bird and Fortune, which ran for 12 series.
It was a beautiful top-floor flat and I redid it with the help of a designer and even had a piano, which had to be laboriously winched into the flat through its upstairs window. The windows faced south and every evening at six o'clock, a Concorde would fly past east to west, which always made me feel I should stand up and salute.
After Tess and I married in 1999, we moved to Courtfield Mews, where there was an upstairs space for Tessa's studio and this is where our first daughter Ava was born in 2001. After that we moved to Oxfordshire, within striking distance of London but very much in the country. But when we met, Tessa [Campbell Fraser, the sculptor] had an artist's studio apartment just off the King's Road and we've kept that as our London base.
I was born in the posh part of Edinburgh and my mother was English, so while I'm very proud of my heritage, I was pretty anglicised and sadly have no natural Scottish accent. For about 10 years until 2019, Tessa and I had a home in the Scottish borders. A labour of love really, a beautiful Georgian house that kept the local tradesmen in work for years.
Through an interest in opera, I ended up on the opera judging panel of the Olivier Awards and I was approached by Charles Hazlewood and Mark Dornford-May, who was general director of Broomhill Opera and they approached me about translating Kurt Weill's opera The Silver Lake. This was to be the opening production for a newly renovated Wilton's Music Hall in Shadwell in March 1999. Wilton's Music Hall is amazing and a place that really captures your heart. We got some grants and sponsorship and community support to pull it all together. And that led me to translating Bizet's Carmen for its next production, which we took to Cape Town.
It's all about the words really. For King (then Prince) Charles' 50th birthday, Stephen Fry asked me to do something, so I reworked Dr Dolittle musical song lyrics: 'I can talk to the vegetables – imagine talking to a turnip, moaning to a mushroom, talking Swedish to a swede…'. I love making words fit.
The new tour is a bit of a hybrid, a mixture of topical stand-up, some sit-down stuff where I talk about the people I have met, from Geldof to Mandela to Clinton, how to do impressions and how I started out and what it was like working with Bird and Fortune. There's a lot there after 40 years that unlocks a fund of stories. So, it's stand-up and stories, plus guest interviewers, including Jan Ravens and Miles Jupp.
I wonder about the value of political satire now, as so much of the modern political climate seems beyond satire. Trump's a gift, as are Farage and Johnson, but the day after the election I did Starmer, who is very different. 'We will govern as we campaigned, tediously, stodgily, setting out a vision of the country in the style of a man explaining to his doctor the symptoms of his ongoing constipation…' and gratifyingly, the audience got it.
I recognised my own ADHD through that of a young relative of mine; what they were going through seemed very familiar. The impetuousness, lack of attention, certain things from my childhood and university, that racing mind. I see my ADHD now almost as my best friend and worst enemy, but it does give me an intensity of focus I try to work with.
I'm a bit of a chameleon when it comes to home and tend to adapt to wherever I am. When I drive into town, I'm looking forward to being in London and when I'm driving out of town, I'm looking forward to being in the country. What I love about London is its infinite variety. Its skyline, its history, its diversity, its energy and I love sitting in coffee shops. I like to think and write with people all around me, I like that buzz.