Latest news with #RoryBremner
The Guardian
a day ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Rory Bremner review – slick satirist cosies up to Trump, Rees-Mogg and the king
Topical comedy meets a trip down memory lane at Rory Bremner's touring show, where gags about – and impersonations of – Trump, Starmer et al rub shoulders with little parps from the far-flung past. Russell Grant, Keith Floyd and Robin Cook – remember them? Bremner does, and remembers the jokes he once told about them too. Prompted by onstage interlocutor Fred MacAulay, he summons them back to life here, in An Evening With … format that includes standup and sketch alongside chat-show banter and questions from the crowd. It's perfectly entertaining, especially for those of us who were there first time around. (MacAulay makes a running joke of the confused 17-year-old in the front row.) Bremner is nothing if not a slick raconteur. Too slick, arguably: I sometimes wished he'd answer a question from the heart rather than from his mental Rolodex of well-buffed anecdotes. He does that once, when prompted to discuss his ADHD, and his commitment to destigmatising the condition. Elsewhere, it's smooth repartee about schmoozing the king, struggling with Noel Edmonds' voice, and prank calls he once made in character as Nelson Mandela. There are treats for the locals in his native city: a cameo from Gavin Hastings and a Trump gag about the Fife village of Lower Largo that would bewilder audiences elsewhere. With little new to say about the US president, there's too much Trump in the standup portion of Bremner's show. It's not the only instance of our host treading familiar ground (on Rees-Mogg: 'he's like something out of a previous century', as if that's not been frequently observed). But there are choice moments, too: a fine quip about the names of the ex-Member for North East Somerset's kids; another about concussion protocols and the high recent turnover of British PMs. You end with an impression of a satirist with little fire left in his belly, his anecdotes suggesting cosy camaraderie with the public figures he lampoons onstage. But he remains witty, well-informed (see the set piece in which voice-of-horseracing Peter O'Sullevan commentates on modern politics) and able with a twist of those vocal chords to spring the innocent, distant past irresistibly back to life. At Gala Durham, 3 June; then touring.
Telegraph
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Britain's diplomats have a new challenge: hiding their globes from Trump
Cartography news. The Government has ruled on what to call the Gulf of Mexico. And Donald Trump – who has renamed it the Gulf of America – won't be happy. Foreign Office minister Martin Wrigley told MPs that the Government 'will continue to follow the guidance of the Permanent Committee on Geographical Names who advise His Majesty's Government on the policies and procedures for the representation of geographical names for places and features outside of the UK'. And the committee has ruled that ' this body of water is Gulf of Mexico '. Better hide the globes when the President comes over for his state visit. Down on the farm Life on The Archers can be cut-throat, says Charles Collingwood, who is marking 50 years playing the ageing lothario Brian Aldridge on the Radio 4 soap. He recalls getting into a BBC lift with Jack Holloway, who played Ralph Bellamy moments after Holloway was told that his character was being written out of the programme in 1980. 'When we got to the third floor where the bar was, he [Holloway] shot off to drown his sorrows,' Collingwood says. 'I went to join The Archers cast and said, 'I've just got in the lift with Jack Holloway – he says he's been written out of the programme?' They said, 'Yes, you've bought his farm!'' Bremner dismounts The pressures of financing an equestrian career has become unsustainable for Rory Bremner and his daughter Lila, 21, an accomplished showjumper. 'It's the sheer cost of it all,' the TV impressionist told me at the Chelsea Flower Show. 'There is sponsorship but it is a very competitive world. To sustain it, I compare it to highwayman Dick Turpin – he had a phrase: 'your money or your life?' The horses get more and more expensive. You need hundreds of thousands. So she's gone to London to do a personal assistant's course and have some fun London days, like I did as a young man.' And why not? Trump's present Gordon Brown told how British prime ministers traditionally give presents to incoming US presidents at the John Smith Memorial Lecture this week. 'David Cameron gave Barack Obama a table tennis table. Rishi Sunak gave Joe Biden a Barbour jacket. Theresa May gave Donald Trump a hamper from Chequers. Boris Johnson gave some poetry,' Brown said. 'Keir Starmer has had to give gifts to the two presidents. He gave a gift to Joe Biden of an Arsenal jersey with 46 on it to denote the 46th president of the United States. I don't know if Joe Biden knew too much about Arsenal. And of course, he has already given a gift and sent it to Washington, to Donald Trump: It's Peter Mandelson.' Perhaps Gordon misses Peter? Rodney's Brexit reset The European Commission helpfully distributed photos of Sir Keir Starmer unveiling the Brexit Reset deal on Monday alongside European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and Council of Europe president Antonio Costa. The only problem was that while the other leaders were correctly captioned, the PM was described as 'Rodney Starmer'. Rodney is of course the PM's middle name. But could there be an Only Fools and Horses fan working for the Eurocrats? As Delboy said: 'This time next year, we'll be millionaires!' Beaverbrook's bashes are back Jonathan Aitken, 82, ex-Conservative minister and now a prison chaplain, has started a new political supper club called the Beaverbrook Forum to re-create the parties thrown by his uncle, Lord Beaverbrook, who owned the Daily Express and served in Churchill's wartime government. Political veterans Lord Gummer and Diane Abbott, as well as Robert Jenrick's wife Michal, dined on champagne and shepherd's pie as Aitken recalled how 'Bollinger Bolsheviks' such as Nye Bevan used to love Beaverbrook's parties. The future Labour leader Michael Foot was apparently so spoiled by Beaverbrook that he was allowed to stay for free in a house in Beaverbrook's garden. Sir Keir's Starmer's freebies from Lord Alli look like small beer. O'Flynn's fiscal legacy RIP the much-missed Patrick O'Flynn, 59, the former Ukip MEP, as well as Daily Telegraph and GB News commentator, who died this week. One of his most memorable policies as Ukip's economic spokesman was for a tax on luxury goods like designer shoes, and handbags to win over former Labour voters. O'Flynn's so-called 'WAG tax' was unveiled at Ukip's conference in September 2014 and axed by leader Nigel Farage two days later, after an outcry. Farage declared: 'It was a discussion point yesterday, it isn't going to happen.' Perhaps with Farage's Reform leading the polls, the WAG tax's time will come again?
Telegraph
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
My First London Home: Rory Bremner
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.
Times
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Rory Bremner: ‘I should have learnt to shut the f*** up'
The Edinburgh-born comedian and writer Rory Bremner is touring a new live show, Making an Impression. Which impressions have you found the hardest? We did Deal or No Deal on Bremner, Bird and Fortune one week and I struggled with Noel Edmonds. Eventually I worked out there was a little catch in his laugh, a little croaky wobble. Sometimes you suddenly find the key to a character and go: 'Yes, that's it!' What's your earliest memory? I remember going on a Sunday school picnic to Gullane. I think I was kicking sand off the top of the cliffs and it was coming down like a waterfall on to the picnic tables where they were serving sandwiches. I was a little show-off. I have a
Times
10-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Times
Rory Bremner: I'm not brave enough to do Nigel Farage in Clacton
Rory Bremner is pacing around a north London pub, miming lines, running material through his busy brain. The veteran impressionist is more often seen on television or heard on radio, a fixture since the days of Thatcher and Major, and on Bremner, Bird and Fortune or I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue. Yet here he is, at a humble Monday night comedy club, looking as if he'd rather be anywhere else — quiet, jittery, terrified. At about 10pm he bounds on stage and says he has to go soon. 'I've got to rush off and do Kemi Badenoch's leaving party,' he says. 'It's a surprise.' The crowd laugh. A few even cheer. And from then on Bremner relaxes, as he goes on a rollercoaster
