There are only two of us at the table but Alistair McGowan has filled this corner of the pub with chattering stars. Gary Lineker talks over Dara O Briain, Roger Federer swaps advice with Frank Skinner, Arsene Wenger ponders life, and then Boris Johnson turns up. At which point I beg McGowan to stop. ‘Really?’ he says, a little disappointed. ‘I love doing Boris.’
McGowan has lost none of the natural facility for mimicry that first emerged at the Guildhall School of Drama in the Eighties and made the BBC1 show The Big Impression such a success. He still does ‘a very good George Clarke’ from George Clarke’s Amazing Spaces around the house because his wife, the opera singer Charlotte Page, likes Clarke so much.
Alistair McGowan has lost none of the natural facility for mimicry that made the BBC1 show The Big Impression such a success
McGowan married Page in 2013 after meeting her in a production of The Mikado in 2008, part of a journey towards classical music that has seen McGowan, in an astonishing about-turn, reinvent himself as a pianist. This month he embarks on a tour of the UK. ‘I’m hoping to introduce people to music they haven’t heard, or didn’t realise that they knew, but they liked,’ he says. ‘I’ll play The Sunken Cathedral by Debussy and not make any jokes about it. Then I’ll do my Harry Kane.’
But for the next hour he’s going to drop the scattergun impressions and let the occasionally idiosyncratic man behind the voices speak; a man who is such an ardent environmentalist he doesn’t like buying new electrical goods. ‘I don’t even have a plasma screen,’ he says. ‘I’ve got an old cathode ray tube television.’
Wearing his beard in the style of the French composer Erik Satie (‘I’m doing a show about his madness but with beautiful music in it’), McGowan today is a very different proposition to the gawky comic from the West Midlands who used to wear a sarong and pretend to be David Beckham on The Big Impression. Co-starring his former girlfriend Ronni Ancona, the Bafta-winning Saturday night show ran from 2000 to 2004.
‘You become a bit of an egotist,’ he says. ‘That’s why you keep doing it, but you get a lot of intrusion. I hear young people saying, “I want to be famous.” Why do people want that? Today I don’t tweet, I don’t do social media, and it’s partly down to the fact that when I was well known, people were keen to say horrible things about me or write things that weren’t true – say that you’ve been places you haven’t been, or that you’ve been out with somebody you’ve never been out with. I found out the hard way because the fame we had then was pretty big.’
Alistair McGowan with Ronni Ancona on The Big Impression as Posh Spice and David Beckham
McGowan and Ancona as Richard Madeley and Judy Finnigan. McGowan says: ‘When I was doing my Hugh Grant impressions, she’d say, “It’s going into Prince Charles”’
His romance with Ancona ended in 1999, but they continued their close professional relationship. ‘When you are working with a partner there’s a certain shorthand between you, so you can get to things quicker. Sometimes actors won’t say what they really think about each other, you pussyfoot around because you’ve got to be polite. But your partner can just go, “Don’t do that!” Ronni used to be very good with me. When I was doing my Hugh Grant impressions, she’d say, “It’s going into Prince Charles.” That’s the great thing when you’re working with somebody who has really, really been through stuff with you. Everybody else would just say, “Yes, it’s really good.” ’
My agent said, “You used to be hot and now you’re not.” That was quite a realisation for me
But Ancona was growing increasingly restless in a role she found limiting. ‘For the whole of the last series of The Big Impression, she was saying, “I don’t want to be known as the girl who did Posh Spice. I want to do other things.” I thought, Oh, if that’s how you feel, maybe it’s time to take a break. Comedy is a ladder. I wanted to get up all those rungs. Going up, I was enjoying the view, and then after a while I thought, Oof, I’m not sure if I do want this! I’ll just go a few rungs down the ladder again. ’
It was a career- and life-changing decision. He did some theatre work and live gigs, after which McGowan felt ready to return to prime-time television.
‘And that’s when you discover that the ladder you climbed before has gone. It’s a different ladder now with different people holding it and they go, “No, no, sorry, you’re not going up.” That was a real shock, not being able to go back to it. For a few years that really hurt. You see the careers of other people, like Frank Skinner and Jo Brand, going on and on, and you judge yourself by them. You think, “They’re still doing it, why am I not still doing it?” ’
Everything else had gone as well. ‘It’s a very strange experience when you’re no longer invited on chat shows and panel games,’ he says. ‘When you’re watching stuff on television and you think, “Hang on a minute, they didn’t offer me a chance to turn that down!” You wouldn’t have wanted to do them, but you want to get the chance to turn them down. That’s a stupid thing, about satisfying your ego, but it’s true, and it’s a strange thing to come to terms with. I went to an agent a year after we stopped doing the show and he said, “Your trouble is you’re not hot.” I went, “What are you talking about?” He said, “It’s simple. You used to be hot and now you’re not.” That was quite a realisation for me.’
Gradually he rebuilt his career, but this time as a serious actor, appearing in Bleak House for the BBC and on stage at the Chichester Festival. In 2015 McGowan and Page appeared in the stage play An Audience With Jimmy Savile. McGowan recreated Savile and Page played several other characters. Did he feel they were taking a big risk? ‘Yes, hugely,’ he admits. ‘There was an outcry, in certain papers and certainly online. People saying, “Oh, you shouldn’t be doing this.” But the play was really sensitively done.’
McGowan, in an astonishing about-turn, has reinvented himself as a pianist. This month he embarks on a tour of the UK
McGowan also mastered the piano he was first inspired to take up by Les Dawson’s comedy act in the Seventies. ‘I had never seen anyone play the piano that badly before but my mother said to play it that badly, you have to be very good.’
He got as far as Grade 2 as a child but gave it up for football when he was nine. It wasn’t until he was in his 30s that McGowan began playing seriously, practising for four hours each day. Today, he is good enough to have performed at The Proms with his Satie show in 2016; his album went to No 1 in the classical charts in 2017. Along the way, he learned to face down his fears. ‘When Sony made the album offer, I said to my agent, “No! It’s ridiculous, I won’t be good enough to record an album in five months.” She said, “Well, get good enough.” And I did.’
McGowan can seem slightly out of touch with modern culture and is sometimes shocked by it. ‘I find it difficult to watch a lot of comedy now, because of the language and the subject matter. The references to sex, I’m just astonished. It’s like there are absolutely no barriers any more. You can say anything about anything. I read reviews that say “Wonderful use of insults” and “The most inventive swearing you’ll ever hear”. And I think, “Is that what we’ve come to?” ’
He even gets uneasy watching Gogglebox. ‘I love it but I can’t believe how often the parents swear in front of their children and children swear in front of their parents. I would have been clobbered!’
McGowan isn’t a parent himself. After marrying Page, he said he didn’t want to have children, though he regrets the publicity that followed. ‘That’s one of the reasons I ducked away from celebrity and fame,’ he says. ‘You’ll only say that you don’t want to have children if somebody asks you the question and you either answer it or seem rude by not answering it. I didn’t go out publicly to make a statement about it. Neither of us are ashamed of it. I think statistics show more and more people are now choosing not to have children. We’re both in our 50s now and we live a very full life. We don’t feel we’ve missed out at all.’
And what about the fame he walked away from – does he regret that?
‘No, I’m really pleased I got to that stage,’ he says. ‘I’m probably a happier person now but I’m happier because I went through that. If I hadn’t had that fame, I’d always be thinking, “What is that like?” ’
Alistair McGowan’s ‘Introductions To Classical Piano’ UK tour begins on April 3. For dates and tickets, go to alistairmcgowan.co.uk