How impressionists keep audiences laughing in an age of social media celebrities | Comedy

“If I see somebody become famous, and they’ve got tremendously predominant mannerisms and they speak a certain way which is unusual, I go for it right away,” the veteran impressionist Mike Yarwood once said of the public figures he mimicked.

But in the decades since Yarwood drew up to 18 million viewers to his BBC shows – with his impressions of the likes of Harold Wilson and the football manager Brian Clough – the cultural touchstones that once defined celebrity have exponentially shifted. With traditional TV viewership continuing to decline among younger generations, impressionists are faced with a new challenge – today’s digital natives may not readily recognise the people they are impersonating.

So claimed one of Britain’s best known impressionists, Alistair McGowan. The man who has imitated figures such as Tony Blair, David Beckham and Jonathan Ross said his days of doing new voices were over because his methodology “doesn’t really work for a modern audience”.

“You’ve got that younger audience, aged from 20 to 30, who don’t know who the BBC weather people are, and they won’t know who Monty Don is,” he said. “If I say ‘He’s a presenter on Gardeners’ World’, they’d say ‘What’s that?’. If I say ‘It’s a programme on BBC Two’, they’d say ‘What’s that?’”

But other comedians have been quick to dampen this sentiment, stressing that standout characters will always be there, and impressionists must expand their horizons to find those that resonate with modern audiences.

Jon Culshaw, star of BBC comedy series Dead Ringers, said it was inevitable that the rules “occasionally change a bit”.

“We saw that when satellite TV was coming in, and there were concerns that it would make everything too fragmented. Of course the whole art of it became a different landscape to the way Yarwood did it in the 70s, but there was still plenty to go at. Things find their rhythms,” he said.

Culshaw said he was still seeing younger people engage with his characters including Rishi Sunak, the TV presenter Jay Blades and the psychologist Jordan Peterson. “Impressions have always been like shifting sand dunes, some drop while new ones come up all the time.”

He added that whether you were watching the news, listening to podcasts or scrolling through Twitter, the big characters would always naturally present themselves to you.

He said: “It’ll be the ones that make you laugh, or the ones who you think ‘they’ve got some character’, or ‘we can put a handle on to that’. Jordan Peterson was that for me, he’s always there with his advice.

“Also the things that everyone talks about digitally, like Love Island. They’re great places to put unlikely people into, such as Michael Gove, Liz Truss, Jacob Rees-Mogg.”

Luke Kempner, whose show, Gritty Police Drama: A One-Man Musical, at the Edinburgh festival fringe features 60 impressions in 60 minutes, said audiences continued to respond “brilliantly”.

“I believe you have to work that bit harder to explain context for any audience so you don’t leave anyone behind on an impression they may not know,” he said.

“I also think you have to work harder to write a funny joke so that the character is funny even if someone doesn’t find the impression recognisable. I performed shows in Russia in 2015. Yes, they didn’t know who John Bishop was but the character I created around John Bishop as a hapless Bishop of Liverpool attending Downton Abbey to court Lady Mary was a successfully funny scenario.”

Platforms such as TikTok and Instagram, Kempner added, offered huge opportunities to do more niche impressions. “People are coming to that video wanting impressions of their favourite show. Love Island? Line Of Duty? Succession?”

Culshaw echoed this, saying TV was not always the place to find contemporary comics any more. “A lot of younger impressionists these days come through YouTube. In the past we’d record tapes and post them to a producer, now you do your own thing in your bedroom or garage and hope it goes viral,” he said.

Rosie Holt, whose show That’s Politainment! is showing at the fringe, said that while she is not an impressionist, she creates characters that “brazenly share recognisable ticks and traits” from people in politics and the media.

“I do think if you prioritise the comedy you can get away with quite a lot,” she said. “I have a character called Harriet Langley Swindon who is an amalgamation of various rightwing commentators and ‘opinionists’ who are so enamoured with their own words and delivery they are unashamed to U-turn and contradict at a moment’s notice. Here I use the impressions as a starting point rather than the finished article.”

For Holt, the trick of creating memorable and funny impressions was in creating new characters in their own right. On her podcast Noncensored, a parody of GB News, she brings in comedians who range from uncannily accurate in their impressions, to those who wildly exaggerate real life people.

“Luke Kempner does a brilliant Boris Johnson but the silliness of his improv is what makes the character compelling, and Sooz Kempner sounds very little like the real Nadine Dorries but has produced such a monstrous creation in Dorries’ image she has earned an adoring following online.”