Double vision

I am waiting for David Brent outside a pub in the Birmingham NEC event venue. It's 11am and it's eerily quiet, like a gutted shopping centre after a zombie apocalypse, save for a small huddle of drinkers in the pub. Suddenly there's the star of The Office strutting through the exhibition centre suited, booted, goateed and ready to rock the NRLA 2024 Landlord Conference.
But first we sit down for an interview. "Shoot," he says, making a gun with his fingers, before doing an awkward shuffle of his tie as he unfurls that unmistakable grimace. Look closer, though, and it's clear that this isn't Brent as performed by Ricky Gervais, but by someone else entirely.
Tim Oliver has been performing as David Brent for 20 years now. Before that he ran a successful events business in Sussex but his face was calling out for a new career turn. "It took me a good 18 months to come to terms with the fact that I looked like him," he says.
He took some photos, sent them to a lookalike agency, booked his first gig and was soon on his way to a call centre in Newcastle upon Tyne with Del Boy and Basil Fawlty. "I was there for three hours just mucking about," he recalls. "I thought to myself: that was a lot of fun and the easiest money I've ever made."
Oliver is in demand: birthdays, stag dos, corporate events. Not only does he look like Brent, and has his mannerisms and lines down perfectly, but his voice is pitch perfect too.
"I ripped audio off the DVDS and played it in my car everywhere I went," he says. "I drummed it into myself. People that have never met me before ask: is that your real voice? Sometimes it's kind of like I've lost my own identity. Maybe I'm not Tim any more - I've become David Brent."
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 06, 2024-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 9.500 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der December 06, 2024-Ausgabe von The Guardian Weekly.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 9.500 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Alison's world The graphic novelist faces up to midlife in this playfully fictionalised memoir
Alison Bechdel emerged in the 1980s with Dykes to Watch Out For, a groundbreaking weekly strip that featured a group of mostly lesbian friends. Since then, her acclaimed graphic novels have focused mainly on herself and her family.
I need to drop everything and get on with doing nothing, quickly
I am sitting in my office shed, marvelling that an email from a car hire company I last used six years ago feels entitled to employ the subject line DROP EVERYTHING.

Fire starter Springsteen's anti-Trump broadside divides fans
As the lead singer of a Bruce Springsteen cover band, Brad Hobicorn had been looking forward to performing at Riv's Toms River Hub in New Jersey last Friday.
A new Syria: sanctions relief gives the shattered country a chance to rebuild
The startled joy that greeted Bashar al-Assad's fall six months ago was shadowed by the fear of what might follow.
I wanted us to finish our journey on a high'
Saint Etienne are calling it a day after 35 years. They discuss their final album, turning down Cher's Believe and a career defined by friendship and invention

The museum of absolutely everything
Poison darts, a dome from Spain, priceless spoons and Frank Lloyd Wright furniture... our architecture critic is wowed by the V&A's new east London outpost for 250,000 of its mind-boggling artefacts

Over a barrel Shortage of sugar shakes Cuba's rum industry
It is a crisis that would have sent a shiver down Ernest Hemingway’s drinking arm. Cuba’s communist government is struggling to process enough sugar to make the rum for his beloved mojitos and daiquiris.

Whiz up or wing it? Dips worth doing yourself and the ones to buy
Is it always better to make your own dips, or can I just buy them?

How a tiny village was engulfed by a mountain
It took a couple of minutes for 9m tonnes of rock to obliterate Blatten-but as glaciers melt, such disasters are more likely
Time warp Romance is beautifully drawn in a tale of two couples whose lives overlap, a century apart
Time is layered in Northern Irish writer David Park's latest novel.