The impressionist on Jeremy Corbyn, Michael Gove and why current politics are beyond satire.
IT’S show day in the Scottish border town of Kelso. Flags are flying on the banks of the Tweed, tractors are revving and gleaming farm animals are being led off trailers. It’s an important day for the area, but not one you would associate with a comedian, less still one as well known as Rory Bremner. He is here, however, moving faster than anyone has moved in the Ednam House Hotel for years, accepting coffee, making small talk about the weather and cutting a tall, well-dressed dash in the tartan surroundings.
The Bremners moved to the Borders in 2003—he’s married to the sculptor Tessa Campbell Fraser and they have two teenage daughters. ‘It’s where we relax,’ he says, ‘although it can be depressing watching Wimbledon in front of a log fire. I’m often reminded of Billy Connolly’— he breaks into a rumbling Glaswegian accent, his first impression of the morning— ‘saying that we have two seasons here: winter and July.’
Mr Bremner is probably Britain’s best-known impressionist. Huge in the 1990s and, to an extent, in the early 2000s, when he was one of Channel 4’s main talents, fronting Rory Bremner, Who Else? and Bremner, Bird and Fortune in an unbroken 18-year run, these days, it’s fair to say that, although busy, he struggles to get the big jobs he once enjoyed.
He’s just completed a run of stand-up dates around the country, which he relished. ‘It’s a really political time at the moment with Trump and Brexit and satire is limping along behind trying to make sense of it all,’ he says. ‘The election was called in the middle of the tour: I was a bit like Brenda [cue indignant female Bristolian]: “What? Not another one?”’
Esta historia es de la edición October 11, 2017 de Country Life UK.
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Esta historia es de la edición October 11, 2017 de Country Life UK.
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