A Real Dead Ringer

Simon Stabler speaks to actor, comedian and impressionist Jon Culshaw

- Simon Stabler

It’s a testament to Jon Culshaw’s talent as an impressionist that he was once able to convince a Downing Street switchboard operator to put him through to the prime minister.

“I was working with Steve Penk on Capital Radio at the time,” he recalls, “and I said to Steve: ‘I’ve got this new voice. You know the new Conservative leader, William Hague? He’s got this great voice. We should feature him in a call.’

“And Steve, who will always see the most direct route through to something, straightaway said: ‘We’ve got to call Downing Street haven’t we?’ Obviously, we thought it would be: ‘Oh, go away, stop wasting our time’ but they did put us through.”

Although then prime minister Tony Blair knew straight away that it was a hoax, he was happy to have a brief chat with Jon before his security team cut the call. It earned Jon plenty of column inches (“We heard that Buckingham Palace had been put on high alert,” he jokes) and a call from his mother. “She called me up and said: ‘Oh Jonathan, you’ve done it this time,’ but there was no trouble as a result of it.”

Jon who worked on Spitting Image in the mid-90s is perhaps best-known for the BBC Radio 4 topical impressions show Dead Ringers and is currently appearing on stage in a one-man show about the entertainer Les Dawson. Written by the Bafta and Olivier Award-winning writer Tim Whitnall, the idea for Les Dawson: Flying High came from Jon himself.