Deadringers star John Culshaw took the Grand’s stage on the evening of 17th June 2018 to deliver a blistering set of pinpoint impressions, supported by veteran radio producer Bill Dare. It was excellent to see one of my favourite entertainers live, although hearing him on satirical radio shows and with Clive Anderson on ‘Loose Ends’ is also always good. Being of that age, I was enthralled by Mike Yarwood’s shows and wanted to emulate him as an impressionist, without any talent to do so. John went to some lengths to credit Yarwood as the master and would probably not have become an impressionist without him, an anecdote about impersonating a history teacher aside.
The show’s format was the two men sat at a table, Bill Dare acting as straight man and feed, so allowing John to speak from his chair or stalk the stage as the personality being impersonated demanded. I honestly cannot even guess the number of impressions he did, starting with a Donald Trump that John admitted swiftly made him feel nauseous, and working through a plethora of people both alive and sadly passed. This was interspersed with career anecdotes, insights on slipping between voices and personal history, the most significant being sending a mix tape of his impressions to Bill Dare, which got him his role on the legendary Spitting Image puppet satire programme.
John has strong Blackpool links working with Radio Wave at its inception. He was able to remember and recount Les Dawson’s opening speech, which also gave the opportunity to really rate Dawson as a writer and performer – almost Shakespearean, I kid you not.
Deadringers has always featured the comedy phone calls and this was done live as part of the show, Bella Italia being phoned as Ozzy Osbourne, Professor Brian Cox, Ed Miliband and finally Alan Sugar. Three pizza boxes did turn up but I suspect they were empty. The thing is the radio segment is edited and this could not be. I think this contributed to my slight distaste for the exercise; I could feel for the poor harassed lady at the end of the phone being phoned repeatedly by someone earning a lot more than her while a theatre full of people sniggered.
Better was the story of impersonating William Hague (currently standing up for cannabis users everywhere) and getting through to Tony Blair. In fact Blair seemed to have twigged pretty early on if not straight away that this was an imposter. We learnt that Hague is from Huddersfield, which was a surprise to me as I thought he was from Wath on Dearne, just down the road from where I used to live in Wombwell.
The show’s conversational nature meant for me that it wasn’t actually side-splittingly funny, but there were plenty of gentle laughs and the time flew by. John always seemed to avoid being cruel and that must be a difficult thing for a satirist. Bill Dare played his role very professionally setting John up smoothly for the various sections of show. That show ended with a quick fire audience call out, resulting in a blizzard of voices, not including Al Pacino who seemed to be the only person that John was not able to immediately do. I think I’ll let him off that one.
