Fiona Bruce, Kirsty Wark, Natasha Kaplinsky, Sophie Raworth. . . famous female newscasters provided rich pickings for impressionist Jan Ravens in the TV show Dead Ringers during the early-to-mid Noughties. The show ran for five years but wasn’t re-commissioned after the seventh series in 2007, although the Radio Four show is still keeping us laughing as the team send up today’s famous voices.
“Making a TV sketch show with lots of different elaborate wigs, costumes and make-up was very expensive,” says Jan. “You’d spend hours in make-up and only be on set in a sketch for a few minutes. Then you’d be back in hair and make-up to start all over again. You’re really a hostage to fortune, too, because you’re never going to look exactly like whoever you’re supposed to be.”
Not that Jan, who appeared on Strictly Come Dancing in 2004 with dancing partner Anton Du Beke, has been idle since the TV version of Dead Ringers went off air. Anything but.
“I’ve been busy doing stand-up comedy and also a one-woman show,” she says. “We did a very successful Dead Ringers Live tour last year and were hoping to go back on the road with it in April. Of course that was before lockdown, though.”
Jan (62) is hoping to resume her roles in the stage version of Alan Bennett’s Talking Heads at Watford Palace Theatre once it opens again. Lockdown ended the run in March.
“I was taking on the role of lonely Miss Ruddock in Lady of Letters – made famous on TV in the Eighties by Patricia Routledge (and more recently by Imelda Staunton). I was also playing tweed-and-twin-set Muriel in Soldiering On. Bennett’s characters are such a joy to play, and there’s such rhythm to his words. Being monologues, though, there are an awful lot of lines to learn.”
Jan says she originally set out to be an actress rather than an impressionist.
“I started doing impressions of teachers at school and they’d ask me to take off their colleagues! Of course, my school friends loved it, too. I never thought I’d do it professionally, though. In the early Eighties, I started doing a few impressions in a revue – my first two were Victoria Wood and Clare Rayner. Then I was asked to do Carrot’s Lib on TV in 1983 and added characters such as Mary Whitehouse and Hilda Ogden to my repertoire. Then I went on to do Spitting Image. Suddenly it was like ‘So you’re an impressionist!’ There was a time when I thought I hated doing impressions – I felt like a performing dog – but now I embrace it. People really like impressions of famous people, especially when you’re able to be satirical. It’s far more than a funny voice thing – it’s about creating a character.”
Jan’s Theresa May and Diane Abbott impressions proved incredibly popular but does she get concerned when high-profile female political figures take a step back out of the limelight?
“It’s not like it was 30 years ago when the only high-profile female politician was Margaret Thatcher,” she replies. “Now there are many – on both sides of the House of Commons. Priti Patel, for instance, and Emily Thornberry.”
Away from, radio, TV and theatre Jan, married to the vice-president of Universal Music Group Max Hole, is the proud mum of three sons. And also an ambassador for the charity ActionAid, an international organisation that works against poverty and injustice worldwide.
But we can’t wait to see her, hopefully back on stage again soon.
Catch up on the latest series of Radio 4’s Dead Ringers on BBC iPlayer
More from Yours.co.uk
Dame Kristin Scott Thomas sings the praises of pulling together
Sue Barker: Tennis career, family life and relationship with husband, Lance Tankard