TV funnyman and impressionist Bobby Davro joined us at NMP Live for a chat on getting his big break, deciding who to impersonate and how to read the room at corporate events.
Watch the full interview or read the transcript below.
In conversation with Bobby Davro
When did you realise you were good at impressions?
I started realising I was good at mimicry, just naturally good at it; I think you can either do it or your can’t do it, and it was when I was about 15 or 16. I have always been a bit of a show off, and I used to dress up as different things just to make my mum and dad laugh. I was about 14 or 15 and they saw I had a bit of an interest in it and there was a documentary on the TV about an amateur variety club in Feltham, Middlesex. I watched it and thought I would love to do a bit of that.
My dad phoned up and got in touch with a guy called Eric Gates and I joined the Armada Variety Club at 15, and I used to go off and do charity work for old folks and different things and it was nice. I was a youngster in it and that lovely old Eric, who is long gone now, but I still have him to thank for stoking the fire in me.
I stayed with them for about 3 years, and gradually realised that I would like to do it. Then I got in touch with a camp company call The Pure Corn Company, and I met a guy called Lee Tracey, who introduced me to another gentleman who used to put on stag nights, believe it or not. I was only a youngster, 18, 19 years old, and I used to do all the stag nights with comedians that were on the circuit that would perform. People like Mike Reid, Jim Davidson, Michael Barrymore, and people like that. I went along as pretty green around the edges, and I learnt my apprenticeship in stag nights, and hen parties, and stuff for strippers. I wasn’t a stripper, of course, I don’t think I would qualify for that!
I used to love it! I went from earning £18.50 a week in Bentalls in Kingston as a shop assistant, to quite a lot of money I was getting that way. I bought my first car with it, and then I realised I didn’t really want to end up in this circuit forever, so I went into variety.
I got myself an agent and I was very fortunate that it started to happen quite quickly. But I worked very, very hard. I used to slip up and down the motorways even then, when I was 20 years old and I used to do all the social clubs on the circuit. Then the more professional I became I started getting better work, getting big clubs, and then I got some telly very early on.
My career has been pretty good actually, I’m pretty happy with the way it went.
What was your big break?
Amazing thing, actually. The year before I had done a series hosted by Jimmy Tarbuck. It was a live show going out from London Weekend (Television) and I did the first year and I did all right and then they got me in for a second year.
I was on the bill in the second half and they gave me eight minutes I think, and I went out there and I did a Freddie Starr impression and then I did a Cliff Richard impression. I was singing and then I had this coat where they pulled the coat off, it had Velcro at the back, and then I went and sat at the piano and played the piano and did singing impressions and I tore the place apart.
It was at Her Majesty’s Theatre in 1984 or 85, I can’t remember when, and from that day on the phone rang all the time. The next day, they phoned up and off I went.
I had got into a show called Copycats which was based on impressions, a bit like the latter-day Who Do You Do which was in the 70’s; Copycats was in the 80’s and I got a chance to do that.
I’ll tell you one of my greatest influences which is a rather nice story. Mike Yarwood was the big impressionist at the time and I wrote a letter to him when I was 16 years old and he said ‘be as original as you can, just be original don't copy me, try and find your own material, find your own impressions.’ And that was the best bit of advice because everyone was doing Tommy Cooper, Frank Spencer and all the normal ones and I was doing the sort of people that no one had ever done.
I kept with that for many years, although I didn't want to be just an impressionist, I wanted to be an entertainer. I was fortunate because I could sing so I could do singing impressions as well and that's actually what the strength is when I come to do corporate work.
Yarwood is a friend of mine now and we go, and I take him out for an Indian meal about three or four times a year and he is my one of my heroes and to know him as a friend, it's a real privilege. In fact we went out the other day and Mike Yarwood was there and then there was me, who sort of came up behind, and then Jon Culshaw came up and then another lad now that's doing very well, a guy called Danny Posthill who is sort of another generation of impressionists. And we're all there together and we had our photo taken and it was lovely. I’m very, very fond of Mike.
Tell us about your TV shows in the 80s and 90s
From Live at Her Majesty’s in ’84,’85 I got Copycats and then from Copycats, because of this desire and this ability to be able to do new people and not just go along with the norm, I got offered a chance to do my own shows. A guy called John Kaye Cooper who was the Executive Producer of The Stanley Baxter Hour show, he was one of the real big guys, he took me under his wing for the first year and we made a special and then we made a series, called Bobby Davro On The Box.
Then he got another job and I had Nigel Lythgoe, ‘Nasty Nigel’ he went over and made billions of pounds over in America with Simon Fuller, and he took me under his wing and I did my best work I think: TV Weekly, Bobby Davro On The Box and Davro’s Sketch Pad. I did some fantastic work with Nigel and then he moved away and then I had a guy called Vic Finch and we did the last two series.
But at that time, coming towards the late 80’s, I could see the writing was on the wall a bit for Saturday night television shows like myself and people like Russ Abbott, who was fantastic at the time, and Les Dennis, who is one of my dearest friends. I realised that the material that people were doing on Saturday Night Live and Friday Night Live, was edgy, it was a bit University, it was young and I could see that and I wanted to do that kind of stuff but I had a contract to do ITV.
So all the people I was impersonating, like Jonathan Ross, I was one of the first people to do [Jonathon's voice] ‘Jonathan Ross’; I was doing Julian Clary, [Julian's voice]‘I thank you’ and I was doing Max Headroom [Max's voice] ‘Ma Ma Max Headroom’ and all these different people that I did were very much Channel 4 people. I used to do an impression of [Jools' voice] ‘what’s his name, Jools Holland, a bit like a hunchback impression’ on the other side we have David Essex.
It was a lovely time and I had a girl with me who was doing the shows called Jessica Martin and we were the sort of Jon Culshaw, Debra Stephenson of the day.
How do you decide who to impersonate?
Usually I notice somebody. I was the first person to do Julian Clary and I said, ‘I like this guy, he's got a different way with him’ and so I said, ‘I'll do him in the TV show.’ You don't know how it's going to go, I found that the stuff I wanted to do maybe was a little bit clever; I used to do Ben Elton and people like that. I remember we made a special a few years after, I hadn't done telly for a while, the BBC job had gone away, and I got a phone call from central telly and they offered me a special.
I went and did it and I said, ‘I'm going to stick to my guns and I'm going do lots of new impressions,’ so I did. I did Michael Barrymore [Michael's voice] ‘Alright’ at the time he had the shows and then I did people like [Paul's voice] ‘do you recognize the voice, we're going to the cemetery, I met this woman and she said ‘morning’ and I said no I’m just taking the dog for a walk.’ That was meant to be Paul Merton.
And I did a bit of [Jo's voice] ‘Jo Brand’ where you look at a picture on the wall, and I did Jo Pasquale, [Jo's voice] ‘like I’ve had an accident’ and then I did Paul O’Grady, [Paul's voice] ‘at the time he was doing Lily Savage’ and I want to be as original as possible and I still strive to be that.
In my show now I do a routine based on my sort of genre of entertainer of the eighties, I always say why don’t we bring a show back of the comedians of the eighties and the nineties and call it ‘Still Alive at the Apollo’ and I think it's a great sort of way of getting in the new impressions. So, I’d do [in their voices] Michael McIntyre and say ‘yeah’ and John Bishop and Alan Carr and Jimmy Carr ‘ha ha ha’ and Harry Hill. So, I keep up with all the new ones and that's the most important thing, as long as you keep going.
What’s the biggest challenge with corporate bookings?
Getting them really! I think what happens is in corporate work when you are an act which is on the telly and very visual they always want them. But this is the secret too, there's many cases, and I see some wonderful comedians which I’ve mentioned, that aren't right, they're not right for the client.
The person the clients wants, let’s invent a client, Tomko’s the washing machine people, a big company, an imaginary name. And because they’ve got loads of money and they’re doing very well ‘we want an entertainer, a comedian.’ The company’s been around a long time, so they book a comedian of the era, ‘who’s the best comedian?’ And they name a couple of acts and they’re the wrong act for their business because some of them a middle aged or maybe older audiences, but they give it to a youngster who costs a fortune, ‘well he must be good if he cost that much.’
As a corporate booker, you sometimes try and say, ‘no don't get them because they’re not right for you but why don't you have so and so’, the reply is ‘oh no, no you want the best.’ And then they spend all that money and then they have the comedian going in and it's not right for them. They're not prepared, because they're big names, they're not really prepared, ‘you've booked me, a big name, that's what you've booked that's what you're going to get, that's what it says on the bottle, you get what's said on the bottle.’ And whether you like it or don’t, that's what you’ve booked.
Whereas, I've adopted a different attitude, I have to, I don't have the profile now that I used to have so I have to cut my cloths so when I go out there, because of my experience and because of my act I can adapt.
Can you get the same audience reaction from a corporate as your own theatre show?
Yes, in some ways it doesn't really change that, as long as you're in the right gig. If you want someone to entertain classical music fans and they book Bobby Davro, you don’t stand a hope in hell’s chance. Occasionally, that happens, that’s why if you speak to a lot of modern comedians, they don't like doing corporate work, ‘it's not my audience is it, it’s someone else’s audience.’
It changes the parameters of performing but if you can adapt like I can; sometimes they don't want to listen to jokes, they don't want to hear funny, they want to dance. I had one the day before yesterday, we'd gone to do a gig and they just wanted to dance. It was in Manchester and I knew, and I could sense it. They'd been sat there having their dinner, they'd had the speeches, they didn't have a band on afterwards and so I thought this audience ‘what are they going to have, another comedian’, so I did some comedy, did some singing and at the end what I do, I've built half an hour of a dance set.
I get the whole audience out of their tables on to a dance floor, if there’s one there and I can do all the dance songs. So, I’ll do a bit of Madness and then I'll do Barry Manilow, Copacabana, all up tempo stuff, Stevie Wonder, then I’ll do Billy Joel and I'll do the Status Quo, Village People and then Sweet Caroline with Neil Diamond and then a bit of Robbie Williams and so I've got all this stuff, a bit of Elton.
I've got all this stuff which gets them up and dancing and sometimes that's required as an entertainer and that is something that I have, it’s my sort of ammo, if you like.
I can also do auctions, I’ve learnt how to do auctions, heads or tails; I'm a very good host, I don’t want to sound conceited but I’m a very good corporate entertainer and there's very few left now. Bob Monkhouse, [in his voice] ‘was a huge friend of mine’, he could do it all and he used to tell me, he told me the best advice, ‘economics, a joke is about economics of words’ and it's about knowing the right material to do for that audience.
So, you can't always get it right, but my success rate is I would say about 98%, I very rarely misjudge an audience. Sometimes I get it wrong but most of time I get it right and I'm very proud of that. I think this is why people phone up and still use me I'd like to think.
What’s the key to your longevity?
The key, when you haven't got a profile, it's not as easy however, I think reputation is something you have to gain and respect, you have to get that and I think I'm very lucky after 35 years, I have got a good reputation, I've got respect.
You have your bumps along the way, but everybody will, you won't get away with it 100 percent you've got to take the good times and the bad times. But I've been very fortunate that there have been very few bad times when it's come to my professional work and I still work at it and I still adapt.
It doesn't cost anything, as my dad used to say, as a man of few words, he used to say ‘Bob’ that's all he said, a man of few words! No, he used to say when it comes to comedy, I said’ I want to be a comedian,’ he said ‘if you can make just one person laugh then you're s***, you've got make a lot of people laugh to be a comedian!’
If you're interested in booking Bobby Davro you can enquire online, email us or pick up the phone and speak to one of our booking agents. For further information on Bobby, testimonials and video clips view his profile.
