 with their uncanny reincarnation. So, if the pool of instantly familiar targets is diminishing, it's becoming the toughest gig. 'I have noticed that younger audiences just don't watch television in the way we used to,' he told The Scots Magazine. '[They have] no idea who these people are. For an audience my age or above… I am very happy to dust off my old impressions and throw in a few new ones, but it is harder and I am less interested…' So it's not just a case of there being new personalities, new trends, but a problematic new model of consumption? 'Yes, that's right,' he says, when I call him to check we haven't got the wrong end of the stick. He elaborates on his concerns: 'I joke that it's all very well, this multi-platform media consumption, but no one thought about the poor impressionists! There were five channels when my show [The Big Impression] was on, and people watched a small number of films. You knew what people were watching. Now, we have no idea. You don't get 18m watching EastEnders, or 4m watching Richard and Judy.' He has given up on playing 'corporate gigs' (to companies), he reveals: 'You've got that younger audience, aged from 20 to 30, who don't know who the BBC weather people are, and they won't know who Monty Don is. And it's more than that. If I say 'He's a presenter on Gardeners' World', they'd say 'What's t){kind=link}
Alistair McGowan says young audiences ‘have no idea’ who most of his targets are. Is the shared culture they rely on a thing of the past?
Is the art of doing impressions a dying one? That has been the grim inference drawn this week from comments made by the venerated impressionist Alistair McGowan, 58, who has said his days doing new voices are “drawing to a close as I am not feeling motivated enough”.
That slump in motivation isn’t, it seems, the result of advancing years, but a broader cultural shift. Apparently, it’s getting harder to alight on satire-worthy subjects whom sufficient numbers of the general public can readily identify. The laughter of recognition is clearly a critical component of why we enjoy impressions – tallying the figure we know (and may not love) with their uncanny reincarnation. So, if the pool of instantly familiar targets is diminishing, it’s becoming the toughest gig.
“I have noticed that younger audiences just don’t watch television in the way we used to,” he told The Scots Magazine. “[They have] no idea who these people are. For an audience my age or above… I am very happy to dust off my old impressions and throw in a few new ones, but it is harder and I am less interested…” So it’s not just a case of there being new personalities, new trends, but a problematic new model of consumption?
“Yes, that’s right,” he says, when I call him to check we haven’t got the wrong end of the stick. He elaborates on his concerns: “I joke that it’s all very well, this multi-platform media consumption, but no one thought about the poor impressionists! There were five channels when my show [The Big Impression] was on, and people watched a small number of films. You knew what people were watching. Now, we have no idea. You don’t get 18m watching EastEnders, or 4m watching Richard and Judy.”