We Love Are You Being Served

Rob Brydon tells the story of first meeting the two Ronnies at a party. He had just written and starred in Human Remains with Julia Davis. Barker said: "You're the fellow from that Human Remains. I watched three of them." Brydon was in awe that one of his heroes had watched his breakthrough role and awaited some form of polite compliment. "You must tell the girl not to always play dowdy," said Barker, and that was that.

Well, he's certainly still doing him at Christmas 1981, as seen on YouTube. It always seems a bit inexplicable that he moved to Thames in 1982 when he'd seen Eric and Ern do the same and become the Beeb's top dog in their absence, but they always cited Thames' Head of Light Entertainment Philip Jones as being crucial in both moves because he was so respected throughout showbusiness and was incredibly persuasive. And initially it worked out well for Yarwood, his first Thames series in 1983 got very high ratings and he was still a bit of a draw, but he had some personal problems and the whole variety scene he was associated with was falling out of fashion - Tarby and Cannon and Ball were both dropped by LWT in 1988, and Brucie and Bob survived due to their game shows.

But as you say, he did have a bit of a comeback in the mid-nineties. He'd been out of the public eye for a while but did a couple of TV interviews talking about his alcoholism, and he came across as very honest and sympathetic, and he got some more work out it. He appeared on HIGNFY and the Royal Variety, as mentioned, and then at Christmas 1995 he introduced All The Best For Christmas...



This was a regular show on BBC1 for a few Christmasses in the nineties, various comedy clips with new links - Brian Conley and Ronnie Corbett did it in other years - and as you can see Mike did some new impressions and it seemed to go very well. And then I'm convinced that it was announced he was going to do a whole new series for the Beeb, and there was a request in the Radio Times for amateur impressionists to appear on it with him, but that never happened in the end and he went back into retirement.

Of course, his last TV appearance would probably have been on the special programme the Beeb did the other year about Bob Monkhouse's final gig from 2003, because Mike was Bob's special guest and had a chat with him, Mike saying he didn't really miss being on the telly and was happy enough at home.

It's funny you should mention his appearance on HIGNFY, because around the same time Tarby was on it, and on Room 101 as well, and it seemed obvious that Tarby's agent had seen Bob do those shows and be hugely successful and reinvent himself, and sent Tarby on them in the hope he could do something similar. But it didn't really work out for him, because unlike Bob, and later Brucie, he was too old-school to reinvent himself to a great extent.

The things with impressionists is that the world can change so quickly and people can lose their position so suddenly that impressionists have to constantly keep up with who is in the public eye otherwise their careers are damaged. Referring back to Yarwood. I remember reading once that Harold Wilson was his "crown jewel" and it was done very well indeed (his impression of Jim Callaghan was good too).

I think the start of Yarwood's decline was before his went to ITV. When Thatcher became PM in 1979 I believe Yarwood only portrayed her once and that part of that was recreating Heath's laugh. Janet Brown played Thatcher most of the time.

I have a lot of admiration for impressionists but the art today is more political and satirical. Rory Bremner is the best of this ilk.

Although it has been over a decade since his series ended.

Is there anyone who does Boris on TV? Perhaps when Spitting Image returns it will, but going on a streaming service doesn't sound to me that a particularly topical programme is planned.

Some of the cast of Newzoids would have done a semi-decent impression of Boris Johnson for that show, but I couldn't tell you who did the Johnson impressions - though Jon Culshaw tends to crop up on these sort of shows.

Jon Culshaw does a Boris impression on Dead Ringers but that's pretty much it.

Hugh Dennis isn't bad on Mock The Week. He does a passable Prince Charles.

Boris was certainly on Newzoids.

They have already revealed puppets for Boris, Dominic Cummings and Prince Andrew and have this month shot a trailer featuring Boris, Trump and Putin which had to be reworked as it was considered too explicit.

The feature film of AYBS looks really good on Channel 5 HD tonight. It looks fantastic with black boxes on the side or anything.

Has the film ever got a HD broadcast or official release before?

Channel 5 are showing the film of AYBS just now, but the voices are giving the impression that the film is being “ played “ slightly too fast.

As for the documentary, thought it was a decent effort overall.

I never had the DVD release of this film. The audio should be normal on that release but not this one. How can you tell it's slightly fast?