Rory Bremner: First impressions

Rory Bremner is great at other people. If you want a mean Ian McGaskill, he's your man. He's thornier issue in himself, though: bland, bulimic and horribly blond have all featured in his self-opinion. And there lies the rub: what does the 'man of a hundred voices' make of his own?

I meet Rory Bremner, "the man of a hundred voices", at The Bluebird, a Terence Conran restaurant/café/club/shop/food market (a whole Conran mini-city, in effect) on the King's Road. He is pacing the foyer when I arrive, talking into a mobile phone and trying, I think, to arrange a wig for his show at the Albery Theatre in London, which starts next week. Rory is surprisingly big. He's stirringly strapping, even, with large, freckled hands, and a face most commonly described as "bland".

Bland is good, in some ways, because of what he does: so many other personalities can be grafted on to a bland face. But it's bad in other ways, because sometimes you can forget who you are, if ever you were someone. This has driven Rory quite sick in the head at times, and there was even, he says, a period when "I felt like I had my emotional braces caught in the car door." I'm not entirely sure what he means by this, but I once did get my scarf caught in a car door, which was very painful indeed. My head nearly got ripped off. So I can sympathise to that extent.

We settle in the club part, in the lovely, squishy leather armchairs. He came up this morning from Oxfordshire, where he now lives with his second wife, Tessa Campbell Fraser (a sculptor), and their 15-month-old daughter, Ava, "who can do a good impression of a cow". It's an extremely happy marriage, he says. It's helpful, he adds, "being with someone who loves you".

He then says that first thing this morning, before he left for London, he took time to notice some wild geese and doves. Five years ago, he continues, he'd have never noticed things like geese and doves. "I'd have been..." And he puts his head down and gives an impression – bloody hell, is there no limit to this man's impressions! – of driving a car very fast. I'm not quite sure where his emotional braces were at that particular time, but hope he'd somehow managed to release them. Otherwise, it might have been dangerous.

Whatever, it's small talk first, rather than emotional-braces stuff. I ask if he's a Conran fan, and he says he is, a little. You don't think of him as a Ronald McDonald for people who shop in Chelsea and have small dogs? He says you have to remember the state of restaurant food in Britain before Conran and the like. Heinz tomato soup ("chilled!") as a starter and all that.

I say true, but look what Mr Conran did to tuna. Started serving it fresh, as if no one would notice that it tasted like doormat, or that it's so much nicer when it comes in a can. "Ah, but not if you marinade it overnight, in coriander and orange, then cook it for not more than a minute."

Bremner, 41, turns out to be quite a cook, and adores Nigel Slater. "He says a baked potato is the culinary equivalent of a big fat hug, which is just perfect." He also likes Clement Freud, for his aloof cruelty as much as anything. He does a Clement Freud voice, and says: "Hare is best when young, when the nap of his fur is not fully formed. Now, kill him, skin him, roast him..."

I'd hoped he wouldn't do too many voices, mostly because it just doesn't work in print. I get off quite lightly, I think. I get a bit of Iain Duncan Smith – "Hey, I'm Iain Duncan Smith, but we can change that" – and mini-lessons on how to do Des Lynam ("it's all in the breathing") and Sandy Gall. "I used to put a lit cigarette into my mouth the wrong way round, and inhale, to get that old, knackered sound." I do not get Chris Evans because Rory has never really got to grips with Chris Evans; he's not sure why. I ask him if he's ever used his gift for mischievous ends, and he says he did once call Michael Winner as John Major, asking him to direct a party political broadcast. Sadly, though, Winner caught on and asked, in return: "Right, Sir. Lots of blood, is it?"

He thinks the most beautiful voice belongs to Derek Cooper, of Radio 4's Food Programme. "It's a voice that sounds like treacle pudding." I get a bit of Tony Benn, saying: "The best thing about democracy is that, in the end, the people can get rid of you." Rory isn't so sure about this. Isn't that one of the worst things about democracy? "Doesn't it stop politicians from grasping the real nettles?"

It didn't stop Thatcher, I say. True, he says. Perhaps it's just Nouvelle Labour (because when it arrives you think: "Is that all?") who "lack courage and ambition". We chat briefly about the ideal form of government, and decide that democracy tempered by assassination might work rather well.

He has, of course, the most wonderful ear, although perhaps not literally. His ears are... well, I can't remember a thing about them. This bland thing. Does it bother him? Absolutely not, he says. He understands, and goes further. "Blond eyelashes, blond eyebrows... horrible!"

You think you are less bland, more blond and horrible? "That apple-cheeked choir-boy look. Ugh!"

I tell him I think he's rather adorable, partly to cheer him up, but partly because I've always rather fancied Paddy Ashdown, to whom he is often compared, so what do I know? He says he has always had self-esteem issues, and there is, indeed, something quite startlingly vulnerable about him. I ask him how he thinks he's regarded by other comedians. "I expect I respect them much more than they respect me."

I'd read that when he accepted a comedy award a few years back, he was heckled by The Fast Show. "John Thomson called out: 'Oi, Frank Spencer'." Ouch. "I just thought... well... you know. There is no getting away from the fact that as years pass you appear to be dated, lose your originality." He can be a little snobby himself, though. He says he hopes his West End audience don't turn out to be "Big Brother fans hoping for jokes about Jade".

However, that said, he found himself hooked on I'm a Celebrity – Get Me Out of Here! "I watched once to inoculate myself but, of course, it didn't work. Rhona! Leave it out! I quite warmed to Christine Hamilton, but what a media tragedy. She's like a fly trying to get out of a dollop of jam."

Whatever, back to his wonderful ear for the sound of things, his ability to take off Moira Anderson at eight, his facility for languages (he studied French and German at university), his passion for music (opera, particularly) and even his love of words. Favourite word, Rory? He likes "curmudgeonly, which is quite onomatopoeic, another good word".

I say I've recently spotted a missing word in the English language. That is, the female equivalent of "avuncular". "Isn't there one? I was going to say Tantric but that's not right, is it?" He adds that he once read a book that tried to fill in all the missing words in our language. He was particularly taken with "Scrabsher, which is the terrier that tries to have it off with our leg." (I now think that Conran might be the Ronald McDonald for people who shop in Chelsea and have small Scrabshers.)

Rory is good company and very funny. We talk about Blunkett's Britishness test. What will be the deciding factor? Whether you've ever driven to a beauty spot, eaten your sandwiches in the car, then driven home for a nice cup of tea? "Ah, yes," says Roy. "A view just isn't a view without a windscreen wiper and tax disc in the way, is it?"

Rory is commonly thought to be posh. His father, Donald, was a retired army major, and his mother was a housewife whose own father, a surgeon, once removed a fishing hook from the King's finger. They lived in Edinburgh, in Morningside, in a house with a drive. At the age of eight, Rory followed his older brother, Nigel, to Wellington College on a scholarship. The scholarship was much needed, as family funds were not that abundant. Rory can remember only one family holiday ever. It was to northern France, where his mother cooked their dinner on a little Calor gas stove in the hotel room, to save money on meals.

I ask him who he thinks was his biggest influence. His mother or father? He thinks for a while then says: "Both. Sorry, that sounds terribly Third Way, doesn't it? But it's true. I got a sense of humour and love of sport from my father. From my mother I got the instinct to keep everyone happy, the need to be liked, which is both a strength and a weakness."

He accepts he is not alone in his need to be liked, or adapting to be the sort of person someone else wants you to be, but that it became debilitating for him. "Everyone does it to a greater or lesser extent, but for me it was a constant effort to always be someone different." Perhaps, in a way, he's rather made a career out of that.

Anyway, I sense we are now getting into emotional-braces territory. I can't quite work out when his worst time was, but think it was during his first marriage to Susie Davies, a teacher, which ended in 1994. He mostly blames himself for this failure, I think. "I just didn't know who I was. I was married and still trying to impress."

He became bulimic, he adds. Bulimic? You ate and made yourself throw up? "Oh, no. I just trained myself not to eat too much." Why? "The nervousness at the time. And then once I got into the habit of eating, I ballooned." Sometimes, Rory doesn't explain himself very well. Or doesn't want to. I think, though, it's safe to assume that he is quite highly strung.

After that first marriage, it sounds as if his love life was a bit of a disaster. It sounds like he dated a string of unsuitable girlfriends, in the sense that they weren't really for him, and he wasn't really for them, but he wouldn't, couldn't see it. He was, he adds, "extremely vulnerable", and seems to feel, in some way, that this was taken advantage of. "I had very low self esteem and whoever I was going out with would fire at it."

In this instance, he was saved, in particular, by John Fortune. They were riding in a car together, when Rory was feeling low, and John said: "Look into the sky. Up there it is written... what is written up there...? You are being taken for a... what's that last word? Rid, is it? Or is it ride?" Rory found this immensely therapeutic. "I laughed so hard I was cured," he says.

Again, I'm not entirely sure what he means. Who was taking you for a ride? "A girlfriend, but not the one everyone knows." He once famously dated Penny Smith. "And it wasn't her." He's now, he insists, pretty much sorted. He has Tessa and Ava. He's had cognitive counselling. Plus, he feels his career is back on track. When wasn't it on track, Rory? Probably, he says, in his latter years at the BBC, when his own material saddened him. "It was just voice tricks, really. Monologues with three jokes about Fergie in it and three about Andrew and no point of view. Very cynical comedy."

He has, he says, been much influenced by the Johns in his life: John Wells, his first mentor; John Langdon, his producer and co-writer; and, of course, those very great Johns, Bird and Fortune. They've all taught him, he says, "how to think, how to have a voice behind the voices".

Ultimately, he switched to Channel 4 and biting, political satire. He is brilliant at it. Indeed, during the last election Labour banned him from their battle bus, which must count for something, surely.

I wish Rory luck at the Albery, which he is nervous about – "It's my first time in the West End". He's a clever, funny man, although I can't quite work out whether his gift for all those voices crowded out his own, or whether an insufficient voice in the first place led to the gift – allowing all the other voices in. I suspect it's a mix of both. Well, that's my impression of him, at least.

Rory Bremner, John Bird and John Fortune will be appearing at the Albery Theatre, London WC2 from 30 Sept for a five-week run (020-7369 1730)