Alistair McGowan

Contact katyh@offthekerb.co.uk or kelsey@offthekerb.co.uk

‘Accomplished’ is the word for Alistair McGowan: a multi-award-winning actor, writer, and stand-up comedian, as well as a poet and a skilled pianist.

But Alistair is perhaps best known for his extraordinary impressions. He provided voices for eight series of Spitting Image and earned a BAFTA for his BBC One television series The Big Impression, with Ronni Ancona.

As an actor, Alistair has been a regular on Radio 4 dramas and comedies (e.g Elvenquest and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane Austen? ), took the lead role in BBC One’s detective series Mayo, and appeared on stage in roles ranging from the depraved dentist in Little Shop of Horrors (for which he was nominated for an Olivier) to Jimmy Savile in the Park Theatre’s weighty post-scandal play An Audience with Jimmy Savile. On the big screen, he featured in the Nia Vardalos film My Life in Ruins and has just voiced My Name is Alfred Hitchcock.

Alistair is also an acclaimed writer – alongside writing his own stand-up and much of The Big Impression, Alistair has also written the stage play Timing (nominated for best new comedy in the 2009 Whatsonstage awards), three Radio 4 plays, a non-fiction book (A Matter of Life and Death Or How to Wean A Man off Football, Faber and Faber, 2010) and a collection of poetry (Not What We Were Expecting, Flapjack Press, 2024).

Alistair has also enjoyed a later-life love affair with the piano. He started playing seriously in 2015, and just two years later released The Piano Album through Sony Classical, which reached number one in the classical charts. He has since toured with The Piano Show – a first-of-its kind blend of stand-up comedy and classical piano music. In 2023, he set up the first Ludlow Piano Festival.