Jan Ravens: Making a great impression

“It's like she wants to smile, but her mouth won’t let her.”

No, Jan Ravens isn’t talking about an awkward audience member, instead she’s referring to another difficult woman – perhaps the most famous one in the country.

But the beleaguered Prime Minister can at least take some solace in the fact that Ravens, one of the original stars of long-running BBC satire hit Dead Ringers, won’t spend the whole evening at her upcoming Maidenhead show giving her a pasting.

There’s plenty of other targets in the impressionist’s sights.

As well as Theresa May, fan favourites Fiona Bruce (‘sexy newsreader’) and Diane Abbott (‘can’t quite get out of bed’) will get a look in, as well as some slightly newer voices in her repertoire, including Nicola Sturgeon (‘slight lisp and thin lips’) and DUP leader Arlene Foster (an ‘interesting character’).

“She has become a lot easier to do since becoming PM,” said Ravens about the ‘difficult woman’ of the show’s title, a reference to comments made by Tory grandee Ken Clarke during the Conservative Party’s last leadership election.

“When she was Home Secretary she never said a thing, but when she made that Francis of Assisi speech I thought ‘aha’.

“That was when I caught on to her rhythm. She is a bit of a bundle of tension, it’s about a tense mouth, it’s like she wants to smile but her mouth won’t let her.”

While the Prime Minister is a major target for all satirists, Ravens says she has sympathy for her, particularly after she stepped up to ‘clear the mess left by David Cameron, who just ran away’.

However, she’s also clear that she’s presenting a caricature when she puts on a voice, not trying to get under anyone’s skin.

She said: “I’m not assuming to know her and as an impressionist you can only go on how they present themselves.

“If I was playing her in a play I would be looking at her from the inside.

“But as an impressionist you can only look at what she presents to the world and you’re using that to say something satirical about the kind of politician she is.

“That’s the key to a good impression, it’s no good just replicating something.”

In the live show, that replication will be limited to just voices, without the costume and make-up which helped define Dead Ringers during its TV years, before it moved back to radio.

But for Ravens this is a boon, meaning she is able to flit back and forth between a range of characters.

It also means she can dwell on her observations, which in some cases have shaped wider public perceptions on celebrities and politicians.

“Fiona Bruce says to me I'm never anything like that, but was kind of thrilled in a way because at the time it bred her image as this sexy newsreader,” she said.

“And Kirsty Wark loves being done too – I think most people think of it as quite flattering.”