Rory Bremner

Sue Lawley's castaway this week is the impressionist and satirist Rory Bremner. He was born in Edinburgh in 1961. A self-confessed show-off, he started doing impersonations at primary school, sending up teachers, sports commentators and Moira Anderson! Entertaining his school friends inevitably developed into performing on stage and he worked as a stand up on the comedy circuit, and notably at the Edinburgh Festival.

Following his sell-out run at the Festival in 1986 the BBC offered him his first television series, Now Something Else. It ran on BBC2 for seven years. In 1993 he moved to Channel 4, where his show Rory Bremner - Who Else? developed a much more hard-edged, satirical and political bite. It also picked up more than 10 major awards including Baftas for himself and fellow writer-performers John Bird and John Fortune. His meticulous research and observation of the politicians he mimics inevitably led to his fraternising with them and ultimately led to being awarded the final accolade for a satirist: he was banned from Labour's battle bus in the 2001 election campaign.

[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]

Favourite track: Have I Told You Lately? by Van Morrison Book: The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon Luxury: Radio