VIDEO: Rob Brydon and our love of his “gimmicky” impressions

SARAH FERGUSON, PRESENTER:  Rob Brydon, welcome to 7.30.

ROB BRYDON, COMEDIAN:  Thanks for having me.

SARAH FERGUSON:  I'm just going to do this. You just tried an Australian accent. How good is it, what have you got for us?

ROB BRYDON:  I reckon that I did a thing years ago called Human Remains and in one of those I played an Australian guy with a really deep voice. Based on a palm reader that read my palm and he looked at it for what seemed like an eternity and then he said, I don't know what words you are allowed to use here, I'm going to change it. He went, "Golly gosh!"

So I based it on that. I've always thought that I was okay at Australian accents because of course, I adore Barry Humphries, so I was getting those Australian voices, not just Edna and Les, but his other characters as well from a young age.

SARAH FERGUSON:  You are here doing a tour that is a musical tour as well as talk and improvisations. Why are we still so surprised to see comedians, why are we so surprised to see comedians sing?

ROB BRYDON:  I've sort of sung all my life in, starting off in school musicals, and then I started to do an improv comedy, there would be singing in that, and then I had a radio show, and I would do comic songs on that.

Gavin and Stacey, Bryn sings, different shows, and I had always wanted to do musical performances of some sort, you know, a musical in the West End, but the problem is I've kept on having children and if you do a musical in the West End, you are out of the house all the time and that's not good, so I couldn't do that.

SARAH FERGUSON:  As you just said, you were always an entertainer, you were always performing at school, drama clubs obviously, you went to drama school, but your very big break, your first really big break came somewhat late - it took a few years in your mid-30s. What is it that Steve Coogan saw?

ROB BRYDON:  I think he saw, I think he saw a kindred spirit to a degree. We are very similar in many ways, pretty much the same age, although he does like to point out that he is four or five months younger than me.

We both started out doing voices, moved into character comedy. I know that what he loved about Marion and Geoff was its heart, was its heart, its soul, its lack of cynicism. He loved that.

That was something he came to a little bit later in his career because he started with that very edgy crowd of Armando Iannucci and Patrick Marber and those guys.

I have it choose my words carefully now. There was a level of brilliant cynicism to what they did.

SARAH FERGUSON:  It was tough as well.

ROB BRYDON:  Yes, yes. So he loved that. He bangs on about that to this day. He loved the heart.

SARAH FERGUSON:  In fact, your niceness is an important part of who you are, isn't it? People respond to it.

ROB BRYDON:  What can I say to that?

Yes, my niceness is an important part of who I am.

SARAH FERGUSON:  Thank you very much indeed.

ROB BRYDON:  I know what you mean. That is just my character which is not to say that I don't have off days, where I'm perhaps not as nice, but, yeah, I do try to be.

SARAH FERGUSON:  I was reading in preparation, and I was very surprised to see how long you've been doing Would I Lie to You which is an enormously popular show in Australia. How have they kept the comedic writing at such a high level for so long?

ROB BRYDON:  There is no writing. The only writing is the writing of the lies because those are written, but there is no writing in the traditional sense.

At its core there is a great production team and the three of us genuinely get on very well indeed. We are all quite distinct, quite different, but we sort of give each other space, and I think that comes across.

SARAH FERGUSON:  It is almost surprising actually that when you took over, when you've got these two comedic geniuses working together that you can introduce a third comedian into that, and not disrupt ...

ROB BRYDON:  I'm not a comedic genius or just comedian.

SARAH FERGUSON:  Comedian.

ROB BRYDON:  Interesting. You've got two comedic geniuses and then a comedian.

SARAH FERGUSON:  You have two comedians firing and then you introduce a third and you managed to make it work.

ROB BRYDON:  So you've not brought me up to comedic genius.

SARAH FERGUSON:  Comedic genius.

ROB BRYDON:  You've just demoted the other two down to comedians.

SARAH FERGUSON:  Wait until the end, you wait until we get to the end. It going to be a big paean of praise to your comedic genuisness.

In one of the scenes in The Trip, you are talking with Steve Coogan and you are talking about refining your impressions as people age. Now I have to admit I feel like someone who has gone to an Elvis Costello concert and begged Elvis Costello to play Alison, but here I am, nonetheless.

ROB BRYDON:  What would you like?

SARAH FERGUSON:  Michael Caine, aging Michael Caine.

ROB BRYDON:  Well, he just turned 90, hasn't he? I it was his birthday party, I think it was yesterday.

I noticed, I noticed, this kind of comes back to this, "Oh, you're doing a musical tour?" I think anyone who does voices has an inherent musicality to them because they will hear stuff in the voice, so I notice people ageing, and I noticed that the main were Michael Caine, Alan Bennett, Barry Gibb, McCartney. Their voices are changing.

So for Michael Caine - here he goes again - it was in the 1960s, Michael's voice was up there, very, very high. Only supposed to blow the bloody doors off, right, and then I said over the years the voice and he would slowly bring the voice down like that and get, very breathy and slow until, "Shall I prepare the Batmobile, Master Bruce?"

SARAH FERGUSON:  What was the origin of the man?

ROB BRYDON:  The Man in The Box?

SARAH FERGUSON:  Yep.

ROB BRYDON:  I was at home with nothing to do and I was experimenting with my instrument. I was messing about just doing voices, because I was thinking about ventriloquists for some reason and I was thinking they do all of this and in the middle of doing it, all of a sudden I went, "Hey there, how are you doing? Somebody get me outta here!"

And I went, "Oh my god. Where was that?" But there was this little voice and I'm totally sincere when I say it is nothing more than a quirky, gimmicky trick, but the number of people...

SARAH FERGUSON:  Why do we love it so much? Why is it so popular?

ROB BRYDON:  I don't know, but the number of people and intelligent people, smart people, who are delighted by it.

"Hurry, somebody get me out of here. Oh my God, what are you doing down there. Hi there, how are you doing. Great to see you."

It is nothing more than a gimmick.

SARAH FERGUSON:  What a great gimmick and a great point to end.

Rob Brydon, comedic genius, thank you very much indeed.

ROB BRYDON:  You saved that. You knew you were going to use that at the end. That's very clever, very smart and... stop it...

Thank you very much.