I am waiting for David Brent outside a Wetherspoon’s in the Birmingham NEC. It’s 11am and it’s eerily quiet, like a gutted shopping centre after a zombie apocalypse, save for a small huddle of drinkers in the pub. Suddenly there’s the star of The Office strutting through the exhibition centre suited, booted, goateed, and ready to rock the NRLA 2024 Landlord Conference. But first we sit down for an interview. “Shoot,” he says, while making a gun with his fingers, before doing an awkward shuffle of his tie as he unfurls that unmistakable grimace. Look closer, though, and it’s clear that this isn’t Brent as performed by Ricky Gervais, but by someone else entirely..
Tim Oliver has been performing as David Brent for 20 years now. Before that he ran a successful events business in Sussex but his face was calling out for a new career turn. “It took me a good 18 months to come to terms with the fact that I looked like him,” he says. “Like this weird, awkward boss who just wanted to be loved. People started coming up to me all the time, so I just thought it’d be criminal not to do something with it.”
He took some photos, sent them to a lookalike agency, booked his first gig and was soon on his way to a call centre in Newcastle upon Tyne with Del Boy and Basil Fawlty. “I was there for three hours just mucking about,” he recalls. “I thought to myself: that was a lot of fun and the easiest money I’ve ever made.”
Oliver is hugely in demand: birthdays, stag dos, corporate events. And you can see why. Not only does he look like Brent, and has his mannerisms and lines down perfectly, but his voice is pitch perfect too.
“I ripped audio off the DVDs and played it in my car everywhere I went,” he says. “I drummed it into myself. People that have never met me before always ask: is that your real voice? Sometimes it’s kind of like I’ve lost my own identity. Maybe I’m not Tim any more – I’ve become David Brent.”
Oliver is a huge fan of Gervais and it turns out perhaps the reverse is also true. Total Film magazine once got the pair together for an interview with Gervais proclaiming that “Tim is the best”; and Gervais has also signed off on an upcoming musical show Oliver is putting together: The Life and Music of David Brent.
As purse strings are tightened everywhere, lookalikes offer a more affordable form of celebrity entertainment. And business is booming. One top UK agency has nearly 2,000 people on their books and while Oliver won’t reveal how much he earns, he confirms it can be lucrative.
“It’s kept me going for 20 years,” he says. “And I’ve got four kids, a nice car, nice house.” So as Christmas party season is upon us, it seems like the perfect time to explore the unique and slightly unusual world of lookalikes and the fascinating idea that someone can spend almost their entire adult life not just as somebody else, but the comedy creation of somebody else. How does it affect their own life?
While Brent may have seeped into Oliver a little and the goatee remains permanently shaved in (touched up with mascara as he greys a little), he says he is generally able to switch him off. “When the tie is on I’m in Brent mode and ready to work,” he says. “But the minute this tie comes off, I’m back to Tim.”
Watching him activate Brent mode is genuinely impressive. He struts into the landlord conference pulling out Brent’s spin moves and kicks, and immediately begins working the room as cameras and onlookers follow him around giggling. Some people get the joke immediately and others don’t – such as one utterly perplexed man on a Curry’s stand displaying a range of dishwashers and washing machines – but he seems to spend longer with those who don’t. “You lean into the awkwardness,” he later tells me. “You get more Brent out of a situation like that.”
It’s a welcome bit of light relief for an event that is a sea of grey with stands advertising things like court bailiff possession order eviction packages. Brent moves from stall to stall trying to make people in company-branded polo shirts and gilets squirm and smile. At one point he plonks down next to a group of seated people on a coffee break and puts his feet up on their table, leaning back in his chair and theatrically interlocking his fingers. “When I’m full Brent, it’s like I’m wearing armour,” he says. “It’s almost like a superhero suit. And if I make a mistake, it’s fine, because that’s what Brent would do.” He’s joined today by Brett Sirrell, a magician and entertainer who plays Gareth Keenan. The pair often team up together for gigs. “If we get booked for a gig in a pub it can take half an hour just to get through the room,” says Sirrell.
They are not the only sitcom characters in demand. Kaz Barrett plays Knock Off Nessa, the blunt Barry Island lass played by Ruth Jones in Gavin and Stacey. It wasn’t a hard transition for Barrett, a carer who also lives in Barry. “I basically am Nessa,” she laughs, in a voice that echoes Nessa’s perfectly. She has seen business go through the roof in the lead-up to the final ever episode of the show, which airs on Christmas Day. “It’s gone absolutely crazy,” she says. Aside from all the events, parties and video messages, Barrett even acts as a local tour guide, mirroring the show’s own Dave’s Coaches. “We do a pub crawl around Barry,” she says. “And I will also happily come and gatecrash your wedding and roast you – I already have around 12 bookings to do that before the end of this year.”
Weird gigs and requests are not unusual in this world. Barrett recalls her strangest at a student bar. “They led me through this fire escape into a courtyard and handed me a bag of burgers that I had to throw at people,” she says. “That was the gig: throwing burgers at students!”
Oliver has had his fair share of odd bookings, too. “I was asked to do a porno,” he recalls. “Someone wanted to make an Office-themed porn film.” He passed, but some gigs you take on and then learn never to do again.
“I did a wake once,” he says. “Which was my first and last. These young lads convinced me to do it for their mate who had died. My job was to go up to the DJ, grab the mic, and sing Freelove Freeway. So I go up and all the family are just staring at me. I took the mic off the DJ and went straight into ‘Pretty girl on the hood of a Cadillac, yeah’ and started singing. Then I did a mic drop. It was horrible. I will never do another one. You’re at a wake, there’s not meant to be comedy.”
Being a lookalike can be a surprisingly resilient profession. Dani B is a classically trained actor from Manchester who has studied Shakespeare but has also worked as Ali G for the best part of 25 years. Such is his longevity that parts of his performance couldn’t even be done today. “In terms of his outfits, they’re now vintage,” he says. “You can’t really get them anywhere. I’ve got an original Wu Wear tracksuit and the Tommy Gear hats are really hard to come by now. I’ve had them imported from America and stuff like that. I’ve spent well on it but it’s more than paid for itself.”
There are no legal restrictions on being a lookalike – Dani B has met Sacha Baron Cohen a couple of times and said the conversation was dominated by how fascinated Cohen was about Dani’s lookalike life – so they have a relatively free rein to do what they want. But surely there is an ethical code when it comes to telling people you are not the actual person in question? Barrett says there is – but she broke this once. “I was doing a live video out in Barry,” she explains. “And there was this woman in her 90s and she’d just come out of hospital. She was terminally ill with cancer and she thought I was Ruth Jones. Her daughter was with her and was just winking at me to say: ‘Please just go along with this’. The old lady was beside herself. It was on her bucket list to meet her and she said it was the best day of her life.”
It is days like that that make it all worthwhile according to Barrett. “You give joy and it brings me joy,” she says. “Life is tough out there at the moment and if you can bring some happiness, why wouldn’t you?” But can being in character doing the same routines over and over not grow tiresome or make one feel jaded or stuck?
“People ask me that a lot,” says Oliver. “And I never, ever do. I love it. My wife is a mental health counsellor and her job is serious and heavy every single day. I get to travel the world and make people smile and I’ll happily go and do that for anyone, anywhere. Except wakes and pornos.”
