It's been a bit quiet on the gig front lately and nothing like the heady days last year with often two or three gigs a day and the frantic dash all over the country for TV, Radio, OK and other magazines and I never did manage to do the thing for Chanel Four that they kept trying to catch up with me for...
The act goes down better and better and I've had the chance to relax a bit more and refine, extend and diversify the material to suite a far wider range of audiences and event types.
The call I had from BBC Radio Four last week lead to a real fun time at Broadcasting House. I was planning to travel in to London by car but the traffic was so bad I abandoned the car and took the tube which was the usual series of double takes, excited fellow travellers and clandestine "photo opportunities".
On reaching Regent Street, the local construction workers were on a break as I approached the beeb and my contact was in reception as I entered to the cheers and comments from the guys in the hard hats and big boots.... He had only seen my pics and was blown away by the reaction I consider just par for the course and he had a ball checking me in as "Sven" and seeing the reaction of other visitors, celebrities, presenters and staff to the appearance of such a famous and usually illusive personality. At his request I continued in character and doing "the voice" all through the building to the studio and the production team hadn't been made aware of my visit or true identity which gave me the opportunity to do the full on charming, bad boy babe magnet number on all the female staff and Fi Glover (the Saturday Live show presenter).
The recording went well and I was interviewed more about the life and times of a celebrity impersonator and how I got into the business as well as what it's like to be constantly mistaken for such a well known person... the highly edited result can be heard for a while in the BBC Radio Four "listen again" site for a while so if you are interested you can follow this link:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/mainframe.shtml?http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/saturdaylive
Plenty of other interesting gigs coming up through the summer and beyond and I'm glad that the public still respond so positively to my appearance and act. I just hope that those booking agents and clients who have been a little scared to book me (since Sven's departure from the England managers job) will join the host of delighted and amazed audiences who so enthusiastically enjoy meeting "Sven" and being entertained by my act.