Jess Robinson’s first impersonations were of her German grandmother, Rosi, who came over to England on the final Kindertransport in 1939. She loved to imitate the guttural way her grandmother spoke, never imagining that one day that particular impersonation would be the backbone of her own version of a German leader.
Angela Merkel jostles with Kim Kardashian, Gwyneth Paltrow, Ivanka and Melania Trump, Greta Thunberg, Adele and Taylor Swift as part of Robinson’s repertoire on the much-anticipated reboot of outrageous satirical puppet show Spitting Image, which kicks off tomorrow.
“I can’t wait for everyone to see it,” says Jess, 35, who recorded her voiceovers from a studio in the Hove home she shares with singer husband Jonty Fisher. “The puppets are brilliant and the scripts are hysterical.
“I’ve loved really looking at these incredible women who become part of you when you imitate them. I spend so much time watching YouTube, Netflix and downloading their podcasts that I end up feeling very fond of them — even Kim and Melania. They begin to feel like odd friends who live in my head and come out of my mouth.”
Her favourite of the characters is pint-sized eco warrior rocket Greta. “Her puppet is so cute but she gets angry a lot,” laughs Robinson. “Adele is another fun one, she is silly and sweary while Gwyneth talks about her vagina a lot.”
She says that watching fellow Jew Ivanka gave her a new appreciation of the President’s daughter. “I didn’t know much about her before I started researching, and presumed she would be a bit of an airhead,” she admits. “But there is something about her that, even if you don’t agree with what she is saying, she is very articulate. She has this great whispery voice — it is almost as if she is telling you a naughty secret.”
As with the original, which aired on ITV for 12 years from 1984, the biting comedy will be completely up to the minute with Robinson expecting to work up until just hours before the show goes out on subscription channel BritBox on Saturday nights.
Impersonation was never meant to be anything other than an amusement for her. Growing up first in Edgware and then Albury, Hertfordshire, where her family were the only Jews in the village (and her mum even played the church organ) she planned to follow her jazz pianist grandmother — who used the stage name Rosi Schul — and her piano teacher mother Jackie into music by becoming a classical singer.
But then, at the end of a year out before starting her music degree, an audition came along which was to change her life. “I was pretty miserable, with a job which was folding clothes up, when I was offered an audition for the touring show of Little Voice,” she recalls. “I was asked if I could do impressions and I lied. I said: ‘I am brilliant at impressions.’ And then I spent the weekend teaching myself to sing like Julie Andrews, Barbra Streisand and Judy Garland. I could already sing and I’d spent all those years imitating my gran and it just worked.
“It is weird to think a big old lie would change the direction I was going in.”
After Little Voice, she combined work as a jobbing impressionist — including on the hit satirical series Dead Ringers — with being a singing teacher at Stage Coach in Borehamwood and a supply teacher in special needs schools. She was approached several times by scouts for Britain’s Got Talent and in 2017 she said yes —an opportunity which was both the best and the hardest thing she had ever done.
“Most professionals are quite sneery about doing talent shows as they are seen as a bit naff,” she says. “There was also a part of me that thought I should work my way up the old-fashioned way. But I had a new agent who thought it was a good idea and in many ways it was.
“The first audition was terrifying. The act before me was buzzed off and it all felt a bit Hunger Games with the roar of the crowd. I have never been so nervous about a gig. And I think it was my nerves that made people say I was a fake once they discovered I was a professional.
“I had this massive backlash and that was a real shame.”
She came fifth in the finals but feels she could have done better if left to her own devices. “In between the show being recorded and the semi finals there was a lot of discussion between me and the producers about what I should do; it ended up being this hybrid which didn’t feel like me at all,” she says. “There was a lot of going backwards and forwards and when I did my run-through the night before I was due to go on, they told me I needed to change my act — they didn’t like the mix of singing and jokes and speaking impressions. Doing the show is not for the faint-hearted.
“There is a part of me that wishes I had just stuck to my guns and done what I was good at but ultimately it gave me the platform I needed.”
After the series aired, she was popular enough to have her own tour and Spitting Image followed. She’ll be joining the likes of her heroine Debra Stephenson, Game of Thrones actress Indira Varma and fellow Dead Ringers impressionist Lewis MacLeod for the ten-part series.
And her Angela Merkel is likely to be one of the stars. “I really did channel my grandma for Merkel,” she laughs. “She had quite a temper and was very determined with real grit — you see that steely side in Angela, although I have to say my grandma had more of a sense of humour.”
Spitting Image starts on BritBox on October 3.
