Last updated 09:21, Saturday, 19 July 2008

Kevin Bishop is something of a rarity in showbusiness. As one of the main characters in kids TV institution Grange Hill (he played nice guy Sam Spalding for two years in the mid-90s) and the star of 1996 film Muppet Treasure Island, he found considerable success as a child actor.

Impersonator: ’To take off someone’s voice, I must be interested in them’

But while other youths with a similar CV may have gone off the rails, or faded into obscurity, Kevin has gone from strength to strength, completing a wide and varied body of work.

Not only that, he’s managed to keep a low profile off-screen, admitting a trip to the cinema is as wild as his life gets.

After years of straight acting with small roles in series such as Silent Witness, Casualty and various European independent films, he found a new audience with Star Stories.

The series, which featured Kevin and a host of other comic talents, poked fun at the rich and famous.

Throughout the run, Kevin performed gross impersonations of Simon Cowell, George Michael, Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and Andrew Lloyd Webber among others, and thanks to the success of that, he now finds himself with his own Channel 4 series, which begins on Friday, July 25.

“I’m really excited about it, but really terrified at the same time because it’s such an enormous thing,” he says.

“It’s called The Kevin Bishop Show as well, so it seems like I’m putting all my eggs in one basket. If it goes wrong, that’s me finished!

“People who are close to me don’t seem to realise the enormity of it, they just say ‘Isn’t it great, you’ve got your own show!’,” he continues.

“They’re right, it is great, but if it’s rubbish, I’m rubbish.”

Fortunately, as the transmission draws nearer, Kevin is more confident about the show than he was while writing it.

“Now I’ve seen it finished, I’m much better than I was, but in the early creation part of the show, I was terrified.

“I felt like all the weight was on my shoulders, so it had to be how I wanted it to be. I was a nightmare when we were writing, but when we got to filming, I knew there was nothing I could do about it – it was going to be filmed and that was that, I had to let it go.”

As we chat, Kevin reveals he’s on set, filming the third series of Star Stories. He went straight from filming his own series to working on the ITV spoof show, but maintains his constant grafting is not due to him being a workaholic, but more about logistics.

“We use almost exactly the same crew for both shows, and it’s the same production company that make both programmes,” he says, adding that he’s spent all day impersonating Elton John.

“I enjoy playing other people. It’s nice because you don’t have to spend any time being yourself.

“I think if I carried on doing what I used to do, very normal dramas and things like that, I’d be a bit bored because it’s the same character, whereas now, I get to constantly mess about and be other people, which is great.”

Messing about is something that comes naturally to Kevin. He confesses, like many professional funnymen, to being the class clown while at school, and can’t believe his luck he’s now paid to do what he does.

“I often think about what a nightmare when I was a kid,” he says. “I was so disruptive, and I’m so sorry for that. I’m sorry to all the kids whose education I destroyed,” he adds, only half joking. “There was no learning going on when I was in the class, just a lot of laughter and a lot of silliness, but no work.”

The forthcoming Kevin Bishop Show has a lot in common with Star Stories in that Kevin will be impersonating a host of famous people, but while the latter dealt with just one tale over its 30 minutes, Kevin’s own show is much more fast-paced, featuring a massive 42 sketches in just under half an hour.

Kevin will play Gordon Ramsay in most episodes, a character he says he loves slipping into, while other famous faces include Amy Winehouse, Pete Doherty, Griff Rhys Jones and lots of others.

Given the celebrity-obsessed nature of his comedy, you might think Kevin spends all waking hours with his head buried in Heat magazine, or scouring the tabloids for titbits of gossip, but that’s not the case.

“When I’m not writing a show I don’t watch any television, and I never read a Heat magazine.

“Lee, the producer, is much more into celebrity than I am,” he continues.

“When I’m writing the show, however, I totally OD on telly and all the tabloids. The newspapers really write my material.”

He then moves on to state how much he admires the people he does impressions of.

“A lot of the people I impersonate I really like. For me to take off someone’s voice or manner, I must be interested in them in the first place.

“In order for someone to be in the public eye, they have to have something about them that people want to know about, they have to do something that captures the public in some way.”

So with the third series of Star Stories on its way, and now a sketch show of his own, is Kevin in danger of becoming one of the things he mocks – a celebrity?

“I don’t think so,” he says, almost worried. “To become a celebrity, you’ve got to go out and show people who you are.

“I’m not comfortable with celebrity.

“The reason I play so many characters is because I’m not too keen on just playing myself. Your anonymity is very precious and you need to hold on to it.”

The Kevin Bishop Show starts on Friday July 25 on Channel 4.