Is the pay really that good? Do you get bored? What was your worst gig? We ask ‘David Brent’, ‘Nessa’ and ‘Ali G’ what it’s actually like to make your money by being the spit of someone else’s comic creation
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.”
