Whether it’s former prime Ministers Tony Blair and Boris Johnson, US presidents George W Bush and Donald Trump, or King Charles, Ozzy Osbourne, Sir Patrick Moore, Tom Baker, Les Dawson and even Obi-Wan Kenobi (as portrayed by Alec Guinness)... Britain's top impressionist Jon Culshaw has mastered them all – more than 350 people in fact.

“You get them all in the end,” he admits. “Although some are easier to master than others. David Cameron took me a long while because he is so bland.You have to give them a character if they don’t really have one. That’s why Kenneth Baker was a snail in Spitting Image.”

After three decades at the top Jon, 57, is about to hit the road once again. Dead Ringers, Radio 4’s legendary and multi award-winning topical satire, has just resumed its 25th anniversary tour with 20 new dates across the UK.

It will feature the long-standing cast of Culshaw and colleagues Jan Ravens, Lewis MacLeod, and Duncan Wisbey, all of whom have some new character offerings.

The Sunday Express caught up with Jon at home in his native Lancashire where he is busy practising some of his new characters for the show – including TV money expert Martin Lewis, US Vice-President J D Vance and Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham.

“Trump is the one most people ask me to do at the moment and so he definitely needs a foil, hence Vance,” explains Jon in character. “This ‘yes’ man who keeps agreeing, however mad it gets.”

Swapping voices again, he continues: “Martin Lewis is also a good one because he has this weird intensity that you can exaggerate until he becomes totally eccentric. You have to be careful not to go too far though, like with Michael Gove, who can so easily become a malevolent Ronnie Corbett or even go a bit Vicky Pollard.”

Slipping into yet another character, he continues: “Clive Myrie from the BBC is another new one for the tour as he brings a quiet sense of calm and authority to the chaos.”

Jon says audiences enjoy the comfort of hearing the soothing voices of the likes of Myrie and certain national treasures like David Attenborough and King Charles, who he says “has an even more velvety voice as he has gotten older”.

The King is a huge Radio 4 comedy fan and Jon has met him on several occasions.

“I was in a line-up once and Camilla was a couple of people ahead of Charles,” he reveals conspiratorially. "Like a mischievous aunt, when she saw me she said, ‘Do him, do him’, pointing back to Charles and was laughing away. “Charles doesn’t mind though because ‘one has had it all one’s life’. He loves comedies like Spike Milligan and The Goons and I believe he listens to Dead Ringers.”

The Dead Ringers live show promises a hilarious journey through a quarter of a century of classic sketches, uncanny impressions and the cutting-edge political and cultural satire that has defined the series. Movingly, the tour will also be a tribute to Dead Ringers creator and producer Bill Dare, who died last March after a road accident. A legendary figure in radio and TV comedy, Bill was behind a raft of classic series, like The Now Show, Spitting Image and The Mary Whitehouse Experience.

“I was just about to go back on stage for the second half of my Imposter Syndrome show at Buxton Opera House when I saw a call from Bill’s sister flash up. I knew he had been in an accident and that it wasn’t going to be good news,” recalls Jon.

“But I had had the knock on the dressing room door and had to go on, so I didn’t take the call. I had a show to do and a theatre
full of people to entertain. I felt it was what Bill would have done. “We pay tribute to him at the end of every Dead Ringers show, though announcing it in a Tom Baker voice.”

Born in Ormskirk, Lancashire, and educated at St Bede’s Catholic High School and St John Rigby College, Wigan, Jon realised from a young age he had a knack for impersonating voices. He noticed the subtle differentiation bet-ween the language of different villages and nearby towns and loved the accents he grew up around in the North West. “A Lancashire accent affects your whole face,” he explains, rearranging his own to fit.

“Your jaw juts, your eyes roll. You just can’t do the accent without gurning.“Then when I started work at this garage washing cars there was this guy who had such a pronounced Liverpool accent he literally couldn’t speak without screwing up his entire face all the time.” Slipping with consummate ease into strong Scouse, Jon’s face crumples like a mechanic’s rag.

A born entertainer and the class clown, if a teacher was late for a lesson Jon would step in and do an impersonation of the absentee to the delight of his classmates. But it was listening to the radio all day during that part-time garage job and enjoying the DJ patter that persuaded him that was where his future lay.

Like many presenters before him he started with a stint on local hospital radio. Jobs on various commercial radio stations including Viking FM in Hull, a breakfast show on Pennine Radio (now the Pulse of West Yorkshire) and Radio Wave in Blackpool all followed. But it was at Red Rose Radio – now Rock FM – in Preston in 1987 where there were the first signs of things to come when Jon would read the weather in the voice of Frank Bruno or do the traffic as Bob Geldof.

Voice-over work followed before his big break with iconic satirical puppet show Spitting Image, where he voiced around 40 of the characters, including then Prime Minister John Major in the 1990s. During a memorable stunt working with Steve Pent on Capital Radio in 1998, he used his latest impersonation of William Hague to be put through to Prime Minister Tony Blair in Downing Street.

“It was pure luck that we did it on a Wednesday, which is Prime Minister’s Questions, and so it is apparently quite usual for the leader of the opposition to call to speak to the Prime Minister in Downing Street in the morning,” says Jon. “I had only been doing my William Hague for about three days, but he is so distinct I got it straight away and to my complete surprise when I rang Downing Street expecting to be told to go away, I got put straight through.”

“Hello Tony,” Jon says in a perfect William Hague voice... “But Tony sussed me straight away, because apparently Hague always said, ‘Hello Prime Minister’, and didn’t call him Tony. “But he played along and we had a lengthy conversation until a member of Blair’s staff abruptly ended the call. Blair then mentioned it in PMQs so it was recor-ded in Hansard and made the national evening news. I was chuffed about that.”

Away from Dead Ringers, Spitting Image and The Impressions Show, Jon has performed a variety of acting roles to much critical acclaim, including playing Tony Blair in the 2004 film Churchill: The Hollywood Years, and The Final Take: Bowie in the Studio, for the BBC.

Last year he received widespread plaudits for his solo performance in Les Dawson: Flying High, taking the show from a successful run at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe to a sell-out national tour. And he is just completing another sell-out tour of his own show, Imposter Syndrome.

Meanwhile, The Dead Ringers radio show returns in all its topical glory this June on BBC Radio 4 as part of Friday Night Comedy and Jon is planning another new tour, cleverly titled Me, Myself And Others. He clearly enjoys being in the theatre but pops back home to Lancashire every few days to see his long-term girlfriend.

Despite being at the top of his tree, Jon loves watching other impressionists take on politicians and celebrities – pointing out that he and Rory Bremner, who are good pals, often do very different versions of the same politician or celebrity. “We were in a car once going to a show we were doing together,” he recalls. “It was a three-hour journey that felt like ten minutes – comparing notes and working our way through all our favourite characters. “We got to a service station up north and both of us immediately slipped into Alan Bennett talking about tea and cake.

“Rory’s sense for a gag and the way he can sum up a politician in a single soundbite is a joy. I like the way different impressionists spot different idiosyncrasies in a person to exaggerate. If Michael Caine was in a Michael Caine impression competition he would only come about third.” And he’s off again, in full Michael Caine mode: “You’re only supposed to blow the bloody doors off!”

● Dead Ringers 25th Anniversary Tour is running until March 26. Tickets and information via fieryentertainment.com/our-shows/dead-ringers-the-25th-anniversary-tour