Bob Golding tells Laura Davis about the challenges of imitating a national treasure
As well as Morecambe, Golding plays a range of people who influenced the comic duo or appeared on their well-loved TV show, including his mother, wife, agents, Bruce Forsyth and media mogul Lew Grade.
To get the characters down, he watched around two solid weeks’ worth of shows spread out over a few months. He also admits to playing his favourite clips on You Tube on nights he is unable to sleep.
Also on hand to help out was impressionist Alistair McGowan, with whom he shares an agent.
He took a break from rehearsing a touring production of Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure to give Golding a few tips.
“I thought he was going to give some sort of technical route, but he gave me very general notes stating that with every character you perform there should be a core sentence which sums them up.
“I went away and thought about that for a long time and came up with ‘It’s very hard being funny’, because, boy, did they work hard.”
Of particular importance to Golding, given his 12 years’ experience of voice-over work, was getting Morecambe’s accent right.
Initially assuming he would be “a classical, serious Shakespearean actor”, he was performing pantomime in Coventry with a group of writers and producers who were also working on a pitch for children’s TV when he was asked to record a range of voices.
The idea was accepted by the BBC and, before he knew it, Golding was the voice of Milo and Max in The Tweenies.
Three years later and he had recorded nearly 400 episodes of the show – entertaining a generation of children or, as he puts it, “annoying millions of parents with high-pitched, screamy voices”.
He is currently playing Plod in the animation Noddy in Toyland for Channel 5, as well as providing voices for CBBC programmes Numberjacks and Harry and Toto, much to the delight of his three children.
Golding’s wife, Julia Bunce, is the set and costume designer on Morecambe and there are further family connections – the couple’s five-month-old son is called Ernie.
“My grandad was Ernest Albert,” he explains.
“So it’s not a complete publicity stunt.”
MORECAMBE is at the Liverpool Playhouse from March 8-13.
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