Twenty-five years ago, Rory Bremner put on a duffel coat and performed his first public impression (of his French teacher, Derek Swift.) He is now widely rated as Britain's sharpest impressionist, a one-man opposition party, with his weekly Channel Four show Bremner, Bird and Fortune regularly winning awards as the best satire on television. He 'does' over 100 people, from Tony Blair to Mohamed al Fayed. He has written and starred in over one hundred programmes for Channel Four Bremner, Who Else?

He was educated in Edinburgh and at Wellington College, but started acting in revues and cabarets while at University in London, where he gained a good honours degree in French, German and imitating lecturers. He still speaks both languages - French fluently, German slightly better than Nicholas Ridley. While still at university he performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and began his career on the satirical radio shows News Review (LBC) and Weekending (BBC Radio) before embarking on a seven-year spell at the BBC.

Rory Bremner & Carmen

"I was originally asked to translate 'Carmen' in 2001 by Charles Hazelwood. Together with Mark Dornford-May, we'd already collaborated on a translation of a Kurt Weill opera, The Silver Lake, which re-opened Wilton's Music Hall in London's East End after a 140-year interval. Carmen was a different project, to be performed at the Spier Festival near Cape Town. After an uninspiring run of mainstream auditions, Mark and Charles decided to widen the search to townships and shanty towns. From there came an incredible fount of untapped talent, raw, exciting and astonishingly powerful. Singing, to the South Africans, was like football to Brazilians- a part of their life and their culture. By the time I arrived in Cape Town, the cast had already adapted bits of the script back into their native Khosa dialect, complete with tongue-clicks. There were some scenes where I couldn't understand a word. Within two years a film, U-Carmen eKhayelithsha (Carmen of Khayelithsha), had been made, which won the Golden Bear at the Berlin Film Festival. By that time the work was almost entirely in Khosa.

The great quality of Carmen, and the key to its popular appeal, lies in Bizet's genius to match each mood of the drama with t he appropriate music. Hence the sultry, seductive mystery of Carmen's Habanera, the macho bombast of Escamillo's Toreador, en garde!, the lusty drinking song about Lilias Pastia's bar, and the chaste purity of Michaela's beautiful arias. Don Jose also gets one of the great Tenor romantic arias in La fleur que tu m'avais jetée. At each stage the music matches the drama. It's one of the great ironies that Bizet went to his grave believing his opera was a flop after the initial unfavourable reaction to its opening in Paris.