Double vision

Is the pay really that good? Do you get bored? We ask 'David Brent', 'Nessa' and 'Ali G' what it's like to make money as the lookalike of a comic creation

- Daniel Dylan Wray

I am waiting for David Brent outside a pub in the Birmingham NEC event venue. 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, 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.

He took some photos, sent them to a lookalike agency, booked his first gig and was soon on his way to a call centre in Newcastle upon Tyne with Del Boy and Basil Fawlty. "I was there for three hours just mucking about," he recalls. "I thought to myself: that was a lot of fun and the easiest money I've ever made."

Oliver is in demand: birthdays, stag dos, corporate events. Not only does he look like Brent, and has his mannerisms and lines down perfectly, but his voice is pitch perfect too.

"I ripped audio off the DVDS and played it in my car everywhere I went," he says. "I drummed it into myself. People that have never met me before ask: is that your real voice? Sometimes it's kind of like I've lost my own identity. Maybe I'm not Tim any more - I've become David Brent."