ALISTAIR MCGOWAN, the man of many voices, is also a man of many talents, to judge by his amazingly varied CV.

He seems to have excelled in every area of show business. Best known perhaps as an impressionist, Alistair has also written and directed, starred in West End musicals and Gilbert and Sullivan and has had a thriving career as a straight actor.

He’s performed in plays by writers as diverse as Alan Bennett and David Mamet and his Shakespeare credits include Measure for Measure and a musical version of The Merry Wives of Windsor. Does the man ever sleep? Or take time off?

“I never get bored – possibly because I never give myself the chance to get bored,” he reflects.

Alistair has now returned to the boards for a second bite at the cherry which is the role of Professor Henry Higgins in Pygmalion, Shaw’s evergreen comedy about class and society. Alistair’s first encounter with the character came under unusual circumstances, as he recalls.

“I was asked to take over from Rupert Everett for the final three weeks of a West End run three years ago. I had about four weeks’ notice and I learnt the part lying on a beach in France and on trains criss-crossing the country.

"I had very little rehearsal in which to try and get to grips with this meaty role and under such circumstances you have to focus on the task in hand. It’s a bit like driving on to the motorway and heading straight for the fast lane on the day after you have passed your test. I then decided that the best way to deal with the pressure was to forget about it with some displacement activity, like cleaning the cupboards and mowing the lawn.

"As a result, I hurt my back and for the first two weeks of the run of Pygmalion, I could hardly stand and barely sit.”

Given such painful memories, it’s surprising that Alistair agreed so eagerly to re visit the part of Higgins.

“I like him, I know him and we both share an interest in the specifics of the smallest sounds and we are both fascinated by what accent can say about who we are. We still make judgements about people, based on how they sound: you hear someone speak and within a couple of sentences, it says something about their background.”

Alistair reveals that he shares certain personality traits with Higgins: “I can get quite irritable about life and Higgins can get extremely irritable. I generally go out of my way to be sensitive to other people’s needs but Higgins barely notices anybody else; he’s obsessed with his subject and obsessed by his work. In a way, it’s quite therapeutic for me to get rid of my dark side through playing Higgins.”

The Professor would appear to be a confirmed bachelor with little or no experience of emotional relationships with women. Does Alistair believe that Eliza inspires feelings in Higgins which have lain, unsuspected, within his subconscious?

“He’s certainly wrapped up in his own work and he is not aware of his physical appearance and he seems to have largely spurned women, “says Alistair. “But Eliza does arouse certain feelings within him. When she leaves, Higgins says vaguely that he’s grown accustomed to her voice and appearance. And modern audiences will want Higgins and Eliza to get together and wonder why they don’t.”

Alistair is inclined to downplay the element of romance in Pygmalion, however. He contends that Shaw is dealing with more substantial issues.

“I believe that what is important for Shaw and for Higgins is the place which each one of us occupies on the ladder. Shaw asks if you can take a person like Eliza from one section of society and introduce her into another world. Will they be happy in this new milieu? We’ve been talking in rehearsal about Frankenstein, about The X Factor and what happens when people win the Lottery. Look at Eliza’s father, for example. Doolittle was much happier as a dustman. Now he’s come into money, he doesn’t want it.”

Shaw’s ideas about the organisation of society and the way in which accent can reveal our place within the social structure are no less relevant today, when social mobility has all but ground to a halt. How should we behave in such circumstances?

“I think the key to Higgins and to an extent the key to Shaw is something my father instilled in me,” argues Alistair. “The important thing in life is not having good manners or bad manners but having the same manners. You should treat everybody with the same consideration.”

Pygmalion is perhaps better known to the wider public as the source of Lerner and Loewe’s musical masterpiece My Fair Lady. The 1956 Broadway production was enormously successful and the 1964 film version added to its impact.

Alistair believes, however, that the passage of time may have redressed the balance somewhat between the play and the musical.

“I’ve been thinking about questions of time and when I was growing up the songs from My Fair Lady were everywhere. The show had opened only twenty-five years earlier and we thought about it in the way that younger generations must think now about Les Misérables. I wonder if the younger actors in our production will even have heard of My Fair Lady. On the other hand, would I like to play Higgins in the musical? You bet!”

Alistair’s courageous decision to step into the breach in the earlier West End production gives us a clue, perhaps, about the source of his multifarious talents.

“I love taking on a challenge in life, I like taking on a challenge in sport and I like learning new things,” he declares. “I also enjoy the challenge of not doing the obvious but to an extent you sometimes have to give the public what they want.”

Interestingly, Alistair’s desire to explore fresh areas wasn’t necessarily the best career move, as he ruefully explains.

“I’d done four series of The Big Impression and when I said no to the BBC about doing a fifth, I thought that I’d turn to a number of things which I’ve been planning to do for some time, such as Shakespeare, light opera and writing a play.

"I did think, naively, that I could then go back to the BBC and tell them that I now was happy to do series five of The Big Impression. But you don’t realise until it’s too late that there are certain rules which you have to follow in this business. Nobody tells you that when you walk away, the door will be firmly closed when you next come calling.”

Alistair, however, seems to take a philosophical view of what happened, stressing how much he’s been enjoying a return to live stand-up. Doing impersonations was something of a McGowan family tradition, apparently.

“My sister and I both picked up the habit from our mother who would tell stories about people in their own voices,” he reveals. “Somebody once said to me that all I have to do is say something in a funny voice and people will laugh.

"But you need to do much more than that, of course. Not only do you have to look like the people you’re impersonating, you have to sound like them as well and at the same time you have to be funny. You also have to choose people to impersonate who mean something to the public and that has become much harder.

"Once I’d buy the Radio Times every week and I’d go through the list of programmes and who was appearing in them. In this way, I could keep an eye on what was on television and what people were watching. But this was in the days of only four channels. Now there are so many different platforms, when you have E4 or Dave or Watch, it’s almost impossible to keep up.”

Some actors compile lists of the parts they’d like to play but Alistair prefers not to follow their example, explaining that “you’ll get disappointed if you fail to meet the targets you’ve set yourself.” He would like to do more directing, however, and he’s always open to surprise suggestions.

“It would never have crossed my mind that I could play Higgins; I’d always thought of him as a much older man.”

Perhaps it is significant that Alistair also devised a show based on the life and work of Noel Coward, another man who liked to spread his talents in as many different directions as possible.

“I’m content to continue as I am,” he concludes, “dipping my toes into the sullied waters of showbiz."

Pygmalion runs in the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre from April 7 - 12. Tickets are available now from the box office on 01483 44 00 00 or online at Yvonne-arnaud.co.uk.