Speech of the Month, July 2026 - Jon Culshaw

The stand-out speech of the month, if you live in the UK, has to be Andy Burnham's speech on social care, delivered on 29 July. However, given that Burnham was my subject for June's 'Speech of the Month', I'm going to dodge looking like a fanatic and choose someone else instead... Jon Culshaw.

Two days after Burnham gave his speech, I was at the kitchen table, hunched over my laptop (no doubt because I'm about to convert the box room into an office), while my daughter, aged ten, was at the sink making herself a drink. Who should pop up as a guest on Times Radio but Jon Culshaw.

He started out giving us prime ministers from the noughties and 2010s — Blair, Brown, Cameron — but when he moved on to Johnson, my daughter squealed with delight. This was the first one she'd recognised. More giggles followed as he glided, vocally, from Sunak to Starmer, and then, mid-Burnham impression, he tossed out the question, "Well, I know all the members of Joy Division — do you?" and she had to admit defeat. "This man's so good, Mum!" Indeed he is. Mental note to self: make Dead Ringers a regular listen. Good for the little one's cultural, comedic and political education.

So why is he so good? And what can we learn from his approach — because that, after all, is the point of SotM.

His vocal precision is razor-sharp

Culshaw's ability to capture rhythm, breath, emphasis and pacing is astonishing, and it's this technical precision that makes his impersonations of Tony Blair, Boris Johnson or David Bowie land so instantly and so convincingly. It's fascinating to hear him describe how he studies a voice — its placement, its energy, the similarities and differences between voices. He landed his Rishi Sunak, for instance, by playing around with his Blair — smoothing it out, elongating the vowels — and, lo and behold, out popped Rishi.

We should bring the same awareness and respect for breath, emphasis and pacing to our own presenting. Without space to breathe, we struggle — yet so many of us race through a speech regardless — and without considered emphasis and pacing, we lose the key tools of delivery.

He's acutely aware of body language

What's striking about Culshaw is that even though he works largely in radio, performing his voices is a whole-body experience. It might be something as slight as the way King Charles points to the left when he speaks, but that attention to detail means the impressions feel rounded and recognisable before he's even said a word — and I suspect it's exactly what brings the voice to life. You sense that if his hands were tied behind his back, he simply couldn't do it.

We shouldn't disable our own body language when speaking in public either. I know arms and hands are a particular problem for many presenters — we don't know what to do with them, so to solve the problem we stick them behind our backs, jam them in our pockets, or grip them rigid. All of which suppresses emotion and makes us look wooden.

He lets us in on the joke

Culshaw often talks about the emotional intelligence behind impersonation — understanding the essence of a person so the audience feels "in on it" with him. He's clear that the joy of impressions comes from sharing something the audience has already noticed themselves, which creates a sense of camaraderie and celebration rather than mockery.

I'd argue the same applies to us: if we can voice something the audience has almost certainly noticed but rarely heard said aloud, that shared recognition bonds speaker and audience. The laugh that follows is a laugh of recognition — and that's a powerful thing for a speaker to create. So always ask yourself: do I have something "in" to say, and is it relevant to my topic?

Normally I'd put a clip at the top so you could watch the speech or interview in question. Annoyingly, Times Radio hasn't released the Culshaw interview — most thoughtless of them — so instead I'll leave you with an interview of Culshaw and one of my favourite presenters, and an earlier SotM subject himself, Matt Chorley. Chorley's no longer at Times Radio, by the way — you'll now find him on Radio 5 from 2–4pm on weekdays. Enjoy!