Having someone else to blame when there is a rude smell in the air.
I found that I could make people laugh doing people like Shirley Bassey. Fortunately it worked.
I find singing as somebody else very liberating, it just frees me up.
I cant read a note of music. I just do it all from ear.
Mike Leigh encourages you to choose a person that you know to base your character on. You write a whole list of people that you know and you go through that list in great depth with him. And then he chooses one of those people from your list.
Usually, certainly British singers, adopt an American accent when they sing and I think that usually people are thinking of somebody else, but I just think of very specific people.