Tom Rosenthal moves his head to one side to fully reveal his Zoom background image – a photo of him dressed up as Alex Turner in his latter-day crooner guise. “He’s like 100 per cent cooler than me, obviously,” he smiles. The 38-year-old then changes the photo to his recreation of the front cover of Arctic Monkeys’ debut album Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not – the iconic headshot of Chris McClure smoking a cigarette mid-night out in Liverpool.
It’s a very accurate approximation. “I did genuinely get quite drunk before that,” he says. “I must have had four sambucas, because I tried to match the exact thing with his eyes. I’m Stanley Kubrick-esque about things like this. Not that anyone notices, and it doesn’t really help in any way.”
The reason Rosenthal is cosplaying as Arctic Monkeys? His current comedy tour is in-part inspired by the Sheffield band: it’s called Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I Am (note the subtle difference). He’s not a massive fan as such – “I just got obsessed with that album specifically” – but his play on the title is Rosenthal’s way of making a serious, wider point, a springboard for interrogating the different ways he is viewed by the public: specifically, and overwhelmingly, as the famous characters he’s played in sitcoms: Marcus Gallo in Plebs and, of course, Johnny Goodman in Friday Night Dinner.
