FANCY a night with Shirley Bassey, Lady Ga Ga and Tina Turner?

Well thanks to performer Ceri Dupree, now you can.

Once described as ‘Joe Longthorne meets Lily Savage, only with better legs’, Ceri is one of the country’s most in demand cabaret acts, appearing all over the world in some of the swankiest places.

And some not so swanky.

“I think the weirdest place I’ve ever performed in was a slaughterhouse,” he tells me. “Some ‘hooray henrys’, can I call them that, yes let’s call them that, well they were putting on a bad taste party in London and they asked me to do Tina Turner for them.

“Then there was this show I did in a cave in Chislehurst. I think it was Chislehurst. Do they have caves in Chislehurst?”

A quick google later and I confirm that they do!

“And then there was the time I did a show on a huge wooden raft in the Seychelles. It was organised by this guy who was absolutely loaded and he had paid for all these actors to go out there and dress up like something out of Downton Abbey. While they were doing their thing, I was doing old Music Hall stuff on the raft.”

Born and raised in Swansea, South Wales, all Ceri really wanted to do was become a costume and set designer.

“I never thought about performing at all,” Ceri adds. “Then I started hanging out with a lot of actors from the Grand Theatre and one night we went to a party where there was a fancy dress competition.

“I went along as Gladys Pugh from Hi-De-Hi, won first prize, and then was asked by the DJ to say a few words up on stage which people just loved.”

Taking his Gladys out to the rugby clubs, he soon added Peggy from Hi-De-Hi, then Margaret Thatcher closely followed by Shirley Bassey.

At the young age of 19 he moved to London for a brief spell before moving back home.

“I was too young,” he reveals. “ but I went back three years later and went for an interview at a club that had just opened up in Soho London called Madame Jo Jo’s. I badgered the owner Paul Raymond for an interview and I ended up staying there for two years.”

Since then Ceri’s unique talents have led him through musical theatre, pantomime, summer seasons, television and cabaret.

He has performed at various major venues throughout the British Isles including numerous appearances at top class hotels like The Savoy, The Dorchester, The Churchill, The Landmark and Claridges.

As well as Madame Jo Jo’s, where Ceri appeared twice nightly, six nights a week, never missing a show, he has also appeared in many other West End nightclubs including The Café de Paris, Talk of London, The Stork Club, Le Beat Route, and Ronnie Scott's.

Now back in Wales, but in the capital of Cardiff, Ceri continues to wow audiences all over the world with his incredible female impersonations and rapid quick costume changes.

“When I was watching the Oscars and saw Lady Ga Ga do the Sound of Music,” he begins, “it got me thinking whether I could actually incorporate Lady Ga Ga with Julie Andrews.”

Which of course he has.

In fact in his latest show EYEcons, he has incorporated more than 15 female icons ranging from Bette Davies to Mae West to Joan Rivers, all of which Ceri transforms into within the blink of an eye.

“I’ve been working with the same costume changer for five years now,” he says, “and there’s almost a rhythm to it now. We don’t speak and while I’m doing upstairs, she’s doing downstairs.

“There’s about a thousand cues through the show in all. Points in the music where I have to change shoes, wigs, even flowers and props.

“And if something goes wrong, there’s not a lot you can do about it. The other day she pulled the zip up with too much force and it came clean off but I still had to go on and perform that part of the show.”

As well as Ceri’s witty sideway swipes at some of the world’s most famous women, the show is perhaps best known for the fabulous costumes he wears, all of which are specially made for Ceri by ‘a lovely woman in Blackpool and a Welsh guy who lives in Milton Keynes’.

“I suppose I have the best of both worlds now,” he says finally. “I always wanted to be a costume designer and now I get to do that as well as perform in them.

“It’s a pretty tough job touring the country but I still love being on the stage. That said I was asked to play Danny La Rue in the new Cilla Black drama on television recently. I was on screen for 40 seconds and the response I got was unbelievable. So you traipse around the world for 12 years and hardly anyone notices you and then less than a minute on the telly and everyone does.”

• Ceri Dupree: EYEcons Mercury Theatre, Balkerne Gate, Colchester.

October 17. 7.30pm.

£16. 01206 573948.

www.mercurytheatre.co.uk