Rob Lamberti

Scunthorpe, a karaoke night and a set of crowns

Lamberti grew up in Scunthorpe, the youngest of four, in a house where Tamla Motown and Northern Soul shared the record player with Blondie and Spandau Ballet. By his own account he was more interested in football and Madness than in pop stardom. The turn came at fourteen, watching a performance of 'Faith' on Top of the Pops.

Two details from his teens ended up deciding his working life. The first was physical: Lamberti shares a Mediterranean-and-British-Isles parentage with Michael, and at fifteen he lost his front teeth in a fight. The crowns that replaced them gave him a smile close enough to Michael's that he has since described the accident as the pivot on which everything else turned. The second was circumstantial. In 1991 he started singing karaoke, working through Simply Red covers before the George Michael material took over, and built it into a weekly pub residency.

In 1994 he appeared on Stars in Their Eyes with the line that still follows him round — "Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be… George Michael" — and reached the live final. The title of Britain's leading George Michael tribute act followed, and with it work abroad. He has now been doing the job professionally for more than thirty years.

The endorsement nobody can buy

Most tribute performers never get a verdict from the artist they impersonate. Lamberti did. Asked by Q in 2014 whether he was ever mistaken for somebody else, Michael answered that he was often taken for Rob Lamberti, a George Michael lookalike. It is the single most useful sentence in Lamberti's professional life, and it is quoted on venue listings from Portsmouth to Scheveningen.

The two men met briefly. Lamberti went to Michael's NEC Birmingham and Wembley Stadium shows in 2006 and 2007 and was taken backstage to meet him and his team. He has been careful not to inflate it: he describes a very brief moment at Wembley and says he was taken aback. In 2007 Michael's camp asked him to stand in on promotional duties for the album 25.

Television and film followed. He performed as George Michael on BBC One's Even Better Than The Real Thing on 16 September 2017, which venues still cite as the moment the audience for his own shows widened, and he appeared in Greed, Michael Winterbottom's 2019 satire starring Steve Coogan.

What changed after Christmas Day 2016

Michael died on 25 December 2016, and Lamberti has said plainly that it altered the weight of the material. Speaking to Smooth Radio in March 2020, he described the loss as having changed a great deal of the feeling inside the show: the ballads carry something they did not carry before, while the Wham! songs still work as a party. He played 'A Different Corner', 'Faith' and 'You Have Been Loved' acoustically for that session.

The framing of the work shifted with it. Lamberti now writes that "tribute act" does not quite describe what he is doing, and uses the stage to make a blunt point about cherishing family while they are still there. It is a line that could read as sentiment, but it maps onto something visible in performance — at the Royal Concert Hall in Nottingham on 27 August 2021 he became audibly emotional in the encore and had to restart 'One More Try'.

He is also deliberate about pacing himself, favouring roughly one midweek show plus weekends over continuous touring, on the grounds that the voice and the character cannot survive being run into the ground.

The show as a piece of construction

Perfectly George is a two-hour concert with a twenty-minute interval, and it is built as a career survey rather than a greatest-hits shuffle. The Nottingham date in August 2021 opened with 'Father Figure' into 'Fastlove', ran through 'I'm Your Man', 'Club Tropicana', 'Everything She Wants', 'Jesus to a Child', 'Cowboys and Angels', 'A Different Corner', 'Faith', 'Freedom' and 'I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)' before the break, then 'Amazing', 'Waiting', 'Praying for Time', 'Careless Whisper', 'Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me' and Michael's Queen cover 'Somebody to Love', with 'One More Try' and 'Outside' as encores.

The band is a real one, and not small. The Nottingham personnel were Carlos Hercles on drums, Michael Hamilton on bass, Paul Williams on guitar, Mark Walker on keyboards, Robert Anderson on percussion and James Gardiner-Bateman on saxophone, with Elle Cato, Hazel Fernandes and Samantha Smith on backing vocals. Dutch promoters list players who have worked with Billy Ocean, Simply Red and Michael himself; the 3Olympia listing in Dublin refers to some of Michael's own musicians. On earlier UK tours Lamberti has also worked with the National Philharmonic Concert Orchestra, though the current theatre configuration is band-only — the Glasshouse in Gateshead stated explicitly that no orchestra was involved.

Staging is period-accurate rather than elaborate: costume changes tracking the eras, the leather jacket, and a police shirt revealed for 'Outside', which at the Lighthouse in Poole on 15 June 2025 came complete with handcuffs. The Poole show carried a five-star review that singled out the opening 'Father Figure' and described the room as electric.

Standing now: nine dates and a West End night

Nine shows are currently on sale, and the routing is unusually long-dated for a tribute act. The nearest major UK date is indigo at The O2 on 16 May 2026, sold through AXS. York Barbican follows on Sunday 15 November 2026, then Waterside Theatre Aylesbury on 25 November, Portsmouth Guildhall on 27 November and Bournemouth Pavilion on 28 November, with tickets there from £42.25.

December 2026 is a run of four: Wolverhampton's Civic Hall on the 12th, the Buttermarket in Shrewsbury on the 17th, Sheffield's Octagon on the 18th and the Edge Arena in Wigan on the 19th. Several of these are seasonal bookings, and the Buttermarket date has already sold out once under its Christmas billing.

The mainland European leg lands in January 2027 — the AFAS Circustheater in Scheveningen, The Hague on Tuesday 12 January at 20:00, billed as a return after sold-out Dutch shows, plus Philharmonie Haarlem, Theater Heerlen, the Trixxo Theater in Hasselt and two nights at the Muziekgebouw in Eindhoven. The UK then resumes with O2 Guildhall Southampton on 13 March 2027, the Adelphi Theatre in London's West End on 11 April, Stockton Globe on 17 April, Sunderland Empire on 14 May and Hall for Cornwall in Truro on 11 July. Dublin's 3Olympia Theatre is set for 16 October 2027, tickets from €46.20.

Prices across the theatre run start around £32 to £37 and rise towards £42 at the larger halls, with premium Live Lounge packages offered on some 2026 dates.