To Be, or to Be Broad, in Service of âHamlet 2â By Charles McGrath
Aug. 15, 2008
DESPITE appearances in movies like Sofia Coppolaâs âMarie Antoinetteâ and Jim Jarmuschâs âCoffee and Cigarettes,â Steve Coogan, the star of the indie comedy âHamlet 2,â which opens Friday, is scarcely known in the United States, unless you count stories about him as an occasional Owen Wilson wingman with a fondness for topless dancers. In his native England, though, he is practically a household name, and not just for his even more frequent tabloid appearances there. He is regarded by many as a comic talent and innovator on a level with John Cleese or even Peter Sellers.
Mr. Coogan, 42, is best known for his character Alan Partridge, who began as a clueless sports reporter with an excessive interest in âgroinalâ injuries and then evolved into a supremely confident and sublimely uninformed talk show host. With his blow-dried hair and toothy smile, Partridge is like David Frost without a brain. Other Coogan characters frequently appearing on TV or in live performances (and anthologized on YouTube) are Paul and Pauline Calf, a mullet-wearing yob and his man-eating sister; Tony Ferrino, a smarmy Portuguese singer; and Tommy Saxondale, a drug-damaged ex-roadie who works as an exterminator.
These people are more than the lightly sketched personas that comedians so often adopt with a few catchphrases or some exaggerated facial expressions. Theyâre full-fledged characters, with elaborate histories and very specific traits and mannerisms, closer in some ways to genuine dramatic roles than to stand-up shtick. In Britain some critics have even complained that Tommy Saxondale, the newest of the Coogan creations and the main character in a recent BBC sitcom, is so layered and complicated that heâs entirely convincing but not particularly funny.
âThe big comic performance is a very obvious thing to do,â said Mr. Coogan, who also appears this summer as a hapless director blown to smithereens in âTropic Thunder.â âThe bolder, more inventive thing sometimes is the subtler, understated performance with minute shades and variations.â
Mr. Coogan appears in practically every frame of âHamlet 2,â and no one would call his performance understated. He plays Dana Marschz (pronounced any number of ways), a failed actor turned high school drama teacher who tries to save his job by writing, directing and starring in a musical sequel to âHamletâ that involves both the Gospel and interplanetary travel. In the playâs big set piece, he descends from heaven, while a pair of low-rider hot rods bounce in approval, and belts out a ballad called âRock Me Sexy Jesus.â
For Marschz, life itself is theater, his own life especially, and he shamelessly resorts to every bad acting trick there is. He mugs, he weeps, he preens, he sulks  he overdoes everything. He may be an even bigger jerk, if a slightly smarter one, than Steve Martinâs Navin R. Johnson character, and Mr. Cooganâs task in the film is somehow to make him endearing as well.
Andrew Fleming, the director of âHamlet 2,â said recently that he and Pam Brady, who wrote it with him, toyed for a while with the idea of having Mr. Coogan play the character as British. âSteve kept resisting,â Mr. Fleming recalled, âand finally he explained that this kind of unbridled enthusiasm without any intelligence behind it just doesnât exist in England. Thereâs no equivalent.â âItâs a good part,â he added. âWe could have set this up with a studio and probably got any one of seven likely suspectsâ Â brand-name comic actors, that is. But working with a studio would have meant castrating the script, he and Ms. Brady figured, and after meeting with Mr. Coogan they decided they werenât interested in anyone else, anyway.
âItâs playing for very high stakes,â Mr. Coogan said about the part. âIf you blink or if you hesitate, you will fail. Itâs like running across hot coals. If you stop and think about what youâre doing, you wonât make it. But if you can do a really big performance and pull it off  the stakes are high, but so are the rewards.â
Wait a minute. Didnât he just say that smaller and subtler was better? Mr. Coogan shrugged. âIâm a populist,â he said. âI want to have it both ways. I like to make people laugh.â His model, he added, was Jack Lemmon, who âeven when he was being funny, even when his performance was very, very big, had the ability to invest himself emotionally in what he did, so it was always faithful, and that made it very watchable.â
Recalling Mr. Cooganâs performance, Mr. Fleming said: âSteve has the ability to go way out there  he has the chops. And every now and then we had to pull it in a little. Weâd wind up with something that was maybe less comically brilliant, but also more real. It was a calibration thing.â
In person, at least with people he doesnât know well, Mr. Coogan is much more subdued than he is onstage or on screen. He practically bends over not to be funny, and his discussions of acting could almost, with just a little more earnestness, a little more self-consciousness, be Partridgean. Like a lot of very funny people, what he most seems to want is to be taken seriously.
Mr. Coogan grew up in Manchester, a middle child in a big Irish Catholic family made even bigger by his parentsâ willingness to take in foster children. The way he got attention, he said, was by being funny and doing voices, and like most Britons of his generation, he was hugely influenced by American television.
An indifferent student, he skipped college in favor of drama school, and while there he began doing voice-overs for commercials. â âLowest prices ever,â âEverything must goâ Â that was my first real acting job,â he said, âthough I was criticized for not being committed enough to my Stanislavskyesque technique.â To get into the actorsâ union, Mr. Coogan also began doing stand-up, and in 1988 he was hired to do voices for âSpitting Image,â the satirical puppet show. He stayed for five years, impersonating, among others, the politicians John Major, Neil Kinnock and Margaret Thatcher, as well as American celebrities like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. âIt was a big break for me,â he said. âBut at the same time I wasnât taken seriously.â He briefly put on a posh accent and explained, âI wasnât treading the boards with the R.S.C.,â the Royal Shakespeare Company. âI was perceived as the funny-voice guy, and the funny-voice guy doesnât have gravitas. So I needed instant gravitas, which is pretty hard to come by when youâre 22.â
The solution was to abandon impressions  a âkind of glorified party trick,â he decided  in favor of characters he created himself, and he was clever enough, he says, to enlist the aid of people smarter than he was. The Partridge character, for example, was developed with the help of the playwright Patrick Marber and the writer Peter Baynham, who went on to work with Sacha Baron Cohen on âBorat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.â
In the fall Mr. Coogan is taking several of his characters on tour in a big, vaudeville-style show that will play in arenas all over England. But his popular success there has become a mixed blessing. âEven worse than being unknown is being a known quantity,â he said. âYouâre always being prejudged.â
What appealed to him about âHamlet 2,â he added, was that it offered a chance to do something different. When he first saw the script, he didnât think much of the title, but he was won over by an early scene that established Marschzâs history of making high school plays out of movies like âErin Brockovich.â âThat was such a subtle comic choice,â he said. âI was just hoping and praying that the rest of the script would be as consistent.â
Marschz is a terrible actor, Mr. Coogan admitted, and thatâs the fun of the part. âThereâs a joy in not being subtle but being justified in doing it,â he said. âThe character is very overstimulated, almost childlike. He gives me license to do things that would normally be anathema to me.â
He added: âIn the U.K. there are very few opportunities for me to experiment except within this little universe Iâve created. But here I can afford to take a big chance and hope it pays off. I figure time may pass me by, so I might as well put all my chips in the middle of the table and see what happens.â
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Steve Coogan: The Jerry Seinfeld of England The British comedian stars in 'Hamlet 2,' directed by former O.C. resident Andrew Fleming. By BARRY KOLTNOW
The Orange County Register[/align]
When Steve Coogan's agent called about a job offer for a movie called "Hamlet 2," the British actor said he hated the title, and refused to star in the movie.
"I eventually agreed to read the script because I liked the work of the director (former Orange County resident Andrew Fleming), but I still didn't like the title. I thought it was an awful title because it misrepresented the film. I begged them to change it, but they insisted that it was funny. And I had to trust them," he added with a shrug. "Andy and Pam (Brady of "South Park" fame) are not idiots when it comes to deciding what's funny."
Fleming and Brady, who co-wrote the script and produced the film, staunchly defended the title, and said it made them laugh. "I thought someone at the studio would say that it sounded too artsy," said Fleming, who earlier wrote and directed the political spoof "Dick." "But more people got the joke than I expected." Brady, who also co-wrote the animated film "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut," joked that she thought the title was appropriate because "this has been a summer of sequels so why not one more?"
The comedy, which began generating buzz after it received an enthusiastic response at this year's Sundance Film Festival, is not a sequel to Shakespeare's masterpiece, but the title is not as deceptive as Coogan originally thought.
Coogan, who already is in theaters playing the hilarious but ill-fated movie director in Ben Stiller's big-budget hit "Tropic Thunder," portrays a hapless, good-hearted and talent-challenged actor who fails miserably at his chosen profession and ends up teaching a high school drama class in Tucson.
In this twisted and wickedly offbeat nod to inspirational teacher movies such as "Dead Poets Society" and "Mr. Holland's Opus," Coogan's character writes, directs and stars in an outrageous and politically incorrect musical-theater sequel to "Hamlet" that sparks intense local protests that expand into a national outcry.
Although Coogan enjoys a modest following in the United States (from his films "24 Hour Party People," "Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story" and "Night at the Museum," in which he played the miniature Roman soldier Octavius), the 42-year-old Brit is a comedy legend in his native country. He is best-known for his TV work, particularly as the character Alan Partridge.
"This guy can't walk down the street in England without people running up to him and repeating lines from his shows," Fleming said. "He's like Jerry Seinfeld in England." Fleming and Brady said they were big fans of Coogan's before they cast the film (Fleming for "24 Hour Party People" and Brady for the Alan Partridge character), but never thought he would agree to do the role.
"Frankly, we made the offer just to meet him," Brady said. "We never thought in a million years we could get him." Coogan said he agreed to meet with the writers, even though he thought the title of their script was a mistake. "From the moment I read the script, I completely understood this character," the actor said. "He has the same DNA as many of the characters I've played in England."
What really sold Coogan on the script, he said, was an early scene in the movie when the misguided drama teacher Dana Marschz (don't feel bad; nobody knows how to pronounce it) directs his high school class in a musical based on the film "Erin Brockovich,"
"That choice was totally faithful to a certain kind of character," Coogan explained during a chat in his Beverly Hills hotel suite. "At that moment, I knew it was going to be funny, and I knew the audience would feel compassion for this fellow. There's an earnestness in a decision to put on a musical production of 'Erin Brockovich,' and yet it is a terrible lack of judgment."
Brady described the character she and Fleming created as "delusional, but he never gives up." Coogan, 42, said the character is different than most movie comedy characters in that he is so emotionally open and vulnerable. "Most comedy comes from a place of duplicity and concealment. It comes from trying to present yourself in a certain way that is a lie. The comedy tension comes out of that. I usually play darker characters that are kind of twisted, and it was fun to play someone who is not cynical, who is so open and says what he feels.
"Normally, I play characters who you have to get the audience to like, but this character is so well-intentioned and always trying to do the right thing that the audience has to be on his side. The film seems to mock him at first, but the audience sticks by him."
Coogan admits that it can get a little uncomfortable to watch this pathetic guy stumble through his life, but the actor said he is accustomed to playing these types of characters. "I can't tell you how many times in England that women come up to me and say: 'My husband loves your comedy but I can't watch it.' That's not an attempt at a left-handed compliment. They really mean it, and I understand what they're saying. When I was a kid, the whole family used to sit around the television set and watch 'Fawty Towers' (a BBC sitcom in the 1970s), and my mother would cover her eyes. She thought it was unbearable to watch, but the rest of us thought it was hysterical. I think uncomfortable comedy like that verges on being pleasurable if you are of a certain disposition."
Coogan will next be seen in this country in Ben Stiller's sequel "Night at the Museum 2," but English fans will see him sooner in a long-awaited comedy tour. The three-month tour, complete with dancers and live music, marks a return to his stand-up roots. But he said he expects to come back to the States to continue his film career.
If there is a dark lining to Coogan's silver cloud, it is that his first starring role in an American movie ("Hamlet 2") might get crushed at the box office by his smaller role in his other American movie ("Tropic Thunder").
"I do have mixed feelings about one movie possibly squashing my other movie," he said with a laugh, "but I'm proud to be in both films. Seriously, when I saw 'Tropic Thunder,' I had the thought: "Hey, this is a great movie, and I'm in it.' "But I'm just enjoying this time," he added. "People are saying that I'm having a moment, and if that's the case, I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the moment. I've been the flavor-of-the-month before, and I've not been the flavor-of-the-month before, and I know that neither is the root of happiness."
Fleming, who attended middle school in Dana Point and San Juan Capistrano, said he has no doubts that Coogan will continue to enjoy moments like this. "There is no way that American audiences are not going to connect with him. Every comic in America is a fan of his, and pretty soon the rest of America will catch up."
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The English Jerry Seinfeld? When has Seinfeld ever played anyone but himself? pah!
Steve Coogan's leaping across the pond Already a British favorite, comedian takes a stab at fame in America By RUTHE STEIN
San Francisco Chronicle
Aug. 24, 2008
Born: Oct. 14, 1965, Middleton, Manchester, England
Personal: Divorced from Caroline Hickman since 2005. Has a daughter, Clare, from a previous relationship.
Why we care: A gifted impressionist, Coogan is famous in England for creating the character Alan Partridge, a sports reporter and talk-show host who also appears in several TV series of Coogan's creation.
Resume builders: Best known in the United States for movie roles in 24 Hour Party People , A Cock and Bull Story and Night at the Museum .
Outside the biz: Claims to be a socialist who revels in paying taxes.
Quotable: "Actors say they do their own stunts for the integrity of the film, but I do them because they look like a lot of fun"
Steve Martin and Robin Williams did it; parlayed their comic talents into a big Hollywood career. Steve Coogan is attempting to follow the same trajectory with one difference: He's British, and most Americans don't know him as a funny man. Audiences at Night at the Museum caught a glimpse of him as Octavius, a miniature Roman warrior in a helmet and red robes, hanging out with the equally tiny cowboy Jedediah, played by pal Owen Wilson. Now, they're putting on their costumes again to reprise their roles in Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian.
But small stuff like this isn't likely to get Coogan flagged down on the red carpet. So the 42-year-old entertainer has taken a big risk by changing his accent to play a hapless American high school drama coach in Hamlet 2. The comedy created a stir at the Sundance Film Festival when it was bought for $10 million by Focus Features, distributors of Brokeback Mountain.
This film's central figure is would-be thespian Dana Marschz, who acts in commercials for genital herpes relief and Jack LaLanne's Power Juicer. Coogan won critical accolades for his portrayal of Marschz, who expresses enthusiasm for putting on a staged version of Erin Brockovich and a musical sequel to Hamlet.
"I don't believe the hype," he said in San Francisco, where he had come to, well, hype his movie. "I take the good stuff with a pinch of salt and the bad stuff with a pinch of salt." Fighting off a cold, Coogan recalled it was "kind of liberating to act the part of someone who has no acting talent."
His character bounces from being angry and passionate and strong and focused one moment to weeping openly the next. Once Coogan understood this about Dana, he knew he had to play him as an American. "Someone who could be so emotionally effusive and open is not something you would find in a lot of British people," he said. "In California, being emotionally open is the state sport."
Coogan's main home is in London, but he spends a few months each year in Los Angeles making friends and meeting important people. That's how the script for Hamlet 2 came to him. As soon as he read it, Coogan told screenwriters Pam Brady and Andrew Fleming that he wanted to do it and would wait until they had financing.
He found the main character "really flawed and vulgar and stupid and all kinds of things at once. I saw it as an opportunity to do something big." Waiting for the film to come out made Coogan anxious. "In some ways, there is a lot riding on the film's success," he said. "It could open up new opportunities for me. All that kind of variety is what keeps you feeling vital. But I am fortunate to have a career that is healthy enough in England that anything that happens here is a bonus," he said. "My life won't fall apart if it doesn't change. I am already working with people I like, so it is all upside for me."
Coogan starred in the British hit 24 Hour Party People and will be touring England in an extravaganza featuring the characters for which he's become famous, including the invented Alan Partridge, an insufferable TV talk-show host who appears in several series.
Just as Coogan was making plans to invade America, he was faced with a serious downside. It still upsets him because it is all over the Internet and is far from the way he wants potential fans to know him. Last summer, after Wilson's suicide attempt, Courtney Love was quoted blaming Coogan for allegedly supplying Wilson with hard drugs. Love, who claimed to be Coogan's former lover, said that when she was out of rehab, "he was right there with the drugs. I tried to warn Owen. I hope from the bottom of my heart that Owen stays the hell away from that guy."
Without mentioning Love's name, Coogan, who is divorced and has a daughter from a previous relationship, said her story was "totally malicious and utterly without any foundation whatsoever. It was totally invented. It annoyed me because it was very difficult for me to defend myself because, of course, my concern was with Owen. It wasn't with being preoccupied with something that was slanderous. I didn't want to inflame the situation by getting into a tit for tat." Coogan said he and Wilson are "very good friends" who are talking about doing another project together after the Night at the Museum sequel. "He was as appalled as I was when he read that," he said of the Love accusations.
This is a side of the entertainment world that Coogan couldn't have imagined while growing up in a bustling Irish Catholic household in Middleton in Greater Manchester, England. Besides Coogan and his six brothers and sisters, his mother also took in foster children. "There was a lot of noise in the house, a lot of hustle and bustle," he said. "To get any kind of attention, you really had to do something."
Coogan quickly discovered a talent for mimicking voices. He would be paraded in front of the family and told to imitate "some very verbose relative or someone maybe the rest of the family wasn't too keen on. In school, my teacher would have me stand in front of class and mimic other teachers for his own amusement. When I was reluctant, he would say, 'Well, then we can open the books and do some work.' Then the rest of the students wanted me to do it because they didn't want to work."
He would later move on to doing impressions of Prince Charles for a record label. At age 10, he starred in a school production of Aladdin. "Then we did 'Hamlet 1,' as I like to refer to it now," he said. For his higher education, Coogan was accepted into a prestigious drama school. Some teachers he worked with were not unlike the one he plays in Hamlet 2.
"It was a major disappointment for them that they wound up teaching," he said. "The frustration was that the talented people perhaps aren't as passionate about theater as the less talented. It is the lack of justice in the creative world because talent is something you can perfect, you can make better, but you can't just bestow it on someone. It is sort of a God-given thing, and he is pretty unjust about who he hands it out to."
Steve Coogan Rocks Sexy Jesus Character in Hamlet 2 HollywoodChicago.com
August 27, 2008
CHICAGO Steve Coogan is a British comedy icon. Forging a career from creating an array of characters, though, hes not as well known in America (except to BBC cultists). He brings this talent for characterization to the lead role of an American high school drama teacher in the new film Hamlet 2. Coogan adds some peculiar quirks to the depiction of the clueless soul who seemingly will do anything to project his dramatic vision.
In a recent HollywoodChicago.com interview with Coogan, he philosophized about the nature of his comedy and how he hopes it can translate both in Hamlet 2 and within the larger entertainment scope as his career progresses. Describing the roots of his basis in developing characters, Coogan went back to his childhood in Manchester, England.
As a kid before cable or VCRs, I used to use an audio cassette recorder to tape TV shows, Coogan recalled. He added: [I did it] just to get the audio tracks. Also there was a lot of comedy on records. I would listen to Monty Python and older British comedy like Tony Hancock and The Goon Show.
Often people would describe their favorite moments on the TV shows or records, he continued. I would say: No. Youve got it wrong. I would start to mimic what was accurate on those shows. I would enjoy the retelling of the stuff. I would enjoy peoples reaction to it once I did it.
Hamlet 2 is a bit of a departure from the British scene. It depicts Coogan as Dana Marschz: a down and out American actor forced to teach bad drama in a high school in Tucson, Ariz. His student body consists of two worshipful pupils who do stage recreations of movies like Erin Brockovich.
When Dana is forced to take some rougher students into his classes, its within the context that the school system is about to cut the drama department entirely. What is necessary is a big production. It must be something the bureaucracy cant ignore.
Dana Marschz will come up with the sequel to one of Shakespeares best. Hell call it Hamlet 2. Coogan added: What attracted me to the character of Dana was that its a funny part. He continued: He is vulnerable, which was a departure from characters Ive played who are unlikable. I am attracted toward dysfunctional people because I find them more interesting. Its a challenge to play someone odd or dysfunctional and still make the audience care about them.
While Dana plots his masterpiece, his marriage dissolves around him. Still, the plucky and gullible dramatist forges on. His play will revolve around a time machine (so the dead characters in the first Hamlet can be revived), musical numbers and the character of Sexy Jesus for the big finish.
We talked about how to make Jesus sexy, Coogan explained. Thats why we settled on the jeans and T-shirt. The hair was always kind of cool. It did make me a little nervous to play Jesus, he admitted. I did wonder whether (writer/director) Andy (Fleming) was just trying to be provocative to annoy Christians in a certain way or if it was just funny. I wasnt quite sure, but in the end, I just did it.
As a generalization, I think Americans are less repressed than British people, he said. Culturally, people from America come from somewhere else, so theres the risk factor within the personality that makes them more free. There is no subtext with Dana, Coogan added. The challenge was how to make it interesting when hes so big and demonstrative without making it over the top especially in contrast with the other characters in the film who are more grounded.
In his final thoughts, Coogan mentioned why he sometimes has trouble being pigeonholed in the way hes cast in movies. I like variety. I dont like to repeat myself, he said. In this marketplace, that is difficult because representatives sometimes dont know how to sell me. I do so many different things. But it satisfies me creatively.
Hamlet 2, which is written and directed by Andrew Fleming, features Steve Coogan, Catherine Keener, David Arquette, Elisabeth Shue, Amy Poehler, Melonie Diaz, Phoebe Strole and Skylar Astin. The film opened on Aug. 22, 2008.
HollywoodChicago.com staff writer Patrick McDonald
'If you think my comedy stinks, give me both barrels. Otherwise, my private life is no one's business' On the eve of his first tour for a decade, Steve Coogan talks to Amy Raphael about scandal, swear words and the trouble with success The Observer,
August 31 2008
Photograph: John Reardon
Let's start a couple of years back, in May 2006, a bright morning on a central London rooftop. Here's Steve Coogan, recently turned 40, smoking in short, urgent puffs and asking his assistant for more coffee. He is affable but distracted. He doesn't check his watch but I get the sense he'd like to. He's just finished filming the first series of Saxondale, the gentle sitcom about former roadie Tommy Saxondale, and is anxious to get back to the edit. He acknowledges that the remarkable success of Alan Partridge means he is, effectively, competing against himself. 'People want to see you doing the same thing again and again, so they have to adjust to something new.'
While working on Saxondale, Coogan had squeezed in a short trip to Canada, where he took a cameo in a Ben Stiller film, Night at the Museum. He compares Stiller to a 'very, very nice machine', adding, 'He's about the work.' This was certainly not a criticism. Coogan is very keen on work, too. Yet he insists that while it's important, it doesn't define him; it's not all he has. He talks about the little cottage he visits in Ireland, alone. He runs, reads, writes, gets sucked into Irish politics. An aunt lives nearby but he rarely sees her. He says, very seriously, that the spiritual connection he has with the country allows him the kind of peace he seldom experiences while working.
Despite this hideaway, the reality is that most of Coogan's time, at this point, has been spent not in a field but reading scripts sent over from the States. Or having endless meetings in LA. For the previous five years, he's had an eye on breaking America. He says he's willing to take risks; he feels he's been around long enough to absorb the impact of the odd bad decision. Then, for a moment, he sounds a little sad. 'But I might just have to accept that my peculiarly British comedy doesn't work over there.'
It turns out that he had no need to worry. The next time we meet, in May 2008, everything has changed. Coogan is about to become a huge star in America. Hamlet 2, a comedy in which Coogan plays a misguided teacher, sold for a record $10m at Sundance in January. Tropic Thunder, a spoof war movie in which Coogan plays a pompous English film director, is poised to be as successful for Ben Stiller as Zoolander. There's part two of Night at the Museum in pre-production, not to mention the cameo he played in Curb Your Enthusiasm last year. Yet for now Steve Coogan, international film star, is in a brown-and-beige Winnebago in a car park in Stockport.
He is waiting to be called to the set of Sunshine, the upcoming BBC sitcom co-written and directed by Craig Cash. Again he is distracted. I have interviewed Coogan several times and it's not that his head has been turned by America or that he's being in any way rude; he just seems to always be thinking of several things at once. He has a restless mind but he's also forgetful. Mid-conversation, he excuses himself, phones his assistant and asks her to send a present over to Rob Brydon to celebrate the arrival of his new baby boy. He then plugs the kettle in but doesn't turn it on. He tells a random anecdote about going to his local supermarket in Hove with Brydon and David Walliams like 'three poofs on a day out'. He finds a cafetiere, fills it with cold water from the kettle, swears to himself and starts again.
It's not turning out to be a good day. Coogan is unhappy with the use of photos of his 11-year-old daughter in a recent article printed in a broadsheet and is talking to his lawyer. Like his hero Peter Sellers, Coogan has had a colourful private life that sometimes overshadows his work, and he gets annoyed when journalists bring up past follies. He thinks his work is good enough to distract from the fact that he separated from the mother of his child in 1996. Or that, around the same time, he had sex with a dancer on a bed littered with some 500 Ł10 notes. Or that his brief marriage to Caroline Hickman finally ended in 2005 after two lap dancers kissed and told about an alleged cocaine-fuelled night in Coogan's hotel room.
'I'm a marked man,' he says, throwing himself on the narrow beige sofa. 'I can't undo what I've done. If you think my comedy stinks, give me both barrels. Otherwise I'm not going to qualify anything. It's none of anyone's fucking business.' And, in a way, he's right: Partridge is as strong a comedy creation as Basil Fawlty and Coogan's private life should be irrelevant. Yet he is being a little naive. He may argue that he's not a politician espousing family values and therefore no one has a right to judge him. He may point out that he's never had a free kitchen from Hello! But he lives in an era where the majority read papers to be entertained rather than informed. That said, he has, at times, certainly had to learn the hard way. In 2005, he had a relationship of sorts with Courtney Love; she later gave a critical account of some aspects of his character. For the first time, Coogan felt the need to threaten libel action against anyone who reprinted her accusations.
Today, in the Stockport car park, Coogan's tabloid adventures seem remote, improbable even. He is called to set and changes swiftly into a Seventies outfit including a pink-and-white shirt that he worries makes him look like Peter Andre. Coogan has known Craig Cash for years but they have never properly worked together, despite both hailing from Greater Manchester and having numerous friends in common (Coogan used to do stand-up at a theatre in Manchester alongside Caroline Aherne, co-creator with Cash of The Royle Family, while Henry Normal wrote on The Royle Family before setting up a production company, Baby Cow, with Coogan).
Sunshine is a comedy drama in which Coogan's character, Bing, has to learn to control his gambling or lose his childhood sweetheart. In one of the final scenes of the three-parter, Coogan waits in the hallway of a terraced house which has been dressed up in Seventies decor. Cash is in one of the bedrooms, lying stretched out on a nylon football duvet. He gently directs the child actor who plays Bing's young son, Joe, as he opens his curtains to find a surprise on the lawn. The scene is replayed over and over before it's time for a break. While the next scene is being set up, Coogan stands around on the deserted road, drinking strong tea in a polystyrene cup. Now that he's on set, working, he's more relaxed than in the Winnebago. He actually manages to chat - about racist taxi drivers and dodgy builders - without appearing to have his mind on other things.
Although Coogan is busy establishing himself in America, he's got no intention of leaving Britain behind just yet. This autumn he will spend almost three months on the road with his first live tour in a decade, Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters. When I arrive at the Brighton office in which Coogan and Henry Normal are writing material (they both live locally), I find a bland room in a tower block with views out across the South Downs and seagulls shrieking overhead. Huge white Post-it notes cling to a wall: Pauline Calf, Tommy Saxondale, Duncan Thickett, Paul Calf, Intermission, Keanu Reeves, Alan Partridge, 'Steve' + song.
Two tables are shoved together and piled high with scripts. Coogan is nowhere to be seen but Normal is on the phone talking to someone about Gavin & Stacey, the phenomenally successful sitcom backed by Baby Cow. Normal deals with the day-to-day running of the production company. He finishes his phone call, sits down and starts to explain the format of the new show. Duncan Thickett, a failing stand-up, is one of Coogan's oldest characters, while Keanu Reeves is one of his most recent. A gay Mancunian emo drug dealer who has changed his name by deed poll and who Coogan plays in series two of Saxondale, Keanu is making his live debut. As is Tommy Saxondale. There are also old favourites Paul Calf, the beer-swilling student hater, and his blonde bouffant-haired sister, Pauline.
Normal and I are trying to work out which characters Coogan performed at his first Edinburgh show in 1990. I was there to interview Frank Skinner, who was supporting, but barely noticed Coogan; I saw him again two years later when he put on an amazing show in a packed, sweaty room with John Thomson and won the Perrier Award. As we are talking, Coogan appears at the door, flings a golf jumper over his shoulder and on to the floor. He puts a coffee and a chocolate brownie on the table, apologises for being late and blows his nose. A pair of black, modern Ray-Bans sit on top of his head, his crumpled T-shirt is white, his ribbed trousers brown and his running shoes blue. He is full of cold.
'I mostly did impressions at Edinburgh in 1990,' says Coogan, sitting down opposite Normal. 'I skipped the next year because I wanted to get the show dead right. So in 1991 I went to Rhodes with my act. It was a holiday job. I was by the pool doing my job in front of a load of families. This man came up and said, "Can you stop swearing please, there are kids around." I'd already done Spitting Image by then, I'd appeared at the London Palladium with Jimmy Tarbuck. And there I was staying in a box room with no windows. It was a real cheapo, nasty set-up. I bought a Guardian International one day and saw the headline, "Frank Skinner wins Perrier Award in Edinburgh". The year before he'd been supporting me in Edinburgh.'
Coogan sighs. 'I asked my agent at the time what I could do. She told me to pull a rabbit out of a hat. I was slightly neurotic, feeling that the grown-up comics on the circuit saw me as a low-rent, low-brow funny voice man. So I took the new show to regional arts centres, avoiding London completely. By the time I got to Edinburgh, John Thomson was supporting me and Patrick Marber was directing. He got the show down to about an hour. I did Paul Calf and Duncan Thickett. Nobody was doing stand-up characters at the time and the element of surprise is very important.' His laugh is high-pitched, slightly self-conscious. 'Both in military and comic situations.'
Henry Normal is keen to get on with planning the impending live show. 'So Paul Calf comes on stage in an electric wheelchair and we think he's got a broken leg, but it's a ruse.' I ask if all these characters age, which of course they do, but not in real terms. Normal explains that it's more a case of creating a modern context, so that Pauline Calf can, for example, send flirtatious text messages. I see Amy Winehouse's name on one of the many lists littering the tables. 'Yes, but it's a shit joke so we won't be using it,' says Coogan, sliding the paper away. He smiles. 'The overall problem of the show is how to make it accessible to a large group of people but to also imbue it with an edge and tension. To make it risqué but also digestible.'
Is there an assumption that most of the audience will be familiar only with Alan Partridge? 'I'd say it's the case with around 50 per cent. There's no point pretending. Hence the name of the show.' Partridge gets 29 minutes, as opposed to 12 minutes for each of the others. His segment will include a look at his new job as a lifestyle guru, following years in the wilderness after his TV chat-show was axed. 'He's going around doing a cheap, low-rent version of a lifestyle guru lecture that people do in America but that doesn't really float in this country,' says Coogan. 'He's been to America, seen these guys and thinks it may be his way back. He thinks he's had some Damascene conversion and he'll be able to impart this wisdom that's changed his life.'
The final nine minutes of the show involve Coogan coming on as a version of himself (not unlike the conceit of Michael Winterbottom's excellent adaptation of A Cock and Bull Story in which Coogan co-starred with Rob Brydon). 'I want to get postmodern and self-indulgent, and see if it works.'
Back in Stockport, Coogan had mentioned that he was contemplating a number for the tour called 'The Cunt Song'. He's still worried about it. Normal isn't. He thinks it's a great way of listing all the unpleasant people of the modern world. He says it's just an updated version of Paul Calf's 'Bag O' Shite' song. But Coogan, who likes his comedy clever as well as funny, and who is very careful about what he presents to an audience, is concerned. A long discussion ensues. Coogan: 'The word "cunt" is deeply offensive to a lot of people, especially women. There are political connotations. You can't say it in America. Period. Full stop. Which is why I'm interested in it.' Normal: 'I think we're desensitised to it.' Coogan: 'I don't. My show has a broad appeal. There are 12-year-old fans of Alan Partridge.' Normal: 'I'm a firm believer in the Lenny Bruce school of thought: if you clamp down on a word, you give it power.' Coogan puts his head in his hands. His cold has given him a thick head. 'OK, I want to use it because it's taboo. And sometimes people laugh at things despite themselves. You can defeat their moral and ethical objections with laughter.'
Later we drive to Coogan's house in his old Porsche. He's lived in Hove for 10 years, although he spends almost half the year in America these days. If it wasn't for his daughter, he would consider moving there. His large, spacious house is overflowing with his brother, his brother's family and his own daughter. His girlfriend China Chow, daughter of restaurateur Michael Chow and the late model Tina Chow, is sitting on a sofa eating a plate of sliced fennel dressed with oil and lemon. She, too, is full of cold but jumps up to introduce herself, make tea and find remedies for Coogan. She is full of tenderness but he just wants to get on with the interview.
In the study, Coogan sits in a leather Robin Day armchair. He sips herbal tea. There are old movie posters of Thunderball and Alfie, random Post-it notes (one says 'ass man' - Chow saw an assistant manager in a shop with his abbreviated title on his badge) and copies of Hello! and OK! - 'because I didn't know who anyone was when I got back from America,' explains Coogan, moving them out of sight. He likes America. 'It's a change of landscape. I work with other people who are very talented. It energises me, excites me. But you have to be tenacious. The Dorothy Parker quote that you can be killed by encouragement in Hollywood is very true. Everyone tells you how great you are in case you turn out to be.'
American critics have been writing about Coogan's greatness since they saw his portrayal of the late Tony Wilson in Michael Winterbottom's 24 Hour Party People in 2002. Then, after his perfectly judged performance as a big-headed British actor in Jim Jarmusch's Coffee and Cigarettes in 2003, he became not only a cult figure, but also cool. And despite - or perhaps because of - Alan Partridge's idiosyncratic Little Englander behaviour, they fell in love with him, too. Coogan's cult status is now in question: he may have cemented it with last year's appearance on Curb Your Enthusiasm ('I had to make sure I wasn't intimidated') but with Hamlet 2's record sale at Sundance and the inevitable success of Tropic Thunder, he will soon be a household name in America.
Still, modestly, he describes going to Hollywood as 'an experiment'; it will be a 'bonus' if he finds real success there. Yet he says Hamlet 2 is 'smart', a good, broad comedy. 'I love all inclusive comedy. I like watching The Two Ronnies with my parents.' However, it's clearly Tropic Thunder that excites him. In a private screening a few days earlier, he laughed the whole way through. Then, at the end, he said with the genuine enthusiasm of a fan that it was one of the funniest films he'd ever seen. Especially after the first 20 minutes, when he's no longer in it. He is still animated now. 'Tropic Thunder is superb. It's Ben Stiller's shining moment as a director. It's game changing for comedy.'
Although Hollywood clearly pays better than the BBC, Coogan insists that he didn't go to the States because he was greedy for more. What he says next comes as something of a surprise, given his widely acknowledged status as a comedy genius over here. 'I don't actually get offered that much work in Britain. People fear working with me because they see me as an auteur and I might cramp their style. I even had to convince Craig [Cash] that if he let me do Sunshine, I'd be there to do a job as an actor.' He sighs; he often feels misunderstood. Perhaps this is due in part to the fact that he's simply a hard person to get to know, especially when distracted.
Even his lower middle-class, Catholic, socialist family (Steve was the fourth of six and his parents took in various foster children) remember him as a brilliant impressionist who lived in a world of his own as a child. Henry Normal says his Baby Cow partner 'feels disconnected from the world. Comedy is one way he makes that connection'. And it is, of course, a very particular type of comedy. He likes gauche characters with visible imperfections. 'Creating such characters was never conscious,' Coogan insists. 'There's just something funny about people being delusional and self-deprecating. I like the catharsis of trying to make comedy out of failure.'
He is frustrated when fans ask him if he makes up material as he goes along. 'The discipline of structured writing with a team isn't self-evident. But the cruel trick of comedy is that the easier it looks, the harder it's been to create.' For a while, around the turn of the century, Coogan lost his way; making people laugh became too much like hard work. He'd won lots of awards, made lots of money, enjoyed phenomenal success with Alan Partridge. Professional lethargy set in. 'Then I realised there was no magic answer to anything. Just get on with the work.' He repeats this mantra several times to himself, as though alone in the room. 'That's where I find peace. It's as simple as: this is what I do, do you like it?' He pauses. 'When Baby Cow was set up in 1999 it really did give me some much-needed structure.'
I wonder if, despite his own ascendancy in America, Coogan is envious of Gavin & Stacey's success in this country. 'A tiny bit of me is, yes. But it's a part I recognise exists. I'm able to stand back and see that it's absolutely ridiculous. I also know that the company Henry and I run enabled them to have that success. I'm 42 now, I'm part of the furniture in this country.' His daughter knocks on the door and asks where to find some playing cards. He pulls himself up. 'The simple answer to Gavin & Stacey's success is that I'm mostly pleased but a tiny bit envious. Then I remember that I have to get on with it. To find a calmness in just moving forwards.' And, having made a statement worthy of self-help guru Alan Partridge, he follows his daughter down the stairs, the interview already forgotten.
· Sunshine is on BBC1 in early October; Tropic Thunder is out on 19 September
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Coogan's miles ahead of any other comedian in terms of column inches... another big read there...
Steve Coogan: He's back and funnier than ever He is taking a break from Hollywood to star in Sunshine, the latest slice of life from the writers of The Royle Family. And Coogan's rather good, finds Gerard Gilbert 30 September 2008
Independent.co.uk
In the end it probably comes down to what you think of Steve Coogan as an actor. How much comic light and warmth emanates from his new BBC series Sunshine will most likely depend on how Coogan manages to tone down the extreme character traits of, say, Alan Partridge and sublimate himself to the requirements of an ensemble piece. Forget Hollywood, this is Stockport, and perhaps Coogan's greatest challenge to date.
Sunshine comes courtesy of Royle Family and Early Doors co-writers Craig Cash and Phil Mealey, and Coogan plays a "lovable" but dim chip shop worker with a gambling problem. "Bing" is an average guy with a weakness for a flutter. There are no exaggerated tropes to play with, no prop blazers or wigs just Coogan on his own, his thespian nakedness accentuated by the fact that he is surrounded by the typically low-key naturalistic writing and ensemble performing associated with Cash and Mealey.
Before talking to the stars, I raised my concerns over a pint (what else, with the creator of Early Doors?) in Manchester. Mealey was taking time out from the editing suite. While agreeing that Coogan's previous comedy incarnations have all been "heightened" and "a bit of a caricature", he also points to the comedian's recent work in America as evidence of a fast developing acting ability. "He's one of the best things about Tropic Thunder [Ben Stiller's recent satire on movie-making] and great in Hamlet 2 [in which Coogan plays a failed actor-cum-drama teacher staging a sequel to Shakespeare's Danish tragedy; it opens here in November]. And in Sunshine, I think Steve will be a revelation to people. He takes risks in this you'll see more of a person."
Yes, you do eventually, although the opening episode is like watching someone groping their way out of the urge to caricature, made all the more obvious by the unobtrusively excellent playing all around him. There's some terrible business with his teeth Coogan protruding them like Ken Dodd at a gurning contest before he breaks through to something more touching and human: Bing, having spent his family's holiday money on a disastrous chance-of-a-lifetime bet, alone and in close-up. You almost feel like cheering for the actor.
"Bing is like a lot of working class men in the 21st century," reckons Coogan of his character. "He's struggling to be the kind of person he wants to be but is being pulled by an addiction. Bing's addiction is gambling, and he becomes a sort of Jekyll and Hyde character. He is a good person who ends up being a not particularly good father."
The challenge is to be likeable as well as a bit of prat, while Coogan's cringeworthy gallery of characters from Partridge to Saxondale have usually got by with just the latter. But hold on, you might ask, what is Coogan, with at least four major movies either in pre- or post-production, doing slumming it in a BBC comedy drama? Was it just a matter of helping out his old friends in the North? Nothing of the sort, says Mealey.
"Steve knew the script was knocking around and asked to see it. He rang the night after he read it and agreed straight away. He told Craig 'This is where I come from' and 'Some of the lines I can hear me own brother speaking'."
This is the first time that Coogan has been directed by Cash but the pair go back a long way. "I met Craig probably about 20 years ago," says Coogan. "He was friends with Caroline [Aherne]. I was at college with John Thomson and there was myself and Caroline, and Craig was around. He was a DJ on radio in Stockport radio and I used to go on his show. Craig would ring me up and ask whether I'd come on for free and just say funny things, late at night, which I did a few times."
Comedian Henry Normal Coogan's partner in Baby Cow Productions was also part of the scene, "a little kind of Manchester thing going on," as Coogan puts it. "Dave Gorman was on the fringes of it as well, and we'd all do gigs at the Green Room and the Streets. Henry worked with Craig on the first series of The Royle Family, so we're all kind of interconnected as a Northern scene."
Cash and Mealey go even further back. "We used to stack shelves together at Tesco's in Stockport," says Mealey. "I've known Craig for 30 years and Caroline for 20." And he's keen to scotch the accepted legend repeated in his Wikipedia entry that Mealey was only drafted in to co-write Early Doors after Aherne disappeared to Australia following alleged script differences with Cash.
"Early Doors was never a Craig and Caroline project," he says. "Craig and I had always had this idea that wouldn't it be great to write a working-class Cheers. After Caroline went to Australia Craig suggested we finally write it. I had quite a decent job at the time as an engineer and my wife had just had our second child. So I hesitated, but my wife said, 'come on; you've got to do it. I don't want to be sat with a 60-year-old man who's regretting never giving it a go.'"
After Early Doors, Cash and Mealey wrote The Royle Family: the Queen of Sheba, the 2006 swansong of Liz Smith's Nana and one of the most poignant and realistic depictions of death seen in TV drama let alone in a sitcom.
"All the great sitcoms, Only Fools and Horses, Cheers and old things like Dad's Army, they always mixed the funny with the poignant," says Mealey, who has now formed his own production company with Cash. "It's called Jellylegs," he says. "It's an old Stockport expression for being nervous. You'd go bowling and say 'don't go jellylegs'."
If Cash and Mealey are feeling "jellylegs" about Sunshine, it may be because it's debuting on prime-time BBC1 fine for an established work of genius like The Royle Family, but rather more nerve-wracking with a new show. On the subject of the Royles, as soon as editing on Sunshine is complete, Jellylegs will be sitting down with Aherne to produce a Christmas special for Britain's most sedentary family. "It'll be pure laughs this time," says Mealey. "No more deaths; we don't want to be the Dr Shipman of comedy."
Sunshine is a different beast from either The Royle Family or Early Doors. Each episode is twice the length and it's more comedy drama than sitcom. There are plenty of very funny lines, and a running joke about Piccalilli that will have manufacturers of the yellow chutney telephoning their PR departments. And it's not all about Coogan's character Bing. In fact, it's an inter-generational saga involving Bernard Hill as Bing's father George a doting granddad to Bob's son Joe but, it is slowly revealed, a man with his own demons.
"We always thought we didn't want a Werther's Original type of granddad," says Mealey. "We wanted people to think that he had an edge in his younger days and you wouldn't want to cross him."
Says Hill himself: "When you see him younger, in the 1970s he's got lots of rings on his fingers, and he's a pretty different sort of personality. He's got sideboards and all that and you see him shuffling cards really well. What I've tried to do is make him responsible to some extent for Bing's personality problems he was an absent father more at home in the pub. So he's skipped a generation and he's gone for the grandson to redeem himself. I think that's quite common."
Hill... Yosser Hughes from Boys from the Blackstuff. "Ah, another Scouse icon," I blurt out, thinking of Ricky Tomlinson in The Royle Family. "Bernard's actually from Manchester," corrects Mealey. "Everyone thinks he's from Liverpool."
Other cast members include the excellent Lisa Millett as Bing's long-suffering wife Bernadette, while Cash and Mealey play Bing's drinking mates. "All in all, there's nine of us from Early Doors in Sunshine," says Mealey. "Well, if it works for Woody Allen..."
'Sunshine' starts on BBC1 next Tuesday at 9pm
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I'm looking forward to seeing this - though it's always taken me a while to like any of the stuff that he's done. They tend to grow on me after a while, which is no bad thing.
Steve Coogan As Alan Partridge And Other Less Successful Characters Steve Bennett
chortle.co.uk
He doesnt have to do this, of course, but Steve Coogans decision to go on the road after ten years proves that the thrill of live performance is irresistible, no matter how famous you are.
The title says it all. In the first half of the show Coogan reprises several favourites from his past, while part two is dedicated to the superlative Partridge. Its a show of two halves in other respects, too. Before the interval, Coogan seems hesitant, phoning in a performance that lacks flair and electricity despite some nice lines in the script. But when Norfolks finest takes to the stage, the magic returns, as he builds to an audacious and spectacular song-and-dance finale that only serves to highlight the spark that was missing from much that preceded it.
He started strongly, with Pauline Calf more relevant than ever in this age of low-rent, high-maintenance WAGs. She opened with a wonderfully bold Bond-style production number, literally singing the praises of Marriot hotels and the D-list celebs she claims to have encountered there the first of many digs at low-level fame in this show.
Anything best-selling author Jordan can do, Pauline can do just as tackily, which is why she treated us to an extract from her delightfully clunky novel, unsubtly drawn from her own life. It was a solidly funny routine, if unadventurous: Coogan used exactly the same set-up for his delightfully promiscuous creation in that last tour.
Next up was Tommy Saxondale, lecturing us, half-heartedly, on the perils of drugs, which initially comprised little more than a series of pseudo-sardonic comments on strange pictures, claiming to be before and after shots of drug use. Its rather easy stuff, the sort of captions you might see on half-funny greetings cards. However, the second part of his set, about the sweet granny who was actually a powerful drug godfather, fleshed out the initial idea nicely, wringing out plenty of chuckles from the unlikely scenario.
Duncan Thickett is one of Coogans oldest characters, but still seemed new to most of the audience, who appeared baffled by this bad Eighties stand-up, complete with zany sound effects and novelty suit. Using irony to make good comedy out of bad is a tricky path, and while Coogan had a few knowing takes on the failings of easy observational and nostalgic stand-up, this never really hit the spot. The fact that, with a couple of notable exceptions, characters like the one hes trying to parody arent generally successful any more cant have helped.
Heavy-drinking Northern layabout Paul Calf came on in a wheelchair as with his fictional sister Pauline, reprising a gag from an earlier show. For half this set, Coogan seemed again to be simply going through the motions, even doing a prick with a needle double entendre that would have shamed the music halls, even if he did have the sense to feign embarrassment about it. However when Calfs flamboyant, if dodgy, gipsy lover takes to the stage, the script finds a much richer vein of one-liners to explore.
Throughout the show the writing is strong, or at least solid, but Coogan doesnt seem to have the command of the material that would allow him to wring the most out of. He stumbles over his words several times, and keeps glancing at clipboards. This might still be early in the tour, but when youve 1,800 people paying just shy of Ł40, you shouldnt still be practising. Coogans concentration seems to be devoted to simply remembering his lines, rather than on delivering them with oomph.
Betwixt Coogans characters, a small ensemble, including Edinburgh regular Steve Oram and Garth Marenghi star Alice Lowe, perform filler sketches that, like the main scenes, are good but not quite great; although the idea of God and Devil dating and quarrelling is especially strong.
Partridge is who almost everyone has come to see, of course, and when he gets a rapturous reception at the start of part two, Coogan raises his game to match. Desperately trying to exploit the last shreds of his celebrity, Partridge now runs a personal development programme Alans Forward Solutions which he relentlessly sells with all the unconvincing zeal of a mid-level sales conference for surgical supports in the East Midlands region.
Hes also written, produced, directed and stars in his own one-man version of the story of Sir Thomas More, which is as ill-researched, anachronistic and dreadfully performed as you would predict. In fact, it makes Acorn Antiques look like Kenneth Branaghs Hamlet but theres plenty of fun in the inevitable way Alans precious ego-vehicle falls apart at the seams.
Theres a reason Partridge is Coogans most popular creation. His naïve absence of self-awareness and myriad vulnerabilities have such appeal that his petty grudges, monstrous insensitivity and desperate quest for even modest showbiz success seem almost endearing. But he also seems to get the best lines, as Coogan and his collaborators have a more instinctive feel for the character. The gags are packed in, and the talk-show element, especially, zings along.
All the stops come out at the end, when Coogan has his tongue-in-cheek and this is me moment, breaking into an impressively choreographed West End song and dance number about his hookers-and-cocaine tabloid reputation. But dont expect the catchy number to be getting much Radio 2 airplay it is deliciously, extravagantly offensive.
Shame the hesitant first half didnt live up to the brilliant second. Despite some sparkling moments, and plenty of mid-level chuckles, the scenes without Partridge didnt have the sense of occasion youd expect of one of Britains biggest and best comedy stars making a comeback after a decade away. Best think of these of an extended warm-up act you dont care less about before the star of the show blows the place apart.
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It sounds great even if this review isn't exactly sparkling...
Steve Coogan: Partridge in flight Steve Coogan is back on the stand-up stage after a 10-year absence. Despite some negative reviews, the comedian tells GAVIN ALLEN things couldnt be better... Oct 31 2008
South Wales Echo
STEVE Coogan is on the other end of the phone and Im very surprised about it to be honest. And thats because I had eagerly chased an interview with Coogan as soon as he included Cardiff on his tour, only to be refused.
When shows sell well they dont need promoting, especially not from someone of Coogans stature. But then earlier this week I was contacted by his office and offered an interview slot with the man behind Alan Partridge. I wondered why, of course, and doubted the interview would actually happen. But thankfully it did and theres a reason for that.
There has understandably been huge media interest in Coogans return to stand-up and some of the reviews have been very negative, accusing him of being under-rehearsed. Particularly his performances in Liverpool where there were reports of walk-outs and general moans from fans about its alleged shoddiness.
Its been fantastic, apart from one night in Liverpool, says Coogan, aiming to set the record straight. The reality is that it has gone very well and Im having a ball. And thats why Im doing this (interview); I just wanted to let people know that the shows are actually going very well. The opening night in Stoke was also a bit rocky but thats because it was the first performance, and in their wisdom The Telegraph chose to send a reviewer to it. But we got fantastic reviews from The Times and The Guardian and they are online for anyone to see.
To call and offer an interview might seem desperate from another comedian, one who made their career from touring, but Coogan really doesnt need this headache. Aside from Saxondale, his sitcom about a rock roadie turned pest controller, Coogan hasnt concentrated on character comedy since 2002s second series of Im Alan Partridge. Since then he has largely focussed on his acting and film career which has yielded varying results but included 24 Hour Party People, Around The World In 80 Days, A Cock And Bull Story and Night At The Museum.
The Manchester-born comedian, 43, says he has enjoyed getting back to his characters and Partridge in particular: Hes not been part of my life for the last seven or eight years and its been great to get the clothes out of the back of the wardrobe, he said. On the subject of another series for the failed chat show cringer he offers hope to millions of fans. I have an idea for a series, I also have an idea for a film, but I have to want to do it, he tantalises. You cant do something because people want you to do it, you have to do it because you want to. But the more different things I do and feel satisfied with, the more likely it is that I will go back to Partridge.
That makes another flight of the Partridge entirely probable because Coogans career is bulging at all the right angles. His film career is growing carefully and contains a crowded slate of films for next year. His profile in America will rise further through an as-yet-untitled series for the TV channel HBO that he is working on with Justin Theroux, the director of Ben Stillers film Tropic Thunder. It will be a comedy but quite oblique, he says. I dont like to stand still. If you are comfortable its not good for you creatively so you have to keep shaking things up. Scare yourself. If you arent scared then you arent challenging yourself.
Earlier this month he enjoyed his first major dramatic role in Sunshine, a three-part BBC series in which he played a gambling addict, while he continues to co-run Baby Cow Productions which has delivered The Mighty Boosh, Ideal and Nighty Night, among others. Baby Cow has also significantly advanced the careers of some major Welsh talent, giving Rob Brydon a platform with Marion And Geoff and backing his friend Ruth Jones for a sitcom she had been working on with James Cordon Gavin And Stacey.
My involvement has been minimal, he says, keen not to bask in reflected glory. My partner Henry Normal commissioned it and his involvement is total. Mine is limited to my endorsement of their talent in the first place. But Im very proud to be associated with something that is so well liked and I went down to Barry to visit them on set. We went to a pub myself, James, Ruth and Alison (Steadman) and did karaoke.
Coogan returns to South Wales tonight and promises there will be a little local content. There are a couple of Welsh jokes in there but people have to understand that they are Alan Partridges prejudices not mine, he deadpans. Plus Rob Brydon contributes a voiceover to the show, so I have given work to a Welsh person and that must count for something.
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The prospect of a new Partridge series is brilliant...
Steve Coogan blasts nastiness of new comedy generation Rick Fulton
Daily Record
Nov 28 2008
COMEDY legend Steve Coogan has lashed out at the new breed of Brit funnymen such as Russell Brand who, he says, disguise nastiness as edginess.
Steve admits he insults people as his comedy character Alan Partridge. But he reckons the joke is always on Partridge for his bigotry, not other people. At the forefront of British comedy for more than 20 years, Steve reckons Russell and Jonathan's radio madness was part of the cynical, mean-spirited humour that is cursing comedy.
Steve, 43, said: "I like comedy that's anticynical. There are too many glib 40-year-olds on panel shows being sarcastic. Russell and Jonathan were symptomatic of cynical comedy. I want people to move on from the idea that to be edgy is to be nasty. People disguise nastiness as edginess and it's not. It's a cheap shortcut. Some stupid people think that if you say something which is nasty, it makes you edgy, and that bugs me more than anything."
Perhaps it's odd that Steve, who is in Scotland next week for three stand-up dates, should pass judgment on other comedians, but he has little to prove. After starting on Spitting Image in the Eighties, he became a telly star with Alan Patridge on The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You . . . With Alan Partridge. He has also broken into Hollywood with films such as Tropic Thunder, Around the World In 80 Days with Jackie Chan and Night At The Museum.
HE'S also been dogged by allegations of drugs and prostitutes, and two years ago was rocked by claims that Courtney Love was pregnant with his baby. Worse was to follow last year when Love, the widow of Kurt Cobain, seemed to suggest Steve had something to do with Owen Wilson's alleged suicide bid. The comedian, who has a reputation for being difficult to interview but is charming throughout our chat, didn't blow up when I mentioned it, but gritted his teeth and said: "The story was total fiction. I took legal action and it went away."
Steve is actually more chipper about life than I'd expected. His show, Steve Coogan As Alan Partridge And Other Less Successful Characters, was panned by critics and audiences at the beginning of the run. Last month, the Manchester-born star was booed by fans in Liverpool. Steve shrugged: "It was a bumpy ride initially. There were some teething troubles. That's natural with any show, but I didn't have time to get rid of the niggles before it started. But now the show is tip-top. Not meddled with it for six weeks because we are very happy with it."
The proof is that tonight he'll be shooting a DVD of the show. And sitting in his dressingroom, he admits he felt, after 10 years of success, he needed to reconnect with his audience on stage. "It's where comedy and performance have been done for hundreds, no, thousands of years," he added in Alan Partridge fashion, although he didn't add "A-ha". The show consists of a first half of characters such as Paul and Pauline Calf, Duncan Thickett and Tommy Saxondale, while Alan Patridge, who is now a motivational speaker, gets the second half.
Our chat soon leads to Edinburgh. It was there Steve won the Perrier Award 16 years ago. While he feels there needs to be a new wave of comedy, he also thinks he needs to do something in which he could fail. And Edinburgh would be the place. But the current show is too big to bring to the Fringe.
He said: "Maybe I could sing an autobiography of my life for an hour. Edinburgh is the place for that. It's not a place where they'll be going, 'Where's Alan?' "I feel quite nostalgic about Edinburgh. You get up late, have a late lunch, do your show and go out. Of course, you end up not knowing where you wake up sometimes."
Now living in Brighton to be near his 11-year-old daughter, Steve has never been busier. He's finished Night At The Museum 2 and Hamlet 2. He has a few American films in the pipeline and something for the BBC. Rumours of an Eddie The Eagle film aren't true and an Alan Partridge film isn't going to happen. He said: "I'm not sure about bringing Alan back. It would be too easy to do that. I don't want to stand still. I keep moving around. It gets me out of bed in the morning."
A-ha to that.
-------------------
Too easy to bring back Partridge? He IS partridge!
By chance I downloaded the movie Hamlet 2 a few weeks back on the recommendation of a pal, but had no idea it has Steve Coogan in the starring role (I'd forgotten that I'd posted a story and pictures about it in this thread!). The story, and his character, reminds me more than a fair bit of Chris Lilley playing the drama teacher in the Australian sitcom 'Summer Heights High', but that aside it's quite a good laugh.
It's not going to change your world, but it's worth a watch if you like Coogan.
Coogan writing Alan Partridge film Interview by Nesta McGregor
BBC Newsbeat entertainment reporter
Steve Coogan is back in the follow-up to 2006's Night At The Museum, Battle of the Smithsonian. The British comedian reprises his role as Octavius, the Roman general brought back to life by museum night watchman Lawrence Daley (Ben Stiller). He says it was a pleasure to work with Owen Wilson and reveals an I'm Alan Partridge film is also in the works.
Was it an easy decision to say yes to making Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian?
It was always being mooted. I almost wasn't in the film because I was busy trying to rehearse my live show. But the director Shawn Levy and Owen Wilson, to some extent, kept jumping up and down in a very nice way and asking me to go over there and do it. So they kind of like gigged things around and I managed to go over there and spend a week shooting the scenes. It was just a matter of getting the diaries in synch and I enjoyed doing the first one. I enjoy working with Owen Wilson doing our comedy scenes together and it allows us a little bit of improvisation from within those scenes. So, yes, it was an easy decision to make.
Is it difficult on set when you have people that funny around you? Do you get put off and forget your lines?
It's quite a technical thing. You do have fun if you're with somebody who's funny and inventive and they are bringing something else to the role, then you can often make each other laugh. But there's always a part of you that's very professional. You've still got to hit your marks and make sure you find the light and these type of technical things that are all a bit boring but you need to address those things when you're doing the scenes. It's probably, on the whole, not as much fun as it looks for people watching a movie.
A movie lasts two hours and they think it's just people having the time of their lives for two hours but in actual fact it's like four months of quite intense, applied work. But there are definitely times when you have a good laugh and if you're working with somebody like Owen Wilson then of course you make each other laugh and that makes the day go quicker and it's so much more fun.
When you broke up from filming with Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson, Ricky Gervais and yourself, was there any friendly competition to be the funniest on set?
Well, the brutal fact of the matter is that I didn't see Ben Stiller on set and I didn't see Ricky Gervais on set because we're not in the same scenes. And even though it looks like Ben's in the same scene as me, he's not there. So I didn't see Ben when I was shooting the movie. The only person I was on set with was Owen Wilson. So Ricky and Ben did all those scenes separately. Again it's the thing where people think we're all in the same room all having fun.
Moving on, do you have plans to make an I'm Alan Partridge movie?
Yeah, we are planning on making a movie. We're talking at the moment. What it is we're not quite sure. But yes, there are plans afoot to make a film.
Have you got a storyline yet?
We have but I'm not going to tell you what it is.
What about the original cast members?
Some of them, hopefully. We'll see. I've got to sit down and decide what it is yet. People who like the TV series won't be disappointed.
Are you worried about making Alan Partridge funny in a feature-length film rather than just in a normal half-hour TV show?
That's a very good point. That's just something you need to be aware of. You need to be aware of that and it might mean you readdress the character, make him slightly more subtle or build up to it in a different way. But that's certainly something that's going to be on our minds but I think Alan is complex enough to sustain something longer.
Rehab, drinking, Courtney Love, Owen Wilson's 'overdose': Steve Coogan confesses all By Piers Hernu
23rd August 2009
'There are lots of things I regret now. But I'm basically philosophical about anything I might have done in my life and... I'm neither proud nor ashamed of it,' says Steve Coogan.
In the not so distant past, this would be the departure point for a rueful tale of alcohol, cocaine, fast women and lurid headlines. This morning, however, Coogan looks positively saintly. He is filling a glass with ice and nothing more menacing than mineral water. He is in a large, ultra-chic, all-white room in the very trendy St Martin's Lane hotel in central London. Having known Coogan off and on for the past 12 years, I get the immediate impression that at 43 he's at long last starting to calm down.
This may simply be because he has too many competing interests in his life. He is the father of Clare, his 11-year-old daughter, and he is a very British Hollywood film star, stand-up comic, TV actor and co-director of his own production company.
'I'm a Catholic with a Protestant work ethic - there's definitely an element of the devil makes work for idle hands,' he says, draining his glass and gazing out across the city rooftops. 'Being busy helps to avoid the distractions that come with the pressure of what I do. When I was a student I was very, very ambitious, completely immersed in my comedy career. I never had that period of reckless hedonism that you should get out of your system in your youth.
'I postponed it. Then when I had it, I had both fame and money. That was a terrible idea. There are lots of things I regret now. But I'm basically philosophical about anything I might have done in my life and...' he pauses for a moment, gazes up at the white ceiling and lets out a long resigned sigh. 'I'm neither proud nor ashamed of it. I know there have been dysfunctions within me. But I also know that those things partly help me to be creative, and I don't try to edit my life out of my work.
'I went to rehab in America because I was going off the rails a bit. And I did once see a priest, but religion wasn't discussed in any of the sessions - he was more of a highly qualified psychotherapist. There was this idea that I was addicted to sex, because it's a sexy headline. But the truth was much more complicated. It was to do with fame - how I was dealing with success.
'Those things are part of the picture, but I'm lots of things. A lot of the way I'm perceived is partly tied up with my background. It's the curse of being middle class. I can't go around claiming to be a horny-handed son of toil. And I can't go around pretending to have that in-built confidence either. And when it comes to alcohol... some people can drink but I can't. It turns me into someone else. I don't fall off the wagon. I crash into a brick wall.'
'There was this idea that I was addicted to sex, because it's a sexy headline. But the truth was much more complicated. It was to do with fame - how I was dealing with success,' says Steve
It's unfortunate for Coogan that he's known as much for his misbehaviour as for his achievements with his beautifully observed TV grotesques Alan Partridge (spoof/cod local radio DJ) and Saxondale (spoof/cod ex-roadie turned embittered pest controller), and major Hollywood movies.
In 1996, shortly after his girlfriend Anna Cole, a solicitor, announced she was pregnant with Clare, a lapdancer sold her story about rolling around with Coogan on a bed strewn with Ł5,000 worth of Ł10 notes. In 2004, his wife of two years, society beauty Caroline Hickman, moved out of their home in Hove after two lapdancers sold a similar sex-and-drugs story.
He says he doesn't dwell on 'all those old stories you can find about me on the internet'. But then he says candidly, 'That was a terrible time. I felt bad about what I did and I regret it. It was a mistake. I'm not making any excuses. It was just an act of stupidity. I've never claimed to be a paragon of virtue but my behaviour has changed - not because of what a newspaper says about me but because I thought it ought to. I use it be wiser and realise that it helps me to be creative.
'I'm not tormented now. Without wanting to diminish the event, lots of people make mistakes. I look after myself too well and I'm far too anal to self destruct. I'm too well rooted too, because my family to me is very real. By that I mean my family in Manchester and my daughter, who has changed me completely. And being a father has made me a lot more sensible than I used to be. I get a thrill out of fatherhood. It's kind of an unadulterated happiness because nothing matters to you as much as your child.
'A bad review, a low phase in your career... they become unimportant. I think if you embrace parenthood you become a much better person. I think I have become more compassionate, more philosophical and less insecure. Although I still have an ego that gets easily bruised.'
Coogan has been burdened by the weight of expectation of his fans, and his recent projects have failed to achieve the success of his glory years. In his latest film, Hamlet 2, Coogan plays his first major lead role as a hapless American high-school drama teacher who audaciously undertakes a sequel of the Bard's famous play. It's an enjoyable if somewhat preposterous feel-good romp that's so skewed to the US market that's it's gone straight to DVD here.
'It was not the kind of thing I'd be considered for over here,' he says. 'It was me playing a nice, vulnerable, naive guy who is trying to do the right thing, whereas normally I play people who are twisted and idiotic in a slightly aggressive way.
'You could say that Saxondale isn't as funny as Alan Partridge but it's more satisfying because he's a more rounded character. Basically I might not be as funny as I used to be but I don't care.
Steve Coogan
'I'm getting bored of smart-alec, cynical comedy. I'm now trying to do things that are a bit more life-a ffirming. The default response these days is to curl your lip up at everything whereas the radical choice is to say something non-cynical. Doing something with genuine sentiment is the most avant-garde thing you can do at the moment.'
The middle of seven children - five boys and two girls - Coogan was brought up in a large Irish Catholic family in the the suburbs of Manchester. He fluff ed his A levels and was rejected by Rada, but accepted by Manchester Polytechnic to study drama. He didn't get any acting roles so took to stand-up.
He's a brilliant impressionist and was the voice behind Neil Kinnock, Mick Jagger, Margaret Thatcher and Michael Heseltine for Spitting Image. He won the Perrier Award in Edinburgh in 1992 for his early show featuring Mancunian characters Paul and Pauline Calf and Duncan Thicket. His fame was sealed with the appallingly cheesy, Norwich-dwelling TV and radio host Alan Partridge in the series Knowing Me, Knowing You... With Alan Partridge and I'm Alan Partridge.
Even with Partridge's immense following, his film career rapidly took him to unexpected new heights. His turn as Manchester music-scene guru Tony Wilson in 24-Hour Party People won him the role of Phileas Fogg in Around The World In 80 Days with Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jackie Chan. He followed that with Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story and Ben Stiller's Tropic Thunder. He's not satisfied, though.
'I am slightly annoyed I haven't been o ffered the part of a really evil baddy in an American blockbuster by now,' he says smiling. 'But I don't get off ered loads of stuff . I'm definitely on the list when they cast movies in America, but I'm quite far down it. Films come to me when they've gone past five or six bigger actors so odd things come my way which have either languished for a while or the A-listers have missed them.'
There have been suggestions that Coogan's personal life has hampered his Hollywood career - most recently when one of Coogan's most ill-judged dalliances, Courtney Love (former wife of Nirvana star Kurt Cobain), claimed that actor Owen Wilson's alleged attempted suicide had resulted from Coogan supplying him drugs. He is scathing of the press he got.
'It was not the kind of thing I'd be considered for over here. It was me playing a nice, vulnerable, naive guy,' says Steve of his lead role as a hapless American high-school drama teacher in Hamlet 2
'That story gained more credence over here than there. It was a complete fabrication put about by someone who had a di fferent agenda. In America they realised it was bullshit as soon as they established that it was spread by someone who was trying to throw a grenade in my path. The industry made it very clear to me that they knew, so thankfully it had no e ffect on my career or my friendship with Owen.
'Yes, Owen did have a bit of a personal wobble between the first Night At The Museum film and the one we've just finished, but he is totally fine now. I spent last Thanksgiving with his family in Texas. We're working together again this year. It never aff ected my friendship with him at all.'
This is not to say that working on A Night At The Museum 2 with Owen Wilson was without pain. 'Honestly, on that film, I really thought I might go blind,' he tells me. 'During filming one day, I was running along - I play a toy soldier - scampering past these giant blades of plastic grass. But, being really old, I got out of breath, so I stopped. And as I bent over to catch my breath, one of these blades of grass went right in my eye.
'It was horrific - it pushed my eyelid over the top of my eyeball and down over the other side. I bruised my ruddy eyeball - actually, I nearly blinded myself. I stopped and put my hand over my eye - I thought I'd have blood gushing out - I couldn't see anything. My head went numb. I had a black eye for the whole of the rest of the film. They had to cover it up with make-up every day.'
It looks fine now; no need for make-up on our shoot, where Coogan is chatty and co-operative with everyone present and seemingly relishes the fuss being made of him. During a break we nip outside the hotel for a quick cigarette but he noticeably turns his back on passing pedestrians in an e ffort to avoid yet another loud Patridge-esque 'Aha!'
'At home in Brighton people just ignore me,' he says. 'But I was in Selfridges in Manchester last week trying to buy a top and people started following me round pointing camera phones at me and giving a running commentary about what I was picking up. It just got really weird and I had to get out of there.'
I remind him that the last time I met him, in August 2007, he told me he had an American girlfriend. Coogan pauses and looks a little sad. 'The truth is I really don't know if I still have one,' he says. 'I know I'm lucky to do what I do but the one thing I don't like about my business is that with all the travel it's not very grounded. It makes relationships di fficult. I like normality and going around a supermarket and putting things in a basket.
'I've got an Oyster card and I like to use the Tube whenever I'm in London. OK, I put a cap on and stick my face in a newspaper but the best way of being inconspicuous is just to avoid eye contact. I know my demographic. If it's a 75-year-old lady then I know I can look her straight in the eye and she won't bat an eyelid. If it's men between 20 and 40, however, I'm doomed. The curse is people with camera phones.'
A couple of times a year he gets away from it all with his brothers and friends in the Lake District. 'We stay in B&Bs and it's a sort of men-only bonding thing. I also rent a bolt-hole cottage in Ireland and I like to drive out there on my own and hide hermit-like reading books and not answering the phone. If a car drives past, which happens maybe twice a day, I get quite irritated.
'I don't spend money like the avaricious, nouveau riche, consumer that I was in my twenties. I've got an eight-year-old BMW X5, which I'm slightly embarrassed about, and an 11-year-old Porsche. I've got a bit of property and I'm looking to buy a place in Ireland. But these days I like to spend my money on family occasions. My brothers and sisters all do really worthwhile jobs like teaching and caring for people with special needs which don't happen to be incredibly well paid. So I foot the bill because I'm the rich one in the family.
'It frustrates me when people try to portray me as a dysfunctional, tortured soul. But I understand it makes better copy than "well-adjusted person has quite nice life". I'm not saying I'm a well-adjusted person, by the way. But I do have quite a nice life.'
Steve Coogan, actor and comedian He may have been crowned king of the underworld, but Steve Coogan admits he has yet to make it big in America. He tells Siobhan Synnot how he hopes to change all that, with help from Alan Partridge
9 February 2010
By Siobhan Synnot
'I'D QUITE like X-ray vision," decides Steve Coogan. "Not right all the way through to the bone though, I don't want vision that is completely X-ray. I'd have to have the power to turn it on and off too, because I don't want to see everyone in X-ray my god, that would be a curse."
Even when considering what godlike power he would most like to possess, there's a touch of the Alan Partridge to conversations with Coogan. Not just in the way he emphatically flattens the last word in a sentence, but the pedantic manner in which he tackles a question. There's also a hint of the Norwich acrylic pullover in his latest character, even if he does wear rock star trousers and have millions of dead souls under his command. Coogan's sly, subversive performance brings comic discomfort to the Olympian god, hinting that Mr and Mrs Hades aren't getting on terribly well in the bedroom department.
Yet Hades is also a rare thing in the pantheon of Coogan characters rather attractive. In his usual line of work, Coogan is often unflatteringly coifed and costumed, but Hades is allowed to cut a bit of a dash. In the flesh too, Coogan is a spruce 44-year-old, with pale skin, skinny limbs, a leonine mass of dark curly hair and teeth that appear to have been straightened.
"I always play sort of hideous or slightly physically unattractive characters." he admits. "It looks like you're not vain, but in actual fact I'm incredibly vain. And it always means that if people are used to seeing you look horrible or wearing awful clothes then, when you scrub up, people are nicely surprised."
Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief is the first film in what it's hoped will be a franchise to rival Harry Potter. Logan Lerman (3:10 To Yuma) is Percy, a dyslexic teen who discovers he's the son of Poseidon and, therefore, the demigod relation of many of the best known characters of ancient Greek mythology, including the neurotic, narcissistic Hades, who can change himself into a fiery demon, but prefers snakeskin hip-huggers and Cuban heels.
In a cast that includes Pierce Brosnan as a centaur and Uma Thurman as Medusa, Coogan is not the biggest name in the movie, nor is Hades the biggest part, but the lack of responsibility suits him fine. "This is low risk," states Coogan. "It's like a holiday: you don't have to write the damn thing, I just have to do the fun part. The bottom line with this film is that I hope that it will be a huge success so that we can have more fun and be paid for it, but if it's a disaster it won't really affect me because I'm not carrying the movie."
Coogan now splits his time between a home in Brighton, close to his nine-year-old daughter, and Los Angeles where, despite having been in the business for more than 15 years, he is still treated as a fresh face. A lead role some years ago in a remake of Around The World In 80 Days failed to make him a global star, while Michael Winterbottom's indie music hit 24 Hour Party People, in which he played Factory Records musical entrepreneur Tony Wilson, didn't break him outside the arthouse circuit.
Coogan in 24 Hour Party People
Blink and you'll miss his small roles in A Night At The Museum and its sequel (as a miniature Roman general), or Tropic Thunder (an ineffective British film director, blown up in the first 15 minutes). Safety Glass gave him a relatively straight lead role as a sleazy newspaper reporter, while Hamlet 2 starred Coogan as a hopeless drama teacher, but these pictures flopped in America, and even in Britain both films headed straight to the DVD shelf. And yet Coogan reckons there is still everything to play for.
The duality of his career must be odd for Coogan. After the interview, I spot him in a smokers' huddle at the side of the hotel just as a passer-by clocks him, and mouths "Ah-ha!" Coogan doesn't even look round. In Britain he's a success not just as an actor, but as the boss of his own production company Baby Cow, which includes The Mighty Boosh among its current shows. His personal life has long been subject to intense media interest, with tabloids clearing their pages to publish bad-boy details of drug use, infidelities, and his brief relationship with Courtney Love, who accused him of supplying drugs to a suicidal Owen Wilson; a claim Coogan says was "total fiction".
Over in America, however, he readily admits he has practically no profile with mainstream audiences barely aware of what British fans already know he is capable of. Among the US comedy cognoscenti, however, he has a fan club that dates to early episodes of Knowing Me, Knowing You. Ben Stiller and Wilson are friends as is Larry David, who had Coogan play his psychiatrist in an episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
"It's quite strange because I'm established in Britain, but in America I have to audition. Even for Curb Your Enthusiasm, I had to sit on a chair in a corridor and then go in and audition. It's weird because you think, 'I thought I didn't have to do this kind of thing anymore.' But it's good, quite humbling."
Doesn't he find having to climb from the first rung of the ladder rather frustrating? Coogan affects a Zen master's stoicism: "If you're unknown, then your problem is selling tickets. If you're very well known, your problem is, will you be as funny as you were last time? So there are always things to contend with.
"Being unknown in America is an advantage in some ways actually because producers and directors see me as an interesting character actor, while in Britain I can generate my own projects but I don't get offered that much work unless I create the work myself. In Britain, they see me as outside or apart from normal actors. In America, I'm on the lists."
Coogan in Percy Jackson And The Lightning Thief
Usually, the more famous actors get, the more they want to be likeable on screen. One case in point is Ricky Gervais whose cringe-inducing David Brent was followed by the more sympathetic Andy Millman in Extras. In his last film, The Invention Of Lying, he played an even more likeable everyman, who cried when his mother died and held out for true love. Coogan, on the other hand, remains thirled to portraying awkward customers. Nobody is better at small, choreographed dances of hideous embarrassment: his immersion into character is absolute, and he's almost fearless in showing us the desperation that frequently lurks under their seen-it-all, know-it-all exteriors. It's this bravery in playing toe-curling characters that makes him so admired in the UK, but perhaps distrusted in the US.
However, you can't keep an appalling man down, and Coogan has just finished filming a small villainous role in The Other Guys, a new Will Ferrell comedy. Alan Partridge The Movie is also in the pipeline, with Coogan and Armando Iannucci finally gripped by an idea that will introduce Coogan's most enduring and exasperating character to American audiences. Partridge has been part of Coogan's life for almost two decades. Coogan admits Partridge is almost tangible. "He certainly feels as if he is this other character that exists in his own universe who I visit now and again. Or, if you like, I embody him. He possesses me for a short period of time."
Before Partridge returns, Coogan is also working on an elaborate film and TV show crossover project with Rob Brydon, which reunites them with Winterbottom, their A Cock And Bull Story director. The two men will play fictionalised versions of themselves, inspired by the improvised interplay between Coogan and Brydon in A Cock And Bull Story, where they needled each other about the size of Rob's billing and who did the better Al Pacino impression.
With a blockbuster, the revival of a favourite character, and now a double act in prospect, could 2010 be the year when Steve Coogan finally reaches a peak of recognition? "The secret of my career is never to peak," Coogan responds firmly. "And I'm doing very well at it."
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