Steve Coogan is to make two hour-long specials for Sky Atlantic, as well as a TV version of his internet series, Mid Morning Matters. It is the first time the character has jumped broadcaster from the BBC since he first appeared as a sports reporter on Radio 4's On The Hour 20 years ago.
The first of the two specials will be entitled Welcome To The Places of my Life, in which Partridge will take viewers on a tour of his beloved Norfolk. In the second, Alan Partridge On Open Books With Martin Bryce, he will be interviewed by a character played by Friday Night Dinner creator Robert Popper in front of a book club..
I'm Alan Partridge aired on BBC Two in 2002, but in 2010 he returned for the online series, set in the fictional radio station North Norfolk Digital, as part of Foster’s investment in comedy. Those shows will be re-edited for a six-part ‘special edition’ series for Sky, with a second series to follow in 2013.
Coogan said: ‘Alan has been off the TV for too long but he is even more excited than me about his chance to have a second bite of the cherry. Alan feels the second decade of the millennium is the right time.’
Sky Atlantic will also screen a two-part series, Steve Coogan's Stand Up Down Under - a behind-the-scenes look at his Australian live tour. Sky’s head of comedy, Lucy Lumsden, said: ‘Sky Atlantic is providing our best writer-performers the space to feel creatively free. Who better to kick off our new season of comedies than the phenomenally talented Steve Coogan?’
A Guide To The New Alan Partridge
Sky Atlantic
27 Jun 2012
Alan Partridge returns to our screens in three brand new projects for Sky Atlantic HD. And we've got everything you need to know:
Welcome To The Places Of My Life
Open Books with Martin Bryce
Midmorning Matters: Special Edition
Welcome to the Places of My Life
Alan Partridge reveals the places that have made him the man he is today. Over the years, Norfolk has given us some of our greatest Britons, from Queen Boadicea and Sir Robert Walpole to Hannah from S Club 7. It's also been home to broadcaster Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) for the best part, and best parts, of his life.
In this special one-off documentary, Alan treats viewers to a guided tour of his beloved Norfolk, revealing the places that have made him who, why and what he is today. From the Riverside Leisure Centre, Norwich City Hall and his local newsagent to the luscious expanse of Thetford Forest, Alan explores the key landmarks and natural beauty spots that have led some people to call Norfolk the 'Wales of the east'.
Norwich boasts more than 20 car dealerships, as well as some of the most sensible parking regulations in the country - facts that really make the city a haven for motorists like Alan. What's more, his daily commute to North Norfolk Digital Radio is a mere ten minutes by car, something Londoners could only dream of. Alan's tour, of course, includes his place of work which, at 800 square feet, is bigger than most good quality dentists'.
Also taking in the church where he was christened, the local dry ski slope and the city's historic market where people come from far and wide to buy monkey hats and tat, Welcome to the Places of My Life is a comprehensive and compelling journey through Alan Partridge's home county.
Open Books with Martin Bryce
Norwich's favourite son Alan Partridge gives a candid interview about his new autobiography. Broadcaster, author and keen rambler Alan Partridge makes a welcome return to television screens as a special (replacement) guest on Open Books with Martin Bryce, hosted by Chris Beale (Robert Popper). After the modest success of his previous book Bouncing Back (it was pulped due to poor sales), Alan returns to discuss his latest, tell-all tome, I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan - a book critics have hailed as "very thorough". In fact, Alan himself describes his autobiography as the best book he's ever written and one of the best he's ever read - high praise indeed from a man who started reading aged a half.
The book charts Alan's rise from humble beginnings in a semi-detached house in a modest suburb of Norwich to TV superstardom, before ultimately establishing himself as one of the better DJs on local radio station North Norfolk Digital. Unflinching and thoroughly gripping, the book doesn't shy away from difficult subjects, including a harrowing account of Alan's Toblerone addiction, and he is similarly candid in interview.
An accomplished chatter, Alan is only too keen to share the secrets of his craft, revealing details of his gruelling writing regime (1,500 words per day, usually with a bowl of hard-boiled eggs for sustenance), as well as his views on reading, writing and literature in general. Alan also reads some poignant extracts from the book, possibly delighting a studio audience who are themselves invited to put questions to Mr Partridge.
A truly absorbing interview that offers a rare insight into the mind of a man who clearly has had, and continues to have, the last laugh.
Mid Morning Matters: Special Edition
The hugely popular online comedy series featuring Alan Partridge arrives on Sky Atlantic. Those that think Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan) is a has-been really need to do the maths. Broadcasting four hours a day, five days a week on North Norfolk Digital Radio - north Norfolk's best music mix - Alan clocks up a whopping 20 hours on air a week. To put that into perspective, that's eight times the output of The One Show. Impressive.
In this six-part series, viewers can watch the master at work as he broadcasts his daily radio show to literally hundreds of listeners. When it comes to the big topics of the day Alan's always got his finger on the pulse, whether he's discussing which condiment listeners would take with them to a desert island, or simply chatting to a young child about the use of lethal force.
Joining Alan for a regular dose of edgy banter and debate is his comedy sidekick Simon (Edinburgh Comedy Award winner Tim Key). Together the pair also take a 'sideways' look at the news, with suitably amusing (and usually inappropriate) results.
Steve Coogan: 'There is an overlap between me and Alan Partridge' After a blustery day behind the scenes of Alpha Papa, the question remains: where does Steve Coogan end and his most famous creation begin?
Patrick Barkham
The Guardian,
1 August 2013
A freezing winter day in Cromer and it is impossible to tell where reality stops and Alan Partridge's world starts. "The best smiles for miles," says an advert for Cromer pier. "If hearty fun is good for the ticker," suggests another, GPs should prescribe "a strong dose of Cromer's seaside special". These Partridge-esque pronouncements are real but the pier shooting gallery and Susan Boyle poster are not. Two of a phalanx of police officers who have sealed off the pier from the public are genuine but most are actors watching the denouement of the long-awaited Alan Partridge movie.
The sheepskin gloves Steve Coogan is wearing when we shake hands must be Alan's? "They are actually mine," says Coogan, a little defensively, "but there is an overlap." The closeness of the border between authenticity and fiction, and the territory shared by the 47-year-old actor and comedian and the hapless broadcaster he brought to life 22 years ago, is intriguing. They are also two good reasons for the longevity of the gauche and yet weirdly lovable Norfolk patriot whose career has been on the slide for decades and yet who has become deeply embedded in our culture.
On the set of Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa, it becomes clear that the Lexus-loving DJ is enjoying an unlikely career fillip. North Norfolk Digital (there is a real station called North Norfolk Radio) has been taken over by an evil media conglomerate and renamed Shape (catchphrase: "Own the Middle"). Partridge's colleague Pat, played by Colm Meaney, has taken the station hostage and is broadcasting live. Pat will only negotiate with the police through Partridge, who has never been the world's greatest diplomat, but is delighted by his return to the limelight. After a chase through Norwich in the roadshow van, the desperate DJs end up on Cromer pier, surrounded by police. It sounds like an ending.
A Partridge film has been planned for 10 years. An earlier version was reportedly scrapped after the 7/7 bombings because it featured Alan versus al-Qaida. While the Inbetweeners movie showed that small-screen comedy could make the leap to the big screen, that success has nothing to do with the timing of the £4m Partridge movie, which is made by Baby Cow, Coogan's thriving production company (as opposed to Partridge's bankrupt Pear Tree Productions) and part-funded by the BBC.
"I wanted to make sure I'd got my other plates spinning before I started this because I didn't want it to have the whiff of desperation of an 80s revival tour," says Coogan. "If it did, it would be sunk from the start." After a 2012 in which most of his public work concerned phone hacking, Coogan is now having an acting moment. This year he has starred as Soho porn baron Paul Raymond in The Look of Love and has co-written and appears opposite Judi Dench in Philomena, a forthcoming road movie about an Irish woman's search for her son. In keeping with his aptitude for playing real people, Coogan takes on the role of the former BBC journalist Martin Sixsmith.
Today Coogan is lying prone on Cromer pier in a wig, sports jacket, blue jeans and white Dunlops, finessing a joke about a seagull (should he mention Jonathan Livingston Seagull or not?) as real seagulls wheel in a gunmetal grey sky, which starts to deposit real flakes of snow. Clutching a hot water bottle between takes, Coogan emanates intensity. In rehearsals, conducted in the gloomy end-of-the-pier theatre, he reminds Felicity Montagu, who reprises her role as Lynn, Alan's loyal PA, of her lines. For a moment, it resembles Alan and Lynn's fictional relationship. In Montagu's defence, she is working on the film by day before racing back to the West End to perform in Quartermaine's Terms at night; one evening she forgot to remove Lynn's mole for her theatrical duties.
Why has Partridge proved so enduring? "Everyone loves a bigot, don't they?" says Montagu. "He says things he shouldn't say and people dream about saying things they can't say. Deep down Alan is a good person. He behaves like a shit but he's quite vulnerable and lovable really." And Coogan? "He's a taskmaster but that's all right," says Montagu jollily.
As lead actor, writer and keeper of the Partridge flame, Coogan dominates the 140-strong crew. The director, Declan Lowney, a veteran of Father Ted and Little Britain whose shoulders heave with silent laughter as Coogan surprises with another new interpretation of the seagull scene, is not put out. "It's bloody brilliant because he's so fucking clever and he's so on his game," says Lowney. "He knows his character better than anyone so it's hard to contribute. All you can do is facilitate and give him the space."
Coogan was 26 and known for his Spitting Image impressions when he invented Partridge with Patrick Marber for Radio 4's On The Hour. Alongside Chris Morris, Partridge graduated to 24-hour news satire The Day Today and then spoof chatshow Knowing Me, Knowing You. A washed-up Partridge reappeared on Radio Norwich's graveyard slot "Up with the Partridge!" for 12 episodes of I'm Alan Partridge either side of the millennium, then his mic fell silent until he was revived for Coogan's 2008 standup tour and an unexpected series of internet shorts.
One reason for Alan's longevity, thinks Coogan, is that he has never been overexposed. "We haven't jumped the shark, yet. We've managed to avoid that by not churning them out," he says. "Although I want a lot of people to like him, I'd rather have his DNA preserved." Coogan could have made another TV series but chose the internet to "do it in a sort of undergroundy way to preserve a bit of cachet"; another unexpected step was I, Partridge, an autobiography that attracted rave reviews in 2011.
Marber was Coogan's first co-writer, before Armando Iannucci and later Peter Baynham stepped in. Both have contributed to this script but Coogan's principal writers now are "the boys", as he calls thirtysomething twins Rob and Neil Gibbons. They wrote some lines for Coogan's tour "and it was a revelation," says Coogan, who is rarely effusive. "I thought, oh my God, they understand [Alan]. A lot of people think they understand but their judgment is slightly wrong, and slightly wrong is as bad as being very wrong. It's either on target or it's not."
As everyone on set points out, Partridge is a deceptively nuanced individual. Kevin Loader, the producer, has a big list of naff, Alan-appropriate songs but says he can never predict which ones Partridge, via Coogan, will like. "There's a saloon bar tendency to think it's like a Harry Enfield sketch character and it's not," he says. "These are very comic two-dimensional characters, very funny, but Alan Partridge is the antithesis of that. He's a novelistic creation."
Partridge has evolved during his 22‑year life. In the beginning, some of the humour was based around him being an old man in a young man's body. These days, the DJ is a lithe 55, with a tendency to use "street" language. "He's tried to move with the times," says Coogan. "He's aware of political correctness but he's playing catch-up. In the same way that the Daily Mail is a bit PC – it wouldn't be openly homophobic now – Alan is the same. He tries to be modern."
Between takes, Neil and Rob Gibbons earnestly consult with Coogan over lines before joining in the silent laughter when he delivers them. Coogan "is a perfectionist," says Neil. "He's absolutely fizzing with ideas all the time. He's got a very restless mind."
"His ability to improvise a good line on demand is ridiculous," adds Rob.
As I check whether the Jim Davidson leaflets on Cromer pier are real or not (they are), the brothers reveal they once wrote jokes for him. With Partridge, they have tried to avoid obvious gags; Alan does not utter "A-ha!" once during the film. "If Alan has talked about it before and a fan might quote it back, we run in the other direction," says Rob.
Every night, Coogan and the Gibbonses go over the next day's script; half of it is scrapped and rewritten. "Steve just absolutely insists on trying to keep it fresh and spontaneous," says Rob. "You have to learn not to be attached to good jokes. If we were, we'd be grumpy all the time because they end up going in the bin. It's gruelling." If this obsessive perfectionism is what you might expect of Coogan, the Gibbonses point out that, unlike every other comic writer they know, Coogan doesn't even remember who comes up with a funny line; he is simply obsessively focused on making it as good as possible. "There's no ego," says Neil.
After a day on Cromer pier, I still cannot see where Alan ends and Steve begins. It is not just me. Partridge's obsession with Cromwell, cars and Nazi trivia is Coogan's own, says director Declan Lowney. "There's a lot of times when Steve says something hilarious and 'Alan Partridge' and you write it down and then you realise it wasn't meant as a joke and it was Steve Coogan," says Neil Gibbons.
I follow Coogan's fast-moving white Dunlops up the cliff and back to the hotel. "It started out not being like me at all. It's probably got more like me," puffs Coogan, as the wind buffets his impeccable Partridge hairpiece. "It's recognising your own vanities and insecurities and turning the volume up on them. Anyone who is creative puts something of themselves in what they do, and I've put lots in, but it's the warped, prejudicial side of myself. It's not just a mocking caricature. It has to have some degree of humanity. On one level, Alan is very likable because he makes mistakes and vocalises a lot of the insecurities that people feel. He's also a contemptuous Little Englander, the kind of person who I see as my life to rail against. Part of him is everything I hate about Britain. It's a bit complicated."
Steve Coogan: knowing me? No way
Xan Brooks
Sat 26 Oct 2013
theguardian.com
One rainy Friday in October, Steve Coogan takes a trip from the Lake District to an expensive part of London. He rolls into town a man in transit, still half-dressed for the country with a yellow tweed cap pulled down round his ears. The car ferries us through sodden streets to a private members club, where a table is booked in an upstairs room. But the hostess is stricken; the place has standards. She won't let him in until he takes off the cap.
It's fitting that Coogan doesn't pass for clubhouse material. His stock in trade is the comedy of embarrassment, the bumbling social faux pas: he has built his success on the concept of failure. And Coogan himself often seems barely a whisker away from the characters he plays, prone to the same cravings, the same failings. You can take the boy out of Manchester, but he might still wear his hat.
He pulls up a chair and orders some tea (English Breakfast, nothing fancy). He sits with his back to the wall, his collar turned up, his dark eyes darting. The club room is cosy but he will never fit in and the snub clearly rankles. "I'm northern lower middle class," he says by way of introduction. "And it's taken me 20 years in the business to realise that's an asset, not a handicap." He shrugs. "But I've still got a huge chip on my shoulder. Chips, peas, mushy peas. And a boat of gravy on the side."
He shouldn't need reassurance. At the age of 48, he is in the prime of life, his career going full tilt. This year he has played Paul Raymond in The Look Of Love, acted alongside Julianne Moore in a knotty adaptation of What Maisie Knew, and spun Alan Partridge into a successful feature-length outing.
His new film, Philomena, may well be his most rounded work to date – the role that might bury his lingering reputation as "just" a TV comedian. Meanwhile, off-screen, the one-time tabloid whipping boy has recast himself as an angel of vengeance, banging the drum for press reform and testifying at the Leveson inquiry into press ethics. His closet, he explains, has been emptied of skeletons. That gives him the freedom to say what he wants.
Coogan pours the tea and explains why Philomena is a passion project, one that really counts. Directed by Stephen Frears, it tells the story of Philomena Lee, a retired Irish nurse on a mission to find her adult son, sold to adoptive parents by nuns nearly 50 years before. Coogan read Lee's story online in 2009, he says, at a moment when he was casting about for a more weighty project; the story reduced him to tears.
"For a few years I'd been railing against postmodernism and irony," he explains. "I've got this real anger against people who think the best way of dealing with the world is through sardonic eyes. It's a depressing, defeatist view of humanity. And I wanted to do something that was sincere, that was not smart and clever for its own sake. I had this notion that the most radical, avant-garde thing I could do was to talk about love. There's nothing that will make an intellectual's buttocks clench more than to talk about love."
Philomena showcases a reliably winning turn from Judi Dench as the shop-worn Catholic heroine – a casualty of the Magdalene laundries, dogged in her pursuit of the child that was taken. Yet Coogan is the film's driving force, having signed on to produce and co-write the script, as well as give a deft, nuanced performance as Martin Sixsmith, the BBC reporter turned government spin doctor who was sacked, hit the road and found redemption. His Sixsmith is prickly and embattled, the latest in Coogan's long line of thwarted men. "Yeah, I put a lot of myself in there," Coogan admits. "He's half Martin and half me."
Coogan says he never intended the film as a comedy: the humour is there just to sweeten the pill. That said, it's not quite an attack on Catholicism, either. Yes, he's an atheist, because "agnosticism is for cowards". But his family still practises and he doesn't want to disrespect their beliefs. Besides, the older he gets, the more sympathy he has. Believing in God does not make you a fool. "I remember discovering the word 'duality' about 15 years ago. That it was OK to think two different things at the same time. It was a revelation to me, that you could take a holistic view of things and hold those tensions without it sending you mad."
When Philomena premiered at the Venice film festival last month, it won an award from a Catholic organisation and another from a secular organisation. He's proud of that fact: it shows he squared the circle. "Or if you want to be unkind, that I've offended no one and said absolutely nothing at all." He gives an awkward bark of laughter and reaches for his tea.
Coogan was raised in Middleton, on the northern outskirts of Manchester, the fourth of seven children and the "runt of the litter", according to his big sister Clare. His mum raised the kids while his dad worked as an IBM engineer. The family voted Labour every polling day and attended church each Sunday. "I'm actually glad I was raised a Catholic," he says. "It's informed my values and given me something to write about. I meet a lot of people who were raised in these vaguely liberal, hippyish, bohemian backgrounds and I think, 'Well, where's the tension?' Struggles inside your head, notions of sin and general dysfunction – it's all incredibly fruitful. Having that kind of moral framework enables me to object to the moral framework." He frowns. "It's a paradox."
By his early 20s he was already working on TV, providing the voices of Neil Kinnock and Margaret Thatcher on the Spitting Image puppet show. Taking to the standup circuit with his friend John Thomson, he won the 1992 Perrier award at the Edinburgh festival and landed a slot alongside Chris Morris and Armando Iannucci on Radio 4's satirical news show On The Hour. It was here that he would road test his most indelible comic creation: a chippy, Pringle-clad alter ego who is bound to dog his steps to the grave.
If anything, Alan Partridge has become more interesting to play, Coogan says, as the character has bounced from outside broadcasts to chat-show sofa to a poky studio at North Norfolk Digital, hosting irascible phone-ins and lauding Billie Piper as "the most popular prostitute on ITV". The two men have grown up together, united by their fascination with cars, women and the machinations of mainstream celebrity. Coogan points out that Partridge started out crude and one-dimensional, a blundering sports presenter who knew nothing about sport. Now there's more light and shade, more pathos. "There's more of me in him," he says. "Maybe the worst part of me. Every now and then these slightly Middle England, xenophobic, curtain-twitching Daily Mail thoughts will start creeping into my head. And the best way to exorcise those views is to channel them into Alan."
Is Partridge his canary in the mine? Coogan thinks this over. "In the early days, 20 years ago, I was part of two gangs. One was the Manchester gang: Henry Normal, Caroline Aherne, John Thomson and Craig Cash. There was this northern scene that felt very secure and comfortable for me. But then there was this other group, Armando Iannucci's gang. Patrick Marber, Rebecca Front and also Stewart Lee and Richard Herring. And I regarded them as very avant garde and Oxbridge and comically aspirant. They wanted to do things in a new way and I learned from that. I wanted what they had. And actually I had something they didn't have, the whole Manchester side. But yes," he says, "they educated me. I think they stopped me becoming Alan Partridge for real."
The central heating is running full blast and the club is a furnace. Coogan slips off his jacket and drops it to the floor. He does this furtively, as though braced for a quarrel. "I think Charles Dickens used to come here," he says in a murmur. "And I suppose they think they can recapture a flavour of Dickensian London by insisting people wear jackets and take off their hats. It really irritates me, stuff like that."
At the turn of the century, Coogan cashed in his chips and lit out for Hollywood, following in the footsteps of his hero Peter Sellers. He played Phileas Fogg in Around The World In 80 Days, a Roman general in Night At The Museum and a corporate cupid in The Alibi, which went straight to DVD. The experience left him feeling hollow and embarrassed, and these days he accepts that the decision was wrong. "I went to America and did mediocre parts in mediocre films," he shrugs. "I never did it because I wanted to. I did it because I was told that this is what I was supposed to do. And I didn't feel comfortable. I felt like a dick."
Back in England, he tried out for various dramas but hit a wall of rejection. The low point came when he auditioned for an ITV series ("not even a particularly memorable one") and two executives took him aside to explain that his specialty was "comedy caricatures", not the serious stuff. "That pissed me off so much. It made me realise that if it was going to happen, I'd have to do it myself."
Had he come to see comedy as a creative cul-de-sac? "Yes, I think it can be. I got very bored with clever, cynical comedy. I've done some of it and I enjoy some of it. But eventually you want some nourishment. It's like getting pissed and doing coke. It's fun but it doesn't really nourish you." He laughs. "It's not a good balanced diet with all the food groups and a little protein. And as I get older I think, 'What contribution am I making? How am I adding to the sum total of human happiness?' " My God, he really asks himself those questions? "Well, not every morning," he says, deadpan. "In the morning I want some coffee and some blueberries and some nuts on my granola."
By and large Coogan likes upending his critics. He was filed as an impressionist until he won the Perrier; he was shackled to Partridge until he bounded into movies, giving a delicious turn as indie impresario Tony Wilson in 2002's supple 24 Hour Party People. "In a curmudgeonly way I like the idea of people sharpening their knives and then having to put them back in the knife draw. What's the opposite of schadenfreude? When you want something to be shit and then have to admit that it's good?"
Coogan divides his time between a house by Coniston Water and another outside Brighton. He bought the first in order to have a base near his extended family, and the second to be close to his daughter, who is 16 and lives with her mother. His current partner, 23-year-old Elle Basey, is a lingerie model he met while guest-editing an issue of Loaded magazine. He was dressed as Partridge and she was in her pants.
Coogan has always insisted that his private life should stay private, which is all well and good. And yet his situation is complicated by the tension between himself and his characters. He likes testing the elastic between fiction and autobiography to see how far it will stretch. In the BBC series The Trip, Coogan plays "Steve Coogan", vain and thin-skinned and horny as hell. He comes gliding through Cumbria in a shiny black Range Rover, chatting up waitresses, bickering with "Rob Brydon" (played by Rob Brydon) and complaining that the world won't take him seriously; that Michael Sheen snaffles the roles that should rightfully be his. Isn't playing himself a dangerous game, inviting a conversation he would rather not have?
No, says Coogan. "I'm playing with the image, but that's my prerogative. If I want to take something traumatic that happened in my childhood and put it in my work, that's my choice. That doesn't mean that all bets are off. That doesn't mean that everyone else can start talking about it." He sighs. "Besides which, when I do The Trip there's still a line that we draw. I have actors playing my parents, actors playing my girlfriends. I have a son in the show and I don't have a son. And I do all these things deliberately."
In the past, the public Coogan has found himself bedevilled by the private Coogan. The Daily Mail (the paper he loathes above all others) dubbed him "Coogan the Barbarian" and insinuated that his hell-raising antics had nudged the Hollywood star Owen Wilson, a friend, to the brink of a breakdown. The red-tops, meanwhile, revelled in reports of cocaine use, liaisons with lap-dancers and an extended sex session on a bed full of banknotes. He concedes that much of this had some basis in fact, but that's not the point. He never courted the tabloids and resented being installed there. "Fame is a byproduct of what I do, it's not the be-all and end-all. I never signed that Faustian pact."
Is this strictly true? The impression I have of the younger Coogan is of someone half-drunk on acclaim; in and out of strip clubs, in and out of rehab.
"OK, yeah," says Coogan. "First of all, I would say it's still none of your business. If I choose to go to a strip club, it's still none of your fucking business. There are people who seek fame as an end in itself. I'm not one of those people." The term celebrity is demeaning, he argues – he's no more of a celebrity than Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre or the Guardian's Alan Rusbridger. Sure, he has had people go through his dustbin and been the subject of an attempted News Of The World sting by Andy Coulson. "But beyond all that is the notion of monstering innocent victims, people like the parents of Milly Dowler or Chris Jefferies in Bristol, people who never signed up to be in the public eye."
In August 2011, Coogan's legal team obtained evidence that his phone had been hacked on behalf of the News Of The World. He went on to testify at the Leveson inquiry and, with Hugh Grant, became the public face of the Hacked Off campaign. Today he has contempt for anyone who holds out against press regulation; who attempts to reduce the whole argument to a simple issue of freedom of the press. And he has contempt for tabloid hacks who pass themselves off as torch-bearers for truth. He's not overly enamoured of his fellow travellers, either, most of them too nervous to wade into battle. "It was me and Hugh Grant: everyone else was too petrified. All those spineless celebrities, so worried about annoying that cunt Paul Dacre." He shrugs. "What the fuck is wrong with them?"
The way Coogan tells it, his history with the press has built up his immunity. But the experience appears to have made him curiously sensitive as well. I'm not sure I've ever met a non-journalist so attuned to the way the press works, or so fascinated with modern media parlance. On the one hand, he doesn't want this interview to pander to the tabloid take on what he's like behind closed doors. On the other, he doesn't want to be cast as a bad-boy-made-good, his wild years behind him. He explains that he was initially prompted to make Alpha Papa, the Alan Partridge movie, after reading a blog that said he shouldn't. At night, alone, he sometimes dips below the line on Guardian articles, just to check what people are saying about him. "I hear that Steve Coogan reads the Guardian," said one post that he read. "Hi Steve!"
He is suspicious of arcs and angles and a newspaper script he can't write for himself. The more he thinks about this, the more his exasperation grows. Journalists, he claims, are always trawling through old cuttings as though these are somehow defining. "The back catalogue of my past misdemeanours." He sips his tea and pulls a face. "And all of that stuff was a long time ago. It's ancient history for me. But what I refuse to do is engage in some sort of justification and say, 'Oh, you know what? I also like going for country walks and reading books.' Fuck you. I'm not going to jump through hoops to redress your perception. It's none of your business. If you think my work is shit, that will upset me, but at least it's legit. My life now is probably much more PR-friendly than it was in the past. But even the good stuff that makes me look good? It's still none of your fucking business."
His blood is up, his colour rising. He takes his cap from the floor and screws it back on his head, all but daring the staff to throw him out on his ear. These days, he says, he's not afraid of a fight. He can say what he likes without fear of the consequences.
Wasn't he always that way? No, he says. "There was a time, 15 years ago, when I wouldn't say boo to a goose. I didn't want to express any political views, I didn't want to alienate anyone. But as you get older you get more comfortable in your skin. I don't need everyone to like me all of the time. I'm comfortable with the fact that 30% of people might think I'm a cunt. That's probably all right. I can still get elected." I'm not sure that he is comfortable: I can't think when he is. But he's keeping the tensions in check, and that's what works for him.
Coogan shakes my hand briskly and then gestures at his cap. Before he leaves, he wants to take hold of the narrative and script his own exit. "There you go," he says cheerfully. "Me wearing the hat. That shows that I'm still hanging on to my punk-rock credentials. Put that in the piece."
Mid-life matters: Steve Coogan interview With Alan Partridge he created one of the most memorable characters in the history of British comedy, but armed with a new-found sincerity and a determination to put his cynicism to one side, Steve Coogan has put himself on the frontline in the battle over press regulation. He tells Sam Macrory why he is on the right side of the argument, and why the fight is far from over. Photo by Paul Heartfield
Sam Macrory
26 Mar 2014
totalpolitics.com
Heard the one about the comedian who wanted to do more than just make people laugh? From stand-up comic to Spitting Image, Paul (and Pauline) Calf to Tony Ferrino and, of course, the many incarnations of Norfolk�s premier Pringle-clad DJ Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan has been excelling at the laughter part for nearly a quarter of a century.
I'm a populist. I like to make as many people laugh as possible. I'm not some pretentious aesthete. Alan Partridge is something I like doing, Coogan makes clear, but he's also decided that there is more to life than laughter. Fed up with joining in with the collective sneer, Coogan wants to add something to the sum total of human happiness in whatever modest way I can.
It may sound like a mid-life crisis moment, but through both his latest film Coogan co-wrote and starred in the Bafta-winning Philomena, the true story of a mother's search for a son taken from her and sold for adoption by nuns and in what he describes as his 'hobby, of sorts', Coogan is proving that he can do serious, and not always with a smile, rather well.
The hobby has seen Coogan take centre stage, along with Hugh Grant, as one of the highest profile backers of Hacked Off, the campaigning body which is calling for the full implementation of Lord Leveson�s recommendations on regulation of the press. Eighteen months on from Leveson�s publication, three years since The Sun splashed with �The Strange Mr Jefferies� after Chris Jefferies was erroneously arrested on suspicion of the murder of 25-year-old Joanna Yeates, and over a decade since journalists employed by the News of the World hacked the phone of murdered teenager Millie Dowler, the press, politicians and campaigners are still unable to agree on what happens next.
�It�s the press� interest to put as much distance between themselves and Leveson and hope by kicking the ball into the long grass people will forget what it was all about,� Coogan warns. �Some vested interests, some newspapers, are wilfully trying to go against the majority, the democratically agreed view. Leveson was an important public inquiry � and it�s not through yet.�
Steve Coogan is older than David Cameron, Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband. He jokes that political leaders, like �policeman�, are getting younger � though it�s the 42-year-old chancellor of the exchequer who leaves Coogan feeling most unsettled. �I do find it strange when I look at George Osborne,� Coogan, now 48, admits. �I think �I can�t believe he�s younger than me, he�s the sort of person that as a schoolboy I used to snigger at on the bus�.�
But the grown-up Steve Coogan wouldn�t snigger. Well, not as much as he might have done. Comedy, it seems, is leaving him a little cold. �Comedy, generally speaking, depends on a kind of arch insincerity, if you like, which is how you get the comedy from it,� he explains from his home outside Brighton, a rare moment of rest between airport lounges and international flights.
�Also, cynicism and comedy sit side-by-side very comfortably. You become a little disenchanted with cynicism. It�s satisfying in the short term but it�s not particularly nourishing. It struck me that more often than not to be sincere and heartfelt was the less obvious thing to do and seemed to be unfashionable. For that reason I wanted to fly the flag for people who are sincere and also be optimistic, without being na�ve � I think people equate sincerity with a kind of na�vety, which is wrong.�
So how to explain the new Coogan? Is this just the case of a man homing in on his 50th birthday? �It�s certainly a bit to do with getting older, and not wanting to be disingenuous and not wanting to feel that you�re selling used cars,� he admits. �Not wanting to come across all Joan of Arcish about it all, but it�s nice to think that you�ve got some sort of sense of what is ethical.�
A cynic might see Steve Coogan�s ethically-driven battle cry for better press regulation as one motivated by revenge: his run-ins with the red tops � and a long running feud with the Daily Mail � have been keeping showbiz hacks in work for years. Coogan admits there is some truth in a lurid set of tabloid tales involving lapdancers, cocaine, and a bed covered in bank notes, but he has repeatedly insisted that what happened after hours, and behind closed doors, is nobody�s business but his.
In August 2011, armed with evidence that his phone had been hacked on behalf of the News of the World, Coogan started legal action against the paper. �It did feel a very lonely place to be and I was warned against taking on the might of Murdoch,� he recalls, but being brought into the Hacked Off fold has given Coogan a team to be a part of, even if he was wary about being the type of celebrity figure who �wants to go around campaigning� for non-celebrity causes.
�I understand that anyone who has a public profile for being creative, if they give their opinion on things that aren�t immediately connected with what they do, they open themselves up to ridicule. I�m not na�ve enough to think that wasn�t going to happen, but having said that, you have to weigh up the negative of going �oh no not him again� with any positive impact your involvement in something can cause.� He accepts that �it can be a case of diminishing returns if you�re constantly going on about this that or the other,� but Steve Coogan is not prepared to let Leveson lie.
The impact, on a personal level, has been positive. People still shout Partridge�s �A-HA!� catchphrase at him in the street, but Coogan has impressed with his appearances on Newsnight, Question Time and in front of a parliamentary select committee, putting some distance between himself and his comic alter ego and moving on from what he calls the �ancient history� of his lively personal past.
But despite his efforts, the impact on the future of press regulation remains uncertain. Last month, Hacked Off published the names of more than 200 supporters, including JK Rowling, Michael Palin, Sir Tom Stoppard, Nick Davies, Salman Rushdie and Sir David Attenborough, to mark the one year anniversary since the publication of the Royal Charter � the government�s solution of a legislative �backstop� to Lord Leveson�s call for tougher press regulation. However, the Murdoch papers, the Mail, and the Telegraph titles, are refusing to sign, arguing that the charter represents state restriction on press freedom.
Instead they are in the process of creating the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), their own self-regulatory solution to succeed the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). Coogan, a genuine authority on the intricacies of press regulation, is appalled at what he calls a �busted flush� alternative.
�There�s no doubt in my mind that we are on the right side. There is no nuance or subtlety in the opponents of Leveson�s findings. The misrepresentation of Leveson�s core findings as state regulation was a gross distortion,� he snaps. �The Royal Charter declares that we believe in a free press as a core tenet of democracy and if people joined a Leveson complaint body it actually protects them against lawsuits. It�s a body which genuinely protects public interest journalism and the rights of people to have some redress. Not famous people, but people who are bullied and pilloried. Leveson was an important public inquiry and it�s not through yet.�
However, Ipso�s backers are already advertising the position of chairman � complete with a �150,000 a year salary � and hope the body will be up and running next month.
�This is an ongoing process. However much some people try to caricature it as being over and done with, it�s certainly not,� Coogan replies. �The body that was approved by the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, Ipso, is not Leveson compliant, and it�s important to remember that the Financial Times, the Independent and the Guardian have so far failed to sign up because of that reason. Most people who look at it for any length of time realise it�s just the PCC all over again.�
The Ipso faction were given some encouragement last November when Maria Miller, the culture secretary, suggested that, �there are opportunities for the press to be able to be recognised� if Ipso proved itself. Coogan is unforgiving in his assessment. �I think Maria Miller is really a busted flush. Any credibility she has went down the swanny a long time ago. From all sides. She�s a fairweather politician. I think she sticks her finger up in the morning and sees which way the wind is blowing and that determines her views and principles.�
Miller was quickly corrected by David Cameron, who declared that it would be a �mistake� for the press to refuse to seek recognition under the charter. Instead, Cameron warned that the press would be �risking that some future, less liberal, less enlightened government at the time of the next press crisis will hitch you with some hideous statutory regulation which I prevented.�
Coogan praises the prime minister�s �very finely crafted sentence � he�s managed to tick all the boxes�, but Cameron was wrong, he says, in his warning. �The people who want press regulation are not anti-freedom at all. The press have nothing to fear.�
�If the Daily Mail went to the wall, who would be there to stand up for the persecuted minority of people from fairly comfortable areas who are middle-aged and not coloured?�, Alan Partridge once asked, but for Steve Coogan no other paper causes him quite such discomfort, and no other editor such disgust as Paul Dacre.
He describes Dacre�s resistance to Leveson as a �kind of almost wilful sociopathic arrogance�, even if he is prepared to give the Mail�s editor a backhanded compliment of sorts:
�The one thing I would say in his favour, that I think elevates him in some way or, depending on your point of view, differentiates him from Rupert Murdoch, is I think Rupert Murdoch is all about business: it�s about the bottom line, it�s about shifting units and building his empire, unimpeded by any sort of regulation whatsoever. Morality and ethics are purely an academic concept to him. He is an amoral propagator of his own empire.
�Paul Dacre on the other hand, I think he genuinely believes all the xenophobic crap that he writes in his newspaper. I�ll let him have that.�
But the �xenophobic crap� is read by more than 2m people a day, making it the fastest growing national paper in Britain. Coogan admits it is �very popular�, but insists that �popularity has never been any kind of defence� for him.
�The notion that purely by definition of its popularity it�s beyond reproach is a nonsense. This is not an anti-tabloid thing. There is absolutely room for a healthy tabloid newspaper industry that has a robust engagement with politics and is popular. As a newspaper it panders to people�s worst prejudices and people like to have their prejudices reinforced and that�s what the Daily Mail does � there are 60m people in the UK and 2m people buy the Daily Mail. I make that one in 30. That�s what? One in 30 xenophobes.�
He�s equally dismissive of MailOnline, a website so popular that it clocks just short of 12m visitors a day. �Well, you know, paedophilia is pretty popular too,� is Coogan�s dismissive response of what he calls �Mailbait�.
He is scathing of a �website that has all the photographs of 12 and 14 year old girls and talks about their bras and how fast they are growing up and all the rest of it. It clearly has an appeal that goes beyond just the curious. That�s hugely popular and all for the wrong reasons. It�s at best creepy and at worst sinister.�
He thinks that �increasingly with Dacre it�s like shooting fish in a barrel�, but it�s hard to know if the shots ever hit home: Paul Dacre is rarely seen or heard in public. If Dacre could be tempted into a televised debate in the style of the Nick Clegg-Nigel Farage bust-up, would Coogan take him on?
�I would � and not in terms of braggadocio,� he replies without hesitation. �I�d just like to see him defend some of the things his newspaper does.�
Back in September, at Steve Coogan�s Brighton home, a small gathering of Labour MPs loitered around a tasteful cheese board. John Prescott held court in the garden; former Liberal Democrat MP � and now Hacked Off employee � Evan Harris did the introductions. Hugh Grant left unfashionably early; Alastair Campbell arrived fashionably late. With diaries packed full of breakfast meetings, most guests called it a night well before 11pm. Labour�s deputy leader Harriet Harman gave a speech. Coogan did too. The scene was a long, long way from the Mail�s tales of Barbarian behaviour.
Coogan clearly gets a buzz out of moving in political circles. The day after the Hacked Off soiree, he sat in the Brighton conference centre to watch Ed Miliband�s speech. He�s been a guest at the Liberal Democrat conference too.
�In one way it�s enjoyable but I don�t get paid for it,� is his assessment of his part-time political pursuits, with Coogan describing himself as a �defender of the political process, however flawed it is. It�s rewarding to be engaged.�
So should Russell Brand be taking to the airwaves to declare his pride in not voting? �I understand it,� Coogan cautiously replies. �The paradox, of course, is when Russell says that, he is engaging with the process.�
Unlike Brand, however, Coogan won�t engage on Twitter. The @accidentalpartridge account has more than 100,000 followers, but Coogan is wary of the �double-edged sword� of instant online conversation. �I�ve been wont to send angry emails that people in my life have sat on me� that 24 hour cooling off period before you buy a gun, Twitter sort of works against that in some ways. Technology means that we�ve all got the equivalent of verbal diarrhoea. Reticence is something to be savoured.�
But in person, Coogan has plenty to say about politics and politicians, even declaring an unfashionable admiration for their work.
�I don�t do this blanket thing about politicians. There are many I don�t agree with politically but I think are thoroughly good company, and people I like on a personal level,� he says. �Generally politicians do get a raw deal because it is unfashionable to be engaged in politics, especially for young people. Although they are in some ways responsible for the apathy, I also think that generally speaking � and this is a generalisation because there�s some complete bastards out there � politicians do have the greater good at heart even if they might take a pragmatic approach.�
He describes his own politics as �left of centre,� a position based on �general principles and emphasis�, while he has �flirted with the Liberals on certain issues and reserved my judgment, and been quite angry, with the Labour Party on other issues.�
His father is a member of the Liberal Democrats, and in his youth Coogan has �delivered leaflets for the Liberals while voting Labour� I don�t know what that says.� He�s even got time for the �certain Conservative politicians� who he finds �engaging and principled� I agree with their general approach to certain issues.�
Would he take it a stage further and embrace politics as a full-time pursuit? �At the moment I like the fact that I can say stuff and the worst I can expect is to get a drubbing in the Daily Mail, and I can cope with that,� is a reply which doesn�t rule out the prospect of a Lord Coogan of North Norfolk.
�If I started to engage with the process and I had to worry about playing the political game so much that I started to disengage with it, that would worry me. But I like being involved in issues that are part of the national debate. The pros outweigh the cons. Apathy and ambivalence I loathe more than anything.�
So has Ed Miliband secured the Coogan vote for 2015? �It�s very much qualified support I give to the Labour Party,� Coogan replies. �I�ll be interested to see how they deal with a number of issues, not least whether they stand up to the bullying press barons and stand up for the people who have been disenfranchised from any system of redress.� He then adds, in a moment of pure Partridge: �I try to be pragmatic, not dogmatic.�
He�s says both Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg �have shown some backbone in standing by the main findings of Leveson�, but complains that �certain politicians are worried about annoying those sections of the press because they think they depend upon them to be re-elected.� Whether David Cameron has done enough to support a system of press regulation that would allow him to �look the victims [of phone hacking] in the eye�, as the prime minister had pledged, �remains to be seen.�
He hasn�t yet mentioned Nigel Farage, a politician firmly opposed to Leveson but whose sports-casual attire and fondness for a pint of bitter sees him stray repeatedly into Partridge territory. Even Armando Iannucci, one of the writers behind Partridge, describes Farage as behaving like �Alan�s single uncle.�
Coogan sounds almost fond of the UKIP leader. �It�s interesting isn�t it? Of course I find almost all of his views objectionable, but you can think that at a Christmas party he might be an avuncular, entertaining presence. I think that�s possibly part of their success. I mean, I might have broad political sympathies with Tony Blair, but l�m not sure I�d want him at my Christmas party.�
A confusing part of Steve Coogan�s insistence that his private life remains private is his habit of playing versions of himself on screen. In A Cock and Bull Story, Michael Winterbottom�s 2005 film, he plays �Steve Coogan�, a cynical actor with a colourful personal life. It�s a role, or a version of it, which he has resurrected for The Trip, in which he joins Rob Brydon playing �Rob Brydon� as the pair set off on an unstructured, comedic-gastronomic tour of northern England.
Later this year The Trip returns for a second series, this time set in Italy. �The food is better, the scenery is better. I hope my fellow northerners don�t take umbrage with that because I do love the north,� Coogan explains. Otherwise �it�s more of the same� as the fictionalised Coogan and Brydon attempt to outdo each other with their range of impressions while endlessly eating enviously well.
It sounds an unlikely recipe for success, but the programme won multiple awards and huge critical acclaim: at last year�s British comedy awards Richard Curtis described it as one of the greatest television programmes of all time.
�Rob and I were always reluctant to do it at first,� Coogan admits. �We just thought it would be a narcissistic, self-indulgent exercise in self-parody, but thankfully it�s a bit more than that. It�s also about grappling with the meaning of life in a way which hopefully transcends the small self-obsessed world of entertainers and it does that. It�s thoroughly enjoyable.�
But however enthusiastically Coogan grapples with the meaning of life, embraces worthy causes, political campaigns or more serious writing projects, there�s a grinning alter ego who can never be ignored. Coogan appeared to tire of Partridge in the past � he once called a stand-up tour �Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge and other less successful characters� � but the older, wiser Coogan is comfortable with Alan at his side. Whether in the form of a TV series, a repeat of the Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge online format, or a sequel to last summer�s Alpha Papa, Partridge�s big screen debut, Alan will be back.
�I had a bit of an epiphany with Philomena. I discovered I could talk about difficult subjects while using comedy. That whetted my appetite so much that I want to do more things like that. But paradoxically the more successful I am with drama, drama that�s funny as opposed to comedy, the more likely I am to do another Partridge. As long as Partridge is a string to my bow � if it�s all I do I find that a bit depressing � I�ll never abandon it. I�m sure there will be another incarnation of Alan at some point. It�s always better to do that stuff when you want to, not when they tell you to.�
In fact, switching to Alan can come as something of a relief for his increasingly sincere creator. �I did the Partridge film straight after I did Philomena. It was madness to shoot and it was very disorganised because I�d spent all my time on my grown-up Judi Dench film, but it was hugely enjoyable chaos. It was nice to go back to doing stupid jokes and having my trousers fall down and very unsophisticated stuff like that.�
For now, however, Coogan is all about sincerity. He�s going to step up his involvement in the Philomena project in an effort to release adoption files, and hopes his film will result in a positive ending beyond the credits. �We didn�t set to out destroy or attack the church in a purely polemic way, there�s a kind of olive branch in the film,� he explains, adding, while laughing: �I�m all about olive branches.�
Except, perhaps, when it comes to certain owners, publishers, and editors � and the politicians who refuse to take them on. �We�re at the stage now, I think it was John Major who said that it�s no longer the press that are drinking in the last chance saloon, it�s the politicians,� Coogan warns. �This is the opportunity to reform and make effective self-regulation which enables the victims to be protected and have a voice.�
So is there really more to life than laughter for Steve Coogan?
His obituaries will inevitably begin and end with Alan Partridge, but the one thing he wants to be said of him is that, �the things I say, however much they might irritate people who disagree with them, are sincere and not part of some agenda. And I hope that people are not cynical about me.�
Depending on what happens to press regulation in this country, and depending on what paper you read, those obituaries will vary widely. A bit of criticism would suit Steve Coogan nicely. The comedian who wanted do more than just make people laugh would clearly have packed a particularly powerful punchline.
Alan Partridge set for Alpha Papa sequel, says Baby Cow's Henry Normal
Steve Coogan will return as the Norfolk DJ in his second big screen outing and in a new series on Sky Atlantic
John Plunkett
Thu 3 Apr 2014
theguardian.com
Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge will return for a big screen sequel and a new series on Sky, including a Coast-style spoof, its makers have confirmed. Henry Normal, co-founder of Coogan's production company Baby Cow, said a sequel to the fictional Norfolk DJ's film debut, last year's Alpha Papa, was in the pipeline, along with a new series for Sky Atlantic, where Partridge moved to in 2012 having previously been on the BBC. "We are planning a sequel [to Alpha Papa], yes, that will be great," Normal told the Guardian. "We are also looking at doing more Mid Morning Matters and another Sky special, a little bit like Coast with Alan Partridge, except I don't think he goes out of Norfolk. I think it's things of interest in Norfolk, that's the general theme." Normal added: "We start writing now. I think we make it at the end of summer."
After the second series of I'm Alan Partridge aired on BBC2 in 2002, Coogan returned to the character eight years later with a Foster's funded online series, Alan Partridge's Mid Morning Matters. The series later transferred to Sky Atlantic, along with a pair of specials, Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life, and Alan Partridge on Open Books with Martin Bryce, talking about Partridge's spoof (and best-selling) autobiography.
"I'm Alan Partridge was so well received, to make the next series you really had to find a way of coming at it in a different way," recalled Normal, speaking after he appeared at Advertising Week Europe in London on Wednesday. "It was great to do something on the internet which was only 11 minutes long. We did some specials for Sky, which again gave it a different life. Steve wanted to do other things. You do get with Alan, if they are sitting in a room long enough, they do get 'Alan mad'. Alanageddon."
Normal said his company had approached the BBC with the 2012 series adapted from the Foster's funded programmes, but they wanted to make something different. "Obviously the BBC has been involved with Partridge and we did go to see the BBC, but they said they didn't want a second series, they wanted something different. Steve said no, I want to do this as a second series and luckily we went over to Sky and Stuart Murphy and Lucy [Lumsden] said fantastic, what else have you got?"
Partridge's well received (and long-awaited) big screen debut, Alpha Papa, featured the staff of Partridge's Norfolk broadcaster, North Norfolk Digital, taken hostage by a disgruntled colleague, played by Colm Meaney, leading to an unlikely gun-toting finale on Cromer pier.
Coogan's other recent big-screen outing, Philomena, which he also co-wrote, has just passed the $100m (£60m) worldwide box office mark, Normal added. "I haven't seen a penny of it, but [its US distributor] Harvey Weinstein is very happy with it, apparently."
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