3 hours ago
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The line between Steve Coogan and Alan Partridge is a blurry one. The love of cars. The clothes. They’ve both done their own live arena tours. They even share a face. But if you ever needed proof that they’re not actually the same, it’s the fact that when I meet him for breakfast at his London hotel, he’s not at the buffet with an oversized plate, the staff aren’t giggling at him, and we’re not in a Travel Tavern.
We’re here to talk about his new show, How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge). It’s the latest instalment in the wider Partridge universe in which he presents digital radio, writes books, successfully podcasts, goes on tour, and made his BBC comeback on magazine programme This Time. (The character is now co-written with the Gibbons brothers, rather than Armando Iannucci and Peter Baynham.)
This time round we meet an altogether happier, wiser Partridge 3.0. He’s no longer in the public eye, but “finds a steady stream of Norfolk-based corporate work just as fulfilling. On the face of it, my life is great,” we learn. “I’ve got a large house,” – he lives in the oasthouse from his podcast – “my partner Katrina [played brilliantly by Katherine Kelly] is one of the fittest women over 40 in Norfolk.”
The show is a documentary, self-funded by Pear Tree Factual Productions, as he explores the topic of mental health: something else that Partridge is dealing with personally. He presents to camera. He conducts vox pops, hosts focus groups and interviews local experts. There are infographics. There’s behind-the-scenes stuff with (yes!) Lynn. He attempts to reconcile with Sidekick Simon (Tim Key), who has had enough of Partridge’s constant criticism, in the name of mental health. He visits a book club and takes to the air wearing a jet pack. Forget Partridge 3.0. This is Partridge 4.0 and a half.
Given the theme of the new show, what I really want to get to grips with is Coogan’s inner Partridge. I’ve come armed with therapy-style questions. My thinking is: if I don’t have Coogan in tears with repressed emotion by the end of the interview, I haven’t done my job properly.
Things start well when Coogan’s press woman (who disappointingly looks nothing like Lynn) introduces me with a mention of the Guardian’s recent autumn TV preview, which (correctly) claims Partridge to be “the greatest comedy character ever produced by the UK.”
“No pressure then,” smiles Coogan.
“Alan’s definitely more popular than me. That’s a given,” he says when I ask if he’s jealous of Partridge’s universal appeal. “He also wants to be liked by as many people as possible. I don’t care about that. I want enough people to like me so that I’m allowed to exist.
“As you get older, I do feel like I don’t have to be to everyone’s taste. I’m OK with some people finding me irritating. When something has really gotten under my skin, rather than get broadsided for it, I’ll have Alan be the champion of the thing I loathe, but in a funny way. You can’t just have a big psychological wank. That’s not entertainment. But it’s a good starting point.”
What advice would Coogan give Partridge on this chapter of his life?
“I would say: ‘Don’t try and be something you’re not. You’re never going to host Newsnight. Lean into what you’ve got.’”
What would Alan say to the seven-year-old Alan Partridge – and what would Coogan say to his younger self?
“[Alan would say:] It’s going to be OK. They will all be proved wrong. You will win.”
And Coogan? “It’s not a million miles away. I did have an odd childhood,” he continues. “I was quite sociable and popular, but lazy. I’m an autodidact. What drives me is the class thing. I have deep-seeded class issues, but I don’t mind, because they’re part of the engine. I used to have low expectations of myself. I’d get from one place to another place career-wise, then think: ‘I wonder if I can get over here?’ There’s been times when I’ve turned down quick money. I’ve never done any panel shows. I watch Would I Lie to You? with my mum and think it’s really funny, but I don’t want to go on it. I don’t have the personality …”
Why doesn’t he think he has a personality?
“I’ve got a personality. But I’m not a personality. I have to talk about this shit to get people to watch it,” he says, of days when he’s forced to meet the press. “Sometimes people, like you, ask me questions I haven’t thought about before, and that gets folded back into my work, because I’ll think: ‘Oh yeah, that’s why I do that …’”
Questions like what?
“Well, the direct parallel about what Alan and I would say to our younger selves. It makes me think of the sixth-form common room. Maybe this is [a bit] Alan Partridge, I don’t know. Forty years ago, I remember thinking: ‘I could be part of the next generation of comedy. Why don’t I do whatever it is you’re supposed to do and see if that happens? And if it doesn’t, at least I know I tried.’”
If Alan was on the therapy couch, what would he be trying to get to the nub of?
“I think he would masquerade as emotionally open. But all the things he would confess to would be completely risk free. He’d be posturing. His vulnerability isn’t real vulnerability. It’s affected.”
I crank it up. A therapist might say: “Steve, you are using Alan as an avatar. What’s the story you’re not telling yourself?”
“I’m reasonably happy as me,” says Coogan. “I look around and think I have lots to be grateful for, so that keeps me grounded. I do accept that Alan is an unfiltered, unmitigated, unedited version of me. What’s the story I’m not telling myself? It might be that I don’t really want to fully understand the dysfunctions of my personality. All I know is it works when I shovel it into this avatar, so why mess with it?”
Everybody wears masks, I point out, it’s just that Coogan wears one so publicly.
“I am self-aware in a way that Alan isn’t,” he says. “Sometimes when I’m speaking to well-educated southerners, my northern accent will fade away. When I’m talking to horny-handed sons of toil from up north, it suddenly comes back. It’s either rank hypocrisy or it’s empathy. I prefer the latter.”
Does that apply to subject matter too?
“My daughter, Clare, says: ‘You’ve got to stop talking about your midlife crisis. You are way past that.’ Alan is lockstep with whatever will give him the least grief. He’s quite Starmer-esque in that respect. I get angry and sanctimonious. I get incensed and descend into slagging people off. I don’t trust myself in that regard. There’s a catharsis in doing Alan. Some of his world view I fundamentally disagree with. But there will be something that I’ll be glad to put the Alan wig on so I can say it out loud.”
Does he ever see himself as a fictional character? For example, Lorraine Kelly successfully claimed for tax reasons that she appears as “a chatty personality”?
“Really? Wow!” This is news to Coogan. “I say things as Alan that are not true, like he had a fight in a car park with Noel Edmonds. The BBC lawyers say: ‘That’s slander.’ How am I slandering someone by saying they had a fight in a car park with a fictional character?”
How long before the circles of the Venn diagram of Coogan/Partridge overlap completely?
“Maybe they’ll eclipse before passing over each other.” He tells a story of arriving in his trailer to find a blue, checked Aubin and Wills shirt to wear while playing Partridge – which was identical to the one he was already wearing. “I did take mine off and put the other one on, even though there was no one to witness me. There was a time when I was writing with Armando and Pete when I’d say something as myself, and they’d just write it down as Partridge and it would irritate me. Now the Gibbons do it all the time. As you get older, you realise it’s all gravy.”
What life lessons has Partridge taught Coogan?
“To be kinder to people.”
I glance at the clock: we’re coming up to 45 minutes, which seems like a good cut-off point for a pseudo therapy session. One last question. Will Coogan mind that, when he dies, his obituary will probably say: “best known for playing Alan Partridge?”
“It would be nice if they filled in some of the other details,” he laughs. “I remember, as a child, watching Fawlty Towers. It would fill the house with laughter for half an hour, we’d switch off the TV, have a cup of tea and dissect it, to make sure it was imprinted on your memory. It was an event. I remember thinking: how amazing it would be to create something like that. I did that with Alan Partridge. If that’s what I’m remembered for, that’s fine with me.”
How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge) is on BBC One and iPlayer in October.
