Biggest Fans

Here's the Coogan topic from my old forum. It has loads of content from around 2008-2014. I've just spent some hours tidying it up after years of neglect. There are still some rough edges, but BIGGEST FANS will be ok with that I'm sure.

https://forum.couchtripper.com/viewtopic.php?t=5174

Though Ricky Gervais and Sacha Baron Cohen were hot on Steve Coogan's heels during those early years of the new century, top dog status amongst his peers and critics remained largely assured. With three triumphant television series featuring Middle England alter ego Alan Partridge in the bag, this dedicated student of comedy history was hankering for the next game-changing move.

The 1970s northern lad who had religiously recorded Monty Python television repeats knew all too well his heroes never stood still. And to further raise the stakes, the biggest hero of all was suddenly looming large.

"Who better than Coogan?" was a familiar refrain amongst London comedy cliques when it emerged in 2003 that a screen adaptation of Roger Lewis's still definitive biography, The Life and Death of Peter Sellers, was in the works.

Rarely cursed by self-doubt, Coogan certainly concurred, whilst the film's executives came close — only blinking at the eleventh hour and playing it safe with the more internationally known Australian, Geoffrey Rush. "I really wanted that part badly," Coogan flatly announced shortly afterwards. "Then Geoffrey Rush came along and said, 'I want to do it,' and he's got an Academy Award and I haven't, and I was out of the picture. I don't mind admitting I was pissed off about that."

The film that followed offered some consolation; a pedestrian story on screen never coming close to the ghoul of Sellers so compellingly drawn out on Lewis's pages. Whilst chameleon Sellers' oft-repeated assertion that he possessed "no interesting personality" of his own sounded increasingly affected as years passed, Rush was given little chance to dispel the notion. Flimsy awards ceremony success at the time (Golden Globe for best TV film actor, no less) should not persuade us otherwise.

In taking on a West End production of Dr. Strangelove, Coogan set a high bar for himself

Yet Coogan could not let it rest: during his other television masterpiece, The Trip, he was still banging on about being "down to the last two" for Sellers seven years on. Co-star and professional sparring partner Rob Brydon reassured him: "As I've told you many times before, you'd have been better than Geoffrey Rush." Though fashionably playing an "exaggerated" version of himself in the series, the difference between the two Coogans at that moment was paper-thin.

Two decades on from being denied the chance to inhabit the bones of his idol, Coogan's status as the nation's comedy colossus seemed assured. Approaching 60, he had lived four years longer than Sellers (who died after a heart attack in 1980). Rather than portray the man, why not reinterpret some of his best characters?

In taking on the starring roles in a West End production of Stanley Kubrick's 1964 satirical magnum opus Dr. Strangelove, Coogan set a high bar for himself, not least logistically since it required him in four separate parts on stage (even Sellers only played three). But such audacity has not quite paid off. Sellers is having the last laugh.

Whilst critical reaction has been broadly supportive of Coogan's portrayals, the production as a whole, directed and co-written by Sean Foley along with Coogan's old collaborator Armando Iannucci, is rightly deemed a misfire — occupying an unwanted no man's land of so-so imitation of the original to hackneyed nods to the present.

As for Coogan himself? The man's long been incapable of delivering anything approaching below par, but the nagging question remains: why? It could be argued he's hindered by a play that never really hits the mark, but Coogan's performance can only be regarded as serviceable by his own impeccable standards.

Whilst portrayals of Group Captain Mandrake and President Muffley (Sellers' best roles in the film) tick along perfectly pleasingly, it's testament to Coogan's stagecraft that his Dr Strangelove counts as the standout achievement. Funny-voiced German Nazis aren't all the rage they once were, but he somehow succeeds in giving his camp psychopath a fresh new lease of life.

But again, why? Why, at the height of powers, would Coogan wish to give such blood, sweat and tears to this essentially derivative venture — one in which he was always likely to come off second best? In what also happens to be the centenary year of the late Goon's birth, modern-day Coogan, for all the plaudits enjoyed in the present, unwisely insists on an attempted land grab from Sellers' past.

Reflecting on his star's improvised/masterfully edited performance as Strangelove during the film's final moments — the previously wheelchair-bound scientist screeching, "Mein Führer! I can walk!" — Kubrick, amongst that small club of directors capable of controlling the Sellers wildfire, romantically maintained his actor had touched a "state of comic ecstasy".

Little chance of that 60 years on. Coogan's performance proves more controlled, more knowing throughout, as suits the age. Audiences are rarely left in doubt that, as with Alan Partridge, he and the writers are two steps ahead. In this respect he and Sellers have always been very different beasts; it's amongst the reasons why the play is such an awkward fit.

Such generational comparisons are also inevitably problematic. Much of Sellers' résumé struggles in the current age: whether it be Clouseau's endless pratfalls and English-speaking "French", or those impenetrable Goons and Indian/Chinaman accents, Father Time isn't merciful. Though some of the landmark performances (Fred Kite, Strangelove, some Clouseau, Chauncey Gardiner) continue to cock a snook at the unforgiving present, credible judgement of long-dead Sellers should not be overly hindered by 2025's passing tastes. Partridge will hardly be packing the same punch 60 years from now. Yet when it comes to Coogan versus Sellers, it's Coogan picking the fight.

There are personal and professional parallels impossible to ignore. After carving out early careers as light entertainment impressionists, both soon enough fixed upon bigger prizes. Young Sellers may have courteously talked of Alec Guinness as an "idol", but never without considering himself the latter's rightful comic successor. Coogan's conviction regarding his own seat at the top table was similarly unwavering from the beginning.

The significance of national minority origins cannot be downplayed, however unalike. The third child of six in a bustling Irish Catholic family in Middleton, Greater Manchester, the boy Stephen learnt to navigate the pecking order early on; proud Irish/Mancunian roots providing ample emotional rocket fuel for the journey ahead. Only child Sellers was, by contrast, monstrously spoilt by Jewish mother Peg. Whilst Coogan is armed with the certainty of regional identity, the much-travelled Sellers, often on the road with theatrical parents, couldn't even make up his mind where he was born. Having officially arrived in the Hampshire seaside resort Southsea, he could alternatively be heard insisting his birthplace was father Bill's Yorkshire. Never shy to make it up as he went along, this Portuguese Jewish/Yorkshireman/Londoner could be forgiven for the identity crisis. His rootlessness also proved the godsend for those many masks that followed.

For most, Sellers will always primarily be Clouseau as much as Coogan is always primarily Partridge. Both naturally deemed their most commercially successful creations albatrosses at various stages: Coogan only more comfortable returning to Alan once assured a degree of critical success was accomplished elsewhere on film, not least 2013's Philomena alongside Judi Dench.

Having rejected offers to reprise Clouseau for a third time in 1968, later career doldrums suffered by Sellers and Pink Panther director Blake Edwards eventually led to the Inspector's return seven years later, swiftly followed by two further sequels.

More importantly for Sellers, commercial clout courtesy of Clouseau ensured fulfilment of a near decade-long obsession with bringing Jerzy Kosiński's 1971 novel Being There to the screen. His portrayal of man-child gardener Chance, who improbably finds himself propelled to accidental status of political sage in Washington DC, remains moving and prescient — only more so when knowing Sellers is himself on borrowed time. Should we sensibly ignore the relentlessly crap The Fiendish Plot of Dr. Fu Manchu that followed just before his demise, Being There proves the fitting swan song.

And this is the issue when attempting to critically assess these two comic geniuses from a basis of artistic parity: bluntly speaking, Sellers made it in Hollywood — Coogan, well, just hasn't. The transition proved more straightforward for Sellers from the start: the first great cinematic role as union man Fred Kite in I'm All Right Jack overlapping with his final days as a radio Goon.

Hollywood worship soon enough ensued: his reign across the pond only kiboshed in 1964 by a series of near-fatal heart attacks brought about by constant pill-popping and bonking Britt Ekland. After all those incoherent rants about American "berks" thwarting his talent in the chaotic years that followed, a once again bankable Sellers was welcomed back to the fold a decade on.

Coogan's Tinseltown forays have been solid without ever threatening the defining career upgrade many presumed inevitable

Having struck at the nerve endings of baby boomer/middle-class English life with unrivalled brilliance for over 30 years, Coogan's Partridge occupies territory in the national psyche perhaps not seen since Tony Hancock's frayed post-war delusions earned similar reverence and affection all those decades before. Yet, apart from when enjoying the appreciative company of east-coast, west-coast comedy in-crowds, Alan's American vacation would prove mainly dispiriting. Away from Partridge, Coogan's Tinseltown forays have down the years been solid enough without ever producing the defining career upgrade many presumed would come his way.

Wrong place, wrong time? Whilst Sellers thrived in an era when leading British comic actors could look forward to clinking glasses in producers' offices in Beverly Hills, the Golden State these days offers slimmer pickings. Though Hugh Grant cashed in on being pretty before later cannily opting to be typecast as middle-aged villains, Hollywood doesn't do funny Englishmen like it used to. Dudley Moore would have little chance in 2025.

When attempting to judge a performer of his long-standing calibre, it would be folly to dismiss the possibility of Coogan still eventually earning that desired place in the Hollywood sun. The form book however indicates this to be one part of the remarkable story where he's likely to fall short.

As recent events prove, Hollywood Sellers remains the cause of a rare chink in the Coogan armour. For Coogan, the phantom of Sellers forever lingers; the one who, for a time, had it all. The one that got away.

Actor Steve Coogan has narrowly avoided a driving ban for speeding at almost 100mph after he told a court it could impact on the new series of hit TV show The Trip. The 59-year-old star of Alan Partridge was behind the wheel of a Range Rover which was caught at 97mph on the M6 on July 29 last year. Coogan already had six penalty points on his licence and wrote to a court to plead for a punishment which did not end in a ban, highlighting that he is expected to drive on the upcoming TV show.

"I have a series of important film commitments scheduled for 2025, many of which involve driving as a central component of the work", he set out, in a letter to Birmingham magistrates court. "I am due to appear in a well-established TV series called The Trip (with Rob Brydon) which as the title suggests requires me to drive. "This starts filming towards the end of June 2025 and if I were unable to drive, the production would likely be unable to proceed."

Coogan argued for the magistrate to impose five penalty points instead of six, leaving him just below the level where an automatic six-month disqualification is considered. "These projects would be severely impacted, not only affecting my own livelihood but also the many individuals dependent on these productions for work", he continued. "These include camera, sound, and lighting technicians, riggers, and others on modest wages who would face cancellations and financial hardship, as rescheduling such projects is often highly complicated."

Coogan said the past penalty points on his licence are due to expire in August 2025, he said he has stuck to the speed limits since the incident, and he expressed frustration that it has taken almost six months for the prosecution to be brought. "The delay...has significantly affected not only my ability to plan for the coming year but also discussions with colleagues and collaborators regarding potential upcoming projects." The offence happened just before midnight on the northbound side of the M6 just before Junction 12 for Telford. Coogan entered a guilty plea and was handed five penalty points, leaving him one point short of facing a ban. He was ordered to pay a £2,500 fine, plus £90 costs and a £1,000 victim surcharge.

It is not the first time Coogan has deployed his TV career in court when facing a driving ban. In 2019, the actor told magistrates in Crawley that a lengthy disqualification would force the cancellation of a new Alan Partridge series he was created for the BBC. "I'm producing a travelogue follow-on TV series where I'm basically driving around Britain," he told the court. "The whole nature of the series is that it is a travelogue and it's an artistic thing that he drives and that defines his character. You couldn't put him on a train because that not who he is – it's part of his character that he drives."

The comedian said camera shots of him driving could not be faked, and pleaded that up to 20 members of the production crew were relying financial on the show being made. The court ultimately decided to ban Coogan from driving for two months, instead of the usual six, which meant the TV show could be made as planned.

He and Rob Brydon have already made four series of The Trip, playing exaggerated versions of themselves as they travel by car together to review restaurants. The show's series, directed by Michael Winterbottom, have been set in the UK, Italy, Spain, and Greece. Coogan and Brydon have both previously expressed a desire to film a fifth series, with Ireland, Wales, and the US suggested as locations. But in February last year Winterbottom publicly ruled out a possibility of another series. However, Coogan's court case reveals a change of heart, with plans already well underway.

Coogan was banned from driving for 28 days and fined £670 in 2016 after he was caught driving at almost twice the speed limit on a 30mph road in Brighton. Coogan has previously expressed his fondness for driving, and in his letter to the court for his latest offence he says he drives around 14,000 miles a year for his work on TV shows, films, and podcasts.

-----------------

What could possibly go wrong while speeding in a large lump of expensive metal?

Bad. And wrong.

Very disappointing from Our Steve.

Track list:
1 Siouxsie and the Banshees – Hong Kong Garden

2 Louis Armstrong – We Have All the Time in the World

3 The Mock Turtles – Wickerman

4 Talking Heads – (Nothing But) Flowers

5 Happy Mondays – Hallelujah

6 Edward Elgar – Variations on an Original Theme, Op. 36: Variation IX "Nimrod"

7 Joni Mitchell – California

8 The Smiths – Panic

Steve Coogan had to pull out of Dr Strangelove at the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre last night with laryngitis. It is not known yet if he will be back for Friday night's performance. Coogan plays four parts in the production which is based on the original 1964 Stanley Kubrick classic film of the same name. Ticket holders received a text message on Thursday evening to inform them that the actor "is recovering from laryngitis and will not perform 13 Feb 2025 19.30 @BGET".

The show runs until February 22nd. Actor Ben Deery, who is known for And Then There Were None, A Street Cat Named Bob and Baldur's Gate III, replaced Coogan on stage for last night's show.

UPDATE: To spare Steve's voice and (half) continue the performance, he shared his four roles with understudy Ben Deery. Great idea.

On the release of Peter Cattaneo's "The Penguin Lessons," let me take a moment to extol the virtues of a comedian and actor, Steve Coogan. Mr. Coogan's career continues full bore, and he was nominated for an Oscar as a screenwriter on Stephen Frears's "Philomena" (2013), but to this critic's lights he was, if not forever snubbed by the Academy, then conspicuously overlooked.

How on earth did its members miss Mr. Coogan's turn as Stan Laurel in John S. Baird's "Stan and Ollie" (2018)? The movie was, in many regards, a boilerplate biopic, but Mr. Coogan did more than exact an impersonation of a beloved comedian. He embodied Laurel with an uncanny, almost scarifying verisimilitude. Retrospect will be kinder to Mr. Coogan than were the panjandrums of Hollywood. It was a great performance.

Mr. Coogan is splendid and sometimes moving in "The Penguin Lessons," though his performance isn't as ambitious. Playing a middle-aged Englishman for whom cynicism is a default mode, the actor coasts on the readymade strength of tart comedic chops. We recognize Mr. Coogan the performer even as he plays a fictional character, in this case Tom Michel, a bedragged teacher of English at a ritzy Buenos Aires boarding school.

Mr. Coogan's character is a cinematic version of a real-life Tom Michel, the author of a 2016 memoir, "The Penguin Lessons: What I Learned From A Remarkable Bird." The book detailed the time Mr. Michel spent in a country beset by political turmoil — the early 1970s and the so-called Dirty War. A military coup and its subsequent abuses serve as a backdrop for a feel-good dramedy about a wise-cracking Briton who rediscovers his moral center and, with that, an enthusiasm for life. It is an ill-fitting congruence.

"The Penguin Lessons" is unapologetic hokum crafted with workmanlike diligence. Mr. Cattaneo is likely best known for directing "The Full Monty" (1997), and there's a similar strain of emotional button-pushing at the core of "The Penguin Lessons." After the Argentinian government has been overturned by the military, our hero goes to Uruguay in the hopes of bedding a comely señorita or two. Instead, he ends up saving a penguin from the debris left behind from an oil spill. Through a series of we-saw-it-coming plot developments, Michel regains his humanity thanks to a cute little bird.

And, damn it, penguins are cute: Even the most hard-hearted among us will cede our standards when the so-called Juan Salvador waddles across the screen. Mr. Cattaneo and editors Robin Peters and Tariq Anwar shamelessly tweak the tricks-of-their-trade in order to anthropomorphize a penguin.

Walt Disney couldn't have done it better, but Uncle Walt would've known that there are better backdrops for a light-hearted morality tale than a country turned asunder by duplicity, kidnapping, torture, and murder. As it is, "The Penguin Lessons" is either a children's movie employing inappropriate means or an adult movie of rank sentimentality.

This is one of those sweet stories aimed at an older audience where its curmudgeonly lead character has to face up to an unresolved trauma and troubling current affairs. It's all going to make him a better person, which is underlined further by his kindness to an unorthodox pet.

In this case, it's a penguin. It's hard to believe this is based on a true story, or even that anyone thought this would make a truly satisfying movie, but here it is — existing. Holding it entirely on his shoulders is Steve Coogan, delivering yet another charming misanthrope/aging lothario to add to his collection.

He's Tom Michell, an English teacher arriving in troubled Argentina in the mid-1970s. The country's on the verge of a brutal military coup and he's just arrived to teach English to local toffee-nosed brats, under the aegis of Jonathan Pryce's schoolmaster.

Michell's not particularly interested in his job anyway, and instead takes a few days off out of the country, avoiding the military violence and going to a nightclub in Uruguay with a Finnish colleague (Björn Gustafsson). He comes back to Argentina with the flightless waterfowl in tow, having rescued it from an oil slick on the beach.

What up to that point had felt like a listless historical dramedy suddenly becomes an unorthodox funny-animal movie — and that's easily the best part. The bird is inexpressive but cute. It has a gift for seducing everyone it comes into contact with, not something you could say about Michell.

What doesn't work is any attempt to plumb Michell's tragic history or the country's socio-political stakes. Not much about this film convinces as the mid-1970s, nor does it succeed in delivering the kind of dread anyone would feel living under a military junta. Michell becomes friendly with his maid and her daughter (Vivian El Jaber and Alfonsina Carrocio), but their cross-cultural emotional connection doesn't convince, either.

The Penguin Lessons has the bad luck of coming out within recent memory of I'm Still Here, with which it shares an era and a setting — a South American country under right wing oppression in the '70s. The earlier film simply does everything so much better than this one. Not to mention, the last thing we need is another story of a white dude dealing with his bullshit while local activists are "disappeared." This isn't The Year of Living Dangerously or Salvador, not even close to as good, nor is it as nuanced as the recent Red Island and its examination of the colonial hangover.

In conclusion, the stuff with the bird is charming, and Coogan can play this kind of character in his sleep — if you need to see one movie this year about a man and his friendship with a penguin, this should be it. Everything else is dire.

Based on Michell's actual experiences while teaching English at an Argentinian boarding school in the 1970s, the picture begins by establishing him as a naïve and troubled man. Michell (played deliciously by Steve Coogan) enters Argentina apparently unaware of the nation's significant political turmoil. He is introduced to his job by the sound of a distant explosion and an armed guard mistaking him for a political dissident. Once he extracts himself from the dicey situation, Michell is informed by the school headmaster (Jonathan Pryce) that the nation is on the verge of a military coup.

Michell is concerned, but the headmaster assures him that the school steers clear of politics because its students come from some of the nation's most affluent families. The rocky beginning would have derailed some, but Michell is packing a good deal of self-loathing, so he plans to ride out the job, doing as little as possible with a difficult group of students. Alas, a weekend trip to Uruguay changes everything.

Hoping to impress a local woman, he rescues a penguin from an oil slick. Michell doesn't get the girl, but the freshly cleaned penguin refuses to leave his side when they return to the beach, so he reluctantly brings the bird to his school, despite the fact that teachers are not allowed pets.

At first, Michell keeps the penguin secret, but it isn't long before others in the community discover its presence. These include a friend and fellow teacher (Björn Gustafsson), the school caretaker (Vivian El Jaber), and her daughter Sofia (Alfonsina Carrocio). They all love the penguin, and – grudgingly – Michell finds himself doing the same, naming it Juan Salvador.

As the characters and animal bond, director Peter Cattaneo skilfully weaves the political turmoil of Argentina into the plot, which boils over when a key figure is unfairly arrested by the militarized government. The film then dances between politics, Michell's efforts in the classroom, and his increasingly close relationship with Juan Salvador. As one might expect given the film's title, the penguin's loyalty and love slowly transforms Michell's outlook on life.

Coogan is particularly good playing grumpy-but-lovable oafs, and he is wonderful throughout. The strong supporting cast doesn't get nearly as much time as Coogan, and it's disappointing to see Pryce so painfully underutilized. But The Penguin Lessons isn't the headmaster's story, so the artistic choice makes sense.

This is a charming film that feels at home next to The Full Monty, which remains Cattaneo's best-known work. I don't expect ThePenguin Lessons to supplant that effort, but its sweet, simple nature should make it a favorite for those who appreciate understated dramedies that pack an uplifting message.

Considering how straightforward the picture is, the 110-minute run is excessive, and there are sequences that Cattaneo could have cut in favor of better establishing the film's background characters. Still, the strengths outweigh the flaws, and The Penguin Lessons reminds us that kindness and love can be found even in dark places, a message that's always worth embracing.

Forrest Hartman is Highbrow Magazine's chief film critic.

via Highbrow Magazine (https://www.highbrowmagazine.com/25285-steve-coogan-shines-uplifting-dramedy-penguin-lessons)

The upcoming film, set in 1976 Argentina and based on a true story, stars Steve as Tom Michell – a disillusioned English teacher who rescues an oil-covered Magellanic penguin.

And amidst the country's political upheaval, the penguin sparks a transformative journey for Tom...

Ultimately, The Penguin Lessons is like Dead Poets Society meets Mr Popper's Penguins meets Rojo.

Directed by Peter Cattaneo and based on Tom Michell's 2015 memoir of the same name, The Penguin Lessons hits Australian cinemas on April 17, 2025.

But ahead of its release, The Weekly sat down with Steve to chat about all things penguins, Judi Dench and Alan Partridge.

Read our full interview with Steve Coogan, star of The Penguin Lessons, below.

The Weekly: The memoir subtly touches on Argentina's political turmoil in the 1970s. How did you and Peter Cattaneo go about balancing this historical backdrop with the lighter, more personal elements of Tom's story in the film?
Steve:  Well, there are lighter touches to this film, but it is dealing with this difficult subject matter. And in actual fact, that was the challenge: to get the tone right.

You know, penguins are very cute and cuddly and make you laugh because they walk in a funny way... So, obviously that makes everything a lot of fun. But there is a serious backdrop to the story.

And so, the challenge for us was when to make things humorous and when to let them breathe, and let people think about things and let them contemplate the sort of poignancy and sadness of the situation in Argentina at that time.

But in some ways, the penguin is what makes it easy to talk about those things. It's sort of a paradox.

The penguin is cute and cuddly. Fascism is quite spiky. But the two together I think, help each other... The penguin is sort of a lightning rod for all these different issues.

Of course, we had to make sure we weren't trivialising this difficult period by having a penguin story in it.

But the fact of the matter is the real Tom Michell did rescue a penguin from an oil slick in 1976, just at the time of the military coup in Argentina – that led to lots of human rights violations, lots of murders, people disappearing, [people being] tortured, and [an] incredibly repressive, wicked regime in Argentina.

We felt that we needed to incorporate that story more into the film. And tell people a little bit about it; this is not just a cuddly penguin film.

There are cuddly penguin elements to it. But it's really about a real world situation with real people who are affected by real events.

It is also about a man who is selfish and narcissistic, [and] disengaged with the world. He doesn't like penguins, doesn't like children, and he is a teacher!

He's a cynic, and it is quite easy to be cynical about the world; certainly at the moment, with what's going on.

We wanted to [tell the story] of someone who rediscovers engaging with the world and that trying to find the good in people is a worthwhile endeavour.

Did you read the memoir in preparation for the role? If so, were there any key scenes that you felt were particularly important to preserve in the film?
I did read the book after [screenwriter] Jeff Pope told me about it.

He'd written the screenplay – I've worked a lot with Jeff in the past; we wrote several films together. This though, he wrote on his own – and he showed it to me and asked me if I might be interested in playing Tom Michell. So, I familiarised myself with [the memoir].

We kept a lot of Tom's story in it. Of him rescuing the penguin and rehabilitating it, and not being quite sure what to do about it and not quite sure where to take it.

Essentially, he accidentally adopted the penguin, which is what we portrayed in the film.

And in terms of the story of the penguin at the school, it was fairly faithful to Tom's story.

But the political situation in Argentina at that time, we sort of brought that to the fore, made that part fold, made that part of the drama. Because it was such a significant event, or series of events in Argentina's history that it felt wrong to ignore it and not make it part of the story.

Also, in reality, Tom Michell is a very decent bloke and he was [a decent bloke] when he rescued the penguin; right through that whole period, he didn't change really.

He was affected by his time with the penguin, and it opened his eyes to better ways to teach and relate to people; relate to the pupils. But he didn't have any kind of an epiphany, in the way the film [version of] Tom Michell does.

In the film, we made Tom far less sympathetic than the real Tom Michell; we made him a cynic. Someone who was disillusioned and disengaged. Because we wanted him to go on a journey where the penguin opens his eyes and he loses that cynicism.

We also invented a backstory about his past that describes and mitigates his behaviour, and [explains] why he is so disengaged from the world.

So, yeah, there's a lot of artistic license in it. There's no doubt about that.

But Jeff does that; when you turn something into a story, something that's based on reality, it becomes a hybrid, where you introduce fiction to make the story more dynamic and more interesting. It's not a documentary.

Did you meet the real Tom Michell at all while preparing to play him?
 No, I didn't meet the real Tom Michell.

He came along when we were shooting it, and we met and talked, um, but it wasn't – I've played about 12 real people in my career on screen and on television.

And, if someone who is public and the audience have a very fixed idea of who that person is in their head, then, of course, I need to faithfully adhere to that as much as possible; I need to sort of acknowledge those people who do know the person I'm portraying.

But with Tom Michell, there is no public perception on who Tom is; apart from his book, he's not a well-known figure. So, we didn't feel like we were encumbered by some towering presence that was fixed in an audience's mind, so, we made him like me.

So, did I meet him beforehand? Uh, no. Simple answer.

What was it like acting alongside a penguin? Were there any unexpected challenges or memorable moments during filming?
 Well, in actual fact, the whole experience of working with penguins was very different from how I imagined it would be.

There's an old adage in show business; WC Fields said, 'Don't work with children or animals.'

But I worked with both of them, as did Peter, and Jonathan Pryce, and everyone else in the film.

So, I anticipated that it might be a little chaotic, and would require application and concentration and all those things.

But the reverse was true because an inadvertent consequence of animal welfare is that, when you're on set, you have to be very quiet and not make loud noises that will cause distress to the penguin.

Everything has to be calm and no antagonism or arguments or things that are notice of negativity, if you like. It meant that people were quiet, and therefore, the atmosphere on set became very serene and calm.

The penguin wouldn't always do what you wanted, but you just had to have patience.

So yeah, it was far more zen than I'd expected it to be.

And funny moments, well, you know, penguins go to the toilet a lot. And so, someone has to follow around the penguin, just basically cleaning up his shit. But you just get used to it.

And people think penguins smell, they don't actually smell at all! They're quite interesting to watch and be alongside.

Every morning I'd go up to them, with my coffee, and talk to them so they could hear my voice. I picked them up, petted them and made them familiar with me, so that they feel comfortable around me and I feel comfortable around them.

So, the entire process was quite enjoyable for me. I'm not squeamish but the penguin only went to the toilet on me once in two months. Which I think is testament to how much respect the penguin had for me as a professional.

While known for your comedic work, you've taken on more dramatic roles in recent years. What motivated this genre swap, and how do you shift between comedic and dramatic roles?

 It was deliberate. I didn't want to just do comedy. I trained as an actor years ago, 35 or more, crikey, uh, nearly 40 years ago; I went to drama school and I got sort of sidetracked into comedy because that's where the work was.

So, I started doing stand up comedy and thought, 'Well, one day I'll try and try and get back to doing what I originally wanted to do.'

And I've just been sort of spending the last 30+ years, slowly weaving my way, circuitously back to being able to just play characters and disappear into roles.

I became a writer as well. I mean, the first dramatic role I did was a role opposite Judi Dench, in a film called Philomena, that I wrote with Jeff Pope. And I didn't particularly want to be a writer, but I thought, 'Well, no one's gonna give me a dramatic role. I'll have to write one for myself and cast myself.'

And, you know, fortunately for me, Judi Dench liked the script and me enough to act opposite me.

So, I did shift things then, and since then I have played more and more dramatic roles and I love it. I love doing comedy; I like the kind of symbiotic relationship between doing drama and comedy.

Sometimes there's an overlap; that's always interesting when you can find really humane, truthful comedy in real situations. And there's a complementary nature of tragedy and comedy that coexist in certain dramas, which I love; it's a real sweet spot.

But there's also things that are very straight down the line and things that are very overtly comical that I do.

I like all of it.

I've just finished a comedy TV series for the BBC – I love to still do that. It makes me laugh. It's enjoyable, it's like a bit of light relief for me when I've been doing things that are more heavy.

For instance, I played the sexual predator Jimmy Savile for the BBC. And that was a very heavy drama.

There was no light relief in that at all. It was pretty difficult to make. It was rewarding professionally, but very difficult.

And, of course, after I'd done that, it was good to go back to comedy because it felt like I could breathe out again after doing such a demanding, dark role. Um, so I'll never not do comedy but I like to move around.

I like the fact that I'm not pigeonholed and that I have some sort of flexibility. I don't want to get bored, so I like to do different things. I'd hate to be stuck in a TV series, doing the same thing over and over.

In a slight pivot, can you tell us anything about How Are You? It's Alan Partridge?
Yes, it's going to be a new series on the BBC this year.

I can't get into too much detail about it because otherwise people won't want to talk about it when it comes out.

Um, but I'm really excited about it. I think it's funny. It's up there with the best stuff we've done. It takes us a long time to make these things. We've spent a long time editing, cutting it together, making sure it's as good as it can be.

And I'm really excited for people to see it... It's really enjoyable; Alan is out and about meeting lots of different people around the country, and he's sort of the barometer of what's going on in Britain at the moment.

Yeah, it's Alan not in the studio [but] out amongst the people.

And finally, the film is obviously titled The Penguin Lessons — but what do you think are the key lessons the film conveys?
 Well, you know, any film has to have a specific lesson. I do hope that people draw something from [The Penguin Lessons].

The idea that engaging in politics, or engaging in the wider world, I should say, and caring about what happens to other people is important. And that cynicism only gets you so far. It's not the answer to everything.

What I like about Tom Michell's journey in this story is that he does re-engage with the world, and he does see some optimism.

I think the only hope really for the future of humankind is for people to try and be kind, or constructive; be kind and useful to the people around them. Human beings are social animals. We are interdependent; we're not lone wolves.

And so, I think Tom Michell is sort of a lone wolf in the beginning; just out for himself. [But] by the end he realises he needs people and some people might need him.

However you read that, I hope people leave the cinema slightly less cynical. It's a lesson in positivity.

The Penguin Lessons will be released in Australian cinemas on April 17, 2025.

Author: Bec Milligan via Women's Weekly (https://www.womensweekly.com.au/news/steve-coogan-the-penguin-lessons/)

"I had no burning desire to do a f—king penguin movie,"says Steve Coogan. "Anyone who has seen my work would not say that's obviously the next step." Yet here he is, having very much done a f—king penguin movie, The Penguin Lessons, and he is sitting in the drawing room of a hotel in Soho to tell us all about it.

As a journalist on a conservative newspaper, one approaches Steve Coogan with a certain degree of trepidation. He is as famous for his Left-wing politics as for his performances. He has supported Extinction Rebellion and the Green Party, campaigned to halt arms sales to Israel and for greater press regulation. He has railed repeatedly and vociferously against the Right-wing press and the "handful of billionaires who control our print media". They are all subjects on which he tends to disagree with The Telegraph.

Still, he also has a lot to promote at the moment, and needs must. A trim, tanned 59, in a casual green suit he has just purchased after wearing it for the photo shoot, Coogan is more relaxed and upbeat than he sometimes comes across. Compared to the blithe Alan Partridge, his enduring comic creation, there has often been an antsy, unsatisfied quality to Coogan.

Perhaps this is a preview of his late era: sober, at peace with Partridge, earnest but not furious about politics, and with a constant supply of interesting work. He has just come off playing Dr Strangelove in the West End and Brian Walden opposite Harriet Walter's Margaret Thatcher in Brian and Maggie. In 2023 he played Jimmy Savile in The Reckoning. Another series of Partridge is imminent, more The Trip is in the works, more films and books and plays and telly. His production company, Baby Cow, has helped launch dozens of comic careers. "I'm never not grateful that I'm making a living," he says. "I've never had a proper job really. I remember student jobs cleaning out vegetable crates for Sainsbury's with horror. I try to remind myself of that. The fact I've got a varied career is great to me."

The Penguin Lessons is an adaptation of Tom Michell's 2015 book, a true story about his time working as an English teacher in Argentina in the 1970s, when he struck up an unlikely relationship with a Magellanic penguin he named Juan Salvador. Coogan plays Michell, a little older than the 20-something of the book; Jonathan Pryce plays the headmaster of the exclusive boarding school where he teaches.

It was a febrile political atmosphere that helped Jeff Pope, the screenwriter, bring Coogan around to the film. The pair have worked together many times, including on the Savile series and on Philomena, the 2013 film about a journalist helping an elderly woman (Judi Dench) who has been searching for her son for 50 years, which earned Coogan Oscar nominations (his only ones so far) for best picture and best adapted screenplay.

"Pope said, 'I'm doing a penguin film,' and I was like, 'What's it about?'" Coogan recalls. "He said, 'Nice guy rescues penguin, it makes him a slightly better teacher.' I said, 'I'll give that a miss.' "But then I went to Buenos Aires and became fascinated by it. It's this strange European city that's been beamed down into South America. I went to the Naval Academy where they kept the disappeared [dissidents who were summarily arrested and held without charge]. It was very bleak. I said to Jeff, 'We need to fold that in. And make him someone who doesn't like penguins and children particularly, just ambivalent.'

"I mean, Martin Sixsmith in Philomena is pretty much the same character," he adds. "Cynical bloke meets Judi Dench, becomes uncynical at the end, and enlightened but not stupid. Ditto [with The Penguin Lessons], but switch Judi Dench for a penguin.

"I had to have something called 'penguin familiarisation'," says Coogan with an expression that suggests he was surprised, 40 years into his career, to experience something genuinely new. "I've never had that in my diary before. I had to learn to stroke them, talk to them, lift them up in the correct way. I jumped in with both feet. Jonathan [Pryce] didn't want to touch the penguin. Another actress wanted to wear rubber gloves to touch it. It's like, get over yourself. It's just an animal."


The penguins helped create a calm atmosphere on set. "Walking into this maelstrom of kids and animals was not the ordeal I thought it was going to be," he says. "You couldn't raise your voice or make loud noises when the penguin was there, which had the unintended consequence of making everyone calm. And the penguin doesn't always do what you want. Eight times out of 10 it will walk in the wrong direction. But you can't be annoyed; it's just being a penguin."

Waddling hurriedly on the heels of The Penguin Lessons will be a more familiar personage. How Are You? With Alan Partridge will air "soon-ish" on the BBC, six half-hour mockumentaries with an unusual starting point for a comedy: mental health. "I think if saying a topic out loud causes you some anxiety, that's a healthy sign," he says. "As long as it's not repulsive, of course. But if you feel that if you handle this badly it will blow up in your face, if you feel like you're trying to defuse an incendiary device, that's a good thing for comedy. As long as you defuse it properly. But I'm excited. I think it's funny."


How Are You? is the latest in Coogan's decade-long collaboration on Partridge with the sibling writing duo Rob and Neil Gibbons. Under their guidance the hapless broadcaster has continually pushed forward into new formats: books, podcasts, travel documentaries, a spoof magazine show. When Coogan's most famous character was created for On the Hour on BBC Radio in 1991, the joke was that he was a reactionary figure out of step with the broadcasting elite. While the world has moved on, Partridge has attempted to move with it, always on the lookout for worlds to infiltrate. Where one might have thought #MeToo was risky for him, he saw it as an opportunity, as it took out most of the competition.

"It's about, where can I get back in, where's the schism in the current social/cultural climate that I can validate myself or make myself relevant or resonant?" Coogan says. "But he's smart enough to know how to bend with the wind. He's a Trojan horse. You can talk about stuff but you have this level of protection." Partridge has attempted to exploit his depression before. Trying to impress a woman in an episode of I'm Alan Partridge, he confesses: "I've had mental health problems [...] I won't bore you with the details but I drove to Dundee in my bare feet."

Coogan has spoken about his "love-hate" relationship with the character, which he sometimes felt he had been "saddled" with. But after more than 30 years, Partridge's longevity has become an asset. His career has straddled the birth of the internet and social media and the fragmentation of audiences. He emerged from a monolithic TV culture, in which Saturday night game shows attracted audiences of many millions.

"I don't think he would come to the fore now," Coogan says. "Uniquely in comedy, because your audience is familiar with the character, people feel like Partridge is theirs and they understand him best. You can explore topics that would normally be off-piste or wide of the mark. It gives you this superpower that has only been arrived at through 30 years of exposure. We don't want to jump the shark. One argument is to stop; that way you protect the canon of stuff. But we like doing it. There's a myth that you can't be funny about certain things. I think you can be funny about absolutely everything. There's no such thing as a no-go area in comedy."

This helps explain Partridge's broad appeal. Not everyone sees him in the same way. "At a live show there was a party of firefighters on a work outing," he says. "They said, 'We love Alan, he tells it like it is.' Sometimes he says things we agree with, but we won't tell you what they are. He started out reactionary and Middle England but then we evolved him into being socially progressive but economically conservative. Cameron-esque. Touchy-feely, but not when it comes to the bank balance." What would Alan make of Nigel Farage? "Fifteen years ago I'd have said he'd like him, but he's antsy about it now. Farage is like Bitcoin. You don't know if his currency will be really valuable or worth nothing."

The differences between Coogan and his alter ego are becoming harder to notice. "One morning shooting this last series I got to my trailer and there was a checked shirt hanging up for Partridge that was identical to the shirt I was wearing. It was literally the same shirt, hanging up for Partridge to put on. I still had to take mine off and put that one on, psychologically, so I could feel like it wasn't me. I sent it to the writers and said, 'The singularity has happened.' "I used to put crow's feet on him," he adds, reaching for the sides of his eyes. "We're very unspecific about his age; I might pass him. I don't mind." See: relaxed.

Rob Brydon and Coogan are also working on a fifth series of The Trip, the series in which they play fictionalised versions of themselves travelling around and eating in the world's best restaurants, although nothing has been formally confirmed. The news broke in an unusual fashion when Coogan used working on it as an excuse to escape a driving ban. He can't say much about it. "I don't want to be rapped on the knuckles," he says. "But The Trip is not over. It will rear its head in some form. Something's going to happen."

One of the conceits in The Trip is "Steve Coogan"'s longing to be taken seriously as an actor, ideally in America, while being constantly borne back to Alan Partridge. He refers frequently to his work with famous American actors, his Oscar nominations, his Baftas. He bellows "Aha!" into the wind. The script delights in the narcissism of the small differences between his and Brydon's characters, their relative statuses within entertainment, their competitive impressions.

Partridge, too, is hyper-attuned to anything that might grant him a sense of superiority, if only in his own eccentric world view: the blazers, the driving gloves, the desperation to be granted another series or invited to Esther McVey's barbecue.

Coogan has always been sensitive to class. He was born in October 1965 and grew up in north Manchester, one of six children of an IBM engineer and a housewife, Irish immigrants. "Depending on your point of view I was upper working class or lower middle class," he says. "I can't be written off as a Hampstead liberal. My father had a respectable career. Our aspiration was not material, it was to try to be a better person. My dad bought an encyclopaedia before he bought a colour TV. I'm not easily pigeonholed. I'm not some privileged Lefty, neither am I a horny-handed son of the soil. I'm sort of in the middle somewhere: I think that's my superpower."

His politics are less ambivalent. He is feeling "not great" about Keir Starmer's run as PM. "I understand there is no single virtuous way to be Prime Minister," he says. "But when you look at the things he did as DPP and an advocate, you think, 'What happened?' He has to be a pragmatist. The one thing Margaret Thatcher did do was offer an ideology. It was specific and clear. That's not Keir Starmer. Populism is the fault of the centre-ground politics, the failure to deliver for those people.

"You can't be all things to all people. Sometimes you have to nail your colours to the mast and accept that some people won't like what you've done. I feel everything is a strategic political decision. Sincerity is at the bottom of a long list of priorities."

Press regulation is another long-standing cause of Coogan's. He was a witness during the 2011 Leveson Inquiry, after he was set up in what he called a "sociopathic sting" by the News of the World. Earlier this year, Prince Harry became the latest high-profile figure to settle out of court with Rupert Murdoch's organisations. "Murdoch has never had to have his day in court," Coogan says. "I accepted a settlement from News International and the Mirror Group for fairly substantial sums of money, which was very nice for me.

"When you have unlimited funds like Rupert Murdoch you can buy your way out of justice. With the Mirror Group they kept offering me more money. I kept saying I wanted to go to court. Eventually I got to the point where they said if you go to court and don't get what they've offered, you'll be liable for the entire costs. That's when I could have lost my house. Intrusion into anyone's life is wrong, even Prince Harry. Despite the soap opera that is the Royal family, it took guts for Prince Harry to take on the press."

Coogan is relaxed about the prospect of turning 60. "It's weird, when I started out I was 22 and everyone said, 'God, you're so young,'" he says. "Then one day they stopped saying it. If I go to east London and eat I know pretty much anywhere I go I'll be the oldest person in the room. But I live in Lewes [East Sussex]. One of the most gratifying things was that when they had the Covid vaccine I was one of the last ones to get it, because I was one of the youngest people in Lewes."

Since his brush with tabloid notoriety Coogan is more careful about his private life. His daughter, Clare, 28, is a chef and food stylist, in a relationship with the actor/comedian Jamie Demetriou, star of Stath Lets Flats. The Christmas table must be intimidating. He has been sober for years, after well-publicised problems with booze and drugs, but doesn't regret his wild days.

"I think the most interesting people are people who partied once, rather than people who've never partied," he says. "I don't regret it at all. There's levels of responsibility. I regret some things if you get into the nitty-gritty, but I don't particularly want to. The Dylan Thomas myth that you have to be self-destructive to be creative is nonsense. The complexity of that conflict in the human heart between being hedonistic and selfish and instant gratification, versus contemplative delayed gratification, that's the stuff of life. That conflict is the stuff of comedy: wanting to do the right thing but doing the wrong thing."

There are other benefits to ageing too.

"As you get older, you're less bothered by what people think of you," he says. "I don't do social media. I don't need to know if someone's slagging me off. I don't want to be a grumpy old man. You get more comfortable in your own skin. Your priorities change. And you do get happier."

He sounds surprised, but if a penguin can teach an important lesson, so can experience.

Steve Coogan has credited his lower-middle class upbringing as helping him get ahead in comedy. The Alan Partridge creator said he first realised his background was a 'superpower' when he went to drama school. He said was initially 'intimidated' among the middle-class students there because 'I hadn't read Stanislavski I just watched telly'. But them he realised: 'They were good at talking about it [acting] but not good at doing it. And not very observant, they couldn't write working-class dialogue.The only working class people they knew was their plumber. But I recognised those speech patterns, and soaked it all up  like a sponge. I went from being quite intimidating to thinking I had a superpower.'

Speaking at the BBC Comedy Festival in Belfast yesterday he also said that sitting at the junction of two classes helped as he started his comedy career. He said he felt like an 'arriviste' when he first started on the circuit.

'I came from Manchester and I did these variety shows with Jimmy Tarbuck and shiny suits', he said. 'I was 22, 23 and that wasn't what I wanted to do. I wanted like Stephen Fry. I wanted to be in that world. So I tried to meet the right people  – Armando Iannucci, Patrick  Marber, I made contacts with these people in London. 'But my Manchester gang were much more grounded, like Caroline Aherne and John Thomson, Henry Normal, so I sort of had this northern gang and this sort of clever Oxbridge gang, and I sort of sat some of the middle. Both were fundamental in a way, because the Oxford gang was obviously ambitious, and my northern gang made sure I made people laugh.'

Coogan was at the event to talk about his next project How Are You? It's Alan (Partridge), which was exclusively screened to the Belfast audience.

Speaking of his alter-ego's longevity, he said: 'The reason he still has currency is that - especially over the last 10,15 years with the Gibbons [brothers Neil  and Rob, who he now writes with] — we use it as an avatar to talk about very difficult things, which are ordinarily spiky or unpalatable. We have Alan try to be relevant by talking about, say, transgender [issues]. The character has evolved from being a reactionary Little Englander to try to lean into, for want of a better word, woke thinking. or enlightened thinking. He's probably made a judgement its better to lean into it - it's probably an entirely cynical decision on his part. I like characters who, however obnoxious they are, have some vulnerability do you cut them some slack.You run out of steam if they are unrelenting awful.

'I used to do live stand-up comedy quite a lot, and occasionally tour. That's really quite useful, because there's nowhere to hide. There's no point being clever getting the audience to nod their head sagely, because that doesn't work.  It's a rude awakening. I try to marry stuff that might be more esoteric that makes me laugh with stuff that makes the crowd laugh. But generally you shouldn't try to second-guess an audience. With comedy it's very hard to quantify and commodify, you just have to seek out people who are funny for reasons you don't understand. Someone like Tim Key is just funny in a way I don't fully understand.'

Responding to BBC comedy chief Jon Petrie's comments earlier in the festival  that big budgets don't necessarily make comedies any funnier, Coogan said: 'Limited budget is a good thing – necessity is the mother of invention. 'If you have a lot of resources then you can make bad decisions because  you can do anything. When you have  budget constraints, then you have to think inventively to solve problems.'

A case in point was I'm Alan Partridge, set largely in a Travel Tavern. Coogan said his inspiration there was asking: 'Where have people not set comedies before? That middle management world of chain hotels, company cars, and so  on. There's something so unromantic about that  functional relationship, a bit soulless, especially for someone who wants to aspire to something with more depth. I was thinking about characters like Tony Hancock and Basil Fawlty and Captain Mainwaring. They're all people who feel like they should be more recognised, that they're under-appreciated people. It's a common denominator: British people who are failures who have something you admire, some feeling, some compassion for. They're misjudgments by people who are weak and misguided, not just not complete idiots.'

Coogan was asked about a memorable scene from that series when he yelled 'Dan!' numerous times across a car park. He said: ' I don't think we had a fixed number of "Dans" - but more than people think is wise. 'When you're writing it's good to challenge yourself. To wonder if you can keep going with it and make people uncomfortable the go past that  to make it funny again. It's quite risky, and you're not supposed to do it!'

He also said he took to heart a comment he heard from vintage scriptwriting duo Ian La Frenais  and Dick Clement, who said ' if you make a plot that's too complex, you're hostage to that in the edit'. 'Comedy comes from character and having a simplish plot,' Coogan said – making an exception for farce.  ' I'm more intersected in those microscopic awkward moments of real life,' he said.

Coogan accepted he would never be able to create another character that could replicate Partridge's success, saying: I wouldn't like to say here;'s the new Alan Partridge, I'm never going to match that.' But he also said he had a soft spot for Saxondale, saying: 'I do miss doing him and I do hanker to reinvent him in some way. He's a character I like because he's apolitical but he's antiestablishment and that feels quite "now".'

"I do miss doing him and I do hanker to reinvent him in some way"

Then get on and bloody well make Saxondale 3 please Steve!

It's now been 34 years since Alan Partridge, Steve Coogan's most celebrated creation, first reported for On the Hour from the Lord's pavilion at Glamorgan versus Essex ("Well, Graham Gooch, all out for 36 – that was quick, you must be pleased") and announced himself as a sports correspondent of rare distinction.

Since then, Partridge has conquered chat shows with Knowing Me Knowing You, bounced back in I'm Alan Partridge, reconquered local radio in Mid-Morning Matters, starred in his own film, and spread his wings into standalone documentaries, before finally – finally – getting back on primetime BBC territory with This Time, in 2019.

Most recently, he has been in Stadium Partridge mode: the last proper Partridge outing was the 25-date Stratagem live tour in 2022, and he also surprised Coldplay fans at Wembley Stadium by singing Abba's "Knowing Me, Knowing You" that summer. But, for Partridge purists, his podcast From the Oasthouse is where the most concentrated hits of mundane, wittering, self-doubting Partridge are to be found – and now he's back for the fourth series.

"I've done live comedy – for my sins – and sometimes you just have to do that kind of big, crowd-pleasing type stuff," 59-year-old Coogan says over Zoom. "I mean, you throw a bone for your peer group in the audience occasionally, so they don't go, 'Why has he gone super-broad?' But you try and get the balance right and be accessible at the same time."

The podcast, by contrast, is where he and long-term co-writers Neil and Rob Gibbons can cut loose. "We don't really care how specific or potentially alienating we get," Coogan says. "So that's really enjoyable."

In one episode, he's trapped in his assistant Lynn's porch while trying to deliver a school minibus (read: lightly refurbished fish van) with his face on the side of it to a team of young skateboarders; in another, he's packing a go-bag to hide out in the wilds should he ever be cancelled. Coogan takes this series to some subtly heartbreaking places, too – hearing Partridge contemplate what would happen to him without Lynn, who thinks she might have cancer, you could be listening to a vintage Alan Bennett radio play.

"If  I wasn't Alan Partridge," says Coogan, in what's difficult not to hear as a Partridgean turn of phrase, "I would listen to it. Sometimes, I'm actually slightly envious of people who get to just sort of hear it unfiltered and unmitigated."

Coogan's been busy outside of Partridge of late, too. He popped up in the Joker sequel last year, and played an English teacher in junta-era Argentina in The Penguin Lessons (alongside said flightless bird) this year – and Labour MP and broadcaster Brian Walden in Channel 4's Brian and Maggie, opposite Dame Harriet Walter's Margaret Thatcher. Soon, he'll play former Republic of Ireland football manager Mick McCarthy in Saipan, a dramatisation of McCarthy's infamous stick-it-up-your-bollocks bust-up with captain Roy Keane at the 2002 World Cup.

Partridge, however, will always be there, yomping the Norfolk countryside until his next media commitment. " We never want to do it unless we want to do it, if that makes sense, because it will show," he says. "I believe that it will betray itself, and it will jump the shark. That's what everyone's always worried about, which is not a bad pressure to have, to be honest with you."

After an extended break, Partridge will be back on TV soon, too. Alan Partridge: How Are You? will see Partridge delving into mental health, and "trying to find some sort of meaning".

"Whether it is real or not, we're not quite sure," says Coogan. "I think he's probably not sure whether his trying to find meaning in life is what he really thinks, or what he thinks he ought to think."

That malleability is what has kept him such a potent character. Partridge was, once, an unreconstructed Shires Tory. But for the past 15 years, he's been trying to get with the programme. " Early on, looking at it, he's quite sort of two-dimensional – not not funny, but not as sophisticated," Coogan says. "And it starts feeling a bit like pulling the legs off an insect, sort of saying, 'What an idiot'. But you sort of run out of steam with that after a while. It has to be more than that."

But the tide has turned from David Cameron's brand of husky-hugging Conservatism, deeply appreciated by Partridge. With Reform on the march and our politics in a decidedly darker place, what will North Norfolk's most storied broadcaster do now?

"He will just ride the wave," says Coogan. "I mean, in some ways, he's a bit like Keir Starmer: 'What direction is the wind going in? Which way is this going? Let me quickly push my way to the front and look like I was leading you.'"

Ah yes, Starmer. Coogan is a longstanding Labour supporter, and even interviewed Tony Blair in character at the 1996 Labour Party Conference. (After Coogan and Armando Iannucci missed their first flight to Manchester, Coogan just about made the next one but had to fly in full Partridge costume, complete with briefcase.) But a year since the election, Blair's heir has not endeared himself.

" I think that almost everything is just political. I don't think he has any ideology. I think every decision he makes is, 'What is the most politically expedient thing to say and think?' And it makes me admire – which I never thought I'd say – Margaret Thatcher for at least having an ideology and a point of view." He's really warming to this theme, so animated he's nearly out of his swivel chair. "And a vision. I didn't agree with it, but at least she had one. He doesn't have one. So I am not an ally."

Such pointed asides will soon find another outlet. Six years after what was thought to be their last testy lunch, Coogan and Rob Brydon will get back together for a fifth series of The Trip – which debuted in 2010 – their semi-improvised ramble through Europe with 24 Hour Party People and A Cock and Bull Story director Michael Winterbottom.

A mixture of reality-blurring play with Coogan and Brydon's public personas and competitive impressions of Michael Caine, in retrospect it looks like the point at which Coogan found a way of reckoning with Partridge and moving on.

This time, they're heading to Scandinavia – that's about all Coogan's sure of at the minute. It is, he thinks, a bit like when a band swears they're splitting up after a farewell tour, then you start seeing them on festival bills a few years later. " The band had gone off and done their solo projects and didn't realise they were actually better together," he says, grinning. "Like Oasis, on a smaller scale."

Arguments that go round and round, while Coogan and Brydon slowly open up new angles on each other's insecurities and anxieties, is sort of the whole idea of The Trip. But it felt like he and Brydon were hitting a limit after a while. " I said, I think after the third one, 'We're just repeating ourselves, aren't we? It's the same material – it's not the same type of material, it's literally the same material.'"

This, it turns out, was music to director Michael Winterbottom's ears. " You go, 'But this is just going around in circles', and he says, 'Yes, but life goes round in circles'."

This time, though, the focus has shifted; where once he and Brydon were midlife strivers looking for new highs while trying not to think about youth having left them, this time they're both approaching 60 and thinking about their legacies. It's new ground from which to fire Roger Moore impressions at each other. "We don't feel like we're flogging a dead horse," Coogan says.

That uncertain gap between the actual Coogan and Brydon and the versions which bickered with each other was always where The Trip found its comic energy. But even if there's a certain overlap between Coogan and Partridge ("You and your fucking Venn diagram..." he recalls Brydon sighing after another explanation of his relationship with the character) it's the gap between him and his characters that still appeals to his sense of mischief.

" You can sort of talk about anything, but in a way that I couldn't, you know. Gender politics, fine. Black Lives Matter, absolutely fine for Alan to go there. It feels a bit like you're stealing apples from someone's garden. It feels a bit naughty.

" If you're being cynical about me," Coogan says, grinning, "you might say it's plausible deniability."

The new series of 'From the Oasthouse' is available to stream on any podcasting platforms now

Via inews (https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/steve-coogan-keir-starmer-makes-me-admire-thatcher-3779353)

Quote from: Miguel Wilkins on Jun 30, 2025, 02:54 PM

Steve Coogan's Criterion Picks

Someone's ruddy brilliantly wrote in the comments:

"Coogan-a-thon schedule

9AM The Lady Vanishes (break for a pee - at least three minutes)
11;05 The Spy who Came in from the Cold  (Strawberry Nesquilk)
13;15 The Servant  (Fishcakes)
15;35 His Girl Friday (Dump? 20 minutes)
18;15 Klute (tin of Directors)
20;20 A Matter of Life and Death (put the roast on as soon as you see the stairway)"

Josh Halliday North of England editor
Sat 5 Jul 2025 08.00 CEST

Steve Coogan has accused Keir Starmer's Labour government of a "derogation of all the principles they were supposed to represent" and said they were paving the way for the "racist clowns" of Reform UK.

The actor, comedian and producer said the party he had long supported was now for people "inside the M25" and described the prime minister's first year in power as underwhelming.

"I knew before the election he was going to be disappointing. He hasn't disappointed me in how disappointing he's been," he said.

Coogan spoke to the Guardian ahead of an address to the annual Co-op Congress in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, where he called for locally led grassroots movements to assemble across Britain and take back control from "multinational institutions and billionaires".

The Bafta-winning actor, best known for his Alan Partridge persona, has backed Labour in several recent general elections but switched his support last year to the Green party.

Coogan, 59, said he "agreed wholeheartedly" with the statement released by former Labour MP Zarah Sultana on Thursday night, when she announced she was quitting the party to co-lead a left-wing alternative with Jeremy Corbyn.

Sultana said Britain's two-party system "offers nothing but managed decline and broken promises" and that Labour had "completely failed to improve people's lives".

Coogan said: "Everything she said in her statement I agree wholeheartedly. I wish I'd said it myself." However, he added that he was "reserving judgment" as to whether to support the new party at future elections if they field candidates.

The Philomena star said he did not blame working people for voting for Nigel Farage's Reform UK.

"The success of Reform, I lay squarely at the feet of the neoliberal consensus, which has let down working people for the last 40 years and they're fed up," he said. "It doesn't matter who they vote for, nothing changes for them.

"Keir Starmer and the Labour government have leant into supporting a broken system. Their modus operandi is to mitigate the worst excesses of a broken system and all that is is managed decline. What they're doing is putting Band-Aids on the gash in the side of the Titanic."

In his most strongly worded attack on Labour yet, Coogan described the party's priorities in the last year as "a derogation of all the principles they were supposed to represent".

"We have a Labour government and it's no different from a Conservative government in neglecting ordinary people," he added.

"I think Labour governs for people inside the M25 – that's who they're preoccupied with, and gesture politics. Every decision that comes from central government these days to me looks political and strategic and nothing to do with sincerity or any kind of firmly held ideological belief."

Without meaningful action to improve the lives of ordinary people, Coogan said, both Labour and the Conservatives would face electoral oblivion.

"They'll pave the way for the only alternative, which is a racist clown. Reform couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery but if there's no alternative you understand why working people will make that choice," he said.

The actor is a supporter of Middleton Co-operating, a community-led initiative based in his home town, just outside Manchester, which aims to provide locally run energy, banking, social care, housing and other schemes.

He said the government's focus on attracting investment to major cities had created a "doughnut of neglect" with poorer communities "ethnically cleansed".

"You look at Manchester, you look at Liverpool, and you go: 'Wow, look at these shiny new buildings' and everything looks clean, there's no crisp bags flying about in the street," he said.

"The disenfranchised people who lived there before are not there any more. They've been ethnically cleansed. They've been booted out to the next poor area. So who's benefiting?"

Coogan urged Labour to breathe life back into towns by empowering grassroots groups to take over neglected buildings, using compulsory purchase orders for example.

"It's not just the fact that people are disempowered and feel like they have no autonomy. It's compounded by the fact that these people, these multinationals, are enabled and supported by the government to keep their foot on the neck of working people," he said.

It was "perfectly understandable" for working people to vote for Farage's Reform in large parts of England, where many voters feel disenfranchised, Coogan said.

"But if any government wants to address that extremism, what they have to do is tackle the root cause," he added.

"The root cause is poverty and economic decline in the post-industrial landscape, especially in the north. If Labour addressed that problem, Reform would go away – all their support would dissipate."

Via Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2025/jul/05/steve-coogan-accuses-keir-starmer-labour-of-paving-way-for-reform-uk)

Steve Coogan is reading the menu in the grand surroundings of Rochdale town hall.

"I'll have the cheese and onion pie - stick to my roots," he says with a grin and tongue ever-so-slightly in cheek. But the Alan Partridge and Philomena star is not visiting the birthplace of co-operation just to try the local delicacy.

He's here because he wants to talk about how he believes co-operatives can change the world. Later that day the Middleton-raised comedian will give a talk at the 155th UK Co-op Congress. That's because the 59-year-old has recently become an ambassador for local co-op Middleton Co-operating. And after years of disillusionment with politics, the Oscar-nominated actor says it has reinvigorated his belief in the power of people to change things for the better.

'It made me start looking at the whole notion of bottom up politics. Half my family still live in Middleton so I became involved in (local community centre) the Lighthouse Project and it helped me lose my cynicism towards local people being able to change their circumstances," he said. "I saw how the people who used it and ran it treated each other with respect and how it led to them improving their quality of life. That galvanised me and made me start looking at the whole notion of bottom up politics."

From there Coogan, who grew up in Alkrington in the late 60s and 70s and attended Cardinal Langley High School, got involved with Middleton Co-operating. The group has recently opened an arts centre, has set up an tenants union for people with housing problems and wants to establish a community-run energy company.

"The way things are set up at the moment the economy just doesn't work for people," said Middleton Co-operating volunteer Mark Fraser, as he sits alongside Coogan and explains the group's goals. The Industrial Revolution was exploiting people right on their doorstep. When you look at really important parts of people's day-to-day lives - transport, housing, energy - that money is getting sucked out of the local economy into wealthy individuals and corporations who don't really care about what's going in our town. Our purpose is to rewire and transform the local economy so it works better for local people. So the things that are most important are more-and-more owned and controlled locally for the benefit of local people."

And Coogan believes their efforts can help revive the 'typical post-industrial town'.

"There's a disillusionment with the failure of successive governments to change the circumstances of people in towns like Middleton," he said. "But rather than thinking 'You can't change the world, there's nothing you can do', I found myself thinking 'You can make a difference'. You can do that by empowering local people and supporting them in having autonomy over their own lives and being able to own and share the buildings and facilities they use."

The Rochdale Pioneers

And in those ambitions they have some have pretty illustrious forerunners. In 1844 a small number of mill workers, who would become known as the Rochdale Pioneers, established the world's first co-operative at a shop on Toad Lane and laid down the seven principles that still guide the movement today. The idea was that the working-class could come together to combat the high prices and often poor quality food and goods that were sold by the unscrupulous industrialists of the time. At the same time every member had a say in how the organisation was run and was entitled to a stake in the profits. Within a decade, there were more than 1,000 similar co-operatives spread across the UK. And Coogan says there are clear parallels between the situation faced by the Pioneers and those faced by working-class people today.

"The Industrial Revolution was exploiting people right on their doorstep," he said. "People had jobs, but they were very poorly-paid so they unionised and co-operatives emerged. We are now in a service economy and the fact is we have these parasitic global organisations that come in and suck the lifeblood out of what's left of a struggling economy. It's pushing back against that and empowering people. For the last 40 years successive government have failed ordinary working people. People can't be bothered to get involved with politics because they think it's pointless.

"When they do vote they vote for Reform because, as far as they're concerned, the unknown and the abyss of Reform is more attractive that the devil they know. I understand it, what I'd like to do is say there's a better way - get involved. You can get a visceral satisfaction from a cynical attack on something you loathe, but it doesn't really change anything. [Middleton Co-operating] is progressive. There's an optimism coupled with an achievability that is very attractive to me. It doesn't feel like pie in the sky, it feels real and hopeful."

On being drawn back to his Middleton roots

"When I come back I sleep at my mother's house in the room I was born in. And when I run to Heaton Park in the morning I run through the places I played as a child. You look around at the people and see how they've grown, the people who were once children getting older. It acts as a touchstone."

On meeting Liam Gallagher for the first time and the Oasis singer's hilarious story of their wild night out

"I met him in County Mayo at Knock Airport and he said 'Come meet me for a drink at Ashford Castle'. I went and he wasn't there. He'd done a bunk. I checked into the hotel and the next day I went down to pay my bill and they said 'Oh, Mr Gallagher has picked it up'. And I was like 'Where is he?!'. Then he showed up and said 'Ahh, I had to go see my aunty, but can you come out tonight?' So we went out to the local pub. I was sat in the corner and he walked in in the most ostentatious manner possible. He span round, got down on one knee and did a peace sign with both his hands. The whole pub turned and looked at him. Within about five minutes it was absolutely rammed. People were hassling him and he's going 'Get out of my face'.

So we went back to this big posh hotel. It had a dungeon and in there they had a load of American tourists listening to this Irish woman playing the harp. They said (adopts Irish accent) 'Can we just say, we have Liam Gallagher from The Oasis here. Will you get up and sing us a song?' And he went 'No, but he will' and pointed at me. So I got up and sang Green, Green Grass of Home - not It's Not Unusual as Liam said, he's incorrect. I did it as Tom Jones, as a crooner, in a way that would make him laugh.

"He was laughing and all these middle-aged American tourists, who in 1997 had no idea who Oasis were, were telling him off, telling him to be quiet. Then we got very, very drunk and I did fall asleep on, not in, the same bed as him. We woke up together. He says I said 'Ah ha!' but I think that might be an embellishment. I think I probably said something like 'Good morning Liam', how was it for you?' "[Liam's version] is not far off, but as John Ford said 'If it's a choice between truth and legend, print the legend'."

On the Kneecap and Bob Vylan Glastonbury controversy

"Kneecap are the closest thing we have to punk rock at the moment. You're not being a proper disruptor if you're not annoying people and causing offence. You can't have a polite punk band, user-friendly punk rock. And I don't share the criticism that was levelled at other performers at Glastonbury. I have made my views clear on that in the past, where my loyalties lie."

Via Manchester Evening News (https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/steve-coogan-oasis-kneecap-co-31994115)

My agent has a sign above his office desk. It pictures a jaunty, smiling man with a speech bubble which says simply, "Remember, don't be a c***." A simple piece of advice, which Peter Sellers seems to have never heeded.

An emotional tornado of talent caused havoc to all who crossed his path. Tortured genius or spoilt narcissist − depends on your point of view. There is a school of thought that says there is an inherent dysfunction that goes hand in hand with clowning. I've sometimes been compared to the troubled, funny man. It's usually meant as a compliment but makes me feel uneasy. I can't think of any of his brilliant performances without thinking of the cost to other people. And he was brilliant.

At his best in I'm All Right Jack or Dr Strangelove, and as his most successful character, Inspector Clouseau, he flew. A perfect combination of intuitive ability to inhabit these absurd but recognisable people with the technical skill honed from years in his craft, trying to emulate his heroes, Stan Laurel and Alec Guinness – although even Guinness would find his way into the crosshairs of Sellers' sniper rifle – or more accurately, blunderbuss.

Sellers. Shall we call him Peter? It might help him a bit.

Peter took the well-worn path through ENSA (the organisation which provided entertainment for the armed forces in World War II). It produced a welter of British talent which dominated through the heyday of radio and on to television in the 1960s and 1970s. It's easy to forget that radio was an intrinsic part of the fabric of British life. Before the internet, before video recorders or even audio cassette recorders were available to mere mortals, the only way to catch your favourite show was to be next to the wireless (radio, the original wireless), or for me, sitting in front of the television, when your favourite show was broadcast, and The Goon Show was a favourite for everyone.

Arriving at the end of rationing and sober post-war austerity, it was like punk rock in a world of bland pop. Anarchic, disruptive avant-garde, but with enough silly voices to make it popular and inviting. A television in every household was still a decade away and radio could command the kind of audience figures which have all but vanished for any broadcast entertainment today. I caught the tail end of the pre-digital age when I arrived at the BBC in 1991 with my own radio show.

We recorded the first series of Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge at the Paris Studios in Lower Regent Street, London. As I stood at the microphone performing my comedy character in front of a live audience (they laughed, by the way!), I remember seeing images of the Goons lining the walls, often pictured huddled around that iconic BBC microphone. I remember inviting the ghost of Sellers to haunt the studio where he had recorded The Goon Show and bring us luck. I'm still performing that character 34 years later, but that first show, surrounded by those images of Sellers, has stayed with me.

Standing on the shoulders of giants. I was too young by a good 20 years to have heard of the Goons, but as fortune would have it, my dad was a great fan. He owned a handful of the shows on vinyl, along with Bob Newhart, Shelley Berman, and Mel Brooks. Later additions, courtesy of my big brothers, were Monty Python, Billy Connolly, Jasper Carrott and Mike Harding.

As a child in the early 1970s, I didn't fully understand the content but I understood the comedic power of funny voices and how they make people laugh. By this time, of course, Peter was an international film star and the Pink Panther films were at the height of their success. My memory of him at that time is of the slim, tanned, denim-clad, happy, shiny guest on the BBC's Parkinson. He seemed to bear no relation to the black-and-white photograph of a slightly podgy short-back-and-sides demob fella looking back at me from the record cover. How could he exist in two worlds?

And yet, he did. Looking back, he seemed to step effortlessly from the monochromatic, joyless, overcast world of the 1950s and into the warm Kodak glow of the late 1960s, of Twiggy, the longer-haired Beatles and, err, "sexual liberation"? He left the old world and joined the new. He appealed to everyone – a classless, joyous sophistication. He made comedy glamorous as well as funny. He seemed to have everything an adolescent boy would see as the key to a happy life − money, fast cars, beautiful women, cool clothes, a bit of bounce to the hair, probably expensive aftershave, and always smiling.

But... is there a but?

Yes, I'm afraid there is. Peter spent a lifetime thinking you could find contentment and peace by accessorising yourself into the kind of image you would see in a glossy magazine advert. He swapped his soul for stuff. Lots of stuff. Perhaps he thought if there was enough shiny stuff, the light would drown out the darkness. But it was never quite shiny enough. Like a petulant, spoilt child, Peter never learnt how to behave. I blame the parents. He was selfish, narcissistic and by all accounts, a terrible father.

On one occasion he returned home with a brand-new Bentley only to find stone chips on the paintwork. Witnessing his father's displeasure, his five-year-old son, Michael, found a tin of house paint and dutifully painted over the blemishes. On discovering this clumsy attempt to please his father, Peter proceeded to smash all of his son's toys.

The kindest thing you can say about this repulsive behaviour is that he was mentally ill. Certainly, today it is easy to see his behaviour as sociopathic. He wrought havoc on all those he encountered, on both a professional and personal level. Women he saw as an acquisition, children an inconvenience. He passed on his dysfunction to his widow, Lynne Frederick, a talented actress who never really recovered from her encounter. And there are countless other tales of woe, recounted in Roger Lewis' forensically insightful biography.

He never learnt that happiness comes from being a functioning human being. From understanding that kindness, unconditional love and the generosity of the human spirit are where contentment lies. But the darkness in his soul is what saves him, because he did have a soul. You see it even now in his performances. The inadequacies and failures of his greatest roles betray a loneliness, a poignancy, that lies at the heart of all great comedy.

There are so many sublime moments where Peter captures the comedic tragedy of human existence. We literally cry with laughter, that guttural, visceral noise we make as an audience, a crowd of strangers. Shining a light on the human condition we seem to know each other clearly for a second, then suddenly the light fades and we forget what it was that we saw. These moments save us from ourselves. I suppose what I mean to say is that we all like a laugh. And so did Peter – he just wasn't very nice.

But when the damage he inflicted and all the bad feelings become fading memories, his comic genius will remain with us, immortalised. Perhaps the best way to remember him is to think of him in those early days. The young man, at the Grafton Arms pub in London, meeting with his comedy friends, before the fame, the money, and the adulation, creating and sharing. Laughing.


1. Lionel Meadows, Never Let Go (1960)
There are plenty of roles in which Sellers played it relatively straight, but the only certifiably villainous part he played was as Lionel Meadows, a crooked car dealer, in this gritty slice of late 1950s-set London pulp noir. The film itself is nothing particularly unusual, but Sellers' performance is a fascinating exercise in malevolence and nastiness.
He'd played other buffoonish baddies before, in pictures such as The Ladykillers and (gloriously) the strident shop steward in I'm All Right Jack, but it was as Meadows that he turned his gift for observation and imitation inside out. According to his then-wife Anne Howe, Sellers went "full Method", becoming a brooding and even violent presence at home. The unlovely results are up there on the screen.

2. Clare Quilty, Lolita (1962)
The first of Sellers's two collaborations with Stanley Kubrick was only a supporting role − he's on screen a total of around 10 minutes − but his appearance as the vainglorious paedophile Humbert Humbert's nemesis is still one of his finest achievements. Kubrick understood that Sellers was not just a master of disguise but someone who buried what little identity he had under make-up, accents and costumes, so casting him as a fundamentally empty − and deeply sinister − figure was both logical and near-genius.

3. Dr Strangelove, Dr Strangelove (1964)
Sellers famously played three parts in his second Kubrick film (and was supposed to play a fourth, as Coogan did on stage, but injured himself beforehand). He's excellent as the hapless stiff-upper-lip British RAF officer Lionel Mandrake, and hilarious as the incompetent US President Merkin Muffley, trying vainly to placate his drunken Russian counterpart.
Yet it's his wheelchair-bound former Nazi Dr Strangelove, forever attempting to frustrate himself from giving stiff-armed salutes, that makes for the film's most memorable character. As with many of the roles Sellers played, it's very funny, but very creepy too. The most iconic moment of all, when Strangelove, revitalised by the prospect of imminent nuclear war, stands up and shouts "Mein Führer, I can walk!" has been imitated and parodied many times, but never to the same effect as here.

4. Inspector Clouseau, The Pink Panther Strikes Again (1976)
Sellers's best-loved character is, of course, the accident-prone, wholly impervious Inspector Clouseau, whom he played in five pictures. Any of the films in which Clouseau appeared could be included on this list, save perhaps the first in which he is very much a supporting part to David Niven's suave cat burglar, but for my money, the giddy, mounting hilarity of Sellers' penultimate turn in the part cannot be beaten. Ignore the relatively thin plot, in which Clouseau's insane boss Dreyfus tries, and fails, to murder his nemesis, and revel instead in some of cinema's finest pratfalls. The other great Pink Panther film is the second, A Shot In The Dark, but this one just pips it.

5. Chauncey Gardiner, Being There (1979)
It would have been wonderfully fitting for Sellers's greatest-ever performance to have been his last, but unfortunately he went out with the rather less distinguished The Fiendish Plot of Dr Fu Manchu instead. For all that, Sellers's appearance in Hal Ashby's unforgettable black comic satire as the simple-minded Chance the gardener, aka "Chauncey Gardiner", whose gnomic words of horticultural advice are taken up as incisive nuggets of philosophical wisdom, is not just the best thing that he ever did on film, but one of the finest performances any actor has ever given. He should have won an Oscar for it.

Steve Coogan has said he plans to "put back into a community that was very good to me" after being chosen to lead the regeneration of his hometown in Greater Manchester. The Academy Award-nominated and Bafta-winning star has been announced as co-chairman of Middleton's mayoral development corporation, a statutory body given extra powers to speed up development and attract investment within a specific area. His appointment was announced by the Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham alongside five other such bodies designed to boost growth in the region.

Coogan said Middleton was a town "really rich in history, the history of people power" and was a "great place to grow up". Coogan grew up in the Alkrington area of the town. "I feel I owe the people of Middleton a debt. That's why I'm happy to be involved and talk to people in Middleton and ask them what they want and what they need," he said.

He will work with Rochdale Council on proposals including restoring Middleton Arena, regenerating the town gardens and bringing the Metrolink tram network to the town.

"Alan Partridge, prize- winning gardener" was probably not on anyone's bingo card for 2025. But such is life, and now Norfolk's finest can boast a trophy from the recent Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival where his sound bath garden drew huge queues after bagging a gold medal – an arboreal achievement that's left his alter ego Steve Coogan seemingly bemused. "Initially, the idea was to launch [the new series of the From the Oasthouse podcast] in a garden centre but then the Flower Show came along. That's as good as anything. It gives Alan something to say about gardens, not that he knows much..." Coogan gives a shrug that Partridge's longtime fans will immediately recognise. "What inspired it? Audible marketing people," he says, unusually transparent for a celebrity fronting a campaign. I start to wonder if I'm speaking to Steve or Alan? "The line blurs sometimes," he acknowledges.

In the 34 years since he hatched, fully formed, as the Pringle-sweatered sports reporter on Radio 4's On the Hour, Partridge has surfed the waves of evolving media platforms: primetime chat-show host (who accidentally shot a guest), radio DJ (from Radio Norwich to North Norfolk Digital), film star (Alpha Papa) and YouTuber (Mid Morning Matters). Since 2020, he's been sharing his adventures from home in his Kent oasthouse via podcast, a medium that suits both Partridge and Coogan perfectly.

"The podcast is stuff we want to do, that we're passionate about and we think is funny and relevant," says Coogan, who writes the show with his longtime collaborators, brothers Neil and Rob Gibbons. "If we're wondering what to do next, we just ask, 'What would Alan do?' and it doesn't matter if it looks a bit desperate." The more slightly naff it is, the more in keeping with Alan's nose-for-a-freebie, bomber-jacketed brand? "Exactly. Any marketing idea that comes along, we have Alan react how we'd react. He reluctantly goes along with it, and that's sort of what we're doing." His hands go up. "All roads lead to Rome!"

Over a decade ago, Coogan described to me why an encounter between two people on the Channel 4 archaeology series Time Team summed up, to him, comedic perfection – "the awkwardness was the delight". I wonder if he's identified a similar trope in the blitz of podcasts, particularly those hosted by celebrities? "Alan said something that made me laugh," Coogan responds. "He says, 'I decided to interview some experts rather than just confident people with podcasts' – of which there is a tsunami, frankly. Anyone with any confidence or conviction gets a podcast and their followers flock to them. We used in Partridge what I said recently to a friend of mine, 'I won't do your podcast, but why don't you and I travel the length and breadth of Britain trying to find someone with a high profile who isn't doing a podcast?' That might make a series." He pauses. "I do think the podcast bubble might be about to burst."

The difference between these "intimate chat" celebrity podcasts and Partridge's is that, for the latter, every word is meticulously scripted and rehearsed. "People forget it's not real, it's all written. Even when Alan is going away on a train of thought, all that's been crafted so it's funny."

What does Coogan listen to himself? "Sometimes Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell [The Rest Is Politics] which is both informative and infuriating. I can't bear it when they have listeners ask them creepily sycophantic, fawning, jokey-jokey questions. I think, 'Get a life'." More generally, he reflects: "The problem with political podcasts is there are no solutions. There used to be proper analysis, that was evidence-based with references and research. Now it's loads of people's gut feelings everywhere. They just like talking about politics, the game of it."

Before the Gibbons brothers came along in 2010 and coaxed Partridge out of retirement, I sat down with Coogan to discuss a raft of other projects he was developing. Then, he expressed dissatisfaction with the success of his alter ego, that his creation had become something of an albatross crowding out his other ideas. Now, with acting work under his belt, including the films Stan and Ollie and the Oscar-nominated Philomena, and his Bafta-nominated turn as Jimmy Savile in the TV drama The Reckoning, Coogan appears a lot more at peace with Partridge's place in the firmament.

"I like doing Alan because of the other stuff," he agrees. "Doing Alan is like putting my slippers and pyjamas on. I get to channel those unfiltered, unexpurgated, petty prejudices. When you're grown up, you think things intuitively but your intellect says, 'Don't do that, it's immature'. Alan has that chromosome missing so it comes out. I'm fortunate to do the things I want to do in a way that entertains enough people to make it viable. I don't take that for granted, ever. I try to get the balance between doing stuff that has some substance, without vanishing up my own arse, and doing things that are entertaining. If you go one way or the other, for me that's failing. I want it to be about something, but I don't want to be a bore."

In his 34 years, Partridge has evolved from a niche pleasure to something far more culturally significant, a one-man reference point for so much that we see in the media, something his creator acknowledges: "The only threat to Partridge is reality." And Richard Madeley? Coogan smiles. "And a number of other people. I don't want to drop them in it. There is a handful of people, not all of whom I dislike. I don't dislike Alan either, he's not mean, he's just ill-informed, nakedly ambitious and trying to decide which way the wind is blowing in terms of his career relevance."

Appreciation such as the Accidental Partridge social media account is something Coogan says he and his writers try to ignore: "Otherwise pop eats itself. I see lots of people looking at how they're depicted in the media and thinking, 'Oh they want that. I'll be that then. Tell me what you want me to be and I'll be that.' They look around and ask, 'What can I say that will annoy the least number of people, and be liked by the largest number of people?' It's that simple, and that can change from week to week depending on what's in the air. If you were being kind, you'd call it being mercurial and, if you weren't, there are a load of other words. That's really unhealthy. At one point they had something. It might keep your career going for a few years but it's a fool's errand. We just ignore the noise and do what we think is good, which is not foolproof but a better way to go."

For example, his podcast sees Partridge and his writers flexing more esoteric muscles than in previous film and radio outings. "In the TV show, I made it more physical, throwing a bone to the clever people but keeping it accessible," Coogan explains. "The podcast is quite purist. We just indulge ourselves in the hope enough other people will get it."

Coogan himself stays away from chat platforms. "A family member told me recently, 'Loads of people are slating you on social media.' It was the first I'd heard of it. I was walking the dog. I don't care, and I don't need to care. Anything I have that's bothering me, I secrete it and post it under the door of whatever I'm doing, whether it's Partridge or drama. It's a far better way." And creatively fertile, too. "When I write with the Gibbons pair, I'll say something and they'll just write it down, unfiltered, and I'm horrified," he says. "Then, as long as it's not too exposing, I'm OK with that."

Surely, by now, he accepts that osmosis is inevitable between Steve Coogan and Alan Partridge? "During the last TV series, I went into the trailer to put Alan's clothes on and I was wearing a shirt that was identical to the one they had hanging up for Alan. I don't mean similar, I mean same pattern, same label. It was the same shirt. I still had to take my shirt off and put his on, just for my own sanity. Then, at the end of the day, I took it off and put it back on the hanger. I needed to do that to reassure myself there hadn't been this moment of singularity where the Venn diagram becomes just one circle. I like to think it's still a figure eight, at least."

Some Steve Coogan interviews. These are going offline in a month, so get them while you can.

https://clyp.it/tkoies1d
https://clyp.it/aow3z3o1
https://clyp.it/mjdxpi0e
https://clyp.it/w0jafbeu