Steve Coogan features

[Miguel Wilkins]

Steve Coogan's Criterion Picks

[Miguel Wilkins]

Steve Coogan's message for 'salt of the Earth' Harpurhey people

[SteveCooganFan]

Steve Coogan: 'Keir Starmer makes me admire Thatcher - at least she had a point of view'

INTERVIEW The actor, screenwriter, and producer talks about the new series of his Alan Partridge podcast, a shift in focus for 'The Trip' with Rob Brydon - and what Partridge would do about the rise of Reform

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

[SteveCooganFan]

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)"

[Miguel Wilkins]

Steve Coogan - 2025-07-04 - Today (BBC Radio 4)
Steve is in to chat about the Cooperative Party

[SteveCooganFan]

Steve Coogan accuses Labour of paving way for Reform UK
Exclusive: Actor says Starmer's party has caused 'derogation of all principles they were supposed to represent'

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

[SteveCooganFan]

Steve Coogan on Oasis, Kneecap, Co-operatives and why he wants to change the world


Steve Coogan has recently become an ambassador for local co-op Middleton Co-operating. And after years of disillusionment with politics he tells Damon Wilkinson it has reinvigorated his belief in the power of people to change things for the better.

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

[SteveCooganFan]

A rrrrather rude and dismissive interview by BBC Breakfast presenters (can only find this short clip) (2025)

[Miguel Wilkins]

Peter Sellers was selfish, narcissistic and a terrible father who smashed his son's toys. He was also a genius'
The troubled comic was possessed with a gift for making people laugh, but his destructive behaviour towards those close to him left a lasting mark
Steve Coogan
Telegraph
10th July 2025

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.

Peter Sellers − his five greatest roles
By Alexander Larman

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.

[Miguel Wilkins]

Steve Coogan to lead regeneration of his hometown
He has been named as the chair of the Middleton regeneration project
Sarah Spina-Matthews
BBC News
9 July 2025

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.

[Miguel Wilkins]

Steve Coogan - 2008-11-06 - Interview
I'm not sure who he's talking to. There were 6 clips and I've joined them together based on the number in the bottom left. Magic.

[SteveCooganFan]

Steve Coogan interview on 'Electronically Yours' (2022)

[Miguel Wilkins]

Steve Coogan: "The only threat to Alan Partridge is reality"
Podcasting is giving Steve Coogan greater comedic licence than ever.
But where does he draw the line between himself and Alan Partridge?
Caroline Frost
22 July 2025
radiotimes.com

"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."

[Miguel Wilkins]

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