Steve Coogan Mark Lawson Talks To...

Steve Coogan became famous by playing an infamous broadcaster

Alan Partridge, his career took his from sports casting via an homicidal

chat show to North Norfolk Digital and recently a major movie, Alan

Partridge Alan Partridge: Alph Papa. In mid career Coogan had two

problems, escaping the shadow of Partridge and suffering tabloid

coverage of his private life. He appeared as a witness at the

Leveson Leveson Inquiry. Coogan is co-producer and co-writer

and co-stars es with Judi Dench in Philomena.

You played many fictional characters, and you have played

characters called Steve Coogan, I always wonder about this, is there

another version of Steve Coogan that is prepared for interviews and

public appearances. You can never be yourself, can you? When you are

younger, not sure how you are and you are paranoid how you are

perceived. I am less bothered about how I am perceived. So I think I

like to think I am fairly forthright and honest, or more honest as I get

older. It strikes me you have reached a position professionally

that you have been fighting towards for quite a long time, in the same

period you have a hit Alan Partridge film and you have a hit non-Alan

Partridge film, Philomena. And that, it seems to me, that has been your

aim for a long time to get Partridge among equals as it were? Yes, I want

to have my cake and eat it really. It is very difficult in this

country, because when you have a successful character, people don't

consider you seriously and that is, as problems go it is quite a nice

problem to have, because it is the result of being successful. I love

doing Alan Partridge and doing comedy but I want to be able to keep

doing it when I feel like it and also do other things, because

otherwise I get bored. Philomena - I was looking around for something. I

am not a workaholic. I would rather sit at home doing nothing, but you

have to create your own opportunities and also when you are

the architect of your work, with other people of course, there is a

perception that people don't offer you work because you are always

doing your own thing, so you have to do your own thing in the end.

Philomena was me try to go do something different. There is a book

by Martin Sixsmith, about someone who was forced to give up a child,

but you were on to it very early. I I think. There was an article in the

Guardian four years ago, and I optioned the book on the strength of

the article because I found it very moving. I thought other people would

connect with it, too. Because it was about a mother and a son, which is

fairly universal. And it was just, it was authentic and one of the

reasons that motivated me to pursue it, apart from the fact that I had

been half Irish, Catholic myself and Philomena being an old eccentric

Irish Catholic, I have grown up knowing a few of those, what made me

want to do something like this was that it was, I wanted to do

something that was authentic and sincere. Because what annoys me

about lots of cinema and television, there is a lot of cynicism and irony

and post-modernism that seems to pervade everything and it is

tiresome. It was necessary in reaction to something but I feel

like it's become an inindividualius thing where people are scared to be

sincere. This woman had a baby who had a baby and kept it a secret for

50 years. It would be a human interest story, I don't do those. It

is both biographical, about real people, but auto biographical

because Martin Sixsmith is not a lapsed Catholic, so so he is a lan

cast re-an lapsed Catholic so that is more you than him I decided,

because when you are writing, you write about what you know, I felt

like because for me a lot of the material put into the screenplay,

Jeff Pope and I, I wrote it with Jeff, was based on interviews we did

with Philomena and Martin. I had to create tension between two

characters to make the narrative resonate and have tension and have

drama and so I put something of myself into it, my lapsed

Catholicism. It balances with the Philomena character because she is a

woman who has suffered a great deal and yet retained herself and the

Martin Six smith character lass lost his faith. There are people in my

life who do have faith and I respect them, and I think they are good

people and the way I was raised was with very good values and the values

of my parents gave to me are very important to me and I was inspired

by their Catholicism. Caring about the weak and dis disenfranchised

were all things I have inherited and I don't believe in certain things

about Christianity, I don't believe Jesus Christ died for our sins, I

don't believe that, but I wanted to have this conversation where I could

find some sort of equal libbium between recognising and dignify

dignifying people of simple faith, unremarkable in some ways, but very

good lives. And Distinguish between those and the church institution. I

asked Philomena, because we conducted these interviews, how if

she forgave the nuns for what they did to her and she said yes, she

did, she didn't hesitate when she answered that question. I found that

interesting. At the same time, her daughter Jane, who was with us. I

don't like that word. Evil is good. Story-wise, I mean. Do you remember

anything he said? Hello. Might have been hi. There is a fascinating

speech you give to Philomena in the film, where she says that the sex

that led to the conception of the child was fantastic, one of the best

things that had happened to her Was that dramatic licence? It was, I

tell you why. It is counter intuitive, because there is this

received wisdom that people should say their first experience of sex

was dreadful, and that you shouldn't have old people talk about sex,

because you shouldn't imagine people were once young people and had lots

of sex when they were young. I wanted to show that older people

used to be young and used to be sexually active. Because especially

as a broad side against the idea of demonising sexuality and sexual

feelings, that I think the church has done. In the war between British

newspapers and show business, of which you are a major soldier One of

the tabloids had film filmed facts. It is such a bad approach to art. I

would like them to fact check Richard III by William Shakespeare.

We don't know, but it's nonsense. Every historical play by Shakespeare

is true to - there is an essence of truth. As you are aware there is

another agenda going on, they are trying to say these guys are

inaccurate and they make the stuff up and then complain about the

press. Yes, well I would say that that's indicative of the reductive

simplistic way they try to try to serve debate in this country.

Because it's not in anyone's interests - not in their interests,

to have an intelligent grown up calm conversation about the various

nuances that need to be talked about in terms of accountability and the

press being enabled to express themselves freely and it is a

nuanced argument. They don't want to acknowledge that. To be reductive

and simplistic at every turn is what they do. In that connection you are

one of those people, you are caught in a paradox, that in order to argue

for privacy, you have to go public, and that in order to take on

newspapers, you risk becoming a target for those newspapers, but you

would say that your calculation is that the outcome might make that

worthwhile. The ire I invite is more than outweighed by my own

self-respect, because I could have not got involved, if I had been

self-serving, because it doesn't benefit me. If you were cynical you

would think it is part of a grand plan to elevate myself. Let's just

say the editor of the Daily Mail wouldn't suspect it is self-serving

because if you managed to bring in any kind of regulation or

legislation, you can then do whatever you want, you won't be

reported. He would say that because he would want to reduce the argument

so something that he's self-serving and simplistic. I didn't want to be

involved. I saw a lop sided argument on television s where an argument

that was framed by the press in a way that was misrepresentative and

dishonest, which is nothing like the wording and the proposals that

Leveson himself recommended, has been hardly any analysis of

Leveson's recommendations. It's all been this broad generalations. They

are not interested in this whole hijacking argument of press freedom,

is them framing the debate and it's been repeated on television and

people haven't actually acknowledged what is in the royal charter, the

details in the royal charter. It is about self-regulation,

self-regulation needs to have teeth. I don't want to go into detail, but

press officer son of P CC, Press Complaints Commission. Which is run

by the editor of the Daily Mail Yes, also some of the things that

they are objecting to, if you actually break it down to the

details and explain them to the man in the street, the public are very

much on the side of we at hacked off, because they see it as entirely

reasonable but that won't be reflected in the way the press, most

of the press report T For example, equal prominence, hacked off, if the

paper prints something that is a lie or untrue they want the correction

or apology to have equal prominence. If you explain that to the public,

if someone prints a lie on page one in a headline, that the retrauks

should be a one inch column on page 16 is laughable. Most reasonable

people thinks that is entirely fair. They don't want that, you have to

ask yourself is why don't you want that. Where it gets complicated for

a lot of people is, you are right, most people, if it is a question of

printing a lie in a newspaper, most people find that quite easy. Where

it gets more complex is the question of the private truth. So let's take

an example, soap opera star who is using cocaine in private or having

an affair, does the public have any right to know about those things? I

think it is to do with what is in the public interest. If someone is

sleeping with someone who is not their wife and they are, they have

not put themselves forward as the paragon of virtue, that is not in

the public interest, it is none of their business. If someone was a

politician who was trying to get elected based on very conservative

values of constantly using family values and his family as something

to help him get elected and saying those were the values he had and was

perhaps judgmental about for example gay lifestyles and it turned out

that he was secretly gay, you could, of course, argue that hypocrisy of

someone who is going to be a public representative, to expose that would

be in the public interest. What about an actor, for example, their

marriage is in the newspapers, allow themselves to be photograph the A

few years later that marriage is in trouble. There is an argument used

very often by newspapers which is they were happy enough to have

publicity when it was going well. It has to be on a case by case basis.

My involvement at Hacked Off isn't to represent famous people. My

involvement is because I have a platform afforded by the fact that

what I do for a living gives me a public profile, means I can speak on

behalf of people who don't want to be on camera, like Chris Jeffries,

Joanna Yates. My involvement really is purely because I want, I love and

admire public interest journalism, I want to see a better level of

journalism in this country. There is a cynicism about certain newspapers.

It is nothing really to do with this idea of them being restricted in

their great pursuit of the truth. I don't for a second think that Rupert

Murdoch is a great, on a great white charger on his quest for press

freedom. The only ideology he has is to be able to practice and prop gate

his own business interests with no restrictions whatsoever. That is his

ideology. I will try and think of something positive to say about Paul

day cue the other day, I he means it. But really this is just about

business, it is not about ethings. It is about satisfying shareholders.

The fact you are turned other by the tabloids and you have been on the

kiss and tells, it would be reasonable to me if that did, if

that was one reason you were involved in this? It is not. Because

when I got involved in it, that was all fading into the background. I

knew getting involved they would drag it all up again. If I wanted to

bury that, I would have let sleeping dogs lie. I knew when I got involved

with this, they were going to trau through all the old clippings -

trawl through all the old clippings. It is convenient for them to label

it as personal. It is not. I like good journalists, I don't like

really bad journalists. Without going to the north//south divide, I

am interested in how much of the most successful English comedy has

come from the north of England. Victoria Wood, Peter Kay, yourself I

will include in that list. Is there something in northern speech or

attitudes or life that is useful to comedy? I think there is an

emotional conservatism in northern working class people. Which means

that affection is expressed often with humour. It is also tied in

hardship. I used to think that Les Dawson when he used to do his

comedy, it was the most articulate expression of the comedy of poverty

and repression, because his comedy inspired me a lot actually. It was

the comedy of his life being no good. His life being miserable. And

within that misery you find a lot of comedy. Especially in the north it

is overcast and it rains a lot. The only options you've got is to have a

laugh. Laughter is free. Having spent quite a loft my life in the

north and having had northern grandparents and pafrnts, it is to

do with understatement and overstatement, in the south of

England people are say it wasn't a great success, whereas in the north

they go for it, they go for the misery and they exaggerate and they

overstate rather than understate, which is very useful for comedy I

grew up in a big household where you have lots of people round the dinner

table, and seven children and Foster children as well, a lot of people

there. Quiet intimacy and touchy-feeliness is not high on the

agenda. Taking the kiss out of each other at volume is another way of

saying, that is a northern lower middle class, which is quite

definitive as well in its own way. Lower middle. How do you qualify for

that precisely? My parents aspirants. My grandmother was a

clean, my grandfather was a binman. Father was an engineer for IBM, we

had a holiday every year and it was comfortable. Knowledge was something

to be acquired and encouraged. There is certainly an awareness, certainly

with me, about my, about intellect and wanting to acquire a greater

intellect. There are lots of psychological theories about the

effective position in the family. You mentioned the number of people

at the table. So first of all it makes you competitive, it must do?

Yes, it does. You have to top each other's line. It is a good baptism.

I do remember saying look at me look at me, quite a lot 679 lot

That is what I Z I didn't really read many books. I was a product of

the TV generation of the 19 70s where I would consume television,

before the days of VCRs and options, so you saw programmes, and didn t

see it again for two years. It was appointment to view. It was crucial,

you were rushing home to make sure you didn't miss that TV show. That

really was how I got through my childhood really. I learnt to do

impersonations and funny voices and I would stand in front of the Mirror

and do them to myself and I would have a group of friends with an

elitist sense of humour, I liked Monty Python, The Goons and some

things I was too young for and I would lose myself in this comedy, it

was important, because there were people who were being irrev rant

about institution institutions and that was an option, that was OK The

mickicry, that famously people who are good minimumics, they started

off with being teachers. When I went to secondary school, my older

brother, I was in the first year and he was in sixth form. He used to

call me up to the common room and make me do impersonations of Jim

Callaghan. Which shows you how long ago it was. He was briefly Prime

Minister. Yes, he was, yes. Anyone over 50 will love that. Dame Judi

Dench, she said that you are the best mimic she's ever met. Can you

do her? I can't, I don't have enough oestrogen to do women. Apart from

Pauline calf. I liked doing it in an unhumourous way, the real forensic

detail. I quite liked doing that. It is like singers having perfect

pitch. You can hear someone and you can pretty much reproduce it. I

wouldn't look at the teachers and observe them. I would find a guy in

the room and I would think, I would imagine how they talked and I could

do it. I had a good ear. I found I was able to do that and at school I

would take the assembly, some days the house mast master came in and

telling me to do, to take the assembly as him. And I was

12-years-old. I remember going round straightening the ties of boys who

were 16, 17. Because he had given my licence to do it and I would do it

in his voice. Was your ambition to be an actor or comedian, did you

make a distinction? I just wanted to be on the telly. I didn't even know

that. I went to drama school. I tried to read Stanislavski, but it

bored me to tears and go on how much I loved the theatre. I didn't love

the theatre and all those things I was supposed to say as an actor I

just wanted to be able to do interesting things and make a living

from it. And express myself in some way. You were turned down by five

London drama schools, including RADA, so you were determined because

that didn't put you off being turned down by five? No. Now I think, I

feel sorry for myself. I remember going to central school of speech

and drama, and seeing all these this is in the mid-80s, these men in

big over coats, saying "my name is Sebastian, my father works for the

BBC World service" and they had these public school voices and ever

so confident and I use today think who are they, I am nothing like

them. These girls with pig tails and said "what was your journey, what

was it liefk, that is amazing" they had self-confidence, I got a recall

here and didn't come up to scratch but I joined this theatre company

that was set up by this guy who had come down from Oxford, Michael

Mulligan, he was great, he helped me and gave me confidence and told me I

was good at what I did. When you left drama school, it was your voice

first of all that got you work, wasn't it? I was skipping off drama

school to go and do voice overs on local radio and I had start today do

stand-up comedy to get an equitiy card and I started to develop

something resembling a routine. At the same time almost the same time

someone asked me to appear on a talent show that Arthur sp smith

hosted for London Weekend Television, regional, and I saw an

advert in the stage, saying new voices wanted at Spitting Image I

sent off a tape and John Lloyd, who was famous for Blackadder and Nine

O'clock News, picked up my tape and I got a phone call before the mobile

phones, it was a canteen public pay phone that would ring and people

would shout out your name and someone said it was for me. That was

great. Also, you sent a cassette, it was on a cassette. Neil Kinnock All

the impersonations I used to do you can tell I stopped, because I can't

do anyone who has been in the public eye in the last ten years, because I

can't be bothered. I did a good Neil Kinnock. Amongst others, when I did

take over from Chris Barry, I had to do his version, which was very

caricature version, because (as Neil Kinnock), a lot of people don't know

the way he used to speak was like that, great emphasis and

occasionally he would sub-qualify the things he would say and go off

on a tangent and a sub-tangent of that. It was very over the top. But

that was one of the voices I put on the tape along with the usual Roger

Moor and Sean Connery and Ken Clarke on Spitting Image and Norman Tebbit.

It's breathing, it is where people breathe. Particularly politicians

who are buying to buy time. Roy Hattersley, he was always run out of

breath before the end of the sentence. (As Roy Roy Hattersley) he

couldn't finish the sentence because he ran out of breath. Various people

say Nick Clegg, and they are undo-able people. I look at David

Cameron, to me he's just a slightly more right-wing version of Tony

Blair. That is all really. The same nuance, they all do the same things,

they have all been coached. They all do this, you are not allowed to wag

your finger, they use their knuckle. I am not wagging my finer, I am

using my knuckle. They both do that. They have had the creases ironed

out. In the days of Thatcher, whatever you think about t it was

very colourful. The perrier award, Steve Coogan in character with John

Thompson, that was character and impersonation, stand-up kind of

thing? It was entirely character work, because I was a bit of a spent

force. The pivotal moment for me, I went to the Edinburgh Festival two

years before with Frank Skinner as my support. Frank worked very hard

and did his homework. I asked him to support me, we did a mini tour. I

was complacent, doing my voices and all the reviews, because I was known

for doing impersonations, all the reviews were awful about me and

fantastic about him. He emerged smelling of rose roses. I was

smelling of the other stuff. I wasn't very happy and I wasn't

working very hard. It was limiting, funny voices was limiting and to me,

even though I could do it, I never was really a fan. I used to look at

people doing impersonations thinking there was something wrong with them.

There's no substance. You don't go that is really impressive. It can

make you laugh, but there's - it's not about anything, it is just

impressive. A year later, the next year Frank won the perrier Award and

I was in Greece doing some stand-up for a holiday rep by the side of a

swimming pool, being chastised by blokes in trunks for swearing

because they had kids around. I am sitting in my box room and a single

bed over looking an air conditioning unit, Frank Skinner wins the Perrier

Award. It was a low point for me. I thought I have to pull a rabbit out

of a hat. So I started to do Paul Calf, this character I did, which

was based on when I was at drama school all the aggressive

non-student working class men in the pub opposite who resented paying

taxes so we could prance around in tights. That was like an epiphany

for me. If you take the truth and crank it up a few notches and

reflect it back at people, they like it a lot. The laughter you get and

also it was a way of saying things that you couldn't say as yourself,

because they were wrong or politically unacceptable, but people

would laugh at it in a different way, they would laugh at the

ignorance. That was a revelation for me. I have a formula here, I can do

this, develop characters who people will laugh at. The laugh you get

from recognition of shining a little light on an aspect of life is from

the gut. It is a different kind of laugh you get. It is much nor

rewarding. On the hour, B C radio 419 92, another very significant

moment because of Alan Partridge appearing on that. Do you remember

the precise moment of conception? I think so. Armando Ianucci, who was

producing the show, and brought all these people together, some of whom

I knew already, Patrick Marber for example, I knew from the circuits.

There were these various different sketches and things that he put

together in the show and I remember being very excited that I was asked

by Armando to join this rep trigroup. It was more Python-like in

that it was adventurous and there weren't punch lines, but it was

funny in a slightly abstract way and in an odd way that I couldn't quite

path om but it excited me. Armando thought the detailed voices was good

and thought I would be useful. It was a sketch about a sports

presenter. I do a sports presenter's voice, I don't really like sport, I

used to do a generic voice, all those people like David Coleman

John Motson rolled into one. They sound the same to me. The defining

thing, with a lot of them was the idea of, Alan's voice changed, he

was just a voice, voicing a sketch, but it was like this (as Alan

Partridge), it was very someone who keeps the notion of broadcasting and

being confident with your delivery, whether you know what you are speak

being or not, it seemed to me something to define sports

commentators. In a Pumping away with those muscly legs inside those tight

Lycra shorts which have become his trademark. I don't know what this

man is playing at. There is no way, surely the judges must come down

like a tonne of bricks, carry carrying bikes on top of a car is

not sportsmanlike. Did you write about Partridge. When we did the

talk show on the radio, which I have framed in my down stairs toilet a

letter of complaint about why this man was allowed this own show from

someone in Tunbridge Wells, infuriated. As the years have gone

on, we have developed him, but he was at first early on he was just a

fool, he's like Malvolio in Twelfth Night. In that he is delusional But

a small amount of xaigs compassion that the audience feel. Tess a

character to laugh at. As the years went by, because a lot of the ideas

would come from me, I remember sometimes writing with Patrick and

Armando, I would say something as myself and they would say "just have

Alan say that" I would find that offensive. Then I would get

defensive about it and feel more connected with him and say don't - I

felt like it was bullying a fool, almost like pulling legs off an

insect, it was too cruel in a way. I wanted to somehow dignify him in a

way and we came close to that because some of the people Alan

would interview would be pretentious. Who do you think you

are? Unfortunately for you, I am the chief commissions editor of BBC

television. Let's forget about all this. Do you want some cheese? No

thank you. It's quite nice. Smells, do you want to smell it? No thank

you. Smell my cheese! Smell my cheese. Norwich took Alan Partridge

to its bosom, and Alan partage alpha papa. Why Norwich. I wanted to avoid

cliche. We thought why does no-one talk about, what is ignored, what

suits him topographically. Looking on the map it's neither north or

south. It is of itself and it is slightly isolated. You don't pass

through it to go anywhere else. Unless you go to Sheringham. You

really need a good reason to go to Sheringham. We shot some Alan

Partridge there. Its isolation was important. It is the most isolated

city in England actually. It is right in the middle of, dot bang in

the middle. All those things have made us think that is perfect for

him. It has an otherness. Police! Identify yourself. Alan Partridge.

Alan Partridge, you know who I am, I haven't been off the TV that long.

Johnny Vagas has just written an extraordinary book in which he

argueses that Johnny Vagas was a comic creation that took hostage

Michael Pennington, the real name of him, and took him over. I assume you

have never got like that with Partridge? I understand what Michael

says about what happened to him I think that is quite a real thing and

it is dangerous because especially if you are drinking too much and it

can be destructive. But that is an extension of people wanting to

people want approval, they revert to the way they are defined by the

media. I was always think when you look at Oliver Reid, drinking

himself to death, and thinking that he is defined as good old Oliver

Reid, who likes a drink, we love him partly because he drinks, so there

is that thing "I'll be that then", because that is what they want and

that means people will approve of me and it's not good. It is not

necessarily the truth. With Alan, it is a double-edged sword, in that I

do like Alan, but I don't want to be defined by him. People in the street

say Alan, I say my name's Steve They just look at me and say what's

his problem. Tony Ferino was the one that got away with the character.

There was that thing of that is what I do now, I do characters. I did

this character that was mass onlying nis - misogynistic egotist, it was

one of the things where the lesson was, when you become pre-occupied

with your production values and don't concentrate or focus on the

material, then - and also when you have done something that is so well

received that you are competing against yourself. I recorded an

album with Steve Brown and my A and R man was Simon Cowell, before he

became famous, and I was really pleased with it. Artistically it was

very good, and it was quite subtle but it was a bit schizophrenic,

where do you place it, what do you do with it? No-one buys ironic

music. They just don't. However well executed it might be. Significant

film parole officer because that was a bigger thing, but that was moving

towards straight roles. I wasn't happy with that at all. It was

because it was, I accidentally made a children's film, with lots of kids

liking it. I didn't have a great experience with that. When I was

shooting that the director, he would say do one take for the producer.

Which was a big take, basically do a big animated take and it struck me

those were the things that were sticking together in the edita can't

watch it now, because I watch my face, my over animated expressions

and I want to strangle myself. I can't watch that. 24 Hour Party

People was happier, two 2002 for two reasons. It started a strain of

playing real people which you have done a number of times, in that case

Mancunian music legend and working with Michael Winterbottom. Did you,

was it immediately a sympathetic relationship? Michael saved me in a

way. Because in terms of my career he saw beyond Alan Partridge, which

a lot of people didn't. Certainly film directors didn't. He saw

something else, which I am pleased about, because he helped. He stopped

me, he stopped Alan becoming this albatross. All the films I have done

with him always had some sort of quality that's made them appreciate

appreciated in the art house cinema circuit and in America where I am

not known really, that is one of the advantages of Alan Partridge not

being successful in America, that there's no type casting problem

there. In comedy, to do comedy well, broad comedy, even good broad

comedy, where you have to have a laugh every 30 seconds, you have got

to be forensic about it, your timing and the way you phrase it, it has to

be really specific and it means you end up being quite controlling. With

Michael, I learnt to throw that away and just not be entirely sure of

what I was doing and not worry about not being funny. And somehow that

helps you be funny in a more truthful and interesting way. 2

Hour Party People was another epiphany. I have had two so far How

many am I allowed! It really was and it was really a very, very happy

experience, also not just of Tony Wilson who I knew and I was reliflg

part of my teenage life -- reliving part of my teenage life, I was a bit

part player in the real story, and when it became to making the film, I

became the main character. Playing Tony. It was great for me, it was

like reliving my youth over again, but having the starring role. On

tonight's show I will be talking to Alice Cooper, he will be hanging a

dwarf live on stage. But first, two minutes of the most important music

since Elvis walked into the sun studios in Memphis, the Sex Pistols

and anarchy in the UK. Michael winter bottom with

cock-and-bull story and the Trip, in both which you play a version of

yourself with Rob Brydon playing a version of himself, were you, did

you have to be persuade persuaded by winter bottom. Rob and I didn't want

to do it at all, we thought it was a terrible idea. Because I have seen

lots of famous people play themselves in things like Curb your

enthusiasm and various TV shows and it's become a slightly tired injoke,

that notion of saying get a load of me playing myself, look how

self-deprecating I am, aren't I cool. I didn't want it to be that.

Or I am playing a nasty person, which shows what I nice person I am?

Look how self-critical I am being. I really didn't want to do that. I say

to Michael we don't want to do T he kept pressurising us. He said

there's not going to be a script. We said it's going to be waffle.

Self-indull gent waffle, too. He said we will frictionalise it,

actors playing your girlfriend and we will distance it and explore

things. He said it will resonate beyond it being about you, it should

resonate with people for other reasons, should be about bigger

things than yourselves. Rob and I said OK, we will do t we will give

it a go. One of the things they respond to is the sense that it was

a real needle between you and Rob brie dovenlt there is a moment in

Cock and Bull story where he says people only want him as Alan

Partridge and he wants to do other stuff. It appears to get really

nasty at times. Yes, the thing is Rob and I, when we did the trip we

agreed that we would be allowed to push each other's buttons and

wouldn't take it personally. It did get close to the bone sometimes But

it was - but I knew that if it's uncomfortable it will be

interesting. It was all gentle ribbing it would be dull and boring,

so it had to be a bit spiky. That is OK. It's good to make yourself feel

uncomfortable like that and to be needled. There is some sort of

truthfulness that comes out of it. I would be at your funeral. Now from

one of Rob's very closest friends, you will know him of course as TV's

Alan Partridge and he has asked specifically to come up and take 25,

30 minutes to talk about his friend Rob. Ladies and gentlemen Steve

Coogan. You may also know Steve from his good art house films which have

been reviewed by some of the broad sheet newspapers. Steve Coogan. Are

you allowed to say to Michael Winterbottom don't use that. Yes, we

did say that. Rob would say to me say something and I would go, I

shook my head. What kind of things? When he started to just rehash the

old tabloid stuff, some of which is true, and some of which is

exaggerated. Courtney Love, he would do that on the Trip? No, he wouldn't

do that. That's... That's something I am not going to go into. That

would be like opening up Pandora's worms, to mix my metaphors. The one

I personally feel didn't get the attention it deserved was Saxondale,

less attention than it should. That was Partridge related. Yes it was, I

am proud of that. It will stand the test of time. 13 episodes of it

Interestingly in America, I have been doing publicity for Philomena,

lots of people, it had a cult following there, lots of people came

up to me and said how much they loved Saxondale. It is a more

rounded, rounded character, because he is both the butt of the joke and

sometimes he himself is genuinely funny and witty. That's what I love

about him. Sometimes you go he's spot on there, he is very perceptive

and also vain and delusional. Partridge is entirely vain and

delusional. Pest control, name me some pests. Rats. Mice. Yes. How

about Ganghi. Shocked you, Gandy was a pest. A pest to the establishment.

We did Ganghi last term. What did they tell you about Ganghi? He

gained independence for India through non-violent protest. That's

an answer. I was trying to articulate that baby boomer

counter-culture generation that came out of the 19 60s, that feels, this

sounds terribly pretentious, but it is important for it to be funny and

about something, those people who didn't know who to react to or who

to fight against when Tony Blair walked into Downing Street with an

electric guitar and he's younger than them, then they don't know

where their place in the universe is, this culture of being

oppositional or outside the establishment. And use rock'n'roll

as their met for for that. Feel a bit at sea, a bit lost because Tony

Blair has an electric guitar, who do you fight against. I had a lot of

compassion for that. The factest self-delusional, that is interesting

about British comedy, it is hard to think of a comedy character who

isn't self-delusional. Captain Mainwaring, Basil fall at this. We

all are in certain ways. It is a British thing, too. Laughing at our

inadequacies and being liberated by that. It is one of the wonder things

about this country, the ability to be self-deprecating. When I was in

America, it is bizarre, the agents there, one of the places where

aggressive is a compliment. ." I am a very aggressive agent". How very

nice for you. They have this thing where there is no embarrassment at

saying I am very good at this and I can do this and that and we think it

is a bit weird. I went over there and tried to be self-deprecating

about my involvement in some project and they said if you say it wasn't

really you, they won't think you are being modest, they will think you

didn't have anything to do with it. In terms of comedy I think that

those people who are, who feel are badly done to, David Brent, Basil

fall at this and Alan Partridge is sort of strange strangely what

defines Britishness. Which I think is glorious actually and wonderful.

Because it means that we - that you can - what was that thing about meet

meeting disaster and triumph It is a coping mechanism for the country.

When some of those British comic characters go to America, they say

couldn't they be more self-confidence or more successful.

Bizarre. You are writing your memoirs at the moment. You are going

to? Yes, yes. Which is a sort of self-therapy, but is it something

you look forward to? Only up until I became a public figure or started to

do break through in terms of my career. As I get older I look back

more and more, you get more and more perspective on your childhood, on

the things that made you and a part of me wants to write it down before

it recedes so far into the past that I forget it. Or it becomes just

almost abstract. I feel connected with it. It is to do with middle

age. Already as you well know, some people have said, he's campaigning

for privacy and writing his memoirs. Your sane you are allowed. It is my

prerogative. If I want to talk to a stranger about my private life, that

is my choice. Do you have a title? No. I have fantasy titles. Give us a

fantasy titles. It is more fun thinking of the titles you shouldn't

use. I talking to someone about the fact that Leonard Nimoy's instalment

was called "-I am not possibling" and the second one was called " I am

possibling". -- Spoca. Steve Coogan, thank you very much.