THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.35 - STEVE COOGAN

Episode Date: March 23, 2017

Adam talks to British actor, writer and comedian Steve Coogan about films, music, phone hacking, Partridge and more! Thanks to Seamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and Matt Lamont for additional editing. Podcast artwork by Helen Green. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk. Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke. My name is Adam Buxton. I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan Let's cross the road here. Wait. How long?

Wait. Oh, come on, how long's it going to be? Wait. Alright, just, why not ask politely? Wait. Oh, here we go. Hey, how are you doing, listeners? Adam Buxton here. Good to be with you again. Not out walking Rosie today, sadly, because I'm in a city you can probably hear. I'm in Los Angeles, or La La Land, as I like to call it. La La Land. I came up with that. I don't know if you've heard of Los Angeles.

It's a big city over on the west coast of a country called Trumpton. And it's the world's number one producer of both tinsel and dreams. I am currently sat on a bench on the corner of Crescent Heights Boulevard and Santa Monica Boulevard. There's quite a few people who look like me sat on the benches, scruffy, older gentlemen with a lot of facial hair and I'm out in Los Angeles partly to buy some tinsel

because Christmas is just around the corner and partly to record a few conversations for this podcast some of which you'll be hearing over the next few weeks normal service, introduction wise, will be resumed next week for now though, let me tell you about this week's ramble, which is, as you may have realised, with British actor, writer, comedian, press regulation advocate,

sometime cocaine enthusiast, and channeler of one of the greatest comedy characters of all time, Steve Coogan. He's the actor, not the character. The character's Alan Partridge. Steve Coogan is the person who channels him. I talked to Steve at his house just outside Brighton in the UK in January of this year, 2017, and after he'd shown me his collection of around four or five classic cars, which I found myself genuinely and unexpectedly impressed by, I have to be honest, he made some tea and we sat in his kitchen for an hour or so of enjoyable rambling. Now, I'd never met Steve Coogan before. I'd been in the same room with him a couple of times, but never really talked. Rob Brydon had told him that he should accept my invitation to

be on this podcast, so thank you very much, Rob. I found Steve both reassuringly similar to the person I'd imagined, the car collection, for example, and yet quite different. See what you think. It was a fun convo. Here we go. Ramble Chat Let's have a Ramble Chat We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that Come on, let's chew the fat

And have a Ramble Chat Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, How's your morning been so far? It's a Thursday. It's good. I went to the gym. How often do you go to the gym? If I'm being good, two, three times a week. I'm not particularly sporty.

It's just that I used to not care and I used to sort of drink a lot and be badly behaved and I stopped all that. I just wanted to, I like the, you know, breaking a sweat and feeling fit and now I sort of find it slightly addictive.

And also it means that I can have pudding if I want. Yeah. Rush out of the gym, pick up some pudding. What's your favourite pudding? I think probably anything that's got rhubarb in it really yeah yeah rhubarb and custard probably do you know what forced rhubarb is no interesting i'll learn about this on the trip actually forced rhubarb is kind of the veal equivalent cruel rhubarb it's kind of cruel rhubarb because what they do is they they grow

the rhubarb in dark warehouses yeah no light and there's little holes at the top of the warehouse where the rhubarb strains for the light and in doing so it becomes very very pink and uh and is naturally sweet so you know sometimes rhubarb is a bit green isn't it can be a bit greeny pink i don't like rhubarb well forced rhubarb is super super pink and, and it's naturally sweet. And very tender. Very tasty, and you don't need to sweeten it as much, so I like rhubarb. But it is dreadfully cruel. It is a bit cruel to the rhubarb, yes, to keep them in warehouses like that with no light, yeah. So now that you don't drink, you're sort of pretty straight edge these days, right?

I have the odd cigarette, not very often, but occasionally in the evening, but that's all I do. I don't drink. So what is it? What constitutes a sort of blowout these days then? Yeah. Just having some time to do, to go and watch a bunch of stuff in my cinema.

Yeah. Friends. I go to the lakes and go walking. It sounds so dull, doesn't it? Um, I do. I like to go out for dinner. I've got to sound like the apotheosis of middle-class mediocrity.

I just like to do stuff that people who've got a disposable income like to do. What do you watch on your movie screen? Well, I watch a combination of things. I did watch that thing called The Night Of recently. Oh, man, I loved it. Yeah, I loved it too. I thought it was really really impressive so good wasn't it um i might watch something like that and then what i try to do is um and i like to watch old films because not a lot of cutting in a lot of old films i've noticed sometimes they let it all play out in a tableau

yeah so it's almost like a play and they've rehearsed the hell out of it so you know you'll have a scene that will go on as long as the spool of film would last. And I like the fact that they're sort of accessible and not too esoteric, but they're funny and engaging, and they've got humanity. And so I like to look for things like that. And a lot of those old masters did those kind of films

and they kind of it's only years later that you realise sometimes because something's popular at the time it seems perhaps lowbrow and it's only when the years like Dickens it's only when time passes that you realise there's people still

there's some substance there some substance behind it like Dire Straits I quite like Dire Straits this is a bit trivia you know you know um solstice swing sure um well she's a great song the guitarist guitar george george borowski yeah i used to do lots of gigs with him in manchester did you yeah years when i started out in manchester there were these strange gigs that were called busker gigs where people would get up and do some comedy or they'd play a guitar

or they'd read poetry and there'd be people like you know, Lem Sisay a guy called Brian Glancy who Guy Garvey sang about and there was Henry Norman, me, Carolina Hearn John Thompson

and George Borowski who does have an old guitar, as described in the song, Sons of Swing. Yeah. A little bit of trivia for you there. So what would you be doing? Would you be doing comedy songs? This was like 25, maybe nearly 30 years ago. I would get up and do some impersonations

and a little bit of comedy. I was discovering what it was I wanted to do. I was at drama school in Manchester and there were no real alternative cabaret venues in Manchester, in fact. The only places I could find were supporting indie bands. And which kind of bands did you support? Did you support any bands that ended up being well-known? Well, I supported my brother's band,

who had one hit, like, 25 years ago, The Mock Turtles that I hit called Can You Dig It and I supported a band called the Chameleons were you ever in a band? no well

you know at school yeah I was in like a sixth form art house band where I played the synthesizer yeah that's my era that year

right early 80s you know sort of synth pop. Synth pop. Yeah, same here. Love it. What were you listening to?

I like Human League, Heaven 17, you know, Ultravox, John Fox. Would you go as poppy as Thomas Dolby? A little bit. I like the Thompson Twins, but I also like China Crisis and stuff like that. Sort of poppy, but with a bit of a slight pretensions to art it was sort of like it was almost like a kind of the legacy of punk and bowie uh sort of that coalesced in these sort of blokes from ordinary backgrounds who um i think they're sort of probably mostly grammar school boys who formed these bands and they discovered poetry at school so that and and they wanted to sort of somehow be artistic and so and

that's a great lyric in um the undertones song which is one of my favorite undertones songs my perfect cousin it's about his perfect cousin how he what he likes what i like to do he doesn't and he's his family's pride and joy but one of the lyrics says, his mother bought him a synthesizer, she got the human league into advisor, now he's making lots of noise, playing along with the art school boys. That was you? That was me, yeah.

I liked all that stuff as well. China crisis, I had a lot of time for China crisis. Yeah, it was also very, when it was fashionable to very it was it was uh when it was fashionable to to be um sad and interesting and i remember developing a taste for things that weren't mainstream and i think at the age of 12 refusing to go and see greece because i proudly tell my friends it's too commercial that sounds like my son now my eldest son he's quite snooty in that way and i'm sure he'll look

back and think and realize that actually he he thumbed his nose at a lot of stuff that was actually quite good yeah i know yeah that's the trouble the thing is what i found is as uh you know because i remember you know disco was like the the devil to me i hated disco and and also because music was quite ghettoized in those days you know i remember one of my friends ringing me up saying i'm going to become a heavy rocker i'm going literally i'm going to become a heavy rocker do you want to join me and i remember saying i'm gonna have to politely decline i wish you luck but have it but you know years later i think that all that sort of tribalism meant you weren't allowed to like music and of course you know now

you know the beat listen to the Bee Gees and what great songs they wrote. Yeah. And fantastic bands like Chic and now Rogers. You just become more Catholic, I think, with your taste as you get older because you appreciate things. You don't feel like you have to become so tribal about it. You end up enjoying radio too.

It's what happens. And all that sort of middle-of-the-road culture that you used to think, God, that's boring. When you were younger, it's like, oh, okay, it's actually pretty good. Yeah, it's very true. Heavy metal, heavy rock, et cetera. I know what you mean. It always seemed like a little bit of a cul-de-sac.

The fun thing about a lot of art school-type music was that you would be fired off on in other directions and you would discover different things yeah they weren't scared of esoteric i mean it was the worst thing you say about it was it was a bit pretentious but i mean yeah only by risking that do you discover new ideas and yeah most of a lot of the things i really like could be described as pretentious in some way there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to well what does that mean what's the definition of pretentious i'm not sure taking yourself too seriously well if a band for example as soon as a band had a chart hit i'd sort of disown them because just

by just by din of being successful that the equation was that they automatically must have sold their soul in some way because it was almost impossible to be successful and um and authentic yeah there you go that's a good definition like taking up a position on something just because of the way you think it makes you look yeah and and of course secretly still liking it or feeling you had to adopt a position because it was about about posturing or something posturing right being being concerned with what other people think of you if you like that kind of stuff. Or trying to find an identity that you thought was interesting and not being...

Well, I think even now, if you're in a room of people who are all nodding their heads in agreement, I think just instinctively I want to sort of question it. So you're not on Twitter then? No, I'm not on Twitter. And if I was on twitter i'd definitely get monstered which is i'm not so desperate i need all the people to like me all the time because i know some people don't like me and i'm pretty i'm very comfortable with that

i don't do twitter because um i know i'd get all my i get sucked down some wormhole of a discussion with people who i'm never going to change their point of view and and it would sap creative energy it's difficult for artists isn't it because as soon as what they do is embraced by the public there is some sort of perceived pressure on them to hold forth about certain issues at various times and often it doesn't go well, you know, because their main skill, whether they're a songwriter or an actor or a comedian or whatever, is making people laugh or moving them with a song or a performance or whatever. That's how they really are best at articulating themselves. Yeah, it is, yeah.

And then when they come out and they make pronouncements about difficult issues, they often end up looking a bit daft and they get so much flack for it. I mean, we're speaking a week or two after Meryl Streep stood up at the Golden Globes and said how disgusted she was with Donald Trump. And, you know, within the artistic community, she was patted on the back and everyone was pleased. But then there was a wider reaction that was just like, oh, shut up, you know, what know what do you know you're an actor you're paid to pretend yeah but i also i also think that everyone has a right to their point of view and the idea that you can't uh and also i tell you what's interesting to me is that here's an observation i made is that

in terms of popular culture and modern creativity there aren't many right-wing effective creative communicators in the world they're almost all left of center and what that to me says is that basically if you are artistic truly artistic and and therefore have a humanity about what you do, but it's very difficult to embrace humanity and be right-wing. Mm-hmm. And that's... which is why all the people performing

at Donald Trump's inauguration are all... well, no one of any... no, is. Who's he got? I don't know. Well, apparently the Bruce Springsteen tribute band pulled out that's a pretty low blow these are strange times although interesting you could say people say may you live in interesting times i mean it doesn't get much more interesting no that's very true and i mean a lot of people said this i do hope there's something in it is that i

was listening to malcolm gladwell on the radio and he was saying that maybe the shift of the political landscape will sway back the other way, because when people are galvanised, especially in the US, say, you know, we don't want to live in a world fuelled by anger and hate, it could be, in the long run, actually a good thing. Yeah, although before things swing back, I think there's a certain kind of um preening self-righteousness in the left that probably has to die there's no doubt about it

i mean it's about not just about finding a voice again it's um well a lot of the left have been living in an echo chamber you know because certain people feel disenfranchised by it doesn't speak to ordinary people it can be seen as elitist. Although I'm not from an elitist background. I'm from a low middle class background, and I was always, I think, raised with decent values. We didn't have lots of money. We got by.

We were comfortable. My dad worked hard. He did the sort of things he was supposed to. He had a job for life, you know, worked nine to five. My mum looked after the family. And the values I was raised with were to be kind to people, to be generous. If you had more than the person next to you,

then you share that with them. But, you know, we weren't a part of the metropolitan elite. We just had decent... Your parents were, they took in foster children, right? Yeah, we fostered an extra. There was always an extra couple of kids in the house at any one time. But they weren't sanctimonious about it. It was just like, that's what you do.

If you're comfortably off, you help people who aren't. It was really very, very simple. It was fueled by their faith, which I don't have, but I'm still pleased that they gave me those values. The trouble with people on the extreme right is they shout with the loudest voice and they pander to people's insecurities. You point the finger and you give a simple solution.

It's very difficult when you're trying to say to people, these are complex issues because no one wants to contemplate complexity. People want to contemplate simplicity. Yeah, yeah. No one has bumper stickers in America saying, I love nuance. Come inside, you're welcome. Step into my house.

It's so nice to see you come inside. You must have gone through quite a difficult time when you were involved with the press... When I was involved in Hacked Off, yeah. Hacked Off. Hacked Off, yeah, and I'm still involved in Hacked Off. And again, very anti-nuanced, it's like anyone who wants to enable people who have no money

to have a mechanism to challenge things that are written about them that aren't true, there's no effective mechanism. When The Guardian tries to advance its arguments against Hacked Off, they always cite me and Hugh Grant and a few celebrities, but they don't mention the Dowlers, they don't mention the Hillsborough families because it doesn't fit in with how they're trying to frame the argument. And yet those are the people who we want to see have access to effective remedy when they've been wronged in the press.

You said the Guardian. Do you mean the Guardian anti-hacker? Well, yes, very largely. I mean, there are a few sympathetic journalists. In fact, there are certain journalists that worked for the Guardian that have been incredibly noble. In fact, it broke the hacking story.

But it's interesting that even the guardian who had access to that story made that story available to the new york times and the new york times was the newspaper that broke the story of hacking initially and then it trickled back to this country because no newspaper including the guardian felt that they wanted to stick their head above the parapet because they'd get clobbered by all the other newspapers which is honor amongst thieves you know how are you made aware first of all that your calls were being taped um they well they weren't taped hacking was when you hack into a voicemail but what they used to do was they would have two phones a journalist would have two phones they would phone the number of the

well-known person and when that person answered the phone they would then call again on the other phone so they get through to the voicemail and generally they just put in four zeros to get access to because most people wouldn't put in a security code on their voicemail and that was just as a way of possibly getting a bit of information but theyattle. What they would do is they knew that it was illegal because what they would do is they would get confirmation by other means. And that happened to me because they would say, for example, we know this about you, but they wouldn't say where they got the information. As soon as they say something, they've confirmed the story.

So it was an illegal way of just basically getting information from people. The thing about you as well is that for tabloids, et cetera, you're such tasty fodder. Here, for example, is a synopsis of your life thus far, plucked from the Daily Mail. Well, from the Mail Online. And this is not, like, all pejorative, but it is selective. Coogan was born the fourth of six children

to a working-class Catholic family in the Manchester suburb of Middleton. He studied theatre at the city's Polytechnic, having been rejected by RADA, and had his first big break as the voice on Spitting Image. All shockingly correct, so far. His comic creation, the blundering, self-important Norfolk radio personality Alan Partridge, defined his career for 20 years. But his success has been marred by cocaine abuse, drug-induced panic attacks, and a turbulent

private life. So that's how they've crystallised you in their mind. Those things overshadow. You talk about those things in your book. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, because now I can contextualise that period of my life as being in the past, I feel like I've sort of come through that period

of self-indulgent, slightly hedonistic substance abuse. I mean, I think I sort of trace it back to the fact that I was so ambitious, I sort of didn't really have an irresponsible adolescence, as it were. Right. So I kind of skipped that because I was so ambitious. And then when I became successful, I thought, well, I'm going to have a bit of fun now.

I'm going to just, like, be really irresponsible and do a bit of rock and roll. But I really ought to have sort of... Most people get that out of their system by their 30s, and I hadn't. Also, you had that physical aspect of getting the panic attacks off the back of taking coke. Well, I had panic attacks for a few years, and they were quite severe, but definitely were triggered by not behaving in a particularly balanced way. So I just got therapy.

And I resolved that part of it pretty quickly. But I carried on taking drugs. So I've got the panic attack licks, and now I can just carry on having fun. But I feel that that part of my life now is something that's very much in you know, in the past. Yeah. And so it was,

it was hard. It was tough. And I felt exposed. I felt very exposed and, uh, and very vulnerable. And, uh,

it was a bit of a shock, uh, that my private life was all over the papers and all the rest of it. But the thing is, I'm now, I'm kind of, uh, I've developed a thick skin as the years went by

and what I tended to do was not become consumed with it so I tried to concentrate on making sure that my work was good and even when my private life was a mess my work was still pretty good what was the work you were doing around that time then? Well, I mean, in 1998, I had won two BAFTAs, a bunch of comedy awards. And that's Partridge. Yeah, that was like a sort of golden year for me. And I had a 10, 11-week sellout show at the Lyceum, which I was firing on all cylinders. And there was the man who thinks he's it.

Yeah, and it was hugely successful. That was the tour. The tour was hugely successful. The world and his wife came to see it. I was just knocking it out of the park, and I was also doing a lot of cocaine. Yeah. So, I mean...

So it was a good appropriate title for the tour. Yeah, it was, it was. In fact, a lot of people have different reasons for doing that kind of stuff, but I don't, it wasn't, certainly wasn't, I'm not going to blame it on some sort of troubled childhood. I didn't take it because I felt bad about myself.

I took it because I felt really good about myself. But you weren't worried at the time? You weren't thinking, oh man, I've got to watch myself here? No, because as with all people with substance abuse, what you do is you say, well, i don't feel particularly good about having done this so i'll do some more um that'll block that so then

you get into a cyclical approach of course any excessive behavior like that whether it's alcohol um or drug abuse or any kind of behavior like that is of course it doesn't work you know it's diminishing returns and you it doesn't make you happy. The drugs don't work, as they say. I used to be sort of envious of some people who would be in recovery because what they'd do is they'd hit rock bottom, and I never had to hit rock bottom. And if people hit rock bottom, they sort of think they lose everything, and they go, I've got to build my life back up.

Well, then it really happened to me. So I was just like, you know, the bills are being paid. I'm still winning the occasional award and I'm making people laugh most of the time. So no one ever organized an intervention for you or anything like that? No, no, no. And the trouble is when you're successful,

then of course people, even people being tolerant, you can be indulged as long as you're still... Paying the bills. Paying the bills and you're doing things and you're you're you're delivering in a professional sense then of course then it become then you become indulged so it's not particularly healthy so you have to just you know you just have to sort of um get a grip and start No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, and they're not, you know, they're not like, you don't play monsters, but you,

but, but the character, weak people, I think, or troubled people. Right, right. But they are,

um, so here's a list of characteristics I wrote down that I associate with mainly Partridge, but also aspects of Saxon Dale and even your portrayal of Martin Sixsmith and Tony Wilson. There's a lot of vanity there a lot of the time. Yeah, yeah. And they're pompous.

Yeah. Well, there are also things that are definitely in me. I think there was something in a newspaper that read my autobiography and said, it's just as ridiculous as the Partridge book. And I thought, well, it's not a big insult to say that I'm a bit like Alan Partridge of course I am, I write the fucking character

if you're self aware then you know especially if you're involved in comedy you do things that you know are not particularly attractive what you do is you just observe that and you put it into your work so the characteristics you just mentioned

definitely part of me there's a lot more the list is really long keen to be thought of as successful massive chip on shoulder in some areas all that's true I often say, when I used to write partridge

I would say stuff in the office and they'd go just write that down I'd say well I wasn't being Alan it just sounds good my guilty pleasure and they'd go, just write that down. I'd say, well, I wasn't being Alan. They went, no, no, but it just sounds good just as Alan. So I'll give you an example, right? My guilty pleasure is I like to watch Air Crash Investigation. I just say that that's what Alan does.

We didn't think about it. As we were writing, we were just going, it would be quite funny if Alan watches Air Crash Investigation. It seems like a very Alan thing to do. But that's what I sometimes do. But I'm not haunted by that. It's just what you do if you're creative you put these things in that you know sound a bit stupid or a bit lowbrow but they they they're all it's all fuel to the fire well the other thing about the characters i think is that they know who they are they're happy in themselves and they're

not struggling with self-doubt that's crippling them there's chinks of self-doubt certainly in alan and saxondale i'd say and even even tony wilson i mean i think that's an attractive quality it is it uh there are chinks of self-doubt which are that for the most part yeah they are comfortable in their own skin but then there are moments of um self-doubt. I think a good character is someone you care about. But I think I've sort of earned the place, probably with Alan, is that the lineage of comic, well-loved British comedy characters

through the years, the thing that makes them last for people is that people have affection for them as well as finding them pompous or ridiculous or reprehensible. at nailing little teeny weeny things about not only stuff that you're into or that a person like that might be into which very often are the same things that the viewer is into you talk about those air crash shows i like stuff like that too and a lot of partridge stuff that comes up i think yeah i like that too i'm into that yeah and he thinks, like, there's a bit at the beginning of Nomad when you're talking about the whole idea of walking and you're walking up to the top of a hill and measuring out the whole journey in your mind,

like, half a step more and I'm ruining it. It's the idea that if he gets to the top of the mountain, he'll avert some sort of humanitarian disaster. There you go. And that's what gets him to the top of the mountain, he'll avert some sort of humanitarian disaster. There you go. And that's what gets him to the top of the mountain, is trying to say that if he doesn't get to the top, lots of innocent people will be slaughtered. As a little self-motivation trick.

A self-motivation technique. It's great, because it's exactly how so many people think. I know, I certainly do. You have all these little stupid crutches that you use. Yeah, I think when he talks about, I mean, the Gibbons, I'd say, came up with the best lines in that book, no doubt about it. And the thing that made me laugh out loud was that we all of us walk from the pert strut of a strictly come dancer

to the no-nonsense galumph of a lady Tory politician. That just made me laugh, the idea of a galumping. And when you came back to do those Midmorning Matters shorts, which were online, first of all, weren't they? They were online, because what happened was there was a big break, because I first started writing with Patrick Marber, then Patrick and Armando, then Armando Iannucci. I mean, I assume people know who he is. Patrick and Armando, Patrick and Armando, then Armando Iannucci. I mean, I assume people know who he is.

Patrick and Armando, and then Armando and Peter Bainham. And then there was a big gap because Armando went off to do his stuff and Peter went off to America. And so I was kind of left a bit writerless, even though I am in the writing room with the writers and I'm the only writer who's been

with alice's the year dart i didn't have any one i thought could find that that voice or and i didn't feel equipped to do it alone because i generally i've always collaborated with other people on everything i've done and uh that's one of the smartest things i've done is basically find the smartest person in the room and jump on them. But then I asked the Gibbons to write something for a live tour I was doing about six years ago when I revived a sort of live show.

And they submitted some material on Alan and it was really so wonderful, so well observed in a way that other people attempted to do and hadn't. And it was so, so well done. I remember crying, laughing and thinking, I can, if I want to revive this character, I can, because I feel like I've got a new voice. And they, I think, brought sort of a vulnerability to Alan

that was only quietly present before. They brought that to the fore. And it's genius to switch him from being this kind of little Englander racist to someone who really wants to be thought of as more of a liberal and someone who's aware of women's rights and race issues and things like that.

Yeah, it's someone who's trying to move the times, I think, and is trying to... I think he probably looked at David Cameron and thought, oh, I ought to do a bit of that. But I just don't find it, that kind of intolerance to me wasn't fun, wasn't, didn't, you couldn't really mine much comedy from him. Well, it wouldn't be very funny now for that reason. Yeah. I mean, it would be less funny just to see. Because what was funny is you felt like it was sort of a disappearing point of view.

Now it feels like distasteful somehow because it is becoming sort of legitimised in a kind of ugly way. Yeah. Not that many people that I can think of came back with a character that big but did it online at that point. Well, we did.

What we deliberately did was when we did Midmorning Masses, we decided that instead of putting out a big platform and saying, here's our new character, blah, blah, blah, I wanted it to be a quiet, creeping back in. Soft launch. That's right. Soft launch. In actual fact, I think we were doing it with Fosters at the time,

which I always felt very awkward about um um right not being a drinker well i think i probably was a drink at the time but certainly i wouldn't drink fosters yeah um come on mate it's the amber nectar um but at one point i think they said we want to put big billboards everywhere advertising alan and i said well i feel like that's alan advertising your lager you know but they said no we'll put billboards over for free to publicize your show i said i said i don't want you to i said what do you mean don't you want as many people as possible to anyone who sort of shout about your new show and i was like no i don't actually i'd rather people just found it yeah i found out about it word of mouth and also because i'm because it's an established character i want to sort of just do it on very very low key way and uh and it worked uh um also there wasn't as much pressure

then you know yeah and also you've got tim key in the in the picture and that was great as well tim was fantastic i remember first came Tim, I think it was in Edinburgh and he did a, he played a tiny little part in Saxondale but I do remember watching him when people audition

for smaller roles you just put them on tape and you watch them all and I remember watching this guy thinking who the hell is that and why, and there's always,

it's always exciting when you're in this business if someone's making you laugh and you don't quite know why. Yeah. Because of course when you work in comedy as you know, you become familiar with certain patterns and and formula

don't you go oh that's very funny but he's doing that thing so it's always refreshing when someone comes along and you don't know what you don't understand what they're doing it's like a conjuring trick he would do little just movements with his eyebrows his eyes and mumble things and it would just i remember just laughing so much and not understanding why i'm thinking i really really want him you know in my creative life and so when we're doing partridge i i uh you know we asked him to come and uh be a sidekick and he does it brilliantly because he's at once grateful for the opportunity but also slightly uh bullied and clearly a bit intellectually superior to alan and all the rest of it all the things that go with

that so uh yeah enriched it all yeah it's great and then those specials as well that was excellent the um especially the scissor dial thing from last year yeah scissor dial was a real real pleasure to make i think it was actually a contractual obligation but it was one of those things we said oh actually they you said that you'd give them another special and you did the deal ages ago it's like ah i've got to do another one um but we've always we've never wanted to phone in something and we always said we've got to make it good we've got to make it good i mean that was essentially a series of sketches almost, wasn't it? But they were so good, man.

That's some of the best partridge stuff. Stuff in the supermarket. Yeah. It was one of those, we'd been inspired by those apology pieces where someone does something wrong publicly and to atone for it, they try to spin it into a relaunch of their career by doing a very public mea culpa. Yeah, well, it's no longer fashionable

to apologise for anything you do wrong now. It's sort of staggering. It's very odd when you do a character that has to be a filter for the world you live in and watch how it changes. So you're going to do more Partridge stuff? Well, funnily enough, the more... Because I and we, the royal we, being me and the Gibbons,

only ever write something when we want to, when we feel like we want to for our own amusement, not to order. So it's always something that we find funny. And the stuff that I do as Alan, I have laughed at it in the writing room before I do it as Alan. In in fact when i'm watching the edits i laugh when i'm watching me being alan it feels like a very odd thing because i don't feel like i'm laughing at myself

i feel like i'm laughing at this um uh character and there was a period where i thought it was an albatross a little bit of an albatross but um as long as I can do other stuff, I'm happy to come back to Alan. If Alan was the only thing I had, I might feel slightly, I might go a bit insane. I'll probably slowly become him and then end up in a padded cell. It puts too much pressure on the whole thing. It's less fun, I guess. Yeah, I'd be doing it.

I never want to be ever doing it because I think I've got to pay the rent or for some reason like that I never ever want to do it in that for those reasons I got a sense from reading your book that you felt a little bit of an outsider when you were working on the day-to-day with that group of people. Would that be fair? Yeah, I did. I mean, I probably overstate it a bit. I mean, I'm sure it probably irritates Armando a bit

because I was never treated that way at all. In fact, there was a lot of equality. No, I was just aware of it in terms of they were just better read and they had a greater intellect. I mean, Patrick once said to me, you're more talented than I am, Steve. He said, but I'm cleverer than you are. Did he say that with his great face?

Yeah, he did. And the thing is, he was right. And he was a real mentor to me. He guided me when I was... I did have a sort of raw talent i wasn't really aware self-aware i was sort of blundering along trying to just follow my nose you know doing bits of comedy and being you know trying to be quite excited by it thinking i think i'm onto something here well the nice thing about the way you described that period in your book is that you say you were aware that this was something special.

This was a different type of a show and this was going to be quite great. I was very aware that I was in with the best of the best in terms of comedy. And would they just set you off running and you would just improvise? How did you get to a... We did a bit of improvisation and there would be some scripts as well so when you've got a line like when alan's commentating on a football match and just goes shit yeah that was that was that was just improvised that what we did with the boy we did the day-to-day which is we get a load of footage and i'm under to say just talk over this footage as alan and also I don't know that much about sport, which actually made it funnier

because I just described what I was watching, literally. So it just came out funny. And really, I was just doing an amalgam of what sports presenters sounded like to me. That's so great. I mean, that, for me, and for my friends, was like the Bible for a funny way of saying things. And I guess for a lot of people you know

they love doing a lot of the voices of the characters you do but there was also um other moments in that show that were so subtle and and just really nicely done like with partridge when he's talking to the lady in the locker room and she suddenly removes her top and suddenly alan's completely at sea but has to carry on and try not to make it too obvious that he's just doesn't know where to look yeah sometimes you think what would literally really happen and if there's some truth in that like just repeating a word over and over because you can't form a thought in your head because you're just looking at someone's tits and that's all you can think of

that then becomes funny because there's something honest the repeating thing is a good motif that you do with Partridge still in the books and what's the name that he says over and over again? oh Dan Dan yeah

sometimes we do things and think deliberately think I wonder how many times we can say this when it becomes awkward and uncomfortable and therefore funny and not funny and then funny again, staying with the joke as long as possible, just breaking that rule of brevity, you know. I think we did the same thing in one series of Partridge

where he's having sex, it's a Valentine's Day episode, he's having sex in a hotel room, turns the lights off, and I think part of us thought, I wonder how long we can make people at home look at essentially a blank screen. How long we can get away with it. Because, yeah, you're not supposed to do that. Well, you're in a nice position now because you can go pretty much any direction.

Philomena was such a success as far as doing a serious film, doing a character that didn't rely... There were funny elements about that Martin Sixsmith character that you played, but it wasn't about that. It wasn't about delivering laughs. There was real heart and real drama there. Obviously, you've got Judi Dench.

That's not a bad person to be playing opposite if you want some drama to actually hit. Yeah, it was very satisfying because it was an article I read in a newspaper and just decided I wanted to do something different, just something I wanted to do rather than just trying to be funny, which is great and I love it, but it's limiting and it's not the only thing that matters.

Maybe some of your dramatic chops were honed working with Michael Winterbottom. Would that be fair like um the first thing I saw you do with him was 24 hour party people which was so good I mean that that's one of my all-time favorite films anyway that's about a whole world of music that I love anyway but all the characterizations in there were so enjoyable and your Tony Wilson was so much more than a caricature. It was very, very three-dimensional, and it played around in a way that I hadn't seen before with, you know, breaking the fourth wall

and talking about aspects of that character and how vain he was and how deluded he was, but still being a very likeable guy, you know. Yeah, bold. And I remember Peter Hook said at one point, was but but still being a very likable guy you know yeah bold and and uh i remember peter hook said at one point said the biggest uh which i thought was a compliment said the biggest wanker in manchester being played by the second biggest wanker in manchester i remember he said we had we kept having him say i went to cambridge in the film um and i remember tony says to me i don't i

don't say that. I don't go around saying I went to Cambridge, but I remember he must have told me three times that he did. Was that fun, making that film? That film, to me, was, of all the things I've ever done, that's the film that I've not seen it for years, and I don't want to watch it, because to me it would be like opening a shoebox full of old photographs that are too it was too close to i mean i grew up

in manchester and i went to the hacienda and and um you know i knew tony when he was on tv as a local reporter and i remember watching his regional shows where he put sex posters on for the first time so when i went to do the film it was like reliving a part of my youth, but instead of playing a bit part, as I did in reality, I played the central role of Tony. At the time, I remember saying to Michael, why do you want to talk about this? This is not real history. This is not history. This is just last week. He said, no, this is a really important period.

And I was like, really? And it's funny. Now, looking back, I go, oh, yes, of course, it's about this seminal moment in popular culture and all the rest of it. But it didn't feel like that at the time. But as I was making it, it's the only thing I've ever done where Michael shoots in such a way that you don't quite know where the camera is.

And, you know, it was pretty wild times. So the line between us hanging out when we weren't shooting and making the film is all blurred in my head. It would be like looking at old photographs if I were to watch the film again. It was the only thing I've ever done where I thought, I don't want the film to stop because I'm enjoying pretending to be Tony Wilson.

Emotionally, the most connected thing I have in my career is that film. film emotionally i'm the most connected thing i have in my career is that film and you had a lot of the real figures from that scene popping up in the in the film yeah it's howard devoto in one scene mark smith and um all these people was that fun having them around it was great it was great and even tony was that bit i mean there was one scene where I had me with a giant straw shoveling up white lines along a road that were like about six inches wide, as if he was snorting the lines off the road. And he came in and went, I didn't do that drug when we were shooting it. He said, but I believe in artistic freedom, so carry on shooting it. And now I'm really glad, so pleased we made that film,

because I feel like it was close enough to that period to definitely capture something of the essence of it. And when they rebuilt a replica of the Hacienda in a warehouse in Manchester, I used to go to the real Hacienda nightclub, so everything from reality tallied with the set. So it was odd. And when Tony walked in and burst into tears

because they'd knocked down his Hacienda before, and he was... At one point in the film, because there was a lot of improvisation I said as Tony I say something like I protected myself from the having the dilemma of selling out by never owning anything to sell out and Tony said to me he said I really like the way you phrased it when you said that he said I didn't actually say that at the time but it sounded so good that I just I put it into my biography and said that I actually said

the words that you said. So he was taking from the film and putting it back into reality and owning what I'd said as him. Closing the loop. Wow, the postmodern art loop. And what was, I mean, Michael Winterbottom does shoot in this unconventional way where you're i've heard that you're never quite sure if it's like a proper take or you don't know what it is

he might be shooting at any time one time he might follow you during the action he might take the camera and go somewhere else there might be two cameras he and also there's no safe normally you're a film set you know everyone can stand to one side of the room while they shoot something or you all have to go and stand on the other side of the room so you're not on camera when michael's shot stuff there's nowhere safe to go because he might turn the camera and point it in any direction at any time so if you're not in the scene you're not allowed on the set there's no makeup and wardrobe not allowed on the set so what if your hair's in the wrong place well keep an eye on it make sure it is in the right place well what what about my jacket well make sure you remember how many buttons you had done up so there probably are a few continuity errors in these

films but no one gives a damn because it's got this vitality and it feels like it's sort of half real and we wouldn't i know when you make a film you get asked to hit a mark so that you're in frame or find the light which means that you don't block you don't stand behind an object that stops the light that's pointing at you illuminating your face there's lots of technical considerations when you make a film conventionally and there's none of that with michael he never asks you to hit a mark he never really blocks anything he just says sort of go over there and sort of say what you like and he doesn't say action or cut either he just goes you know go on whenever you're ready so it doesn't there's this

delineation between now it's acting and now it's reality so it really does creep under your skin and remember sometimes we'd just be chatting around a pool table me and the band the actors playing the happy mondays and we'd be chatting laughing and i pool table, me and the band, the actors playing the Happy Mondays, and we'd be chatting, laughing, and I'd realise, why has Michael not come over and asked us to do a scene? And I'd look over in the corner and realise that he's filming us, quietly. And then that ends up in the film. I think we did a scene at Manchester Airport once where he turned up and just said to the band,

start knocking over tables and stuff in the airport lounge and kicking over chairs. I mean, he had no permission to film there. He he said just keep knocking them over until the security turn up and throw you out and so that's what they did they just started knocking tables up and then security turned up of course because someone said oh my god this there's these people are going mad and all turned up and grabbed hold of them and literally turned them all out of the building and just filmed it all and put it in the film and were there no actors who were just distressed by that process who said now come on look this is people would turn up yes some actors would actors would turn up and say what's going on and because i got up to speed fairly quickly because i was playing the lead role i would say just the best

thing you can do is stop trying to figure out what's going on and just go with the flow and just do it, and he'll figure it out later and edit it into something that makes sense. So that was really enjoyable to do that because it was being anti-technical. And then in Cock and Bull's story, was that your first pairing with Rob Brydon then? I think it was. I mean, I'd worked with Rob before, because he and Hugo Blick sent me this tape of him doing a sort of taster tape of what became Marion and Jack.

Oh, yeah. Which I went to the BBC with, which I like to remind him of constantly. Sure. I gave him his big break. So I had worked with him, but I'd never worked with him on screen. And he did a series for us with Julia Davis called Human Remains, which sort of went below the radar,

but there's a couple of episodes of that that I absolutely adore. That's an amazing show. Yeah. There's one episode called Slytherin about middle-aged swingers, which I just, even now, I just adore it. But anyway, Rob and I had never acted before. We did the Cock and Bull story now. And then there's, I think it's the final sequence, isn't it,

where you're sat watching the film. Is this right? Yeah, that's right. And you're winding each other up, and it seems real. It seems like you're genuinely getting a little bit riled on at certain moments and then of course that was such an effective pairing that you went on to do the trip yeah you've done two series you're going to do a third we just did one we finished it oh yeah in spain in spain that's being edited i've got a rough call I'm supposed to look at now, actually.

So the last two incarnations were like a 90-minute film and six-and-a-half hours. It's a film in the rest of Europe and America, which has like an arthouse release as a movie and does get a bit of traction. That's the Italy one, is it? And the Yorkshire one. Oh, right, I see. They were both TV series in the UK and then movies elsewhere.

And the same things happen with this. This is the trip to Spain and it's the same, you know, tropes and themes that the other ones have. There's a slightly different story going on and an issue with me and my son and my girlfriend. Yeah, well, we know how to do it now, so it was very enjoyable. I mean, it is very... The first one, Michael kept asking us to do it,

and Rob and I kept saying no, because we thought it sounded like a terrible idea. We thought, well, at least in those other films we did with Michael, there's some structure, but there seemed to be no structure. And also, celebrities playing themselves had sort of been done on Larry Sanders and Gary Shandling, and it felt like a busted flush. So we really were not keen on it at all, because we said it's not... And it was post-extras as well, wasn't it?

Post-extras, post-extras. So I didn't want to do that thing of going, hey, get a load of me. There's a little bit of when a celebrity makes fun of themselves of like, hey, look making fun of myself aren't i cool and don't i have loads of humility um and that just felt like uncomfortable and uh so we just didn't for lots of reasons we didn't want to do it but michael kept saying no it won't be that it'll be more than that it'll be better it'll be about sort of middle age and life and we were, but we haven't got any material. And he'd say, well, it'll work out. There'll be a road map. And I thought, well, if we do it in Michael... Eventually, I think he just wore us down.

I said to Rob, what, should we do this? We might as well, and it might be good. And I think we were in York... Not Yorkshire. Yeah, we were in Yorkshire. The Inn at Whitewell in the Trough of Boland, which is a lovely country pub in a beautiful part of the world. We were a couple of days, two or three days into it. We sat with each other and we had an agreement,

we made an agreement to sort of not be able to rile each other and, if you like, cross the line a bit with each other's personalities and say things that are quite personal how did you do that then what was that do you remember like i think we had a conversation say look we can take the piss out of each other and we're not supposed to get to you know i think rob said you're not going to get upset and no i said look if we don't like we take it out but yes we've got license to be cruel a bit a bit cruel uh with each other and make it uh have a bit hard to police though isn't it have a bit of a edge. Hard to police, though, isn't it?

And surely the temptation for both of you was to one-up each other by going as far as you could. Well, it would, and sometimes it got a bit uncomfortable, but we also knew that the discomfort meant it would be quite watchable. And there were times when it was like we got a bit frosty. Would you say things in those moments or would you just leave it frosty? No, sometimes I'd say, that's not going in, or he'd say, don't talk about that on camera.

And then sometimes we'd get really, I'd get more angry than Rob sometimes. And what are you like in those moments? Do you go quiet and passive aggressive? No, I just start going on my high moral horse and grandstanding about you know i mean we're sort of playing ourselves and then and then amplified and rob's always doing impersonations and being more happy-go-lucky and laissez-faire and uh seems to wear life more

lightly on his shoulders and of course there is a great deal of truth in that but but we we both are self-aware enough to amplify those what rob doesn't do is go around doing impersonations all the time he doesn't really do that and i don't go around being pretentious and self-important all the time although there's a bit of that in me so what we do is we just ramp that up in fact what happened was rob and i would sometimes stay in the same hotel and we'd eat with each other in the evening for real not with the cameras on us and when we had those dinners we'd just be nice to each other and we'd just talk each other in the evening, for real, not with the cameras on us. And when we had those dinners, we'd just be nice to each other. And we'd just talk about stuff. And I think one time we were talking about our families.

We both wept. I said to him, wouldn't it be funny if people saw that what actually happens is we talk tenderly about each other's families and say nice things to each other. But when we do manufacture those conversations, there is a bit of truth in them. And we know that. After a couple of days,

we did realise that. We said, I think this is going to be good. This is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. This is an advert for Squarespace. I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial.

And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code BUXTON to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. There we go. Steve Coogan. Welcome back to my bench in Los Angeles, corner of Crescent Heights and Santa Monica Boulevard, getting a couple of strange looks from people, but not really. Scruffy old guy doing a podcast on a bench. That's what this city's all about. Thank you so much to Steve Coogan for giving up his time to talk to me.

I hope you enjoyed that. I would really encourage you to pick up those Alan Partridge books if you haven't done already. I, Alan Partridge, and Nomad, co-written with the Gibbons brothers, recommend the audiobooks. They're some of the funniest things I have ever heard. Anyway, thanks to Steve. Thanks to Rob Brydon for encouraging him to talk to me. I won't ramble too much at the end of this episode because I've got to go and pack my bags and get on the plane to head back to the UK. I'll chat a little bit more next week. Just before I go, though, I would like to toot my own trumpet.

Hey, I'm in Los Angeles. That's what you're supposed to do here. Auto trumpet tooting. We won an award, this podcast. The Chortle Internet Award, I think it was. So I was thrilled, and I believe it was voted for by actual humans. So if you were one of those people that voted, thanks so much. I really appreciate it it makes a big difference makes me feel as if I'm not totally wasting my time and of course I would like to thank the people that helped me with the podcast

especially Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his production support and to Matt Lamont who helps me edit a lot of these and this one in particular as well thanks to those chaps. And thanks to everybody who agrees to come on and talk to me. I really appreciate it.

Especially Joe Cornish and Louis Theroux and Garth Jennings. My most faithful regular guests. And thanks to you, especially listeners, podcats, for continuing to download the podcast i really appreciate it i feel like i should do a muted i love you bye because i'm just embarrassed to do a loud one in hollywood you know if someone like a big agent might be driving past and see me sat on my own on a bench saying, I love you, bye. And then they would think, oh, I was going to cast that guy in a big new blockbusting comedy film. But now I've seen that he appears to be mentally unsound. I'm going to give the part to James Corden Take care listeners

Till next week I love you Bye American people are staring at me See ya Please like and subscribe Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Bye. Like and subscribe. ស្រូវាប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ Thank you. Bye.