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Coogan's Bluff

Coogan's Bluff

pROfilEs cOOgaN’s Bluff

Britain’s reigning king of the comedy of embarrassment. BY jOHN laHR

n a sweltering morning in mid- He specializes in creating characters, March, three executive produc- not jokes. Each comic persona has a dis- ersO for HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusi- tinct world view, a unique idiom, and asm,” David Mandel, , and a richly imagined backstory. Coogan’s Jeff Schaffer, lolled around in shorts at humor often trades on the almost Ori- the patio table of a Malibu beachfront ental complexity of the British class sys- house waiting for the to arrive so tem, which means that his most mem- that the day’s shooting could begin. All orable characters—the beer-swilling were graduates of the Harvard Lam- Mancunian slacker Paul Calf and his poon and of “.” A month earlier, sluttish sister Pauline, for instance— they had put the British and don’t always travel well beyond the up for the role of borders of the British Isles. (“It really Dr. Bright, a psychiatrist whose advice bugs me,” Paul Calf said in one routine. lands Larry (), the antihero “They say, ‘Oh, David Beckham—he’s of “,” in a world not very clever.’ Yeah. They don’t say, of woe with his wife, Cheryl (Cheryl ‘Stephen Hawking—shit at football.’ ”) Hines), in the penultimate episode of In Britain, however, they are house- the sixth and possibly final season of hold names, as much as Jerry, George, the series, which airs November 4th. It Elaine, and Kramer are here. If you was a meatier role than most guest ap- were alive in England in the nineties, pearances, and the producers had been Coogan’s character was hoping, according to Schaffer, to “get one of the cultural icons by which you someone great.” They were all Coogan measured time, a Malvolio of media fans. Larry David, however, knew noth- personalities, on a direct line of wit be- ing about him. tween Basil Fawlty and David Brent. In 2005, “The Comedian’s Come- A hapless talk-show host demoted to dian,” a British television special, asked radio d.j., Partridge was mean-spirited, more than three hundred respected com- self-aggrandizing, status-seeking, for- edy professionals worldwide to rank their ever tempest-tossed in the Sea of Me. favorite . Coogan came in at He was also a fun-house reflection of No. 17, just ahead of Charlie Chaplin Tory Britain, the ultimate Thatcherite (No. 18), just behind Peter Sellers (No. Middle Englander. His three series on 14), and well ahead of many more famous BBC2 riveted the country from 1994 to figures, such as Eddie Murphy (No. 32), 2002, attracting as much as twenty per Bill Cosby (No. 47), and Mel Brooks cent of the audience share and selling (No. 50). (Larry David was No. 23.) The more than half a million DVDs. forty-two-year-old Coogan is, in some For a few years now, Coogan has ways, a British version of Larry David. been sowing the seeds of a success- He has captivated British audiences for ful acting career as well. He is the only more than a decade, with a run of enor- British comedian since Dudley Moore mously successful television series which to make significant inroads into the are the kind of high-water marks of com- movie market, with fine performances edy in Britain that “Seinfeld” (for which in such films as ’s “Coffee Larry David co-wrote sixty episodes) and and Cigarettes” (2003), Michael Win- “Curb Your Enthusiasm” are for Amer- terbottom’s “24-Hour Party People” ican viewers. (2002) and “” In his shows, Coogan, like David, (2005), and Sofia Coppola’s “Marie An- has accentuated the negative and ex- toinette” (2006), as well as some not so plored the comedy of embarrassment. fine outings in such big-budget Holly-

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TNY—2007_11_05—PAGE 42—133SC. wood movies as “Around the World in Eighty Days” (2004) and “” (2006). By Coogan’s second day on the set of “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” according to Mandel, “it was just like he’s one of the regulars. It’s very simple to see when Lar- ry’s having fun.” Mandel was holding the day’s script—a single piece of paper with seven typed lines—which gave the ba- sics of the plot that Coogan, David, and Hines would flesh out through improvi- sation over the next eight hours: Larry, in an effort to get himself out of the dog- house with Cheryl, who has moved to a rental in Malibu, takes Dr. Bright there and tries to persuade him to accept the blame for everything that has gone wrong. As the crew positioned the lights around the wicker living-room furni- ture and adjusted the curtains of the bay window overlooking the glassy Pacific, Coogan, in conservative psychiatrist garb—blue gabardine suit, suède shoes, and glasses—milled around the set in a kind of focussed, anonymous solitude. Once the actors had blocked out the scene, he and David began to improvise an argument about who should take re- sponsibility for David’s marital crisis. “I’m taking ninety per cent of the blame,” Coogan said. “I’m asking you to take ten per cent.” David refused; mayhem en- sued. After each take, the writers hud- dled around the actors and rearranged the syntax of the scene, clarifying ideas, cutting excesses, adjusting words, reset- ting props, and debating character points. Gradually, they built up a gram- mar and a rhythm for the exchange. Steve Coogan is, in some ways, a British version of Larry David. Around the fifth take, as the argument about Dr. Bright’s percentage of re- scribbling on my notepad and sashayed Coogan seemed almost embarrassed sponsibility escalated, David began to over. “Why did I let you on the set?” he to be the focus of attention on Larry Da- crack up in the middle of the scene. asked, then dictated, “Larry David vid’s set. “It’s someone else’s show,” he Two or three times, he started to speak, looked pensive before the shot,” and said at the lunch break. “I want to do in- then collapsed in guffaws. “I’m so sorry,” headed off with a pensive look on his teresting stuff without overwhelming.” he said more than once. On the sixth face. I asked him what was so funny While he waited for a van to take him to take, Coogan’s exasperation—“I take about Coogan. “He’s just got a funny his trailer, a couple of miles down the one hundred per cent!”—set David way,” he said, turning back. “When he Pacific Coast Highway, he said, “I find wheezing like a tire deflating. He cov- started yelling, I hadn’t heard him yell it quite inspiring. It’s like playing tennis ered his face. “I can’t help it,” he said. before. That really made me laugh. I with someone who’s really good. It raises On the seventh take, Coogan nailed it. cannot keep a straight face when people your game.” Even when he climbed into He spoke of Larry as being under his yell at me on the show. In life, of course, the van beside David, Hines, and the “auspices”—a pompous term that some- I cower.” David went on, “He plays con- producers, who were heading to a local how captured the preposterousness of fusion and ineptitude very well.” Schaffer sushi restaurant, he maintained a polite, the man and his situation. “That was added, “Steve’s able to get a lot of com- almost shy reserve. David was talking ko ko S

ri pretty wonderful,” Mandel said, under edy on reactions. He’s skilled enough to about his diet, about Coogan’s comedy, T r E his breath, and called, “Cut.” know that he’s gonna get huge laughs by about something that the character rob During a break, David noticed me saying nothing.” George had said on “Seinfeld.” The van

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TNY—2007_11_05—PAGE 43—133SC.—livE ArT r16741 swung into the show’s base camp to drop Coogan off. “I respect you all. Goodbye,” he said as he got out. a KOsMOs

“ he spirituality of imperfection is You lay in your last sleep, not-sleep, what interests me,” Coogan said of head tilted stiffly to the right on the pillow hisT comedy. In life, Coogan’s imperfec- at a sharper angle than when you bent over poems, tions have landed him, variously, in ther- year after year, and we plucked at each other’s lines, apy, in rehab, and in the British tabloids, where he regularly sees himself depicted as if now you considered some even starker question. as a Viagra-gobbling, coked-up libertine Your I.V. tubes were gone. Your arms were bruised. with a sweet tooth for threesomes. In A blue cloth cap enfolded your pale, bald head. 1996, Coogan’s four-year relationship It was too late to give you the lavender shawl I’d imagined with the lawyer Anna Cole ended—six months before their daughter, Clare, was more for my sake than for yours. born—after tales surfaced of his bedding Your mouth was suddenly tender, the mouth of a girl. another woman on a mattress covered in You had come very far, to come here. ten-pound notes. In 2002, Coogan Never one not to look at things squarely, hosted “a bevy of lap dancers” in his hotel room. “I was appalled and shocked to now you looked inward. Who knows what you saw. find out they were lap dancers,” he said, And when, weeks later, we gathered when tabloid newshounds confronted again at the house to say those formal farewells, him. “I was under the impression that I went up to your study looking for “Leaves of Grass” they were Latvian refugees who needed shelter for the night.” In 2004, another and found, instead, your orderly desk, unused, hotel-room jamboree with lap dancers your manuscripts neatly stacked, the framed was one of the more sensational indiscre- photographs of your girls, and, like a private message tions that put paid to his two-year mar- from Whitman, who saw things whole, the small riage to the society beauty Caroline Hick- man. In 2005, the singer Courtney Love dried body of a mouse. A kosmos, he, too. He, too, luckier. claimed to have got pregnant during a brief affair with Coogan. (Coogan denies —Rosanna Warren this.) This summer, in response to a sui- cide attempt by his friend the actor , Love put Coogan back in the laughter becomes the only available op- In the distance, the brackish Channel tabloids, characterizing him as a kind of tion.” As Oscar Wilde observed, to be- threw off glints of light; seagulls sun- Devil’s henchman who had somehow come a “spectator of one’s own life … is to bathed on street signs beside Coogan’s pushed Wilson over the edge. (“It’s horse- escape the suffering of life.” Coogan dis- house, where the blinds of the front win- shit,” Coogan said. He had been filming plays a certain detachment when he’s not dows were drawn. Except for the gray in Hawaii for six weeks and hadn’t even performing, a kind of polite vagueness. Porsche parked in the driveway, there was seen Wilson since the previous January.) He can’t do “big emotional things,” his nothing showy about the place or, when Through the years, Coogan has come producing partner, the comedy writer he finally answered the door, about to believe that everything problematic Henry Normal, told me. “What comes Coogan himself, dressed in his usual about himself—his fears, his vanities, the out is often just the tip of the iceberg. mufti of jeans, cardigan, and T-shirt. public saga of his sexual misadventures— Somewhere within him, he feels discon- Coogan is thin, with a shock of gray- is also part of the solution, something he nected from the world. Comedy is one ing, uncombed hair; offscreen, he seems can exploit quite directly in his perfor- way that he makes that connection. Part subdued, at once guarded and restless. mances. “I’ve seen myself in my personal of what he’s doing is reshaping the world His house—which he moved into in life behaving like an idiot and thinking, so he can fit into it.” 1999, though he spends a lot of his time This will be quite useful,” he said. “If I see in Los Angeles—revealed the single- something I’ve done that’s funny, I will n another bright day in March, I minded focus of his transient life. In the laugh out loud like I’m watching a char- visited Coogan in Hove, a genteel spacious front rooms, boxes and racks of acter that’s been created.” He co-opts his annexO of where he and his cur- clothes waited to be sorted. Only his own flaws in his work, he said, in order to rent co-writer, Neil MacLennan, were daughter Clare’s room, its walls decorated deny “other people ownership of things thrashing out the story lines for the sec- with rainbows, a pink ballet skirt dropped that might make me vulnerable. To me, ond season of Coogan’s latest series, “Sax- like a grace note in the middle of the it’s a battle of wits. You can’t pretend you ondale,” which was scheduled to begin floor, showed any sense of life or order. don’t have that baggage, so the best thing shooting in June. (The first season was Comedy is what gets Coogan’s attention to do is just use it all. The older one gets, shown here on BBC America last year.) and—according to Henry Normal—

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TNY—2007_11_05—PAGE 44—133SC. between me and a crack squirrel, I would take takes up ninety per cent of his waking that squirrel down. I would take that squirrel Coogan improvised and tested; Mac- time. “The other ten per cent are eating down to Chinatown. Lennan challenged and transcribed. The and going to the toilet,” Normal said. “I pas de deux went on for an hour and a don’t think he has a day off unless he’s “I connect with his anger and frustra- half. Finally, they took a tea break, and forced to. Even if he has a day off, who tion and his preponderance to pontificate Coogan settled onto a black leather sofa. knows what’s going on in his head? He endlessly,” Coogan said. “I’m a bit inse- “I like doing someone who’s got a few could be doing a sitcom about having a cure. That’s fine. I just give it all to neuroses,” he said. “The dysfunctional day off.” (In 1999, Normal and Coogan Tommy.” He glanced out the window at side of your personality is always funnier. together formed Baby Cow, now one of his walled garden—a large square of lawn It’s kind of a double bluff. I like the idea the biggest independent comedy produc- dominated by an apple tree with a pictur- of people thinking, Is he really that bad?” tion companies in Britain.) esque wooden swing. On one side of the He added, “When I say things as Tommy A large Victorian desk with a leather- property, below a vegetable patch of peas, , it’s sometimes me just getting ette top dominates Coogan’s work room, runner beans, spring onions, and radishes, things off my chest. We all talk crap and but he rarely sits at it. He is a pacer. He was a covered swimming pool; on the do stupid things sometimes.” doesn’t write things down; he doesn’t other was the Sussex County Cricket type; his gift is for improvising on his feet. Club. “There’s great ambient sound oogan’s characters are, in a way, his “He’s almost autistic,” Normal said. “If around here,” MacLennan said, referring confessional. His longtime friend he’s trying to find a joke, you could set a to the “oohs” and “aahs” that emanate andC collaborator the playwright Patrick fire next to him and he wouldn’t notice.” from the cricket matches. Coogan chimed Marber told me, “The difference between MacLennan, a large, genial, shaggy man in: “I find it very easy to work when I can Steve and a lot of celebrities is he feels a with tired eyes, was at the desk with his hear the background noise of polite ap- bit guilty about it all. There’s an urge in laptop, poised to catch the sparks of the plause. … He said ironically, knowing it him to be a good family man and a good day’s conversation and to keep Coogan’s was funny.” boy.” Coogan, who was born in 1965, imagination from wandering too far off Coogan propped himself against the grew up in Middleton, just north of Man- track. On the wall behind him, stretching mantelpiece to scrutinize the Post-it chester, in a lower-middle-class Catholic from the fireplace to the ceiling, was a notes detailing the episode that he was family, and, according to Anna Cole, “his mosaic of color-coded Post-its, listing the working on. In it, Tommy is fined for Catholic upbringing is a huge part of who plot points, character ideas, and key lines riding a train without a ticket, even he is.” His parents, Tony and Kathleen, for each episode of the new season of though he offers to pay. “This happened an I.B.M. engineer and a housewife, were “Saxondale” (“Regrets”—yellow, “Nos- to me,” Coogan said. Refusing to pay the progressive Catholics; in addition to their talgia”—turquoise, “Suicide”—blue). “It’s fine as a matter of principle, Tommy in- own six children (Steve is the fourth) and been heavily compromised, because I ran sists on defending himself in court. an adopted daughter named Maria, they out of colors,” MacLennan said. Coogan and MacLennan began work on took in a series of foster children through- Tommy Saxondale, Coogan’s most his courtroom defense. Coogan offered, out his childhood. In the liberal, vivacious recent and most nuanced creation, is a “Should he start his speech saying, ‘Mark Coogan ménage, the children all vied for former roadie turned pest exterminator, a Twain once said … ’ ? I just wonder what’s the attention of their parents, who were man full of heroic gas, a combination of funniest. Is there a more pretentious per- not “particularly demonstrative,” Coogan bombast and botched insight. He is also son? William Wilberforce? That might said. “You couldn’t get a lot of their time.” a potbellied, gray-haired projection of be too pretentious. Someone whose name He used to run home from school during Coogan’s own divided nature: a romantic is loaded with the righting of wrongs and recess “to sit with my mum and chat contrarian struggling to come to terms injustice … Mahatma Gandhi.” about things, just to get an hour on my with the confounding disappointments of “Nelson Mandela,” MacLennan own with her.” adulthood and searching for ways to face suggested. “We’re a family that puts a high value down the uncertainties of the new cen- But Coogan had already settled on on being entertaining,” Coogan’s older tury with a modicum of dignity. Each ep- Gandhi. “Some people might say, How sister, Clare, told me. Coogan was pre- isode of the show begins with a session of can you compare nonpayment of a ticket pared to go to great lengths to make an an anger-management class that Tommy to a British railroad station—Stevenage impact. When he was twelve years old, is taking. When, in one segment, the railway station—with Mahatma Gan- he daubed himself with fake blood and teacher argues that negotiation is better dhi’s passive resistance?” he began, in wax skin “to make myself look like I was than conflict, Tommy responds, “Not al- character. “Some people might regard dead.” Once, he made an effigy of a man ways possible, is it? … Take the urban that as ridiculous, even deeply preten- and put it in the living room; the body squirrel. I would like nothing better than tious. But this is why it’s not.” was tricked out with a tape recording to hammer out a negotiated settlement.” and lights. “When you went in the door, But the squirrels in public parks, he says, a light would come on, blinding you, have feasted on hidden crack cocaine and and it would trigger on the tape become violent, drug-crazed rodents: saying, ‘Hello. Come in. Sit down. Do I have seen a squirrel with my own eyes not attempt to see who I am,’ ” he ex- punch a pit bull terrier on the nose. Say what plained. “My mum just went over and you want about anger management. But, if it’s pulled the head off the effigy. I would do

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TNY—2007_11_05—PAGE 45—133SC—#2 Page new Live sPot art r16762F, PlS iNSPECT ANd rEPorT oN quAliTY things like that all the time. My sister re- describe the action. “I used to get annoyed what I do. I felt like I had something.” In members me saying a lot, ‘Look at me!’ when I’d hear people telling the stories order to get his Equity card, he started ‘Watch me!’ ” and not doing justice to the detail. The doing standup. At the time, there were no Throughout his school years, Coogan detail made it work for me.” alternative comedy venues outside of told me, his report cards all said the same By the time he finished school, enough London, so he worked the rowdy Man- thing: “chatterbox, tendency to dream, people had told him that he should be on chester pubs, sometimes opening for his slow in his work.” Coogan, who was in- television that, he said, “I thought, Well, brother’s band. He developed the habit of troverted and anxious, said that his obses- maybe I have got something.” He had adding surreal scenarios to his imperson- sion with comedy was just one manifesta- done badly on his A levels and had been ations: the pint-size comedian Ronnie tion of being “in my own world a lot of the rejected for a course in politics at Lan- Corbett in Vietnam, Sylvester Stallone as time.” He was so dreamy that his aunt caster University. “I remember thinking, a social worker, meets dubbed him Stevie Wonder. “In our fam- In every generation new people emerge— Alan Bennett. “I remember seeing him in ily, I would say, he was the least confident,” that’s the natural order of things,” he and thinking he’s too big for Clare said. “He was very aware of being said. “I thought, Why can’t I be part of the crowd he’s running with,” Normal humiliated. Very early on, he lived with that new generation? All those people said. “They’re aiming for the trees; he’s not being brilliant, not being good-look- must have started somewhere. I’ve got aiming for the moon.” ing. If we’d been puppies, I think he would as good a chance as anyone. No bag- By the age of twenty-two, Coogan was have been the runt of the litter.” gage. No setbacks. I’ve got to try and earning a thousand pounds a night doing Still, from the age of three, Coogan do something. I’m not going to do it standup, as well as providing voices for displayed a startling gift for mimicry; through academia.” the satirical TV puppet show “Spitting he’d wake his siblings up at night to At nineteen, Coogan auditioned for Image.” Tapped as one of the up-and- make them guess the identity of his lat- the London drama schools and was re- coming generation of performers, he est impersonation. “I was like a windup jected by all of them. “I felt like an ‘oik’ twice appeared in the Royal Variety Per- toy for friends,” he said. When he was from the regions,” he said. “They cast formance, where he shook hands with a twelve-year-old at Catholic grammar a great silhouette, these young men Prince Charles and Princess Diana. But school, his older brother Martin—who and girls who came in, with inbuilt his comic Waterloo came in 1990, when was the first Coogan to win fame, as the confidence.” When he auditioned, later, he was playing the Edinburgh Festival lead singer of the Mock Turtles, and is for the Manchester Polytechnic, which Fringe, with the comedian Frank Skinner now a Manchester d.j.—would pull Steve offered a vocational course in drama, supporting him. “He blew me offstage,” aside and command him to do impres- Coogan used that sense of intimida- Coogan said, anger still percolating in his sions. Coogan’s impersonations included tion to create a character called Duncan voice at the memory. “We were sharing a Margaret Thatcher, Michael Crawford, Thickett, a sort of whirlwind of inept- flat in Edinburgh and the phone kept Roger Moore, and Sean Connery. He ness. “Because I was doing a character, it ringing. It was always for him. I was much could also mimic his schoolteachers; once gave me license,” Coogan said. “I walked better known than he was, but I was just he was even invited to lead an assembly as in with my books and dropped them all doing impressions. ‘Yeah, Steve Coogan— his housemaster, checking the students’ over the floor and scrabbled to pick them he does funny voices.’ They were over me dress and extemporizing on school issues. up like I was very nervous. I did a delib- already, before my career had started.” “I wasn’t the class clown,” he said. “I had erate rendition of an incompetent, idiotic Coogan began to think of his imperson- my own sense of humor, which was a lit- person trying to get into drama school.” ations as the theatrical equivalent of jug- tle bit élitist. When the teacher asked me “He was gawky, with a strange laugh and gling, a trick that should be consigned to to do that, I was reluctant. I didn’t want big glasses,” Martin Nestor, who was birthday parties. He hankered for the to be a performing monkey, but I did do one of the two adjudicators, said. “We depth and richness of real characters. “I it. It was the only thing I was good at, to thought, We mustn’t laugh, because he’ll was very much aware that some of the be honest.” think we’re laughing at him. For two or more established people regarded me as Coogan grew up in a television gener- three minutes, we were genuinely fooled lightweight,” he said. “I was absolutely de- ation; his influences were primarily Brit- into believing that this young man was termined to redress it.” He added, “I re- ish TV comedy—“,” “Por- a candidate. Finally, he broke it off and member someone said to me, ‘You’re ridge,” “Steptoe and Son,” “The Two said, ‘My name is Steve Coogan and I’ve gonna have to pull a rabbit out of a hat, Ronnies,” “Morecambe and Wise.” (The come to audition.’ ” Needless to say, he because you’re flatlining.’ ” economy and eloquence of Northern was accepted into the program. In the end, he produced two rabbits. workingmen’s club comedy also had a Coogan began to realize—“almost The first was a repertory of characters, significant influence on him.) Watch- overnight,” he said—that what he’d per- which he developed with another Man- ing comedy shows was a family event and ceived as his handicaps were actually vir- chester Polytechnic graduate, the come- “quite formative to me,” he said. “Parents tues. “I knew what ordinary working-class dian . In 1992, he took and children all laughing—it’s a unifying people sounded like. I had a good ear. A their show, “Steve Coogan in Character thing.” In a time before VCRs, Coogan lot of these people from middle-class with John Thomson,” to the Edinburgh would use a tape deck to record com- backgrounds were confident but they Fringe. He also paid a cohort, Patrick edy shows and play the dialogue back to didn’t know how ordinary people spoke. I Marber, to direct it. Marber, who became friends. When there was no dialogue, he’d suddenly thought, I’m better than them at one of the most distinguished playwrights

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TNY—2007_11_05—PAGE 46—133SC. #2 PAGE—TExT ChANGES iN CENTEr ColumN of his era, had yet to direct anything. Nonetheless, he was Coogan’s second rabbit, a rigorous contributor to the depth, shape, and backstories of Coogan’s char- acters. “We met at a very good time,” Marber said. “I was a bit lost and sort of waiting to be a writer. Steve needed a di- rector. We had a very fruitful four or five years, when we made a lot of radio and TV programs together.” Coogan closed the Edinburgh show with his new creation, Paul Calf, the phi- listine lager-lout. Calf came onstage with a beer in his hand, a mullet hairdo, and ash on his trousers. “I’ve got two bad habits: smoking and masturbation,” he said. “I’m a twenty-a-day man—and I smoke like a chimney.” The character immediately took off; so did Coogan. His show won the Edinburgh Fringe’s Perrier Award for best comedy performance. “That was probably the most enjoyable award I ever got,” he said. “When you’re in the Edin- burgh bubble, it seems bigger than the Oscar. Things happen in quick time. The first week, no one’s heard of you; by the fourth week, you’re a star.” Throughout “All right, now see what happens when you turn the faucet off.” the hubbub, people kept asking Coogan if he was going to tour. “I’m working on a radio show,” he’d answer, “with this new •• character, Alan Partridge.” “A lot of peo- ple were saying, ‘Don’t bother with that. inferiority complex, in that the news jour- character’s good enough to sustain a Get out on tour,’ ” Coogan said. He re- nalists looked down on him. He was try- radio show,’ ” he said. He thought of sponded, “No, you don’t know how good ing to be professional, and yet behind it, Partridge then as just a voice, and a some- this is gonna be.” if you prodded him, he would collapse.” what crude one at that. But Marber pre- Almost instantly, according to Iannucci, vailed; he titled Partridge’s show “Know- aul Calf owed his bawdry and his Coogan’s character was named: “ ‘He’s an ing Me, Knowing You,” with a wink to edginess to Coogan’s working-class Alan,’ somebody said. Someone else said, ABBA, one of Partridge’s favorite bands. ManchesterP past. Alan Partridge was ‘His surname is Partridge.’ ” A partridge The format was three interviews—three more ironic and subversive, the result of is a small bird whose chest puffs out; self- eight-minute bits—and the first episode Coogan’s keeping company in London inflation became the key to Alan’s metab- was performed before a live audience at with the university wits at the BBC. “On olism. He was at once thin-skinned, self- the BBC’s Paris Studios, in London, ,” the radio show he’d joined in important, and stupid. March 14, 1992. Even though it was 1990, was a lively spoof of broadcasting, a “Working with Iannucci was a reve- radio, Coogan decided to give Partridge traditional British genre that offers bright lation,” Coogan said. “He really did re- a look. “I wanted the audience to buy into young things a place to show their intelli- shape things for me. There was no set- the conceit of the character,” he said. “I gence before they’re old enough to know up, no punch line. None of the comedy went to Lillywhites at the top of Regent their minds. “I asked Steve if he could I did with Armando was structured in Street and bought some casual clothes”— come up with the voice of a sports com- an orthodox way. It deliberately drove a pink sweater with a golf logo, slacks, mentator,” the writer and producer Ar- a coach and horses through the rules loafers—“and combed my hair in a funny mando Iannucci told me. “I said, ‘Not an at every opportunity.” He added, “I re- way. That was sort of the birth of him.” impression, just something generic.’ ” The member thinking, I’ve been looking for From the show’s first beat, Alan Par- voice he came up with was both generic this all my life. We knew we were onto tridge broadcast his powers of mispercep- and specific. “There were about five of us something.” tion, an almost unerring ability not to un- in the room,” Iannucci said. “We all felt It was Marber, who was also acting derstand the import of what he was we knew this person. We knew that it was and writing for “On the Hour,” who sug- saying. “Those of you who know me from someone who had aspirations to be taken gested turning Partridge into the host of the world of sport will know that I like seriously in the entertainment industry. A his own radio . At first, Coogan having a bit of a chat with brawny men on little blank. A little bland. He had a slight was unsure. “I went, ‘I can’t believe the the rugby field,” he began. “And having a

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TNY—2007_11_05—PAGE 47—133SC.—livE ArT A12779 bit of a chat with the soft, fair, waif-like, with footage of sporting events and gave city’s “third-largest radio station”—at moist creatures you find in ladies’ sports.” him a microphone. “Steve didn’t really 4:35 A.M. Partridge went on: As an interviewer, Partridge’s spectacular know much about sport,” Iannucci said. A song in which Joni complains that they’ve paved Paradise to put up a parking lot. A mea- lack of curiosity was matched only by his “It kind of helped, because he’s genuinely sure which actually would have alleviated ignorance. With a fictional sex expert struggling to describe what he’s seeing.” traffic congestion on the outskirts of Paradise. named Ally Tennant, Partridge discussed Partridge’s vacancy and his vamping were Something which Joni singularly fails to point out, perhaps because it doesn’t quite fit in with the female orgasm. “What is it?” he almost surreal. “The goalie has got foot- her blinkered view of the world. blurted. “I mean how, how … does … ball pie all over his shirt!” he boomed, it … manifest … itself? What do you commenting on stock footage during his Divorced, with two children who hear? When it … ? … Well, what is it?” countdown to the 1994 World Cup. At evinced no interest in seeing him, Par- The smooth-talking Tennant turned the other times, as in a tone-deaf report on tridge inhabited a sensational isolation of question back on him. “Describe what bobsledding, Partridge’s banter became his own making, which was reinforced by happens when you achieve an orgasm,” an extravaganza of bunkum: his room-emptying prejudices, his pa- she said. Partridge replied, “No, no, no, Ironic, really, to think I had Bob Sleigh in tronizing attitudes toward women, and my class at school—a boy who had no interest no, no, no! O.K. Let’s leave it there. It’s in the sport whatsoever. his appalling taste. (He was a fan of the over. Leave it. A great lady or a mad old This course actually reminds me of when I death penalty, the right-wing tabloid the trout. You decide. Ally Harris! Ally Ten- was tobogganing at the age of sixteen. I hit , and Paul McCartney’s group something and fell off. I was concussed. Hit a nant. Ally Tennant! Sorry, Ally, for get- cat. no cats here, of course. The groundsmen Wings—“the band the Beatles could have ting your name wrong … but I hadn’t are quite strict about not letting cats onto this been.”) Unfulfillment was Partridge’s heard of you before tonight.” course. If one of those things comes down on terrain and also the source of his humor. a cat, it doesn’t stand a chance. A bit like Both easily humiliated and quick to standing on a wasp. not pleasant, but it’s The closer Coogan got to spoofing take revenge, Partridge locked horns gotta be done. himself, the funnier he was. “I would say with a character identified as “Britain’s things as myself and the writers would greatest living novelist,” Lawrence Cam- Coogan’s own radio show, “Knowing say, ‘That’s funny,’ ” he said. “I would go, ley, who was promoting his enormous Me, Knowing You,” also made the jump ‘I wasn’t trying to be funny. I was just novel “The Soul of Time.” “First to TV in 1994. Coogan seems to have being me.’ They would go, ‘Yeah, but reaction to your book—don’t drop it recognized that his time had come. “The what you said sounded funny, so just on me foot,” Partridge said, before first night I met him”—in April, 1992— have Alan say it.’ ” “As a person, he’s not turning to his enthusiasm for Sherlock “he told me he was going to be famous,” cool,” Cole told me. “A lot of that comes Holmes: Anna Cole said. About six years after out in the characters. He used to wear so AlAn: What I thought was great about that conversation, in a Manchester much aftershave lotion when I first met Sherlock Holmes was that not only was he a super sleuth, he was also a hard worker. kebab shop, Coogan and his younger him that sometimes you could hardly ’Cause not only did he go out and solve the brother Brendan found themselves in a breathe. He’s like a Northern boy come crimes, he came home and wrote it all down. fistfight with some locals over a misun- down to the big city.” Iannucci said, Fantastic. That’s why I admire him. derstanding about a girl. “I remember “Were it not for the fact that he has lAWrenCe: (Pause) Y-e-s. I … I’ve always thought it was a shame that Conan Doyle grabbing the guy’s head and banging it this fantastic gift for comedy, Steve is had to kill him off. on the floor,” Coogan said. “As I stood fundamentally a guy who reads a lot of AlAn: I think you’ll find it was Moriarty that killed him. up, the guy I’d been on top of said, ‘Are car magazines.” (Cars, inevitably, were lAWrenCe: Yes, I know, but ultimately, of you Steve Coogan?’ I said, ‘Yes, I am.’ defining possessions for Partridge.) course, it was Conan Doyle. He went, ‘I’ve got your DVDs.’ I ended After the series ended, in 2002, Par- AlAn: no, it was Moriarty. Definitely. up signing my autograph for him.” tridge resurfaced in 2003 in a TV special, lAWrenCe: Yes, I know, in the books it was Moriarty. But, of course, the ultimate an homage to his career; in 2005, he responsibility was Conan Doyle’s. n the course of three television series, made a charity appearance. As a charac- AlAn: Hang on. As far as I know Mori- arty acted alone. Or did he?! This is interest- Alan Partridge went from national ter, he is now resting, but there is a chance ing—you think that there was some sort of televisionI talk-show host to local d.j., his of his cinematic resurrection. Recently, conspiracy involving this shadowy Doyle shrinking workplace a metaphor for his Coogan pitched the idea of a movie in figure … tragicomic collapse. “That was ‘Big Yel- which Partridge is held hostage at the lAWrenCe: no, no. I’m sorry, Alan. I’d like to let this go, but I really can’t. Sherlock low Taxi,’ by Joni Mitchell,” he said, in the BBC after a terrorist takeover and tries to Holmes did not exist. first episode of the TV series “I’m Alan work out a peace settlement. “Your posi- AlAn: He did. Partridge.” He was speaking between tion is you want to destroy the West,” lAWrenCe: look, if he had existed, how would he have been able to describe in in- songs on Radio —a provincial Coogan said, launching into Partridge’s timate detail the circumstances of his own imaginary negotiation. “The West’s po- death? (Pause.) sition is, broadly speaking, they don’t AlAn: Um … The nobel Prize for litera- want to be destroyed. Is there a midway ture. You never won it. What went wrong? between those two positions that could satisfy us both? Rather than suicide In 1994, “On the Hour” transferred bombings, you achieve so much more to a television format titled “The Day with a sternly worded letter.” Coogan Today,” and Iannucci sat Coogan down added, of the movie, “Part of me wants

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TNY—2007_11_05—PAGE 48—133SC—#3 Page new Live sPot art r16762e, PlS iNSPECT ANd rEPorT oN quAl- iTY— rEflowEd To fix SomE widowS to do it, part of me wants to do other lenge of his middle years. “Lack of intro- things. If I did something else that caught spection has been my problem,” he told the public in a high-profile way, then I’d me. At lunch, on the top deck of a red feel more able to go back.” London transport bus that had been turned into a canteen, he picked over his saw Coogan one last time, on a lamb cutlets. “I feel that I’m in a different gray, chilly day in early June, as he place than I was two years ago, a much emergedI from a run-down Ministry more calm, controlled environment,” he of Defence building about forty-five said. “When you’re young, you think, I’ll minutes south of London, where the just get over this hill and then everything “Saxondale” production was headquar- will be on an even keel. Then you get tered. It was 8:15 A.M., on the first day used to the fact that, no, you’re never of shooting; Coogan, who had been up gonna get to the point of equilibrium. All since five, walked out as Tommy Sax- you do is move forward. That’s what life ondale. For all intents and purposes, he is—being in motion.” was a completely different person. He’d When he was younger, driven first by been aged ten years. His smile was a ambition and then by the momentum of shantytown of ragged yellow teeth; his his fame, Coogan made time for work hair was a wiry gray thicket; his paunch but not for life. “Why should I go around made him walk with a waddle. “I’m get- Europe? What’s that gonna do? What’s ting slimmer, Tommy’s getting fatter,” the dividend?” he said of his attitude he said. Coogan’s current girlfriend, the then. He had a feeling, he said, “of not actress China Chow—the daughter of enjoying the moment, just going, ‘Good. the restaurateur Michael Chow—ap- That’s achieved. Next.’ ” Coogan knows peared with coffee. She asked him, “Do that he needs to be “kept busy”; these you feel excited or scared?” Coogan said, days, however, he’s often busy with things “I don’t feel either. I just feel ready. My that he hasn’t done before. He has taken blood pressure and my pulse drop when up hiking; he goes on vacations, fre- I start working. This is my comfort quently renting a cottage in Ireland where zone. It occupies everything in my head he holes up by himself for weeks at a in a good way.” time, reading books. (“I’m a slow reader, The morning was spent filming a se- so I get through, like, three,” he said.) ries of scenes in which Tommy tries to Recently, he made a cheese-and-onion persuade his suicidal friend Martin pie, using vegetables from his garden, (Kevin Eldon) not to throw himself off a and served it to his daughter. “One of the roof. Tommy is a combination of big- proudest things I’ve achieved,” he said. hearted concern and bluster. “If it’s the Back on the set, in the front seat of middle of the night and I’m fast asleep, I Tommy’s yellow Mustang, Coogan tried want you to shin up the drainpipe and to improve his last line, the bravado of hammer on me window,” he tells his mo- which was meant to mask Tommy’s rose friend. Martin takes him at his word. compassion fatigue. In the scene, Tommy Four times, he comes to Tommy’s door; tells Martin that he can come over if he each visit reduces Tommy’s concern. In gets depressed again. “You sure that’s the course of the episode, Tommy moves O.K.?” Martin asks. The script called for from a twenty-four-hour open-door pol- Tommy to reply, “Am I sure? Am I one icy to suggesting only telephone contact, hairy-arsed son of a bitch?” Coogan then only texting. Along the way, he dis- turned other options over on his tongue. penses Coogan’s own prescription for “Am I sure? Was Jim Morrison a wanker? fighting depression: Was Ravi Shankar a sitar player?” he You know, those demons in your head are said. “Is Van Morrison a grumpy man?” just pests taking a dump on your mental When I left the set, Coogan was still carpet. And I’m gonna show them the door. in the front seat of the car, running the I’ll force-feed them a blood-thinning antico- agulant of good vibes until the dark thoughts scene. I remembered something he’d die, screaming in agony in your head … in a once said about the piquancy of perform- good way. ing: “It’s like flying when you become someone else. It’s very liberating. It’s a Comedy, Coogan says, is a form of very calm place to be. It’s like curling up “self-medication.” And “Saxondale” is a in a warm blanket. At those moments, comic reflection on the existential chal- life is very simple.” 

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