‘It’s like a school trip with a crew – and we’re the star pupils’
For the new series of The Trip, Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon head to Greece, writes Georgia Humphreys
It takes time for Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon to settle back into normality after filming The Trip.
In the Sky One travelogue series, the comedians and friends play exaggerated versions of themselves, who venture around the world reviewing restaurants together. The latest instalment – the fourth – sees the pair head to Greece.
“There’s a real period of adjustment when you come back and slot into your family again,” says Swansea-born Brydon, 54.
Having a camera crew around all the time makes Coogan, also 54, become “slightly childlike”.
“You can think, ‘I’ll just walk across this road, because if there’s a car coming someone else will stop it’,” quips the actor, who grew up in Middleton – a suburban town north of Manchester.
“So, when you get back to real life, you realise when you cross the road you have to look both ways. Things like that really do happen to you.
“You get up in the morning and think, ‘What do I do now?’ It’s up to you, you’re a grown up!”
Here, the pair tell us what to expect from their Greek adventure.
The first episode starts at the site of ancient Troy in western Turkey, where they see ruins and make their first lunch stop. They then head to the Temple of Athena in Assos before travelling on a private boat to Lesvos, where they visit the Moria refugee camp.
“We’re mimicking Homer’s Odyssey, which is the trip of Odysseus from Troy to Ithaca,” notes Coogan, who is responsible for beloved comic character, Alan Partridge, and can currently be seen in cinemas in Greed.
“People weren’t sure for hundreds of years whether Troy was mythical and about 100 years ago they discovered it was real.
“Though of course The Odyssey is a fictional book as it has gods in it and anyone who has half a brain knows that gods don’t exist...” jests the outspoken star.
“Just throwing a bit of controversy in there! I know most people think there’s one.”
The witty, energetic duo behave just as you’d expect them to; they naturally bounce off one another, and there’s rarely a quiet moment during the chat.
“We try to avoid the places that most tourists go when they visit Greece,” Coogan continues.
“We were there for about five weeks and saw a handful – at most – of British people. It was June, right in the middle of the summer, and it was all the better for it, much as I love my fellow countrymen. It was nice to explore it in an anonymous way.”
“I wasn’t expecting the greenery,” says Brydon, who’s famous for sitcom Gavin And Stacey, and presenting panel show Would I Lie To You?. “It’s a beautifully verdant, lush country.”
Discussing their favourite moments during filming, Brydon suggests: “We did a lot of travel by water. I enjoyed that.”
“We didn’t really stop travelling,” echoes his co-star. “We covered a lot of ground; drove a lot, sailed a lot.
“We sailed across a big stretch of water which would take hours and when we got there the car would be waiting for us. It was like a very highend driving holiday.”
They “always have fun”, effuses Brydon.
“We have breakfast together, film all day, have dinner together, so we spend a lot of time with each other,” he elaborates. “It is intense, but in a good way.
“It’s quite unusual at our age to spend that much time with a friend. We go on these trips and they’re curated so we get the best of everywhere we go.
“It’s all arranged, we don’t have to think about anything. We close our bags in the hotel room and they’re in the next one.”
“It’s like a school trip with a crew,” jokes Coogan, chuckling. “And we’re the star pupils.”
Because they play semifictionalised versions of themselves, there has been cases of fans confusing fact and fiction.
“In The Trip To Italy my ‘Rob’ has a moment of madness and spends the night with a deckhand,” recollects father-of-five Brydon.
“This went out on BBC2 and the next day my wife Clare was taking one of our kids to school and in all seriousness the teacher came out and said, ‘This must be a very difficult time for you’.
“She must have thought she was watching a fly-on-thewall documentary which I had allowed into my bedroom to see me getting out of bed the next morning and looking a little, ‘What the hell have I done?!’”
● The Trip To Greece launches on Sky One on Tuesday, 3 March