‘People in Wales like Partridge because he’s the epitome of the Little Englander who doesn’t really understand anything that’s not English’
The Alan Partridge creator’s stage show is now in Cardiff, but Steve Coogan would prefer to take his TV series to Ireland, he tells Kathryn Williams
“WE did so many fancy restaurants that by the end I was craving a fried egg sandwich,” says actor, writer and comedian Steve Coogan when chatting to me about the possibility of another series of The Trip – or, more specifically, The Trip coming to Wales as I proudly tell him that we now have a double Michelin star restaurant in the vain (unlikely) hope he’ll agree it’s a fantastic idea to film here. Coogan is in Cardiff with Alan Partridge Live: Stratagem, a show that sounds peak Partridge, a character he’s embodied since 1991’s On the Hour for Radio 4, who’ll be wearing a headmic and spouting about a roadmap for a better tomorrow and he’s looking forward to performing to Welsh audiences. But it sounds like he’s at loggerheads with his The Trip co-star about whether the half spoof travelogue-half sitcom which can currently be seen on Gold, should come here.
The Trip, of course, sees him and Baglan-born Rob Brydon travel around wonderfully indulgent restaurants and stunning locations throwing insults and trying to out-impression each other.
“We haven’t done one for years, but we haven’t ruled out doing another. I must admit I do miss doing them,” he said, but adding that he thought there needed to be a break before another series.. “I’d love to do another one with Rob in a year or two. I want to go to Ireland and Rob wants to go to Wales. Rob says ‘why dont’ we go to Wales?’ and I say well, let’s go to Ireland! Or let’s go to France, or Los Angeles – oh no we don’t want to go to America, America is boring. But the first series we did, we did the north of England and I bloody loved it. So, watch this space.” He’ll have a small stop in Wales thanks to the three-night run at the Motorpoint Arena and said he’s looking forward to exploring Cardiff in between the shows.
“It’s the only place I’m doing three nights on the trot,” he added. “Whenever I’ve come to Wales in the past there are always great audiences, they really embrace laughter. When you go around the whole country England, Scotland and Wales, you notice the differences in audiences. And there are some areas, which will remain nameless, where you think ‘oh, it’s going to be a bit muted tonight.’ And then there are certain places where you know you’ll get loud laughs, and Wales, Cardiff in particular, is definitely a place where you’ll think ‘we’re going to have some fun tonight’.”
If you’ve got a ticket to an Alan Partridge, or Steve Coogan, live show you’re lucky – he only tends to tour once a decade – and you know it’s going to be funny. After making fans laugh through the Day Today and, Knowing Me, Knowing You to two series of I’m Alan Partridge and then This Time With Alan Patridge in 2019, not forgetting everything in between, Partridge is a huge presence in the British comedy psyche, and I ask Coogan why does he think Alan connects with a Welsh audience.
“I think definitely the people in Wales like him because he’s the epitome of the ‘Little Englander’ who doesn’t really understand anything that’s not English, never mind nonBritish. So that’s when he insults the Scottish, the Irish and the Welsh inadvertently, in a way that lots of English people do,” he said. “I think they get a chance to sort of get their own back, on England if you like. It’s the sort of egotism of England and the subjugation of these nations around it and I think that Alan is the epitome of that
small-minded Englishness that makes Welsh, and the Scottish and Irish, be able to laugh at him so much.”
Giving him the idea to pick Rob Brydon’s brains about how to weave in some Welsh-specific jokes to Stratagem, Coogan added that he does work in some city-specific jokes anyway and that Partridge’s clumsy patronising ways mean the audience is always laughing at him. It’s definitely a tack that’s worked, anyway, for three decades, so I ask what Coogan, who’s currently on TV in Channel 4’s Chivarly, and about to be seen as monstrous sex offender, Jimmy Savile in a new drama, what is Partridge’s enduring appeal?
“He’s like a sort of sieve for everything,” he said. “You distill life through him. But the character I think... Some people think ‘there but for the grace of God go I’, they think ‘sometimes I nearly say or think things like that.’ Sometimes people laugh because what Alan is saying is what they secretly think but aren’t allowed to say. And sometimes people laugh because they see their parents’ generation laughing but they don’t quite get it. I’ve seen fathers and sons [at a show] who’ve both laughed for different reasons if you like.
“Whatever is going on in the current time you can sort of apply Alan to it because he’s always trying to stay relevant. It’s a way for people to laugh at themselves, or it’s a safe space for people to make jokes about things that are a bit risky because you are doing it through this ignorant person.”
Part of Coogan’s comedy education as a youngster may come as a surprise to many who came to know him via his more satirical, cynical edge from which Partridge evolved. Lodged, as he describes, between the esoteric, intellectual comedy of Oxbridge stock like Monty Python et al and the cruder end of the scale, is the uncynical, warm sweet spot inhabited by the likes of Max Boyce, Billy Connelly and the Jasper Carrots of the world. He had some well-worn vinyl of the Welsh comedian, who hit the masses with his famous LP of Live From Treorchy – recorded back in 1974.
“He belongs to a group of comics born out of music, out of a sort of folk tradition. There’s something quite unique about them. It’s something not like working men’s club comedian, or not like the Oxbridge comedy of Monty Python, what I love about it is there’s a warmth to it and it’s intelligent. It makes you feel good and gives you a laugh and it’s not cynical and all that applies to Max Boyce and that group of comic.
“They occupy a perfect sweet spot between the esoteric intellectual comedy, and then the more crude stuff right at the bottom of the barrel, but they managed to do silly, silly jokes, and also quite clever stuff and they mix it all up in the perfect recipe. To me, I’ve got great affection for that era of comedy. When I was growing up, it was quite formative for me.”
As talented at comedy Coogan is, his next big project will be a world away from funny.
He’ll be seen later this year in The Reckoning, the BBC’s Jimmy Savile drama, which the star was papped filming up at Rhos-on-Sea in late 2021, and was eerily dressed as the paedophile. I ask about the sheer amount of interest facing the project, prompting sneaky on-location shots being sold to the tabloid. He answers that he only wished he’d shot the image himself and sold it on to give the takings to charity.
He also repeats his defence for making the series altogether, and understands why there’s an uneasiness about it, but that it’s an important story to be told – so it can never happen again.
“It’s a very serious, sensitive subject matter so of course there’s this fascination, certainly with the media about this, about this figure who dominated our popular culture at one time and was probably the most famous man in Britain,” said Coogan.
“And yet there was this huge betrayal there. And that angers people and makes them feel uncomfortable.
“It makes people feel particularly angry because this person who did lots of good and made people happy was totally deceptive. It can make people cynical. Partly the revulsion is that If he tricked people, then anyone can trick us.
“Great Britain, the whole of us, enabled him by giving all this adulation. People don’t like to be reminded of that, it feels like a great hoax.
“The fact is, you need to confront that and see how it happened and that it doesn’t happen again. It makes people feel bad, I suppose, but there are so many good people in the world to believe in. People don’t like to be reminded of this deception that was perpetrated over the whole country and that’s why there’s anxiety about it and I understand that, I think it’s important.
“But I also think it’s important to look at the lives of these people and look at the whole person to see how these crimes were committed to stop that happening again.
“So I’m very comfortable with having made that, it’s really important, it is very good writing and the best people working on it.”
And so we circle back to the start, as I refrain from making an ‘egg in a bap’ joke following his confession about too much fancy food during The Trip – that’s one for the I’m Alan Partridge fans – and he signs off by saying how much he’s looking forward to his three nights in the Welsh capital.
One thing’s for sure, he’ll definitely find a decent fried egg sarnie as well as a load of Welsh Partridge lovers.