Steve Coogan and the Alan Patridge legacy

NEW YORK — Steve Coogan has been playing Alan Partridge, his vain, tasteless British radio host, for 23 years.

Initially born on British radio as a sports commentator who didn’t know anything about sports, Partridge has for more than two decades been a bumbling show-business failure and an ongoing parody of media haplessness. His afflictions are well known, as is his steady fall from a TV talk show to local radio in Norwich.

And now his TV alter ego has hit the big screen too, with an eponymous film, after years of TV series, specials, a stage show, a Web series and a memoir. It’s a return to Coogan’s roots just as he’s growing in a new direction spawned by his turn as the writer, producer and star of the Oscar-nominated Philomena, as well as The Trip To Italy, the sequel to the highly lauded The Trip TV series. However, the 48-year-old said he wants to expand from being “a comedy guy” as he gets older. But, he quickly added: “I’ll never neglect Alan.”

For Coogan, Alan is “a way of me exercising my frustrations by putting them into the character”. “In sort of an inverted way, I’ll have him say stuff which is me raging against the stupidity of the media,” he said. “I just shove it all into him, and that gets it off my chest. But ultimately, you have to have empathy. It can’t just be a freak show. Which it sort of was, early on. The reason I think people like it is: Everyone feels they’re only one step away from being Alan.

“Alan is close to me. And it’s okay,” he added.

In a strange, life-meets-art way, Coogan, who has long been a vocal critic of tabloids, once called one editor of the News Of The World, “Patridgesque”.

“It is true Alan represents, in some ways, that kind of lazy thinking (that tabloids do),” said Coogan. “He does represent ... that sort of myopic, slightly philistine mentality, which is what historically differentiated the British from our European cousins. Alan is the apotheosis of that. It’s that idea of being on the wrong side of cool.”

Unlike Partridge, Coogan doesn’t have an inflated sense of self. He isn’t, for example, expecting the Alan Patridge film to break box-office records in the US where it has just opened. “But I want it to not disappoint those people who already know who he is. I’d rather do something that stays true to its roots than water down the DNA of the character to appeal to Americans.”

As for what appeals to him, Coogan seems content with his life right now. “I’ve sort of arrived where I want to be. I want to produce more movies. I like doing comedy but Philomena was a real epiphany for me, because I found I could do what I wanted to do — dovetailing both aspects of my personality — which is to talk about important things but not in a way which is tedious. I want to be the school teacher that everyone thought was great fun because he made learning fun.

“That sounds horrific!” AP