Steve Coogan has reflected on the “[Keir] Starmer-esque” quality of Alan Partridge, ahead of a new TV outing for the popular comedy character.
Coogan, 59, has portrayed blustering broadcaster Partridge in a raft of TV shows, podcasts, and other media across the last three decades, with the latest TV series, How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge), set to premiere next month.
Speaking to The Guardian, Coogan discussed his relationship to the actor, and compared one of his key traits to UK prime minister Starmer.
“I am self-aware in a way that Alan isn’t,” he said. “Sometimes when I’m speaking to well-educated southerners, my northern accent will fade away. When I’m talking to horny-handed sons of toil from up north, it suddenly comes back. It’s either rank hypocrisy or it’s empathy. I prefer the latter.”
He explained that his daughter Claire had told him: “You’ve got to stop talking about your midlife crisis. You are way past that.”
“Alan is lockstep with whatever will give him the least grief,” Coogan continued. “He’s quite Starmer-esque in that respect. I get angry and sanctimonious. I get incensed and descend into slagging people off. I don’t trust myself in that regard.
“There’s a catharsis in doing Alan. Some of his world view I fundamentally disagree with. But there will be something that I’ll be glad to put the Alan wig on so I can say it out loud.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Coogan claimed that BBC lawyers had initially objected to a line in which his character claimed to have had a fight with TV eccentric Noel Edmunds.
“I say things as Alan that are not true, like he had a fight in a car park with Noel Edmonds,” Coogan recalled. “The BBC lawyers say: ‘That’s slander.’ How am I slandering someone by saying they had a fight in a car park with a fictional character?”
How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge) is Coogan’s first televised outing as the character since the second series of This Time with Alan Partridge in 2021.
This Time was a parody of the BBC chat show The One Show, which saw Coogan’s character play the grandiloquent host.
How Are You? sees the Norfolk-born presenter return to the UK and attempt to reconnect with his British roots after a 12-month stint working in Saudi Arabia.
The series will premiere on BBC One and BBC iPlayer in October.
