Easily Distracted

by Steve Coogan

  Rob and Neil Gibbons were driven so hard they nearly walked out on me. Every night I’d go into the writing room with them and write till 11 p.m. I’d sit in the car on the way home and think, ‘When I get back I can have a break for twenty minutes with a cup of tea and the papers online and then I’ve got to get to bed.’ I couldn’t risk having even one drink; I gave up alcohol for the entire period I was working on Philomena and Alpha Papa.

  Once home, I would lie in bed saying to myself, ‘Go to sleep, go to sleep.’ And then I’d get up six hours later, sleep in the car, wake up as soon as we arrived on set and get to work.

  It’s the hardest I’ve ever worked and the loneliest I’ve ever felt.

  *

  If I felt alone, it’s because I was alone. Armando was physically absent throughout the shoot because he was in the States, doing Veep. I’d turn round and say, ‘What should I do now?’ and no one was there. At the start of the first week, I sent Armando an email saying that I needed some stewardship.

  I hadn’t paid attention to any of his notes and the script had gone in a different direction. It wasn’t, he said, his sense of humour.

  I’ve always had more affection for Alan whereas Armando basically regards him as an idiot. There is more we agree than disagree on, but there is undoubtedly a difference of emphasis.

  I owe Armando a huge debt: the focus, exactitude and rigour he brought to the development of Alan Partridge helped counter my vagueness and inherent lack of discipline.

  But he wished me luck.

  A few days into the shoot, I sat down with Neil and Rob. I said the good news was that we’d got clarity. We were definitely on our own. It was gallows humour. In a way it was useful: we could get on with the film in our own way.

  I don’t think I can go through this book without making special mention of the Gibbonses, who, after a long hiatus, breathed new life into Partridge. They gave him a more rounded personality. The purest, most mature and funniest incarnation of Partridge is, to me, in Mid Morning Matters. I think it’s as good as the first TV series of Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge. It might even be better. And it’s all down to the tenacity of the Gibbonses.

  Had it not been for Rob and Neil, Alan would not have had a renaissance. That Tim Key is also part of that renaissance gives me great pleasure; I learned a long time ago how important it is to always be on the lookout for new talent.

  One of the problems we had with Partridge is that during his hiatus it became very difficult to find clothes for him that looked suitably awful. Postmodernism meant that everything we had once seen as square or distasteful was now being worn by hipsters, who appeared to enjoy dressing identically to old fogeys. I blame those Hoxton hipsters for confusing things.

  The waters of what was uncool became so muddied that it was difficult to find anything that looked bad and not just ironic.

  It even made me question if Alan was still relevant.

  In fact Alan became relevant again because of Rob and Neil; the writing became more nuanced and complex.

  The twenty-first-century Alan is a nicer man. He is more empathetic and less about mocking the fool. More Malvolio than Frank Spencer.

  *

  I knew by the end of the first week of filming that we were starting to get funny material. Armando saw the dailies and realised we might just pull it off. When he got back to the UK, he came straight to the edit and was fantastically helpful.

  I slowly started to grasp that if everyone did as I said, it might just turn out OK. I kept on thinking about something Ben Stiller had said to me a few years earlier: ‘When you’re on a film set and you’ve got to make endless decisions, you have to realise that you can’t be worried about people’s feelings.’

  At the time I thought it a selfish approach, but when I was doing Partridge I realised Ben was right. There just wasn’t time to be polite.

  Julia Davis, who I have worked with for a very long time, was cast as a policewoman. She came up to me after the read-through saying that her character should be a lesbian. I didn’t see what difference it would make and anyway the scene wasn’t long enough to explore who the hell she was sleeping with. A few days later, Henry Normal told me he’d had an email from Julia.

  I got as far as ‘Dear Henry, I’ve been thinking long and hard …’ That was enough.

  I said to Henry, ‘Get a replacement right now.’

  We were lucky: we got the wonderful Anna Maxwell Martin at very short notice.

  The point is, I didn’t even have time to read an email detailing Julia’s reasons for pulling out. I had to be ruthless, a kind of benevolent dictator. There wasn’t time to sugar-coat anything or to make decisions by committee. I didn’t have time to talk to someone from the costume department who was asking whether Partridge’s shoes should be red or brown.

  I certainly didn’t have time to make jokey small talk between takes. Humour only mattered if it was on the screen.

  In the first week of the thirty-day shoot, Declan had all these tracking shots of Tim Key, who plays Sidekick Simon, as we were DJing at North Norfolk Digital. I would watch the rushes and see that the comedy was being sucked from the scene. It was too fancy.

  I said to Declan, ‘It’s all wrong. Just lock the camera off on a shot of me and Tim in the same frame and that will be the mast for everything.’

  I didn’t enjoy saying that things were wrong or not working. I felt sick inside, but I had to be brutal. At one point I even had to stop filming and force everyone to take an hour’s break so that I could rewrite a scene with Neil and Rob.

  Slowly, things stopped falling apart. None of the material we shot on the first day was funny, but by the end of the first week we would be laughing really hard after a take and all the tension would dissolve. I knew it would still be hard, I knew I’d be working till 11 p.m. every night and getting up at 6 a.m., but it would be worth it. You feel very alive constantly being one decision away from disaster.

  In a way, having autonomy made me more decisive. At the risk of being mocked by ‘Pseuds Corner’ in Private Eye, I felt a bit like Ernest Shackleton as the ice floe engulfed the Endurance. If you all do exactly as I say, I promise we’ll get out of here alive.

  All right, maybe it wasn’t like that. But it certainly felt like it.

  *

  When we were doing our research for Alpha Papa, we went round some of the local radio stations in Norwich that had been taken over by umbrella stations. We saw the same kinds of cards that Alan rips up in the film, the ones that assert inane things such as ‘be relevant’ or ‘local, local, local’. Often there was a timeline of the core audience on the wall to show what they were doing at any given time in their lives: ‘Seventies: school. Early eighties: university. Late eighties: career, marriage, kids.’ Or: ‘Do you remember [insert name of confectionery popular in the seventies]?’

  It was really a cynical and horrible way to run a radio station.

  Henry sent in a guy called Graham Duff to edit the script when it was all falling apart. Graham helped to keep everyone calm. He told me a really interesting story about a meeting he was called into when he worked at a local radio station in Brighton. The boss started saying that he was perfectly aware of everyone’s concern about job security. On and on he went until suddenly the talk ended with, ‘Make no mistake, this station will get juiced.’

  It was an appalling way to suck the life out of a radio station and make it absolutely clear that commerce was the bottom line. I immediately thought, ‘That’s what I want the Partridge film to be about.’ I wanted to use the film to rail against the deification of the businessman. I get angry when I hear about business gurus turning up at schools and colleges. Stay away!

  Kids shouldn’t grow up thinking that the only thing of any importance is earning money. They should be learning about culture, not business – Albert Camus and John Cooper Clarke, not Grant fucking Shapps.

  The Partridge film is essentially about multinational companies taking over l
ocal radio stations. It dignifies local radio DJs, who may be cheesy but who are at least serving the local community. Until the cynical Goliaths stride in, desperate to satisfy shareholders while caring nothing for compassion.

  I wanted Alan to be heroic, for the audience to sympathise with him while laughing at his world. I also wanted people to think that he dies at the end of Alpha Papa. We filmed the final scenes on a desolate, out-of-season Cromer Pier because it has an inherently sad pallor of broken dreams while still looking suitably cinematic.

  You have to root for Alan in Alpha Papa. You know he’s done the wrong thing, but at least he’s got some humanity. It’s impossible to sustain ninety minutes of good drama without investing in the character.

  *

  We really did put Alpha Papa out against all the odds and all expectation. I’m really proud of it.

  My only regret is that we didn’t get the chance to film any of the siege scenes in Alpha Papa at BBC TV Centre before it was sold off. We did at least manage to film the ‘smell my cheese’ scene from I’m Alan Partridge there; I relished running through the old reception with a large piece of cheese on the end of a fork.

  When I recorded Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge for Radio 4 in the Paris Studios, the ghosts of Tony Hancock et al. weren’t lost on me; when I ran amok with the cheese at the old BBC I felt the power of Fawlty Towers, Porridge and Dad’s Army. I was in the same space they had been in, but with different props. It was truly magical; I had arrived in the place I had loved from afar as a child.

  And at least I was there as the sun set on the old world of television.

  CHAPTER 10

  MICHAEL WINTERBOTTOM WAS one of the few people who always saw beyond Alan Partridge. I have made five films with him now, and working with him on both 24 Hour Party People and A Cock and Bull Story was a revelation.

  I’m not in control when I work with Michael, but I’m always very happy to let him tell me what to do. Comedy is about being in control, and Michael taught me that it is OK not to be in control. It’s OK to let go, to show naked honesty, which in itself is counter-intuitive to comedy. In drama the responses are much more muted unless laughter is replaced by tears, and even then people don’t exactly wail. Both laughter and tears are physical, emotional responses.

  Michael pushed me to be uncomfortable with the unknown and to not only do work where every single beat is familiar. It’s OK to risk failure as you explore new ideas.

  Michael liberated me from the need to be funny.

  I realised there was a world beyond comedy that I could access. It’s not about a total absence of comedy, it’s rather about widening out my work in a way that is more interesting and engaging for me.

  I have faith in Michael because he has a singular talent. His films always end up being more than the sum of their parts; there is an otherness to what he does that I can’t quite understand. I’m just a participant in it really. I’m not the architect, but I’m always happy to come along for the ride.

  There’s an old adage in Hollywood, ‘Ready, fire, aim’, and that’s Michael all over. Through sheer force of will he manages to make films that probably wouldn’t otherwise be made.

  Michael likes to run at projects before they are fully formed or financed. There are no scripts to look at per se. The dialogue is largely improvised. There were only around sixty pages of dialogue in the Cock and Bull script, but Michael told us not to worry about it. He said we’d figure it out.

  Whenever actors turned up on the set of 24 Hour Party People or Cock and Bull, they would invariably ask what was going on. Michael mumbles direction; the set seems to be disorganised. It’s not chaotic at all, but it can look that way to an outsider.

  I’d say to the actor, ‘Just don’t try to figure out what’s going on.’

  Michael has no wardrobe on set, no make-up, no trailers, no script supervisor, no continuity. No indulgences for the actors. He hangs the monitor around his neck and off he goes. I’ve never been asked to hit a mark in any of Michael’s films. Things are shot very quickly; turnaround takes minutes.

  In 24 Hour Party People, the actors playing the Happy Mondays kick over all the furniture at Manchester airport and the security guards throw them out. Those guards were real; Michael told the actors to behave badly until the guards responded. He didn’t have permission to film there. He just filmed it secretly. He has a uniquely austere approach to film-making.

  There is no safe place to be. There is no such thing as ‘off camera’, because Michael might turn the camera on you at any point. You have to go and hide in a different room if you don’t want to risk being filmed.

  I loved living in the world that Michael created in 24 Hour Party People. It’s the only time I haven’t wanted filming to stop on a project. There was no catering or lunch breaks; we finished at 5 p.m. and all went out to a pub or restaurant. The next day we filmed again. It all became a blur: we didn’t know what was filming and what was hanging out. It was like a dream.

  Working with Michael is thrilling. It’s the purest kind of work. Every now and again I need a fix of it.

  *

  In 2009, Rob Brydon and I met Michael for lunch. He asked if we’d be interested in doing a series in which we visit a series of restaurants and review them. He had been inspired by the scene at the start of Cock and Bull in which Rob and I are talking in the make-up trailer because the weather is so bad. Playing heightened versions of ourselves, we more or less improvised a scene about Rob’s teeth, our appearance and the vanities of growing old. It was a natural, funny scene.

  Michael thought we could take the idea of me and Rob as restaurant reviewers and run with it.

  Rob and I didn’t like the sound of it at all.

  We’d already played ourselves in Cock and Bull. Playing yourself is not a new thing: Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Larry Sanders Show and Extras had all come before.

  The more we thought about it, the more Rob and I thought it sounded awful. Both of us playing ourselves and effectively saying, ‘Get a load of us mocking ourselves. Aren’t we cool?’ Ingratiating ourselves by appearing to be self-deprecating in a way that might have had some cachet a decade ago, but now feels a bit tired and tediously postmodern.

  At least Cock and Bull had those sixty pages to build on. The Trip was just an idea. It was fifteen pages of sample dialogue with the odd vague storyline: ‘Steve’ sleeps with the receptionist at the hotel; ‘Rob’ is a family man; ‘Steve’ is sleeping alone because he’s a bit tortured. It pointed out the differences in our personalities.

  I thought to myself, ‘I know you think it’s funny, Michael, but it’s going to become boring very quickly.’

  It sounded pretentious and tedious; there wasn’t enough of an idea to make it work. Rob and I spoke on the phone several times and agreed to say no thanks to Michael. His idea felt like teasing out a quite good but small idea to inevitable failure. Why didn’t we make a proper film together instead?

  But Michael kept badgering us. And I had always trusted him.

  Eventually we met to make a decision one way or the other.

  Michael left early and Rob turned to me. ‘Should we just do it?’

  ‘Why not? Nothing terrible will happen if it fails,’ I replied. ‘And you never know, it might be really good.’

  The original idea was to film ‘up north’, but then we decided to focus on the Lake District and Yorkshire because of the proliferation of critically acclaimed restaurants.

  Michael gave us homework, mostly poetry by Coleridge and Wordsworth and some books on the area.

  I said to Rob, ‘Have you read those books Michael told us to read?’

  He said, ‘No, have you?’

  I said, ‘Thank God, neither have I.’

  I’m genuinely interested in the poets, but I’m always busy. All I had before we started was the kind of smattering of knowledge that any half-educated person might have. I could quote two lines about daffodils and two lines from Wordsworth’s ‘The F
rench Revolution’: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,/ But to be young was very heaven!’

  So I did some poetry cramming the night before and chucked the odd quote into the improvisation.

  It annoyed me that Michael wanted to make Rob really enthusiastic about the poets and me a bit ignorant. It wasn’t Rob’s fault that he was made to be the clever one; I just wanted to share my knowledge, such as it was.

  On a day off, Rob and I walked up the Old Man of Coniston. If we saw other walkers approaching, I would shield my eyes, but Rob would greet them with gusto and was happy to have his photo taken. I teased him mercilessly about being an attention seeker.

  I then retold the story in a newspaper interview.

  Rob was cross. He accused me of affecting a Lou Reed-style disdain of everyone. He said he wouldn’t do another series of The Trip if I continued sneering at him in real life. It was emblematic of the risky game we were playing in that series, but nonetheless I felt cowed and apologised.

  So I confessed: I envied the fact that he found it so easy to be nice to people and to talk to them.

  He has since told me he was flabbergasted. He said he always put me on a pedestal, partly because it’s such fun to knock me off.

  CHAPTER 11

  WHEN WE TURNED up at the Inn at Whitewell in the Forest of Bowland, I was still worrying about The Trip. As much as I trusted Michael, I still wasn’t sure the idea could work. Was it enough to take certain aspects of our personalities and amplify them?

  Michael was, as ever, stoic. He kept telling us to do more improvisations and to talk about the north. Michael is from Blackburn and we share a certain northern chippiness. He wanted to show the north in an unclichéd way, to capture its beauty and culinary sophistication. It was funny and slightly abrasive, like two friends fencing.

  Suddenly it made sense. I was sitting opposite Rob at the Inn at Whitewell and I said, ‘I think this is going to be good. It’s definitely going to be different.’