Easily Distracted

by Steve Coogan

  And then I did the Tunnel Club, at the southern end of the Blackwall Tunnel, which was run by the late Malcolm Hardee. Everyone knew that to be accepted on the London comedy circuit, you had to survive the Tunnel Club. But it was a brutal rite of passage.

  As soon I tried to do my nuanced observations, the audience threw plastic beer glasses at the stage. And then a chair.

  The heckling was relentless.

  ‘Fuck off!’

  ‘You’re shit!’

  ‘You’re fucking shit!’

  ‘Get off!’

  I ignored them, but changed tack. I did the characters from Rainbow – Geoffrey, George, Bungle and Zippy – in a sweary, scatological, sexual manner.

  When they started laughing, I returned to my usual material.

  As I left the stage, the audience started shouting again.

  ‘More! More!’

  Malcolm came over and asked if I’d do another one.

  ‘No,’ I replied. I’d won.

  *

  Around this time, I bumped into Rob Newman on an escalator in the Tube. He’d just graduated from Cambridge and was an emerging impressionist.

  He said, ‘You’re the new voice on Spitting Image, aren’t you? Fuck, I want that gig! I thought I had it in the bag as the edgy new impressionist on the block and now you’ve turned up out of nowhere.’

  No one could put me in a box. They couldn’t quite work out who I was.

  But not everyone was as generous as Rob.

  Many didn’t think I’d done my time. At the tail end of alternative comedy, I’d come down from Manchester wearing a shiny suit and I no doubt looked like a misfit. An arriviste. I was openly ambitious and certainly didn’t shy away from commercial work.

  My voiceover work had, by this time, graduated from local radio to television ads for high-profile brands such as Ford. Sometimes I would earn as much as £20,000 for a voiceover, which would then be used repeatedly. I didn’t like doing them, but the more you did, the more often you were asked back.

  I hardly had any outgoings either, because I was still renting a cheap flat that was really little more than student digs.

  Just five months after graduating, I was able to buy myself a brand-new Mazda MX-5. I went straight back to Manchester Poly and knocked on the door of the canteen.

  Elsie appeared in her blue overalls, hairnet on. As I drove her around Didsbury, she sat in the passenger seat, grinning. She looked at me fondly and said, ‘Look at you! Aren’t you doing well!’

  I floored it, drove back to college and dropped her off. She was still grinning when I left her. She’s dead now, sadly, but I still think of her fondly; John and I were both there for her retirement party.

  Always having in excess of £15,000 in the bank was a big deal. It was a small fortune. I spent my money in typical bachelor fashion: I bought a sports car but not a washing machine. I used to drive to the launderette once a week with my washing in the passenger seat of my Mazda.

  I’m often made to feel selfconscious about my love of fast cars. I have several classic cars in the garage and part of me always feels contemptuous of them because they are a luxury, an indulgence. But as addictions go, liking fast cars is fairly benign, and they connect me with my childhood in a very simplistic way. I buy cars that date back to the period I grew up in, that remind me of the times I would lie in bed and wait for the heavy thud of a Matchbox car in a padded brown envelope dropping through the letterbox and on to the doormat.

  The truth is that most people who like cars are white, overweight and right-wing, and I want nothing to do with them or their base values. I like talking to genuine car enthusiasts who are as encyclopaedic as I am; it’s sometimes a relief not to have to talk about what I do for a living.

  I’m aware it’s profoundly unhip. Every time I buy a car magazine and read it on the train, I feel very aware of people looking at me as though I’m an idiot. It’s just very … lowbrow.

  Part of me is very simple. I have these profound thoughts and then I’ll spend hours looking online at a white MGA with leather seats and I know that if I bought it, it’d make me happy. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of being able to buy the cars I loved as a child.

  I have rarely felt guilty about earning good money; my Catholic upbringing taught me to be generous. Once I got very well paid for a gig and I gave the money to my sister, Clare, to buy a car for her family. I always pick up the tab, unless the person I’m dining with is super-rich. I take a very dim view of people who are tight; if you’re lucky enough to earn good money, share it around a little.

  I didn’t, however, always behave well. I was so busy doing corporate gigs, often being paid several thousand quid a pop, that I sometimes got into trouble.

  One night I tried to squeeze in two gigs.

  The first a corporate gig, the second a left-wing, righton gig. The corporate gig was delayed and delayed. I had to make a choice, so I went with the people who were paying me the big cheque, not the trendy lentil-eaters.

  I phoned the young female organiser of the righton gig from a call box in the pub – that’s how long ago it was – and told her I couldn’t make it.

  She was bilious: ‘You’re a cunt. I’ll make sure you never work on the circuit again.’

  *

  I also performed at Edinburgh for the first time in the summer of 1988.

  LWT invited me to be one of their showcase acts at the festival and my agent said they’d fly me up from Manchester. I was baffled. Why would I fly such a short distance? I’d only been on a plane once before, to France, and yet in my head I felt like I was virtually in the jet set.

  In the end, I got the train.

  I stayed at the Caledonian and felt uncomfortable when a man old enough to be my father addressed me as ‘sir’.

  Within a year or two, of course, I’d completely adjusted to being called ‘sir’.

  At the time, it was all new and exciting. And I was so naive. I had the following conversation with someone:

  Him: ‘Have you been to the festival before?’

  Me: ‘Yes.’

  Him: ‘When?’

  Me: ‘In 1979.’

  Him (surprised): ‘Gosh, that’s a long time ago. Which shows did you see?’

  I gave the least arty, edgy response possible. ‘I was here with my dad. We saw the Military Tattoo.’

  I went to an LWT party at the hotel and a pre-Tiananmen Square Kate Adie was there alongside Melvyn Bragg. I had to keep reminding myself not to look too desperate.

  I remember thinking that anything could happen. It was a period of real flux in my life. It felt as though my career was in perpetual fast-forward.

  Spitting Image was looming and there was talk of an invitation to appear on Sunday Night at the Palladium with Jimmy Tarbuck.

  Also, crucially, I was starting to meet the people who would later shape my life. I met Doon Mackichan briefly in 1988, who I went on to work with on On The Hour and The Day Today.

  Around the same time I bumped into Patrick Marber. He was doing a reasonably good act on the circuit and was memorably moody.

  I had, of course, no idea he was to become my mentor, and the man who would push me to bring Alan Partridge to life.

  CHAPTER 38

  I STARTED WORK on Spitting Image in the autumn of 1988. I moved out of my rented flat and back in with my parents in Middleton.

  Every Saturday I caught the 6.30 a.m. train to London, arrived at Molinare Studios in Soho at 10 a.m. and left at 6 p.m. Sometimes the show was recorded in a Birmingham studio, which was more convenient for me at least.

  My Young Person’s Railcard meant that my return train ticket to London only cost £21. My Spitting Image fee quickly rose from £350 to £1,000 a day, but I carried on using my railcard. I managed not to feel guilty.

  Anyway, the show went out on ITV on a Sunday at 10 p.m. and the majority of the sketches were recorded a week ahead. Because it was broadly topical, we would also react to news at the last minute, recording
sketches on a Saturday for the following day’s show. Spitting Image predated rolling news, so week-old sketches weren’t an issue, but at the same time topical jokes were applauded. I don’t think people could believe we were so quick off the mark.

  Sometimes we recorded a sketch with two different punchlines for the following weekend’s show and the producers would wait to see how that particular news story unfolded during the week. Alternatively, the puppets would be live in the studio and we would do the voices as the show went out. Or a sketch would be pre-recorded with a guide voice that sounded nothing like, say, Neil Kinnock. And then I’d come in and do Kinnock’s voice, knowing that the guide voice had set the tempo.

  I was the youngest and most inexperienced voice actor on Spitting Image. Chris Barrie, who voiced Ronald Reagan, Neil Kinnock and Prince Charles, had already been on The Young Ones, Smith & Jones and Blackadder. Kate Robbins, who voiced Queen Elizabeth II, Thora Hird and Sarah Ferguson, had been on Mike Yarwood in Persons. And Harry Enfield, who voiced Denis Thatcher and David Steel, had already made a name for himself with Stavros and Loadsamoney.

  We all did dozens of different voices, sometimes swapping over. I started off doing Douglas Hurd and Jeffrey Archer and progressed to Stephen Fry, Ben Elton and Stan Laurel before voicing more politicians, including Geoffrey Howe, John Major, Neil Kinnock and Paddy Ashdown.

  I kept thinking to myself, ‘I’m on the inside. I just have to not fuck it up and my life will probably now be completely charmed.’

  A never-ending stream of people commented on my age, saying things like, ‘You’ve got this far and you’re still only twenty-two! You’re really going to fly.’

  It was quite hard to deal with. I believed my own hype for a while. I was naive and cocky, which isn’t a great combination. You always think you’re going to be the youngest and most exciting person in the room. Years later, I would watch young comedians come through and recognise the cockiness of youth and the flush of self-assurance. It’s like watching someone who’s just learned to drive, but who hasn’t yet had a bump.

  *

  Each time a new figure appeared in the public arena, all the Spitting Image voice actors had to do mini auditions to see who would be best suited to take him or her on. I jumped up to the microphone every time like an eager puppy, but I was also conscious of the fact that some of the voice artists had a limited repertoire.

  It was awkward being the new boy who could easily pick up most voices. Not only that, but I’d stand up and nail a voice and then listen to the others having a long discussion with the director about getting the nuances of the voice right.

  The director would indulge them and then finally say, ‘I think we’re going to go with Steve.’

  I had to sit in silence through the entire process just so that I couldn’t be accused of muscling in.

  Once, when Chris Barrie wasn’t available, I had to do his Neil Kinnock, which was inferior to my Kinnock. I couldn’t do my Kinnock for the sake of continuity, so I had to do an impression of Chris doing an impression of Kinnock. It was a caricature, albeit a funny caricature.

  The one politician I couldn’t do was Thatcher. Steve Nallon was brilliant at doing Maggie for Spitting Image; he adjusted his performance as her voice became deeper and less grand during her eleven-year premiership. Although I couldn’t quite capture Thatcher myself, I could do an impression of Steve’s impression. Sometimes someone else’s impression gives you the key: I really improved my Ronnie Corbett after I heard Rob Newman do him.

  Most of the time I have a good ear and I can pick out the characteristics of someone’s voice. My technique is a bit like looking at a caricature by Gerald Scarfe or Ralph Steadman in which the politician’s nose is hugely exaggerated: maybe you hadn’t noticed the size of the politician’s nose before. Wogan’s voice, for example, is very sing-song. So to do an impression of him, you go from a high to a low register. It’s the same for, ahem, Rolf Harris.

  As a child I listened back to cassettes again and again, but as an adult I don’t practise voices. Around 70 per cent of the time I just hear a voice and repeat it. It’s like having a photographic memory of some kind. Sometimes I can instantly do a voice: I hear it replaying in my head, then reproduce the voice while capturing the attitude at the same time. You refine it as you go along, concentrating on the person’s verbal tics.

  By the end of my time at Spitting Image, I started to notice that the writers were trotting out the same sketches. Or a sketch that had been ditched would be dressed up and resubmitted a year later. I would always remember a sketch.

  *

  On 9 April 1992, on the day of the general election, John Thomson and his flatmate Zoë Ball had an election party in Manchester. Neil Kinnock lost to John Major and the evening descended into a wake.

  I went into Spitting Image the next day, already angry at the idea of being condemned to another four years of bullshit, so when a fellow cast member asked me if I was secretly glad as Labour would inevitably have raised income tax, I went crazy.

  I got on my soapbox about tax avoidance and it all went very quiet and uncomfortable. I said she should be ashamed, coming as she did from Liverpool, a place of cripplingly high unemployment and deprivation, a place that had suffered the most from Conservative rule.

  We were told to take a break to calm down.

  It wasn’t very nice of me to have yelled at someone I worked so closely with, an otherwise very pleasant person who used to make me laugh a lot.

  I left Spitting Image the following year; I had been there for six years, during which my life had completely changed.

  I had both my feet in the door.

  CHAPTER 39

  IN THE TIME I spent as a Spitting Image voice artist, I went through a kind of extended metamorphosis. I had just graduated when I started the show in autumn 1988 and, by the time I left, I was getting letters of complaint from Radio 4 listeners convinced that Alan Partridge was real.

  Between Spitting Image and the birth of Partridge, I had a tricky road to navigate. I was hyper-aware that alternative comedy was in opposition to the mainstream and yet I had a foot in both camps. I had set out to be an actor but became an impressionist because it was a means to an end. Similarly, I wanted to be a clever alternative comedian, a Stephen Fry or a Ben Elton, but I wasn’t in a position to turn my back on mainstream entertainment.

  I wanted to do the kind of comedy I watched, but at the same time I wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.

  As I was leaving college, I got my first London agent, Jan Murphy. Sandy Gort was a great agent, but he was based in Manchester, whereas Jan was based in central London and had more contacts.

  Jan introduced me to Kenneth Earle. Kenny was like Mr Showbiz, a real old-school manager with a wood-panelled office in Regent Street. He wanted to get me straight on The Des O’Connor Show. When I pulled a face, he said that perhaps if I did Friday Night Live – the new version of Saturday Live, presented by Ben Elton – I could do Des next.

  I was confident enough at twenty-three to say that I didn’t really want to do Des.

  Kenny didn’t understand why I’d rather be associated with Ben Elton than Des O’Connor. I could see him thinking, ‘Fucking hell, mate. I’m not in that game.’

  Much as I didn’t want to do Des, I decided to get as much experience as I could. I went where the work was.

  Some encounters were better than others; I was lucky enough, for example, to work with some of the last music-hall comedians.

  I did a corporate gig with Ken Dodd that seemed to go on for ever. Dodd is a brilliant live performer. He came from the music hall and managed to make the transition to television, a move that eluded many of his peers. He is famously addicted to performing – he is still touring in his late eighties – and has always said he only feels alive in front of an audience. I understand that addiction; it’s a particular curse of comedy. When you are onstage and the audience are laughing, you feel surges of adrenalin. It’s like a f
ix. And so, inevitably, the silence of your dressing room post-gig can be deafening.

  I also did The National Lottery Live with Bob Monkhouse, who was very funny in person. I had never really liked him as a TV performer, but I found him to be a genuinely nice, generous-hearted man and a comedy super-fan. He had a near-encyclopaedic memory of other comics’ material.

  He came up to me at the Lottery show and said, ‘I remember this routine you did …’

  It turned out the routine was from several years earlier. He quoted my material back at me and I was stunned. It was word-perfect.

  He then gave me a good gag for Tony Ferrino, the Portuguese singing sensation I was doing on the Lottery show.

  Bob: ‘I’ll say to you, “Tony, it’s great to meet you.” You say, “Bob, it’s an honour and a privilege.” I’ll say, “It’s an honour and a privilege for me!” And you’ll say, “That’s what I meant.”’

  So he gave me a joke to do at his expense and it got a big laugh.

  Ken Dodd and Bob Monkhouse were from another era. I was glad to have crossed over with that world as it was disappearing, but only because I knew I could step away from it.

  At the same time, I was never keen on being overtly or loudly left-wing in the way that Ben Elton and his peers were. I tried to be vaguely political on occasion, but never in a straightforward way; David Coleman discussing Chilean politics as though it was a sporting event was probably the closest I got.

  There was a small fire in my belly and I felt huge antipathy towards Thatcher and Reagan, but I was undeniably an armchair lefty.

  I had been very purist at drama school. It was about ideas and attitude and being vaguely anti-establishment. As soon as I started to earn money I changed my mind.

  I thought, ‘This is quite nice.’

  The holier-than-thou bleating of my college peers on the left didn’t help much.

  I was also becoming increasingly aware that some of the people who were laughing at my work were right-wing, and I realised that I could make people laugh when I didn’t agree with their politics. I didn’t want to create enemies, so I thought it might be best if I wasn’t angry any more.