Easily Distracted

by Steve Coogan

  DOCUMENTARY MAKER: ‘But given that your sole responsibility is to maintain the security of the pool, isn’t that an indictment against yourself?’

  KEITH: ‘Well, I would say this. I’ve been working here for eighteen years. In 1975, no one died. In 1976, no one died. In 1977, no one died. In 1978, no one died. In 1979, no one died. In 1980, someone died. In 1981, no one died. In 1982, there was an incident with the pigeon. In 1983, no one died. In 1984, no one died. In 1985, no one died. In 1986 … I mean, I could go on.’

  DOCUMENTARY MAKER: ‘No.’

  I knew it was funny because I could see the cameraman’s shoulders shaking with laughter while he was trying to keep the camera steady. He had tears streaming down his face.

  Chris Morris said I should stop doing comedy because I’d never do anything as funny as the night attendant ever again. I think he’s right. It may be the funniest thing I’ve ever done.

  CHAPTER 44

  ARMANDO KNEW ALAN Partridge was funny, but he didn’t give much thought to Alan’s future because he was buried beneath On The Hour. And if you listen back to On The Hour, Alan doesn’t really stand out among the clever silliness.

  So when Patrick proposed an Alan Partridge chat show, both Armando and I laughed. We were dismissive. I thought the character could stretch itself to, at best, ten minutes. Given half an hour, he would surely run out of steam.

  We made Patrick write a proposal for the chat show. It had already been established that Alan liked Abba, so even in its primitive form Patrick knew it should be called Knowing Me Knowing You. I think Armando added ‘with Alan Partridge’.

  Patrick’s pitch said that the show would be six thirty-minute episodes for Radio 4, with the On The Hour cast playing guests. He sold it as a spin-off of On The Hour, and pointed out it would be cheap and funny – why not do a pilot?

  Armando initially thought it would be like Radio 4’s weekly discussion programme Start the Week, but then we all agreed it should be a chat show to appeal to Alan’s more mainstream side.

  Alan Partridge really came to life when Patrick started pushing me to think about Alan in terms of his family life, whether he had kids or not, if he was divorced, what sort of music he liked and hated. Things I hadn’t bothered to think about. Patrick teased the information out of me.

  He was a little obsessed with Alan, and I wasn’t.

  Patrick says now that people love Alan because there’s a little bit of Alan in us all; a confident, perennial fool, he speaks to a universal small-mindedness that we would prefer to conceal. He points out too that Alan was a fan of the Thatcher regime, which we detested as young, studenty lefties; to play the enemy was great fun.

  Patrick saw an opportunity to make Alan greater and he wanted to be the person to do it. He thought Alan just too good to be a small part of a cult radio show.

  And so I went round to Patrick’s house in Islington to write with him.

  He would give me five minutes’ grace and then fine me a pound for every minute I was late. He refused to give it to charity because he knew I wouldn’t mind paying up. I was pretty much never on time, and the most he charged me was a fiver. Despite being preposterously late year after year, Patrick always found it in himself to forgive me.

  Patrick carried on pushing me, asking me endless questions about Alan.

  Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge was written almost entirely by me and Patrick, with Armando producing, editing and guiding the show. When it came to the television show in 1994, Armando became fully involved as a writer as well.

  When we finally recorded the radio pilot of Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge at the Paris Studios, I nipped out to Lillywhites in Piccadilly Circus during a break in rehearsal.

  I bought some slacks, slip-on shoes, a shirt, a tie and a nice pink-and-green Pringle golf jumper. I still have the sweater in as-new condition, hardly worn. My affection for it grows with the years.

  Back in the studio, I parted my long hair down the side and combed it across my head as if I was covering up a bald patch.

  Photos of myself as Alan in the early nineties show that I look way too young. It doesn’t really work. But I wanted to walk out in front of the radio audience as Alan. People wanted to believe he was real, and I was happy to oblige. We kept the conceit going when it became a TV show; I would welcome the studio audience and tell them that we’d be starting shortly and ask them to be patient. In other words, do the normal warm-up that would be expected if Alan were real. It was easy that way. If there were any technical issues, I’d go out and talk to the audience as Alan.

  For the Radio 4 show, the guests, most of whom had been in On The Hour, didn’t come onstage and huddle around a mic. Radio 4 has this stilted and very idiosyncratic way of delivering drama and comedy drama that generally involves three people leaning into a mic and the characters being very earnest, endlessly sighing and talking in received pronunciation.

  We wanted to be more naturalistic and so we set it up as a real TV chat show, with guests sitting on chairs perpendicular to me.

  When the show was first on the radio, one of my greatest pleasures was people telling me they had to pull over because they couldn’t listen properly if they were driving. When you tune into most Radio 4 plays, you know within two seconds that it’s a radio drama rather than someone talking for real. With Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge, listeners were totally thrown.

  They couldn’t quite believe what they were hearing and didn’t know if it was for real or not. It was the perfect response.

  I had letters of complaint from listeners who thought it was real.

  I have one such letter framed in my downstairs toilet:

  December 9, 1992

  Dear Mr Iannucci,

  I was appalled by yesterday’s 6.30pm Alan Partridge broadcast. If this is the level to which Radio 4 has sunk, the BBC is in need of real help.

  The Simon Fisher ‘interview’ was tasteless and cruel. Partridge’s only means of countering the intellect of a quite exceptional 9-year-old child was to ridicule him and apparently after striking him, to reduce him to tears. It ended with Partridge calling Simon a ‘little shit’.

  The pseudo-hypnotic segment gave Partridge a five minute opportunity to tell listeners on countless occasions that at school (and having heard him, I was surprised to learn he ever went to school) he was nicknamed ‘Smelly Fartridge’. How very entertaining.

  At this stage, I switched off.

  Of all the communication media, radio is my first love and usually I have a high regard for the standards set by the BBC, but this example of witless drivel presented by an individual who gives me the impression of being verbally uncontrollable has greatly concerned me.

  I hope Sir Michael Checkland and Michael Green both caught the programme and share my concern. Please let me have your comments and by copies of this letter, I would make the same request of them.

  It’s a compliment, I suppose, that anyone thought Alan was real.

  I was chuffed to be mentioned in Sir Roger Moore’s autobiography. His father was still alive when I did Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge on TV. One of the jokes in the first episode was that special guest Roger Moore had failed to turn up because he was stuck in a car at Heston services on his way from Heathrow.

  His father later said to him, ‘It was very rude of you not to turn up to that talk show.’

  Roger replied, in that smooth, baritone drawl, ‘Father, it’s a satire.’

  I’m also still staggered by how many public figures have a crass, Partridgesque world view. More than anything, Partridge represents those economically libertarian, socially progressive Tories who like to think of themselves as fun and not fusty. Touchy-feely. You know, suits with open-neck shirts, PR-ed to within an inch of their lives. At least those old-money bastards in their top hats were easy to spot.

  *

  The script for Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge was only delivered the night before and we re
hearsed on the day in the Paris Studios. The show was then recorded in ninety minutes and edited down to half an hour. It was loose and scary, but it gave the show a certain freshness and at least we all knew each other very well from On The Hour.

  I didn’t learn the scripts: I could crib off a clipboard because I was a chat-show host. When the show moved to television, I cribbed in two ways: the script was on the autocue, so occasionally I’d look up and ask a question and the audience would laugh. I used to look at the autocue and the clipboard and combine an awkward look of selfconsciousness with an opportunity to look at my lines.

  I also had an earpiece. Armando would occasionally throw in the odd phrase from the control room or give me a prompt, tell me to ask a certain question. There’s a famous moment where a horse did a shit as we were filming and I couldn’t see it because it was behind me. Armando alerted me to it and told me to make a reference to it, so I did so without having seen it.

  Just before the radio pilot went out, I did a corporate job and a woman asked me what else I did.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘I do bits and bobs, On The Hour. I do a sports presenter called Alan Partridge.’

  Her eyes widened: ‘Oh my God! That character is genius!’

  She started eulogising about Alan. Her response both shocked and pleased me.

  But I still didn’t expect people to be queuing around the block for the pilot. I couldn’t quite believe it. When an audience turns up, you’re not quite so cocky. If they don’t laugh, it’s not funny.

  The brutal nature of comedy is in fact what’s enjoyable about it. I’ve always loved its lack of ambiguity. People can say what they like, they can have an opinion. But if lots of people laugh at it, they can’t say it’s not funny.

  Michael McIntyre is not my cup of tea, but I can’t deny that people find him funny. He was reported to be the highest-grossing comedian in the world in 2012, and you can’t argue with that. You can say someone has bad taste if they’re laughing at something you don’t find funny, but you can’t say it’s not funny.

  Our Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge audience was flesh and blood. They were real. There was nowhere to hide.

  I need not have worried about the pilot. The audience was mostly, so far as I could tell, made up of On The Hour fans who had heard about Alan Partridge going solo.

  The recording was dynamite.

  It was the first time I thought, ‘Oh, people like Alan. They really like him.’

  Afterwards I went to a pub round the corner with the On The Hour gang.

  I don’t know why Patrick wasn’t there, but I remember calling him from a phone box.

  He said, ‘This character is going to change your life. I hope you’re ready for it. People are going to be shouting “A-ha” at you across the street.’

  I was floating on air after that recording. Everything was lining up perfectly.

  CHAPTER 45

  WHEN I FIRST started seeing Anna Cole properly in early 1992, I apparently told her I was going to be incredibly successful and famous within a few years.

  She thought I was slightly deluded. Charming, but deluded.

  It sounds arrogant to say so, but sometimes you just know you’re on to something. We knew collectively with On The Hour; it’s different saying it about your own comedy creation.

  Yet my toughest critics were gushing about the radio pilot, including my dad.

  When I played it to him, he laughed all the way through and then asked how many episodes I was going to record.

  When I said five, he laughed again. ‘You’ll have a job keeping that up.’

  And yet Alan was advancing on three fronts.

  As well as the radio show, Patrick and I were filling in his backstory for Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge, and On The Hour was transferring to television as The Day Today. There was a discussion about which should be shown first, The Day Today or the Partridge chat show. Introducing Alan to television as part of an ensemble was perfect, so The Day Today started on the BBC in early 1994 and his chat show went out later on that year.

  I was also pulling material together for a show I could take to Edinburgh in the summer of 1992.

  Patrick asked if I had a director. I didn’t so I asked if he’d like to do it, for a fee of £1,000. It sounded pretty reasonable. It was a bargain in retrospect, of course.

  I did two shows in Edinburgh: the one with John Thomson that Patrick directed, and a much less successful one during the day at Pleasance Two called The Dum Show with Patrick, Stewart Lee, Richard Herring and Simon Munnery. It wasn’t anyone’s fault; the chemistry that existed in On The Hour wasn’t there and it just didn’t work.

  We fooled around on the last night and Stewart told us off for not taking it seriously. I felt guilty, but it was hardly cataclysmic.

  There has been speculation about internal tensions in the group when we were making On The Hour as Lee and Herring weren’t, in the end, involved in The Day Today. I can’t account for anyone else, but I didn’t fall out with Stewart and Richard. We were just different. I wanted to be successful, but on my own terms. I was intuitively more commercial and gravitated towards broad characters like Partridge and Paul and Pauline Calf.

  I was wrapped up in what I was doing, but it’s easy to see how my ambition might have irritated them. Maybe they even thought, ‘Fucking hell, he could do with a bit of self-doubt.’

  I was driving around in my racing-green Mazda MX-5 with BBR turbo conversion. I think I used to vault into the car without opening the door.

  What a tit! But I was having the time of my life.

  Meanwhile, Lee and Herring were quite purist, and confident with it. They were esoteric and elitist, but not in a bad way. They didn’t want to pander to populism. It’s amazing to see what Stewart Lee has become. He has his own idiosyncratic style – his is a unique comedy voice. I think he is the best stand-up comedian in Britain.

  I did, however, briefly fall out with Patrick when we were working on Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge for the BBC.

  The fight is now long forgotten and it is, in retrospect, ludicrous that tension about my inability to ever be on time came to a head over a pair of shorts.

  It was a hot, humid day in the summer of 1994 and I had spent my lunch hour searching for a pair of shorts. All the shops seemed to have sold out and I ended up getting back to work half an hour late.

  Patrick was immediately angry. ‘Where have you been? You know we’re up against it.’

  ‘I was hot. I couldn’t find any shorts.’

  He said, ‘What goes on in that little mind of yours when you know you’re late?’

  ‘I’m not answering that.’

  He was furious. ‘I really want to know. I’m genuinely fascinated.’

  I looked at him. ‘Button it.’

  He went for the door, but I stood in his way. I raised my fist.

  He said, ‘Don’t you dare raise your fist at me,’ then stepped round me and walked out.

  Armando was left there saying, ‘Should we … er … have a break?’

  That evening I bumped into Patrick and immediately apologised.

  My memory of the row is different from Patrick’s. I was convinced that he suggested we take a break because our professional relationship had become quite intense. He insists that we put our differences aside, came into work and carried on writing. We did, in fact, carry on working together on various projects after ‘Shortsgate’. We did a Pauline Calf Christmas special that year, and then, in early 1995, I went to the opening night of his play, Dealer’s Choice. Perhaps the truth is that we drifted apart when the second series of I’m Alan Partridge was commissioned and for various reasons Patrick wasn’t involved.

  I went off and edited Live ‘n’ Lewd, a video of a national tour I’d done earlier in the year that was directed by Dominic Brigstocke. I was supposed to be editing it with Patrick, but I did it on my own and it went really well.

  About six months later, Patrick said
he’d have a look at it for me.

  He watched it and said, ‘This is really funny.’

  Ironically, it was his unqualified praise for something I’d done without him which set me free.

  I had wanted and needed his approval since On The Hour, but suddenly I’d developed my own voice.

  He has asked me a few times to take Alan back to the radio, but there just hasn’t been time. The beauty of radio is that it’s a short step from conception to execution; on television there’s always the danger a project will have its vitality sucked out of it at every turn.

  I will always love Patrick. He held my hand and led me past the pitfalls and potholes on the rocky road to success. Yes, I know, Partridge could have written that sentence, but unfortunately I did. It doesn’t matter.

  We worked together for five really important, formative years and, in a strange way, as the years go by, that time I spent with him becomes more, rather than less, important.

  CHAPTER 46

  KNOWING ME KNOWING You with Alan Partridge was first broadcast on Radio 4 in December 1992. We recorded the pilot three months before going to Edinburgh and the five episodes that made up the first series straight afterwards.

  As Alan’s chat show was going out on Radio 4, I did a Prince’s Trust gig. The next day, Charles and Diana announced their separation. People asked what I’d said to Diana. It’s not as though I even got the chance to stir it up; we had a banal conversation in which she asked if I practised my voices in front of the mirror.

  At the start of 1992, however, my focus wasn’t on royal gossip but on planning my Edinburgh show.

  John Thomson and I decided to do an extensive warm-up tour of adult education centres in the north-west in a Volkswagen Golf. We were endlessly refining the show, but keeping it away from London.