Coogan: 'There's a lot of me in Alan Partridge'

Coogan: 'There's a lot of me in Alan Partridge'
Coogan: 'There's a lot of me in Alan Partridge' (Image credit: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

Steve Coogan has confessed he has similarities with his TV alter ego Alan Partridge. The 46-year-old comic actor is best known for playing hapless radio DJ Alan - and confessed: "There's a lot of me in him." Steve admitted: "There's a part of me that's a bit embarrassing and some of the things Alan says are things that I might think. But we obviously edit those thoughts. Alan doesn't, he just says them. So I think the reason people identify with him is because a lot of the things he says, people have secretly thought. "I think they find it quite cathartic because although Alan's foolish and bigoted sometimes, his heart's in the right place. He's not a nasty person and people do care about him. However foolish he is, people don't want him to be humiliated - they want him to come out OK." Steve is back with a new six-part series, Mid Morning Matters: Special Edition, which kicks off on July 9 on Sky Atlantic. Alan Partridge: The Movie is also set to be released next August. "It's important to me to do other things in my career, but Alan makes me laugh," he explained. "It would be different if I didn't like doing the character, but I do. When we're sitting in the writing room we laugh. We spend all day laughing even though it's work. It's a pleasure."

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 


An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.