The show’s lead actor spoke to JOE about his beloved character’s return, using comedy to explore hot-button issues, and the rave reviews he has received from Irish audiences.
Everyone’s favourite bumbling British TV personality, Alan Partridge, is back with a hysterically funny new batch of episodes.
This is courtesy of the fourth season of From the Oasthouse: The Alan Partridge Podcast, which has been newly made available to stream on the service Audible.
The series sees Alan (played as always by Steve Coogan) contractually obligated by Audible to produce 11 episodes of content. As such, the iconic presenter records himself rambling about various, sometimes hot-button topics. This is as he goes about his daily tasks, usually getting into some form of trouble as he does so.
Dubbed Alan’s “most personal and dramatic season yet”, the presenter throughout the season also becomes involved in a legal battle.
As the plot synopsis reads: “Many great men have fallen before the law, their fortunes and reputation lain waste by a single poor decision.
“Now comes the turn of Alan Gordon Partridge as he faces a criminal case that could alter the course of his life forever while providing a narrative arc around which the series can hang.”
Co-written by Coogan, alongside Neil and Rob Gibbons, From the Oasthouse Season 4 is a dream for fans of Alan Partridge, essentially giving listeners access to an undiluted stream-of-consciousness version of Alan.
All the while, Coogan – who has been playing Partridge for nearly 35 years – continually manages to find further layers of depth to his creation, as well as inventive new ways for Alan to put his foot in it.
JOE caught up with the actor and writer to discuss From the Oasthouse Season 4, which also has a tie-in attraction at this year’s RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival from 1 – 6 July. You can read about that here.
Our first question to Coogan was how he managed to fit in writing and starring in 11 episodes of the podcast around his already prolific recent output. This includes playing four roles on stage in Armando Iannucci’s excellent recent reimagining of Dr. Strangelove, as well as playing former Ireland football manager Mick McCarthy in the upcoming movie Saipan.
According to the performer, he was able to squeeze in the prep for the podcast while touring with the play.
“Sometimes when you’re doing something like the play, Dr. Strangelove, once the show’s up and running, strangely, your days are free,” he explains.
“When you’re doing the show in the evening, you sort of feel like you’re a delivery mechanism… who’s basically delivering the performances to the audience and then goes home. It becomes second nature. You’re not not thinking about it, but it’s like a muscle memory. So you can apply yourself to other stuff.
“So, during the day, I’d be doing Zoom sessions and writing with [Neil and Rob Gibbons], sometimes getting together with them. It’s always fun. It’s always a joy. It’s never a chore to write the podcast stuff, because there’s a lot of freedom.”
When JOE points out to Coogan that he has played Alan Partridge for nearly 35 years across a variety of different mediums, he says the character still appeals to him because it gives him an outlet for comedy, while also allowing him time off to pursue other, sometimes more serious projects.
He says:
“It works for me now. I know how it works. There was a period where I thought: ‘Do I kill [Alan] off? Do I do something else? Do I do another character? Do I do loads of characters?’
“I used to do a few characters but then, I’m not that interested in doing loads of comedy characters in the sort of Harry Enfield mode, brilliant though he is.
“I wanted to write. I want to do what I’m doing now. That’s what I wanted to do. So, when it came to comic characters, I thought: ‘Well, any of the comedy I’m thinking of, I’ll just chuck it all into Partridge. I’ll do the comedy through him.’
“35 years, the fact that I’m able to do other things, makes it easier for me to do Alan. If it were the only thing I was doing, I would probably be a bit depressed.”
On the advantages and disadvantages of playing a character for a long time, Coogan explains: “The downside… is that there’s a danger of running out of steam.
“But I realised: ‘Oh, in actual fact, all you [have to] do is lean into what’s happening, [because] it keeps him relevant. You just reflect society, you reflect what’s going on in popular culture. He’s not fixed in time; he’s evolved the way we’ve all evolved.
“The other thing about it is there’s an audience that knows the character. It means you can skip all the set-up and reintroducing.
“They’re already up to speed, so you can dive into deep waters really fast, and people just go with you.
“When an audience feels familiar with a character… if you use it properly, it’s a shortcut to talking about stuff that might be difficult. Because they go: ‘Well, we know who he is. We know what his attitude is.”
From the Oasthouse season four finds much of its humour out of Alan’s fear of “cancel culture”, something Coogan reveals he was particularly eager to explore. On this, he says:
“I think it’s always good to talk about cancel culture because it gives people anxiety. [When] you’re doing comedy, the more difficult the subject matter is, the better it is, certainly for Alan Partridge.
“Because I’d rather fail in maybe making a misjudgment, than being bland. I’d rather upset some people… not for the sake of it, but risk that, than sort of fade into mediocrity.
“It’s like walking across the hot coals or a child pushing something off a table; if it feels a bit forbidden, it’s probably good.”
That said, Coogan also notes that when covering such hot-button issues like cancel culture or mental health, he and his co-writers try to do so in an ethical manner.
As he explains: “We are quite ethical about what we do. But it’s like: ‘You can’t occupy that space with comedy.’ I don’t believe that about any topic, any topic at all.
“But I don’t think anything goes either. I do self-censor, but I don’t self-censor in a way that I think is unhealthy.
“Sometimes when we’re doing stuff, we will not do something that might make myself and the Gibbons’ laugh. We won’t do it because we have so much context around why we’re laughing, and we can’t always know that that would be the case [with the audience].
“Or it’s like, what’s the net effect? Do you shine light on the human condition when you do that joke? Or do you encourage a kind of prejudice, a bullying prejudice?
“Even though we might find something funny, if we think actually on balance that it could be seen by people as encouraging a kind of blind ignorance, then we just won’t do it.
“We’ll go: ‘Yeah, let’s dump it,’ and we’ll dump it. There are plenty of other ways to make people laugh without pandering to the worst side.”
A less pivotal but still recurring element in From the Oasthouse season four is Alan seeming to be slightly fearful of Irish people.
When we raise this character trait to Coogan, we get a glimpse into his thoughtful approach to using humour as a means of highlighting and satirising prejudices that exist.
“You’re right, he does have this sort of thing with the Irish,” the actor-writer agrees, adding: “Because I think it’s actually true [that there’s] a lot of English people who are ill-informed [and] do have this sort of thing [where they] don’t really understand the Irish and therefore fear them a bit.”
The Alan Partridge Sound Bath Garden at the RHS Hampton Court Palace Garden Festival marks season 4 of Audible’s From the Oasthouse: The Alan Partridge Podcast
Smiling as he notes that he recently became an Irish passport holder – after all, he has many Irish relatives, including his mother from Mayo – Coogan says: “I heard someone say: ‘I live in the middle of the Irish sea.’ That’s where I am.
“I’m also from the north of England. Sometimes I have Alan saying: ‘The north’ [Coogan says the words gravely], like it’s this dark place for people, because I see that attitude down south.
“A very eminent Irish person said to me that he loved the bit on the podcast where [Alan] said, in an ad for a future podcast: “Coming up. How Do You Solve a Problem Like Ireland,’ and it was very much from a British point of view.
“I think it was like: ‘Alan featuring…’ and there were all English people, including some military people as well. And I think Alan says, we tried to get some Irish people involved, but none were available at the time [Coogan recounts, laughing].
“There is a sort of basic ignorance. But it’s quite enjoyable to do that thing, because I see it, but I also feel like I can do it, like when I have Alan talking about the north in an ignorant way.
“I feel like maybe because of the baggage I’ve got, it means that people know where I’m coming from when I do it. So, it allows me a sort of licence to do it.
“It’s quite bold. I feel like some people might find it offensive, but not many people. I’ve got enough experience now to roll that dice and know.”
Another example Steve Coogan cites of such Ireland-related humour is his character of Martin Brennan, a farmer from Sligo who is a doppelganger of Alan Partridge.
This leads to Alan inviting Martin on his BBC talk show, where the latter winds up singing Irish rebel songs.
Coogan reveals: “My mother was really worried that I would offend. ‘We’ll never be able to go back there if you do this,’ she said.
“I thought: ‘I think they’ll love it. I think they’ll recognise that I’m not doing any generic Irish stuff. If I’m super specific, they’ll just go: ‘Oh, we know him, he’s part of the landscape.’ There’s lots of different kinds of Irish people and he’s one of them.
“The writer of Derry Girls, Lisa McGee, she was really vocal about it on social media, how much she loved that character, because she got it.”
However, while Coogan often deploys the “fool” Alan as a means to expose existing prejudices, he also sometimes uses him to get at glimmers of truth – which is perhaps part of what makes audiences care about the comic creation.
On this, the actor-writer says: “Sometimes Alan says things that are true inadvertently, the way a traditional Shakespearean fool is both silly, talks in riddles, is sort of stupid, has an immaturity, he’s childlike but also occasionally says things that other people can’t say.
“So there’s a pendulum where sometimes you’re laughing at Alan’s ignorance and sometimes you’re laughing because you go: ‘I think that’s secretly true but no one can say it.’
“Most people, they have an internal policing mechanism. You go: ‘Well, I shouldn’t think that, even though I am thinking it. I know that that’s wrong to do that.’
“People, if they are mature, they govern themselves, don’t they? They govern their own intuition. That’s why we’re civilised. Sometimes Alan doesn’t do that. It just sort of comes out.”
One of the funniest ongoing gags in From the Oasthouse Season 4 is Alan slagging off other media personalities or throwing them under the bus.
When we ask Coogan if he ever gets permission from the real-life people Alan references, he says he does not – something which has gotten him into “trouble” in the past.
“No, no I don’t. I don’t ask their permission,” he admits: “It’s not like we don’t like those people. It’s just, we sort of create a parallel universe of Alan, but we want it to feel like it’s real, so we mention real people.
“Years ago, a guy who is probably retired now, a newscaster – we got in trouble because Martyn Lewis, the broadcaster from 35 years ago, I think Alan said he gets free showers from Dolphin Bathrooms.
“‘You can’t say that! Because that’s slanderous.’ And I was like: ‘But it’s a comic character saying that a real person gets free bathrooms.’
“But we did it anyway and in the end, the lawyer sort of backed down.
“We do make things up. Alan has a bit of a beef with Noel Edmonds, and it feels funny to us that that’s part of his universe, part of his landscape, his environment.”
On the freedom the podcast form allows for Alan Partridge, Coogan sums up: “We’re not thinking so much about the audience. It’s more about what we think is funny, we find funny.
“It’s quite an indulgent thing. It’s like the difference between free-form jazz improv and a pop song.
“When we do stuff for TV or live, that’s more like pop music, and when we do the podcast, it’s more like stuff for musicians, purist musos.”
From the Oasthouse: The Alan Partridge Podcast Season 4 is streaming on Audible now.
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