Steve Coogan on the next Alan Partridge project

The next Alan Partridge show, in which the hapless host takes on mental health, is set to come out in ‘the next couple of months’, Steve Coogan has said.

Speaking about the series, entitled How Are You?, the comic said: ’Alan’s trying to jump on the mental health bandwagon. He knows that he can get back on TV if he talks about something important.’

He said the show would be out ‘this year.. next couple of months, I think. We’re editing it now’.

And he reveals some of the content has been so near the knuckle that he can’t help but laugh when filming, even though he is supposed to keep a straight face.

‘It is so risqué some of the stuff, I can't even describe, you have to just listen to it,’ he said. ‘There’s some stuff that’s so wrong that it makes me laugh, because  there are some things he says that no one could say. And I certainly couldn't say.’

But he says Partridge gets away with it ‘because you, the audience, know who he is and that he's sort of ill-informed but is trying his best. He's not an evil person. He's just a fool. 

‘And sometimes the fool says things that people secretly agree with. So, that's quite enjoyable that having that little bit of catharsis. And also, you can satirise… if I want to take the mick out of someone I don't like, I just make Alan say that they're his best friend. Rather than attack them. In fact, the last Alan Partridge book, it says foreword by Grant Shapps. And there is no foreword in the book at all.’

It was previously announced that the six-part series would follow Partridge as he attempts to reintegrate into British life after spending 12 months working in Saudi Arabia

Speaking to Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett on the Dish from Waitrose podcast, Coogan – who is currently starring in Dr Strangelove in the West End – also confessed: "There was a time when I felt like saddled with it [Partridge].

‘ So, when I do Partridge [now], I do it through choice. Not because I have to. 

‘I'm doing some stuff at the moment, and it does make me laugh, so I make notes in my phone. I have a funny idea. I'm on the train, and I'm chuckling to myself. I will laugh at myself as a Partridge comes into my head, and put it in my phone, on my own. 

‘Or I'll look in a shop window and think about what would Alan say about that. I'm still doing it now 30 years later, so it's like a condition now. There'd be an acronym for it, you know. 

‘I do like writing it with the Gibbons brothers, the two writers who've been doing it for 15 years. We've been doing the podcast and we think of funny scenarios all the time. The one we did the other day was, Alan gets trapped in a porch

‘In his house, he goes out there… and he slams the door, he’s trapped in the porch for eight hours. But he's recording his podcast. So, he has to start looking at the leaflets on the floor, like pizza delivery leaflets.. so things like that… really sort of stupid things’

The podcast’s focus is on food, and he confessed that despite all the fine dining he and Rob Brydon experienced while making The Trip, he has simpler tastes. ‘I like the Walls sausages, not the fancy ones,’ he admitted.

‘When I did the series with Rob Brydon we went on all these fancy restaurants, all around the world, in fact, and they were all interesting. But I did find myself craving more simple food. 

‘After a while of being bombarded and spoiled by this assault on the senses I just [started] craving a fried egg sandwich, you know? And also, I started to get put off by the sort of fetishistic eight-course menus where it takes longer to describe the food than it does to eat it. Someone stands there, tells you what it all is, and you're going, all right, get on with it.’

However there are some food trends he likes, adding: ‘I like that sort of farm to table. It's honesty. When I grew up, my mum cooked all the food because that was the most cost-effective way of feeding the family. And I was jealous of all the kids at school who had all the processed food, like Findus Crispy Pancakes.’

One of their most memorable meals in The Trip was in Ravello on the Amalfi Coast, ‘which is like heaven’, Coogan explained. ‘It's up on the mountaintop and it's the most idyllic garden.’

Some time after making the series, he and Brydon returned there for a photoshoot for Vogue, and dined at one of the restaurants where they had filmed – to the shock of one couple who had gone there purely after seeing the programme.

‘It sort of blew their minds,’ Coogan said, recalling how they asked: ‘’Do you just live here? In this restaurant?’… ‘like we were there especially for them’.

He said that while the show was a mix of fact and fiction ‘Rob and I, we had a gentleman's agreement that we were allowed to take the piss out of each other and know that we risk upsetting each other.

‘Because if you know someone well, you know what buttons to press to wind them up, so we did that. And sometimes it would get quite frosty. Probably on my part, you know. I'd go, "You want to go there? You want to go there? Do you want me to go there? Should we do that? Are we, are we doing that?" 

‘But you know, I was normally the instigator  and Michael  [Winterbottom, the director] would say, "Stop, stop, be nice to each other," or "Just do some funny voices, stop it".

‘I play up to being precious and pretentious. There's some truth in it, but we always overplay it, and Rob plays being Mr. Entertainer and he's a bit more nuanced than that. A bit. A bit.

‘But actually in the evening we go out and eat as ourselves. As two normal people, and our conversation is really boring. Talk about like, "Are you having an extension built?" It was things like that. Like, it's really dull.  Like no edge at all. But Rob and I do, do actually like each other.’

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Published: 5 Feb 2025