Steve Coogan on the evolution of Alan Partridge and ‘laughing around mental health, not at it’ | UK News

“Do you like my orange socks?” asks Steve Coogan.

The British actor is pointing down to a brightly coloured, Argyle patterned pair, worn with brown leather sandals.

“That’s where Alan meets Steve,” he adds. “In the socks.”

By Alan, of course, he is referring to his much-loved and often quoted comedy creation, Alan Partridge – the tactless, self-absorbed and self-styled presenter.

The character first appeared as a sport reporter on the Radio 4 parody news show On the Hour in 1991, with one unwitting listener writing in to say they had been “appalled” by his on-air behaviour.

Since then he has gone on to have his own chat show, sitcom, film and podcast.

Now, his 2025 return finds him funnily failing at fronting a self-funded TV documentary on mental health.

Partridge, as Coogan reminds us, is like “every superficial” celebrity who just wants to have a public profile. “That’s more important to them than what they’re saying or what they stand for,” he adds.

“He’ll take a look around for what seems the most fertile territory for him to exploit. And I think he thought, ‘oh mental health… A lot of people are talking about that these days, I’ll jump on that and try to make myself relevant.'”

How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge) shows its titular star “bravely” – as he puts it – investigating his own mental health and that of the nation.

Addressing “important” topics in comedy can be cathartic but requires a constructive and kind approach, Coogan stresses, noting the intention from him and his co-writers was to “laugh around mental health, not at it.”

He says: “Sometimes if people are worried about attaching comedy to something which is about people’s vulnerabilities then they tend to avoid it because they don’t want to upset people.

“Whereas we will gravitate towards that, even though it gives people anxiety or could be potentially problematic.

“But we know that the same things that make something problematic also give it a lot of potential in terms of comedy.”

Partridge’s latest misadventures see him searching for answers as he reintegrates into British life after a year spent working in Saudi Arabia, having been cast out by the again.

His misguided approach – often aped on the Accidentally Partridge social media account, which shares cringeworthy clips of public figures – is “provocative” but, Coogan hopes, “never mean-spirited.”

The fictional Norfolk-based host can be used as a comedic “Trojan horse”, he says, to talk about taboo subjects and to “mock different kinds of received wisdom.”

Partridge is as likely, according to Coogan, “to mock the xenophobic little England mentality of the Daily Mail” as he is “the smug, self-righteousness of the Guardian, at its worst.”

He continues: “People who don’t agree on everything might all laugh at Alan Partridge at the same time.

“So that’s really a nice unifying thing.”

In the 1990s and early noughties, Coogan would write material for the ambitious-yet-awkward Alan alongside Armando Iannucci and Peter Baynham.

But Iannucci turned his attentions to political satires like The Thick of It, while Baynham was “poached by Sacha Baron Cohen” for Borat, Coogan recalls.

Cocaine use affected his own work on series two of I’m Alan Partridge, he has previously admitted.

The character then endured a “fallow period” of about seven years, as Coogan looked for other projects that would “help me feel like I wasn’t just gonna die with ‘here lies Alan Partridge’ on my tombstone.”

He starred as Manchester music mogul Tony Wilson in Michael Winterbottom’s 2002 film 24 Hour Party People, and then alongside friend and fellow comic Rob Brydon as exaggerated versions of themselves in The Trip.

A blend of truth and fiction, the conceit hinted at Coogan’s frustrations and ambitions to step out of Partridge’s shadow into other acclaimed roles. It worked. He won a Bafta for his performance in series one, to add to his previous wins for I’m Alan Partridge.

Another Bafta win and an Oscar nomination followed for 2013 film Philomena, which he wrote and starred in alongside Dame Judy Dench.

When Alan returned from his hiatus in the 2010s, in the YouTube series Mid Morning Matters and spoof autobiography I, Partridge, a new writing team was in place.

Screenwriting brothers Neil and Rob Gibbons helped Coogan to slowly fall back in love with him.

“It took a while,” admits Coogan. “I was doing a live show, and I asked them to write something and it was brilliant – almost but not quite perfect.

“And since then, they’ve just taken the reins and they have breathed new life into the character, given me new confidence and we took it off in a different direction.”

The trio worked together on the Partridge movie, Alpha Papa – alongside Iannucci and Baynham – and another Bafta-winning series Scissored Isle, as well as the TV magazine programme This Time and podcast From the Oasthouse.

Coogan believes Partridge’s longevity is down to him having “evolved” into a more “three-dimensional” figure, capable of evoking “pathos”.

Neil Gibbons says in the early days Partridge was surrounded by “reasonable” people, meaning he would often be the one saying something “stupid”.

Their trick, he reveals, was to surround him with people who are worse, like his new girlfriend Katrina.

“Alan often, in a clumsy way, says things that as an audience you agree with,” he explains. “It just gives you another angle of attack, as otherwise you run out of ways he can say the wrong thing or lose his temper with someone.”

More sympathetic characters like his long-suffering assistant, Lynn (Felicity Montagu), and his old sidekick, Simon (Tim Key), return but with gripes of their own.

Coogan thinks while older fans may feel relieved watching Alan slip on life’s “banana skins” that they’ve avoided, younger viewers – with whom he is popular on TikTok – “see their parents in Partridge”.

“They see that desperation from their parents to be relevant and not square,” says the actor.

Like for many “white, middle-aged, middle-class men”, offers Rob Gibbons, “the world has changed too fast for him” and he’s “scared”.

Partridge was once an “albatross” around Coogan’s neck, but he returns to him nowadays because he “wants to”, not because he has to.

“I don’t want to live with Alan but I do like to visit him,” says the star.

As his socks might suggest, the 59-year-old admits he has caught himself becoming a little more like Partridge as he’s got older.

He has no intention of killing him off anytime soon. “As long as I can do the other things that are really important to me, I think I will always come back and do something, as long as we can keep the standard.”

And having realised that “laughter is very healthy”, Coogan says he will keep performing comedy for “as long as I’ve got breath in my body.”

How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge) begins on One at 21:30 BST on Friday 3 October, when all six episodes will be available on iPlayer.