Steve Coogan

Steve Coogan is Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters
“Extremely funny” The Mirror
“Hugely entertaining” Observer

The star of I’m Alan Partridge, Saxondale and creator of Paul and Pauline Calf will be touring the country in 2008, appearing at the Echo Arena Liverpool on 13 October 2008. Steve Coogan is returning in a show featuring the characters that have made him a BAFTA and British Comedy Award winning Comedy Legend. His last live show played 200 performances and was seen by 350,000 people, so get your tickets now!

Over the past decade, Steve Coogan has established himself as one of the most popular, charismatic and versatile comic actors working in Britain today. It was as a comedy performer that Coogan's greatest success came, and the first hint of this was in the series Saturday Zoo (1993), where he created the boorish, ghastly Paul Calf, who briefly became as much a 90s archetype of the 'New Lad' as Harry Enfield's 'Loadsamoney' had been of the 80s. This character, along with his equally horrible sister Pauline, was resurrected in various guises in such television comedies as Paul Calf's Video Diary (BBC, 1993) and Pauline Calf's Wedding Video (BBC, 1994). The latter, shown shortly after Four Weddings And A Funeral (d. Mike Newell, 1994) rejoiced in the knowing subtitle 'Three Fights, Two Weddings and a Funeral', as well as boasting a cameo from John Hannah.

The figure for whom Coogan is best known, perhaps to the extent that his other work has been dwarfed by it, is Alan Partridge. Partridge first appeared in Chris Morris' and Armando Iannucci's BBC Radio 4 satire show On The Hour (1991), which then became The Day Today (BBC, 1994). Coogan was very much part of an ensemble cast, but the figure of an inept, pompous sports reporter was considered to have enough comic mileage for him, along with Iannucci and Patrick Marber, to use the character in a spin-off spoof chat show called Knowing Me, Knowing You (BBC, 1994). Again, this had its roots in the radio programme of the same time, in 1992. While Coogan also invented the less successful figure of an uber-macho Latin American crooner named Tony Ferrino, it was Partridge who proved the most popular figure, as could eventually be seen by the enormous success of the 'sitcom' I'm Alan Partridge (BBC, 1997-2002). In the first series, at least, Coogan, Iannucci, and co-writer Peter Baynham, looked forward to the later plotless, character-driven comedies of Ricky Gervais and Caroline Aherne, turning Partridge into a laughable yet oddly sympathetic figure with consummate skill. Around this time, he also attempted to diversify in his series Coogan's Run (BBC, 1995), with his repellent salesman Gareth Cheeseman in particular standing out as a clear precursor to Gervais' David Brent in The Office (BBC, 2001-3).

Venue

Echo Arena Liverpool, Liverpool

Dates

2008 13 Oct 2008

Tickets Information