The biggest name at this year's comedy festival is Steve Coogan, the Englishman of many guises - including the legendary Alan Partridge - whose long-awaited return to the live stage got off to a rocky start in England. But he's been slaying them across the ditch, he tells Russell Baillie, from somewhere near Noosa
Why go back to live shows? Is it a bit like Jerry Seinfeld who went back to stand-up because he got tired of counting his money?
Ha ha ha. It's because I felt like I ought to because I had been away from it for so long - I had left it for 10 years and I was getting scared that whatever it was that I had been was pretty good at 10 years ago I might have lost. So I thought I ought to do it. And the other reason is because I missed it. It was so long ago it had turned into nostalgia. I wanted to revisit that and see if I could hack it. There is nowhere to hide when you're on stage. You can't re-edit like you can in a movie ... there is something pure about it, it's closer to what entertainers have been doing for a couple of thousand years.
Did you need to give yourself a fright?
Yeah. The feeling if you get it right - it's always a gamble - it outweighs the risks. I've been pretty lucky and also I made sure I got my head down and did my homework. But yeah, there is definitely a feeling of trepidation. But once you have done a couple of shows though you know stuff works you are good. The first try-out show we did in Canberra was very nerve-racking. I didn't know whether people were going to laugh or were going to get it. It turned out it was great. I'm enjoying it.
It must be said, the reviews from the beginning of your tour in Britain late last year weren't good.
Yeah, we had a unfortunate experience in Liverpool which is the mainstay of that criticism. It was a combination of things - we made the mistake of playing a big arena. We should have had big screens which we did on subsequent shows because there is a lot of physical activity and with 5000 people you can't see it, you are so far away. And also our microphones went down so it was a catalogue of technical things that compounded the fact that the show was brand new and we were still trying to iron out some of the gags.
But those criticisms were fair enough - a week later the show was in tip-top condition. And audience attendances and subsequent reviews bear that out.
Click here and here to read British media reviews of Coogan's tour last year.
Okay. So the show you had at the beginning of your tour in Britain and the show you are bringing to New Zealand - are they pretty much the same?
No it's a totally different show. I would say what remains of the British show is 35 per cent and I would say that 65 per cent is stuff that is new or stuff that I did five years ago. I have taken the best bits of the stuff that I have done and haven't been seen in Oz and amalgamated them into a show which is different and which is tailored really for Australia and New Zealand. It's very very different.
Must have been hard to suffer that sort of backlash ...
You seem slightly more preoccupied than I am about it. It was about a week and it was mainly Liverpool and once you become successful and become part of the establishment - which is what I am in Britain - there will always be naysayers and however good your show is there will be some people who don't want you to succeed. That is just the nature of the beast. Anyone who is pretty much near the top of the game in Britain suffers from that same sort of sentiment and you have to get past that. If you become preoccupied in pleasing all the people all the time you come a-cropper. There will always be a minority of people who don't want you to do well and that's fine, that's a deal you make when you get into this business. The one bagging in Liverpool was leapt upon by some people. But I got dozens of great reviews but they don't get repeated online because they don't make good copy.
Really, this is like a distraction because I am having to put movies on hold in the US that I lined up to do because I want to fulfil my commitment to myself and to my audience to do some live work.
It must be fun being your agent - you having movies waiting for you when you are out in the colonies doing live shows.
That's par for the course. In terms of problems in the economy at the moment, having several job offers is a very nice problem. Some people are not so fortunate to have that problem. I will never complain about that.
Some of your characters must travel better than others.
Yes. I've omitted some of my characters from my southern hemisphere tour because I know others are more international and that will be the case for the US too. Certain parochialisms I realised I don't have to worry about - some of my characters are very from the north of England - Mancunian - but that's a bit irrelevant. The fact is the two characters, Paul and Pauline Calf, he's a bar-room bore and she is kind of a goodtime girl predatory female - they exist everywhere in the world.
Especially in Queensland
Exactly. The accent is kind of academic, it's the attitude which is very much universal. And Alan Partridge is a self-regarding broadcaster and any sophisticated Western Nation has a few.
There was a colourful finale song in your British show where you were sending up the tabloid version of yourself. Can you do that further afield?
I thought I couldn't and, in fact, I wasn't going to do it when I came to Australia. But people kept asking me about it and because the song was a real show-stopper in England and I tried it out in Melbourne and it went down a storm. It makes some reference to my [profile] but you don't need to know that for the joke to work. The joke is using the worst word in the English language and repeating it ad nauseam. But the song is a very celebratory inclusive.
It's a song about humility and the audience love it. I've done it before - I've done a film with Michael Winterbottom and with Jim Jarmusch where I play myself and I send myself up. I just do that all the time.
So will the real Steve Coogan stand up - or ever do stand-up?
I used to do stand-up years ago but I found myself a little self-conscious. The other thing is I am a fairly private person. When I've done these things in movies when I've played myself it's artistic licence and there's a modicum of truth in it, sometimes you exaggerate and turn the volume up on things - you just caricature for the sake of comedy. When I do stuff as myself it's not really who I am - that wouldn't be true. It equally wouldn't be true if I said that's exactly who I am.
Given your ability with accents and characters, how much is your comedy a study of the English class system? Or is it just inspired by say Monty Python where they liked to do funny voices?
I think it is to do with class. Britain is still class-obsessed, however much people pretend it isn't. I do play on that and I come from a lower-middle class background - you are not really working class, because your family has moved from that poverty trap into something else. But neither are you raised with the self-confidence that comes with a higher education. So you are kind of in limbo.
Creatively, it's quite interesting because you learn a lot as you are growing up but the downside is you are still trying to figure out where you belong. You are too sophisticated to sit in the pub and talk about football and eat fish and chips all day. And you are not quite sophisticated enough to talk about Nietzsche in smoke-filled rooms. Creatively, I am quite glad of my background because it has informed the comedy, which is a lot about class differences and snobbery and inverted snobbery and ignorance.
All in all, is your career going to plan?
I would say so. I've been doing this for 20 years and it's evolving. I almost feel like doing the live stuff is almost like a sabbatical from my career. When I am done with this there is stuff I have to get on with in the States and Britain. The only one common denominator is I have never done work which I didn't think had some value. I've never worked just for a payday. And I would rather do that and have a slightly less stratospheric career than take an easy buck and do that deal with the devil.
So you won't be coming up with your own Mr Bean?
No, you can put money on that.
LOWDOWN
Who: Steve Coogan, spoof-specialising comedian-turned-actor
Born: October 14, 1965 in Manchester, England
Key roles: Tropic Thunder (2008), Night at the Museum (2006), A Cock and Bull Story (2005) Coffee and Cigarettes (2004) Around the World in 80 Days (2004), 24 Hour Party People (2002), various TV shows as Alan Partridge (1994-2002) and Saxondale (2007)
