Steve Coogan

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The program was originally broadcast in two thousand nine.

Presenter0:27

My Castaway this week is the comedian and actor Steve Coogan. In recent years he's found success in films, in roles as diverse as the eighteenth century fictional man of letters Tristram Shandy, to Manchester's best known pop impresario Tony Wilson.

Presenter0:43

He was a child when he realized he had a knack for impressions, and he first made a name for himself on spitting image but he's best known for creating the grotesque Alan Partridge, a character so crass he had us peering at the telly through our fingers in mortified horror.

Presenter0:59

Although his work has been very varied.

Presenter1:02

It seems precious little about his career has been left to chance.

Presenter1:06

He was still a teenager when he started planning his future success. I remember being in the Sixth Form one day, he says, having this moment of clarity, thinking, There's a generation of future comics out there, all around the country, people who have no idea right now that they will be part of that generation, so why can't I be part of it?

Presenter1:24

Other people out there don't know it's going to happen to them, but I'm going to see if I can make it happen to me.

Presenter1:31

That seems extraordinary, uh Steve Coogan, that as early as your sort of late teenage years you were in the common room, were you, when you had that thought?

Steve Coogan1:37

Yeah, I remember it very clearly because um I started thinking about all the people I admired on television, all the creative people I admired and

Steve Coogan1:44

One always thinks that whoever's around now is that's going to be the status quo forever. And then, of course, you realize that isn't the case, and it never will be the case.

Presenter1:51

Quite unusual to see those patterns at that age. I mean, at this point in your career, you know, somebody who's had the amount of success, the sustained success you have, and you're in your forties and you can think, Yes, I'm part of that generation and indeed now you're a comedy producer and you bring on new talent. To see it at sixteen or seventeen, though, seems

Presenter2:07

Unusual and and more than a day dream, much more precise than a day dream.

Steve Coogan2:11

Um I was from a background where where there was a kind of a certain sense of caution in what you did. I remember a teacher called me in and said, you know, thinking of going to drama school, that's a very very precarious profession and you might have a wife and children to support. Is that the wisest choice to make?

Steve Coogan2:27

And there was a kind of caution about things.

Presenter2:28

What was your answer when they said that?

Steve Coogan2:30

It sort of made me annoy that to try and do something extraordinary was unwise. But to be charitable to him I think he thought he would flush me out, and if I really wanted to do it then despite what he said to me, then clearly I was committed.

Presenter2:43

And why was it comedy at that point?

Steve Coogan2:45

Because I wasn't interested in football, I wasn't interested in sport. In fact, when I did play football, I used to I'd always play defence because I could talk to the goalkeeper who was very interested in movies like I was. I found I could do impersonations and I could entertain people, not in a kind of a class clown kind of a way, but in a very sort of with my little coterie of friends who liked our little exclusive sense of humor. It was a little bit elitist in a good way, I think. I was part of the television generation, definitely.

Presenter3:12

Number one.

Steve Coogan3:13

Most T V shows, if they were half decent, were an event because the next day in the playground people would discuss them and dissect them and I felt part of that and connected to that.

Presenter3:21

And this was even prior to the video cassette recorder. Yes, it was. So you used to hold a little microphone, did you uh

Steve Coogan3:24

Yes, it was.

Steve Coogan3:26

Well at first I used to put a microphone on the cushion in front of the T V. In fact, I've got some recordings at home where you can hear me telling people to be quiet in the room while the T V show is on, because I didn't want their voices on some recording of Forty Towers or something. So I would play the tape back and then speak the visuals.

Presenter3:27

And

Presenter3:44

And was it still funny? It sounds as if you might have been sucking the life out of the way. No, no.

Steve Coogan3:47

No, no, it was probably deeply unfunny, but people would say, Did you see that thing the other night? Oh, and try and describe it. And I would hear people do it and get it wrong, and it would annoy me. And I'd step into the conversation saying, No, it wasn't like that, and I'd try to replicate it with accuracy.

Presenter3:54

Uh

Presenter4:03

Let's take a break for some music, what's the first track that you've chosen?

Steve Coogan4:06

Uh Susie and the Banshees. It was during the time when when punk rock was just emerging and I was a bit too young to go to the nightclubs but just young enough to be excited about its its irreverence and its maverick status. And I still remember ordering Susie and the Banshees from Boots the Chemist. My older brother told me to used to tell me what to buy because he was the cool one in the family. I remember ordering it and putting it on the turntable for the first time and being so excited about this sort of energetic different sound.

Speaker 34:37

In the air, symbols crashing everywhere Green the Bales of Rise and Rage War population favours Jump blocks on for Lieutenant Water and all

Speaker 34:53

And sell your daughter, what's your like number twenty-three? Play your hands on the counterplay.

Presenter5:04

Suzine the Banshees and Hong Kong Garden. It struck me, Steve Cookin, as you were talking about being this little boy with the microphone and placing it on the cushion, that there was something of the Alan Partridge in that. Talking people through the faulty towers and saying this is the bit where he goes to the bar, sort of you know, dissecting life into its minute little parts and and slicing up sort of train spotterish, I suppose. Do you think people say that about you actually, deep down he is a bit Alan Partridge?

Speaker 35:19

Boom.

Speaker 25:19

You know

Steve Coogan5:20

Yeah.

Steve Coogan5:25

I suppose.

Steve Coogan5:28

There's things about me that I've sort of channelled into Alan Partridge, but Alan Partridge was a collective effort. I tried to describe it as when I would speak to someone in conversation or meet someone, you have or one has private thoughts that you don't speak out loud. You edit your thoughts and you say the appropriate thing. And I think I do think before I speak, but all I'd do when I did Alan was to remove that natural edit that people who are sensible and measured have and let your subconscious speak and try and make it sound reasonable. But sometimes I would say things as myself, not trying to write Alan. And I remember Patrick Marburt just writing down what I'd said as myself, thinking that was funny, saying just say what you said. And I'd be slightly insulted by the fact that he thought that what I'd said as myself was worthy of Alan Partridge. But I didn't mind, as long as what ends up being funny and people enjoying it, then I didn't mind that.

Presenter6:30

W were you comfortable with having with the success of Alan Partridge, such a big character? I mean, I presume it it must have changed your life radically in terms of the walking down the street sort of life that you have.

Steve Coogan6:39

I I remember quite clearly recording the pilot of the talk show, Knowing Me, Knowing You, for radio.

Steve Coogan6:48

And I dressed up as the character, even though it was radio. Can you remember?

Presenter6:52

Can you remember what you were wearing?

Steve Coogan6:53

Yeah, I nipped to Lilywhite's to buy a Pringle sweater that was quite expensive, actually. A sort of golfing sweater. I've still got that sweater, actually. Oh no, the cat's out of the bag. Yeah, and I've sort of got sentimental attachment to it, actually. But I remember afterwards, Patrick Marba said, you do realize, he said, this character that you recorded tonight is going to change your life. People are going to be shouting that aha at you. I remember thinking at the time, wow, that would be extraordinary. What an amazing thing that would be.

Presenter7:26

How many times do they shout out you a week now, say?

Steve Coogan7:29

Um, about twice a week. It's that not that bad. It's quite a comfortable amount. If it stopped altogether I'd be upset. But two or three times a week is acceptable to me, yeah.

Presenter7:37

Henry Normal, who's been your writing partner and now indeed producing partner over many years, you you run your company together, Baby Cow, says of you, Steve feels disconnected with the world. Comedy is one way he makes that connection. Do you think he's right?

Steve Coogan7:53

Yes, yes, I think so. It's c it is therapeutic and cathartic for me, what I do creatively, and I need to do creative things. I feel comfortable when I'm writing, I feel comfortable when I'm performing, and I'm not entirely comfortable when I'm myself. But if you like, I'm comfortable with that discomfort.

Steve Coogan8:11

Anything that happens to me on a day-to-day basis or generally in my life, I never see anything as a negative experience in a philosophical sense because I know that whatever happens to me is useful and interesting. I do remember once, and this is a real, I don't know whether this is a vain actor thing, but something was happening in my life a long time ago, and I was actually crying, and I remember looking across in the mirror and thinking, oh, that's interesting, that's what grief looks like.

Presenter8:40

As you say, it's a fan actor thing.

Speaker 28:40

Uh

Steve Coogan8:40

Is it

Speaker 28:41

Be an accessor thing.

Presenter8:43

I think this would be a good moment to stop for reflection, listen to some music.

Presenter8:49

Tell me what you've chosen as track number two.

Steve Coogan8:51

At Louis Armstrong we have all the time in the world.

Presenter8:53

Why have you chosen this?

Steve Coogan8:54

I've chosen that because I love the music of John Barry and to me all the music of John Barry really reminds me of that cinematic escape in Louis Armstrong's vocal on it is wonderful. It's the last thing he did before he died, but it's timeless. It reminds me of this other world of sophistication and perfection that's slightly unreal but very comforting.

Speaker 29:15

We have on.

Speaker 29:19

But time.

Speaker 29:21

In a while.

Speaker 29:26

Die for nothing for life.

Speaker 29:29

Two one four

Speaker 29:32

All the precious things love has in store.

Speaker 29:37

We have all

Presenter9:41

The lounger in the world

Presenter9:45

Louis Armstrong, and we have all the time in the world. Uh Steve Coogan, tell me about your early world then. You described it as a a sort of happy, a normal, and a large family.

Steve Coogan9:55

Yeah, I have four brothers and two sisters, and my parents foster did short term fostering of children sometimes two or three at a time in the house.

Presenter10:05

They live in a big house.

Steve Coogan10:06

It was well it still is. In fact, the n the nice thing is when I go home I sleep in the bedroom I was born in, which is a really comforting thing.

Steve Coogan10:14

It was uh fairly big, but yeah, there was always a lot of people in the house. I remember once a policeman came round because there was an accident outside or something, and there were lots of kids running round, and uh and my brother used to cut people's hair, so there's a line of kids lining up to have their hair cut. And we had a pinball machine in the corner of the dining room, and the policeman said, Is this a community centre? He didn't think it was someone's house. So that gives you an idea of the sort of it was quite a lively place. And the way we live we had like a tramp who came round once a week and sat in the hall and we'd give him a cup of tea and a sandwich. It was a very welcoming, sort of hospitable sort of uh house and a really sort of warm kind of environment to grow up in, very secure environment.

Presenter10:54

Was it very secure? Because I can understand I mean the motivation clearly for your parents to put themselves uh uh through so much work. I mean I'm sure it's a huge amount of work running a household with with that amount of children in it. One can understand that, but at the same time I wonder maybe if as a child you were left feeling that you had to fight for attention.

Steve Coogan11:03

Children in it.

Steve Coogan11:10

I'm not saying it was a perfect childhood, but it's only when you're older you realise how formative your childhood is. Of course, purely statistically, you didn't get a lot of one-on-one time. I used to all my brothers used to stay at school for school lunch, and I would come home at lunch time. And it's only looking back I realise it was so I could have just have an hour with my mum to myself. I knew there was a lot of love in the family because it wasn't very conventionally demonstrative, it wasn't very touchy-feely. I remember when I first started doing acting in London, I used to think, God, whenever I see my agent, I kiss her on both cheeks, and when I see my brothers after months of not seeing them, I just nod at them across the room.

Steve Coogan11:49

But it it meant that you didn't get a lot of attention. And yes, I was sort of a middle child. And the way to get attention was to say, Look what I can do, get a load of me. I remember waking one of my brothers up in the middle of the night, tapping on the shoulder saying, Do you think this voice sounds like Norris McGuirter? Do you think this sounds like him? And he'd sit up in bed and go, Yeah, it does. Yeah, maybe a little higher, maybe a little lower. And then I'd go back to bed.

Presenter12:12

We'll take a break for some music. What's track number three?

Steve Coogan12:15

This is my brother's band. He had his moment in the sun in the early 90s with a song called Can You Dig It? It reminds me of a very happy time in my life when.

Steve Coogan12:24

His band was doing really well and I was just starting out and I was living in Manchester and I remember he was in the charts and he was on top of the pops and it was a very sunny, optimistic time where the whole of our lives were ahead of us. I mean I've still got a bit left. But it was that time we were young and anything was possible. It's my favourite song he ever wrote and it's called Wicker Man.

Speaker 312:45

I had a friend.

Speaker 312:48

The game farm far away

Speaker 312:52

And every day we would go down by the river and play

Speaker 313:01

Like Mamba Summers of the Fan

Speaker 313:06

These interrupted games weren't meant to

Presenter13:14

The Mock Turtles, your brother, your brother singing lead vocals. Yeah, he wrote all the music for the Flipan. The Wicker Man, he was singing there and reminding you of of your youth. I read once that Patrick Marber, who who you've written with and who now is very well known for being a a a playwright of very proper plays and serious plays, but has written and produced a lot of comedy. Is it true that he said to you once when you were complaining about the tabloids turning you over, that it was you were just paying the fame tax?

Steve Coogan13:17

Yeah, he wrote all the music for the for the band.

Speaker 213:30

It's in serious place but as written.

Steve Coogan13:40

Uh yes he did. Yeah. Yeah. Um

Presenter13:43

Are you at home with the fame tail?

Steve Coogan13:45

More than I was, yeah, because at first time there was something in the tabloids about me. It seemed totally alien to me,'cause I don't read the small newspapers'cause I want to aspire to be better than

Steve Coogan13:56

What you're supposed to be. I mean, I was I was first of all, I was just staggered that anyone would be remotely interested in my personal life. I didn't really believe, I didn't really understand that I was famous, and so it was a shock to me. I was naive.

Presenter14:08

And how did you deal with it?

Steve Coogan14:09

Uh

Steve Coogan14:10

Well, I don't think very well. Um

Steve Coogan14:14

I took it all very personally and I saw it as being just intrusive and I was worried about people around me, people who aren't interested in that kind of thing. I I felt guilty about people who are disconnected with having a public profile as I have, being dragged into things. That that made me feel bad.

Presenter14:32

I mean, I'm wondering about y your your parents, you know, your good Catholic parents, who presumably were very proud of their boy for being on T V and and being successful, then having to read about who you were sleeping with or who you weren't sleeping with.

Steve Coogan14:37

Motherfucker.

Steve Coogan14:40

Then having to read a book.

Steve Coogan14:42

I think well, first of all, they don't first of all they don't read the tabloids anyway, but they know that things are in there. People often speak to them. But they are they're very tolerant, non judgmental people.

Steve Coogan14:54

Which is basically how they've lived their lives. So when people ask me why my father says, Oh, you must be very proud of your son, his response is always, Well, I'm very proud of all my sons. Just because one of them happens to have a public profile is in some ways neither here nor there. And I don't regard myself as a Catholic now, but I will defend it insofar as the notion that it's this sort of judgmental, unforgiving kind of attitude. It certainly wasn't my experience growing up. It was about tolerance and humanity and compassion for those who are less fortunate than others. So if I was the subject of some tabloid story, they were very grown up about it, really, and not at all hysterical, as I was, but they weren't. It was probably a bit at first, yeah. I mean, since then, the the solution to anything that's ever happened to me like that, irrespective of my culpability, which I don't really want to go into here, but irrespective of that, my attitude is that I get on with my job

Steve Coogan15:49

The people in my life who know me and love me, what they think of me is the most important thing, not how I'm defined by people who don't know me. And given a choice,

Steve Coogan16:01

Between

Steve Coogan16:02

If you like engaging with people who write things about my personal life and trying to justify who I am, I'd rather people didn't know I'd r I'd rather say, Hey, everybody, oh, I'm not like that, I'm a really nice guy, honestly, you should come and talk to me. I'd rather they didn't know who I was and misrepresent me than give them everything of me.

Presenter16:20

Right.

Presenter16:21

Let's have some music then. What have you chosen for uh track number four?

Steve Coogan16:24

Uh talking heads and nothing but flowers.

Steve Coogan16:28

I love Talking Heads and David Byrne, who's another example of one of those people who are.

Steve Coogan16:34

Outside the ordinary. America gets a lot of flack these days in this country. People try to paint America as all a bunch of meatheads who don't know what they're talking about. He was, you know, one of those people who takes a slightly odd, unusual, sideways look at life and humanity and gives you this different perspective on things through the music.

Speaker 316:52

Here we stand.

Speaker 316:55

Locking out of my room

Speaker 317:00

What a fuck!

Speaker 317:04

God didn't reveal them.

Speaker 317:07

Who was enough?

Speaker 317:12

So beautiful and storm

Speaker 317:16

Birds in the tree

Presenter17:19

Talking heads and nothing but flowers. It's true, isn't it, Steve? Couldn't you you auditioned for how how many drama schools?

Steve Coogan17:26

Um, probably five, five in London. That's all all the big ones, right?

Presenter17:30

And what what happened?

Steve Coogan17:32

I found it a truly intimidating experience because all the people who seemed to turn up there were all very middle class. It's going to sound like I've got a big bag of chips on my shoulder, which I probably have. I would say I've got chips in a tray with gravy on my shoulder. Lots of very friendly girls in dungarees with ponytails being ever so friendly and bright and bushy tailed. And lots of blokes called Julian and Sebastian who had these very sort of well modulated voices, these ex-public school voices, and they wore long overcoats and scarves and had ironic hairstyles. And they'd say things like Hello, Rogie, you know my father Algernon, he works for the BBC World Service. I think, oh my god, I think I've got a cat in hell's chance.

Presenter18:10

What did you look like? What did you look like?

Steve Coogan18:12

What did I look like? Well, I looked like some teenager from the eighties. You know, that's what I was. And I joined this theatre company in Manchester after my school days and travelled round adult education centres doing sort of devised theatre before I went to drama school. And that actually.

Steve Coogan18:28

Gave me a bit of confidence in what I was doing and who I was.

Steve Coogan18:32

and got me into drama school ready.

Presenter18:35

And at drama school I mean it sounds like it was quite a golden time.

Steve Coogan18:38

Well, Drama School gave me a lot of confidence because the people that I said I found intimidating when I uh uh auditioned at the London Drama School, I rea I started to realise that the things that made me feel um slightly uh intimidated and slightly inadequate because I was if we're going to talk about class, that sort of thing, I'm sort of all lower middle class background. I realized those things were actually my strengths. Because because it's like whenever you see those sixties films with Rada actresses trying to be Northern.

Steve Coogan19:05

They'd say things like, He got our daughter in family way. You know, when the song about someone being pregnant, someone remembered, Our daughter in family way. Th that's how they think Northerners speak. You know, she oh, she's pregnant then, right. Okay.

Presenter19:17

There was an interesting progression f for you. It's interesting you talk about these sort of floppy haired people. I don't know if Armando Yanucci even has enough hair for it to be floppy, but I certainly know that that was a time of solidification for you when you met some of those Posher boys who'd been through the Oxbridge system. Actually they they did sort of seem to progress your conversation.

Steve Coogan19:23

Do you want it?

Steve Coogan19:33

Stuff.

Steve Coogan19:35

Aggress your conversation. Well, Amanda certainly wasn't one of those floppy-haired people, but he's Oxford. He's Oxford educated, and he is a very clever man, so is Patrick Marburg, and all the other people on what was on the hour, on the radio, and day to day. I had.

Presenter19:50

But did did maybe their more intellectual approach manage to bring this up.

Steve Coogan19:53

Yes, yes, absolutely it did. It it really sort of opened my eyes and I still remember reading the first scripts and thinking this was so fresh and different and yet f making me laugh for reasons I couldn't quite understand, but it fascinated me. They sort of raised my game, there's no doubt about it. And they also gave me confidence because they thought I was funny.

Presenter20:17

We'll talk a little more about your journey uh in a moment, but for now tell me about your uh next piece of music.

Steve Coogan20:22

Next piece of music is Happy Mondays. Hallelujah.

Steve Coogan20:25

Specifically because it's from the film I did with Michael Winterbottom called 24 Hour Party People where I played Tony Wilson, an iconic Manchester figure. There's a scene in the film where as a voiceover I describe Manchester. All the words that I said as Tony Wilson I could well have said been saying myself about Manchester and how I felt about how I feel about my home city. It encompasses everything that's industrial and yet creative and poetic about my hometown.

Speaker 320:57

Hallelujah, we miss the pizza We'll take a pizza pizza night

Speaker 321:06

Hallelujah, hallelujah. From the show, will you ride up? We'll lie down beside ya. People show.

Presenter21:22

The Happy Mondays and Hallelujah and good memories there, Steve Coogan, of uh it was Tony Wilson you played in Twenty-Four Hour Party People, which was Michael Winterbottom's highly acclaimed movie that captured that distinctive period in Manchester's history where it was um a hotbed of creativity for music and for art and and for performance. I I'm wondering how much you consulted him. Did you speak to him about what you were going to do?

Steve Coogan21:44

Well I knew I knew Tony before I did the film.

Steve Coogan21:47

And I read about it in the paper first. I read oh, Steve Coombs to play Tony Wilson, I read it in the paper.

Presenter21:52

Well before you've been offered this.

Steve Coogan21:52

But before you

Steve Coogan21:53

Yeah. And I rang Michael and said, Read this in the paper, is it true? And uh oh, yeah, it is, we just haven't got round to asking you yet. Oh, okay then. It wasn't so much that I was desperate to play him, it's that the idea of someone else playing him and getting it wrong really annoyed me, and I sort of thought I felt I knew something of

Steve Coogan22:09

who he was and all the things about him, all the sorts of lots of contradictions about him. Again, someone who sort of encouraged people from lower middle class backgrounds to be creative.

Presenter22:19

From your point of view, given that you had a history of doing impersonations, we haven't even touched on that. I mean, you were the voice uh whose voice were you on Spitting Image?

Steve Coogan22:27

Could I do I did Neil Kinnock?

Steve Coogan22:30

I did Terry Wogan. I said that I could Terry Wogan.

Presenter22:32

I said that I

Steve Coogan22:34

Pretty nice radio voice there, goes up and down all the time, like that. So, um, you know, I I used to Terry Wogan, I did uh Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone.

Presenter22:44

Can you do Sliced Alone still,'cause he's got the most distinctive voice.

Steve Coogan22:47

Well, he's just sort of he's got I think that um it's not it's not my most ambitious work.

Presenter22:54

Slight.

Presenter22:59

I I'm wondering about the difference between when you do somebody who who's real and you don't want to make it uh overtly comical or a past each like Tony Wilson and and then doing these people. It must be it's a different sort of approach, is it?

Steve Coogan23:11

Well, to me, doing Tony Wilson to me is a gift because you don't have to research a character, you don't have to develop a character. He's spent fifty years doing it for you. And he was such an interesting larger than life character that it was a gift to play. It wasn't like playing someone who'd done something significant but had no charisma. He was incredibly charismatic.

Presenter23:28

Can we talk about your early gigs? I w I want to talk about your first experience, I think, at at the Edinburgh Festival, where Frank Skinner was your support. Is that right?

Steve Coogan23:36

That's right, yeah, yeah, yeah. Nearly twenty years ago, yeah.

Presenter23:38

Yeah.

Presenter23:39

Is it indeed true that he stormed it?

Steve Coogan23:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he yeah, it it was a really depressing time for me and a great time for Frank.

Presenter23:43

Yeah, yeah.

Steve Coogan23:49

Yeah, it was we went to the Edinburgh Festival and Frank worked very hard. I didn't work hard. And I was doing impersonations, which I found a bit it was just something I could do. And I got the review that said it's funny how everyone remembers the bad reviews, but I'm no different. And it said Steve Koogen does a passable impersonation of a bad comedian until he comes on in the second half and you realize he is a bad comedian. So I was showing flat with Frank at the time in Edinburgh, and that he hid that review under the sofa cushion because he didn't want me to see it.

Presenter24:20

And didn't it only get worse a year later? Were you not playing in Spain at a time?

Steve Coogan24:23

Oh, yes, a year later. Sorry to remind you of all this. It's fine because I can look back and laugh now. And I went and did some terrible, terrible holiday camp gig for a few hundred quid on this hotel in Rhodes, Greece. I had like a box room with a view of an air conditioning duct. And I read in Guardian International that Frank had won the Perrier Award in Edinburgh. The guy had supported me the year before. So, yeah, that was. I really felt like it's just down to you. You either sort of pull your socks up and do something, or you don't. And I did.

Presenter24:24

I'm trying to remind you of all that.

Presenter24:29

Stop.

Presenter24:55

Piece of music, what's next?

Steve Coogan24:58

This is Algar's Enigma variation, I think it's number nine Nimrod.

Presenter25:02

Why chosen?

Steve Coogan25:02

Why have you chosen it? I'm very sort of proud to be and happy to be from England. And that gets a bad press sometimes because you associate it with sort of people with mastiff bulldogs and racists and such like. And I really am pleased that I'm from this country with all its faults and everything. I'm happy to be from here. But the best thing about it is that there's an optimism about it. There's an optimism about the future that I find really uplifting and really positive. So it's a really comforting piece of music.

Presenter26:27

Nimrod Elgar's Enigma Variation No. Nine.

Presenter26:31

I to listen to you talk, Steve Coogan, about um your talent for mimicry, which sort of enabled your career to to take off, you you sound very dismissive of it. Is it because it comes so easily to you?

Steve Coogan26:39

That comes so easily to you. Yes, I find it's very embarrassing. It's all tied up with that class thing that we're sort of talking about. It's it's a trick and it's not about using your brain. It's just about having a facility. So to me it's but it's lowbrow and it bothers me to be associated with it.

Presenter26:55

Is it important to you, Dan? You know, when you moved into film and we've spoken about Twenty Four Hour Party People, which was very well received, and then you did this uh Cock and Bull story where it was the film of the eighteenth century novel Tristram Shandy, but it it was very postmodern, and it it exposed a lot of the

Steve Coogan27:09

Booth.

Presenter27:10

The petty grievances and jealousies of the actors quite near the knuckle for you.

Steve Coogan27:16

Yeah, yeah.

Presenter27:17

Why did you want to do something that potentially people could say well, is this Steve Coogan essentially paying him for playing himself, asking for shoes that are slightly more built up than the other characters so as he appears taller, annoyed when somebody gets a better line than him, flirting with the good looking runner on set and making a bit of a fool of himself?

Steve Coogan27:22

Um

Steve Coogan27:34

Well

Steve Coogan27:35

Sometimes you see people playing themselves on on things in movies, and it looks like they're saying, Get a load of me laughing at myself, aren't I cool? And I wanted to avoid that. But I also wanted to to make sure it had some resonance. And I felt that playing myself

Steve Coogan27:50

Would work. But I do tap into things about myself that make me vulnerable, and that's fine. The only thing is that my my fear was that it would be too self-indulgent, which is not good.

Presenter27:59

Are you satisfied with what you've done, or are you somebody who always has a sort of little bit of sand in the oyster? It's never quite as it should be.

Steve Coogan28:06

I'm very, very grateful to be working, quite frankly, certainly in this day age, and I never lose sight of that. But yes, of course, sometimes you think, well, I'd rather do a bit of this or a bit of that, and I don't think I'm attracted to a kind of discomfort. I think that's what it is. And certainly if I do a job, if there's something about it that unnerves me or worries me or runs the risk of me making a fool of myself or getting it wrong and making a big screwing up in a public way.

Steve Coogan28:36

It makes me want to do it. So.

Steve Coogan28:40

I don't know what that says, but it certainly it makes me feel like a

Steve Coogan28:44

I can't be complacent, I can't sit back, so I don't like to take the easy option.

Presenter28:49

And what about in life, in the rest of your life, if things seem to be right, do you have the desire to make them wrong?

Steve Coogan28:57

Well, that's quite clever.

Steve Coogan29:00

No, no, no. I just no, I don't think that i i is the case. I just don't think I'm

Steve Coogan29:08

I don't think I focus enough probably on my own life. That's what it is. I don't think I I self sabotage particularly. Maybe I do. I don't know. I'm not s I'm not vehemently denying that I might do that. I don't know. I need to talk to a therapist.

Presenter29:21

In the meantime, while you search for their number, let's have some music. What have you chosen next?

Steve Coogan29:25

Good point.

Steve Coogan29:27

Uh the next track is Joni Mitchell and California. I love the lyrics, I love the fact that it captures a period of time where pe young people were exploring Europe and the world was changing and it brings something alive every time you hear it. And it takes me outside of myself, it takes me to another world and I love it for that.

Speaker 329:48

Oh, the rogue the red, red rogue He cooked good omelets and stews, And I might have stayed on with him there, But my heart cried out for you.

Speaker 329:59

California, oh California, come home Oh make me feel good, rock and roll band, I'm your biggest fan California, coming home

Presenter30:17

Jenny Mitchell and California. And indeed you have this Californian life now as well. You you run your Hollywood life and you run a British life and you you've done what some people might think is harder than actually having a successful career as a performer. You run Baby Cow, which is a production company that has spawned a new wave of comedy. Do you ever feel worried that they'll overtake your comedy career? No.

Steve Coogan30:38

No, in fact, I helped set Baby Cow up, but I'm not really there for the day-to-day running. It's all done by Henry Normal. I think if anyone is doing it, if anyone in the office says that I run Baby Cow, they would just.

Presenter30:43

Can anyone want to do that?

Presenter30:46

But I would

Steve Coogan30:47

All about laughing.

Presenter30:48

Well, it's your company and we should remind people that it it's responsible for producing Gavin and Stacey, The Mighty Bush, Marion and Jeff, big shows. Yeah. So you don't really have anything to do with it, you just take the money.

Steve Coogan30:55

Hmm. Yeah.

Steve Coogan30:58

No, I helped sell the Mighty Boost to a very sceptical BBC and staked my reputation on it, which paid off on that occasion.

Presenter31:02

Right.

Presenter31:06

Are you a workaholic?

Steve Coogan31:07

No, when I do light work I feel kind of um equilibrium when I work hard. But no, I like to do nothing quite a lot as well, if I can.

Presenter31:16

And your father you're father to a teenager. Your daughter, Claire, is is she thirty

Steve Coogan31:19

Nearly, nearly a teenager. Right. Yeah, that's that's uh important to me. You know, being a parent is very, very important to me.

Presenter31:21

Right.

Presenter31:26

Does she watch your stuff? Does she think it's funny?

Steve Coogan31:29

Um not entirely, I'm but a little far sir, which I think is the way it should be.

Presenter31:34

So uh you have time for a real life, you're on the island, you're all on your own, how will you manage on your own?

Steve Coogan31:40

Well, in some ways, I'm very comfortable on my own. Are you? Yeah.

Presenter31:43

How are you?

Steve Coogan31:44

Copyist?

Presenter31:44

Happiest on Moon

Steve Coogan31:45

Um I like

Steve Coogan31:47

I think I'm maybe schizophrenic. I like company. I love company. I love conversation. I like being sociable with people. But I also like equally like being on my own and not talking to anyone. There was there's a place in Ireland I I used to rent this cottage and I would stay there for days not speaking to anyone and if any car passed by I'd be thinking, oh who's that person bothering me? So I think I'd be okay.

Presenter32:10

Let's add some music. What's your final disc?

Steve Coogan32:12

But this is the Smiths and Panic.

Steve Coogan32:16

I went to see the Smiths at the Free Trade Hall in 1983 when I was seventeen and Morrissey was twenty-four and he bought me a pint of bitter, which I will remember forever. And what I love about it so much is that their inspiration they didn't have to look outside of their own home town to find their inspiration, so they sing about things in their immediate surroundings. They found beauty and poetry in the ordinary. And that was inspirational to me.

Speaker 332:49

Any constreets of London.

Speaker 332:53

And I come streak of Birmingham I'd wonder to myself

Speaker 333:00

Would life ever be same again?

Speaker 333:03

Leaves like streets which are slipped down, I wonder to myself

Speaker 333:11

Hopes may rise and the grass near

Presenter33:14

Smiths and Panic and Memories There of a Man Who Bought You A Pint when You Wevent and You Went See A Morrissey bought you a Pint.

Steve Coogan33:20

Yeah, I brought it up with him recently. He didn't remember it, strangely.

Presenter33:24

Devastating. This is the point in the programme then when I give you the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare, Stephen. You have to take another book. What book will you choose?

Steve Coogan33:32

Well, I'll take Laurenston's Tristram Shandy because I haven't read it. Um I never managed to get through it. I thought if I'm on the island I'll be able to read the whole thing.

Presenter33:41

Okay, that's yours. And a a luxury too. What will be your luxury?

Steve Coogan33:45

Um my luxury would be a fully restored Morris minor traveller.

Steve Coogan33:52

The one with the wooden back, the wood the wooden detail, the wooden frame, because it's a car that I spent lots of happy memories of childhood in, travelling back and forth to Ireland, and I'd want one of those with vinyl seats, and if it was a sunny day, I could get inside and smell that smell that only hot vinyl in a car has on a sunny day, and that would make me very happy.

Presenter33:54

The wood the way

Presenter34:13

That's yours. And if you had to choose just one of the eight tracks, which one would you choose?

Steve Coogan34:18

It would probably have to be Louis Armstrong, we have all the time in the world.

Presenter34:21

Steve Coogan, thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs.

Presenter34:32

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Dists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.