  Steve Coogan as character Tony Ferrino. |
North Americans best know British comic Steve Coogan for playing the pompous director of the movie-within-the-movie in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder. Or for conjuring the feisty Octavius who so annoys Stiller in the Night at the Museum franchise.
But his fellow Britons know that Coogan has spent the past 15 years creating some of the most viciously comic characters in British TV history. With his genius for mimicry and odd voices, with his talent for writing and performing, and with his penchant for sending up everyone from upper class twits to working class yobs, as well as himself, Coogan is an equal opportunity satirist.
Now people here can see and hear what he was on about over there. The Steve Coogan Collection debuted this week. It is a 13-disc, DVD set containing most of Coogan’s significant specials and BBC series from 1994 through 2007. It is comprehensive and hilarious, starting with his most famous character, the smug, self-delusional radio and TV host Alan Partridge.
“Well, I’m pleased,” Coogan tells Sun Media from London, “because it’s a canon of work that I’ve accumulated over the years.”
Even his British fans might be surprised, Coogan offers. “Some of it, because of the success of Alan Partridge in the U.K., lives partly in the shadow of that. And it’s material that I’m very proud of and this gives a chance for a new audience to acquaint themselves with some of the stuff I’ve done. So I’m pleased about that. It excites me!”
Besides Partridge — who will soon become the title character of a big-screen comedy — Coogan’s characters range from Latino singer Tony Ferrino to self-proclaimed “lager lout” Paul Calf and his sister Pauline Calf. Most recently, Coogan played Tommy Saxondale, a retired rock band roadie who now works in suburban pest control. More obscure work includes Coogan’s cheeky, seven-part homage to Hammer horror movies, Dr. Terrible’s House of Horrible.
“There is a slight negative,” Coogan confesses about this collection. “Whenever there is an accumulation of material, it feels a little bit like being fired. But I’m in my early 40s (he turned 44 on Oct. 14) and I’m not done yet. So there is sort of a funny feeling about it in that way.”
On the up side, he cites two seasons of Saxondale. “That’s on there and I’m very proud of that and that it stands in comparison with the best stuff that I’ve done. It neatly rounds it out.”
Some early material is rough, or “doesn’t quite hit it!” Coogan says. “But there is nothing there that doesn’t pass muster. I don’t mind some things in there not being quite properly worked out. It’s so you can see development, comic development, and see things change. If people like what I do, then, at the very least, there is a curiosity about it.”
Coogan likes to hit home, roil up emotions, show an exaggerated reality. “I gravitate towards discomfort. I gravitate towards those things which, in reality, would be painful. It becomes very liberating.” His targets are “the unattractive side of humanity, people’s weaknesses, their foibles and dysfunctions.”
But Coogan also has found himself the occasional target of slander, libel and gossip, including being dragged into Owen Wilson’s reported suicide attempt in 2007 (Coogan denied accusations that he enabled Wilson in the misadventure). Coogan’s discomfort became personal. The solution? Infuse that into his on-screen characters.
“I can’t say it doesn’t bother me,” he says of being the target of gossip-mongering, “but rather than being angry or threatened by intrusions into my life, I just sort of throw it into the mix. It doesn’t become all-consuming. It just becomes an ingredient.” And his heady comic stew becomes even more caustic.
bruce.kirkland@sunmedia.ca
