Steve Coogan

Alan Partridge to return in second Sky Atlantic series

Steve Coogan to star in new six-part series of Mid Morning Matters next year.

Steve Coogan cleared over speeding fine

Steve Coogan was cleared of a driving charge yesterday after saying he had forgotten who was behind the wheel of his car when it was caught speeding.

Sky Atlantic's second Partridge offering, Alan Partridge On Open Books, was far too clever and self-indulgent for anyone's good.

The kind of arty programmes it was sending up are so far up their own luvvie backsides they are almost beyond parody. So we were treated to an hour of Steve Coogan being clever and pleasing his ego, rather than being funny and pleasing his viewers.

As a cheeky plug for his latest book it worked a treat, though. No wonder Coogan went to Rupert Murdoch instead of the Beeb this time.

Steve Coogan film on porn baron forced to change title

Channel 4-backed film on Paul Raymond was to have been called The King of Soho, but family claimed rights to name.

Alan Partridge has been around for over 20 years, since he first began life as On the Hour's sports reporter. Watching his latest TV outing, he is still going as strongly (or rather tactlessly) as ever.

This is the first in a series of programmes featuring Steve Coogan's most famous character being broadcast on Sky Atlantic. Luckily, for those of us who don't have Sky Atlantic, this particular programme was repeated on Sky1, mostly in an annoying attempt to promote a channel lots of people can't afford to pay for.

Watching this, it's nice to see that some of the Partridge magic is still there. It's amazing that after so long there are still laughs that you can get out of it. In this mockumentary, he gives viewers a quick tour of Norwich, also known as "The Wales of the East".

Partridge is still as ignorant as ever. For example, he somehow managed to persuade his local leisure centre to get rid of a disabled parking space so he could park closer to the building. Then there is his rather disturbing description of the plague as "Flying AIDS."

My favourite moment, though, was when Partridge was in a swimming pool, talking about the sort of people who use it. Well, when I say favourite, I mean harrowing, because it was at this point I realised that I do actually think a bit like Partridge when I go swimming...

Welcome To The Places Of My Life was a great show. I just hope it and the others eventually get released on DVD, because I'm still not planning to buy Sky Atlantic.

After last's week's welcome Partridge Pilgrimage, Steve Coogan gives us another one-off special, this time parodying the kind of quietly deferential book shows that pepper late-night arts schedules. Open Books is 'Norfolk's foremost forum for lovers of literature' and Alan, sporting a necktie, tweed and floppy hair, has his memoir to promote. No prizes for guessing he needs little help from his interviewer (played by Look Around You's Robert Popper) to dig himself into ever-sizeable holes as he tries to act the literary colossus.

A good week for sharp writing included Alan Partridge: Welcome To The Places Of My Life wherein Steve Coogan's chat chump took us on a personal tour which included his radio station ("My coalface, my canvas, my lathe"), the fitness centre ("A diet of Tracker Bars means I'm able to lead the kind of physically active life that's simply out of reach for many men my age such as Eamonn Holmes") and his favourite beauty-spot ("For some Thetford Forest means dogging and suicide but I'm old-school and I'm off for a walk!").

There was a glorious reprise for Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge. Older, yes; wiser, emphatically no. As he took us through the "places of my life" around Norfolk, yet again we marvelled at how his confident asides manage to combine the shiveringly banal with the roundly offensive. We started at North Norfolk Digital Radio. "Many are surprised at how small the offices are. But at 800 square metres that's larger than a good-quality dentist's, and could house a Tesco Express." Then Norwich town hall, opened in 1938 by King George VI, "the stammering monarch made famous by hit movie The King's Speech". And his favourite car dealership. "Whether you buy British, or have a short memory and are happy to buy Japanese..." and then the woods. "For some, Thetford Forest means dogging, or suicide. But I'm old-school, and I'm off for a walk." Not one sentence technically wholly untrue, but all supremely wrong, and the whole of it supremely right. It was a wistful, spot-on return for Alan and his leisureware, and at this rate he'll end up a kind of bathetic national treasure.

Welcome to the Places of My Life review

Some of the best bits of Welcome to the Places of My Life are when we get a sense of the cameras rolling for about four seconds longer than they should have done, just like in Knowing Me, Knowing You, Partridge's first TV outing, but also to what Steve Coogan himself is mocking - the overblown ceremony and rubbish incompetence of low-budget telly.

If you could forgive the hypocrisy of Steve Coogan selling out to his supposed nemesis Rupert Murdoch then Sky Atlantic was the place to be on Monday.

However, I found Welcome To The Places Of My Life, Coogan's latest Alan Partridge project, the least impressive of its three new comedies. It had some fine moments, but it just wasn't vintage Partridge.

I worry how much mileage the old guy has left, even if he does buy the new Range Rover (with the tan interior) in time for next year's movie.