Producer screws up Steve Coogan celebration by being too bloody clever

Watching Steve Coogan: The Inside Story last night on BBC 2, I was reminded of a wonderful outtake of a rehearsal for BBC TV’s opening coverage of the Mexico Olympics. 

After a run-through, the presenter, David Coleman, goes utterly bonkers, giving the hair-dryer treatment to everyone around him, and ends his charmless tirade by yelling “Don’t try to be so bloody clever!” at the poor director.  

Well, if I’d had comms with the director of last night’s one hour celebration of Coogan’s work, I’d have said exactly the same thing, just as charmlessly.

Steve Coogan is one of the great comic geniuses of our era. His main creation, the sports commentator turned talk show host, Alan Partridge, is one of greatest comic characters TV has ever produced: a crude, cultureless, insensitive, bigoted wretch with absolutely no knowledge of sport or any talent for interviewing.  

Given the wealth of existing footage of Coogan in his Partridge guise, as well as material featuring him playing Paul and Pauline Calf, Tony Ferrino, Saxondale and others, the producer could easily have filled an hour with all our favourite scenes interspersed with a few comments from the host of comic talents who have worked with the Great Man over the years. There might even have been some attempt to explain how Coogan manages to make essentially repellent characters bearable to the public, or a serious examination of how much of Coogan’s own personality is reflected in his creations, or whether Alan Partridge is so painfully funny because there’s a little of him in all of us. (Personally, I’d just have spliced the clips together with minimal links - it’s all we really want to see).

Instead, the producer decided to splice subliminal-length snippets of Coogan’s work with the comedic black holes that Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer form whether working alone or together. They played a range of characters who were supposed to have worked with Coogan (cameramen, make-up artists, whatnot). Their dialogue (adlibbed, one presumes) was so unfunny and so protracted I wondered if its inclusion was a wheeze to remind us just how bloody funny Coogan’s best work is. But, unless the producer actually wanted to have the audience shouting “Die in pain you talentless twats!” at the screen at regular intervals, then I’m not sure the plan really worked.

Steve Coogan is very funny. You have lots of Steve Coogan material. Show the material! 

Is that a difficult concept to grasp?

If there are copyright issues, make it a 30 minute programme. If you need to pad it out for other reasons, use more comments from people who worked with him, or even respected contemporaries who admire him. Don’t stink out the place with an irrelevant pair of has-beens - who most of us think never were - acting as comedic anti-matter.

There’s a programme about Not the Nine O’Clock News on BBC 2. Let’s hope the producer has heeded that piece of excellent advice, “Don’t try to be so bloody clever!”