S6 EP1: Steve Coogan on falling out of love with Alan Partridge, playing Jimmy Savile, and sobriety  

26:15Yeah, I did... I did Robert De Niro and Alan Bennett in a film together. It was like... Are we going to do one of those? I'm a sucker for it. Yeah, I'd say it was one of those days, you know, I went down the street, ripped the guy's head, I've stood down his goddamn fucking neck, two-bit dicks like a motherfucking asshole. What about you, Alan? Alan, have you had one of those days? Yes, I have. My mother sent me to the corner shop for a packet of lemon puffs and I came back with happy faces. I'm laughing at my own old impersonations. But for some reason in comedy circles, I think probably still to this day, impressionism is viewed with an unfair degree of disdain.

26:57I did it early on because I went to drama school and I wanted to do acting and no one gave me a job and they got a job doing funny voices and I thought go where the work is and figure it out later. Just go push whatever the door is open and figure out your career later. So I was doing this comedy doing stand-up comedy. I did a show with Frank Skinner and he was brilliant and he was supporting me and I was just doing funny voices. You got off to Edinburgh in 1991? Yeah, he got rave reviews and I got slagged off for being rubbish, which I sort of was. I just wasn't trying to... This was your Dark Night of the Soul.

27:27This is part of your... There's two sort of nadirs. Is that the word? There's two episodes where you feel like you kind of hit the buffers, and this was the first one where you had this flush of success with impressions and then something... Very lightweight. I was seen as... I remember thinking, I want to be liked by those clever people over there. That was sort of what I was thinking at the time, and I wasn't. I was sort of like... Why weren't they liking you? In the end, they let me, if you like, some clever people did let me join their gang, and that was Armando, Patrick and Rebecca. Patrick Marble, playwright.

27:58Patrick Marble, Armando Inici. Chris Morris. Peter Bainham. Peter Bainham. Peter is slightly odd. Peter now writes for Sasha Baron Cohen, but at that time, they let me join their gang. When I say their gang, I mean, they were all very well educated, mostly Oxbridge, and they let me join their gang. And I actually learnt a lot from Armando and Patrick at that time. And also to aspire to be better with the tools I had. I mean, it was important that I had clever people saying, you're very talented. Patrick Marber once said to me, you're more talented than me, but I'm cleverer than you are. So we need to work together.

28:37At the time, he was sort of... Did he meet it in a nice way? I think it was sort of right on the... It was a tight... I mean, I think it was neither bad nor good. It was just the truth. Right. Are you still friendly with Patrick? Yeah, I am. You give him a lot of credit. Yes, I've not worked with him for like 25, 30 years. You see him as being kind of, what's the word? He was like a big brother at one time. Catalytic. Catalytic converter, yeah. He's a catalytic converter for your supercharged engine. So anyway, the original question was, I fell out of love with Partridge, but it was because Patrick and Amanda went off to get out from just being people who make Alan Partridge funny.

29:13So I was left sort of thinking, what do I do now? and I was scrabbling around and I... What was that sidebar about? I don't know why we're talking about that. So basically you were doing the spinning image voices and then you hit the buffers. You were in 92, you were in Rhodes doing a ghastly gig, looking out at an air conditioning duct. Yeah, you did your research. And you read the Manchester International Guardian and since Frank had won the Perrier Award, which is the great award of Edinburgh. It's sort of transformative for any young aspiring comedian or comic performer. The Perry Award is like, on the game of snakes and ladders, it's like going up the biggest ladder very quickly.

29:50And Frank won it because he was dedicated and driven and did his work, and I was a bit lazy and uninspired. And so the year before, I'd been slagged off and he got rave reviews, and then the next year he won it, and I was like... And I had this show percolating, and I hated doing impersonations because I always thought they were Mickey Mouse and not serious, and I was just starting to work on Alan Partridge, and I stuck him in a show with some other characters, Paul Carf, this other character I used to do years ago, who's like an unreconstructed working-class Mancunian who hates students. Yeah.

30:25Can we say yob, or is that considered...? I think, yes, a yob, but a sort of poor bore, but occasionally quite truthful in the way that sort of... You know how sometimes a slightly drunk working-class person can actually say something profoundly true about someone else or something in a way that's quite eloquent and... Yeah, well, maybe not unlike Alan Partridge. Maybe they see through the bullshit sometimes. Well, I think Alan does it accidentally. I think actually someone like that other character I used to do would do it with complete cognition, would be completely aware of it. Alan, it's most enjoyable for me when I say something that I sort of secretly mostly agree with as an observation.

31:06Not that it's a... But I don't mean I wholly agree with it, But sometimes you laugh at this because you think, I sort of think that's true, but I also don't think it's very healthy to think that. Yes. You can think those things at the same time. Yeah, that's the duality when we're talking about them. Yes.

31:36This episode is brought to you by British Airways. You know, travel's always been an important part of my life, both personally and professionally. Growing up, me and my family, we'd travel to America every year. My dad's American and spend time on Cape Cod. We'd fly into Boston. And there was something about getting in touch with my American side. Although I sort of come across quite British, I'm more American than you might think. and seeing my family, being immersed in their love and also their oddity. Because, you know, they would talk like this and they had different breakfast cereal and they'd say, here's some Hershey's Kisses.

32:15And they didn't really sound like that. But that's the best I can do right now. Later on, I lived in New York when I was starting my work as a journalist, working on television and living in Brooklyn, flying back and forth to London. and then more recently I've been a bit more of a homebody but still once a year we get away to Greece, we go to Crete as a family which always feels like a break from the norm and a way for us as a family to kind of get in touch with each other to spend time together without the stresses and strains of the school routine or the workday routine. So travel has always been important throughout my life and how you get there obviously makes a big difference.

32:57Every one of us is an original and thoughtful touches from British Airways make every journey an unforgettable one. Everywhere we go makes us everything we are. So what will you be? To plan your next trip, visit BritishAirways.com. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. When I was younger, I always wanted to be either an astronaut or an athlete. I was a fast runner. I thought maybe I could make it to the Olympics or be blasted off into space. As it happens, neither of those dreams came true. I had to settle for being an award-winning documentary maker and international celebrity. Ah well, we've all had big dreams and it's never too late to make them happen.

33:39This is your sign to stop holding back and go for it, especially if your dream is to run a business, because Shopify is making it easier than ever. It's there to support you every step of the way, from designing your website to marketing to product descriptions to sales. The list goes on and on. So give it a shot. Turn those dreams into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash louis, L-O-U-I-S. That's shopify.com slash louis, L-O-U-I-S.

34:27Should we talk, because it's important to reflect on quite what a phenomenon Alan was. I mean, when was peak, Alan, would you say? The peak of the cultural phenomenon that felt like an albatross and everyone was going, aha, wherever you went. That's 1990, I would say, about around 2000, because we did one more series in 2000, 2001, around that period. But 1998, it suddenly was like, I did a big live show in the West End. It was a huge success. And I was like, it won a load of BAFTAs. And the show is a sellout. And yeah, after that, I felt like, in a way, because Armando and Patrick, sorry, Armando and Peter, by the way, Peter Bainham, were the sort of men behind Partridge and sort of helped govern it.

35:14The sort of The Wizard of Oz, the man behind the curtain. They were the men behind the curtain. I couldn't not be the Wizard of Oz, and they could go off and sort of reinvent themselves, which they did very successfully. I sort of was not quite sure what to do, and I sort of hated Alan because of his success, felt typecast. But it's not just being typecast, it's being also recognised. I mean, I remember interviewing Keith Harris about Orville, and I'd heard somewhere that, you know, obviously that was his, he was a ventriloquist and he had a green duck, and it was said that he felt so welded to Orville in the public mind, and I said to this, he denied it that he would sometimes come home and attack Orville, beat him up physically, which, again, he denied that.

35:54But in a way, like, you were both Orville and Keith in that scenario. Yeah, yeah. Yes, I was.

36:03That's like Alan Bartlett. You want what you just said? Literally. I could have written that. So you couldn't beat yourself up, or maybe you could. Yeah. So I was doing a live tour after I'd done a few films with Michael Winterbottom and stuff. So arty films that not many people saw, but I was very proud of, but nothing that really entered the national consciousness. But had you made a decision to walk away from Alan at that point? I just needed to do something else for my own sense of sanity. Yes, definitely. Would it be upsetting for people with a heart at that point? Were you quite keen? Well, I remember Patrick Marber saying to him in the 90s, that character you did for the first time for a BBC Radio 4 audience tonight will make you famous and people will shout our heart at you in the street two years from now.

36:56And I remember thinking, wow, is that really possible? And then when it happens, be careful what you wish for. But people still sometimes shout it now. But you quite like it now. I'm trying to trauma-farm you, Steve. I'm trying to get to the lowest ebb. I'm trying to get to the pain of when you were walking around and you thought, will you stop fucking saying aha at me? I would do one of two things. I'm a fucking actor. I was like, I was probably cracking up a bit. It was like, I went from ignoring it to walking right up to the person who said it to me and screaming aha in their face. In a friendly way?

37:33No, in a kind of a way that made them go, that was weird. I wanted to slightly... I wanted to disturb them a bit. Really? Yeah. So I did that... Stopped going to pubs, I'm sure. No, no. Often Dweller just stepped off a tube just before it left. I just put my face against the window and shouted a-ha. Really? Yeah. In a way that was not friendly? In a way that was most definitely not friendly. In a way that they go, I'm not going to... I want them to think, I'm not going to do that again if I see him again. Really? So, but then... Do you know, have you seen the Liam Gallagher anecdote where he talks about partying with you.

38:06Yeah, yeah. And he says, would you want to do it? Oh, do I want to do it? It's an anecdote. Do you want to do it? I mean, that's also a good partying thing. Do you know that story? Yeah, go on, do it. No, I just got drunk with Liam Gallagher once, crikey, 25 years ago. It was in Ireland. He says that we... I got drunk with him and he went to a pub. I can't remember how boring this is. But anyway, I got drunk with Liam Gallagher. We went to a pub and then we went to this pub. Someone was asking him to sing Wonderwall and he said, fuck off. So you go on stage. I think it might have been pre-Wonderwall.

38:45But it was a little American tourist in a dungeon at an Irish castle, basically, who didn't even know who Oasis were. And two of us were in the basement. Someone was playing the harp, you know, in Mary O 'Hara style. And then they just said, would you get up and sing? And he said, no. So I got up and sang some Tom Jones. It's not unusual. Yeah. And he was laughing because I was singing it in a very deliberately crooner-y way. I was singing it in an ironically bad way because I think I'm quite good at singing. And the American tourists were all sort of smiling and swaying. And he was laughing and he was being berated by all these American tourists for saying, please be quiet, let your friend sing.

39:28He's got a great voice. He's got a great voice. And then you continued... Go on, sorry. We got very drunk. I went to a local pub and I remember he went... We went to the pub and there was no one in the pub and then 10 minutes later the pub was absolutely rammed because someone's got on the phone and said, you know, get down here, the oasis are here. And then we ended up drunk and we ended up in the same... We woke up on, not in, the same bed. I wake up with a spitting headache and looking next to me and thinking, oh, Christ, what happened? And fortunately I can say that nothing. But he says I woke up and shouted, aha.

40:03I don't remember doing that, but I can't categorically deny it either. It makes a good story. I feel bad for putting you through that. I felt like you had to drag yourself through that. Yeah. Was that awful? Not really. I'm just glad to be working.

40:27Humorless, enlightened liberals bring out the fascist in me. That's a bit extreme, but I think it's broadly true. I mean, yes, what I mean is I think there's sort of... There was a time when I would only sort of attack what I would call the small-minded little Englanders of the Daily Mail. But I think now I'm just as... I find, you know, the intellectual soft left, shall we say, for what's a better term, just as annoying and perhaps more annoying sometimes in their sort of sanctimony. so we try to sort of spread the contempt evenly sometimes this stuff by the way is channeled into partage my personal attitude is sometimes funneled through Alan I don't do social media what I do is I've got something that's bothering me I just chuck it in the Alan bucket and it comes out down the line as something else Can I play therapist a bit?

41:23Yeah sure because having read the book and listened to a lot of interviews and enjoyed your work over many years. What's striking is this sort of disconnect between how talented you are, how much success you've had, and then what comes across is this sort of feeling, there's still maybe less now, but a feeling of almost a grudgingness, like a feeling that you haven't, that others have had it easier or that... Yeah, chippy, a bit chippy. Maybe that's what it is. I might be inventing straw enemies. I mean, Patrick... It's a lot about floppy-haired people and they arrived and they all called Sebastian and Julian and then there's the floppy-haired people.

42:01And the first couple of times you let him go, there's more people with floppy hair. And he's being attacked by these, it's like Confessions of a Beautiful Mind. You're seeing these floppy-haired people everywhere. I think, look, if you said these are invented, I think they might be. I can't say, no, no, no, this is the way the world is. You know, when I talk about Patrick, and I always say that I felt a bit intimidated by their, if you like, their intellect collectively and that I felt like I needed to prove myself. And Patrick said, well, we didn't think that. We just thought we were all doing comedy together.

42:43So they saw it differently. And it might be that that was just something I created in my head. It might be that. I don't deny that. But, in actual fact, creatively, if you do create these straw men that you want to... Floppy head. Floppy head straw men.

43:05Then, creatively, it's actually quite good because it gives you some sort of vigour and some sort of impetus to have comedy with energy. as long as it helps me do funny stuff, then it's okay. But there's probably something... It's quite punishing for you. It is punishing, yes. And actually, because another... You know, you say at one point, I've heard you say that you were maybe jealous or envious of Rob Brydon for how at ease he was with himself. Yeah, that's true. Rob Brydon, your co-star in The Trip, a fantastic franchise series. Thank you, yeah. That's very true. Rob is more at ease than himself.

43:42Why aren't you at ease with himself? I think it might be something to do with my Catholic upbringing that you're not allowed to really enjoy anything. I never sort of, whenever I've won lots of awards... I thought that was Protestant, no? It is a bit Calvinistic, but there's definitely a... I think it's to do with, like, you know, I was always raised, no-one likes the clever clogs, don't get too big for your boots, and be nice to people on the way up. You might meet them again on the way down. so I've won lots of I have won quite a few awards over the last 30 years and I don't think I've ever apart from the Perrier award when I was 25 every single thing since then I've just thought okay well that means they can't have a go at me for another six months that's sort of the most joy it's like ah good I survive another day and the only pleasure is like how can I frustrate the people who'd like to destroy me I mean not I'm making it more dramatic but there's certainly an element of ha ha they can't get me again and you're right it can make you do good work because it's a pressure you create in your head to be good at what you do but you're right about the fact does it make you happy and serene no but then what you have to do is do other things to try and counter that like walking in hills in the Lake District which I do so you don't you can't live in that bubble but and when we did The Trip in fact when I did the series The Trip with Rob Brydon where we do versions of ourselves I sort of crank that up I crank that that malcontentedness up to 11 and Rob cranks his man of the people totally at ease of himself affable next door neighbour and he's he's camping that up and I can't remember but there's some truth in both those things And sometimes when I think everything's right, I sort of think, how can I cause trouble for myself?

45:45I sort of... I don't mind if some people don't like me. I'm really at ease with that. But sometimes if people do like me, I sort of play with sabotaging that by trying to be... I don't know, have a fight. Have a fight with someone. The Guardian comes up a lot as well. Like, oh, Guardian readers. And then you also talk about reading The Guardian. Yeah, it's, well, yes. It's circular. Yes, it is. And often people very close to me say, shut up about The Guardian. What's wrong with you? I mean, there are people in my life who matter to me a lot. It stands for something, though, for you. It sort of does in a sort of a, I think, well, for example, I would say that, a little bit of provocative comment here, that, for example, the rise of reform, that as a phenomenon, I would lay the blame for that squarely at the feet of the neoliberal consensus on the left for failing to address the problem of dispossessed, disenfranchised people and they're paying the price for that.

46:56You liked Corbyn. I liked the things he said. I'm not sure he was a very good politician, but I liked his values. Having said that, I'm not... I think that part of the problem with both the right and the left is that patriarchal top-down view of... Whether it's on the right to do with personal morality or on the left in terms of how to fix the world. To me, it's more about top and bottom than right and left. It's like empowering people at the bottom. There's a sort of Victorian philanthropy to people on the left, which is, we're going to help you, you poor wretched people. Just wait over there while we do a bit of administration.

47:41We'll get to you in a minute. Which is why you liked Tiz Was more than Swap Shop, which I was quite surprised by. You see, that's another dichotomy, because there's a part of me... I only said that, to fully embrace the nicheness. Yeah, it will mean a lot to some people. And magpie over Blue Peter, presumably. Well, I thought a part of me does... because there is part of me that does like Enid Blyton. But unfortunately, the world isn't red pillar boxes and nice policemen on bicycles. I would that it were. I know we have... I want to motor through. We should talk Savile. OK, sure, yeah. We've crossed paths a couple of times.

48:22Yeah, we have, yeah. One time I remember you were talking about Savile and you did the impression and you were talking about how his vowels... He had sort of Yorkshire. that was obviously infused with this Leeds Yorkshire accent, but that he had quite posh vowels, clear, resonant tones. His O's. His O's, yes. I can't really do it. Well, I'm always slightly concerned now because obviously I played him in a very dramatic, not funny context, which is very important. In The Reckoning for BBC's sort of accountability project, the drama written by Neil Mackay. That's correct, yeah. You were nominated for an award, I think.

48:57Yes. As my mother said, they won't give it you. they're not going to give a BAFTA to a paedophile. So, well... And there's certainly some truth in that. There is some truth in that. Yeah, that was... But you'd played him on Spitting Image, is that correct? It is, and that was why it was quite odd, because in that context, that was before it all came out, but there was sort of a feeling about him, which was reflected in the Spitting Image character. That was very cartoon, grotesque. He would say, jangle, jangle, jewellery, jewellery. Yes. Was that your line? That was my line, yeah. Did you come up with that?

49:25Yes. Yes. He said, I spoke to him, obviously I made two documentaries, who spent a couple of weeks filming one of them with him, he said he never actually said that. Well, no, of course he didn't. Did he actually say that? I think she asked him, yeah. I'm so tempted to do it. It's hard to know. I meant to check with Millie before the taping. Are we allowed to do him or not? I did an audiobook where I did a sort of half-power. The only time I've noticed is in an episode of this time as Alan Pottsidge, I almost accidentally do Jimmy Savile and the joke is the fear in the look of Alan's eyes when he realised he nearly did do this.

50:02Now, that, I think, is legitimate. Yeah. Because it's about the fear of... No, you can't trivialise it. Look, you know, when we did it, I made sure... Look, we met the survivors and it was important that they... We did it in a very grown-up way with proper, diligent application and, you know, there was humour on set, certainly, but I had to be very careful. I couldn't start goofing about in public because it's a very serious subject. But sometimes there was a gallows humour, not to do with what he did, but it was, you know, I'd do it on set because it was so heavy. And we're doing it for months and I just shaved my head twice a week.

50:38So I had a bald head before I put all these wigs on. So I was like, it was a very strange, intense period. And I even, there's something I said before, I wore his shoes, his actual shoes. So I was walking literally, in his actual shoes. Why would you do that? It was just, it was there, and they said, how do you feel about this? I just, I paused about it long, and I thought, well, if I'm going to go there, I'm going to go there. And I sort of, I felt like I should, in for a penny, I dived into it without thinking about it too much. People say you're very brave, and I think it's just a job. My job is to do this, is to execute this character in as accurate a way as possible, to help tell a drama that is truthful and not do a caricature because that ultimately is a disservice to those who survived his abuse.

51:31And if you do some sort of pantomime villain or something like that, that's also not very responsible. So you sort of had to, to some extent, humanise him because bad people are human beings. And that's the unpalatable truth. And that's what we had to... So we did all that and I... And it was done, I should say, with unbelievable or rather totally believable verisimilitude. Like the amount of research, everything in it, I think, was sourced in the historical record. Neil, the writer, had obviously gone deep into his research. The recreation of his penthouse in Roundhay in Leeds was perfect. Yes, I know.

52:11They'd obviously studied photos or documentation. Everything was reproduced. It was, and that apartment, I remember sitting in the, that was actually in North Manchester, sorry, South Manchester, Heaton Moor, near Stockport, that set. Right. And something was odd at the time was we had to go and film the BBC scenes in this courthouse in Bolton, which had a round, a circular-shaped structure like the old BBC Television Centre, which was called The Donut, in fact. And I bought an apartment for a while. I had an apartment in the old BBC television centre, which was in that doughnut, as they call it, this round structure.

52:49I mean, I actually since got rid of it. But I remember I was doing acting as Jimmy Savile, walking along a fake BBC corridor that had a curvature to it. Then I'd go home to my flat in London and walk along the real BBC corridors where he perpetrated some of his crimes when I was just going to the gym. and that sort of weird flip of actually living near where he did those things and then going 250 miles north to simulate that sort of got inside my head a bit. I mean, I do remember at the end of that process wanting it to finish. It's funny because all the time I was like, this doesn't bother me, this doesn't bother me.

53:30This is fine, I'm just doing a job. I'm just passionate about it. I didn't have my lunch as Jimmy Savile. I'm not a method actor. I just stopped. Cut, good. I'm not doing until you say action again. And also, you know, I meet these young actresses who I had to, as characters, abuse. I would meet them in the morning and say, let me meet them before you turn me to Jimmy Savile. So I can say, look, I'm Steve, I'm here. We're going to work together today, have this normal conversation, and in two hours you're going to see me and I'm going to look very different, but we know what we're doing. It's a job.

54:03And that then meant there was no self-consciousness when it came to shooting the scenes. So we'd go to extraordinary lengths to make it all very grown up and the only humour would have been some bleak humour with the cameraman in the morning just to relieve the tension because it's just so intense. And I'd been doing it for four months. I think towards the end, I remember I went to the trailer one morning and I sort of felt like... I was shocked because I felt like I wanted to burst into tears. I felt like really sad. very sad. And like I had this huge sort of blanket on me, this cloak on me. And it wasn't a help of the fact that when we went to the Bolton courthouse where we shot it, the only way for me to avoid the press was to put a blanket over my head and take me in through the door of the court where they took the accused in, up those steps into the courthouse, through the courthouse and along to the set.

54:56So every day I would do this weird ritual of, as if almost as Jimmy Savile, I'd been arrested for those crimes when he was alive. That was just to get me to the set without the press seeing me. The BBC, of course, was absolutely paranoid about any, any slip-ups, any banana skins along the way to this thing. So it was uber-controlled. But I remember being very glad when I took those shoes off. I felt like the unbearable likeness of being, That's what I felt after it stopped. Because I was shocked that its effect, just before the end of those four months, it started to be depressing. There's video of you with Jimmy Savile on the James Whale show.

55:45What vintage would that be? Crikey, that would be 1989. And funny stuff, someone said, did you ever meet Jimmy Savile? And I said, no, no, I didn't. And this one said, you did. And I went, oh, yeah, I just forgot. I just forgotten. And you do an impression of him. Of him, to him. To him. Yeah. It was in his short hair phase, which would have been probably... That was during the Broadmoor, his Broadmoor period. When he was a governor at Broadmoor, brought in by Margaret Thatcher. Yes. To turn it around and brought in his friend, maybe from Stoke Manmore, maybe from Leeds General Infirmary, to run Broadmoor, right?

56:17Yes. How deep into the research did you go? Did you feel like you got any insight? You know, that whole thing of getting into the mind of the character. Yeah, I sort of did. Well, you know, I read... Dan Davies' book. Dan Davies' book. In Plain Side. And I watched your documentary, both of them, and anything else that was out there, frankly. And, of course, I grew up with him, you know, like you did. Yeah, you probably wrote in, did you? I think I probably did. I think I did write in about something to do with James Bond. I wanted to somehow rub shoulders with James Bond. It never happened. I studied him physically.

56:47When I do a character, I try to become someone else when I'm sort of tasked with doing that. I use the physicality to somehow get inside the head. It's like the opposite way of doing method acting. It's like if you look in the mirror and you behave and start to physically behave like someone, it starts to give you a key to something inside counterintuitively. It's the superficial stuff weirdly can connect you with who that person is. And what I realized was that he used his hands like a kind of magician. Like he'd sort of talk like this and wave his arms around in the air so you couldn't see what was going on and wave them around.

57:21and your eyes start darting and looking at his hands and it's almost like it's that classic thing a magician does when he's doing something else with another hand. And that sort of occurred to me as I was watching him. He had something I think I mentioned before, that he had some of the qualities of a stage hypnotist, which obviously has to do with suggestion. You're also testing the audience for how suggestible they are and then thereby selecting the more influenceable victims. Yes, that's very true. A selection process, yeah. I mean, psychologically, he's a fascinating man beyond the repugnance of what he did.

58:02He could read body language. He obviously was intelligent. He had a skill set that allowed him to get away with what he got away with. I think that part of the consternation about the whole project, and I knew that part of that thing of taking a risk was people like, what are you doing with that? It'll be a disaster. And I knew that the stakes were high, but that sort of attracts me to a project. It's like, at least danger will keep me awake. I don't want to be bored to death. And decisions like that aren't boring. They might be dangerous, but they're not boring. When I did that, I thought that the consternation, I think, was partly because, you know, David Tennant played Dennis Nielsen.

58:44No one battered an eyelid. That's right. Dominic West played Fred West. Yes. I mean, on the sliding scale of horribleness, cannibalism is pretty horrific. Certainly murdering multiple people. Multiple people, exactly. So on a sliding scale... And yet they didn't cause the same consternation. And that is because someone who wheedled their way into the public eye, I think the public who were aware of him, feel somehow complicit and therefore don't want to think about it, understandably, and don't want to reflect on it or see any tree ties about what it was because it's unpleasant. But all things, you have to, it's that whole thing of, you need to go through that discomfort to learn things and he couldn't have done it unless there was people who legitimised him and everyone did a bit.

59:49Yeah. How are we doing for time? You've got to go up four, I think. Let's see what happens. Sure. How are you with relationship stuff? Do you mean like personal relationships? I'm in a relationship. I've not been hugely successful. What's that all about? I don't know. I just, I don't know. I mean, I think I'm not, you know, I was married a long time ago. What's that about? I don't know. I have, you know, I have a very good, you know, I have a stepson and a daughter and I'm soon to be a grandfather and all that stuff gives me great satisfaction. And, you know, having those relationships in my life are the most important relationships in my life.

1:00:39And I have a family in Manchester who I... Are your mum and dad alive? My mum is alive. My dad died about seven years ago. But it comes across, you love them very much. Large family, five siblings, isn't it? Four brothers and one sister, yes. And some foster sisters. And foster sisters. And so it's all sort of stable origins. I think you were quite wild back in the day. Yeah, certainly. when I say in my 20s and 30s, I had what I would call delayed adolescence in that I didn't do any of that rock and roll stuff when I was younger. And I was sort of super straight, a bit square. And so when I had this first flush of success, I then thought, oh, I can do what I like now.

1:01:27Jumped in with both feet. Yeah. I'm still waiting for my delayed adolescence. Yeah. Are you sober now? Yes. Is that important to you? It's just easier. I think when you get a certain age, you can't have a really fantastic evening and a fantastic morning, and I choose mornings.

1:01:51There's a dividend. Was cocaine the big one for you? It was back in the day, absolutely. Yeah, and it's the instant gratification, and when you're sort of self-destructive like that, everything becomes a problem. Small things become problems because you're not functioning cognitively properly. You're half-functioning. And when you swim away from that, slowly the sort of cloud lifts and you find that you're... It's not worth it. That's what you sort of discover. It's not worth it. And actually the payoff is so much better because you discover all these new things, like being able to cope with 20 things at the same time.

1:02:42And it's fine. It's fine. And your relationships become more sustainable, enjoyable. You don't have to... The worst thing about drinking and doing drugs is you have to lie. And when you're liberated from lying, it's like a huge weight off your shoulders and you have to relearn. Sometimes I remember I'd be driving along. This is years after being sober. I'd see a police car following me and I'd think, shit, shit, you know. Have I drunk too much? And I'd realise, no, you don't drink. Oh, yeah, I'd forgotten. Because that became a sort of a... It was sort of intrinsic in me for a while. Do you put the women in the same category or not?

1:03:34I think that was just that was like sort of first flush of success. Very awkward originally with women. Suddenly I was confident and so I had lots of relationships and then sort of went off the deep end. And I didn't have a proper job, so I had lots of lack of accountability. But to me now, this is sort of like, it feels like someone else now. Does it? Yeah, it feels like, oh yeah, yeah. You were that guy, remember? Because I feel like, now I feel like, you know, I'm getting older. I'm nearly 60. You're looking good, by the way. Thank you. Especially for someone who's been, had a few drinks and a little bit of nose candy.

1:04:24Back in the day, yes. I mean, as... How long have you been sober? I don't count the days, by the way. Just the nights? Yes, about, yeah, exactly. Well, I stopped about 11 years ago, but then I sort of fell off again. I say fell off again. I started drinking and I stopped. So I had a period where I started drinking again. But it wasn't like... I wasn't doing drugs again, but I was drinking again. And I wasn't like... I didn't go off the deep end, but I sort of flirted with it again and then decided to stop. But I hadn't got out of control, I just thought it's easy without. If you want to drink sensibly, you always have to think, should I have one or two or three or four?

1:05:00When you don't drink, it's easy. You just go, well, I don't. And then you don't have to worry about driving home or any of that. You just say it's just more straightforward. It must be part of it you miss. I'm not trying to base it. That sounds awful. Like, come on, have a drink. Come on, Steve, I can show you. No, but that narrative of like everything's so much better now, but I also feel like, well, is it? I think, yes, it is because your tastes change as you get older. you've got this to look forward to, Louis. Your libido starts to subside. Yeah, I'm looking forward to that. When does that happen?

1:05:31You still, you know, when you need it to happen, it can happen. It's just that it's less like, what's that old thing about being chained to an idiot? Yeah, that's the one. Well, that sort of, I'm beyond that. There's a description of what it's like. I don't know women, speaking as a man, it sometimes feels like that. Yeah, is that the old thing of libido making rational people make irrational decisions, or rational men, I should say, more often than not. So, yeah, I mean, your sort of taste changed. I don't want to go out. I don't want to go out in the evening. I want to watch, you know, I want to stay at home and eat some food.

1:06:07Bergeron. I tell you what, it's funny you should say that. My current girlfriend said, oh, have you ever watched Foyle's War? Because I took her down to Sussex and she said, oh, this is like Foyle's War around here. and I went, what were you talking about? And she was a big fan of Foils War. Who's seen Foils? Michael Kitchen. It was a Sunday evening drama. It finished doing it like 15-plus years ago. Sunday evening police drama set during the war about a detective on the south coast near Eastbourne, which is where it was filmed. Anyway, it's sort of very well done but very gentle Sunday evening drama where the world is quite nice and no one is, apart from probably one murder up a week, no one is horrible.

1:06:55And I started enjoying that in a way I never would have done 25 years ago. Now I sort of go, let's have a cosy evening and watch a foils war. Because the world is pretty horrible and it's nice to sort of pretend that it's nice, as it were. and that's I mean now you know I would rather watch Falls War than have a line of cocaine What if you were watching Falls War having had a line of cocaine that's interesting I can't say that it might not be better than either by themselves but I'm not prepared to experiment at this stage

1:07:48And scene. Welcome back. That was great, right? What an incredible guest. So interesting. We hit all the notes. Happy, sad, high, low, funny, not very funny. Thinking mainly about the Jimmy Savile stuff. And yes, on your bingo card, you can tick off not just Savile, but also the relevant Nietzsche quote is a new entry on the bingo card. Is it? Have we ever had that before? That's a new one. I think I've said it before. Millie's kneeling on the floor of the studio. We've got an autocue and we're trying it out. What do you think? Do you like it? We think it goes more smoothly. It's hell on Millie's knees.

1:08:33What a shame. Is it okay to like those mother-in-law jokes? I thought Steve made a good case for actually it's punching up because the mother-in-law was a very powerful figure. Afterwards, I was like, really? Well, in a sense, it does speak to a feeling of maybe being the northern man being embattled by this ultra powerful mother-in-law who's capable of throttling a whale with her bare hands. I do confess to finding Les Dawson funny and also impressions I think I said that during the chat they're like magic to me it's almost a miraculous gift I'd love to be good at impressions what's that? I am literally no one is saying that I am I've got a couple I've got Uri Geller but that sounds a bit like my other one which is Michael Jackson that was so bad Uri Geller I'm not going to bend a spell I went back to Uri Geller pivoted quickly.

1:09:34I'm not going to bend a spoon for you, Louis, okay? Is something he once said to me and then said, look over there. And then I looked back at him and he was bending a spoon with his mind or not. The other thing I was thinking about, I made notes on this. So Steve said, I think it was because this struck me as a great quote and instructive about creativity in general. If you're creative, he said, it's liberating when you just channel anything that bothers you. Millie, need that to go up a little bit?

1:10:09Make a virtue of irregularities or dysfunctions or things that you think aren't perfectly healthy, prejudices that you know intellectually you have but can't stop having intuitively. Lop it all in to create a casserole of Alan Partridge. It reminded me of when we had Nick Cave as a guest. I think really what it's saying is like, lean in, I hate that phrase, but embrace those parts of you that seem most awkward, most uncomfortable, and find some way of expressing them, either as a comic character or through my documentaries. I definitely am most curious about those parts of the culture that feel most dubious, most questionable, because they reflect the dark heart of humankind and the existential human condition.

1:11:02I feel like I'm doing a sermon. So, and that's a nice feeling. So I hope you're enjoying it. The other thing that came up was Steve's obsession, my word, with people with floppy hair, men, posh boys, men with floppy hair, who either run the world or inhabit his imagination in a way that feels either intimidating or annoying. I made a reference to, oh, it's like Confessions of a Beautiful Mind. There's no such film. You may have spotted that. There's a film called Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. It's not the one I meant. There is a film, A Beautiful Mind. That's the one I meant. And it's got Russell Crowe playing a mathematician, John Nash who has mental problems and hallucinates not men with floppy hair but I think like CIA guys or something and they follow him around and then in the end they never go away but he just learns to ignore them so maybe the lesson is that Steve needs to ignore the possibly not real floppy haired people I think that's it apart from the all important credit the producer was Millie Chu she's down there kneeling on the floor playing with the steady auto cue.

1:12:23The assistant producer was Marnell Yazari. The production manager was Francesca Bassett. The audio mix was by Tom Guest. The video mix was by Scott Edwards. God, this feels like we've got more credits than usual. Exciting. It's like a TV show. A very shit one. The music in this series was by Miguel de Oliveira. The executive producer was Aaron Fellows. We've glitched. The auto cue's shit. Well, it's gone back to the beginning. Yeah, I know, but you know the final line. What is it? This has been a Mindhouse production for Spotify?

1:12:58Oh, man.

1:13:08This episode is brought to you by Shopify. When I was younger, I always wanted to be either an astronaut or an athlete. I was a fast runner. I thought maybe I could make it to the Olympics or be blasted off into space. As it happens, neither of those dreams came true. I had to settle for being an award-winning documentary maker and international celebrity. Ah well, we've all had big dreams and it's never too late to make them happen. This is your sign to stop holding back and go for it, especially if your dream is to run a business, because Shopify is making it easier than ever. It's there to support you every step of the way, from designing your website to marketing to product descriptions to sales.

1:13:50The list goes on and on. So give it a shot. Turn those dreams into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial and start selling today at shopify.com slash louis. L-O-U-I-S. That's shopify.com slash louis. L-O-U-I-S.