Steve Coogan, BIC
THE title of this show - Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters - says it all.
Partridge arrives after the interval, and is, as you’d expect much better received than the first half, which opens with a vulgar Pauline Calf, tart with a heart (of stone), spouting innuendos so cheap they’d barely pass muster in a Carry On.
Roadie Tommy Saxondale’s talk on drugs is memorable mainly for its projections of freaks and oddballs, while abysmal 80s “comic” Duncan Thicket is funny a) in a so-bad-it’s-good way, and b) because he bears a surprising resemblance to one Timmy Mallett, currently entertaining a nation from his jungle hide-out.
Paul Calf, unlike his slutty sister, works well as a re-born parody of Broken Britain, a scrounger with a neck of solid brass.
The filler sketches from a strong support cast were fun too.
But the guffaws only started to gush once Partridge, reinvented as a life coach pushing his Forward Solutions, took centre stage.
You feel that Coogan truly feels comfortable in the skin of this failed (and deservedly so) chat show host.
The gags, both spoken and sight, come thick and strong as this East Anglian enigma dishes up a diet of excruciating embarrassment.
There’s even a short play – with an Ernie Wise vibe – about Sir Thomas More.
As for the closing number, a deliciously offensive routine about Coogan’s reported sex and drugs lifestyle... let’s just say, it’s probably best not to sing it on the bus on the way home.
This show is slicker than reported earlier in the tour, inspired in places, but still a mixed bag.
Definitely one for the fans, maybe not the family... and certainly not Ross Kemp.
