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British comedy character

Alan Gordon Partridge is a comedy character portrayed by the English actor Steve Coogan. A parody of British television personalities, Partridge is a tactless and inept broadcaster with an inflated sense of celebrity. Since his debut in 1991, he has appeared in media including radio and television series, books, podcasts and a feature film. Partridge was created by Coogan and Armando Iannucci for the 1991 BBC Radio 4 comedy programme On the Hour, a spoof of British current affairs broadcasting. In 1992, Partridge hosted a spin off spoof chat show, Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge. On the Hour transferred to television as The Day Today in 1994, followed by Knowing Me, Knowing You later that year. In 1997, Coogan starred as Partridge in a BBC sitcom, I'm Alan Partridge, written by Coogan, Iannucci and Peter Baynham, following Partridge's life in a roadside hotel working for a small radio station. It earned two BAFTAs and was followed by a second series in 2002. After a hiatus, Partridge returned in 2010 with a series of shorts, Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge, written with Rob and Neil Gibbons, who have cowritten every Partridge project since. Over the following years, Partridge expanded into other media, including the spoof memoir I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan (2011) and the feature film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013). In 2019, Partridge returned to the BBC with This Time with Alan Partridge, a spoof of magazine shows such as The One Show, followed by an Audible podcast in 2020 and a touring show in 2022. While the writers use Partridge to satirise bigotry and privilege, they also aim to create empathy. Critics have praised Partridge's complexity, realism and pathos. Vanity Fair called him a British national treasure and The Guardian described him as "one of the greatest and most beloved comic creations of the last few decades". Partridge is credited with influencing cringe comedies such as The Inbetweeners, Nighty Night and Peep Show. In a 2001 poll by Channel 4, Partridge was voted seventh in their list of the 100 Greatest TV Characters.

Alan Partridge was created for the 1991 BBC Radio 4 comedy programme On the Hour, a spoof of British current affairs broadcasting, as the show's hapless sports presenter. According to Iannucci, "Someone said, 'He's an Alan!' and someone else said, 'He's a Partridge!' Within minutes we knew where he lived, we'd worked out his back story, what his aspirations were." His name was also inspired by the former Newsbeat presenter Frank Partridge. Iannucci, Patrick Marber, Richard Herring and Stewart Lee wrote much of the early Partridge material. Herring credits the creation to Coogan and Iannucci.

Marber felt Partridge had potential for other projects, and encouraged Coogan to develop his character. In December 1992, BBC Radio 4 began broadcasting a six episode spoof chat show, Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge. The series saw Partridge irritate and offend his guests, and coined his catchphrase, "Aha!". In 1994, On the Hour transferred to television on BBC2 as The Day Today, in which Partridge reprised his role as sports reporter. The series ends with Partridge accidentally shooting a guest. A Christmas special, Knowing Me, Knowing Yule, followed in December 1995, in which Partridge attacks a BBC commissioning editor, ending his television career.

In 1997, Coogan starred in a sitcom, I'm Alan Partridge, written by Coogan, Iannucci and Peter Baynham. The series follows Partridge after he has been left by his wife and dropped from the BBC. He lives in a roadside hotel outside Norwich, presents a graveyard slot on local radio, and desperately pitches ideas for new television shows. Iannucci said the writers aimed to create "a kind of social X ray of male middle aged Middle England". The BBC broadcast a second series of I'm Alan Partridge in 2002, The writers found the second series difficult to make, feeling it had been too long since the first and that expectations for sitcoms had changed. and in 2008 he performed a tour, Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge and other Less Successful Characters, featuring Partridge as a life coach. Coogan returned to Partridge after pursuing other projects, such as his work with the director Michael Winterbottom on films such as 24 Hour Party People (2002). He said he did not want to say goodbye to Partridge, and that "as long as I can do my other things, that, to me, is the perfect balance".

Partridge returned in 2010 in a series of YouTube shorts, Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge, as the host of a digital radio show with a new character, Sidekick Simon (Tim Key). The series was later broadcast by Sky Atlantic. Coogan said they chose the web format because "it was a bit underground, a low key environment in which to test the character out again. And the response was so good, we realised there was more fuel in the tank."

In 2011, a spoof autobiography, I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan, written by Coogan, Iannucci and the Gibbons brothers, was published by HarperCollins. An audiobook version recorded by Coogan as Partridge was also released. In the book, Partridge recounts his childhood and career, attempts to settle scores with people he feels have wronged him, and dispenses wisdom such as his assertion that Wikipedia has made university education "all but pointless". Coogan appeared as Partridge to promote I, Partridge on The Jonathan Ross Show and BBC Radio 5 Live. It received positive reviews and became a bestseller. The programme earned Coogan the 2013 BAFTA for Best Male Performance in a Comedy Programme. and co produced by StudioCanal and Baby Cow Productions, with support from BBC Films and the BFI Film Fund. The film sees Partridge enlisted as a crisis negotiator during a siege at his radio station. and opened at number one at the box office in the UK and Ireland.

In 2015, Coogan co presented a special Christmas episode of the Channel 4 chat show TFI Friday as Partridge. In February 2016, Sky Atlantic broadcast a second series of Mid Morning Matters. Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle, a mockumentary in which Partridge examines the British class divide, followed in May. A second book, Alan Partridge: Nomad, a travelogue in which Partridge recounts a journey across the UK, was published on 20 October. In July 2017, Partridge appeared in an episode of the BBC Radio 4 programme Inheritance Tracks, in which guests choose music to pass to future generations; he selected "Who Put the Bomp (in the Bomp, Bomp, Bomp)" by Barry Mann and the theme from Grandstand. Iannucci guest edited an October 2017 issue of The Big Issue, featuring a debate on Brexit between Partridge and Malcolm Tucker, a character from The Thick of It, another sitcom created by Iannucci. On 27 December, BBC Two broadcast a documentary about the history of Partridge, Alan Partridge: Why, When, Where, How and Whom? In the series, Partridge stands in after the regular host falls ill.

In September 2020, Audible launched an Alan Partridge podcast, From the Oasthouse. It sees Partridge discussing topics such as relationships, family and the culture wars. Coogan said the podcast format was liberating, with more opportunity for nuance and less need to create punchlines to unite the audience, and October 2023. In April 2022, Coogan began a UK Alan Partridge tour, Stratagem, in which Partridge gave a motivational talk and addressed topics such as identity politics and culture wars. The Guardian critic Brian Logan gave the show four out of five, praising its "rich comedy of physical awkwardness" and writing that Partridge was now "at the centre of his own thriving multi platform metaverse". He noted that though Coogan had once tired of Partridge, he now "clearly takes pleasure in the performance". The Independent critic Louis Chilton gave it two out of five, finding its jokes obvious and dated and that Partridge did not work in a live format. A third Partridge memoir, Big Beacon, covering Partridge's return to television and his experience restoring a lighthouse, was published on 12 October 2023. The Times gave it a positive review, praising its "skilfully terrible writing". In February 2024, the BBC announced a new television series, And Did Those Feet With Alan Partridge, a six part mockumentary that has Partridge exploring mental health issues following a year in Saudi Arabia.

Alan Partridge is an incompetent and tactless television and radio presenter. He is socially inept and often offends his guests. He has an inflated sense of importance and celebrity. According to the Telegraph, Partridge is "utterly convinced of his own superiority, and bewildered by the world's inability to recognise it". and "freak show", but slowly became refined as a dysfunctional alter ego. Coogan has more affection for Partridge, whereas, according to Coogan, co creator Armando Iannucci sees him as "basically an idiot". Iannucci said that Partridge stays optimistic because he never sees himself as others see him, Coogan, who is left wing, Coogan felt the humour came from Partridge's misjudgement, rather than in a celebration of bigotry: "I don't want to add to the sum total of human misery. I want to point out things where we can improve our behaviour, myself included." According to Forbes, Partridge has "parochial bad taste", and Coogan described him as "on the wrong side of cool". His talk show catchphrase, "Aha! ", comes from ABBA, and he named his son Fernando and his talk show Knowing Me, Knowing You after ABBA songs. In earlier incarnations, Partridge's wardrobe included a blazer, badge and tie, driving gloves and "too short" shorts, styles he describes as "sports casual" and "imperial leisure". According to Iannucci, by the time of Alpha Papa, Partridge had "evolved to the Top Gear Presenter Circa 2005 stage", with sports jackets and a foppish fringe. According to Variety, in Britain "Alan Partridge is a full on phenomenon, a multiplatform fictional celebrity whose catchphrases, mangled metaphors and social ineptitude are the stuff of legend and good ratings". Though Partridge is less known outside Britain, Adam McKay, the director of the 2004 comedy Anchorman, said he is well known among American comedians including Ben Stiller, Will Ferrell and Jack Black: "Everyone watching those [Partridge] DVDs had the same reaction. How did I not know about this guy?" Brian Logan wrote in the Guardian that though Partridge was created as a satire of the "asinine fluency of broadcaster speak" of the time, his development as a character study gave him a timeless quality. Another Guardian journalist, John Crace, wrote: "By rights, Alan Partridge should have been dead as a character years ago, the last drops of humour long since wrung out but Steve Coogan keeps finding ways to make him feel fresh." The Independent wrote that Partridge was a "disarming creation" whom the audience root for despite his flaws. In the Guardian, Alexis Petridis wrote that audiences find Partridge funny partly because they recognise themselves in him, and Edmund Gordon called Partridge "a magnificent comic creation: a monster of egotism and tastelessness". Mandatory wrote that Partridge was "a fascinatingly layered and fully realised creation of years of storytelling and a fundamentally contemptible prick—he feels like a living, breathing person, but a living, breathing person that you want to strangle". In 2014, the Guardian writer Stuart Heritage described Partridge as "one of the greatest and most beloved comic creations of the last few decades". In a 2017 poll of over 100 comedians, Partridge was voted best TV comedy character and Coogan best male comedy actor, and a scene from I'm Alan Partridge in which Partridge goes to the home of an obsessive fan was voted best comedy scene. In 2021, Rolling Stone named I'm Alan Partridge the 52nd greatest sitcom, writing that it had taken Partridge "from a parody of celebrity presenter smarm to one of the greatest Britcom characters ever". In 2022, the Guardian journalist Michael Hogan selected Partridge as Coogan's greatest TV role, writing that Coogan had "painstakingly fleshed him out from a catchphrase spouting caricature to a layered creation of subtle pathos one of our most enduring and beloved comic characters."

The Telegraph credited Partridge with influencing cringe comedies such as The Inbetweeners, Nighty Night and Peep Show. Another, "Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank", was used by the hostel booking site Hostelworld as the basis of a 2015 television advert with the boxer Chris Eubank. In 2020, Coogan said that many of Partridge's inane ideas had since become real programmes, making satire more difficult. An art exhibition inspired by Partridge opened in Norwich in July 2015. In September 2020, an unofficial statue of Partridge created by sculptors in the film industry was temporarily erected outside the Forum in Norwich; Partridge's official Twitter account released a statement endorsing the statue.