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In her ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ Radio 4 podcast Young Again, journalist and broadcaster Kirsty Young takes her guests back to meet their younger selves and asks the question: if you knew then what you know now, what would you have done differently?

Steve Coogan is an award-winning comedian, actor and writer. He has recently played the character of Jimmy Saville in the ³ÉÈËÂÛ̳ drama The Reckoning, and published Big Beacon, a memoir written as his iconic comedy character Alan Partridge.

Here are eight things we learned…

1. Young Steve suffered from imposter syndrome

Steve didn’t go to university. “I was supposed to go to Lancaster to do politics, but my A Level results were crummy and I thought, might as well audition for drama school.” After training at the Manchester Polytechnic School of Drama, he began a career as a comic actor and impressionist.

“I started working with lots of people who had a classical education. And at the time I was a little bit… I wouldn't say intimidated,” Steve says. “I felt a little bit like, how did I get in here? But I knew they were smart. And I learned from them,” Steve considers. “But at the same time, I also learned the things that I knew they didn't know – the advantages I had from being from a lower middle class background, state educated.”

2. Winning a comedy award early on meant a lot

In 1992, Steve won the prestigious Perrier Award for his comedy show at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.

“It was so unexpected,” Steve reflects. “It was like I pulled off a heist. And I've had lots of Baftas over the years and I've had Oscar nominations, but nothing was as exciting as winning the Fringe award at the Edinburgh Festival.”

“It's like a condensed life. The first show I had six people in the audience… Six. And then a week later, just through word of mouth, you've got 100, then you've got 200, which is the capacity of the venue. And you go from zero to hero really fast and everything changes.”

“I wasn't doing any impersonations in it, and it's like, ‘I've won the show with the thing that people think I don't do’. So that mattered to me.”

3. His upbringing gave him an ear for writing ordinary people

“I realised because I came from what I would describe as a lower middle class or upper working class background,” Steve says, “what I did know was how working class people spoke because I knew a lot of ordinary people. What I found from when I bumped to a lot of classically educated people was that they understood all the theory, but the only working class people they knew were the people that came around to mend their plumbing, so they didn’t have an immediacy with it.”

“I've got a very good ear. So, rhythms of how people speak… I was able to write stuff with substance in a non-patronising way.”

4. Steve’s dad was surprised by Steve’s success

“My father would tell me to stop acting the goat and you're never going to get a job if you keep acting the idiot,” says Steve. And when Steve’s career took off, his dad was taken aback.

“I did this show 25 years ago in the West End, for 10 weeks, and it was a big sell out. And I put my parents in a hotel room opposite so when they pulled the curtains back in the room, my name was huge, opposite the window. And my mother said, ‘Your dad said to me, “When you think what a nuisance he was…”’ It was almost like he couldn’t believe I was actually making a living.”

5. Steve says he took longer than usual to grow up

“I was a bit of a square… I was just a bit uncool,” Steve remembers himself as a teenager. “I didn't drink. I didn't like drinking, it was boring. I listened to music and I liked listening to comedy records and watching movies and things. But I didn't really go out clubbing or anything like that.”

He describes having a delayed adolescence when his career started to take off.

“When I got the success I was like, ‘Ah, this is great!’ Like a sort of professional footballer. Suddenly, quite quickly, I got what to me seemed a lot of money… I mean, I bought a sports car before I bought a washing machine, you know?” Steve adds, laughing. “It was that sort of idiocy.”

“I grew up. It just took me longer.”

6. Steve doesn’t feel trapped by Alan Partridge anymore

“Because I’ve had a degree of success with other areas, I now feel a little bit more relaxed. It freed me from Alan Partridge so that when I do Partridge now it's through choice, not cause I'm locked into this Alan Partridge-shaped cage,” says a reflective Steve.

“Which you were a bit resentful for?” asks Kirsty.

“Which I was, yes, at a certain point. But what keeps it fresh and not boring, not feel like we're flogging a dead horse… is because the Alan Partridge environment is our environment. It keeps changing.”

Alan Partridge first appeared in 1991 in the Radio 4 comedy programme On the Hour which spoofed the current affairs format. Since then Steve has portrayed the hapless broadcaster with his own unique inflated sense of celebrity in TV series, books, a feature film and podcasts.

7. Laughter is one of the most important things to Steve

“It’s great to laugh. You can laugh and make comedy about difficult things. It's all how you do it,” Steve says.

“Alan Partridge as a character is deeply flawed, but he's not a nasty man. He's only accidentally nasty. I think he's just a bit lost. But you know, human failings, human weaknesses, our flaws, the things that make us interesting… We constantly make mistakes. And that's what makes us funny and interesting and human. And comedy allows you to celebrate that whatever.”

“Laughing is really important and it took me a while to realise that it is really important to be able to laugh in the most dire of circumstances.”

8. He can’t imagine ever retiring

“Is work at the centre of who you are?” Kirsty asks Steve.

“Almost certainly. I love what I do and that is a real privilege. A lot of my friends, who are a little bit older than me, are talking about retiring. And to me that just seemed like such an alien concept because I don't want to do work all the time, but I love what I do.”

“I think,” Steve pauses, “I am defined by it largely. And possibly at the expense in the past of my personal life, because I subjugate everything for [it]… Without wanting to say that I am an artist, that art that I do – whether it's comedy or drama, writing or acting – is creative and it always sort of comes first.”