When you’ve spent nearly your entire career playing a character, you can understand how it might be difficult for people to see you as anything else. So, for Alan Partridge fans nationwide, Oscar-nominated film Philomena showed a different side, and skillset, to the Steve Coogan they thought they knew.
In fact, it surprised the man himself, thinking, on the way to a Papal audience during the film’s first release, “All this has happened because I read an article in a newspaper”. The book also delves into the darker side of the comedian’s previous hedonistic lifestyle, and why he felt it was part of his duty to fight against phone hacking journalists before the whole scandal had come to light.
Whether you are a Partridge fan or not, the book is a wonderful insight into a man who has lived it all, and admits: “I learned that it’s OK to acknowledge your weaknesses. It’s fine. Not only is it fine, but it makes you stronger, rather paradoxically”.
