Who invented Alan Partridge?

[c]

Was it mostly Stewart Lee and Richard Herring? (Sorry if this has been asked before).

"RICHARD HERRING: I love I'm Alan Partridge. I thought it was magnificent. I don't know if we had a real creative vision, but I think the way Alan Partridge has taken off was predictable but it's also slightly gratifying that we wrote most of his early material and thus had a hand in what it has become. Good luck to everyone from that show I say (even Marber). It was one of those great things where all the right people were together at the right time and if nothing else I know what I did to help shape it. That's all I care about now. Other people's opinions don't bother me too much."

http://www.richardherring.com/press/6019/interview_from_offthetellycouk_from_the_year_2000.html

LEE: "It's fun for us to say we invented Alan Partridge, but we didn't. We invented a sports writer, and Steve Coogan did this voice, and that was it. It wasn't much to do with us. But other people have made more out of less, haha!"

http://www.stewartlee.co.uk/slcv4/those-comedians-that-you-have-now-stewart-lee-interviewed/

[Cuellar]

I did but you don't hear me going on about it

[phatfill]

I don't bloody know . Bobby Moore ?

[Tony Yeboah]

Steve Coogan

[c]

That Lee quote is a bit odd. He humbly declares that they didn't invent the character of Partridge, then describes them inventing the character of Partridge and Coogan just coming along and doing the voice. It's almost as if he wants the credit for inventing him whilst avoiding getting into trouble for taking the credit for inventing him.

At the very least, it shows he's operating on a higher level than Herring, who simply takes the credit for inventing him. 

But, taking their claims together, if they invented the character of the sports presenter and wrote most of his early material, while Coogan simply did the voice, then...??????

[JamesTC]

Lee and Herring wrote some of the first sketches with Alan Partridge in but they called for a generic sports reporter. They got credit for creating the character afterwards due to this and seem to have thought it funny so played along to the idea. The character, the personality and the back story was nothing to do with Lee and Herring.

Richard Herring has discussed it on RHLSTP with Armondo Iannucci and I think maybe Steve Coogan when he was on.

For what it's worth there is a bit in IAP1 where a person goes up to Alan in the hotel and asks "Are you Alan Partridge?" and he smiles thinking he has been recognised and then the guy says he dropped his pass: that happened to Richard Herring. Also the maniac with the room dedicated to Alan was a thing that happened to Stewart Lee.

[Cuellar]

I don't bloody know . Bobby Moore ?

Lovely stuff

[Cuellar]

Also the maniac with all the room dedicated to Alan was a thing that happened to Stewart Lee.

It was some DJ who was the superfan wasn't it? His name will come to me in a sec...

Christian O'Connell.

[c]

Lee and Herring wrote some of the first sketches with Alan Partridge in but they called for a generic sports reporter. They got credit for creating the character afterwards due to this and seem to have thought it funny so played along to the idea. The character, the personality and the back story was nothing to do with Lee and Herring.

Richard Herring has discussed it on RHLSTP with Armondo Iannucci and I think maybe Steve Coogan when he was on.

For what it's worth there is a bit in IAP1 where a person goes up to Alan in the hotel and asks "Are you Alan Partridge?" and he smiles thinking he has been recognised and then the guy says he dropped his pass: that happened to Richard Herring. Also the maniac with the room dedicated to Alan was a thing that happened to Stewart Lee.

Thank you. Mystery solved.

It was a fun mystery, for all of the one hour and three minutes it remained mysterious to me.

[Pearly-Dewdrops Drops]

Ricky Gervais. Next question.

[Huxleys Babkins]

Ricky Gervais. Next question.

"I likes it when I gets a second series."

[Chollis]

Now we've solved that....

What's Herring's beef with Marber? I'm vaguely aware Marber is a bit of a bellend but that's about it

[olliebean]

Ricky Gervais. Next question.

Who invented Ricky Gervais?

[Pauline Walnuts]

Who invented Ricky Gervais?

The Lightbringer.

[magval]

Now we've solved that....

What's Herring's beef with Marber? I'm vaguely aware Marber is a bit of a bellend but that's about it

It's to do with with Lee and Herring's mock-serious assertion that Marber was responsible for their material being edited out of the On The Hour cassettes, his leeching onto the stardom-bound Coogan and their general dislike of his abilities as a performer and writer. Both have distanced themselves from it in more recent times but Stewart carried the torch for longer than Rich did.

[Chollis]

It's to do with with Lee and Herring's mock-serious assertion that Marber was responsible for their material being edited out of the On The Hour cassettes, his leeching onto the stardom-bound Coogan and their general dislike of his abilities as a performer and writer. Both have distanced themselves from it in more recent times but Stewart carried the torch for longer than Rich did.

cheers

[Crabwalk]

They also felt that he was outwardly pleased that the dispute led to their omission from The Day Today, whereas the rest of the team were believed to be more saddened. I think.

[Stone Cold Steve Austin]

pretty sure a lot of people thought of Marber as a bit of a sharp elbowed careerist bellend, there was a brief story on the Jeremy Hardy ComComPod about Marber asking him for advice in the terms of a yuppie salesman. Probably not as funny if you're Lee and Herring and you're bearing the brunt of his ambition

edit https://youtu.be/G8nnDcrif_s?t=3205 link to the comcompod story

[Enzo]

Now we've solved that....

What's Herring's beef with Marber? I'm vaguely aware Marber is a bit of a bellend but that's about it

I think they fell out over an Edinburgh show they did together as well which fed in to the rest of the stuff

[The Lurker]

I was told that one of my old university lecturers was loosely the inspiration for Partridge in his radio guise. It was said that when he was a radio host, he interviewed Coogan who at the time was doing research for the Partridge character.

It does say on Coogan's IMDB page that "He based the character of Alan Partridge on a radio presenter who interviewed him just as he was becoming famous. Coogan began mimicking the interviewer during the interview and from this came the inspiration for Coogan's most famous creation," so it could well be true.

And to be honest, I could see it - he had his mannerisms, was a radio presenter who had a book which he always plugged, had his dress sense and would say things that Alan would, I remember him slating farmers in a lecture once for no reason whatsoever. He's dead now though so I'll never be able to ask him.

[Alberon]

I think they said in the FAQ on their BBC website for Fist of Fun that it was mostly an injoke of theirs to carry on picking on Marber.

Here's a quote lifted from a 2004 CaB thread lifted from my defunct Lee and Herring website lifted from the BBC.

Q. Why do you hate Patrick Marber?

A. Rich feels sorry for Patrick, but Stew hates him. When Marber came back from failing to write a novel in Paris in 1991 he was desperate for people to write stuff for him, including us, and he really creeped up to us, but after he started to do well he just was nasty, and seemed delighted by any failures we had. He also claimed he'd written some stuff that we did. And when we used to go round to his house, which he owned(!), to write for him, he used to make us pay for any phone calls we made. That's it really. Part of the fun of picking on him in FOF1 and the book was just because he is quite an obscure figure. Also, he writes plays, and all plays are shit, and so is anyone who likes them, or writes them, including Richard Herring whatever excuses he may try and make up.

This week I have been unable to sleep because everytime I close my eyes I'm chased through a maze by giant rats with the faces of all the comedians on TV. So, I'm out most nights driving round and round the Elephant and Castle roundabout in south London, in my buff metallic 1973 Hillman Avenger, shouting out of the open window "Damn you! Damn you to hell, Patrick Marber!"

One of my (very) obscure claims to fame is that a letter from me was read out on one of Lee and Herring's radio shows demanding Simon Quinlank should be replaced by Patrick Marber.

[rasta-spouse]

Was it the Fist of Fun tv series where Stew told viewers to write Marber's name in the "contact in case of death" section on a wallet donor card?

I wonder if anyone did that.

[c]

I was told that one of my old university lecturers was loosely the inspiration for Partridge in his radio guise. It was said that when he was a radio host, he interviewed Coogan who at the time was doing research for the Partridge character.

It does say on Coogan's IMDB page that "He based the character of Alan Partridge on a radio presenter who interviewed him just as he was becoming famous. Coogan began mimicking the interviewer during the interview and from this came the inspiration for Coogan's most famous creation," so it could well be true.

And to be honest, I could see it - he had his mannerisms, was a radio presenter who had a book which he always plugged, had his dress sense and would say things that Alan would, I remember him slating farmers in a lecture once for no reason whatsoever. He's dead now though so I'll never be able to ask him.

But Mr The Lurker, what was his name? If he's dead, you can tell us. I wonder if his book is on abebooks?

[rectorofstiffkey]

Jon Ronson also loathes Patrick Marber and has mentioned his deeply-held grudge several times in his columns, but most at length here:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/dec/09/weekend.jonronson

It's not clear whether Ronson or Marber (or neither or both) are being the twat in this situation.

[rectorofstiffkey]

...forgot to put the reply bit to the actual question: if anyone's interested in Steve Coogan's take on the 'who invented Partridge', it was in this serialised bit of his autobiography, he goes into it in some detail.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2015/oct/03/steve-coogan-autobiography-extract-comedy

He mentions Lee and Herring but seems a bit snappy about their contribution... his discussion of Alan Partridge's creation can be pretty much summed up as 'It was me and all me, got that?"

[magval]

One thing worth saying is that Lee and Herring's contributions to On the Hour are very distinctive and the early Partridge sketches stink of them, but it's arguable that Alan's character was created in his interactions with Morris between reports which DON'T sound like they were by L&H. They can claim to have written the earliest material word for word, but not to have influenced the character through performance or direction and even the content of those sketches features no character detail. Don't think they wrote his roving reports either (Sumo or tennis interviews), but the Sports Desk stuff is very clearly theirs.

[Ballad of Ballard Berkley]

Alan as we know and love him doesn't really have anything to do with Lee & Herring. Funny though those OTH skits were, he really was just a generic sport reporter. He only became a more rounded character when Coogan, Iannucci and Marber got together for KMKYWAP. With Baynham's help, Coogan and Iannucci added more layers and backstory in IAP. Coogan and the Gibbons(es) have built upon that in the last ten years.

I also don't begrudge Coogan being so possessive of the character. Without him, Alan wouldn't exist at all. Coogan as Alan is comic acting at its finest, it's a subtle, multilayered performance worthy of Sellers at his best. Impeccable. Kubrick once said of Sellers that watching him in Dr Strangelove was uncanny, a dazzling case of an actor fully immersing himself in a role and reaching a state of comic ecstasy. Coogan as Alan is on that level.

[popcorn]

I also don't begrudge Coogan being so possessive of the character. Without him, Alan wouldn't exist at all. Coogan as Alan is comic acting at its finest, it's a subtle, multilayered performance worthy of Sellers at his best. Impeccable. Kubrick once said of Sellers that watching him in Dr Strangelove was uncanny, a dazzling case of an actor fully immersing himself in a role and reaching a state of comic ecstasy. Coogan as Alan is on that level.

I truly think that Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge is one of the greatest ever filmed performances. Just generally.

[thraxx]

pretty sure a lot of people thought of Marber as a bit of a sharp elbowed careerist bellend, there was a brief story on the Jeremy Hardy ComComPod about Marber asking him for advice in the terms of a yuppie salesman. Probably not as funny if you're Lee and Herring and you're bearing the brunt of his ambition

edit https://youtu.be/G8nnDcrif_s?t=3205 link to the comcompod story

Even watching TDT and KMKYWAP on their first airings back in the day in the early 90s, for all Marber brings to the programmes, I always found that his parts have the very same hard and unpleasant edge underpinning his characterisations.  Whether he's playing one of the poll attendants, the work psychologist, the French philosopher or Gary Barker the xerox repairman and actor it's neqrly always there, bitter and sneering.  With hindsight and all these stories about him, I wonder if it's just part of his personality showing through.

[Jerzy Bondov]

Jon Ronson also loathes Patrick Marber and has mentioned his deeply-held grudge several times in his columns, but most at length here:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2006/dec/09/weekend.jonronson

It's not clear whether Ronson or Marber (or neither or both) are being the twat in this situation.

Haha cheers for this, that's really funny