My career as an impressionist started early. From the age of five or six, I used to imitate the sound of car wheels screeching – sometimes too effectively: Mum was always telling Dad off for driving too fast, and on occasion she would do this when he was driving at a reasonable speed, because of me.

From a very early age, I had a great memory for voices, a good ear. I would borrow my older brother’s cassette player, balance the microphone on a cushion in front of the TV and record my favourite shows, like Fawlty Towers and Ripping Yarns. I would listen back time and again. Slowly and meticulously, I learned to do all the voices. I was called upon regularly to bring to life some aspect of the previous night’s TV for a friend of my mum’s or sister’s. “Stephen, did you see the show?”

“Yes.”

“Oh good, do it for us.”

I was more self-conscious around my dad. Mum was calmer, more tolerant. But as soon as Dad came into the room, I’d stop goofing around. He wasn’t big on praise. He thought criticism was a great way to learn. I have, to some degree, inherited it as a character trait, and I hate it. I’ve had to learn to recognise it and try to be effusive when I love something, rather than overly critical.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest This month, Steve Coogan publishes his memoir, Easily Distracted. Here, he interviews himself about sex, drugs and creating Alan Partridge.

I am a product of my Catholic upbringing, my Irish roots, my lower-middle-class background. Of the north, of suburbia, of the grammar school system and the television generation. I’m the fourth of six children, five of whom are boys. Our house was a colourful, noisy environment. Quiet contemplation was saved for church on a Sunday.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Me, aged 12, in a Terylene blazer.’ Photograph courtesy of Steve Coogan and family

When I was a teenager, my parents fostered a series of kids because they took the view that, if you can look after yourself, then you should look after others less fortunate. Mum and Dad came from working-class backgrounds, but were socially mobile, aspirant. Education was the way to a better future; knowledge was something to be acquired and appreciated. My dad decided to buy the Encyclopedia Britannica, which meant that knowledge could be accessed without a trip to the library. My parents brought us up to be respectable, to be kind to people, to take personal pride by contributing to society in a traditional way.

As it turned out, I’ve made my living by goofing around in exactly the way my dad disapproved of. My stupidity became my raison d’être. I discovered I could mock myself through my characters and that as long as I was the architect, playing the fool gave me a certain sophistication. I was playing a trick on everyone: by being profoundly uncool, I ended up being the coolest person in the room.

When I told my English teacher I wanted to go to drama school, he shook his head. “That’s a shame,” he said. “If you’d got into Cambridge, you could have joined Footlights and you’d have been away.” Every time drama school was mentioned at school or at home, there would be a puffing out of air and a slumping of shoulders. The implication was clear: it wasn’t going to happen for me.

I auditioned for all the London drama schools and was knocked back by every one, apart from Rada, who offered me a recall.

My A-level results were disappointing. I hadn’t put in the work and so I decided to do resits. Meanwhile I signed on and, during a visit to the jobcentre, noticed a simple card: “Actor/actress required.” I went to meet Andrew Mulligan, director of a new regional theatre company. He asked me to join and I left school, abandoning the resits. We put on straightforward adaptations of plays, including CP Taylor’s The Magic Island, about a bloke who lives in a cave. We took it around schools and showed it to six- and seven-year-olds, who laughed at me playing the bogeyman.

My parents brought us up to be respectable… I’ve made my living goofing around in exactly the way my dad disapproved of

Andy helped me prepare for my audition at Manchester Poly, where I’d applied to do a diploma in theatre. I hadn’t thought carefully enough about my earlier auditions; I’d been too vague about why I wanted to go to drama school.

Andy knew I had to stand out. He suggested starting with two standard speeches – typically Shakespeare, followed by a modern piece – and ending with Duncan Thickett doing a bad audition. Duncan was, at this stage, a nascent character, a little voice that had started out in my head and grown into an inadequate fool. I used to do him in rehearsals to make Andy laugh. He was, I suppose, my first foray into the comedy of embarrassment.

At the audition, I read from Shakespeare’s Pericles in a cockney accent, standing on a chair like a market trader, followed by a speech from Arnold Wesker’s Chips With Everything. Then I left the room, knocked on the door as Duncan and asked if I had come to the right place for my audition. I walked back in with my papers and dropped them all over the floor. I kept saying, in a ridiculously overconfident way, “I just want you all to relax and enjoy my audition.” The panel was crying with laughter and they offered me a place on the spot. Flushed with excitement, I went home and told my mum.

But I still had the Rada recall to come. Again I did the formal pieces followed by the Duncan Thickett routine, curious to know how they would respond. I remember they sat rather formally in a line, looking at me with poker faces. I wasn’t surprised not to be offered a place. I got a rejection letter that said something along the lines of, “You made the final 100, but you didn’t make the final 30. You’re quite good, but you’re not good enough.” My dad was so impressed, he framed it.

The high of being offered a place at Manchester Poly did not, inevitably, last. I went, and still felt out of place. I tried to be enthusiastic, even signing up for yoga and buying special blue tights. But there was no escaping the fact that the southerners who got on to the theatre course with me were fellow London drama-school rejects who had more confidence than talent.

The teachers were pretentious and kept trying to make me perform Brecht even when I made it clear I wasn’t interested. Most of the other students had a pompous love of theatre that left me cold. They read all the books on the syllabus; I read none.

Despite the tutors’ persistent negativity, I was performing or getting paid work nearly the whole time I was there, as both a standup comedian and a voiceover artist for local radio ads. Although I had got on to the course on the basis of my impressions, I was then widely regarded as being lowbrow for doing voiceovers for Yorkshire Bank.

‘What’s the most cocaine you’ve ever taken at one time?’: Steve Coogan answers your questions Read more

I was still studying when my first proper agent, Sandy Gort, saw my dream advert in the Stage: “Voices required for Spitting Image.” I sent off a cassette tape with a selection of my impressions and was called down to London. The late Geoff Perkins, a producer on the show, showed me around the studio. It was strange to see Neil Kinnock and Roy Hattersley lying deflated on a shelf alongside several puppets of Thatcher.

All the news at drama school would come via the payphone in the corner of the canteen. There was often someone yelling, “Is so-and-so here? Can you go and get him/her?” One day, someone shouted my name across the canteen. It was Sandy, beside himself: “Spitting Image want you.”

I couldn’t believe it. I returned to the table and sat down with my student friends. I said, still incredulous, “I’m the new voice of Spitting Image.” They looked at me, as shocked as I was: “You jammy bastard… I suppose you’ll be all right then.”

***

Edinburgh festival in the summer of 1990 was a real eye-opener for me. Sandy asked Frank Skinner to support me at the Pleasance theatre. Frank had put in the hours. I hadn’t. He was the better act, and so the audience responded to him much more than they did to me.

Frank would do the first 25 minutes, get the audience on his side, introduce me, I’d do 30 minutes of old material to a lukewarm reception, Frank would come back on stage, and we’d sing a song we’d written called It’s Over Now. Frank was always a gentleman, but it was a bit awkward.

Sharing a flat with him didn’t make it any easier. The phone was always ringing. I’d always answer it and it was always for Frank. It would be a TV producer whom I knew and who knew me – and who always wanted Frank.

With Frank Skinner at the Edinburgh festival in 1990. Photograph courtesy of Steve Coogan

There were good times to be had in Edinburgh that summer, but I had a horrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. I was having a fling with an older comedian and Paul Merton was hanging around her Edinburgh flat. Compared with heavyweights like him, I felt slightly naff.

Sean Hughes won the Perrier with A One Night Stand. It was his first time at Edinburgh, and he became the youngest ever winner. He looked like a pop star and women adored him. In the summer of 1990 I spent far too much time imagining what it might be like to be him – and I probably got the crumbs off his table in terms of women.

Edinburgh was as much about sleeping around as being funny. It was part of the lifestyle: you did your show, went out, got drunk, had sex, woke up, had a late breakfast, went to see someone else’s show if you could be bothered. On and on it went.

Frank supported me at Edinburgh. He'd put in the hours and was the better act. He was a gentleman, but it was awkward

There’s a strange Victorian morality about being sexually active that I don’t share, as long as it’s consensual. I don’t regret sleeping with all those girls, not really. I thought I was Byronic. But I did hurt people and I’m not proud of that. At the time I didn’t really think about the consequences. Sex is just sex. It doesn’t necessarily carry any emotional involvement. When you’re young, it doesn’t really matter.

If I was still shagging around now, it would be a bit grim. Contrition has been shown and apologies made to those affected – and I will say that I can still count as friends all the women I ever had a relationship with. In the late 80s and early 90s, however, it was a big adventure.

***

I didn’t go to Edinburgh the following year. I decided to skip it and take the show when it was right. Instead, I did a residency in a resort in Rhodes. You got your flights paid for, a few days in the sun and a few hundred quid. So I found myself standing by a swimming pool, trying to make largely uninterested holidaymakers laugh. As I was doing impersonations, blokes in trunks kept interrupting: “Do you mind not swearing? There are kids around this pool.”

I said nothing, but I kept thinking, “How the fucking hell have I ended up here?” My single box room was like a cell. Every time I went back there and looked straight out on to the air-conditioning unit, I would put my head in my hands and think to myself, “This is desperate.”

One afternoon I sat alone on my narrow bed and read a copy of the international Guardian. The first thing I saw was a story about Frank Skinner winning the Perrier award. The previous year he had supported me and now he’d won. And here I was, in a room with no view in Rhodes.

While I was feeling sorry for myself, Armando Iannucci had come up with the idea of a spoof news comedy programme called On The Hour. He assembled performers including Patrick Marber, Chris Morris (who also wrote for the show), David Schneider, Doon Mackichan and Rebecca Front, and writers including Stewart Lee, Richard Herring, David Quantick and the late Steven Wells. He invited me to join them.

It was an extraordinary collection of people, all in their 20s, and, best of all, I was in their gang. I wasn’t very sophisticated when I joined them. I was more aware than I should have been that they were university educated, while I had been to a poly. I felt like I was punching above my weight.

Neither Armando nor Patrick was remotely judgmental about my education; it wasn’t important to them, or to anyone else. It was all in my head. In fact, Patrick later told me he considered me the big cheese in the room, after Armando, because I’d been on TV and drove a sports car.

Once On The Hour had been commissioned as a series, Lee and Herring wrote a brilliant, incisive sketch about a sports reporter. It became increasingly surreal and there were no punchlines, but it was incredibly funny. Armando turned to me: “Steve, can you do a generic sports reporter’s voice that’s not an impression?”

The voice was very different from the way Alan Partridge now talks. It wasn’t, in fact, that different from my own voice, except more nasal and monotone – a bit like Elton Welsby, John Motson or David Coleman. I’ve never been particularly interested in sport, but I know that commentators tend to sound very confident and simultaneously slightly stupid. They never stop talking, even if they’re stuck for something to say.

Lee and Herring wrote some original scripts, but none of the comedy was character driven. It is sometimes said that they invented Alan Partridge. Let me be clear: they did not.

As Alan Partridge in Knowing Me, Knowing You, 1994. Photograph: Rex

I started to improvise the part, about how I wanted to get into light entertainment to get away from the serious news guys who I feared looked down on me, and then I improvised as a racing car commentator, which was immediately funny because I know so little about the rules of the sport. The more mundane I was, the better: “There they go, racing around that bend. Along the straight now. Down the dip. Through the chicane. Around the bend again. Down. Up a bit.” Everyone started laughing. Armando says it was as though Alan emerged fully formed.

I had no idea, of course, that Alan Partridge would come to define my work in Britain for the next two decades. If you were to draw a Venn diagram of Alan and me, there would clearly be an overlap. I would explain to people who asked that I used Alan Partridge to channel all the things about myself that I was embarrassed about. And then they would want to know more.

Am I as incompetent, narcissistic and socially inept as Alan? Sometimes. But aren’t we all? Isn’t that why we respond to him? Alan’s foibles aren’t unique; there is an unfiltered honesty coupled with ignorance. Some critics seem to think I might be wounded by the observation that I’m a bit like him, as if it’s something I’m not completely cognitive of. What irritates me is when I do other characters and they still say, “Oh, that’s a bit like Alan Partridge.” Well, no: that’s actually me you’re seeing.

Alan allowed me to make a virtue of my ignorance about certain things. I very quickly learned in improvisation sessions that the key was using my immediate reactions to anything anyone said: those unedited reactions had a childlike quality to them. I could use Alan as a dumping ground for my insecurities and at the same time say, “This is not me. It’s someone else.”

Later on, I would be writing Alan with Patrick and Armando, and I’d say something as myself. In unison they would respond: “Just say that as Alan! It’s perfect!”

Am I as incompetent, narcissistic and socially inept as Alan Partridge? Sometimes. But aren’t we all?

Patrick remembers me being as assertive and confident as him and Armando in those writing sessions. He says I mocked their Oxbridge intellectualism and vetoed gags I considered too highfalutin. But I remember feeling like the world of clever comedy was almost out of my reach. I felt I could just about jump off the riverbank and grab hold of the branch without falling into the river.

I was wrapped up in what I was doing, but it’s easy to see how my ambition might have irritated the others. Maybe they even thought, “Fucking hell, he could do with a bit of self-doubt.” I was driving around in my racing-green Mazda MX-5 with BBR turbo conversion. I think I used to vault into the car without opening the door. What a tit! But I was having the time of my life.

***

I didn’t start taking cocaine until I was living in Edinburgh in the summer of 1992. I didn’t buy it; people just kept giving it to me and I kept accepting it. And then I had a truly terrifying cocaine-induced panic attack. I’d been up all night doing drugs, and when I sat down to have breakfast I started to feel dizzy. My blood sugar level had dropped dramatically and I was on the verge of blacking out. I could feel pins and needles in my left arm, and my heart was thundering. I thought I was having a heart attack. Patrick put me in a car and drove through red lights to get me to hospital. I cried all the way. I couldn’t stop thinking, “I’m going to die. This is it. My headstone will say: Stephen Coogan, born in Middleton in 1965, died in Edinburgh in 1992, aged 26 years.” What a waste!

Finally, a doctor appeared. He examined me and said I was fine. “No!” I shouted. “You’ve missed something. I had this thing… My heart was going bang, bang, bang.”

He said, “You’re fine, honestly. It was just a panic attack.”

They gave me an ECG and told me they were going to keep me in overnight for observation. I was scared of what might be written about me in the papers. I pulled the electrodes off my chest, got dressed, walked out of hospital and did the show that afternoon.

But the next day I had another panic attack. And another. They wouldn’t go away. I started to think I was going mad. I’d be having dinner in a restaurant, surrounded by people I did and didn’t know – or anywhere I felt I couldn’t easily escape – and I couldn’t breathe. I very quickly became depressed.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘I used to vault into my Mazda MX-5 without opening the door. What a tit! But I was having the time of my life.’ Photograph: Harry Borden for the Guardian

When I came back from Edinburgh, I saw a therapist. He asked if I had a feeling of impending catastrophe. That was the perfect word: catastrophe. He then described a panic attack and I was immediately calmer – I wasn’t going mad. This was a condition, and as soon as I could label it, I felt better. The therapist taught me breathing exercises and how to play a trick on my mind: as soon as I felt an attack coming on, I had to start a drill. He told me to breathe slowly and to think of a place where I was happy as a child. I would think of childhood holidays in Ireland, of the farmhouse where I used to sit and gaze out of the window at the rain. To my amazement, it worked.

But as the panic attacks became less and less frequent, I started doing cocaine again. It was always around, always on offer. I didn’t start to buy it until years later. In those early days it was all recreational and relatively controlled. I’d have a line or two and stop. I liked it because it gave me confidence. I always thought, “I’m not really one of those people who does cocaine, so I’ll be OK.”

As soon as I could control the panic attacks, I quit therapy. It can be useful to talk to someone who won’t just tell you what you want to hear, but I don’t embrace the blame culture that is sometimes associated, however indirectly, with therapy – the notion that I’m like this because of my parents.

I did a spell in rehab much later and I hated the idea that I was there because of my childhood, or some incident of bullying at school. I was there because of my own selfishness. I had to accept personal responsibility. I wanted to say, “I don’t take cocaine because I feel terrible about myself, I take it because I feel fucking great about myself and I deserve a reward for working so hard.”

At the same time, I wanted to stop. Wanting and then needing some sort of constant stimulus becomes debilitating. I don’t take drugs or drink any more, but I am in no denial about my past: I will always be a recovering addict.

The problem with all my excesses is that, unlike those people who reach rock bottom with drugs, I could still function. Being a functioning addict is a curse; my life didn’t ever quite fall apart. I maintained a certain quality in my work that almost gave me a licence to misbehave. It wasn’t healthy. I put a number of people through rehab at my own expense while still abusing drugs myself. I spent tens of thousands of pounds on everyone else’s addiction, but it took me a long time to face up to my own.

***

In 1992, I was doing two different shows in Edinburgh, one directed by Patrick Marber, starring me and John Thomson, and a much less successful one with Patrick, Lee, Herring and Simon Munnery. It wasn’t anyone’s fault; the chemistry that existed in On The Hour wasn’t there and it just didn’t work.

Winning the Perrier award in 1992 for Steve Coogan In Character With John Thomson

When I wasn’t in hospital or having a panic attack, I had a routine going. I would do the shows, get totally wrecked, get up at midday, get some lunch, do the next two shows, get totally wrecked. God knows how much I was drinking. But I was also making sure our show was good.

We had worked on the show all that year. It was called Steve Coogan In Character With John Thomson. It was Patrick’s idea to include Alan Partridge. John’s compere character was Bernard Righton, his politically correct Bernard Manning, very of its time and incredibly funny. A typical Righton joke was: “A black man, a Pakistani and a Jew are in a pub having a drink. What a wonderful example of an integrated community.”

I did Paul Calf, Duncan Thickett, Ernest Moss and Alan Partridge. It was unrecognisable from the show I’d done with Frank two years earlier. I wanted to show those bastards who’d given me bad reviews how good I really was. The first one or two shows drew an audience of six or seven, but by the end of the week the venue was full and it was almost impossible to get a ticket.

One morning I was lying in bed ill in the Edinburgh flat I shared with Patrick and John. No doubt I’d overdone it the night before. I heard Patrick in the hallway, talking on the phone. “I think the best place to give it to him would be on stage.” He says he had this feeling of immense pride and power because he’d been given this wonderful piece of news which we were as yet oblivious to. After a minute, unable to contain himself, he knocked on our bedroom doors. “You’ve done it! You’ve won the Perrier award!” We grouped together in a big manly hug and danced around the room, laughing, unable to absorb the news.

I was no longer just this lad from Manchester who was good at voices. I knew I was finally starting to get it right: I was finally being taken seriously – not only by On The Hour fans, but by the comedy world.

• This is an edited extract from Easily Distracted by Steve Coogan, published on 8 October by Century at £20. To order a copy for £16, go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846.

In the Guardian on 5 October, Coogan answers’ readers questions.

Steve Coogan will be in conversation with Armando Iannucci at a Guardian Live event on 15 October.

Styling: Grace Gilfeather at GQ. Grooming: Anastasia Borovik using REN skincare. Suit, £2,250, shirt, £360, and tie, £155, all by Tom Ford at harrods.com

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