Coogan went on to produce Brydon’s breakthrough series, ‘Marion &
Geoff’, in which he played the tragically optimistic divorced minicab
driver Keith Barrett, and the superbly grotesque relationship mock-doc
series he made with Davis, ‘Human Remains’. He and Coogan fleetingly
shared screen-time in ‘I’m Alan Partridge’ (Brydon played a Christian
at Lyn’s baptism) and the ‘Marion & Geoff’ prequel ‘A Small Summer
Party’ (Coogan was Geoff), and they were both in the one-off ‘Cruise of
the Gods’. ‘Cock and Bull…’ – their first protracted collaboration –
has a certain continuity with their trademark characters, and indeed
much of the finest British television comedy of the past decade. Just
as Tristram Shandy is acutely aware of his status as the bearer of his
own text and constantly tries to ingratiate himself with his readers
(or now viewers), Keith Barrett and Alan Partridge – along with ‘The
Office’’s David Brent and Chris Morris’s victims in ‘Brass Eye’ – are
painfully conscious of their position as performers, compulsively
modifying their behaviour in light of the presence of the camera.
It’s not, therefore, too surprising to learn that ‘Cock and Bull…’ was
originally conceived as a TV project – a fact alluded to in the film
when ‘Rob’ says, ‘Originally, I was going to play Tristram,’ prompting
‘Steve’ to snipe: ‘Yeah, that was when it was going to be a sitcom.’
That this was not merely a throwaway line comes as news to Coogan.
‘They did genuinely talk to me about doing it on television,’ Brydon
maintains. ‘You do know that? That’s not just a joke in the film. They
genuinely called me up one day and said: “We’ve got this idea to do
this series where you talk to the camera, la-la-la.” And I went to
Waterstone’s or somewhere on Charing Cross Road and looked at the book
and saw how big it was and just walked away. That doesn’t reflect well
on me, but it’s true. And then I didn’t hear anything more about it.
And even after we’d started to do this, it was only one day I went,
“Oh, God, this is the project they were talking about before! This is
the same book!”’
Coogan sounds unsettled. ‘I didn’t know that. I’m rather upset by that.
I’m going to make a phone call,’ he mutters. ‘No, but you come out of
that very well,’ Brydon insists. ‘They chose you over me.’ ‘Doesn’t
matter. The fact that they considered you…’
Despite his rising cinematic profile – this year he’s in Sofia
Coppola’s ‘Marie Antoinette’ and signed up for a remake of ‘The
Persuaders’ alongside Ben Stiller – Coogan hasn’t turned his back on TV
comedy. A pilot for a new series has been completed, starring Coogan as
‘an ex-roadie who’s now a pest control operator who lives in Stevenage.
That’s it, really. It’s a new character, a bit nicer than Alan
Partridge,’ currently named ‘Saxondale’. Brydon isn’t sure about the
name – ‘people might think it’s a type of butter’ – but did enjoy the
pilot.
