About 20 years ago, the actor and comedian Steve Coogan did a tour called, with typical self-deprecation, Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge and Other Less Successful Characters. I saw the show and it was, as you’d expect from Coogan, amusing and cleverly performed. Yet it ended strangely; Coogan sang a self-lacerating song called ‘Everyone’s a Bit of a Cunt Sometimes’. It was oddly bitter and angry, but clearly Coogan stood by its sentiments, because he attempted to reprise the number in a dream sequence from his restaurant-review comedy The Trip several years later. The song, given full production values, was, perhaps wisely, deleted from the programme’s final cut. (Although you can still find it on YouTube.)
I thought of it when I read that Coogan, his production company Baby Cow and the film studio Pathé Pictures have paid an out-of-court settlement to the University of Leicester academic Richard Taylor. The university registrar had been a character in the Coogan’s film The Lost King about discovery of Richard III’s bones underneath a Leicester car park. That discovery was led by Philippa Langley, an amateur archeologist, and the film made much of her struggles to be taken seriously by both the academic establishment.
Taylor, as played in the film by that go-to actor for weaselly and squirming characters, Lee Ingleby, is presented as the antagonist. He not only belittles and patronises Langley but, when it becomes clear that she is on to something, is quick to claim the credit for the discovery and sideline her instead. The Lost King is what it is, certainly not as big a hit as the previous collaboration between Coogan, his co-writer Jeff Pope and director Stephen Frears, 2014’s Philomena. But watching the film back, it’s little wonder that Taylor was insulted by the character on which he was supposed to be based. In 2022, after the film’s release, he told the BBC that ‘I’m portrayed as kind of a bullying, cynical, double-crossing, devious manipulator, which is bad, but then when you add to that I behave in a sexist way and a way that seems to mock Richard III’s disabilities, you start to get into the realm of defamation.’
There’s the old saying ‘where there’s a hit, there’s a writ’, and even though The Lost King was only a modest success at the box office, Taylor sued. After a judge ruled last year that his fictionalised presentation on screen as ‘smug, unduly dismissive and patronising’ was indeed defamatory, the path was clear for expensive legal action. That legal action could have been embarrassing for all parties, not least Coogan who, as the film’s lead actor, screenwriter and producer, was directly responsible for the characterisation of Taylor. Hence the out-of-court settlement, and a graceless public statement from Coogan that read, in part, ‘If it wasn’t for Philippa Langley, Richard III would still be lying under a car park in Leicester. It is her name that will be remembered in relation to the discovery of the lost king, long after Richard Taylor has faded into obscurity.’
This is not enough for Coogan, who would clearly like to be taken seriously as a Renaissance man
The film will not be re-edited in any way, with the only change made being a title card emphasising that Ingleby’s character is ‘fictional and does not represent the actions of the real Mr Taylor’, who ‘acted with integrity during the events portrayed’. This brings the legal matter to a close, but it does cast questions over Coogan’s own judgement. He has been a major celebrity for several decades. Even if he were not solely responsible for creating one of Britain’s great grotesques in Alan Partridge, he would still be lionised as a comic genius, mentioned in the same breath as Peter Sellers and Tony Hancock.
Yet this is not enough for Coogan, who would clearly like to be taken seriously as a Renaissance man. Hence his support for fashionable left-wing causes (he was, naturally, a fully paid-up Corbynista), his desire to take on difficult and demanding roles, including, inevitably, Jimmy Savile in the grim drama The Reckoning. And, of course, his triple-threat status as writer, actor and producer. Against that impressive CV is his private life. Coogan is tabloid catnip because of a lifestyle of sex, drugs and general self-indulgence, but this is less wearying than the sense of sanctimony creeping into his work.
Whether or not you believe Richard III was wrongly maligned – and it is an issue that remains controversial, to put it mildly – it was somehow typical of Coogan to go all in behind the Ricardian side. He was similarly bullish in refusing to simply apologise to a man who has clearly been maligned. It is hard, bearing all this in mind, not to hum the lyrics to ‘Everyone’s a Bit of a Cunt Sometimes’, and wonder if Coogan should have listened a bit more carefully to his own advice.
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