Steve Coogan confessed in a recent interview on BBC1’s The One Show that he is morphing into his alter ego Alan Partridge. ‘There’s almost a complete overlap in the Venn diagram,’ he admitted, ‘by this time next year I will have completely become Alan.’ Maybe he was joking, but I suspect he kind of meant it.

At a recent drinks party, I discovered to my horror that I’d come dressed exactly like every other midlife man in the room

The comedian has spent years trying to distance himself from the boss of Pear Tree Productions, firstly by creating ‘other less successful characters’, his words, not mine, and then by retreating to Hollywood. With freshly capped teeth, designer jackets and long tousled hair, he immersed himself in a variety of movie roles from Stan & Ollie (‘back of the net’) to Night at the Museum 2 (‘saaaaaad’). But no matter how hard he tried, the glamour of his newfound film career couldn’t banish the ghost of Norwich’s finest.

And now here he is again, ‘bouncing back’ to promote yet another Alan Partridge memoir, Big Beacon, his third to date. Later in the year, he is set to return to our screens in........

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