I'm Alan Partridge

Alan Partridge began life in 1991 as the sports presenter on On the Hour, a BBC Radio 4 news spoof devised by Armando Iannucci and Chris Morris. Steve Coogan carried him to television in The Day Today and then to his own chat show, Knowing Me, Knowing You. I'm Alan Partridge, written by Coogan, Iannucci and Peter Baynham, gave the character his first proper sitcom in 1997. A second series followed on BBC Two in 2002, twelve episodes in all.

The show finds Alan after the fall. The BBC has let him go, his marriage is over, and he is living at the Linton Travel Tavern, a roadside hotel he treats as a country club. He presents the graveyard slot on Radio Norwich and spends his days pitching programmes to commissioners who would rather be elsewhere. Felicity Montagu plays Lynn, his devoted and much put-upon assistant, and Simon Greenall is Michael, a Geordie ex-soldier who works at the hotel. The comedy is recorded before a studio audience, yet most of its laughs come from small things: a misjudged word, a pause held too long, Alan's terrible taste in music and cars.

The first series won BAFTAs for Best Comedy and for Coogan's performance, and in 2000 the British Film Institute placed it 38th in its list of the greatest British television programmes. Much of the British cringe comedy that followed, The Office included, owes it something. Coogan has returned to Alan regularly since, in Mid Morning Matters, the film Alpha Papa and This Time. Many viewers still think of this series as the definitive version of him.