Hello, I'm Krestey Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive.

For rights reasons, we've had to shorten the music.

The program was originally broadcast in 2009. My castaway this week is the comedian and actor Steve Kuggen. In recent years he's found success in films, in roles as diverse

as the 18th century fictional man of letters Tristram Shandy, to Manchester's best known pop impresario

Tony Wilson. He was a child when he realized he had a knack for

impressions and he first made a name for himself on spitting image. But he's best known for creating

the grotesque Alan Partridge, a character so crass he had

us peering at the telly through our fingers in mortified horror. Although his work

has been very varied, it seems precious little about his career has been left

a chance. He was still a teenager when he started planning his future success. I remember

being in the sixth form one day he says having this moment of clarity thinking

there's a generation of future comics out there all around the country people who have no idea

right now that they will be part of that generation so why can't I be part of it

other people out there don't know it's going to happen to them but I'm going to see if I

can make it happen to me that seems extraordinary Steve Coogan that as early as you were sort of late teenage years,

you were in the common room where are you when you had that thought?

Yeah, I remember it very clearly because I started thinking about all the people I admired on television,

all the creative people I admired.

And one always thinks that whoever's around now is that's going to be the status quo forever.

And then of course you realise that isn't the case and it never will be the case.

Quite unusual to see those patterns at that age.

I mean at this point in your career, you know, somebody who's had the amount of success, the sustained success

...