Alan Partridge 'writes' second autobiography

Alan Partridge was first created for radio

A second volume of Alan Partridge's autobiography is set to be published.

Writer Neil Gibbons, who helped write the Norwich DJ's first book and the successful Alan Partridge film, revealed the news on Twitter.

He promised the book, which is due for release in 2016, would include "new Monkey Tennis revelations".

Publishers Orion said the journal would be a collection of diary entries, letters, "think pieces" and programme and business ideas.

Orion announced it had bought a book "by Alan Partridge, which will be written 'with help' from Steve Coogan and Rob and Neil Gibbons".

Twin brother comedy writers Neil and Rob Gibbons started working with Coogan when he brought back his DJ alter-ego in an online Partridge show called Mid Morning Matters in 2011.

They also worked on his first autobiography I, Partridge: We Need to talk about Alan, which was published in 2011 to rave reviews.

"An acutely observed mock-memoir, touching on the great man's highs (receiving a Burton's Gold Card) and lows (Toblerone addiction) in equally self-regarding manner," said the Independent on Sunday when it was published.

And Time Out gave it four stars: "As a parody of celebrity autobiography, it's sound; but as a sustained piece of comic writing, it's outstanding".

Coogan admitted that he decided to write Partridge's life story as a way of getting out of writing his own.

"Publishers asked me to do one, but no-one asked me to do the Alan Partridge autobiography - I suggested it as a sort of deflecting device," he told BBC's Front Row.

Coogan wrote the book in the same way as the hit TV show, with him and the other writers improvising.

But he admitted he did not set out the first Alan Partridge autobiography to be satirical.

"We just wanted to do what he would do in trying to write his autobiography.

"He wants to make his life more than unremarkable, so every single event in his life he tries to spin into something it's not.

"There was an argument between his parents about tax returns that he tries to turn into some kind of nightmare childhood - as if it was torturous for him and he was scarred by it".