Simon Greenall has spent a career in the second row: the Geordie handyman Alan Partridge cannot follow, a polar bear captain, a pair of sheep. Small parts, played without fuss, and one of them is the warmest thing in a cold comedy.
Fi1m perspective
Alan Partridge talks and Michael answers, and Alan cannot understand a word of it. That is the joke in I'm Alan Partridge (1997), and it belongs to Steve Coogan. What belongs to Simon Greenall is everything around it. His Michael, the Geordie handyman at the hotel outside Norwich where Alan has washed up, is the only person in the building who seems to like the man, and Greenall plays that liking straight. A lesser actor would lean on the accent until it was the whole part. Greenall keeps it at a level real people speak and lets the warmth do the work, so the scenes are funny at Alan's expense and never at Michael's. We were surprised, on rewatching, by how fond of Michael we had become, and it is because he asks us for nothing: he is kind to a man nobody else has time for, and he does not seem to notice that this is unusual.
That series was the breakthrough, after small television roles from the mid-1980s, and Greenall went back to Michael in Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013). Between and since, most of the work has been done with his voice. He is Captain Barnacles, the polar bear in charge of Octonauts (2009–2017); he is the Twins in the Shaun the Sheep films, from Shaun the Sheep Movie (2015) to Shaun the Sheep: The Beast of Mossy Bottom (2026); he is the meerkats in the Compare the Market adverts. The live-action credits in the same stretch are brief: a chauffeur in Wimbledon (2004), a guest part in Doctor Who (2006). For most of the country he is a voice they know and a face they do not.
The Aardman work is the kind that goes unnoticed when it succeeds. Our review of The Beast of Mossy Bottom found steady laughs across 81 minutes and did not mention him, and that is not a slight. The Twins are part of the flock, and the flock is the point; a voice that drew attention to itself would break it. He has now done this for Aardman across four films, which suggests they know what they have.
The honest caveat is the one the whole career carries. Nearly all of it is supporting, and we have no evidence of what he would do with the centre of a frame, because nobody has given it to him. Michael is the exception, and even Michael is a man defined by his relationship to somebody else. Coogan is the collaborator who has got the most out of him, across three projects, and the reason is simple: Partridge needs someone to be decent to him, and Greenall does decent better than most.
If you want to see the best of him, it is the first series of I'm Alan Partridge, and it is worth the evening on its own account. If you have small children, you have already heard a good deal of him without knowing it.
Biography
Simon Greenall is an English actor, voice artist, writer and producer. He trained at the Manchester School of Theatre.
Greenall is known for playing Michael in the BBC series I'm Alan Partridge (1997–2002) and the film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa (2013). He appeared in the sketch series Big Train (1998) and has voiced characters including Captain Barnacles in the Octonauts franchise and the twins in the Shaun the Sheep films (2015, 2019). His other television credits include Mr Skinner in Doctor Who (2006) and roles in Doctor Who spin-offs and various comedies.
