It's a Sterne old place

IT'S more than possible that Steve Coogan had never heard of Coxwold before last year. Why would this small Hambleton village be on the radar of a Mancunian whose most famous creation, Alan Partridge, hails from Norwich?

Rob Brydon and Dylan Moran - Welsh and Irish comedians respectively - and US X-Files star Gillian Anderson were most likely unacquainted with this remote spot too, sitting 18 miles north of York.

Stephen Fry, on the other hand, would have known all about it. He knows everything.

All this illustrious group are now well aware of Coxwold. They are the stars of A Cock And Bull Story, the film inspired by clergyman Laurence Sterne's novel.

This hilarious and utterly original book, an instant sensation after the first volume came out in 1759, was completed in Coxwold after the author was made vicar of the parish as a reward for his literary success.

Sterne moved into the village's medieval parsonage, which he promptly renamed Shandy Hall after his fictional hero. Today it is a museum and arts centre dedicated to the author. Its curator, Patrick Wildgust, is convinced Sterne would have been delighted by the playful movie adaptation of his novel.

"He would have loved it. He certainly would have loved all the attention."

A Cock And Bull Story went on general release yesterday.

Before that it had been premiered at the Haymarket in London's West End. Patrick Wildgust went along with artist Martin Rowson, who has produced a beautifully illustrated version of Sterne's book - The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, to give its full title.

"We watched the limos arrive with the stars and the people gathered behind the crush bars in a place right at the heart of London where Sterne would have been in the 18th century," Patrick said.

"That was when he caused a fantastic stir and was a very famous celebrity. And it was all happening 250 years later."

Afterwards he hobnobbed with the great and the glamorous at a party nearby. "It was just a jolly time," he said.

The book is supposedly a life story, but is so disrupted by digressions and asides that any plot is buried. Instead readers just sit back and enjoy meeting a parade of comic characters.

Movie material? Clearly not.

"This had never crossed my mind," Patrick admits. "Because nobody had stuck at it before it seemed as though it was something that couldn't be done."

That was before director Michael Winterbottom took the book in hand.

"What Michael has done is what I think Sterne did in the 1700s, which is to capture the spirit of the time," Patrick said.

"I think the film's brilliant. I've now seen it five times. Quite genuinely, each time you see it there's another little aspect to it. It's a very clever and intelligent film."

True to a central theme of the book, our shifting identities, the stars all play versions of themselves as well as Sterne's eccentric characters. Stephen Fry takes on the role of Parson Yorick - and also that of Patrick Wildgust, contemporary curator of Shandy Hall.

"We're so similar - same build, we have the same intellect!" laughs Patrick. "He's obviously very bright and he seems to be able to improvise to order, like the best comedians can."

In his role as curator, Fry improvises an explanation of the book, something that Patrick has to do regularly for the benefit of visitors who haven't read it.

The scene took a day to film, and is the only part of the film based at Shandy Hall. Even with the extension Sterne added, the building was too cramped for movie purposes and so Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk stands in (more identity swapping again).

Nevertheless, Patrick has been fully involved in the film's development, and even hosted the world premiere of the film in the village last year. He was on hand throughout the production to fill any gaps in the crew's knowledge about both book and author.

"As well as my own knowledge I am a portal to other Sterne experts around the world," he said. "It was a very happy thing to work on."

Patrick hopes the film will provide a major boost to the profile of Shandy Hall. He has been involved with the museum for three years, living there for the past 18 months.

"It's like going into the Castle Museum and having a part of it where you could sit down and read a paper and have your evening meal," he says.

"The most interesting part of the job is that, on the whole, people who are interested in Laurence Sterne are very interesting people, they really are."

The former English teacher has created Asterisk* at Shandy Hall, which is the "centre for the study of narrative" - in tribute to Sterne's free style of storytelling. This three-year programme will commission new art works, host artists-in-residence and establish an international forum on the internet.

Already British artist Patrick Caulfield, who died last year, has designed a tapestry called Pause On The Landing inspired by a comic episode in Tristram Shandy when he gets waylaid halfway down a staircase by a man who won't stop talking. That hangs in the British Museum - on the landing of course.

The exhibitions and workshops won't take over Coxwold, Patrick says. "I don't want to ruin anything. I don't want to make this into another Heartbeat, for God's sake.

"The thing that's wonderful about this place is it's black when you go outside at night. You get the most fantastic heavenly display. The last thing I'd want to do is change it.

"It's hardly changed since Sterne was here."

London movie premieres are all very exciting, but you get the feeling that Patrick wants to be nowhere else than Coxwold.

Shandy Hall is open every Wednesday and Sunday afternoon from May. Parties welcome at any time of year by appointment: (01347) 868465

For more information about Asterisk*, see www.asterisk.org.uk

Updated: 15:49 Friday, January 20, 2006