Steve Coogan as "the King of Soho" Paul Raymond
The Alan Partridge star is playing the "eccentric character" in a new biopic from Michael Winterbottom, The Look of Love
Some bad news: Michael Winterbottom’s biopic about the notorious Soho porn king and property baron Paul Raymond isn’t going to be released under its delightful working title Paul Raymond's Wonderful World of Erotica.
Some good news: you can finally get your first look at Alan Partridge star Steve Coogan in character as Raymond on the poster for the film, which is now known as The Look of Love.
Based on Paul Willetts's colourful biography of Raymond, the movie promises a wry look at the life of someone deemed “an eccentric character” by Coogan.
Talking about the film, Coogan pledged that audiences can expect laughs and sauce aplenty from the biopic. He said: "Like 24 Hour Party People, it's a very British story about an eccentric character at the centre of pivotal events in British culture.
"I love the film. It has that strange combination of comedy and tragedy that Michael Winterbottom manages to pull off with a real deftness of touch. Like very few films these days it's actually about something without being portentous. Oh and there's lots of naked ladies in it too!"
As well as Coogan, The Look of Love features turns from Anna Friel, Imogen Poots, Tamsin Egerton, Stephen Fry, Matt Lucas, David Walliams and Chris Addison.
The Look of Love will be released in British cinemas on Friday 8 March 2013.
Paul Raymond, who died a multimillionaire in 2008, worked variously as a spiv and a stage clairvoyant before making his fortune publishing top-shelf magazines like Razzle and Mayfair. Later in his life he invested in property, buying up vast swathes of Soho real estate, and opened the notorious strip club The Raymond Revuebar. A showman as well as a pornographer, his motto was "nudity without crudity".
