"A post-modern classic written way before there was any modernism to be post about." That's how Steve Coogan describes The Life And Opinions Of Tristram Shandy in this new film based on that most convoluted of 18th-Century novels.

Or rather that's how the character of Steve Coogan describes it - for, in the self-referential twists and turns of A Cock And Bull Story, the Hove-based comedian, best known as the creator of Alan Partridge, is also required to play himself.

Launching Cinecity, Brighton's three-year-old film festival which runs until December 4 across Brighton and Hove, the latest movie from director Michael Winterbottom (Wonderland, 24 Hour Party People) is a hall of mirrors in which Coogan's real-life professional arrogance and private scandals begin to drive the fictional plot.

Full of literary and typographical jokes and with a faux-autobiographical narration to which Shandy's interfering family continually put pay, Lawrence Sterne's nine bawdy volumes have long been seen as a novel about the impossibility of its own writing.

So Winterbottom has made a film about the impossibility of filming it.

"The novel is really just a daft but heart-warming story about a bunch of people living in a house and behaving idiotically in their own way," explains Winterbottom, " - something I thought could apply quite easily to a film set."

Supposing a schoolyard rivalry which exists between most comics, A Cock And Bull Story centres around the relationship between Steve Coogan and co-star Rob Brydon, whose Keith Barrett character took up where Coogan's edgily real creations had left off. In improvised scenes the two friends/rivals compete over top billing, heel height and for the laughter of the make-up artists.

"I always joke that I discovered Rob," says Coogan. "Well, actually I did. But he blossomed very quickly in his own right and then he got comfortable with me and started taking the piss - in an affectionate way. It would never have worked with anyone who was in the least bit deferential to me. He does things which are risky and uncomfortable and that makes for good comedy."

Shot in three stately homes and with a dream of a cast which includes Dylan Moran, Mark Williams, Stephen Fry and David Walliams, A Cock And Bull Story should do wonders for the name of Tristram Shandy when it goes on general release on December 30. But this special preview will give local audiences a chance to re-evaulate their opinions about one of the city's most famous residents.

"Often the best place to source material is from the truth," says Coogan.

"While I feel vulnerable about my personal life being intruded on by the newspapers, using it in a drama like this, with a director I trust, has been a way of exorcising my insecurities about it. Comedy is best the closer to the bone it gets."

Cinecity takes place at venues across Brighton and Hove and includes UK premieres and previews, shorts and documentaries, screenings in the cells of the former Brighton Police Station and a special programme exploring the Cuban capital, Havana. For full details visit www.cine-city.co.uk