It started with a kiss, like the initial contact between the Titanic and the iceberg. By all accounts the lift in which the British comedian Steve Coogan met the American rocker Courtney Love shook for 15 minutes and for the next two weeks the residents of the couple’s Los Angeles hotel suffered from earthquake anxieties.

Fate could not have chosen a more ill-starred or improbable pairing for a match which, like Love’s reported pregnancy, they both deny. Yet the Manchester-born Coogan, creator of toe-curling media “personality” Alan Partridge, does have certain things in common with the scandalous widow of rock legend Kurt Cobain — a libidinous reputation, a well-documented love of white powder and a trail of human wreckage.

Their epic fortnight of passion has been the source of much media merriment and incredulity all week, after their “steamy romps” were catalogued in graphic detail by a tabloid. Under the headline “Wild girl Courtney reveals shock truth about her drug-fuelled Coogan sex fling”, Love was reported to have confirmed: “Yes, I am pregnant with Steve’s baby.”

Unfortunately, she would say no more. A good tabloid rule of thumb is never to allow the facts to get in the way of a good story, but providentially a friend of Love was only too willing to spill the beans. They may prove too spicy for those of a delicate disposition.

According to the friend, the baby was conceived at the famous Sunset Marquis hotel in West Hollywood, where the 39-year-old comic was staying in his bid to relaunch himself as a film star, and confirmed a few days later through a home pregnancy kit.

The “queen of grunge”, 41, allegedly told her friend that Coogan was insatiable, fuelled by Viagra, drugs and sex toys. “It was literally nonstop sex. Steve is a f****** sex addict and has a major substance problem,” Love reportedly complained.

In one of their rare cigarette breaks, Love is alleged to have said that Coogan wanted to bring in a prostitute, which Love rejected. Worried that they had had unprotected sex, she warned: “If he’s given me anything, I swear to God I’m going to cut his dick off!” What really mortified her, her friend claimed, was the loss of street cred. “Tell me honestly, what does it make me look like that I slept with Alan Partridge?” In fact, few Americans have ever heard of Alan Partridge, let alone recognise Coogan as the creator of the nerd from Norwich. He is better known as Phileas Fogg in last year’s $120m film Around the World in 80 Days.

No matter, the following day both were protesting their innocence. “It’s nonsense,” said Coogan’s spokesman, while not issuing an outright denial. A statement released by Love’s agency was more blunt: “Courtney Love wishes to make it clear that she denies recent stories suggesting she is pregnant or has had a relationship with Steve Coogan. She confirms that she and Steve are good friends and have met a few times in Los Angeles.”

Their disclaimers were capped by news that Love had turned for support to her friend Pamela Anderson, the former Baywatch star whose marathon sex sessions with former husband Tommy Lee gave her particular insight into this human weakness, and that Love was staying at Anderson’s Malibu mansion while she decided whether to keep the baby.

Given the couple’s previous form, their statements were not taken at face value. Love, a former stripper and lead singer in a band named Hole (whose songs have been characterised as bad sex, bad drugs or a bad day at an abortion clinic), is a heroin addict in rehab who numbers among her former paramours Russell Crowe, Ben Affleck and Edward Norton.

Love’s husband, Cobain, lead singer of the cult band Nirvana and hailed as the voice of the 1990s generation, killed himself with a shotgun in 1994. Currently on probation for three drug and assault convictions, Love has several times come close to losing custody of their 13-year-old daughter, Frances Bean.

Infelicities such as Love’s famous air rage incident on a London-bound plane in 2003 (“F*** off, I hope you die,” she screamed at air crew) might be expected from the daughter of a man who boasted of disciplining her with a pit bull terrier.

But the way that Coogan, son of strict Roman Catholic parents, has let his private life go spectacularly off the rails is more of a mystery. His record of lap dancers, cocaine and broken relationships marks him out as the latest in a long line of tragic, self-destructive funny men stretching back to Lenny Bruce, Tony Hancock and his hero Peter Sellers.