Alan Partridge - I, Partridge - We Need to Talk About Alan

Of course it wasn’t a winner at all. Not being privy to my train of thought, they had no idea what this ‘tea’ prefix was. As far as they were concerned their new colleague had just accused them all of having AIDS. Yet they didn’t have AIDS. And though the colourful lifestyle of one of them certainly put him in the ‘at risk’ category, he wouldn’t go full-blown until 2003.

No, I was wrong to suggest they all suffered from a terminal beverage-based illness, whether that was tea AIDS, coffee cancer or hot chocolate tumours. I was so ashamed by my behaviour that I retreated into my shell like a turtle would if it realised it was about to have a car reverse over its head. (And for the record, Fernando shouldn’t have let it out of its cage in the first place.) And it was in my shell that I would stay for most of my time on On the Hour.

To be honest, you’d find this unfriendly attitude across the whole BBC News and Current Affairs team. It saddened me because the department was populated by heroes of mine, faces I’d watched time and again on the news while eating my dinner: pork chops and gravy, beans on toast, hot pot, chicken pie and chips, maybe even a coq au vin, sometimes just a quick can of soup. Any meal, it doesn’t matter really. I’ve just realised I’m listing things I have for dinner when I should be listing faces I’d seen on the news. But I’m just saying I’d seen these people on the news and respected them. But their reassuring televisual demeanour was, I realised, a facade. In person, they didn’t like to mingle at all. Not even with each other. 63

So yes, in London, I was very much in my shell. But back in Norwich, things couldn’t have been more different. Anyway, this chapter’s over now.

58Press play on Track 12.

59For years, I guarded the Alan Desk Design jealously, but in 2007 I concluded reluctantly that I was never going to successfully monetise the concept and so I made it – and this isn’t arrogant – into my gift for the world.

60Press play on Track 13.

61Comprised of a hidden network of mysterious subterranean tunnels – how did they get there? Where do they end? – it’s at work for 18 hours a day hurtling busy Londoners around their capital at almost twice the speed of walking. Meanwhile at night, with all the humans gone, it is said that the station platforms become a place for the capital’s innumerate rats to gather for bouts of high-energy unprotected sex. It’s basically dogging for rats.

62For a long time I’d actually lobbied to get one at home. Carol and the kids had said no. With the best will in the world, those kettle-crazed Luddites wouldn’t know progress if it came up and scalded them in the face.

63Many was the time I’d see Nicholas Witchell sitting all alone in the canteen. It was a shame, because years later I realised we both shared a love of collecting butterflies. He has an enormous collection in his London flat. I like to imagine that after a hard day following the royals, he returns home, sits in an armchair with a mug of cocoa and waits as his entire herd of butterflies greet him by flitter-fluttering their way over and landing on his naked body. But I know for a fact this can’t happen because his entire collection is dead, each one attached to a display case with a single pin through the heart.

Chapter 8

A Mighty Big Fish for A Pond this Size 64

‘WHO ARE YOU? I don’t bloody know you any more!’

Carol was shouting at me, tears streaming down her ruddy 65 cheeks, as I tried to barge past her. She grabbed at my jowls, imploring me to look at her. But she was right. This was a different Alan Partridge and he wasn’t in the mood.

I eased her out of the way and put the takeaway menus – the glossy food-describing documents that she’d so carefully placed in my hands – back into the top drawer. It should have been second drawer down but I wasn’t thinking straight.

She swung me around and fanned some of my breath into her nostrils. ‘Have you … been drinking??’ Her voice was shaking. I turned away. I’d had a half-bottle of wine – I don’t remember the colour – on the train back home and was out of control.

Friday would usually have been our takeaway night, but tonight I wasn’t hungry – I’d been in the BBC club, enjoying a buffet put on to celebrate 26 years of Tomorrow’s World. (For the uninitiated, the BBC club is a subsidised bar-cum-restaurant, laid on by licence fee payers for the talent and crew of the BBC alike. It provided a public-free environment for BBC staffers to carouse and unwind, to share ideas and to complain about working conditions. It was where a star-struck Alan Partridge would buy a sandwich most days in the hope of spotting Esther Rantzen, Andy Crane, Karl Howman.)

This was a new experience for me. I was starry-eyed, my mind addled with possibility and adventure, recognition and more adventure. Which is how I found myself seduced that night by the lure of glamour, sausage rolls and a chat with Maggie Philbin.

Not many people had turned up to the soiree – the 25th anniversary in 1990 had been a much bigger do – but I had lost track of time, arguing with Howard Stableford about the possibility of time travel, and had missed my usual train. On the next scheduled service, I thought I’d wash down the rolls with a drink. Frig it, I said aloud, why not? I work hard, it’s Friday night and I want a glass of wine (still can’t remember the colour).

I had some crisps as well, and the sliced potato snacks had lopped a fair bit off my appetite. I didn’t want a bloody take-away. I wanted another slice of quiche and another half of bitter. I wanted to be back in the BBC club, the happy filling in a Kate Bellingham/Judith Hann sandwich, not sat in with Carol as she decorates her face with spare rib sauce.

And when she handed me the menus, my response had been withering. ‘I’m not peckish. I don’t want to eat a take-away meal tonight.’

That’s when she shoved me and burst into uncontrollable (but still annoying) sobs. ‘Who are you? I don’t bloody know you any more!’

Yes, reader, London had changed me. My career was going stratospheric, with millions of radio listeners hungrily eating the sound of my voice as it fed them sports-centred info. It was all so new to me. New and intoxicating and fun.

I slumped in front of the TV and Carol sat next to me, ordering a takeaway for one. Armed with a new understanding of London broadcasting, I was able to provide a kind of Director’s Commentary on current affairs TV shows, pointing out what the presenters ordered from the BBC club, if they were taller/shorter than they appeared on TV and generally providing helpful info on the production process. Carol said nothing.

Sue Cook appeared on screen, and in my tipsiness I began to talk in gushing terms about her. She’d always reminded me of Jeff Archer’s wife, Lady Archer. Sophisticated and demure. But having got to know her a little bit, I’d realised she had a wonderful sense of humour and had a loathing of other presenters that I found quite wonderful. I mentioned this to Carol and she ran to the bedroom, really fast and loud. I climbed into bed next to her and thought it prudent to say nothing. You really can’t win with Carol sometimes.

I muttered something about heading off early the next morning to test drive the new Rover 800 with Gary who directs the Superdrug commercials and she just looked at me.

‘Don’t you know what day it is?’

I mentally rifled through the roller deck of red-letter days: birthdays, anniversaries, deaths. And then it hit me. I stumbled into the bathroom, splashing my face with water so cold it made me go ‘Ah! Ah!’ with each splash.

Tomorrow was the day of the Royal Norfolk Show, and we were to man the Elizabethan craft fair in period dress. This was a Partridge family fixture, absolutely utterly unmissable. And not just out of duty – we always had a really great day, adding ‘–eth’ to our words to sound more Elizabethan and having a bloody good laugh about it.