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

Carol was right. What had I become? A Royal Norfolk Fair-forgetting ogre of a man. I slumped into the shower (which was just a curtained-off area at one end of the bath), decided not to turn it on and sobbed. 66

If you’d told me in the late 80s that one day my local branch of Tandy would shut its doors to the public so that Alan Partridge could browse its electricals in peace, I’d have thought you were mad. If you’d told me that they would do this at the height of the Christmas shopping period, I’d probably have spat on your back. Yet in December 1993 and December 1994 and December 1995, this is exactly what happened. The question of course, is how …

There was no doubt about it, Carol was on the money. I had become a monster. It was as if I was one kind of person in my London life (not a monster) and an altogether different type in my Norwich life (a monster). And I’d guess that the transition between the two would have taken place somewhere in between. Let’s say Manningtree if I was on the train and Newmarket if I was driving, defaulting to Silverley if I’d plumped for the B-roads.

In London I may have been just another face in an already star-studded media landscape, but in Norwich I was now a seriously big dog. I was receiving more sexual advances than ever before, many of them from women. Every time I entered a wine bar heads would turn. Or alternatively people would just swivel their stools round so they didn’t have to strain their necks.

If I’d been a philanderer, this period in my life would have been a turkey shoot. I could have gone out for a drink in any bar in Norwich and left with at least a dozen middle-aged woman plucked, gutted, and slung over my shoulder. With sex at my place to follow.

Of course the local men-folk didn’t like this. Even my old Our Price buddy Paul Stubbs seemed to have his nose put out of joint. He ambled over to me one night as I was picking through some bar snacks.

‘What size are your feet, Alan?’

‘I’m an 11,’ I replied, tossing an olive sky-ward.

‘Well I suggest you buy some 12s.’

‘Oh yeah? How come?’

‘Because you’re getting too big for your boots!’

Even accounting for the fact that I never wore boots, this was a good line. And as he ran up and down the wine bar high-fiving a random selection of other jealous males, Stubbs knew it. As I caught the olive – which admittedly had been in the air for a long time – in my mouth, I knew this had been a shot across the bows. But like so many others, it was a warning I chose to ignore.

But my new-found clout in Norfolk was probably most noticeable in my voiceover work. For years I’d played second fiddle to Pete Farley. Now this guy was good. Name any of the major advertising campaigns from ’86 through to ’91 (Dunfield Carpets, CDA Automotive, Arlo Wholefoods) and Farley was always there or thereabouts. All the rest of us got were the crumbs off his table.

It’s not even like we could go foraging into Suffolk for scraps. Because Farley had it sewn up there too. The first of a new breed, he was truly pan-Anglian. Rumour had it that his tentacles even stretched up the fens to Cambridge. The guy was bullet-proof.

Once in every while me and the rest of the boys would meet up for a few pints. As the guest ale flowed, we’d plot how to bring him to his knees. It was nothing sinister (we weren’t like that), we just wanted a fair shot at the big jobs. The exception to this – and he’ll chuckle when he reads this – was fellow voiceover artist Vic Noden (think ‘Asprey Motors – stunning vehicles, stunning prices’).

Now Noden would really do a number on Farley. By 9pm he’d have wished every terminal illness under the sun on him. By 10pm, and with us all the worse for wear, he’d have infected the wife too. And by closing time, well, let’s just say Farley’s kids weren’t long for this world either! We’d all be crying with laughter.

Except when we’d all bid each other good night, jumped in our cars and driven home, the same conclusion had always been reached. Farley could not be toppled.

And then one day along came On the Hour. All of a sudden, Alan Gordon Partridge was box office (in Norwich). No longer a quiet little mouse, now I would roar like a lion. 67 Gone were the days of doing second-tier work for a few shekels here and there. Now some of the biggest names in corporate Norfolk were wangling four-figure deals in my face like a large willy. And believe me, it felt good.

The other day I pulled out my 1992 diary. I dusted it down, buffed it off and allowed myself a peek inside at the companies I’d lent my voice to. It read like a Who’s Who of the companies I’d done work for in ’92.

Work literally rolled in that year – most of it enjoyable. There was the odd engagement that I found unsettling, but you take the rough with the smooth. One spring evening, for example, I provided commentary over the PA for a private greyhound racing event for a group of local businessmen, at a track I’m not able to name. I was well paid and given unlimited buffet access but only realised at the last minute that the dogs were chasing an actual rabbit. And by then, I’d already committed to doing the commentary.

I fulfilled the commitment to the best of my abilities, consoling myself at the end of each race with the knowledge that I was being given a small window into what it would have been like in medieval times to be hung, drawn and quartered.

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