Special celebrity guest for this blog, Alan Partridge
For this (parody) blog I am
very honoured and excited to welcome the curiously compelling Alan Partridge as
a special celebrity guest. I have followed Alan’s television and radio career
closely over the past three decades and I have always found him to be an
endlessly earnest, (self) interested, occasionally informative and at times
even entertaining character.
Keen to be seen as a hero in
these strange pandemic times, Alan has been reaching out to various
blogs and websites with ideas on how he can contribute to the common good and ‘the
betterment of man all over this planet we call Earth’ (his words). In making such a contribution, his only condition would be that he could make
a new 'Partridge-centric' (his phrase) television series about the experience. I was one of those who sent a
reply to the generic email that landed in my inbox this morning from his long serving
assistant, Lynn Benfield.
Almost immediately after I
replied to the email, I received a phone call directly from the great man himself
and we (he) decided to plan the interview there and then. In view of current travel
restrictions, I could not take up his initial kind invitation to visit him at Denton
Abbey, his Norwich ‘massive mansion’ (his words) so we decided to conduct the
interview over the phone. Alan was keen to highlight how he could ‘become a
humble champion for the world in this time of need’ (his words), drawing from
his ‘world-class broadcasting and journalistic skills combined with an easy
charisma, appealing to men and women alike, both intellectual and working-class
and of all colours and none’ (again, his words).
I have to admit that the
interview felt a little stilted from the outset. I had a strong impression that
Alan had a definite list of items to cover and I felt that he was nudging me
along to suit his own agenda.
Here’s a summary of what we
covered initially at least, before the interview became increasingly one sided. Towards the end, Alan was sounding like he was merely reading out a prepared script focused on his
development of a new television series.
Alan and handwashing
Alan began by outlining how,
even before there was ever any knowledge or mention of ‘this COVID-19 debacle’
(his words), that he had already devised a ‘super-hygienic’ method
for hand-washing. He shared with me a video clip from his most recent television
outing, ‘This Time, with Alan Partridge’. I told him that it felt like he was
clumsily shoe-horning in this clip in order to make him suddenly relevant in the fight against COVID-19.
He dismissed my observation, saying that the clip had nothing to do with shoes or indeed horns but it was all to do with hand-washing. He went on to tell me how he has patented the hand-washing method (he refers to it as Partridgean handwashing) but he is willing to share the technique with world governments for a small fee and the condition of state funding for a 'thought-disturbing' (his term) documentary about how he devised it.
A still from Alan’s demonstration of Partridgean super-hygienic handwashing
And here is a link to the actual handwashing video:
Alan’s
CV
Once he had finished with
the handwashing discussion, Alan moved me on swiftly to give an overview of
his ‘meteoric’ (his word) rise to fame in the early 1990s with the radio show
‘Knowing Me Knowing You’, followed by a televised version of the show, the
series ending prematurely when he accidentally shot a guest live on air.
Alan in his younger years
Alan live on air with Forbes McAllister, moments before accidentally shooting him (Alan describes this as 'my very own JFK in Dallas Texas moment', except that Forbes McAllister - and not Alan - was the actual shooting victim)
After the ‘shooting fiasco’
(Alan’s words), Alan parted company with the BBC (his decision, he stressed to
me on a number of occasions) and did some ‘gritty, fly-on-the-wall documentary
making' (Alan’s words) for two seasons of ‘I’m Alan Partridge’. Then followed
‘Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge’, a feature film ('Alan Partridge:
Alpha Papa'), various other ‘televisual jewels and gems’ (his words again) such
as ‘Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life’ and ‘Alan Partridge’s
Scissored Isle’.
As an example of his ‘classic
clothing elegance and easy camera charm’, he asked me to include the image below (Alan's self-styled 'l'homme du sport' look),
from the mid 1990s when he was enjoying 'the early cream of my youth' (Alan's phrase). Also of particular relevance to this blog, Alan developed in the 1990s a specific look that he refers to as 'sports casual'.
L'homme du sport - a unique Partridgean look, modelled by Alan in Paris, 'the well known uber-posh fashion city' (Alan's words)
And here's the video clip from which that image is taken (and also keep an eye out for Alan's 'sports casual' look):
Alan the sports commentator
Having run me through his 'glittering
crown of televisual family jewels’ (his own, somewhat mixed up metaphor), Alan brought me back,
rather abruptly, to his early days as a sports commentator with ‘On the Hour’.
Although described at the time by reviewers as being ‘hapless’, 'woefully
inadequate’ and ‘comically out of his depth, in terms of both sporting and broadcasting knowledge’, Alan seems to feel that this was
the high point of his early broadcasting career.
Here is a still from Alan's time as a sports presenter, his first love (apparently):
Alan as sports presenter on 'On the Hour' - he insisted on 'Sport' in large lettering behind him, for clarity regarding his role. He later clarified in one of his autobiographies, 'I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan', that the sign was in fact 'a savvy move to get the the deaf on side'.
And here are some video clips from
that era.
In this first clip, Alan interviews a jockey and initially ('quite understandably', according to Alan) mistakes him for a child:
In this first clip, Alan interviews a jockey and initially ('quite understandably', according to Alan) mistakes him for a child:
And in this next clip, Alan is doing some 'orgasmic commentary' on 'men in shorts with fast balls' (again, his phrases).
Finally, the television series proposal
Alan then nudged our
conversation on to football (he simply startled me into silence by shouting ‘football!’), referring to my earlier blog on the
non-completion of the current season: https://sportyman2020.blogspot.com/2020/03/football-life-and-death.html
Being a proud Norwich man, I would have thought that Alan would be happy to see
the current Premier League season declared null and void, as Norwich City look highly
likely to be relegated down to the Championship as the table currently stands. However, Alan has some ideas on how he can capitalize on Norwich's poor season. ‘I’m visualizing a televisual football journey for Norwich over the next
few years’, he began. I could hear papers being ruffled and what sounded like
his assistant Lynn prompting him in the background. I started to feel like Alan
was making some kind of pitch for a new television series and I was reminded of
that incident in a restaurant with BBC Chief Commissioning Editor Tony Hayers
from all those years ago:
Alan pitching 'high brow ideas that were sadly before their time' (his words) to Tony Hayers, Commissioning Editor with the BBC
And here's some video footage from that meeting:
Alan then goes on: ‘Following their hopefully inevitable relegation
this season, I will faithfully follow Norwich in their fight down in the Championship next season as they
attempt to get back with the Premier League big boys. Norwich like trying to
hang out with big boys and I want to enjoy that experience with them’. He
paused and I could hear him snapping a comment at Lynn about the ‘inadvertently
homoerotic wording’ of what she seemed to have written for him.
‘So what I’m proposing is
that I will be there at the last few Norwich games this season, hanging around
the stands and interviewing sad fans blubbering and crying, as they seem to do when relegated, but not getting to the point of taking
their shirts off to display man-boobs, as they do in places like Newcastle and Sunderland (he chuckles as he pronounces these placenames using a rather generic northern English accent).
Then the series will really get underway properly for the 2020-2021 football
season, when Norwich have to battle their way back up to the Premier League’.
At this stage, I find it hard to interrupt Alan, so I just let him
talk.
‘I will attend all Norwich
home games (assuming I get unfettered access to a corporate box where I can mix with
local dignitaries, along with a generous appearance fee) and I may even attend a selection of the away games (weather
and time permitting, travel and subsistence expenses to be covered fully by Norwich City FC). At the home games, I will introduce each match on the
stadium public announcement system, possibly with some self-selected background
fresh musical soft-rock accompaniment (e.g. ELO, Bee Gees or the ever reliable and
vastly underrated Swedish outfit Abba). I will hold impromptu interviews with
proud Norwich fans. I have the common touch, even with simple football folk,
so this item should work a treat’.
I hear another rustle of papers as it seems
that Lynn is handing Alan some more reading material.
‘Then at half-time I will
bring on a special celebrity guest and interview them in a mock-up of my Denton
Abbey study, set in the centre-circle of the pitch. This will help
keep the crowds calm and completely silent for the half-time break, preventing
them from fighting or from shouting out those ghastly and often poorly rhyming football chants’.
For the half-time mini-chat-show with celebrity guests, Alan plans to 'strike a perfect balance between intellectual and, bearing in mind the audience, football-casual' (his words), conducted in a mock-up replica of his Denton Abbey study
‘Throughout the match, I
will also occasionally come on to the public announcement system to shout words
of encouragement at the Norwich lads when needed (e.g. just prior to kicking
a penalty goal-shot). Likewise, I will lead the crowd in booing and hissing mercilessly at the opposition teams
when they’re in similarly crucial field positions. I will thus become a kind of twelfth man for the team, giving them a, let's face it, much needed edge. A camera crew will monitor every second of
this season long journey, nay odyssey, and we will then package it as a 12 part series for sale to the highest bidder; I'm talking Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc. and I may consider mere terrestrials such as the BBC. The series will have some similarities to that charming little ‘Sunderland 'Til I Die’ documentary, but it will be more, well, middle
class. It will be more intellectual and far less emotional - less football and man-boobs and more Partridge’.
And still he goes on:
‘If Norwich are promoted,
then we will repeat the series in the Premier League campaign of 2021-2022, when Norwich are aiming for top class sports awards such as the Community Shield. But if
Norwich continue in the Championship, or are relegated again, then I will just
repeat the series wherever they are. Whatever happens, I will have guaranteed
material for top class television every football season, forever’. There is a triumphal tone to his voice as he says the
word ‘forever’ and I imagine that he is smiling broadly and expectantly, similar perhaps to the image below.
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