How to make professional connections by Alan Partridge

A lot of people are surprised to hear I’m a keen advocate of LinkedIn. I’m seen very much as a people person – with good reason. When it comes to professional interaction, I like to do it man to man. A handshake after a game of squash. A clinked pint glass in a gastropub. Back slaps and big laughs through mouthfuls of steak and wine. To me, that’s business.

Whereas LinkedIn users find solace in what you might call virtual connections tappity-tap-tapping smartphone messages on a quiet train or scrolling content at home with the blue light of an iPad illuminating their blankly impassive faces in an otherwise dark bedroom.

What is a friend? Someone you spend a lot of time with, united in the pursuit of a shared objective which you work towards in exchange for money? Wrong – you’re thinking of a colleague. Someone you’re close to then, with whom you shared a bond of affection, warmth and trust, and has the same mum as you. Nope, that’s a sibling. Alright then, someone unrelated to you with whom you enjoy spending time, and who makes you laugh and lets you stroke them. Also wrong – that’s a dog.

Although I’ve enjoyed seriously good online connections with some seriously good LinkedIn users – Beth Greaves, marketing manager at Borrowdale Executive Vehicles; Jim Snell, MD at Snell Animal Feed; Penelope Troome, legal executive at Wardle Wardle & Wardell; Stephen K Gribben III, VP, marketing EMEA at Hoopla Plastic Toys Inc – I honestly think more of you have it in you to function adequately in a social setting. Right now few of you do.

I don’t propose to go into the reasons for that – in some cases, it’s shyness or a Kermit-the-frog-style ‘nerd voice’. In others, confidence isn’t the problem so much as having ripe breath or hairy hands.

Whatever the reason – and as I say, I don’t have time to go into what it may be; it could be simply eating loudly – whatever that reason… and it could even be that you say pacific when you mean specific, again now is not the time to go into any of that. Whatever the reason, LinkedIn users tend to struggle when it comes to giving a good account of themselves in a real-world environment.

Now some of you will take issue with that. ‘I have loads of LinkedIn followers, and I’ve never had a problem making friends.’ And yet you’re reading this right now on LinkedIn, whereas other people, ‘friend people’, aren’t are they? They’re sitting down to dinner with loved ones, hosting a cheese evening with friends from school, talking cars with the guys, cradling a newborn baby or succeeding in business.

No disrespect intended – but good business is about relationships. Ask anyone from Matt Hancock to Aaron Banks and they’ll tell you: where possible, you do business with friends.

I’ve got a lot of time for LinkedIn – it’s a valuable resource when you want to view someone’s mugshot so you know if they’re Hilary a man or Hilary a woman. Or if you need to know if a US contact goes by Steve Gribben of Stephen K Gribben III. Beyond that, it ain’t massively my bag. It’s a forum that often describes itself as a marketplace of ideas. You know what else calls itself a marketplace of ideas? A marketplace. Those covered ones where stallholders wear money belts and the ideas you overhear are generally old or unworkable. 

So why am I on here? Well, cards on the table, my initial sign-up came in 2019 and let’s call that what it was – a social media strategy devised by the marketing guys at Audible.co.uk who, and I’m guessing here, identified the LinkedIn demographic as the most likely to buy audiobooks. And they’re probably right – you’re guys who want to consume podcasts and books while sitting astride a rowing machine. Or driving to a sales conference in Birmingham. Or power walking before brunch. You’d no more read a book than I’d watch a television programme on ITV2. Knowing all this, the marketing boffins at Audible signed me up, hoping I’d wheedle my way in, butter you up, network with you, and kiss your sweet ass cheeks in the hope you’ll warm to me and listen to my podcast.

But I’ve grown fond of each and every one of you. And since I’m here, I thought why not help a few of you out with The Alan Partridge Guide to Making Connections If You’re A LinkedIn User.

1.    Shave your hands. Hairy-handed men engender feelings such as unease, mistrust, disdain and revulsion. It’s a fact that humans like to be around smooth-handed people. Yet of the men I’ve seen on LinkedIn more than half have hairy hands.

2.    Volume. Normal conversation tends to be be around 60db. Lower if you’re Kirsty Young, a lot higher if you went to public school. But aim for 60.

3.    Learn to sidle. Eavesdrop in a room until you find a conversation you can follow. Latch on, and very very slowly get closer and closer, murmuring agreement louder and louder. Before long you’ll be inside the conversation and might make a friend.

4.    Fresh breath! Expel a gobful of breath into a cupped hand. If it ain’t fresh, get it fresh.

5.    Cut out the Essex. If you’re from Essex, tone it down generally.

6.    Eye contact. But remember to blink.

7.    Think of things to say. It’s no use expecting a bundle of talking points to pop in your head right on cue. Prepare in advance a bunch of conversational jumping off points: how did you get here? Do you own a car? Do you like cars? What’s your favourite car? Does your wife own a car? What kind of car does your wife own? Have them ready.

8.    Be nice. As my mum used to say, it’s nice to be important but it’s more important to be nice. FYI, she was neither.

9.    Hand-stubble growing back? Shave again.

‘To this day there’s never been a story published suggesting Alan Partridge has tits’

Partridge on life, love, his new podcast, and the difference between an oasthouse and a game larder

 

 

 

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Rich Pelley

Wed Sep 2 2020 – 13:10

 

Turn right out of Norwich railway station, take the number 12 bus, change at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, ride eight stops on the number four towards Swanton Morley, walk 1.1 miles, and you can’t help but spot the twin louvred conical towers of the oasthouse that Alan Partridge calls home.

It is from this very oasthouse that Partridge – raconteur, national treasure, wit – broadcasts his brand new podcast, From the Oasthouse: The Alan Partridge Podcast.

Partridge bounds out to greet me in what appears to be an effusive show of hospitality. He offers a handshake before snapping it back into a more pandemic-appropriate wave. “I am so fine with social distancing,” he says. “Remember, I work in television where you’re forever mauled, hugged and leant on by over-pally floor managers or cackling makeup ladies. Now I can say, ‘Get your hands off me!’ without appearing in any way rude.

He glances at my bag before lowering his voice. “I’d ask that you remove any sandwiches and if you’ve handled any such snack in the last hour, wash your hands quietly and well.”

His dog, he explains – an enormous brown mastiff called Seldom – adores sandwiches. “Less than 0.1 per cent of mastiffs attack,” says Partridge as we sidle past the animal. “Unfortunately, Seldom’s the whole of that 0.1 per cent. The kindest thing I can say is that he’s a statistical anomaly.”

Extensive strapping

Twenty minutes later, with the dog sleeping off a meal of ham and boiled eggs, we sit down at the kitchen table. Does Partridge trust the press, I ask? Was he involved in the phone hacking scandal? “I was concerned enough at the time to have a friend leave a fake message on my voicemail discussing the fact that a high oestrogen count had given me breasts that I was only able to hide with extensive strapping. I wanted to see if it got picked up by a paper. To this day there’s never been a story published suggesting Alan Partridge has tits.”

Alan Partridge in person is just as you’d imagine Alan Partridge off the telly. He’s managed his first post-lockdown haircut. “No longer having to worry about the volume and lustre of my hair, I became a hat man, something I’ve always wanted to try,” he says. “So I’d buy a hat online and then spend a day wearing it. It was only when I answered the door to a smirking Ocado driver while wearing a Jamiroquai hat that I had a moment of clarity . . . ”

He’s sporting a fetching pair of burgundy trousers. “They’re not burgundy,” he corrects me. “They’re ox-blood. Sometimes I’ll just see a colour and think, ‘I want to wear that.’ So I’ll pick it out of a Dulux colour chart and send my assistant to the shops.”

What’s the format of his new podcast?

“Format is the death of chat,” counters Partridge. “Podcasts are strangled by format – talk about your favourite meal, tell us about the adverts you enjoy, tell us about the last time you cried, watch Doctor Who with me. Mine is different. I just yank back the curtain, drop the facade, peel back the warm hood of celebrity and reveal the real me, the raw me, the true me. A be-cardiganed, cuppa-tea-swigging, pair-of-slippers kind of Alan.”

This is one of half a dozen times Partridge mentions tea or cardigans, as if keen to project the air of a man at ease with himself.

“Five years ago, I was swanning around in a complimentary Kia, my name emblazoned on the side, the talk of Norwich – Johnny Big Bollocks, ” he says. “Today . . . ?” He nods outside to a silver saloon. What’s he driving, I ask? “Oh, a Vauxhall, but who cares really? After the year we’ve been through, there are more important things than how much you earn or what racquets club you’re a member of or how sweet your wheels are. And people say, ‘That’s the Insignia GSi, isn’t it? Nine-speed automatic with paddle shift? Keyless entry, e-boost hydraulic brakes, heated front seats with massage functionality?’ And I just chuckle. Some even peer through the window and say, ‘Tell you what, Alan, for a 40k car, this is specced to absolute buggery.’ And I just shrug and, again, chuckle.”

Steering one-handed

Has Partridge been inspired by any other podcasts? “Less other podcasts, more by the excellence we see all around us: a dog leaping to catch a stick, a ballerina doing a brilliant ballet, a forklift truck driver steering one-handed while smoking.”

Having said that, he admits to enjoying the true-crime genre (“Nothing beats settling down with a glass of wine and a plate of sandwiches to be entertained by the ins and outs of a man found battered to death in a hedge”) and is considering using a second series of his podcast to explore the disappearance of a friend who fell from a pier in 2013, never to be found. “I’m just waiting to hear from Audible as they’ve yet to say they definitely want a second series. I’m not worried. It’s just that they said they’d call and thus far they haven’t. It’s fine. They’ve not not called. They’ve just not called.”

Alan Gordon Partridge is allergic to shellfish and was born in King’s Lynn, Norfolk. At school he was nicknamed Smelly Alison Fartridge. “Bullying suggests weakness. I wasn’t bullied. I allowed some pretty dysfunctional kids to reveal their dysfunction through the medium of hitting me. And now everyone knows they’re dysfunctional and I’m clearing a six-figure salary. So remind me – which one of us was bullied?”

Partridge found fame presenting the sports on Radio 4’s On the Hour and BBC Two’s The Day Today. Does he still have an interest in sport?

“Does anyone? Once upon a time, the theme from Grandstand by Keith Mansfield would waft through from the living room and every household would drift to the sofa, like a snake-charmed snake to a snake charmer. But as the BBC lost the rights to blue-riband events, the music developed a sarcastic feel, the bombast that had once led into, say, the Monaco Grand Prix jarring badly with live canoeing from Wiltshire or the Masters snooker from wherever the Masters snooker is from.”

TKMKYWAPCS

On his chat show Knowing Me, Knowing You With Alan Partridge (KMKYWAP for short), Partridge accidentally shot dead a guest during a segment on duelling pistols. During TKMKYWAPCS (The Knowing Me, Knowing You With Alan Partridge Christmas Special), he accidentally punched chief commissioning editor of BBC television Tony Hayers with a turkey. Partridge then pitched Cooking in Prison, Youth Hostelling With Chris Eubank and Monkey Tennis.

Yet F*** Off I’m Fat, Anthea Turner: Perfect Housewife and World’s Craziest Fools, presented by Mr T, have aired on BBC Three.

Is he bitter?

“It’s interesting,” muses Partridge. “I proposed those shows in strict confidence at a private luncheon with Tony Hayers. Somehow, the world and his dog now know about them so I know Hayers must have betrayed my confidence and told people. Does that mean he deserved to die in a tragic accident just weeks later? Yes, I think it does.”

Partridge then presented Up With the Partridge and Norfolk Nights on Radio Norwich (“A TV presenter claiming to prefer radio is like a Hollywood actor claiming their first love is ‘the theatre’ – a clear and obvious lie”), and Mid Morning Matters on North Norfolk Digital, the same radio station where he was later held hostage at gunpoint by fellow DJ Pat Farrell. He returned to live TV in 2019 to co-present BBC One’s flagship current affairs programme This Time, after host John Baskell died. Are there any broadcast media he’d still like to try?

“I’d like to have had a crack at voicing the government’s public information Covid campaign. Nothing against Mark Strong. He has competent delivery and an authoritative voice, but a glance at the numbers suggests Strong just hasn’t worked. I’d love to be considered for the second wave.”

So how does Partridge think the UK government is coping? “Something special is happening with the Conservative party right now,” he says. “I like Boris a lot, although I’ve never met him. He was going to be at a function I was at a few years ago, but apparently he’d just had another baby and was having a small gathering to celebrate hitting double figures. But he’s persuasive. We’re talking about a chap who’s managed to pass himself off as an energetic, sporty ladies’ man despite being morbidly obese with a kind of . . . I want to say collapsing face? Like that evil rabbit at the end of Watership Down. What can I say, I like the guy!”

So what was Norwich like during lockdown? “Norwich is used to repelling unwanted plagues – be they germs, people from Suffolk or invading armies. I remember when my kids were teenagers . . . ” (I interrupt to ask when he last saw his now middle-aged children. “Just before lockdown. They’re shielding so I couldn’t visit anyway. Fernando says he had head cancer and Denise says she’s sometimes diabetic . . . “)

“Anyway, we’d have an enormous Christmas breakfast then go for a big old walk while Carol cooked Christmas lunch. One year, the kids didn’t want to come – I’d bought them a chemistry set, so I get it – so off I set on my own in my new coat, a lovely warm thing. After several miles, I found a world war two pillbox. It was just fascinating to sit inside, imagine the Germans had invaded and picture British soldiers in here, shouting, ‘Take that, Fritz!’ and whatnot. Anyway as I say it’d had been a very big breakfast and this was a very warm coat and long story short, I woke up and it was 2pm on Boxing Day. I didn’t realise until I got home and Carol had taken down all the decorations. So mixed memories there.”

Wilf and Fi

How’s his love life these days?

“Varied. I signed up to an elite dating agency called Echelon, for high wealth/class individuals looking to encounter similar. It’s run by a couple called Wilf and Fi who provide a tightly curated list of potential matches. I was in a very happy sexless relationship for 12 months. We’d kiss, cuddle and talk about the garden. Very pleasant. Just nothing genital. Some of my mates said it must be like going out with a mermaid. They were right. Although one that can’t swim.”

He shows me round the house. Recent spoilsports in the oasthouse field have noted that this particular oasthouse does not possess the visible joints nor the vented fireproof floor required of a traditional 19th-century oasthouse and is more likely to have been a game larder.

“It didn’t used to be anything; it’s a new build, so they’re bang wrong,” he snaps. Meaning it never was an oasthouse? “That’s absolutely correct. In fact, if I come to sell it, I legally have to list it as an oast-style house. It only dates back to 2018. I read somewhere you can age brickwork by power hosing it with black coffee but it just made the house smell like a bank manager’s mouth so I had it cleaned off. Either way, it doesn’t look like a game larder and it’s never been a game larder.”

Partridge suddenly jumps up. “Bugger me, I have to collect Lynn from her physio.” Ah, yes. Partridge’s dedicated assistant Lynn, who has worked for him since the 90s. “She’s just started a 12-month driving ban, so I’m having to ferry her around and subtract the petrol money from her wages. She fell asleep at the wheel after an Irish coffee and crashed into a stationary St John ambulance – people you’d expect to be able to cope in the event of a low-speed collision – but their training went out of the window and they went to pieces. It was only when a second St John ambulance arrived that they were able to restore some semblance of order. The judge made an example of her, which I think she was quietly flattered by.”

Just one more question, I ask, as Partridge shows me the door. What’s the difference between an oasthouse and a game larder anyway? “You dry hops in an oasthouse. You mature dead animals in a game larder. Very different vibes. You might show a Tinder date around an oasthouse and kiss her up against the hops. Would you do that next to the corpse of a baby deer or a bunch of garrotted rabbits? I don’t know, maybe you would.” – Guardian

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The question I’m asked more than any other – more than ‘are you Alan Partridge’ or ‘is that a wig’ or ‘why don’t you have a Norwich accent’ or ‘have you passed an advanced driving course because you drive like you have’ – is this: ‘how can I maximise my creativity?’

Because whatever your profession, whatever game you’re in, you’re only going to become an industry leader if you’re creative.

Creativity can take many forms. It might be Bernard Matthews’ forensic quest to find efficiencies in poultry slaughtering that would allow him to achieve the fabled ‘ten pence turkey’. Or Gary Barlow’s ingenuity both in writing hit pop tracks or seeking to become ever more tax efficient.

True creativity needs to become a habit. It’s no good sitting down to dream up a logo or TV format and thinking you could just summon creativity at the flick of a switch. You need to train that muscle, like Ross Kemp does with his glutes. That means thinking creatively the moment you awake. Think about the way you get out of bed. You always get out of bed the same way – flopping one side of the duvet up, letting both legs dollop over the side, before planting the feet and standing up. Spend a few minutes thinking of another way to leave the bed, a different way to leave the bed. Roly poly off the end; stand on it and jump to the door; have an obese friend jump onto the mattress in a way that catapults you up and out, I don’t know. Just think, see what occurs.

Okay, it’s breakfast. You’d normally slop a bowlful of porridge out of a pan and sit down to eat. Is that it? You’re just going to dole it mouthwards while you stare at the wall? Use your noodle and be creative. Why not use the porridge to exercise the mind muscle. How would you describe porridge to someone who’d never encountered it? What words would you use? Slop, paste, gunk, hot, claggy, silken, gruel, oaty, food, nice, eat, tummy, carbohydrate, coagulated. Any others? Already, your cogs are whirring. You’re in a creative mind space. Why not make a face from the components of the bowl. Two blueberries for eyes. A smear of banana could make a cracking little smile. Almond ears. If it’s thickened enough, use the sharp edge of the spoon to slash a nose down the middle. There it is, think outside the box, be different, be you, be best.

You dress. What were you thinking, shirt and tie? How about just a shirt, open to the sternum? Or a polo shirt with a tie? Or a ribbed, turtle neck sweater in an unusual colour? Cravats can be a great way to explore your creative side. Ditto a beret. Try something different. For crying out loud, be creative.

Time for that video call. Why not do that a little differently – after all they can only see you from the chest up. Why not host the call while sporting some ladies shoes, or scratching your feet with a pumice stone, or doing some lunges? Again, try to be creative. I don’t know how many times I have to say it.

I could go on.

This is an extract from Forward Solutions: An Imbecile’s Guide by Alan Partridge, published here with the kind permission of Alan Partridge. Copyright Alan Partridge. Alan Partridge. 

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Alan Partridge On The New BBC Series Of This Time…

Alan, welcome back! For the uninitiated, what can you tell us about This Time?

It’s what’s known as a magazine show, bottling all of the magic of magazine reading and translating that into 30 minutes of TV. Some people sneer at magazines. But imagine a world without magazines, with readers having to make do with books, newspapers and letters. A chilling prospect.

This Time manages to be all your favourite magazines rolled into one. As informative as the Reader’s Digest, as sassy as Bunty, as entertaining as Private Eye pre-Hislop, as debonaire as Conde Nast Traveler, as fair-minded as The Spectator.

Our goal? To deliver telly people talk about – what BBC execs still refer to as water cooler TV, even when you point out everyone works from home these days so office water coolers are just stagnant receptacles going mouldy round the nozzle.

What kind of subjects does the show cover?

What doesn’t it cover!

But what does it cover?

Well, we’ll cover current affairs, hot button topics, global issues, everyday niggles, some very light politics – pitched at or below GCSE level – all held together with good old fashioned chat, which by the way is baked into the format. We underfill the show by about 30% to allow for nattering. So over the half hour, expect around 20 minutes of content. And the rest of it is left slack to keep the show fresh.

Describe a typical day working on the show.

I like to arrive at the BBC early.

I often bring in a box of doughnuts for the team and say ‘dig in’ while I stand beside the box to ensure no one takes more than their allocated one. It’s a shame I need to police it but this is the modern BBC for you.

The editorial meeting will discuss items we can cover in future episodes. It’s all fairly workaday so I like to hurl in more daring ideas – often just semi-thoughts like ‘zero gravity?’ or ‘live from Broadmoor?’ – and yes, 99.9% of them will be quite rightly discarded. But it’s that 0.1% that could one day scoop us a nomination for a National Television Award.

At lunch, I’ll grab a sandwich and go and look down into the atrium occupied by BBC News to see if I can see them ready the One O’Clock News, while my co-presenter Jennie [Gresham] spends time with her phone.

After lunch, another meeting, this one running through that evening’s show. I tend to tune out of this one. It is possible to over-prepare for a show, and render it stale. Instead I prefer to experience parts of the show as a viewer would – which means sometimes I won’t really know who a guest is until they come on, or what Jennie’s report is about or why the man in my earpiece is saying I have to walk to the other side of the studio.

And then it’s all about getting ready for the show. I’ll sit in hair and make up for half an hour and then retire to my dressing room to instantly redo my hair, unmaking all the mistakes the hair stylist wouldn’t have made if she’d been listening.

Then I dress, do 10 push ups, finish the doughnuts if there are any doughnuts left, and wait for the show to start.

Do you have any input on the stories you feature in the show?

Under the producership of our producer Philip, it’s a green light, open door, free-for-all. Got an idea? Pitch it. Doesn’t have to be a topic to be covered in the show. I might go to him and say, the lighting guy isn’t very good, lose him. Or I think Jennie needs to wear more blusher.

Philip is the Biddy Baxter of This Time, a producer who’s helmed the show since its inception. Sadly he’s leaving because he’s got a younger girlfriend and she wants to go travelling. But we’ll certainly miss him. He’s wonderfully hands off which means he’ll leave you to write your own autocue or deliver video packages without always running them by him

And while things might change under the new producer whoever he (or she!!!!) is, they might not.

What’s it like presenting alongside such a popular presenter as Jennie Gresham?

A keen tennis player and childless, Jennie likes nothing more than catching up on the soaps, reading the Guardian newspaper or shopping for the latest iPads. She’s modern, sassy and wants it all!

It’s fair to say we approach our roles as co-anchors slightly differently. One of us can be seen presenting umpteen other BBC shows from Walking the Lakes with Jennie Gresham to The Unexplored Brontes with Jennie Gresham to Inside John Lewis with Jennie Gresham to Jennie Gresham’s NHS Heroes. The other one prefers to dedicate him- or herself exclusively to This Time because he/she happens to think the show and our viewers deserve that, but each to their own.

How would you describe your working relationship?

We’ve had our ups and downs – it’s like a marriage. Very like a marriage in that we sit next to each on a sofa, we don’t face each other when we talk and there’s no sex or suggestion of sex.

Are we friends? Well, are Ant and Dec friends? Are Holly and Phil? Are Richard and Judy. No, of course not. But we dovetail, at least I do.

And the rest of the team?

Roving reporter Ruth Duggan is a hugely popular member of the team, her charismatic smile redolent of public figures such as Priti Patel. Off air she has a tendency to mutter but on air she’s clear and informative. Yes, I like Ruth very much. Are we bosom buddies? No. She’d probably mutter that ‘bosom buddies’ is sexist and no better than saying ‘mammary mates’ or ‘chest chums’. But that’s part of her wonderfully dry sense of humour. Yes, I like Ruth very much.

Simon Denton is our social media man. His role has slightly expanded, as has he due to inactivity during lockdown. He’s keen to take on more of a presenting brief, but that’s something we can revisit at the back end of next year or the first half of 2023. And talk about funny! From puns to quips to voices (he now has ten voices) to wry sideways looks at things, this guy comedically has it all and provides some welcome light relief, particularly after Ruth’s been on.

And then there’s crew who I won’t name. They’re broadly fine.

As for me, I’m just an old codger who potters in his garden and happens to be good at advanced driving.

How has the show continued amid the Covid pandemic?

We’ve coped manfully and womanfully. We even have a studio audience for every show. They have to socially distance when the camera is on them but out of shot they can do what they like. For the crew though, it’s a different story. Temperature tests on entry, no sharing water bottles, compulsory masks and of course regular testing which I’ve not enjoyed.

I’ve had an overactive gag reflex ever since a drinking game I was made to play on a stag do. This makes Covid testing an ordeal. I’ve had to develop a routine to stave off panic. I numb the throat with an anaesthetic spray, eliminating as much sensation as possible. With my tonsils deadened, I blindfold myself, put on a loud piece of music, open my mouth and count to 500 hundred. The covid tester has until then to sneak in, swab, and leave. If they’re not heavily odoured, I can get to 500 without even knowing I’d been tested. It’s a rigmarole, but it works.

This Time saw you return to presenting on the BBC after 25 years, how did it feel to be back on BBC One after such a long time?

It’s like stumbling across a long-discarded pair of trousers in the back of your wardrobe. You’d grown out of them decades earlier but now due to a new fitness regime and gastric flu that means you can’t keep food down, they fit again. You put them on, savouring the snug grip of waistband on midriff, perhaps parading up and down the landing like it’s a catwalk. Obviously, chances are you’ll regain that weight and outgrow the slacks again, but right now? It feels intensely satisfying. That is what it feels like to be back on the BBC. I can’t put it any clearer than that.

I’ve now had the pleasure of presenting the show since 2019 and for billions of households up and down the country, I’m now part of the furniture – one of the good ones such as an elegant sideboard or a sleek TV/stereo unit.

Was there a particular guest that stood out for you in this or the previous series?

I think what you’re asking is ‘what makes a good guest’. And that’s a great question. A good guest is famous, with two anecdotes, speaks quickly (eg someone Scottish) and clearly (eg someone not Scottish), and listens. A lot of them don’t listen, that’s the problem. They think it’s all about them. They don’t listen, they need to listen more.

Alan, many well-known gameshows have returned to the airwaves of late. Jeremy Clarkson now hosts Who Wants to Be A Millionaire and Gino D’Acampo heads up Family Fortunes. Are there any classic gameshows from yesteryear you would like to revive/reboot and host?

No.

This Time with Alan Partridge returns to BBC One on Friday 30th April at 9.30pm

Alan Partridge on his new podcast: ‘This is the real, raw, be-cardiganed me’

Rich Pelley
He’s back – sporting a post-lockdown haircut and hosting a new podcast. Britain’s No 1 raconteur talks about his new hat, driving a Vauxhall, and why Boris Johnson looks like the evil rabbit in Watership Down
Wed 2 Sep 2020

Turn right out of Norwich railway station, take the number 12 bus, change at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, ride eight stops on the number 4 towards Swanton Morley, walk 1.1 miles, and you can’t help but spot the twin louvred conical towers of the oasthouse that Alan Partridge calls home. It is from this very oasthouse that Partridge – raconteur, national treasure, wit – broadcasts his brand new podcast, From the Oasthouse: The Alan Partridge Podcast, and to which Partridge has invited the Guardian.

Partridge bounds out to greet me in what appears to be an effusive show of hospitality. He offers a handshake before snapping it back into a more pandemic-appropriate wave. “I am so fine with social distancing,” he says. “Remember, I work in television where you’re forever mauled, hugged and leant on by over-pally floor managers or cackling makeup ladies. Now I can say, ‘Get your hands off me!’ without appearing in any way rude.”

He glances at my bag before lowering his voice. “I’d ask that you remove any sandwiches and if you’ve handled any such snack in the last hour, wash your hands quietly and well.” His dog, he explains – an enormous brown mastiff called Seldom – adores sandwiches.

“Less than 0.1% of mastiffs attack,” says Partridge as we sidle past the animal. “Unfortunately, Seldom’s the whole of that 0.1%. The kindest thing I can say is that he’s a statistical anomaly.”

Twenty minutes later, with the dog sleeping off a meal of ham and boiled eggs, we sit down at the kitchen table. Does Partridge trust the press, I ask? Was he involved in the phone hacking scandal? “I was concerned enough at the time to have a friend leave a fake message on my voicemail discussing the fact that a high oestrogen count had given me breasts that I was only able to hide with extensive strapping. I wanted to see if it got picked up by a paper. To this day there’s never been a story published suggesting Alan Partridge has tits.”

Alan Partridge in person is just as you’d imagine Alan Partridge off the telly. He’s managed his first post-lockdown haircut. “No longer having to worry about the volume and lustre of my hair, I became a hat man, something I’ve always wanted to try,” he says. “So I’d buy a hat online and then spend a day wearing it. It was only when I answered the door to a smirking Ocado driver while wearing a Jamiroquai hat that I had a moment of clarity…” He’s sporting a fetching pair of burgundy trousers. “They’re not burgundy,” he corrects me. “They’re ox-blood. Sometimes I’ll just see a colour and think, ‘I want to wear that.’ So I’ll pick it out of a Dulux colour chart and send my assistant to the shops.”

What’s the format of his new podcast? “Format is the death of chat,” counters Partridge. “Podcasts are strangled by format – talk about your favourite meal, tell us about the adverts you enjoy, tell us about the last time you cried, watch Doctor Who with me. Mine is different. I just yank back the curtain, drop the facade, peel back the warm hood of celebrity and reveal the real me, the raw me, the true me. A be-cardiganed, cuppa-tea-swigging, pair-of-slippers kind of Alan.”

This is one of half a dozen times Partridge mentions tea or cardigans, as if keen to project the air of a man at ease with himself.

“Five years ago, I was swanning around in a complimentary Kia, my name emblazoned on the side, the talk of Norwich – Johnny Big Bollocks,” he says. “Today…?” He nods outside to a silver saloon. What’s he driving, I ask? “Oh, a Vauxhall, but who cares really? After the year we’ve been through, there are more important things than how much you earn or what racquets club you’re a member of or how sweet your wheels are. And people say, ‘That’s the Insignia GSi, isn’t it? Nine-speed automatic with paddle shift? Keyless entry, e-boost hydraulic brakes, heated front seats with massage functionality?’ And I just chuckle. Some even peer through the window and say, ‘Tell you what, Alan, for a 40k car, this is specced to absolute buggery.’ And I just shrug and, again, chuckle.”

Has Partridge been inspired by any other podcasts? “Less other podcasts, more by the excellence we see all around us: a dog leaping to catch a stick, a ballerina doing a brilliant ballet, a forklift truck driver steering one-handed while smoking.”

Having said that, he admits to enjoying the true-crime genre (“Nothing beats settling down with a glass of wine and a plate of sandwiches to be entertained by the ins and outs of a man found battered to death in a hedge”) and is considering using a second series of his podcast to explore the disappearance of a friend who fell from a pier in 2013, never to be found. “I’m just waiting to hear from Audible as they’ve yet to say they definitely want a second series. I’m not worried. It’s just that they said they’d call and thus far they haven’t. It’s fine. They’ve not not called. They’ve just not called.”

Alan Gordon Partridge is allergic to shellfish and was born in King’s Lynn, Norfolk. At school he was nicknamed Smelly Alison Fartridge. “Bullying suggests weakness. I wasn’t bullied. I allowed some pretty dysfunctional kids to reveal their dysfunction through the medium of hitting me. And now everyone knows they’re dysfunctional and I’m clearing a six-figure salary. So remind me – which one of us was bullied?” Partridge found fame presenting the sports on Radio 4’s On the Hour and BBC Two’s The Day Today. Does he still have an interest in sport?

“Does anyone? Once upon a time, the theme from Grandstand by Keith Mansfield would waft through from the living room and every household in Britain would drift to the sofa, like a snake-charmed snake to a snake charmer. But as the BBC lost the rights to blue-riband events, the music developed a sarcastic feel, the bombast that had once led into, say, the Monaco Grand Prix jarring badly with live canoeing from Wiltshire or the Masters snooker from wherever the Masters snooker is from.”

A TV presenter claiming to prefer radio is like a Hollywood actor claiming their first love is theatre – a clear lie
On his chat show Knowing Me, Knowing You With Alan Partridge (KMKYWAP for short), Partridge accidentally shot dead a guest during a segment on duelling pistols. During TKMKYWAPCS (The Knowing Me, Knowing You With Alan Partridge Christmas Special), he accidentally punched chief commissioning editor of BBC television Tony Hayers with a turkey. Partridge then pitched Cooking in Prison, Youth Hostelling With Chris Eubank and Monkey Tennis. Yet F*** Off I’m Fat, Anthea Turner: Perfect Housewife and World’s Craziest Fools, presented by Mr T, have aired on BBC Three. Is he bitter?

“It’s interesting,” muses Partridge. “I proposed those shows in strict confidence at a private luncheon with Tony Hayers. Somehow, the world and his dog now know about them so I know Hayers must have betrayed my confidence and told people. Does that mean he deserved to die in a tragic accident just weeks later? Yes, I think it does.”

Partridge then presented Up With the Partridge and Norfolk Nights on Radio Norwich (“A TV presenter claiming to prefer radio is like a Hollywood actor claiming their first love is ‘the theatre’ – a clear and obvious lie”), and Mid Morning Matters on North Norfolk Digital, the same radio station where he was later held hostage at gunpoint by fellow DJ Pat Farrell. He returned to live TV in 2019 to co-present BBC One’s flagship current affairs programme This Time, after host John Baskell died. Are there any broadcast media he’d still like to try?

“I’d like to have had a crack at voicing the government’s public information Covid campaign. Nothing against Mark Strong. He has competent delivery and an authoritative voice, but a glance at the numbers suggests Strong just hasn’t worked. I’d love to be considered for the second wave.”

So how does Partridge think the government is coping? “Something special is happening with the Conservative party right now,” he says. “I like Boris a lot, although I’ve never met him. He was going to be at a function I was at a few years ago, but apparently he’d just had another baby and was having a small gathering to celebrate hitting double figures. But he’s persuasive. We’re talking about a chap who’s managed to pass himself off as an energetic, sporty ladies’ man despite being morbidly obese with a kind of … I want to say collapsing face? Like that evil rabbit at the end of Watership Down. What can I say, I like the guy!”

So what was Norwich like during lockdown? “Norwich is used to repelling unwanted plagues – be they germs, people from Suffolk or invading armies. I remember when my kids were teenagers…”

(I interrupt to ask when he last saw his now middle-aged children. “Just before lockdown. They’re shielding so I couldn’t visit anyway. Fernando says he had head cancer and Denise says she’s sometimes diabetic…”)

“Anyway, we’d have an enormous Christmas breakfast then go for a big old walk while Carol cooked Christmas lunch. One year, the kids didn’t want to come – I’d bought them a chemistry set, so I get it – so off I set on my own in my new coat, a lovely warm thing. After several miles, I found a world war two pillbox. It was just fascinating to sit inside, imagine the Germans had invaded and picture British soldiers in here, shouting, ‘Take that, Fritz!’ and whatnot. Anyway as I say it’d had been a very big breakfast and this was a very warm coat and long story short, I woke up and it was 2pm on Boxing Day. I didn’t realise until I got home and Carol had taken down all the decorations. So mixed memories there.”

How’s his love life these days? “Varied. I signed up to an elite dating agency called Echelon, for high wealth/class individuals looking to encounter similar. It’s run by a couple called Wilf and Fi who provide a tightly curated list of potential matches. I was in a very happy sexless relationship for 12 months. We’d kiss, cuddle and talk about the garden. Very pleasant. Just nothing genital. Some of my mates said it must be like going out with a mermaid. They were right. Although one that can’t swim.”

He shows me round the house. Recent spoilsports in the oasthouse field have noted that this particular oasthouse does not possess the visible joints nor the vented fireproof floor required of a traditional 19th-century oasthouse and is more likely to have been a game larder.

“It didn’t used to be anything; it’s a new build, so they’re bang wrong,” he snaps. Meaning it never was an oasthouse? “That’s absolutely correct. In fact, if I come to sell it, I legally have to list it as an oast-style house. It only dates back to 2018. I read somewhere you can age brickwork by power hosing it with black coffee but it just made the house smell like a bank manager’s mouth so I had it cleaned off. Either way, it doesn’t look like a game larder and it’s never been a game larder.”

Partridge suddenly jumps up. “Bugger me, I have to collect Lynn from her physio.” Ah, yes. Partridge’s dedicated assistant Lynn, who has worked for him since the 90s. “She’s just started a 12-month driving ban, so I’m having to ferry her around and subtract the petrol money from her wages. She fell asleep at the wheel after an Irish coffee and crashed into a stationary St John ambulance – people you’d expect to be able to cope in the event of a low-speed collision – but their training went out of the window and they went to pieces. It was only when a second St John ambulance arrived that they were able to restore some semblance of order. The judge made an example of her, which I think she was quietly flattered by.”

Just one more question, I ask, as Partridge shows me the door. What’s the difference between an oasthouse and a game larder anyway? “You dry hops in an oasthouse. You mature dead animals in a game larder. Very different vibes. You might show a Tinder date around an oasthouse and kiss her up against the hops. Would you do that next to the corpse of a baby deer or a bunch of garrotted rabbits? I don’t know, maybe you would.”

Alan Partridge, it’s been 25 years since your last BBC presenting job.

It has. But very soon I’ll be parking ma backside on the This Time sofa, just inches from regular host Jennie Gresham, a broadcaster I genuinely admire. If it’s not verboten to say this in the current climate, she’s the thinking man’s thinking woman and provides not just eye candy, but ear candy and even brain candy too at times. She’s that good.

How did your return to live TV come about?

Well, as you may have read, regular presenter John Baskell has become rendered unwell – it’s not my place to divulge the nature of his illness but I believe it’s to do with his heart, brought on by good living and his almost heroic refusal to ever exercise. So with a few days’ notice, I got the call. And although my schedule is as clogged as John’s arteries (get well, John) I consider it my public duty to stand in for as long as John is away. Anyway, it won’t be for long. If John can fight this with a fraction of the vigour he uses to fight for presenting work he knows has already been promised to other people, he’ll be on his feet again in no time.

You’re used to helming your own shows. Have you co-presented before?

I’ve presented daytime radio alongside a man called Simon Denton for several years. But that’s not co-presenting. In relation to me, Simon’s position contractually is one of total subordination. He’s a sidekick – at best. And he knows that.

So no, co-presenting is not a dynamic I’m used to, but I’ve been working on a few things. So when Jennie’s reading the autocue I might turn my head to face her to simulate listening, or frown solemnly if she mentions ‘cancer’, or wait until it’s my turn to speak and then prefix it with ‘That’s right, Jennie.’ Loads of things you can do.

How do you and Jennie get along?

Gotta say, we’ve only just met but already we have a chemistry that sizzles like liver in a hot pan and crackles like a genuine house fire. We joke about it ourselves! I said to her, “Jennie, in the words of Grease, we go together like rama lama lama ka dinga da dinga dong.” And did she laugh! (Yes.)

What can you tell us about the show? Are you a fan of This Time?

If I’m honest, I’m not super-clued-up on the show itself? I’m not an avid watcher of BBC One, since I don’t like documentaries about supermarkets or period dramas featuring bonnets. But I’ve circled a bit on a This Time press release here that describes it as a ‘30-minute mixture of studio chat, rigorous interview, hard-hitting VTs and a generous helping of fun, covering news, issues and consumer affairs’. Whereas I’m more of a Nazi Megastructures man.

It’s a little more serious-minded than the rest of your output.

I’m cool with that. I pull no punches, push the envelope and punch my weight when push comes to shove – if that makes sense.

How would you sum it up?

Ha! Believe me, I don’t have the time to sit around thinking up marketing taglines for the show. Wish I did! But I suppose if pushed I’d say something like: if you’ve got time to give This Time your time, then it’s time to let This Time spend time making your time a good time on This Time with me, Alan Partridge and I’m sorry I’ve forgotten the woman’s name,

Jennie Gresham.

Thank you.

What changes can we expect with you in the hot seat?

And it is a hot seat. There’s an exposed bit of metal frame that cooks under the studio lights and if you sit right back and your shirt rides up, it scalds you on the back. So you just have to sit forward and/or make your shirt stays tucked in.

And what changes can we expect?

Fear not, I’m not going to eff with a winning formula. But I do have a phalanx of fresh ideas that’ll benefit the show no end, including the introduction of my longtime radio sidekick Simon Denton. Adept at reading out tweets and providing a sideways look at news, he’ll be our social media reader-outer.

Anything to add?

Not really, just please please please please please please please watch the show.

GQ Magazine

By Alan Partridge

25 February 2019

Twenty-five years. A life sentence. A man freed after 25 years in jail would see the world through quite flabbergasted eyes. What would he make of, say, contactless bank cards or Tinder or Paddy McGuinness? Yes, his would be a fascinating perspective (the convict’s, not Paddy’s).

Since I’ve been asked to fill in on BBC magazine show This Time, 25 years after my last BBC presenting gig, it occurred to me I’ve served my own life sentence. Perhaps not the kind demanded by the family of the man I shot dead on air, but a life sentence nonetheless. And like the newly freed convict I mentioned in paragraph one, my time away leaves me well placed to consider how the world (of TV) has changed and turn it into this thinkpiece for GQ.

In it, I will look at the rise of multichannel, HD technology and diversity – the key drivers of what Alan Shearer calls “the medium’s discernible paradigm shift”. I will touch on the BBC’s funding model, the rise of streaming and the insistence of quirky regional accents for on-screen “talent”.

I’ll come to all of these shortly, but first a brief word on refreshments. Because the most obvious difference between then and now is the sandwich selection at lunch!

In the Nineties, we came live from Television Centre in Shepherd’s Bush, but with that building now turned into ace apartments owned by people who don’t live there, the BBC has upped sticks to New Broadcasting House, Central London. Back at TVC, lunch was limited to something-with-chips in the BBC club or a panini from the ground floor cafe. Beyond that, well you were stranded in the no-man’s-land of West London. What could you do? Venture into Shepherd’s Bush, with its chicken shops and outdoor market? Risk a fry-up from a cafe with chairs screwed to the floor?

No. Lunch back then was a miserable affair. Little wonder BBC presenters made do with a liquid diet, rendering them tipsy enough in the afternoons to commit the industrial-scale sexual harassment for which the Corporation is now famous.

Since the Beeb’s relocation, though, we’re bang smack in the heart of London’s lunching district, with a cornucopia of choice for even the most discerning sandwich fancier. Not keen on grabbing a bite in the BBC’s subsidised cafe? Fine. I invite you to walk down Regent’s Street and marvel at the choice of branded sandwich outlets.

Look to your right and you’re greeted straight away by the mustard-yellow sign of an Eat. These guys don’t muck about and it’s little wonder they punctuate the name with a full stop – a reminder, to me at least, (when you’re) full, stop. Now, Eat always sells a good sarnie. The team there opt for a thick-cut granary, a superb all-rounder and the perfect loaf for a really, really satisfying sandwich. If you’ve no meetings that afternoon and aren’t worried about your breath, try the tuna and cucumber, the vinegary flakes of tuna meat set off by chunks of cool, refreshing vegetable. Are its sandwiches perfect? No. The BLT comes with bacon so floppy and undercooked the rind is translucent and resembles silicone jelly. It’s, to my eyes, absolutely disgusting. But that’s a mere blip on an otherwise faultless sarnie setup.

Don’t fancy Eat? No problem! Cross the road and you’re welcomed by the sight of a Pret A Manger (“Ready To Munch”). When it comes to butties, Pret and Eat are two peas from the same pod – a notch up price-wise from your budget offerings – and hard to separate. Perhaps Pret is a smidge more generous with the mayo spoon, perhaps its bacon is given a touch longer in the pan, leaving it less flaccid and see-through than that of its near neighbour. But Pret and Eat are great options and I have no hesitation in recommending them.

Want more? You got it. A few yards south, you’ll find Starbucks, the tax-canny US coffee chain whose sandwich range, while limited, is well worth checking out if Eat or Pret ain’t yo thang.

Those who like their sandwiches hot and round might like to try a “burger” from quick-food giants McDonald’s – and while connoisseurs will quibble at my classifying a burger as a sandwich, I stand by it. It’s meat wedged between bread; and, I’m sorry, that is a sandwich. Try the chicken sandwich (I shan’t add the Mc) for creamy white, piping hot breast meat in a zingy, flour-based coating. Finger lickin’ good.

Back across the road, for those with more money than sense, you can pick up a sandwich from an array of shops that together sound like the members of a bad boyband: Leon, Paul, Joe (& The Juice). The latter in particular isn’t my bag. Staffed by preening take-your-timers, it’s a coffee and smoothie shop for those whose answer to the question “When would you like your drink?” is “In about ten minutes.” But if pushed, you can buy sandwiches from any of them and that’s something to be celebrated.

Think the list ends there? Think again. Toddle into Topshop, take the escalator down past the bras and sandals and what’s this? Another Eat, less than 300 yards from the last one, a quirk of branch strategy for which someone at head office must have been torn a new one. It’s not quite as roomy as the flagship restaurant I mentioned earlier and, being an in-store concession, your sandwich is going to be accompanied by the taste of perfume, but it’s a great option for those in a rush who have ducked into Topshop to use the toilet or hide from an associate.

So that’s sandwiches dealt with. But what of the myriad other changes in the world of television?

Oh, and there’s Boots as well. Lots of people overlook Boots when it comes to sandwiches, but don’t overlook Boots. Although pre-packed on a worryingly vague earlier date, these tasty, well made bread snacks are lightyears better than they were in the past, when their sandwich offering was blighted by a practice known as “central packing| – an all-too-common ruse that sees the filling bunched into the centre of the sandwich. When sliced through the middle and presented in cross-section, it gave the illusion of a plump, generously filled sandwich. It’s only after buying one that you find the filling tapers at the edges down to a barren tundra of unoccupied bread. Whether it was due to my letters or some other reason, Boots are no longer guilty of this and are now a byword for quite excellent pre-packed sandwiches.

So you see, today’s BBC telly makers enjoy a breadth of sandwich choice that their Nineties counterparts could only have dreamt of.

I had hoped to discuss other changes in television but I’ve hit my word count now. Thank you.

Alan Partridge: an underrated style icon

Poloneck jumpers, string-back driving gloves, personalised blazer badges — who knew East Anglia’s premier broadcaster was so fashion-forward? As Partridge returns to our screens with a new current-affairs show, Men’s Health editor Toby Wiseman salutes a menswear innovator

Toby Wiseman

 

Sunday February 17 2019, 12.01am, The Sunday Times

The blazers

“I am not Giorgio Armani,” Alan Partridge told the audience of his talk show, Knowing Me Knowing You, in 1994, “but my name has become associated with a certain look, a look I define as ‘sports casual’.” Integral to this look, honed on the Norfolk Broads, is Partridge’s dizzying array of blazers. “It’s the classic English gentleman abroad. It’s David Niven, Stewart Granger, Nigel Havers. It’s a green blazer,” he once said. Was Partridge’s penchant for double-breasted blazers, frequently oversized, in bold colour blocks, a nod to superannuated broadcasters in the Alan Whicker mould? Almost certainly. But there has always been a liberated, more forward-thinking feel to the king of chat’s style. For a start, he commissioned his own personalised blazer badge, embroidered with the Latin motto Cognoscens Me, Aha, Cognoscens Te. In fact, it could be said that he presaged the patches and club insignias seen throughout this season’s Kent & Curwen collection. Either way, the exaggerated DBs in greens, greys and burgundies seen at the SS19 menswear shows in Paris and Milan surely owe something to the early innovations from our hero.

The woolly knits

Long before ironic Christmas jumpers became a thing, Partridge was doing turbocharged knitwear entirely without irony. After all, his biggest style influence, he told Clive Anderson in an interview in 1997, was the Welsh golfer Ian Woosnam. While those famous blazers spoke of convivial regatta drinks or a provincial Conservative club tea party, his patterned lamb’s wool golf sweaters and thick shawl-neck cardigans projected a gentler, altogether more cuddly side to the presenter — an image that unfortunately belied his tendency towards on-air bellicosity. Indeed, it was while wearing a fetching cream and maroon V-neck pullover, adorned with Aztec geometric detailing, that Partridge fired Glen Ponder, the house-band leader on Knowing Me Knowing You, at the end of a show. Ponder’s crime? Having the temerity to mock the star’s dress sense.

Notoriously, grandad knitwear was the link to a darker side of his psyche, as evidenced by the nightmare that recurs throughout the I’m Alan Partridge series: in it, he lap-dances for the BBC programming director, Tony Hayers, while wearing a patchwork jumper, a vulcanised rubber posing pouch and platform pumps. Paradoxically, it was a look that could conceivably have been fashioned by the avant-garde designer Yvonne Boyd, a KMKY guest (and Vivienne Westwood lookalike), whom Partridge offended by suggesting she had come onto his show dressed as Widow Twankey. “I didn’t know that, as well as doing fashion, you also do pantomime?”

The short shorts

Never afraid to reinforce the “sports” in his signature sports-casual style, Partridge has become famous for his willingness to show some leg over the years (see above, re vulcanised rubber). Shorts have always been integral to his look. For a special fashion dispatch for KMKY, our Alan-of-all-trades paid a visit to the Champs-Élysées in Paris. Among the outfits modelled was one he dubbed “strolling pastel” — “a classic summer suit with the omission of long trousers” — along with the voluminous green bermudas of another look he called “l’homme du sport”.

It was this early predilection for a more revealing style that marked him out as a stylist before his time. There can be little doubt that it was with one eye on Partridge’s shiny blue bum-skimming runners — most memorably showcased during a bedroom workout scene at the Linton Travel Tavern in I’m Alan Partridge — that Miuccia Prada decided to make ultra-short neoprene shorts the main event in her cheeky SS19 collection.

The accessories

Few style icons understand the importance of accoutrements in completing a look quite like the East Anglian artiste. From the flat cap, walking stick and binoculars of his 1995 nature documentary Alan Partridge’s Country Ramble to the captain’s hat and silk cravat worn while shooting a corporate video to promote Hamilton’s Water Breaks in I’m Alan Partridge, his approach to style has always been accompanied by an obsessive attention to detail. The key to his success in pulling off this range of fashionable guises without veering into fancy dress is his commitment to authenticity and utility. Take, for instance, the “cruiser arriviste” look from A Partridge in Paris. His specific insistence that driving gloves come with string backs is justified because they “give you a bit of extra purchase”.

Interactive

Partridge or Piers: who said what?

One is an outlandish TV personality who regularly ruffles feathers. The other is Alan Partridge. Can you tell the difference between Good Morning host Piers Morgan and Steve Coogan’s comedic creation?

Play the quiz

Meanwhile, when he posed for the paperback cover of his 2011 autobiography, I, Partridge, dressed as some kind of neocolonial hunter, it was only the sensible inclusion of a gold compass, camouflage utility belt and white wraparound sunglasses that prevented him from looking utterly preposterous.

The leisurewear

“Who’s this cool customer? Ice white shoes, ice white socks with navy blue double cadet stripe, a pair of shorts, T-shirt with chevron action flash…” No, this isn’t Demna Gvasalia’s latest dadcore look, but Alan Partridge’s go-to leisure ensemble. Indeed, if anyone in fashion today is in the broadcasting legend’s debt, it is the creative director of Balenciaga, renowned for putting “weekend trip to Homebase” style on the catwalk. But, in truth, Partridge’s influence in this arena is pervasive. Viewers of 1995’s Christmas special, Knowing Me Knowing Yule, will recall his punishing exercise routines around the cloisters of Norwich Cathedral decked out in ugly plimsolls, high socks and shell-suit jackets. Now, from Prada to Lanvin, Craig Green to Louis Vuitton, this fixation for nylon and polyester is finally being appreciated.

@tobywisemanuk

This Time with Alan Partridge starts on BBC1 later this month

ANDY SEYMOUR/BBC PICTURES

I, Partridge

GQ: You didn’t succeed in having the walk made into a TV series. Was it tough to secure the publishing deal?

Alan Partridge: How I became one of Britain’s best-loved travel writers

October 26th 2016
Last week I attended a training day for volunteer stewards at January’s London Boat Show and as an ice-breaker we were all asked what we did for a living. Usually, I’d say ‘broadcaster’ or ‘radio chat-jockey’. But on this occasion, something else flopped out: ‘Travel writer’.

And as my fellow volunteers split into groups to practise carpark marshalling or saying “Please don’t touch the boat, sir”, I stood there, luminous bib in hand, suddenly realising that, yes, I (Alan Partridge) was ‘on the road’ to becoming one of Britain’s best-loved travel writers. In this piece, I shall explain how.

Britain loves a travel writer. One thinks of Bill Bryson and his gentle ribbing of these isles, which although affectionate is a little bit if-you-don’t-like-it-Bill-go-back-to-America for my tastes. Or even Charley (sic) Boorman’s Long Way Round/Down/To Tipperary books, which obviously aren’t for everyone but are enjoyed immensely by people who say ‘modorcycle’ instead of ‘motorbike’.

But travel was a not a genre people automatically attached my name to. While I had done some travel writing before, it was limited to writing postcards to personal assistants, savaging gastropubs on TripAdvisor or emailing sumptuously descriptive directions to my summer BBQ bash (“Turn left at the shop-cum-post office, its jaundiced signage yellowed by the searing Norfolk sun”). But I’d never actually had a travel book published. So what happened? The answer: fate.

Earlier this year I undertook a deeply personal walk in honour of my father. It was a deeply personal recreation of a journey he had undertaken in the mid-1970s, from our family home in Norwich to the Dungeness Nuclear Power Station some 160 miles away. For him it had been a simple drive to a job interview. For me however, several years after his death, it was a deeply personal attempt to understand why he had been the man and, let’s be honest, git he was.

So I was stunned when, in the weeks that followed and with word of my journey echoing through the publishing community like whispers on the breeze, the book offers came a-rushing and a-gushing to my door.

And it was only then, after a period of quiet reflection during an extremely slow haircut, that it occurred to me that, by sharing my experiences, I might be able to help others who had endured challenging relationships with their own fathers, particularly if those ‘own fathers’ had tried, and failed, to land a job with British Nuclear Fuels in the mid-1970s.

The more I mulled, the more compelling a literary proposition my journey became. Because this humble rambler had learnt a little about his dad, a lot about himself and whole heap of heck about this land we call Britain.

Walking the nation had allowed me to get under the skin of the country like the mosquito larvae that once burrowed under my friend Daniel’s skin and deposited their pupae in his cheek.

Sure, my chosen route – Norfolk to Kent – was no Lands End to John O’Groats but, if you picture the British map as a squatting dog, I’d walked Haunch to Heel which, when put like that, is just as iconic. Indeed, Haunch to Heel with Alan Partridge was later the working title of the book (rejected by publisher).

And so I set to work. Thankfully I didn’t have to try too hard to remember the events of the walk. Purely for my own amusement, I’d scribbled down the odd note in a journal after each day’s yomp.

At the time, I’d thought nothing of these jottings so you can imagine my surprise when I returned to the journal to discover it contained almost 70,000 words of publication-ready prose. Being tidy-minded, I’d also broken the journal down into chapters and provided some options for dust jacket copy, while (for a laugh) it seems I’d knocked up a fairly detailed index too.

As I say, this had all been for my own amusement since there’s almost nothing else to do on the road. It’s a sad fact that only 1 in 20 UK B&Bs give their guests access to non-terrestrial television.

So when a walker has napped, eaten his chocolate, napped again, bathed his feet in a cocktail of Radox, Dettol and TCP, slathered them in E45 and wrapped them up in damp towel, what else is he going to do? Watch Emmerdale Farm? Skype a woman? No, he may as well collect his thoughts, jot them down long-hand and email them to a proofreader friend (for a laugh).

Not that I spent every evening of my journey hunched over a type-writer. Much of the wording had already plopped into my mind on that day’s walk. I could often be found writing passages out loud; standing by a field, casually tossing off paragraphs to the cows.

I knew they’d only gathered in the hope that I was the farmer come to top up their feed. But that was okay, because sometimes I’d oblige, hurling a chunk of butty their way, then standing back to watch the frenzy. The cows went absolutely ape-shit. It was hilarious.

The result? Alan Partridge: Nomad by Alan Partridge. At 292 pages it is the second longest book I have ever written. They say everyone’s got a book in them, but clearly that’s not true: it’s meant as an average across the whole population. I have now had four works published, which means that somewhere out there are three other people whose literary dreams lie in ruins.

And my father? Well, I know he’d be too frugal to shell out for a hardback at the Heaven branch of Waterstone’s but, with the paperback due for release just months after the London Boat Show 2017 at ExCeL on 6-15 January (“The best boats, the best people”), I’m sure he’ll be smiling down on me in the early part of next year.

Yet that evening something else caught my attention. It was the sound of braying broadcasters proclaiming that we’re now in a golden age of TV. Well, Oddie and I threw our heads back and roared (me laughter, Oddie anger). It wasn’t just the arrogance of it, but its wrongness. Television is a busted flush. No sensible broadcaster wants to work in it, and I am no exception. Nor, he has asked me to point out, is Oddie.

And so, in this piece, I will debunk the myth that we are seeing a golden age of television. I will go on to demonstrate that radio is the preferred medium for the talented broadcaster. I will summarise these points in a recap paragraph and end on a single pithy line that knits everything together. I will then spellcheck the document. I will email it to the Guardian and will then go into town to meet an acquaintance. Then it’s BodyPump, Tesco Metro, bite to eat and bed.

A golden age? More like a golden shower! If you work in television, you’re probably spluttering something about the mass appeal of Strictly Come Dancing or how cutting-edge Game Of Thrones is, with its sandals and dragons. Personally, I fail to see what’s cutting edge about a dragon. They were used to advertise mouthwash in the 80s. They’ve been extinct for millions of years!

Everywhere you look there are signs of decline. Our newsreaders now stand up, our chatshow hosts don’t chat, our TV detectives take a “series arc” to suss out what Bergerac managed in an hour – admittedly, the kind of canny problem-solving you’d expect from a guy residing in a tax haven.

Of course, put this to a TV exec and they’ll waffle on about appreciation indexes, time-shifted viewing figures, strong online feedback. Talk about mealy-mouthed! But then BBC mouths are some of the mealiest in the industry. And it’s not just their mouths. Face, head, neck, you name it – all very, very mealy indeed.

But where one empire crumbles, another rises. While TV slides into the abyss, radio rises like a phoenix/new day/beanstalk. Some of the best broadcasters are realising radio is the place to be and are migrating to this medium in their droves.

Am I just saying this because it’s the arena I happen to work in? No! Or maybe because I’m bitter that I no longer work in television? Of course not! I’m in a more contented place than ever. I drive an executive saloon, I take several foreign holidays a year, I have a four-figure endorsement deal with Norfolk’s leading manufacturer of non-recyclable cat litters. What else? I own two NutriBullets. My hair’s still nice and thick. I do have a fat back but I’m able to manage that by not approaching people back-first with my top off.

No, the reason I’ve penned this piece is because I’m genuinely evangelical about digital radio. Enter any DRS (digital radio station) and you’ll find it fizzing with ideas, like liver on a hotplate – or liver on a hot plate. I, personally, come up with over 20 ideas a day; more if I’ve had egg for breakfast (don’t know why).

Then there’s its global reach. Digital shows can be accessed via the internet anywhere on Earth. When I launch a phone-in that asks: “How often should you wash your towels?” or “How long can a dog stand on its hind legs?”, it’s as likely to be enjoyed by a housewife in Hemsby as it is by a factory owner in Guangzhou or a weaver high (or low) in the Andes.

All of which explains why I was gracious enough to allow Sky Atlantic (a TV channel) to broadcast my forthcoming (radio) show Mid Morning Matters. Perhaps it’s because they Believe in Better, I don’t know, you’d have to ask them. All I know is it takes real humility for them to admit that television, the very medium they operate in, is a spent force that simply isn’t working and that the only thing that might be able to prop up their viewing figures is the webcam footage of a Norfolk-based digital radio show.

I guess that’s also why I was only too happy to go along with their suggestion that they take sole ownership of the rights to the show along with all back-end revenues in perpetuity. After all, don’t kick a man when he’s down, right?

Back at the Goodies shindig, I made many of these points and more. The braying of the execs softened to a whinny as they digested what I had to say, and before long they were listening in rapt silence. It was then I realised they weren’t listening but were watching Bill Oddie pin Chris Packham to a wall. I handed Bill his spectacles. He realised it was Sue Barker, apologised and we sloped back to the car.

I’ve run out of space for the summary paragraph and pithy sign off. Sorry.

PS. Mid Morning Matters is back on Sky Atlantic,10pm, 16 February

ALAN’S PICK OF THE RADIO RENEGADES

Freddy And Ted, Majesty Radio

Breakfast presenters at this Peterborough outfit, Freddy and Ted had a blokey repartee which took on a different hue when they announced their engagement live on air. Controversially, the show now features Snog or Yog, in which listeners guess whether the slopping noises they can hear are the sound of them eating yoghurt or French-kissing one another. Advertisers and parents have run a mile but it makes for urgent, compelling radio.

Judge Solomon, Six Counties Radio

A former barrister, Solomon takes a cue from his biblical namesake with Judge Solomon’s Kids Court, in which he presides as a family court judge and, after hearing from both parents, grants custody to one or the other – with explosive results. His decision carries no legal weight whatsoever but the listeners don’t seem to know that.

Steve Penk, The Steve Penk Wind-Up Channel

If you think Trevor Bayliss invented wind-up radio, think again. Penk is the master of the practical joke and is as creative and daring as ever. He once phoned me to say my daughter had lost an arm in a powerboating accident and it was “touch and go” if she’d pull through. I couldn’t stop crying, even after I realised I’d been “penked”. That’s Steve!

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