I, Partridge (20 page)

I knew that scaling back my schedule of cold-calling might look like I’d lost some of my hunger and I didn’t want to give that impression at all, so I kept trying. At the same time, I didn’t want to sound like a broken record because I’m not. So I displayed my creative side in my correspondence. I’d send him a teddy with a note saying ‘Alan can BEARly wait to get started on series 2’, or a honey-roast ham with the message, ‘When can we MEAT?’

I was on the verge of stopping because this approach was costing me a fortune and I was running out of puns. But then the call came. ‘Tony wants to meet.’

I was a bit disappointed by this, because I didn’t see the need for a meeting. Why wouldn’t he just bike over contracts for the next series? I thought that was a bit off actually (still do) but, ever the professional, I just said: ‘Fine.’

‘He’s booked a table in the BBC restaurant, Friday at 1.’

I knew for a fact this establishment served ‘modern European’ whereas I’d hoped we could meet at a TGI Friday because I wanted something with chips. So I politely declined, but then reconsidered and called back very quickly to accept.

Victory at last. I phoned down to hotel reception and told them I’d be moving out at the end of the week and then asked my assistant to find me a house that befitted a prime-time TV personality. She found one.
¹⁵⁴

I then phoned arrogant breakfast DJ Dave Clifton and laughed into the receiver for ages. It was important that I wasn’t triumphalist about being recommissioned but equally it was essential that I got one over on Dave Clifton. This felt like a happy medium.

Two days later I was buying a five-bedroomed house to live in. I didn’t expect Carol to come back to me but, knowing that she was living in a four-bedroomed residence, it was out of the question that I would live somewhere inferior when I was to be one of the faces of BBC television for the next decade.

As I was inspecting the facilities, the BBC called. Unable to wait until Friday, they brought the meeting forward. I had one hour to deodorise and get to TV Centre. Tough call. Ingeniously, I ended up doubling up on the two tasks by getting my assistant to hold the wheel on the A140 while I reached into my shirt and swabbed my pits generously with a roll-on.

I felt, looked and smelt fresh and was in high spirits, electing to forego a conversation role-play in favour of a singalong to
The Very
Very
Best of Tears for Fears
. (Their album was actually called
The Very Best of Tears for Fears
but I didn’t like ‘The Way You Are’ or ‘Woman in Chains’ and had taped it on to a C90 minus these two tracks, then renamed it to create a compilation that really was the crème de la cream of their output.)

Hayers came down to the restaurant door as I was deep in conversation with Steve Rider (I’d called Steve on the way and asked him to meet me there and engage me in ‘high-level chat’ to impress Hayers.)
¹⁵⁵

‘… and I’ll get Barry Sheene to bloomin’ well explain himself when I next interview him,’ I concluded as Hayers approached. In my peripheral vision, I could see he was as impressed as anyone would be by my casual mention of a former motorcycle world champ who was by now half-metal.

We sat down and Hayers began to make small talk.

‘My Lunn Poly brochure arrived this morning so I’ve just been looking at holidays,’ he started.

I could tell something was wrong – he was nervous, shifty. I ordered food and wine for us both – a nice German wine, some Italian food and UK water – as he tried to manufacture some chit-chat. This is
so
BBC, I thought. (Try meeting someone in the BBC and taking the lift with them – I guarantee they’ll make some comment about the lift being slow or full. They are
inane
.)

‘Portugal is supposed to be nice,’ he stuttered.

‘Cut the sweet shit, twinkle toes,’ I said, like a latter-day Jack Regan. If I smoked I’d have stubbed it out at that moment. Instead, I set down my knife and fork and swallowed my Italian food. It was clear one of us was going to have to take charge and that someone was going to be me. ‘Let’s talk about the next series. I want a yes or no.’

His big face went pale and he averted his eyes. ‘It’s a no,’ he said. Nearby diners who’d been secretly eavesdropping on our summit gasped and stared. I’m fairly sure one let a roast potato fall out of his mouth. ‘Whaaaat?’ they all thought.

I was more sanguine. Don’t get me wrong, it was a hammer blow. But I’d expected it and didn’t really have my heart set on working with Auntie anyway. The BBC is nothing if not risk averse and I was seen as a bit of a maverick. In fact, some of them called me Maverick behind my back I think.

No, I’d foreseen my career would be with other broadcasters anyway, so I really wasn’t arsed.

I felt a bit sorry for Hayers then. Shadowy powers had clearly forced his hand, and he was snivellingly torn between losing a major piece of talent and upsetting his idiotic paymasters.

‘Have you got any other ideas, though?’

I snorted. Did I really want to entrust my portfolio of projects to this shoddy outfit? I don’t think so. But he practically begged me (it was a bit unseemly actually, people were watching) so I went ahead and listed them. Norwich-based crime drama
Swallow
,
Knowing ME Knowing You
(a factual show looking at the disease),
Inner City Sumo
and
Monkey Tennis
.
¹⁵⁶
But as I reeled off format after format – each more daring than the last – I could see he was retreating into his cowardly, safety-first shell. All genuinely original ideas, all snubbed.

I did have another ace up my sleeve:
Motorway Rambles
– a travelogue of me walking the hard shoulders of British highways, with special permission from the British Transport Police – but it had been co-devised by Bill Oddie and he’d made me promise I wouldn’t pitch it if he wasn’t there. Fair enough.

The meeting was over. I had things to be doing that afternoon anyway, so I thanked Hayers, and stood up.

‘But … but … we’ve not even had the cheese course,’ he said.

I looked him square in the face and, without breaking his gaze, I struck the handle of the knife that was resting on the cheese board. The wooden edge acted as a pivot, the blade as a springboard, firing a cube of cheese up into the air. I caught it and wrapped it in a napkin, which I slotted into my pocket.

‘While I’m on the subject of cheese,’ I said, as the waiter hovered nearby, ‘it’s an open secret in the BBC that you
smell
like cheese.’

The waiter caught my eye. ‘Ha! I’ve been
dying
to say that,’ he thought.

Well, Hayers didn’t know what to say. I didn’t care. I’d had enough and the meeting merely confirmed my long-held desire to continue my career well away from the BBC.

I wasn’t going to let a coward like him pay for the meal, so I took out a hundred-pound note and slotted it down the waiter’s cleavage. And he did have a cleavage.

A noise snapped behind me, like the sound of a piece of flesh hitting a nearby piece of flesh. It was a handclap. It was followed by another from the far corner of the room. Then another. And another. And as I turned to face them, the diners broke into rich applause. It was as if they were saying: ‘So long, Alan. The bigwigs might not appreciate you, but by God, we do.’

Thanks, guys, I thought. It means a bunch. Then I very calmly, very slowly, very proudly walked through the lunchtime diners and away into the night. It felt good.

152
Press play on Track 29.

153
As I say, he’s a good guy. He’d become chummy with me after a falling out with Des Lynam several years before at a
Grandstand
bonding retreat. Des couldn’t help but correct what he saw as speech defects in fellow sports presenters – he’d picked up on my Norfolk nasality in the early 90s, for example. Unlike me, Steve had reacted badly to being told he had a tendency to pronounce ‘this afternoon’ as ‘the zarfternoon’ – but the fact is, he does and Des was bang right to point it out. Steve’s not spoken to him since – and I’m the beneficiary. I am, Steve admits, his fall-back friend and I am happy with that.

154
Antagonistic talkshow host Trisha now lives there.

155
Thanks again, Steve.

156
His loss.
Monkey Tennis
was later snapped up by TV stations in Laos and Taiwan and ran for two successful years – after which the format reached the end of its natural life and the monkeys were quickly and humanely destroyed.

Chapter 20
Proof that the Public Loved Me

READERS, PLEASE DON YOUR
Kevlar body armour and retreat from the blast zone, taking care to position yourself behind a wall or stationary vehicle, because I am about to blow the lid on one of the most explosive incidents in my entire life. Women and children should remain indoors, keep away from the windows and await further instructions.

For extra dramatic impact I will now shift into the present tense.
¹⁵⁷
It’s a technique my editor at HarperCollins feels worked particularly well in the chapter where I described my own birth. And while he feels it worked less well in the section on being interrogated by the police after shooting a man, he does think it’s worth having another go. So here goes.

A small pink tongue emerges from a man’s mouth. It hesitates, as if blinded by the light, then darts left and right, greedily scouring the lips for any crumbs of moisture. It finds nothing, so starts again, this time more slowly, gliding over every crease and crevice like some sort of very thorough snake. Still nothing. It bows its head as if to say ‘no drink today then’, before slithering slowly back into the darkness.

Pan back to reveal that the tongue is mine (as is the mouth). We can tell by the look on my face that something’s wrong. It’s probably the eyes that give it away. The pupils have gone all dinky. I’m clearly stressed to buggery. A single bead of sweat trickles down my back like a rescue party sent to fetch help. But there is no help where it’s headed. There’s only my bottom.

I listen out for any noise. I haven’t got my hopes up but boy I’d love to hear the roar of an approaching 999 car. Sadly, the only sound to be heard is the slight squelch emanating from my sweat-savaged undies. Unsure of what to do next, I decide to sum up where I am and what is happening to me, just so it’s clear. The time is 4pm on 8 May 1997 and I’m being held captive in the home of deranged super-fan Jed Maxwell, I think to myself.

The day had begun so promisingly. I, Partridge was to conduct ‘An Afternoon with Alan Partridge’ at the Linton Travel Tavern. With Sue Cook as my ravishing special guest, it was to be a chance for me to re-connect with some of my most loyal fans. Yes they could call in and talk to me on my radio show every morning, but it wasn’t quite the same. They could never be 1000% sure that they weren’t just listening to someone doing a very good impression of my voice. For example Phil Cool, Rory Bremner or local impressionist James Galbraith (to my mind, the pick of the three – his Desmond Tutu is so good he almost doesn’t need to black up).

I’d toyed with the idea of doing an arena gig but quickly ruled it out. My fans (and any members of the hotel’s staff who’d excitedly asked to sit in – and not just to bulk out the numbers) deserved better than that. They deserved something more intimate. Not in a sexual sense you understand, though with Sue Cook in the room you couldn’t blame a chap for keeping his fingers crossed!! Seriously, you really couldn’t. I think she’s fit.

The format was to be looser than my TV show, firmer than my radio work. A fun chat with Sue about her life, loves and
Crimewatch
career, followed by an open Q&A with myself. And no topic would be off-limits, with the honourable exception of the recent hit on Jill Dando.

But there was another reason why I was fizzing with excitement like the sodium bicarbonate-rich soluble tablets mentioned in the last chapter. That morning I’d breakfasted with two senior execs from Irish TV channel RTE.
¹⁵⁸
As a combination of fruit juice, fried food and hot coffee settled in our contented tummies, we began to get to know one another.

The art of befriending a fellow human was one I had come to perfect by this stage in my life. I could go from total stranger to close buddy in under two weeks. Just ask Peter Sissons. Meanwhile, the statuses of acquaintance, business partner or lover could all be achieved, on a good day and with a fair wind, inside 90 minutes. Even with the Irish. In fact, especially with the Irish. (Equally, if I’m forced to turn whistleblower, I can go from cherished friend and godfather to your eldest son, to the kind of guy you try to physically attack at a BBC BBQ, in less than an hour. Again, just ask Peter Sissons. Sorry Pete, no choice, mate.)

And so it was that by the end of our pleasantly greasy breakfast, myself and the RTE execs had hit it off in what I can only describe as ‘a big way’. Better still, they had agreed to attend AAWAP (An Afternoon with Alan Partridge). We shook hands. ‘If this goes well, Alan, we’d be prepared to take the format (minus Sue Cook) and put it directly on to primetime telly on the Emerald Isle. And don’t worry about having to relocate to Ireland. You could just come over one day a week to record the show. Obviously we’d sort out your flights for you. Or, if you wanted to get the ferry we’d pay for your petrol for the run up to Holyhead and sort you out a cabin. And if you do buy any snacks on-board just keep your receipts and we’ll get you reimbursed within 28 days,’ their handshake seemed to say. I was deeply encouraged.