I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan

by Alan Partridge

  Mouth dry, head spinning, and suddenly keen for a poo, I staggered from Television Centre. Steadying myself against an old woman who was there for the BBC Tour, I took another step into the street and bellowed at the sky.

  ‘They want me back on the radio!!!’

  You see, Walters was a radio commissioner. Of course. Of course. I should have known. He had that lifeless, grey, dead-eyed quality that they all have at Broadcasting House. I called a cab and, with a heavy heart, went for a meeting with Adam Walters. Of Radio 4.

  It wasn’t the best meeting I’ve ever had. Almost on auto-pilot, I ran through all the famous people I knew (who, I said, I could definitely get) and Walters seemed duly impressed. I was in a seriously bad mood, no doubt, but Adam’s compliments and the excellent selection of biscuits there soon cheered me up. He all but offered me a show there and then. Paydirt!

  People ask me if I found that daunting. They don’t know Alan Partridge. If anything was making me apprehensive it was that a light-hearted comment – in which I joked that I owned my own production company and would make the show myself in exchange for a hefty development and production fee – was somehow taken at face value.77

  So the next morning I created a production company by putting posters up around Norwich and giving work experience to family friends. And lo, Peartree Productions was born.

  Alan’s Show – this was a working title – began production on 9 August 1992. Peartree Productions was a thrilling place to work, dynamic and young – indeed, many of the staff should technically have been at school. We really felt we were making something important. And so it proved.

  We worked out a format – I would ask questions, the guests would answer, as if in conversation – and after a few trial runs I had it down pat. Unable to afford celebrity bookers, we relied on two researchers, Lisa and Jason, to approach agents. And on the whole, they did a good job. (Lisa’s personality could be an issue. I suspected her of smoking cannabis and, as her employer, rifled through her bag to be sure. Nothing, but she went berserk. Her attitude really, really stank sometimes.)

  The date of the first show was approaching. But we hit a snag! The BBC had decided that Alan’s Show ‘wouldn’t work as a name’ on the grounds that people might not know who ‘Alan’ was. I said, ‘I dunno where you’ve got that idea from!’ And I invited them to my local Do It All as a fame-proving exercise (they declined). Alas, we needed a new name.

  A team meeting was hastily called and we embarked on ‘brainstorming’, an American business technique in which ideas are graded depending on how loudly they’re shouted. As the team screamed at each other, I noticed that my favourite CD, Abba Gold, was on the stereo and a song came on that I felt would be perfect.78 I sat and listened as the debate raged on among my colleagues before shouting, ‘Shut up, you wallies! Shut up and listen to the music!!’

  That got them. We sat in silence as the refrains of the song, ‘The Winner Takes It All’, blasted from the office Alba. It seemed so right, with its title reflecting my sporting heritage while announcing myself as a triumph in the cut-throat world of broadcasting. As I sang along, eyes closed, I imagined it playing to the applause of a studio audience.

  In the end, the group persuaded me that it didn’t set a particularly inclusive or humble tone, but another track,79 ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’ – which is centred on the theme of people ‘knowing’ each other – seemed to fit the bill.

  We put a call in to Abba’s people and waited for the good news. But all we got was a snub. Abba, it seemed, wanted to receive a special payment, or ‘royalty’, if their song was broadcast.

  This was insane, I reasoned. The man on Norwich market who sells towels plays this CD every week. Does he have to pay a ‘royalty’? Does a single mum have to pay a ‘royalty’ if she blares it from her Fiesta car stereo? We were being victimised.

  I later discovered that royalty payments were an extremely common – but no less sickening – requirement of music broadcasting. So we had the song re-recorded by the Jeff Lovell Orchestra.80 This version retained all of the poetry and drama of the original, but Jeff, himself on guitar, added much more treble to the mix and with extra cymbal work managed to add a sheen of accessibility and, dare I say it, stardust to an already magnificent song. We had our musical motif.81

  Aha!

  What is that? What is Aha? Well, it’s a duosyllabic exclamation that has spilled from my chops and given pleasure to millions across the globe. Some would say it has come to define me. But how was it formed? I’ll tell you the truth.

  We’d not even rehearsed it. I’ll say that again (or you could just re-read the first one and skip this next one.) We’d not even rehearsed it. I came out on stage for that first show, sweating freely and visibly from my face, neck, pits, back and pants. ‘Knowing me, knowing you,’ sang the Jeff Lovell girls.82 And as the track reached its conclusion, they sang it again.

  My eyes filled with a burning white light and Abba drenched my brain. ‘Ahaaaaa!!!!’ I boomed. It just came out. WALLOP! The audience didn’t know what to say. Me, I took it in my stride, literally shaking at how right, how ruddy correct, it had felt. Throughout that show, I said it a few more times. And I opened all subsequent shows with the same shout. And you know what, it became something of a calling card, voted years later 84th in Channel 4’s 100 Best Catchphrases.

  And if people to this day shout it out at me, in the street, or when I’m trying to pay for my shopping, or if I ring up a call centre to renew car insurance, or in a doctor’s waiting room if I’m having trouble digesting food, it doesn’t bother me. I’m fine with it. I like it. It makes me feel good and glad. Why wouldn’t it? So if people think it does bother me or that they’re getting one over on me, or that it might be a good way of riling me, they could literally not be further from the truth. I do not give a fucking shit either way.

  No, if anything, I embraced it. In fact, the phrase has become so synonymous with Brand Partridge that I later took steps to claim some kind of entitlement to it, flying to Gothenberg to negotiate directly with Björn and Benjamin’s lawyers for rights to shout (but not say) the word ‘Aha’ 50 times a year in perpetuity for the rest of my life or until 2015, whichever comes sooner.

  But that’s by the bye, the first show was a great success. Brainbox author Lawrence Camley was a ruddy good sport, Ally Tenant (a TV mind quack) was interesting, although perhaps too smutty for an audience reared on shipping news and dramas about farms. As with all feminists she combined a hatred of being sexualised with a fixation that everything is to do with sex. I mean, do you like having it off or not?? Hello???

  Afterwards I went to congratulate Adam Walters but he was tied up in a meeting, sitting still while the BBC’s Controller of Editorial Policy, John Wilson, paced and shouted incoherently.

  Every show thereafter was a great success. ‘Don’t read the reviews,’ said Martin Bell one day in a corridor. ‘Don’t have to, mate!’ I shouted back, a spring in my step. Each show seemed more informative, entertaining and superb than the last, although I felt the guests could have been better behaved. Controversial lawyer Nick Ford was an especially crass interviewee, not attempting to hide his homosexuality at all as far as I could tell.

  We garnered pleasing column inches for what was a poorly marketed Radio 4 show, aided in no small part by the resignation of government minister Sandra Peaks in our third show. She’d been siphoning government grants into her husband’s construction firm and paying twin 17-year-old rent boys to engage in sexual acts. Although our conversation was somewhat fractious, Sandra and I remain very, very good friends and I regret my line of questioning deeply. The so-called controversies were nobody’s business but Sandra and Clive’s.

  The show was being talked about – not just in DIY superstores or trumped-up newsagents but in media circles. We enjoyed further publicity from the death (figuratively speaking!) of comedian Bernie Rosen in week five and the death (actual) of Tory peer Lord Morgan of Glossop in our final show.


  But I don’t think anyone was too upset. Lord Morgan’s family began legal action and asked some searching questions about our indemnity insurance, but I don’t think anyone seriously believed we’d been responsible. Can you imagine? Cause of death: chat!!!83 I don’t think so!!

  No, far from it being a downbeat end to the series, I was in high spirits. Our final show had seen a guest appearance from Tony Hayers, then acting commissioning director for BBC TV and a man who frankly made Adam Walters look like a pathetic radio idiot. Tony and I hadn’t met before but, knowing he was important, I’d kept an eye on him and admired him from afar, most notably in the BBC canteen from behind a newspaper.

  Walters had made it clear that Radio 4 wanted a second series. ‘Join the fucking queue, mate,’ I said with my eyes.

  After the final show, with Tony heading for the car, I ran up behind him, shouting to be heard over the noise as Lord Morgan’s body was lifted into the ambulance. ‘Tony,’ I said. ‘Are you going to put this baby on the goggle-box or what?’

  I was pleased he’d come to the last show of the series because by this point my new look was really taking shape. My clothes were, and would remain, somewhere in the sweet spot between smart and smart casual, but it was my hair that had taken the quantum leap forward. Chat show hosts normally keep things pretty trim up top. I however liked to think outside the square. So I’d grown it. It was now thick, full and if I tipped my head right back, shoulder-length (see picture section). If the day was an even number, I’d wash it. And if it wasn’t I’d just shake it loose and brush through a little olive oil. It worked for me then and I know it works for Jonathan Ross now, though he’s replaced the olive oil with Fry Light cooking spray.

  As this thought had been so long, I decided to repeat my question. ‘Tony,’ I said. ‘Are you going to put this baby on the goggle-box or what?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ he said, which at first I thought was a worryingly non-committal hand-off. But then I thought about it,84 about his specific choice of words. ‘See’, he’d said. Not ‘hear’, ‘see’. He was talking in visual terms. This I felt sure was him saying, in code,85 your show will be seen on the television. I punched the air and whooped before lowering my voice out of respect for Lord Morgan’s nearby relatives.

  The next day I walked into Peartree Productions and doubled everyone’s pay. Then sacked Lisa.

  74 Note: at the time this word was deemed acceptable. How times change!

  75 Press play on Track 18.

  76 Fernando confronted me about this many years later. And after initially telling him to get stuffed, I broke down and admitted to a momentary lapse of parental judgment.

  77 Some people have subsequently accused me of lying that I owned a production company. It wasn’t a lie. It was a joke that was taken seriously. And if they can’t see that they’re idiots.

  78 Press play on Track 19.

  79 Press play on Track 20.

  80 Free of charge. This was a big break for Jeff and the gang. In fact, they later won a contract to play on a cruise ship to Santander off the back of me.

  81 Some people mistakenly believed the track was recorded by the Geoff Love Orchestra. Wrong! If I had a pound for everyone who made that mistake, I’d be pig rich.

  82 I say, girls. One was in her forties and recorded her vocal with a ten-year-old son eating sandwiches by her side.

  83 I’m laughing as I write this.

  84 Press play on Track 21.

  85 Would make a good chapter in The Da Vinci Code.

  Chapter 11

  Radio’s Loss

  A TV CHAT SHOW is different from a radio one. Hair must be better kempt, the studio must be de-drabbed, a house band is required. And other things like cameras and monitors differ as well.

  These weren’t my concern, though. I was the talent. And the world would know my name.

  Hayers had us scheduled for a 9pm BBC2 slot. I’m often asked if that miffed me. The natural home for a broadcaster like me would surely have been BBC1, 7pm. The chat show landscape of the time was barren and desolate like the moon or Malta, and ITV’s Aspel & Company – the only serious rival for the chat show crown – had been put to sleep. (As an act of kindness, trust me. Terrible show.)

  BBC1 was crying out for KMKY, and the decision not to place it there was a loony one. But miff me? No. I looked at the bigger picture. If ever a TV channel needed helping out of a hole it was BBC2, 1993/1994. And I was the man to give it a shot in the arm.

  Don’t get me wrong, I wasn’t an avid watcher of the channel, being neither a young urban male or book-bothering clever-clogs. But I did watch Top Gear, and I knew damn well that its fortunes represented an accurate bellwether for BBC2 as a whole.

  In 1993–4, Top Gear – and by extension BBC2 – stank the place out. Tiff Needell’s voice was cracking every other word, like an early-day Michael McIntyre. Clarkson was a point away from a driving ban so was test-driving cars like they were hearses, and Quentin Wilson …

  Never the most upbeat of motoring journalists, something was up with Quents. Don’t get me wrong, he’d been a bit weird for a while: the cadence of his sentences had started to get on everyone’s tits, and he was walking round all uppity and pretending to like art. More privately, he’d bought a series of vintage Bentleys but didn’t know how to drive them, secretly preferring his Toyota Avensis. But he’d even cut down his mileage in that.

  No, there was more to it than that. I followed him to the bogs at the Motor Show in ’93 and asked him straight out what was up. He wasn’t able to meet my eyes but shook his head sadly. ‘I’ve fallen out of love with them,’ he said. ‘I just can’t stand them.’

  ‘What, who?’ I said, asking two questions for the price of one.

  And with a heavy hand, he gestured out towards the Birmingham NEC. At the cars. All of the cars. He’d had his fill. And at that he broke down. We held each other, crying, for what seemed like ages. And from that moment onwards, I knew that he was shot. Top Gear was shot. BBC2 was shot. I made a big decision that day. I would forget about BBC1 and be BBC2’s White Knight,86 riding to the rescue, the salvation of the listing TV station.

  Having agreed to be the face of the channel for the foreseeable future (and agreed to drive Quentin around for an hour every Saturday so that he and cars could ‘start again’), I noticed that the atmosphere around TV Centre was different. There was literally a spring in everyone’s step. Ironically-bespectacled producers peeped out from behind laptops and rubbed their eyes as if greeting a new day. Production managers whistled as they worked. The nervous women who do typing and whatnot seemed less mousey than normal. It was a new dawn.

  Having salvaged BBC2, I set about making the best show that had ever been on it. Knowing Me Knowing You would be broadcast from a studio 25% larger than Aspel & Company’s and make use of a house band (a trait subsequently appropriated by US talk shows such as Letterman and Conan O’Barian).

  Finding the band was easy. I’d seen local musician Glen Ponder rock the joint at a Norwich wine bar months before. Dressed in tails and armed only with a baton, he was the conductor to what was essentially a pub band – a needlessly high-brow touch that I felt would fit well with the tone of my show.

  And finally, after months of slog (made more complicated by Lisa’s vindictive employment tribunal), we were ready. I was to become a star.

  86 Not racist.

  Chapter 12

  Glen Ponder, Musician87

  SAY WHAT YOU LIKE about Glen Ponder – and I have, frequently – but he was a virtuoso conductor of lounge music, possibly the most talented easy-listening batonsman of his era. He and his loyal band of minstrels (musicians) were a fixture on the Norwich music scene, effortlessly able to switch between the rival demands of a wine bar, a hotel lobby or a shopping mall forecourt. He was that versatile. As soon as I saw him and his band in action, I knew they must be given a big break. By me.

  Glen had just finished an awe-inspiring during-dinner set at Café Symphony i
n Norwich (now, at long last, a Nando’s) when I decided to broach it. I followed him to his bus stop.

  ‘Mr Ponder,’ I shouted as I approached.

  ‘Let’s have it then, fucker!’ he said, wheeling round and baring his fists and clenching his teeth. I pretended not to notice and ploughed on.

  ‘Great set back there, man,’ I said, using the word ‘man’ so he knew I was familiar with modern music. ‘Magnificent tracks.’

  He looked at me in order to size me up and gauge my intentions. His breathing was shallow and his eyes were wild. I had to say something.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I said in a quiet soothing voice, as if I was a Conductor Whisperer. He was instantly becalmed.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ he said, now at ease. ‘I thought you were a mugger.’

  Glen, it turned out, was responsible for collecting up the coins that were tossed at the band, carrying them home and piggy-banking them. As such, he was often targeted by youths, vagrants and Scots.

  Clearly, I was none of these things and we were able to strike up a conversation.

  ‘Wanna be a star?’ I asked, casually, pretending to inspect my fingernails. He just looked at me.

  ‘I’m Alan Partridge,’ I said, but he looked at me even more blankly. ‘From Radio 4’s Knowing Me Knowing You,’ I added. Still nothing. Then I added The Day Today and On the Hour, fruitlessly. I listed several other pieces of my work, but it wasn’t until I mentioned Scoutabout that the penny dropped. Flippin’ Scoutabout.

  Undeterred, I suggested that he and his band sign up with me. He agreed there and then, before we’d even discussed terms or mentioned money – which I found both refreshing and a bit desperate. But I remembered a piece of advice I’d been given by Bernard Matthews – ‘It’s when they’re tired, desperate and hungry that they’re at their most compliant’ – and I suddenly knew that this could work out very well indeed.