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.
But then, disaster: I received word that Sue Cook had bailed on me. Incandescent with rage, I slammed my fist down on the reception desk. Such was the ferocity of the blow that it left a noticeable dent in the granite. I know their handshake had seemed to suggest that Sue wasn’t a deal-breaker but it was too late, my confidence was shot to ribbons, pieces and buggery. Oh Cooky, I thought to myself, you are as unreliable as you are fit – i.e., very.
Sure enough, the show was a disaster. Some months later Michael, the kindly ex-Forces Travel Tavern employee, had attempted to put things in perspective. After all, I hadn’t s
hot any of my guests dead. Neither had anyone been punched in the face with a turkeyed hand. And in a way he was right, but in the heat of the moment I couldn’t see it like that. To my mind I’d just done a show that sucked some pretty big bum hole.
Worse still, the Irish televisual twosome had left. I gave chase and intercepted them in the foyer. Never before had they looked so Irish. I’ve no idea what that meant, but I do remember thinking it. Somehow I managed to smooth their ruffled emerald feathers, at which point they asked if they could come back to my house to talk further. I could hardly say no. In Ireland, due to a shortage of office facilities, it’s quite normal to have a strategic business meeting in another man’s lounge. The problem of course was that I had nowhere to take them. Only months earlier I had been comprehensively de-housed by Carol.
It was now that Maxwell had entered the story. To save my blushes, he had offered me the use of his bungalow. He would pose as my flat-mate/bungalow buddy and all would be well. Except when we reached his home, all wasn’t well.
The first problem came in his choice of art. Over my mantelpiece there’s a painting of a country church with a herd of geese wandering past. Over Maxwell’s there was a painting of a topless female biker, her hair flailing in the wind, her nipples standing to attention like a couple of boob soldiers.
Yet all that would have been fine – after all, breasts are just sacks of fat at the end of the day – if it hadn’t been for the other room in Maxwell’s home. Maintaining the ruse that this was actually my house was proving pretty tense, so I’d gone to the toilet to piddle out some stress. Except I didn’t know where the toilet was and when I’d pushed open the nearest door and entered the room – whoops! – I’d stumbled into this terrifying shrine to yours truly. And it’s at this point that I’ll return you to the powerful immediacy of my present-tense writing.
Fear ripples through me like the raspberry in a raspberry ripple ice-cream. I look around me. From floor to ceiling the walls are covered in pictures of Alan Gordon Partridge. This is one of the weirdest rooms I’ve ever been in, and that includes Bill Oddie’s blast-proof underground bird chamber.
Immediately I figure out that Maxwell isn’t a good Samaritan, he’s a dangerously obsessed super-fan. But the RTE executives behind me see it differently, viewing it as evidence that I’m an East Anglian egomaniac. They flee before you can say ‘Gerry Adams’.
I scan the walls. Some of his pictures have come from magazines and newspapers, but to my horror others have been captured with a telephoto lens. I’m now incredibly nervous and give voice to this in the form of a very loud gulp. Yet at the same time I can’t help but notice that Maxwell’s photos are actually very good, especially because many have been taken while crouching behind bins, squirrelled away in bushes or – Jesus of Nazareth! – hidden inside my shed.
I particularly like one shot of me stepping out of the shower, circa 1994. Don’t worry, reader, you can’t see my privates. In fact, Maxwell has cleverly used the cactus on the window-sill as a kind of photographic loin cloth. But what it does capture is a certain muscularity. This was the year, don’t forget, when I had set myself the goal of being able to do a one-armed press-up. And while I was destined never to succeed, all the gym work had left me with a body that would not have looked out of place in a magazine for men who like to look at other men.159
Yet what really draws me to this photo, what really speaks to me, is its portrayal of my hidden vulnerability. Sure there’s the raw, animal power of my physique, but there is also an essential fragility to my personality. And that’s communicated with real poignancy by the fact that there’s nothing more than a spiky Mexican plant shielding the world from my freshly washed penis and balls.
Yes, I like Maxwell’s work very much indeed. But there’s no time to dwell on this. ‘I’ve got something to show you, Alan.’ Blocking the doorway, Maxwell removes his shirt and utters a sentence I will never forget. ‘I’ve had a scale drawing of your face tattooed on my stomach.’
For a split second I think maybe it’s one of those transfers you used to get free with bubble gum. But no, it’s too big, too complex to simply be an old-fashioned lick-and-peel. It really is a tattoo. Though one thing it isn’t, is to scale. Even with fear muddying my senses, I refuse to accept that my face is as big as a torso.
The next thing I know, Maxwell has donned a plastic Alan Partridge face mask. Although not official Partridge merchandise, these masks are nevertheless a lot of fun. Still available from www.maskplanet.com/partridgeface at £9.99 for ten (excluding postage), they’re ideal for parties of all kinds. All I ask is that they not be used for Halloween. Have a bit of respect.
It’s now that things take a worrying turn for the worse. In what I fear may be the first stage of some form of ritualistic sacrifice, Maxwell begins to chant a terrifying noise. Avian in nature, I think perhaps it’s bird song, a crow maybe. To my relief it turns out that he’s just shouting my well-known TV catch-phrase (‘Aha! Aha! Aha!’), but the panic has galvanised me. I need to get out of here.
My only concern is that he may be preparing to use a weapon. If it comes to hand-to-hand combat I have every confidence that I can take him down. As a teen I’d been schooled in the ways of Judo. I chose not to progress to the very top belts as I knew I was becoming capable of badly hurting someone with the sheer proficiency of my self-defence techniques. The thought of breaking my opponent’s arm, or ensuring that his shoulders remained in contact with the mat for a count of three, only to discover 20 years later that he had become, say, head of Norfolk’s biggest Range Rover dealership, made my blood run cold.
Fair enough I’m not karate world champ Jackie Chan, but nevertheless there’s a certain sense of invincibility that comes with knowing that 30 years ago you were awarded a green belt in Judo.160 My guess – Maxwell will pick up on this and stand aside.
My guess is wrong. Maxwell twists my arm and fixes me in a headlock. Clever. He knows that one wrong move from me and my head will be ripped clean off. I have to act fast. Quick as a flash, I elbow him in the nuts, nodding as I hear the satisfying thud of bone on gland. I’ve just turned his testicles into a couple of bollock pancakes. And it feels good. ‘Would you like lemon juice with them, sir?’ I roar, inside my head.
Fear still ripples through me like it does in that flavour of ice-cream I mentioned earlier, but my will to survive is strong. No, Maxwell, Alan Partridge isn’t ready to die just yet. Despite the fact that my wife has left me and my kids rarely take my calls, I have a wife and kids to live for. At this point he’s still doubled up. I charge over and – bang, bang – head-butt him twice in the back. He screeches like an alley cat. ‘Looks like I got the kidneys then!’ I roar, still inside my head.
I quickly consider my next attack. Time for a bunch of fives, methinks. Looking around I see Maxwell catching his breath. Then, like an animal rearing up on to its hind legs, or like a human standing up, he stands up. I send a command to my brain. Instantly the fingers of my right hand start to curl inwards. Within seconds a fist has been formed. I launch it directly at my assailant’s eye. ‘Delivery for Mr Maxwell!’ I roar, this time remembering to say it out loud.
‘Really – what is it?’ his furrowed brow seems to ask.
‘A knuckle sandwich!’ my fist replies.
Somehow recovering from the force of the blow, Maxwell picks up a chair and swings it at my brain. I duck, thwarting him with the sheer speed of my knee bend. Now on my haunches, I have an idea. Tucking my head into my chest I launch into a ferocious forward roll. It skittles the insane super-fan in the blink of an eye.
For several minutes we thrash around on the floor like Tarzan and that crocodile (I’m Tarzan, he’s the croc). If I’m honest the rolling around does little to advance the fight and causes neither of us any injuries. We get back to our feet. Maxwell now has me by the throat. We both know we are entering the endgame. He thinks he’s got me, I can see it on his ugly mug, but he’s not counted on one thing – POW! – I floor
him with a classic one-inch punch. Textbook stuff, a real gut-buster.161
With Maxwell fighting for air, I see my chance and make haste for the exit. But before I can reach my car, he’s giving chase. In his hand is some sort of weapon. I don’t get a chance to look properly but my hunch is that it is either a gun or the brush from a dustpan and brush. In a split second I’ve reached my car, slid across the bonnet and got inside. I crank the ignition. The gentle throb of the Rover’s British-made two-litre engine is as comforting as a nice big hug from Mummy (would have been, were she still alive). Before Maxwell can reach me I wind down the window and holler something witty. It may have intimated that he was mentally and physically disabled, I forget now.
As I put the pedal to the metal he’s tearing after me. Yet for the first time since I entered his house, I’m starting to feel confident – the Rover 800 can out-accelerate most cars in its class, never mind a sprinting nut-case. But as I ease her into third, a wry smile dancing across my increasingly moist lips, I spot something awful. I’m driving down a dead end! I slam on the brakes and can’t believe it when the car comes to a halt without careering through the fence. Then again, I had bought British.
By now Maxwell is almost upon me. I bolt from the car, swivel on my heels and begin to sprint, leaping over a five-foot stile like it isn’t there. I hurtle across a farmer’s field, my legs eating up the ground, my arms pumping like the pistons of a big Victorian steam engine. It doesn’t even matter that I’m wearing a shirt, tie and blazer, nor that instead of running spikes I have on faux-leather shoes bought from a supermarket.
Within minutes I have sprinted for what is surely about four miles. More to the point, Maxwell has given up. And who could blame him? I’ve just blown my previous personal best for fleeing across fields right out of the water.
I just manage to stagger to a public phone box. I call my assistant and tell her to (a) collect my car and (b) deal with Maxwell personally. Hanging up, I slump against the side of the phone box and slide into a heap on the floor, the calling cards of a hundred local whores raining down on me like big drops of prostitute rain. I begin to weep. I have cheated death. I am free.
I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan Page 15
