I mention that story because my publishers felt it would make ‘a good anecdote for your book’, but actually most corporate engagements are far less dangerous. In the year 2000, I was hired to front Crash, Bang, Wallop. It neatly brought together three of my biggest passions: cars, car crashes and high-quality sell-through videos.
Had Police, Camera, Action! not already been a hit international TV show, it would have been the video that inspired Police, Camera, Action! The idea was simple. We would play to one of the most innate of all human traits – rubber-necking.
And I had an idea for a USP: why not show fatalities? Please don’t misunderstand, road deaths break my heart. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve been reduced to tears when slowing down at the site of a pile-up to grab a few snaps on the camera phone. But isn’t that the point? By showing unedited footage of RTA fatalities, weren’t we shocking drivers into being more careful? The deader they are, the stronger the message. And believe me, the drivers I had in mind could not have been deader.
In the end I was over-ruled, though we did reach a compromise. We would show horrific accidents, but we’d use crash test dummies. I personally oversaw some of these shoots and I cannot tell you how much fun it was. We had families of four – just dummies remember – flying through windscreens left, right and centre. I hadn’t laughed so much in years. I wanted to do one with a crash test dog but apparently they don’t make them.
We got most of our footage from the Highways Agency and the police, plus the odd one from me following people home from company Christmas parties. I’d do the tailgating and my assistant would hang out of the window with the camcorder. It was simple, safe and almost always ineffective.
Ironically this was the time in my life when I was least at risk of being injured in a car crash myself. Due to an unfortunate Toblerone addiction, I had ballooned180 (see picture section). I even disabled the driver-side air bag on my Rover. It was simply not needed.
At this time I was also considering switching to an automatic. Like any real man, I much preferred a manual but my new-found bigness meant there were logistical issues to address. The recent expansion of my left thigh had effectively taken my gear stick out of the equation. When I got into the car, the contents of my leg would take four or five seconds just to settle. I’d sit there watching as it advanced like lava. I’d often have the engine running and a CD playing before it had finally come to rest, with the gear stick nowhere to be seen.
It was a great job to do, though, especially if you loved cars. And I, of course, am every inch the car-o-phile. I can’t recall the first word I ever spoke but I do remember that it didn’t take me long to go polysyllabic. And when I did, into my world came words like combustion, camshaft, Halfords. I didn’t need to use them all that much in those early days of playschool and Tufty Club, but they were just there, tucked away in the back pocket, ready. And to a young child still getting to grips with the world, I cannot tell you how reassuring that was.
Growing up, I adored words and loved reading. I could always be found with my head in a good paper. The rag of choice in the Partridge household was the Daily Express. And I actually enjoyed it as a nipper. Which does make sense, given my mental age at the time. But one day, things suddenly changed. I was becoming a man, with my own thoughts, my own opinions, my own pubes. I knew I needed something radically different. I rushed straight out and bought the Daily Mail.
I sometimes flirt with the Telegraph or peep at the Times, but it’s with the Mail that I’ve stuck ever since. It really is a rock-solid daily. I especially love Richard Littlejohn. He doesn’t just shoot from the hip, he fires bazookas from it. Immigrants, travelling tinkers, and especially homosexuals – many of his pieces are so good I rip them out and laminate them. I keep them in my downstairs loo, a simple, wipe-clean tribute to one of the most progressive thinkers in the United Kingdom.
Anyway, sorry, I’m jumping around the years here (I’m like a ruddy Tardis!).181 My point was that as a youth I’d always read the paper. And I’d see stories about teenagers from broken homes joy-riding cars. Well it would turn me green with envy. Speeding round the council estate in somebody else’s car, spaffed off their faces on sniffed glue. It was the stuff of dreams. Apart from the glue. I always imagined that I’d trade my share of the Bostik for a bit longer behind the wheel. Besides, surely it sticks all your nose hairs together?
Of course joy-riding was just a crazy adolescent flight of fancy. In reality I didn’t drive a vehicle until I reached the legal age. I’ll always remember the morning of my 17th birthday. I was hoping to open the curtains and see a shiny new Triumph Dolomite gift-wrapped on the drive. But I didn’t get a car. That’s not to say I wasn’t pleased with my attaché case. The other kids in my class had to make do with satchels (boring!), whereas I looked quite the young professional, striding around with my nearly-new, jet-black Samsonite. It was a great feeling to arrive fashionably late, then make a show of flicking open the lock and pulling out my PE kit.
Mum was the one that took me out for driving lessons. Dad said he wanted to but couldn’t because of his temper. In reality, though, I got taken out very rarely, so I had to improvise. I’d sit on a chair in my bedroom, with a cushion for a steering wheel and upturned school shoes for the clutch, brake and accelerator. I guess these days you’d call it virtual reality. It might sound stupid, but I believe it’s as a direct consequence of my hours in the simulator that I was able to pass my test after just three or more attempts.
But it wasn’t just the driving I loved. I had a real reverence for the Highway Code too. Still do. If Gutenburg had known that one day his printing press would allow for the publication of the Highway Code, I’m sure he would have given us a pretty broad smile and an enthusiastic medieval thumbs-up. Because people forget that it doesn’t just save lives, it’s also a damn good read. More than that, it can help in social situations. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve broken into an impromptu braking distances quiz to plug an awkward silence at a cocktail party.
I remember once June Whitfield thought the braking distance for a car travelling at 50mph was 28 metres, not 38. Imagine that! Yet while her error quite understandably got one of the biggest laughs of the night, I was still duty-bound to tell her that those ten metres might be a harmless bit of fun at a drinks reception, but out on the open road they could mean the difference between a quiet Sunday drive and a dead baby.
I never heard back from the DVLA, but for the sake of all our children I can only pray they came down on her like a ton of bricks. That said, a ten-car pile-up triggered by the ignorance of June Whitfield would have been manna from heaven for Crash, Bang, Wallop.
I worked with the same company on a number of other projects but ultimately our relationship was doomed. It came to my attention that some of their other business interests were not a good match with Brand Partridge.
I’ll give you a prime example: wet t-shirt contests. Becoming quietly aroused as you watch a couple of young tits slowly reveal themselves though a piss-wet t-shirt might have been acceptable family fare in the 1950s, but no more. Modern women are very different beasts. And I use the word ‘beast’ in its most complimentary possible sense.
One can hardly imagine a quintessentially 21st-century lady like Carol Vorderman allowing her lady breasts to become sodden solely for the amusement of the nation’s sell-through-video-buying public. Not that it wouldn’t be a pleasant sight. The last thing I want to do is cause Mrs Vorderman any offence. I’ve absolutely no doubt that her chest is every bit as impressive and accurate as her maths.
175 Not even Mrs Kelly.
176 They sort that out in the dub.
177 This pun will become more enjoyable as the paragraph progresses.
178 See?
179 The previous week I had got myself caught up in a row with the local farming community over some comments I may or may not have made (I did make them) about intensive farming techniques. For the record I’d like to say o
nce again that these comments were made in the heat of the moment and that I fully and categorically retract many of them. And actually, issues of slander aside (remember the slush fund mentioned above), it made for some scintillating radio.
180 I’ll get to that! Calm down.
181 For overseas readers not familiar with Doctor Who, the Tardis is a very small police station that can travel through time.
Chapter 25
Marching On: Skirmish
A HUSH DESCENDED OVER the studio. I took a breath and spoke.
‘You have two phosphorous bombs, a confiscated IED, two fin-stabilised mortars and a German MG3 machine gun with a full magazine. The target is a missile silo. What are you opting to play with?’
‘Phosphorous bomb, please.’
‘I can tell you that the silo is adjacent to a hospital. Play or rearm?’
‘Play.’
‘He’s gone for play, which means this is a high-risk question. Your topic is American sitcoms. Get this wrong and you wipe out the hospital and are back down to £100. Get it right and the dishwasher is yours …’
Well, any viewer of UK Conquest/serious fans of dishwashers knows what happened next and I won’t spoil the excitement for others by revealing it now. Suffice to say that all 208 episodes of military-based quiz Skirmish are available on DVD, and they definitely bear rewatching.
The format was absorbing, high-brow but brilliantly simple: players would vie to complete fictional or historical military operations with the fewest casualties, answering general knowledge questions to gain territorial advantage, tot up Gung-ho Points or accrue weaponry. I’d honestly never been this excited about a format since Noel Edmonds sat me down with a pen and paper and explained the winning strategy for Deal or No Deal.182
The attention to military detail was second to none, with our armed forces consultant Dave Harrier free to work full-time for the show after his dishonourable discharge from the Scots Guards. It lent the show a quite terrifying realism which in turn gave us wonderful moments of drama. Although never aired, the tension on Celebrity Skirmish was such that Yvette Fielding soiled herself.
Skirmish, then, was a runaway success, on a good day achieving its target regional digital optional share of 2% of the regional digital available audience, which is eight thousand people.
It was a new stage of my career. A new show, on a new channel and time I felt to experiment with a new look – not least because I was starting to swell grotesquely in weight. So I began to grow a beard, going so far as to invest in a miniature comb and a gentle wax. I’m told that Matthew Kelly uses conditioner on his but that felt stupid to me. I did order a quality beard trimmer, though – recommended on Eric Clapton’s website.
The facial hair didn’t last long of course. As well as causing an itch that called for perpetual and frenzied scratching, it wasn’t to everyone’s taste. Plus, Bill Oddie threw a tantrum when he heard I was growing it and sent me a very, very curt letter.
No matter, I was back on the telly, and things were better than ever. Better than ever? Come off it, Partridge. Yes, better than ever, so shut your mouth. It was better because it was TV without the restrictive, choking, stifling, suffocating bureaucracy and creativity-aborting compliance culture of the BBC.
The BBC is like an uncaring sow, lying there fat and impassive as a host of piglets jostle to suck calcium-rich milk from her many jaded teats. (The metaphor probably doesn’t need explaining but, on the off chance that this book finds itself in one of those municipal libraries populated by adult learners, let me explain: the piglets are TV presenters, the milk is cash and the teats are job opportunities.)
TV talent chases BBC presenting work as if it’s the be-all and the end-all. NOT me though. Unlike your average piglet, Alan Partridge had the gumption to look beyond the udders of this particular swine and monetise his talent via other channels.
My Radio Norwich contract forbade me from moonlighting on rival stations, but I was free to engage in other commercial TV work.
I’d had a damn good go at the Hamilton’s Water Breaks vid and maintain that my attempt was as good as if not better than the Cliff Thorburn version eventually used. Cliff is a decent guy and a heck of a billiards-player, but his thick Australian accent (he pronounces Norfolk as Norfoke) cheapened the depiction of what were actually really good water breaks.
But appearing in front of the camera again had literally lit a fire in my belly, and I suddenly had a renewed appetite for on-screen work.
I was approached by Matt and Mario from a production company called AAA Productions, a name that was such a brazen attempt to appear first in telephone directories I couldn’t help but be impressed. They met me in the meeting room of a Regus office facility which you can hire by the hour, telegraphing the fact that they weren’t even based in the building but were a back-bedroom operation masquerading as a properly established company.183
They talked me through the idea of Skirmish,184 about their vision for the show, and ITV’s keen interest. They even showed me some marketing material they’d mocked up to promote my agreement to present in the show. It was a photoshopped image of me as John Rambo, armed to the nines with high-grade weaponry and question cards. They’d super-imposed that over an actual screenshot of the moment I shot Forbes McAllister, and included a speech bubble of him saying ‘Be careful with that.’185
Well, I absolutely hooted with laughter. This was an inspired piece of show marketing that was incredibly crass/inventive,186 and boded well for the quality of the show. I agreed to take the job there and then, shaking hands and then leaving their hired meeting room, still laughing my head off.187
ITV got cold feet188 in the end and decided not to take the show, even though Matt and Mario assured me the channel had definitely been interested and they’d definitely had a meeting there, even if they couldn’t remember who with.
No matter, because new satellite channel UK Conquest were sniffing around like a randy dog who’s picked up the musky excellence of another dog’s vagina. The channel’s ethos – ‘guns, girls, guys, grrrr!’ – seemed ideally suited to Skirmish.
At first, we were to be its flagship show, broadcast on Monday, Wednesday and Friday (the Wednesday and Friday shows were repeats of the Monday one). Alongside me was glamorous assistant Susie Dent, better known as the resident lexicographer from Countdown. Susie resigned after the first show, pointing out politely that the actual format hadn’t been explained to her.
Although the loss of such a talented bookworm was a major blow, it proved to be the making of us. It probably suited the tone of the hard-nosed show to have someone a bit rougher, and urban DJ Lisa l’Anson brought a Westwood-style glamour to proceedings.
Before long, we’d massively upped our output and – on my insistence – we were making three shows a day, six days a week. This was to be my undoing.189
182 You’d kick yourself if you knew!
183 I’ve done the same many, many times.
184 To be honest, they had me at the name ‘Skirmish’ but I listened politely all the same.
185 His final words.
186 Depending on your point of view.
187 A fit of giggles that only stopped on my drive home when I realised I was also crying.
188 There’s a clever pun in here.
189 Press play on Track 34.
Chapter 26
My Drink and Drugs Heck
‘ARGH. GWAAG. HUUUH.’
These noises, these gurgles and barks and grunts, they’re coming from me. They’re coming from my mouth. How long have I been making them? I do not know. Where on earth am I? I do not know. Where’s my assistant? I do not know.
One thing I did know was that my face was in considerable pain. Sharp-cornered objects were jostling for space in my mouth, spearing my inner cheeks and stabbing the roof of my mouth. Mixed with the taste of blood was an unmistakable cocktail of chocolate and nougat.
I gasped for breath, feeling my life force waning. ‘Is this
it then, Alan?’ I thought. ‘Is this where you’re finally going to die?’
I gathered my bearings. I was sat in my car, door open, belt on. It was dark, cold. Pitter-patter went the rain, as if bookending my short and ultimately unhappy life (see Chapter One for the left-hand bookend). I was alone, and felt it.
‘[My assistant]!’ I called out through the semi-masticated confectionery. Where was she? ‘[My assistant]!’ Nothing.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the rear-view mirror – my mouth and chin were stained brown from all the binged chocolate. My eyes peeped out, redly, from a pair of collapsed lids. My face – my lovely face – was now unspeakably bloated, blotchy skin struggling to contain the expanding Alan within. It was as if bread was being baked in my cheeks. Like a good-looking John Merrick, mine was a face that looked really shit. Ravaged by addiction, it was now home to jowls, eyes and chin that were being dragged torso-wards by the weight of their gelatinous content.
Fat, tired, confused, cold, obese, alone, with chilly feet. I had hit rock bottom. I forced another two prisms of chocolate into my already over-subscribed mouth and waited for death to come.
The human brain comprises 70% water, which means it’s a similar consistency to tofu. Picture that for a second – a blob of tofu the size and shape of a brain. Now imagine taking that piece of tofu, and forcing your thumbs into it hard.190 It would burst, wouldn’t it?
Okay, now imagine those thumbs weren’t thumbs but thumb-shaped pieces of bad news. And there weren’t two of them, they were about half a dozen. Imagine you were forcing all six pieces of bad news – a divorce, multiple career snubs, accusations from the family of a dead celebrity, estranged kids, borderline homelessness, that kind of thing – into a piece of tofu.
I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan Page 18
