‘Alan, I love you!’ she kept shouting (Sonja, not my assistant – urgh). Poor kid, I thought as I did my belt up. (I was in the toilet anyway so thought I might as well make use of it.) But I became less sympathetic with each shout, because it was repetitive and, other than the theme tune to Ski Sunday, I don’t like repetitive noises.
She stayed for absolutely ages. I found this irritating because I’d promised to send a showreel to Bid-Up TV and the post office was going to shut. After a few hours she calmed down and sloped off, but I’d missed the last post and never got that BUTV job. Shame, because it was one of my favourite channels and I used to practise the patter in the shower, imagining I was selling Radox or a bath mitt.
And so I moved into the house alone – a big space for one certainly, but I liked that, sometimes running around the building with a makeshift cape around my collar. It had four good-sized bedrooms and I used to alternate between rooms 1 and 4, leaving 2 (Fernando’s) and 3 (Denise’s) untouched in case they dropped by and needed to go to sleep. Still do!
And Sonja? Well, she and I are still very close – in the sense that she’s now my cleaner. I wish things had turned out differently but I’m glad they didn’t.
217 The finishing touch was to be a boot scraper outside the front door. When I see one of those outside a house I think, ‘They know which way to vote at a General Election!’
218 One of the very, very few.
219 I may be wrong about this, but he looks like he could be gypsy. I’m not sure of his ethnicity but I’m reliably informed he once tried to put a curse on Leo Sayer after an argument over the bill in an Indian restaurant.
220 Still clueless over that one. Animals.
221 The name was registered but no business was ever conducted.
222 Postscript – it turned out my assistant’s mum died of colon cancer anyway, so I was absolved/vindicated.
223 ‘Fail to prepare? Prepare to fail!’ – as I once had engraved on the underside of a watch that I’ve subsequently never worn.
224 ‘Every Breath You Take’ – The Police with Sting.
225 North Norfolk Digital Listener Survey, June 2011.
226 So-called because of the time of day it was broadcast and because that’s where Dave was heading if he didn’t cut down on the booze.
227 And it was always bitter.
228 Manual masturbatory relief by a consenting foreign hand.
229 Press play on Track 39. Check out the video!!!!
230 I won’t say too much. I’ve no doubt she’ll be reading this. She still sends me Christmas cards with glitter glued on to a picture of Our Lord with a sort of Ready Brek glow around him and inside the inscription says, For unto us this day a child is born (which is fair enough). But I’ve always found her continued correspondence a bit desperate.
231 My favourite thing about her? Her backside.
232 NB – check word exists.
Chapter 31
Forward Solutions™
I AWOKE AT 3AM to find sweat pouring from all over my body. Something wasn’t right.
But how could this be? I’d bounced back. I was in solid fettle. Slim, happy, professionally successful, I was a published author no less! Things were going fine for me. So what gave?
It wasn’t until after I’d made toilet that things started to fall into place. Whether it was a brainwave triggered by the exhilaration of one of my best ever slashes, or the blissful relaxation engendered by crouching in the half-light, flannelling sweat from my undercarriage, I’ll probably never know. But it was at that moment that my destiny took shape.
Yes, things were going fine for me. But, as I’ve always modestly insisted, it’s not all about me. There are people out there who are lonely, weak, vulnerable, obese, not on the radio, poverty-stricken, drugged to the nines on smack pipes. Things were going fine for me, but what about them? The underpoor, the badlings, the shitsam and flopsam. What could I, Alan Partridge, do for them?
It was obvious. I had a responsibility to give. I had a god-given duty to help others. It was incumbent upon me, Alan Partridge, to summon up everything I’d learnt while bouncing back and run after-work Forward Solutions™ courses for a special corporate rate233 of £299.98 per head, ex VAT.234
A man who does manual labour for a living once accused me of being arrogant. My crime? Taking my wisdom and sharing it with people who would never develop it off their own bat.
Is that arrogant, do you think? To genuinely help people less savvy than you? When Gandhi advocated non-violent resistance or when Moses parted the Red Sea, were they being arrogant? Well yes, maybe Moses was a little bit jazz-hands, but leaders need a little showmanship. It’s what Jesus of Nazareth would have had in mind as he turned loaves and fishes into five thousand tuna butties.235
So no, not arrogant. Helpful.
‘It’s not arrogant, it’s helpful,’ I said, wishing I’d never wound my window down to address him. He was holding a Stop/Go lollipop while his ‘colleagues’ spread gravel across one lane of the carriageway. You would not find a candidate more in need of night school and a shave. And, in a nice way, I’d said so.
I was in the early evangelical flush of Forward Solutions™ – keen to get out there and improve lives. So I’d slapped the door of the Lexus and suggested that if he improved his literacy and appearance he ‘could drive one of these’.
What followed had been good Samaritanism thrown back in my face. So I explained that I was a force for good.
‘Yeah, but only if folk want helping,’ he spluttered, unintellectually. ‘Tha’s no right to come up t’ folk and t’ tell ’em wot’s right and what’s not, tha dunt. I’m happy as I am.’
He made me think about all the funny things Jez Clarkson says about the working class. I thought, ‘Wow. If Clarkson could hear this spiel, he’d have a field day, laughing along with me at this guy’s working classness.’ No doubt we’d end up down the pub swapping stories about people with no money.236
‘My friend,’ I said, ‘you’re wearing a high-visibility jacket over a t-shirt that says “Rage Against the Machine” on it – the only machine here is that generator and if you were to rage against that, it’d be riding rough shod over basic health and safety. Not a good look, hombre!’
And with that quip, I revved my engine, ready to speed off. There was no traffic in either direction so I was ready to slam her into first and really let rip. You snub my advice, I’m going to deliver a quip and then drive past you fast – it’s that simple.
But he just stood there watching me, the Stop side of the lollipop facing my way. I revved louder to let him know I was eager to drive past him fast but he seemed not to notice.
I started to become anxious. The more time that elapsed between my acid put-down and me driving off fast, the less it would seem like a conversational flourish – it’d just look irresponsible. I revved again. Still nothing.
I called out to him but he didn’t seem to hear me. This was really annoying. On the off chance that he might be about to turn the lolly round I repeated the ‘Not a good look, hombre’ bit to give it proximity to my driving away. But then a full five minutes passed.
With my requests falling on deaf ears, I got out of the car and approached him.237 I was just about to ask him to turn the lollipop to Go when he did just that. I trudged back to the car and pulled steadily away.
I learnt something that day. That unsolicited life coaching was inadvisable. If people don’t pay for it, they don’t appreciate it. Even during the Sermon on the Mount there must have been a couple of Sinai-based goat herders who wished Christ would just eff off.
Also, it’s not a sustainable business model, and at least by charging a fee you cut out the true bottom feeders – who are probably beyond help anyway. My advice is more for amateur businessmen, shopkeepers, even people who rent out pedalos on a shallow man-made lake. It’s not for single parents, asylum seekers, football hooligans, people in care, or criminals (unless white collar and sorry).
No, Forward Solutions™ was a potentially lucrative, potential helpful, potentially global life-improvement programme that, having helped me, could potentially help other people. I whipped it into the shape of a 60-minute presentation and, alongside my radio work, it became a source of real professional fulfilment that made me feel good (pride) and look good (image).
So what was Forward Solutions™? Perhaps it’s easier to tell you what Forward Solutions™ wasn’t.
1. It wasn’t some attempt to boost my profile and secure lucrative television work. No, no. My TV days were dead to me and I was fine with that. Did I miss having my own parking space at Television Centre? Not really. Do I even remember that my face on the cover of the Radio Times once led to a 2% leap in circulation? Can’t say I do. Did I used to enjoy the make-up girls referring to me as ‘Mr Partridge’ but calling Nicholas Witchell ‘Nick’? Perhaps a little.
But, just to reiterate, Forward Solutions™ was not and is not some presentation that could just be repackaged into a 12-part series of lifestyle makeover shows for BBC 1.
2. It wasn’t some kind of clever-clogs psychobabble. The opposite! What was unique about my system was that it took science and plucked the good bits out and dismissed the rubbish. Science can really bog things down with blah-blah about research, tests, statistics, facts and psychology. I didn’t want to be bogged down. I wanted to be bogged up.
3. It wasn’t just another self-help programme. Of course, there were a lot of people who were trying to do what I was doing. It was a very crowded marketplace.238 Stuart Blender was just launching his Mind Muscle™ technique. David Els was generating plenty of attention for his Ladder of Legends™. And of course Solomon Baptiste’s Rise Like a Phoenix™ programme was the big show in town.
But I had a considerable advantage in that, unlike the three I’ve just mentioned, Forward Solutions™ wasn’t shit. I really was offering the best coaching around. Yes, Blender raises the interesting point that the hero is deep within us and all he needs is soul food. And yes, Els does offer a moving discourse about hope being a buddy who doesn’t mind what time you call. And there’s a certain entertainment value in watching Baptiste whoop and holler like he’s got chillies in his unders. But could they compete with Forward Solutions™? No.
4. It wasn’t all about personal happiness. It had real business benefits too. From day one, hour one, minute one, second one, I wanted to create something that was touching yet business-like: a presentation that would make you laugh and make you cry or (if better) make you stop laughing and make you stop crying.
5. It wasn’t just spoken passages culled directly from Bouncing Back. Although some bits did double up. It had taken a great deal of thought and consideration and thinking. Nothing was rushed – and boy, did that pay off. It was a presentation I developed very gradually in my bathroom mirror. What started out as me slapping my own face and saying ‘You have to get through this’ went on to become what Winning Management magazine describes as ‘nothing less than the advertised hour’.
But there were still doubters – still are! In Britain, people are very wary of seeking help for problems that occur around the head, brain or mind.
Why? If your car breaks down, you call the AA. If your mind breaks down, I’d say, call the AP.239 Actually, unlike the AA, AP doesn’t discriminate against middle-aged men. Try phoning the AA when you’re not a pregnant disabled single mother and see how much they value your call. You’ll be there all night.
Last time my fan belt went, I was in the middle of Norfolk at 2am and I had to flag down a woman’s car and demand that she make the phone call for me. She was really scared. But then so was I.240 Why would a single woman be any more prone than a single man? Single men can be just as vulnerable to a crazed homosexual pest241 or – and this is less likely – a very strong woman.
So now that it’s clear what it wasn’t – and I was certainly clear on that – I felt it was high time I shared Forward Solutions™ with the world.
Fast forward three months and a thrusting go-getter by the name of Alan Partridge is in the staff room of Richer Sounds in Norwich, wrapping up a well-honed presentation to a sales team that would outnumber the fingers on both hands of a fully able man.
‘So you see, it’s not about “self-help” or “self-improvement”.’ (I’m walking slowly up and down as I say this. You can’t take your flippin’ eyes off me.) ‘What I’m talking about is “self-transformation”.’
Oh, now they’re listening.
‘Self-trans-formation. The actions I’ve given to you – to you Daniel, to you Marvin, to you Sam, to you Andrew242 – the actions I’ve given to you are nothing less than a Self-Transformation Diagnosis. Now I’ve given STDs to men, women, children in some cases …’
They’re smiling now.
‘Actually I find that it’s most pleasurable to give STDs to kids. The younger the better really. When I go into schools and give STDs to kids, I know that I’m really having an impact on the rest of their lives. And that excites me.’
All of them laugh and, although I only later work out what the joke is and pledge not to acronymise Self-Transformation Diagnosis ever again, it’s a nice upbeat ending to the session.
‘Now go out there and attack the planet!’
Think this was a one-off? Think again. The Richer Sounds presentation was in December 2005. In the preceding seven months alone, I’d presented Forward Solutions to the staff of Clinton Cards in King’s Lynn, to Fords of Norwich, to the entire company at Bulwark IT Security and to the staff at the Norfolk Mead Hotel.
I felt like a new person. Younger, fitter, wiser, louder. I took to wearing the three old reliables: stone-wash baby blue denim jeans, oversized white training shoes and a wearable microphone.
Quick digression for the AV nerds out there. I absolutely insisted on presenting with a Sennheiser 152 G2 Headset microphone. If any of you are in the market for a headset mic – aerobic instructors, business leaders, the people at the market who sell chipped crockery – let me give you a piece of solid gold advice. This is the Piat d’Or of headset mics. Used by the likes of Mr Motivator and – weirdly – Terry Nutkins, the Sennheiser is the official headmic for both product demonstrators at the Ideal Home Exhibition and Gabrielle.
I’m not going to go on about headmics, and bulk out my word count with technical details243 – other than to say it’s lightweight but packs a punch. And its supercardioid microphone produces crystal clear sound.
Some of the lesser headmics out there – I’m thinking of your Radnor CL-07s – muffle certain consonants so that an S sounds like an F.244 I gave a version of this presentation to the children of a local primary school and caused uproar by repeatedly using the phrase ‘You can’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs.’
So avoid the Radnor range. That’s my advice.
I would also advise you to avoid wearing a headmic on one side of your head and a Bluetooth mobile phone headset on the other. Because during the same presentation, Carol called – she was angry that I’d cancelled a long-standing direct debit, suspending her subscription to BBC Good Food magazine. And the sound from the call vibrated through my head and was picked up on mic.245
I had bigger plans for the project than drafty staff rooms, though. My aim was to take the presentation on a tour of the major theatres around the country. Provisional chats were initiated with the Norwich Playhouse, but they said their only free slot was the Christmas season, and they normally fill that with a pantomime. Kein problem, I said! My presentation was loose enough that it could easily have been re-purposed to become a fun family-based show in the best traditions of the UK pantomime. For example, the hero would be on stage and he’d say to the audience, ‘Where aren’t my best years?’ And they’d say, ‘Behind you!!’
They never got back to me. No matter!
At least I was showing ambition. All you need to do is aim high. As Jimi Hendrix once said, ‘Excuse me, while I kiss the sky.’ And I echoed that. Of course, Jimi was f
ound dead in his own sick shortly afterwards. He’d probably been listening to Stuart Blender’s CD.
It’s all about belief. I had a chap called Alvin visit me who’d struggled to hold down a job. He was in a hostel and at a low ebb. He believed he would one day learn how to travel forwards and backwards through time.
‘In that case, you will,’ I said. ‘Just hold on to that belief. You can achieve whatever you want to achieve.’
‘Really?’ he said. ‘My psychiatrist says I’m being weird. I’ve been prescribed pills.’ And at that moment he looked so sad – his will crushed by medical science. I told him to lose the pills and follow his dreams.
And as a result of that advice, Alvin came on in leaps and bounds. He was soon dreaming of even greater feats – intergalactic real estate deals, breeding humans with mermaids, an invisibility cloak, flying from one high-rise building to another.
Surprise, surprise, his psychiatrist pleaded with me to stop. ‘It’s irresponsible,’ he said during one particularly shirty phone call. ‘He can’t travel through time.’
‘Oh? Why?’ I said. ‘Because you say he can’t? Because society has decided he can’t?’
Defeated, he mumbled something about the laws of physics prohibiting it and hung up. And it’s that attitude, that ‘prohibit’ word, that idea of ‘can’t’ that I was trying to break down. You can’t travel through time. You can’t have a second series. You can’t have time off your show to do a self-help tour. Bullcrap, all of it.
I decided not to devote too much of my time to Forward Solutions™, instead choosing to concentrate on my radio show. I quietly laid the programme to rest. I’d helped enough for one lifetime …
And Alvin? Hmmm. I had a funny feeling, he’d be aaaa-okay.
233 For those on a limited budget. The least I could do.
234 Press play on Track 40.
I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan Page 23
