I shut my eyes and prepare for the worst. But instead of the crack of bone on tarmacadam, what I hear is more of a squelchy thud. Because Clifton has failed to get out of my way and has effectively broken my fall. Better still, his recent thyroid problem means that, to land on, there’s very little actual difference between him and a bouncy castle.
Yet as we lie there in a tangled heap of DJs, I realise I haven’t totally escaped injury. My left ankle is badly sprained. As the pain courses up my body I yelp like a shot dog. Clifton is pretty badly hurt too. Blood is glugging from a cut in his knee like a big squirt of leg ketchup.
I’m sorely tempted to spit in the bastard’s mouth, but don’t. I’m worried it might be taken as a sign of affection by any sexual deviants in the crowd. As my mind scans its database for a plan B, he leaps up and starts to run away. Instantly I’m hurled into the belly of a dilemma. What do I do now? He’s pushed it too far this time, but I’m still a professional, I’ve still got a show to do. My fans are expecting three hours of quality radio, delivered mid-air. I may have a bust ankle, but there’s no reason I can’t get back on that castle and hop.
But then I look out into the (small but high-quality) sea of faces. My god, people are laughing at me. Worse, on the front row I see Craig Kilty, aka The Monster, and a man who looks very much like Tony Hayers but isn’t Tony Hayers because Tony Hayers is dead. What I wouldn’t give to wipe the smiles off their faces, especially the face of Craig Kilty aka The Monster because it is actually him, whereas the other one isn’t Tony Hayers (because Tony Hayers is dead).
If I just let Clifton get away with it even more people will think I’m past it. Even more people will think it’s time to put me out to pasture/stud. Instantly my mind is made up.273 ‘Sorry, guys,’ I say, ‘show’s cancelled.’
Two hours later the pursuit is still in full swing. Struggling with different but identically debilitating injuries,274 we’re locked in a dramatic low-speed chase. Thankfully for me, Clifton has been unable to stem the bleeding from his knee. Even if I temporarily lose sight of him I can always tell which direction he’s headed because he leaves a small trail of blood. He’s like a large, menstruating snail (with a drink problem).
By this point my ankle has swollen to roughly the size of a child’s head. There’s no way I can give up, though. To make matters worse, he’s goading me.
‘You’ll never catch me, Partridge.’
‘I wouldn’t bet on that,’ I counter, as a pregnant woman overtakes me.
‘Well I would,’ he replies, his ridiculous mid-Atlantic accent hanging on the breeze like a bad trump.
‘Oh yeah, how much?’
‘How much have you got?’
‘Depends if you mean cash or assets. If we’re going down the assets route then we’re talking house, car, antique Toby jug, which is chipped but not badly …’
Suddenly something hits me. This entire conversation has been nothing more than a smokescreen. With me distracted he’s hobbled on to a number 23 bus and is getting away. Overcome with rage I flick him the Vs (both hands). A young boy misunderstands and thinks I’ve aimed the insult towards his mother. Keen to defend her honour, he flicks his wrist to and fro in the international gesture for ‘masturbator’.
I flick my head effortlessly to the right and see another bus pulling in. Hauling my kiddy’s head of an ankle aboard, I pay my fare (£1.50 for a single!) and fix the driver square between the eyes.
‘Follow that bus!’ I bellow, my face puce with frustration.
‘Jesus, what happened to your ankle?’ he asks, leaning his head out of that little cabin they sit in.
‘Bouncy castle fall only partially broken by bad man,’ I answer, concisely. ‘Now drive!’
He steps on the gas and with a massive cloud of dust we wheel-spin out of the depot, our back end bucking like a bronco. But at the lights, disaster. Clifton’s bus turns left, mine goes right. I ding the dinger, but as I leap from the bus and on to the pavement I’ve forgotten about my ankle. The sudden throb of pain makes me understand what childbirth must be like. Except I’m feeling it in my lower leg rather than my vagina (which is presumably more sensitive).
‘Are you okay?’ says a passing French woman who’s obviously learnt to speak English. I totally ignore her, partly out of pain, partly because I’m still angry at her countrymen for taking part in the Vichy regime.
I scan my surroundings. If I can cut across the retail park I should – should – be able to head him off at the junction. It’s a long shot but it’s the only shot I have. I make my way past Boots, JJB Sports and Blacks, who I notice have got 25% off all waterproof trousers. This is handy, not only as I need a new pair of waterproof trousers but also because I always aim to get them at a discounted rate rather than pay full price.
But when I look back over to the junction, the bus has gone. Clifton has eluded me! ‘Noooooooooo!!!!’ I shout, tossing my head back and firing my scream into the sky (although some of it will inevitably have spilled into the nearby Burtons). I trudge on in a daze, making it a few more paces before collapsing to the ground in a tangled heap of DJ.
When I finally come round – how long has it been? A few seconds? A few minutes? A few hours?275 – I realise where I am.276 I’m lying in a disabled parking bay outside Morrison’s. Yet this isn’t just any old Morrison’s. This is the site of the copse where I’d stood all those years ago, an eight-year-old marvelling at a simple maple, bowled over by its class and its spunk. The same site to which I make pilgrimage once a year, to remember that tree and take stock; to remember who I am and re-engorge my sense of self.
But today feels different. Today the tree/parking space feels blank, impassive, solemn. Rather than replenishing my self-esteem, being here seems to be sending me a far more poignant message.
As a child this is where I’d looked ahead to the rest of my life, where my hopes and ambitions had taken shape. And now I am here once more, at the tail-end of my career, bested yet again by a rival DJ. The message is clear – I really am past it.
Try as I might, I can’t ignore what this tree277 is trying to tell me. I feel tears welling in my two eyes for I know what I must do. I must go into North Norfolk Digital278 in the morning and announce my retirement, effective immediately.
As the enormity of my decision dawns on me, I bring my arms into my body, tuck my chin on to my chest and roll away to the left (as a disabled guy wants to get into the parking space).
That night I sit alone on my sofa and prepare to write a goodbye speech to my listeners. Armed with nothing other than a pad of paper and one of those biros that writes in different colours depending on which button you flick down, I set to work.
Memories, people from my past, significant achievements dance before me, like I imagine they would if I was sitting at a fire after drinking the potion in some kind of voodoo ceremony.
I will myself to write my goodbye. But that night’s Bid-Up TV is so enjoyable that four hours later I realise I haven’t done anything (other than make a winning bid for a 12v automatic hammer with soft-grip handle).
I turn off the TV and head into the kitchen to treat myself to a bowl of Coco-Pops with hot milk (heavenly), and as I’m slurping down a mouthful of sweet brown cereal, I fall sound asleep. I wake at 7, with a bit of milk on my face but also with a genuine sense of clarity and certainty. ‘No time for McDonald’s today,’ I say loudly, ‘I have to say my goodbyes: to my colleagues, to my listeners, to the profession that has been my love for the best years of my life.’
I telephone my assistant to tell her the news. I’m obviously not interested in what she has to say, so when I’ve finished speaking I press the buttons on my phone in order to drown out her protests with the keytones. Then I hang up.
I start the drive into work, manfully trying to operate the brake, accelerator and clutch with only one functioning foot. It’s not easy, but I’m confident that if I move my good foot quickly enough, while slinging my bad one over the gear stick, it can be
done. A close shave with the local lollipop lady tells me I’m wrong. I clamber aboard my crutches and begin the long walk to work. It will at least give me time to marshal my thoughts.
Some hope! As I struggle to pole-vault my body gradually towards the studios, my concentration is crumpled by interruptions.
‘Excuse me, love,’ a bespectacled woman asks from the driver’s window of a Renault Espace. ‘I’m trying to find the Millennium Library. I think it’s Ethel St?’
‘It’s Bethel Street,’ I mutter, my eyes fixed on the pavement ahead. ‘It’s just past the end of Earlham Road but there are tailbacks from the roadworks on the Grapes Hill roundabout, so you’re better off taking Dereham Road and heading for St Benedicts St.’
‘Thanks!’
I must concentrate. This is a seminal moment in my life. I need this to be right. But a shout from a nearby doorway halts my train of thought.
‘Lovely day!’ says an old cardiganed woman, towing a tartan shopping trolley and dead-locking her front door behind her as all old people obsessively insist on doing.
‘Yeah, for ducks!’ I holler. She laughs, and I explain. ‘The weather’s going to take a turn any minute. Massive chance of rain today. Massive.’
She stops laughing and, deep in thought, heads back indoors to collect a coat or buy her shopping online.
I arrive at North Norfolk Digital279 still clueless as to how I’ll announce my retirement. Just before I enter the building, the security guard catches my eye. He looks a bit down – or rather, more depressed than usual – so I engage him in a quick bit of chat, instinctively focusing on topics someone like him he will relate to, such as football or the lottery.
I get inside and crutch myself to the bathroom. Standing at the mirror, I observe my reflection: my eyes still dance and sparkle (of course they do) but my hair is mottled grey, my eyes are riddled with wrinkles and my skin has developed a blotchy quality that I never discovered the source of.
‘The time has come for me to retire,’ I mumble to myself. Yes, something simply feels right. I hear a snigger from a toilet cubicle and curse silently. My colleagues really are twats sometimes.
After splashing my face where it had been stained with milk, I leave the bogs and order a couple of less senior people to assemble everyone in the foyer. And then I drop my bombshell. ‘I’m calling it a day. I wanted you all to know first, but in a few moments I’ll share the news with my listeners. “I’ve had some great years with you all,” I shall say. “But the time has come for me to retire.”’
A hush falls over the room. They can’t believe it. At the back, I think I see someone faint. I start the process of shaking every member of staff by the hand. It’s only a small gesture but I know it’ll mean a lot. Some people have got palms even clammier than my own (including a worryingly high proportion of women), but I don’t tell them – now’s not the time, I’ll just give my hands a good wash later.
In the end I have to do the shakes increasingly quickly as I’ve noticed people have started to drift away (no doubt intent on returning to their desks to switch off their email, take their phones off the hook and give themselves a few minutes to get their heads straight).
By the time I get to the last few it’s barely even a shake, it’s more of a grip-and-release. I’m in such a hurry I end up pressing the flesh of a couple of people who aren’t even on the payroll – one is a DHL courier, the other isn’t.280
I’m so determined not to miss anyone out that I even head back into the toilets (first the men’s, then the women’s, then the disabled’s) to mop up any stragglers. By now however it’s five281 to ten. The time for shaking hands with people in toilets, no matter what their gender or handicap, is over.
I glance out of the window and see an old woman looking up at the window, through the driving rain. But I’ve no time to worry about lady pensioners. It’s show time for the final time. I enter my studio, for the final time. I sit on my seat, for the final time. I warm up my voice, not for the final time (at this point I’m still toying with the idea of joining a gospel choir).
As I have done for every one of my broadcasts over some 30 years, I quietly run through my pre-show checklist. Headphones – on. Throat and nasal passages – clear. Fingers – ready to push buttons and slide sliders. The breakfast show has chosen to end with ‘It’s My Life’, the 1992 hit by Dr Alban. It seems somehow appropriate, even though it’s been used to advertise tampons.
My moment has arrived. Alban stops, his husky European rap-singing slowly fading in the crisp morning air. And then …
Nothing. Silence. I’ve frozen. I’m committing the biggest sin in radio: dead air. But it’s not that I’ve lost my bottle. Me? No way. Get real. I’d made my mind up after all. It’s simply that I can’t muster the will to speak. Something has grabbed my brain like the jaws of a distempered police dog. It’s the old lady I’ve seen from the studio window, moments earlier.
It’s only now I realise: this wasn’t just any female pensioner. It was the woman I’d spoken to earlier this morning. This time she was wearing a coat, carrying an umbrella to protect her body from the drench. And when her eyes had fixed on mine she’d been mouthing something. ‘Thank you,’ she’d been saying. ‘Thank you.’
I’d helped that woman. I had genuinely helped her. In providing a simple weather update, I’d helped her to avoid both the downpour and – who knows – perhaps a fatal dose of hypothermia.
And it wasn’t just her. The travel bulletin I’d given to the bespectacled driver had helped her to (I imagine) return her library books in time, saving her money that she could use to feed her children, and all thanks to a detour away from the inevitable jam-back at Grapes Hill. And then there was the security guard. He’d been at a low ebb, but my chat, my breezy demeanour, my easy way with people had given him a chuckle, a moment of levity, a sign that someone cared.
I shake my head. No time for sentimentality, Alan. I need to get back ‘on-message’, as Tony Blair would say. But still I’m dry-mouthed and unable to propel the words towards the foamy orb of the mic.
By now word has spread that I’m drying up live on air. People are pouring into the studio that faces mine. Others are peering in through the little round window in the studio door. It’s only a small window but I count at least 3.5 faces.
But still, I can’t do it. Because I’d helped people, I’d amused, I’d chatted. Help, amuse, chat. And those qualities – help, amuse, chat – are qualities that broadcasters spend a lifetime trying to perfect. Yet on the limp to work I hadn’t even had to think about it – it was like breathing, or going for a wee in the night. It had all come so naturally. It was just Alan being Alan, Partridge being Partridge, me being I.
But shouldn’t I be saying ‘sod them all’? Sod the mockers, the naysayers, the bouncy-castle saboteurs? Whatever they think of my broadcasting, isn’t it my audience that matters? I mean, for them I am doing a good thing, day in, day out (except weekends). Help, amuse, chat. Help, amuse, chat. I look back to the window. Now my assistant is there. She’s holding up a plastic bag with some sandwiches in. Is this a sign? No, probably not.
Suddenly the producer is in my ear. ‘Speak, man.’ His voice seems to go into slo-mo. ‘Speeeeeaaaakkkk maaaannnn!!!’ I go to loosen my tie but realise I’m not wearing one. So instead I just end up scratching the bit below my Adam’s apple. As I drag my nails back and forth across the base of my gullet, the producer is back in my ears. ‘Snap out of it, Alan.’
Dozens of eyeballs peer at me, thousands of ears strain to hear. I lean towards the mic and finally, finally, I speak:282
‘This is Alan Partridge with Mid-Morning Matters. And on the day that 67-year-old Norwich resident Mary Leese has woken from a three-year coma, we’ll be asking – what’s the best night’s sleep you’ve ever had?
‘We’re also looking at the law and asking: are you legally allowed to draw a line down the back of a photograph and use it as a postcard? Now, though, the best band ever to come out of
Liverpool – it is, of course, China Crisis.’
A deafening roar goes up around the station as people realise I’ve shelved my retirement plans. I go to shield my ears from the noise, but suddenly an ecstatic throng of well-wishers is flooding into the studio. As two oldish receptionists struggle to lift me on to their shoulders, dozens of others reach over and hug me (although there is absolutely no physical contact between myself and my assistant).
Instantly everything feels right again. I am back where I belong. I am I, Partridge.
So, dear reader, our time together is over. All that remains is this short epilogue. And anyone who thinks it’s designed solely to haul me over the minimum word-count specified by my publisher is very, very, very, very, very, very wrong.
Instead it’s a chance for us to reflect. Having read this book I’d like to think you’ve come to know me a bit better. Because in a funny kind of way I feel like I’ve come to know you. Shall we be friends? Yes, I think we shall. In a spiritual sense anyway, please don’t come to the house.
It’s my belief that in the previous 309 pages we’ve been on a journey – literally in the case of those reading this on the train or bus, less so for those on the sofa, in bed, or reading aloud to a blind friend or lover.
Now, however, as I ask that you play track 46,283 the time has come to bid you farewell. I have been through much in my life. I have scaled the highest highs284 and I have plumbed the lowest depths.285 And though I sit here today with a heavy heart and a weary soul, my eyes still burn brightly. They burn for a better tomorrow, for a world without famine and war and the BBC. But more than anything they burn for a million-plus sales of the hardback version of I, Partridge: We Need to Talk about Alan.
269 A bit less if I go to the toilet before I weigh.
270 North Norfolk’s best music mix.
271 North Norfolk.
272 Starring Charles Dance as Alan Partridge, and sound-tracked by ‘You Can Call Me Al’ by Paul Simon, which I think is quite cheesy but still good.
I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan Page 26
