I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [106]
And so Mid-Morning Matters was born. And it was quickly apparent that listeners had warmed to this new Digitalan Partridge, with listening figures spiking in my first quarter by almost 2%. Why though? Just what is digital radio?
You’re the bloomin’ expert, Alan! Out with it!
Well, as far I know: The most common meaning is digital radio broadcasting technologies, such as the digital audio broadcasting (DAB) system, also known as Eureka 147.
I’m pretty sure: In these systems, the analog audio signal is digitised, compressed using formats such as mp2, and transmitted using a digital modulation scheme.
If you’re interested, I’m relatively au fait with the aim of digital radio: The aim is to increase the number of radio programs in a given spectrum, to improve the audio quality, to eliminate fading problems in mobile environments, to allow additional datacasting services, and to decrease the transmission power or the number of transmitters required to cover a region.
But that’s all I can remember right now.
246 North Norfolk’s best music mix.
247 5Live would be a good example.
248 With the exception of 5Live.
249 Yes.
250 Terminator 2-style.
251 North Norfolk’s best music mix.
252 Regular NND listeners will know EXACTLY what I mean.
253 It should have been a baseball and pitcher’s mitt but I didn’t have one.
254 More the font they used than what they actually did, which was pretty awful.
255 I enjoyed the double-meaning of ‘matters’ so much I’d sometimes pronounce it as a verb, and other times as a noun, and see if anyone noticed.
256 ‘Web logger’.
257 Essentially less Hot Chocolate and more Tears for Fears.
258 Love the alliteration. It’s so clever!
Chapter 33
A Sidekick
IN OCTOBER 2010 i broke one of the most sacred covenants of Brand Partridge. I decided to start broadcasting with the aid of a sidekick. No consultation, no forward planning. I just did it. BAM! Yet even to me his arrival – like that of a baby whose parents weren’t responsible enough to use protection, be it a condom, the coil, or whatever – was completely unexpected. So what the hell was I playing at?
The story begins on a Tuesday night.259 Wearing flannel slacks and a tossed sweater, I’d driven over to my local hostelry. It was a warm evening and I was hungry for the 2.5 units of alcohol to which, as a driver, I was legally entitled. I locked my car by casually pointing the keys over my shoulder – boop beep260 – but before I had advanced more than a few metres something stopped me in my tracks. It was one of the loudest peals of laughter since sliced bread. And it was coming from the snug.
It’s no exaggeration to say that it nearly blew me back against the car. It might very well have done so too, were it not for the fact that my calf muscles had recently been beefed up by a Runton to Matlask power ramble. (If you’re in the area by the way, can I urge you to drop in at The King’s Arms in Barningham? Excellent guest ales and a very welcome zero tolerance policy on dogs in the bar. And I do mean zero tolerance. If you’re blind, don’t bother.)
I picked up the pace. The only person I’d ever heard cause such an uproar in that snug before was, well, me. Phil Shepherd had them crying with laughter in the saloon bar one night last year but, like I say, that wasn’t in the snug. I couldn’t imagine who it could be. Hmmm, I mused, curiouser and curiouser.
As I entered the pub I instantly spotted the source of the mirth. It was a man in his early 30s wearing an ‘out there’ Hawaiian shirt and sporting a beard that was a sort