I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [111]
Yet it seemed that the chattering classes around North Norfolk Digital had seen it differently. To them it was a sign that I was letting my guard down, that I was losing my hunger, my sharpness, my ‘joie de broadcast’. Of course this was cobblers/fucking bullshit. But it still needed answering, and the only way to do that was to stage the kind of one-off radio event that people would be talking about for a generation, certainly in my household anyway. Which is how I came up with the idea of ‘Mid-Morning Matters, mid-air’.
Whoosh! Legs together, arms by my sides, I shoot up into the air, my body spiralling like a drill bit. ‘Shiiiiit!’ I scream in terror as my beloved Norfolk disappears beneath me. Up I go, higher and higher, climbing like a bird (that flies vertically). Two feet, three feet, four. God knows how many Gs I’m pulling.
Then suddenly the ascent seems to stall. ‘Norwich, we have a problem,’ I quip, deep inside my own head. But of course we don’t have a problem. It’s just Old Lady Gravity getting her way. (She always does in the end, the bitch.) And so here I go, beginning my long descent back to earth. Four feet, three feet, two. As I gather speed, my side parting lifts off my scalp. ‘I can fly!’ it must be thinking. How wrong it is. How wrong it is.
And then – ka-boom! – 13 stone, 8 ounces269 of pure Alan Partridge crashes down into the forgiving embrace of soft, inflated plastic. A broad Cheshire cheese smile lights up my face. I really do love a bouncy castle.
It’s August 2011 and you join me at the annual Fun Day of North Norfolk Digital.270 A million miles away from our dark, cramped studios, the Fun Days are all about glitz and glamour as we broadcast live from a large field or car park. It’s a rare chance for us radio professionals to do our stuff in front of a real-life audience, and I for one love it. Reading the travel news into an unresponsive studio mic is one thing, but announcing a tailback on the A47 while staring deep into the eyes of a local granny as she nervously tries to calculate the implications for her journey home? Well you can’t beat it.
I like to spice things up with a gimmick too. Last year I broadcast wearing a full suit of armour (hot, but worth it). The year before I didn’t do anything. (I was going to dress up as David Beckham, but in the end I didn’t as I was in a bad mood on the day.) And this year, I’ve trumped the lot. A first for digital radio anywhere in Norfolk,271 I’ve decided that part of my show will take place mid-air, as I catapult myself up and down on a bouncy castle.
People have tried to talk me out of it of course – some concerned that the jumping will compromise sound quality, others believing (wrongly) that the castle is only for the use of under-10s. But there’s no way I was going to be dissuaded, because this year of all years, with rumours circulating that I’m past it, I need to make my mark.
A few practice leaps have banished the nerves that kept me awake for much of the night. And as I look out into the small but high-quality crowd I can feel myself basking in the warm glow of relative confidence. I breathlessly clamber aboard the castle (having first removed my shoes) and quickly scare away any remaining children. Yet barely have I finished my first mid-air ‘Hello, Norfolk!’, than things go horribly, catastrophically wrong.
As I reach the high point of my first ascent, I can just make out something odd going on below. A grubby man has rushed forward and is shoving the castle out of the way. Suddenly there’s nothing to cushion my fall but cold, hard car park. My whole life flashes before me (it really would make a good film).272 But before I crash to earth I notice who