I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [121]
One of the many places where I attended Scout camp. I remember how we’d all sit around the campfire singing ‘Ging Gang Goolie’ until the sun came up, or until our 10pm bedtime, whichever came sooner. Then we’d all snuggle up in our sleeping bags to tell ghost stories or see who could shine a torch into their mouth for longest. I never got involved with this, wrongly assuming it carried a significant cancer risk. It was while camping at this exact site that I first mastered the sheepshank. People say knot-tying is a useless skill but try telling that to my bin bags!
On the day this was taken, my parents had been called into school by the headmaster because he was concerned my posture had homosexual overtones. He’d been alerted by my tendency to turn in my right knee and my preference for slip-on shoes. Also note that my father had insisted I tuck my tie into my shorts. In terms of psychological abuse, this was just the tip of the iceberg.
A semi-detached house in Edgbaston, Birmingham, much like the one my childhood nemesis Steven McCombe lives in. We never saw eye-to-eye but I’ve moved past that now because I prefer to let bygones be bygones. It’s not, as some have suggested, because I earn a lot more money than he does. It doesn’t matter to me in the slightest that McCombe wouldn’t know the top tax band if it broke into his house and attacked him while he slept. Nor that the engine in my car has double the cubic capacity of his. FYI, I also drive with more skill (e.g. can go round roundabouts using only one hand).
Me, reporting on The Day Today, where my beat was sport (plus the Paralympics). I used to warm my voice up beforehand by singing the national anthem to the tune of Live and Let Die. Not easy, but it can be done.
There are few men alive who can pull off a haircut that’s longer at the back and sides than it is on the top. I am one of those men. On windy days I would go outside and run into the wind, just to feel it billowing behind me like a superhero’s cape. I was very wary of having it cut off. I didn’t want to become a broadcasting version of the guy from Samson and Jemima. But I’m glad to report that when I did get sheared the impact on my career was minimal. For old times’ sake I kept the cuttings. They’re in a Waitrose Bag for Life in my shed. There’s probably enough to stuff a loose pillow or a compact lumbar-support cushion.
As soon as I heard that Roger Moore had agreed to appear on Knowing Me Knowing You, I rushed outside and ordered a subordinate to take a photo of me standing against a wall with my thumb up. In this shot the cold indifference of the brick contrasts beautifully with the wild elation that swirls inside me. In Western cultures an upturned thumb is a sign of contentment. In Middle Eastern cultures it translates as something very different. Had you seen me doing this in Tehran it would have meant I wished to molest Roger anally. Nothing could have been further from the truth.
Superman had Kryptonite, I had Tony Hayers. Here he is, standing behind me before the filming of Knowing Me Knowing Yule, during which I punched his lights out with a dead turkey. It’s hard to describe the pleasure I felt as the free-range meat crashed into the cheek of the mealy-mouthed commissioning editor. But I’ll have a go … Let me see. It was like the combined ecstasy of sneezing while driving over a humpback bridge. That’s how good it felt when I punched Hayers’s lights out with a dead turkey. Afterwards, it occurred to me that you could have a turkey-glove boxing event in It’s a Knockout. I looked into it but came up against a wall of bureaucratic red tape regarding the contestants’ potential contraction of salmonella. I offered to have all the ‘gloves’ cooked in an oven beforehand but this failed to satisfy them, which proved that the salmonella excuse was just a ruse. It all boiled down to that insidious new cult/fad of ‘animal rights’. No one ever mentions human rights.
Me, Sue Lewis, a stable