I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [14]
That’s why students and their incessant status quo bashing are so wrong. Challenging convention should be left to those of us who truly understand convention – and you can only understand convention if you’ve stuck rigidly to it 99% of the time. That’s basic.
I regretted going to university deeply. Education is clearly important (we’re repeatedly told by those who have a vested interest), but it’s borderline self-indulgent to devote several years of your life to a single subject. That kind of blinkered obsession with one topic at the expense of all others doesn’t sit easily with me. I say that as a man who can gen up on any subject to university standard in an hour and then chair a radio phone-in on it that informs and entertains. Wikipedia has made university education all but pointless.
My mind was already on the next exciting stage of my life. What would I become? How would I make my mark? I still didn’t know. But as I bellowed from a park bench to everyone and no one after another Party Four one night – ‘Alan Partridge is coming!’ (The same phrase I’d hear shouted up the stairs when I turned up at parties.)
30 I think it was golden anyway.
31 And it’s always a man.
32 A modern-day New Faces in which the audience wear t-shirts with the contestants’ names on them.
33 I’d actually taken three but obviously I didn’t count the one I dropped.
34 Press play on Track 6.
35 Sometimes called ‘Naughty Norwich’.
36 You could have sliced cucumber with it, were it not for the lint.
Chapter 4
Carol
THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, WENT my heart, like Phil Collins hitting one of his drums. My breathing was shallow, my limbs were shaking and my sweating palms were crying out for the absorptive powers of a chamois leather. I don’t think I’d ever been so nervous.
The date was 13 April 1978 and I, Partridge was about to be wed. My intended? A female by the name of Carol Parry.
Our relationship was to be given full legal status in St Edmund’s Church in the Norfolk village of Caistor St Edmund. We’d been to visit the previous summer and had both fallen madly in love with the place – Carol for its pretty graveyard, its cherry blossom and its old-world charm; me for its ample parking and easy access to junction 5 of the A47.
Of course there were limitations too, most notably the lack of wheelchair access. And while all of our guests were able bodied, the marriage was still nine months away – ample time for one (or more) of them to be involved in a serious road traffic accident or develop a degenerative brain disease.
In the end we decided to follow our hearts and book it. Besides, we figured that if anyone did end up paralysed come next spring, our two ushers – one taking the feet, the other the hands – could easily carry them into the church in a safe and dignified manner.
The intervening months passed in a blur, until suddenly the day had come. I rose early, breakfasted on an egg medley (one poached, one boiled, one baked), changed and headed off to St Edmund’s. I got there with just two hours to spare. For what seemed like an eternity I wandered around the grounds of the church, killing time, trailed by an almost constant stream of – without wishing to be crude – my own bum gas.
Soon enough, though, the guests arrived. I smiled to myself as I noticed that none had succumbed to any form of disability. And as the clock struck three minutes past eleven, a hush fell over the congregation. There, at the end of the aisle, was Carol. Clad in a pleasant white dress, her lace veil glistening