I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [21]
Crowther read the first page with bemused interest before – in a clear indication that he was still on the sauce – bursting out laughing. Very much one of the old school. But it was a laugh that said, ‘Boy, this guy’s good.’ I’d proved I knew the subject inside out.
Within the hour, I was broadcasting to the whole of east East Anglia, reading out sports reports direct from Teletext, ‘throwing’ to a pre-recorded interview with a 15-year-old cycle champ and then reading out greyhound racing results, which I later learnt had been made up by the still-laughing Crowther.49
Hethersett – perhaps still crushed by the death of his mother or father – never returned to Saxon Radio. And they wouldn’t have wanted him anyway. I’d shown my mettle and taken to it like a duck to water. (Or, as former Olympic swimmer Duncan Goodhew says, ‘like a Dunc to water’, which isn’t that funny but forgivable as Duncan continues to be an inspiration to hairless children nationwide.)50
Sports reporting was a dizzying but exhilarating slog.51 I was spending my Saturday and Sunday afternoons at horse trials, football matches, squash tournaments … I was becoming a familiar voice on radio and, yes, people wanted a piece of me.
I ascended the career ladder like a shaven Jesus ascending to his rightful place in the kingdom of Heaven. I was poached by Radio Broadland (Great Yarmouth), Hereward Radio (Peterborough), Radio Orwell (Ipswich) and eventually Radio Norwich.
There, my brief extended beyond sport to a bi-monthly52 magazine show called Scoutabout, which I took over from amateur DJ and Scout obsessive Peter Flint.
‘Fall in, Troop! Fall in!’ I’d shout into the microphone. And then as the specially commissioned theme music ended with a rom-po-pom-pom, I’d say, ‘Aaaaaaaat ease.’ And the show – a high-spirited hour aimed at Boy Scouts and to a smaller extent Girl Guides – would begin.
It was great, great fun, but my sports reporting was obviously my top priority. As such, I became a valuable and well-known asset to Radio Norwich. The controller there, Bett Snook, was a chain-smoking woman who sounded like a chain-smoking man whose chain smoking had called for an emergency laryngectomy.
She gave me some solid gold advice. ‘Dickie Davies, Barry Davies, Elton Welsby, Jimmy Hill, David Coleman, Tony Gubba, Ron Pickering, Ron Atkinson, Bob Greaves, Stuart Hall, Gerald Sinstadt. What do they have in common?’
‘They’re all sports broadcasters,’ I said. ‘Some more successful53 than others.’54
‘And what’s the difference between them?’ She sat back in her chair, smoking her cigarette using her mouth.
‘Some are more successful55 than others,’56 I repeated.
‘No, more than that. Think about it. They’re different types of sports broadcaster. Some are anchors, others commentators, some are analysts, some are reporters.’
I realised what she was getting at.
‘Alan, it’s all very well being Norwich’s Mr Sport [which I was]. But you’re spreading yourself too thin. Work out what it is in sport you want to be, and then be the best at it.’
So I did. And I was. I became the best sports-interviewer-cum-reporter/anchor on British terrestrial television.
In 1990, I was fortunate enough to see a steward badly hurt at an archery competition. In a funny kind of way – and at first, it was very funny – this single mishap provided the springboard to a career at what was, in my view, the biggest publicly funded broadcasting corporation in the United Kingdom. The BBC.
I’d been extremely reluctant to report on