I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [24]
It all felt like a fresh start for me. A new city, a new job, a new desk system, even a new brother-in-law who could speak clearly and wasn’t over-affectionate with my kids. I was cockerel-a-hoop.
Radio 4’s On the Hour was a weekly news programme with seriously big balls. It made Newsnight look like Newsround and The Nine O’Clock News look like Newsround. If other shows were a normal-sized packet of crisps, On the Hour was very much a grab bag. And for those of you unfamiliar with the denominations of crisp bags, that means it was large.
It was a serious break for me and I knew it.60 I’ll never forget my first week in the job. On the morning of the show I’d arrived at London’s [CHECK NAME OF STATION] with nothing other than a Slazenger back-pack, a selection of snacks and sandwiches, a spare shirt and tie, a notebook, pens, pencils, pencil sharpener, first aid kit, an emergency 50p for the phone box and (I hoped) a glint in my eye.
I hopped on the tube and made my way over to the BBC. (By the way, for anyone reading this overseas or in Wales, the ‘tube’ is a means of public transport.)61 The show was to be recorded in the august surroundings of Broadcasting House. And what a building! As soon as you walked through the doors, you could tell these people knew what they were doing. Quite simply, the place stank of news.
But this reek of pure BBC quality only added to my sense of apprehension. With only an hour to go until the opening editorial meeting, nerves fluttered around my stomach. It’s a hard feeling to describe but it was almost as if someone had put moths in my tummy.
It was of some comfort to me that I knew one of the team already. On the Hour was edited by the redoubtable (love that word) Steven Eastwood. I’d met him when I came up to London for my job interview. Things had begun, as they so often do at the BBC, with a handshake.
‘That’s a good handshake you’ve got there, Alan.’
‘Thanks,’ I replied. ‘I practise it in front of the mirror.’
‘And how was your journey?’
‘Real good, thanks, Stephen,’ I said, briefly forgetting that his name was actually spelt ‘Steven’.
‘So tell me, young man, how much do you want this job?’ he probed.
‘What’s it out of? Ten?’
But Eastwood didn’t want a number – if he had, my answer would have been ten, maybe eleven – he just wanted to see a flicker of true passion. Thankfully for me, that’s exactly what he saw. And incredibly that was all it took – along with a 90-minute interview, a written exam, a series of psychometric tests and the submission of a full portfolio of my work – for him to offer me a job. Well from that moment onwards, our professional relationship went from strength to strength to strength to strength to strength.
On a personal level things were slightly different. He and I were just chalk and Cheddar. At the height of the show’s popularity I was receiving five, sometimes six, pieces of fan mail a quarter. It was pretty relentless and if I’m honest, I think it stuck in Eastwood’s craw. Sure, I tried to build bridges from time to time. I’d take him to the BBC bar and order us each a pint of bitter and a meat-based sandwich. But he’d take a few sips (of his drink) before claiming he was ‘dead drunk’ and needed to go home.
Maybe it was possible to get drunk that quickly. I’ve certainly heard it said that Chinamen can’t hold their booze. But all these years later, when I think back to those aborted evenings out, there’s one tiny detail that just doesn’t add up: Eastwood wasn’t Chinese.
Okay, he had a soft spot for a portion of Chicken Chow Mein on a Friday night. But, be honest, who doesn’t? And besides, even the most berserk Sinophile would struggle to argue that ingesting industrial amounts of egg noodles actually makes you Chinese. No, Eastwood was from Hertfordshire, and there was nothing anybody could do about it.
But as I made my way to that first editorial meeting, I knew I still had my fellow reporters to wow. Questions tumbled around my head like trainers in the washing machine I have mentioned