I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [3]
The sad fact was, my parents (although not Communists) were unconsciously adhering to the same one-child-only policy espoused by the People’s Republic of China. And, like billions of Chinese children, I consequently had to endure a home life of intense loneliness.
This meant there was extra pressure on me to be sociable. I didn’t have a motto growing up, but had I done it would almost certainly have been ‘I’d love some friends, please’. But maybe in Latin.
I’d look on with longing as I saw my fellow children greedily enjoying their friendships. I remember being especially jealous of a lad called Graham Rigg. Graham was too cool for school (though he did still attend). He’d not only been the winner of the sports day slow bicycle race for three straight years, he was also the first boy in our class to properly kiss a girl. There’d been cheek pecks before, not to mention inter-sex handshakes, but he was the first kid in the playground to ‘go French’. None of the rest of us could figure out where he’d learnt to do this, but the general consensus was ‘from porno films’.
Eight-year-old Jennie Lancashire was the cock-a-hoop recipient, and she was rightly grateful.9 But when I look back I often think how fortunate it was that Graham was the same age as her, because if he’d been 20 years older he would have been up in Crown Court. And quite right too!
I bumped into him for the first time in decades the other week. It was at the returns desk in my local Homebase. We were both taking back kettles (him – faulty filament; me – didn’t like colour).
‘Still French-kissing eight-year-olds?’ I said, pointing an accusing finger at his potentially paedophilic mouth.
‘No,’ he replied.
‘Good,’ I said. Then for extra emphasis I said it again, but slightly more slowly. ‘Gooood.’
I’d made my point. Anyway, after that, talk naturally turned to motor vehicles and I was bowled over to learn that Graham had been the first person in Norwich to own a car with a catalytic converter. From playground lothario to environmental trailblazer in under 50 years. It quickly dawned on me that here was a man whose number I needed to take, but before I had the chance he’d collected his refund, mimed taking his hat off to me and disappeared off into the sunset/down the paint aisle.
Without love (parental or matey) to sustain me, I turned to myself, Alan Partridge, for comfort. Eager to keep myself occupied, I was from a young age deeply inquisitive. Learning was my friend; knowledge, my bosom buddy. Indeed, in my quest for self-education, I once put a bumblebee in the freezer. It was to see if I could freeze it and then bring it back to life. I couldn’t. Of course I couldn’t, it was dead.10 (I put it in a matchbox, like a biodegradable bee casket. Then just chucked it in the bin. I never told my mother.)
And so, this young, neglected but resourceful young man would guzzle down knowledge like other kids would guzzle down fizzy pop. Or full-cream milk. Either works. For a time, I was fixated with butterflies – an interest that my father did much to encourage. We’d go into the garden on a summer’s evening and when we saw the gentle flitter-flutter of a butterfly, he’d smash it to the ground with his tennis racket.
‘Fifteen love!’ he’d roar. Either that or some other tennis-related phrase. (‘Advantage, Dad’ was my favourite.) ‘You know what you need to do now, Alan,’ he’d continue.
‘Yes, father. I’m to collect the remains, piece them back together and do my utmost to identify the genus.’
Sometimes I could actually do it too, but more often than not (particularly when Dad used his textbook backhand slice), you would have needed dental records to identify the dead. Still, world-class interactive learning.
But don’t be deceived by this seemingly intimate tale of fatherliness. (In fact, I probably shouldn’t even have put