I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [33]
‘Trust me on this one.’
And with that, he was gone, as gone as gone can be.
That night I barely slept. Thoughts were tumbling around my head like the trainers in the washing machine I referred to both on page 3 and page 64. Des was right. How could I not have spotted this before?
My mind drifted back to my earliest broadcasts on hospital radio. I had indeed beefed up the nasal quality of my voice, thinking it lent it a timbre that was trustworthy, authoritative and basically quite nice. It sounds crazy when I think back to it, but I was so convinced of this that I used to deliberately try to catch a cold. The all-too-common viral infection of the upper respiratory tract was an excellent way to cause profound blockages of the soft palate which in extreme cases can make you sound like Melvyn Bragg before he had that operation. As such, it was perfect for my needs.
Many was the day I’d ride the public bus system of Norwich, seeking out any passengers with the snivels. I’d move over to them and casually strike up a conversation. I’d talk about the stuff of everyday life – the weather, last night’s TV, the design of the new Opel Kadett which, staggeringly, had a transaxle that allowed the clutch to be replaced without removing the transmission unit. I didn’t care really, just as long as I was close to them.
And when they finally reached their stop, I would always, always insist on a handshake – or better still, a long, lingering, long embrace – to up my chances of contamination.
Once I was so desperate I even doused myself in pepper. I stood next to a man with a nose throbbing like a Belisha beacon and waited for him to sneeze. As he threw his head back I inched even closer, only moving away again when I knew I’d been covered in a fine sheen of infected nasal drizzle.
Yet now, almost four years later, I saw the folly of my ways. My voice had become too nasal, too serious. If I was to fulfil my ambitions of being a top-quality TV broadcaster I needed a cadence that was versatile. I needed a voice that could flit like a carefree moth from the heavyweight to the powder-puff.
I spent the entire night stood in front of my bathroom mirror doing everything in my power to quash exactly 25% of my vocal nasality. Of course with radio being an entirely aural medium, the mirror had no part to play. I could just as easily have stood in front of a wall. (But, truth be told, I had spotted a pimple developing on my neck – roughly three inches south of my left ear lobe – and was keen both to track its growth and plot its destruction.)
By daybreak I had finally cracked it. Although, as a result of ten hours of unbroken speaking, I had also lost my voice. Ironically, the three weeks I subsequently had to take off work very nearly cost me my job. But I clung on, I survived, and returned as the broadcaster I am today. I now had a voice that could take on any chat-based challenge; that could swoop and glide from genre to genre. It was the voice that I still use today – high-brow yet inclusive, candid yet mysterious, loud yet quiet. In short, it was the voice of I, Partridge.
As for the neck pimple, it expanded for a further 48 hours before I was able to take it down using a hot pin.
68 Press play on Track 16.
69 The next quantum leap forward was to come in 2003 when – breaking the mould once again – the guys at Beyond Petroleum launched their fabulous Wild Bean cafés. Quite simply, shit hot.
70 Little did I know that some years later I would be spending a lot of time in one of these petrol stations as a certain Geordie chum saw me through the many stages of a pretty hefty mental meltdown. But that’s for later. And please don’t skip ahead. Just stay patient, keep reading and you’ll get there.
71 I remember around this time bumping into former Grandstand presenter Frank Bough at a fancy dress party in Shepherd’s Bush (long story). I commented that the early 90s really was a golden age for British sport. Frank simply took the ball gag out of his mouth and said, ‘You’re not wrong, Alan’ before dropping on to all fours and being led