I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [37]
But that’s by the bye, the first show was a great success. Brainbox author Lawrence Camley was a ruddy good sport, Ally Tenant (a TV mind quack) was interesting, although perhaps too smutty for an audience reared on shipping news and dramas about farms. As with all feminists she combined a hatred of being sexualised with a fixation that everything is to do with sex. I mean, do you like having it off or not?? Hello???
Afterwards I went to congratulate Adam Walters but he was tied up in a meeting, sitting still while the BBC’s Controller of Editorial Policy, John Wilson, paced and shouted incoherently.
Every show thereafter was a great success. ‘Don’t read the reviews,’ said Martin Bell one day in a corridor. ‘Don’t have to, mate!’ I shouted back, a spring in my step. Each show seemed more informative, entertaining and superb than the last, although I felt the guests could have been better behaved. Controversial lawyer Nick Ford was an especially crass interviewee, not attempting to hide his homosexuality at all as far as I could tell.
We garnered pleasing column inches for what was a poorly marketed Radio 4 show, aided in no small part by the resignation of government minister Sandra Peaks in our third show. She’d been siphoning government grants into her husband’s construction firm and paying twin 17-year-old rent boys to engage in sexual acts. Although our conversation was somewhat fractious, Sandra and I remain very, very good friends and I regret my line of questioning deeply. The so-called controversies were nobody’s business but Sandra and Clive’s.
The show was being talked about – not just in DIY superstores or trumped-up newsagents but in media circles. We enjoyed further publicity from the death (figuratively speaking!) of comedian Bernie Rosen in week five and the death (actual) of Tory peer Lord Morgan of Glossop in our final show.
But I don’t think anyone was too upset. Lord Morgan’s family began legal action and asked some searching questions about our indemnity insurance, but I don’t think anyone seriously believed we’d been responsible. Can you imagine? Cause of death: chat!!!83 I don’t think so!!
No, far from it being a downbeat end to the series, I was in high spirits. Our final show had seen a guest appearance from Tony Hayers, then acting commissioning director for BBC TV and a man who frankly made Adam Walters look like a pathetic radio idiot. Tony and I hadn’t met before but, knowing he was important, I’d kept an eye on him and admired him from afar, most notably in the BBC canteen from behind a newspaper.
Walters had made it clear that Radio 4 wanted a second series. ‘Join the fucking queue, mate,’ I said with my eyes.
After the final show, with Tony heading for the car, I ran up behind him, shouting to be heard over the noise as Lord Morgan’s body was lifted into the ambulance. ‘Tony,’ I said. ‘Are you going to put this baby on the goggle-box or what?’
I was pleased he’d come to the last show of the series because by this point my new look was really taking shape. My clothes were, and would remain, somewhere in the sweet spot between smart and smart casual, but it was my hair that had taken the quantum leap forward. Chat show hosts normally keep things pretty trim up top. I however liked to think outside the square. So I’d grown it. It was now thick, full and if I tipped my head right back, shoulder-length (see picture section). If the day was an even number, I’d wash it. And if it wasn’t I’d just shake it loose and brush through a little olive oil. It worked for me then and I know it works for Jonathan Ross now, though he’s replaced the olive oil with Fry Light cooking spray.
As this thought had been so long, I decided to repeat my question. ‘Tony,’ I said. ‘Are you going to put this baby on the goggle-box or what?’
‘We’ll see,’ he said, which at first I thought was a worryingly non-committal hand-off. But then I thought about it,84 about his specific choice of words. ‘See’, he’d said. Not