I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [48]
That pretty much covers it.
Carol left me 14 months after the last of my TV chat shows. I wasn’t in a good place (the back garden usually) and she’d found it difficult to offer the right122 support.
But I can’t speak for Carol. Nor would I want to. Only she knows why she wanted our marriage to end, so she’s very kindly outlined – in her own words – what went wrong. Over to you, Car.
‘I loved Alan and probably didn’t fully appreciate what I had. He was working hard to provide for me and the kids and I probably took that for granted.
‘He was away from home more than I’d have liked but I acknowledge that Peartree Productions needed him and he had a career on the telly. You can’t do that if you’re swanning around at home, for crying out loud.
‘He’d be working long hours trying to resuscitate his production company, his mind forever racing with new ideas and formats. Every now and then, in front of guests, I’d laugh at the sheer inventiveness of them.
‘But yes, Alan’s career hiccup hit me hard. I’d invested a great deal of hope in Alan being a fixture on mainstream TV for years and years to come. God knows, he deserved it and was (is!) a damn sight more of a talent than the likes of Tony Robinson or Andy Marr.
‘When his show hit a few snags and he was hung out to dry by the BBC, I began to realise that my dreams of being on the arm of a BBC mainstay were fading. I mean, he’d come back stronger – that was never in any real doubt – but I was impatient and wanted all the rewards that he’d promised me.
‘Hurt, upset and I guess a bit too moody about the whole thing, I took to visiting the gym. I’d suggested that Alan come too, but after every unreturned phone call to the BBC he’d dig an angry hole in the garden and so any spare energy went on that. Besides, he was already in pretty good shape.
‘At the gym, I met a personal trainer. He was young, physically in peak condition – no arguments about that, fair do’s, some people have a lot of time on their hands – and didn’t stretch me intellectually, which did my confidence the world of good.
‘In a clear contravention of my marital vows, I began sleeping with the guy. God knows how Alan feels about that. I never stopped to ask his permission or run the idea by him. This carried on for an indeterminate amount of time.
‘I then split with Alan, who hadn’t been having an affair. Not because he couldn’t. He could. He was a well-regarded TV personality. You think he was short of offers? Dream on. But he exercised self-restraint. What can I say – that’s Al.
‘Alan wasn’t perfect. There were a couple of minor niggles which I won’t bore you with now. It wasn’t anything significant, and it was certainly not in the bedroom department, a room where to be honest he played a blinder.
‘So, that’s my story. It’s the tale of stubbornness, broken promises, broken dreams and – I have to admit – my own shortcomings as a spouse. I’ll now hand you back to Alan.’123
Thanks, Carol. Appreciate that.
Carol scotched ideas of a reconciliation and said we were splitting up for good in 1996, and I – of course – demanded sole custody of the children. Fernando wasn’t keen as he was living in Cambridge midway through the final year of a politics degree, while Denise was living in Ipswich with an art collective. I consulted a lawyer nonetheless and he advised me not to pursue it. The law always takes the side of the woman.
116 Press play on Track 24.
117 He says ‘banging’ actually but I mean, honestly.
118 Some people wrongly refer to birdwatchers as ‘twitchers’, a phrase emphatically rejected by the birding community – presumably because they think it paints birdwatchers as hunched weirdos beset by debilitating tics, which isn’t always the case. I’m assured that only a small minority of them suffer from these kind of spasms.
119 i.e., ‘French kissing’ – a technique in which two mouths dock at the lip, creating a closed arena for intermittent insertions and exploratory