I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [54]
I may have been back at the exact same station, in the exact same building, at the exact same desk (the ergonomics needed work), but I was in no doubt that I was on a steep upward career trajectory.
Helming my own show, with neither the limitations of a sports-only remit nor the self-serving irritation of studio guests, was a challenge as new and fresh as an egg salad. This time, I set the agenda. It was me and my personality and, as I’ve been blessed with a superb personality, it translated into shit-hot radio.
For the first time, I was also at the controls when it came to selecting music. I knew that soundtracking my listeners’ early mornings was a major responsibility – music is a powerful emotional catalyst, and research suggests that people are at their most irritable between five and six in the morning. I was playing with fire. If my listeners were anything like me, hearing a sub-par song on the radio before breakfast could see them slamming cupboard doors in the kitchen, scrubbing themselves down with bodywash a bit too aggressively, or shouting at the assistant on the carphone. And I was buggered if my music was going to damage cupboard hinges, torso skin, or carphone cradles – all of which I value enormously.
The knowledge that I was the conductor of my listener’s mood saw me gemming up on what ‘quality music’ meant. I’d spend hours in HMVs, Virgin Megastores and second-hand record shops staffed by greasy-haired 40-year-olds dressed as 20-year-olds, listening to contemporary music of every genre – Britrock, heavy maiden, gang rap, brakebeat. And I came to a startling but unshakeable conclusion: no genuinely good music has been created since 1988.
The relief was, as Americans say, freaking awesome. The death of music on or before the release of Arthur 2: On the Rocks meant I was freed from the obligation of keeping up to date with contemporary music trends. Instead, I could continually revisit music that embodied an era of Thatcher, Hot Hatches and men who looked like girls – Bowie, Strange, Le Bon, Ant (not of ‘and Dec’ fame).
I also knew I couldn’t just play music and read out the song title and artist – I wasn’t Mark Goodier for goodness sake. I needed to speak good as well. Having learnt a lot from my time in London and on TV, I knew if I was going to become the very best disc jockey there was, I couldn’t rest on these considerable laurels. After all, Caesar didn’t rest on his, he wore them on his head. Same with Hadrian. Would he have built his fantastic wall had he been sat on the aforementioned decorative headwear? I think not!
I wasn’t nervous. Some people thought I was nervous but I wasn’t nervous. Nervous? Of what?! So no, not nervous. I just knew I had to put the graft in.
And what graft! I’d shadow my colleagues, sitting in on other shows to pick up tips, learn techniques or take ideas wholesale – on one occasion staying at the studios for two days straight until I began to hallucinate during the traffic report of my third show without sleep and jumped into a bank of monitors to avoid a motorbike.
I roped my assistant in as well, instructing her to scour long-wave radio for far-flung stations, and then tape entire shows – pausing whenever a record was played and then unpausing on the song outro – so that she could present me at the end of each week with an audio dossier of continental broadcast trends.
Invariably, I didn’t have the time to listen to them – of course I didn’t – but I know she enjoyed being involved, even if she could only tune into most LW stations by standing on a box and holding the radio out of an upstairs window.
In summary, then, I was becoming a better all-round broadcaster day by day. This bit could even be cut into a montage and set to music145 like the training sequence in a Rocky or Karate Kid movie, albeit with less physical exertion.
134 Fat.
135 See previous footnote.
136 My phrase.
137 He’s my cousin.
138 The hyphen here is crucial. Totally different word without it. Totally different.
139 Press play on Track 26.
140 I’d stood up