I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [59]
I’m reliably informed that lorry driver clean-up costs are budgeted for by every service station in the UK. Apparently it gets its own line in the business plan. They’d rather it didn’t happen but what can you do? If you try to stamp it out, they just go elsewhere. Don’t believe me? Ask Bob Grainger up at Keele (M6). He learnt the hard way. You avoid them depositing their previous meal on-site but you also miss out on them buying their next. Apply a simple cost-benefit analysis: the margin on a service station breakfast is £5.95; clean-up costs are a pound a dump. If they boycott your services, you’re looking at a total net loss of £4.95. Ergo, let them go.
The problem for Jom and me was that service stations turned a blind eye for people with HGV licences but that’s where they drew the line. At a crisis meeting in early November, we battled to find a solution. The closest we came was the idea of installing caravan portaloos in the boot. We wanted to see if we could hook the flush up with the car’s exhaust so that the human waste took the same exit as the CO2, but deep down I think we both knew it wasn’t going to happen. I demanded my £300 back that very afternoon. When it transpired that he didn’t have the money because he’d spent it on mattresses, I took the mattresses instead, 15 in all. I’ve still got them actually. They’re in a lock-up in Beccles. But you know what? That’s business. If you can’t stand the heat, don’t cook.
146 On a clear day, and provided I’d got rid of any smudges on my binoculars, I could even see the M11.
147 It’s just occurred to me that in the previous chapter, when I said I spent the night with Glen Ponder, I should make clear I meant I went to sleep at his flat. I did not have sexual relations with him. Thought I’d cut in now and mention it while it’s occurred to me. Believe me, there was no physical contact and the light remained as on as my clothes, save for my socks which I always remove to let my toes breathe because I have an intermittent athlete’s foot. So, as I say, no funny business at all. The only time I’ve touched a man as I slept was on an Outward Bound course to Snowdonia when I hugged a man in a sleeping bag, but that was only for warmth. Richard doesn’t have a gay bone in his body and is as manly as they come. He now runs a nightclub in Brighton called Beef.
148 She’d been raised on a diet of powdered egg, so any real egg – even battery – seemed to her an unnecessary eggstravagence (my word).
149 Press play on Track 28.
150 I shared that thought with TV comedian Alan Carr and told him he could have it for free. He laughed. The guy’s a breath of fresh air. Some people unkindly say the deaths of Inman, Harty and Grayson have put talented entertainers like Carr back into some kind of closet. I hope not. I’ve long lobbied the BBC for the reintroduction of a primetime TV homosexual.
And yet some people have accused me of intolerance or homophobia, a word that didn’t exist before 1980 – if you’d have used the term before then, people would have thought you were referring to a science fiction disease. Uh-huh. Not me. Although call me old-fashioned, but in my day public toilets were for pissing and shitting.
It seems that now that it’s not a criminal offence, it’s fine for TV homosexuals to be ‘active’. Is that a good thing? I’ll remain above the fray. That’s for you, the reader, to decide.
Although if pushed, I’d say if the ‘activity’ remains in a private dwelling or hotel, is genuinely consensual and the age disparity is under a decade, let them broadcast.
151 I suggested the name ‘Motel’ as it was half motor car, half hotel but Jom wasn’t keen.
Chapter 19
Me V Hayers
I’D FELT SO AT home in BBC TV Centre I resented not being able to come and go as I pleased. Watching the building from a parked car for an hour every Tuesday filled me with a profound sense of sadness and anger, which I could quell only by reminding myself that a second series was still highly likely to be ordered.152
This was just a few short months after the slightly mitigated success