I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [68]
My second: who’s taking over? I closed my eyes and waited for the answer. Not that I was desperate. I had plenty of ideas and was in demand for broadcasting work elsewhere. Hamilton’s Water Breaks had pencilled me as understudy for their next corporate video; I was in the early, early, early stages of repurposing Up With the Partridge for TV; and the pilot script for Swallow had received admiring glances whenever I left it poking out of my bag. But as the nation’s broadcaster, the BBC was probably my more natural home. Whether I would deign to return depended on the identity of Hayer’s successor.
Sue grunted with pleasure. ‘They’ve only gone and give it Chris Feather,’ she said. Then she had to go because the 3.50 was starting and she had a bet on.
This was the dream scenario. Before his liver transplant, Chris Feather had been a rising star at the BBC – blessed with the common touch and not a clever clogs. You wouldn’t find Chris in an ivory tower unless the Ivory Tower is the name of a pub! Our paths had crossed in local radio, when he’d been a fledgling producer, and I’d been impressed by his way with people and his knowledge of ELO. (It was he who had alerted me to the fact that Roy Wood could play the bassoon.)
For his part, Chris had been blown away by my tenacity, my restless creativity and the fact that the camera/microphone loved me. He pledged that we’d work together in TV. I still have a beer mat on which he scrawled that very promise.
Yes, he drank too much and, yes, he was slovenly and coasted through several years of his career and wasn’t a student of the genre in the way that I was.165 Chris was more of a casual observer. But he was the best man for the job and I’m not just saying that because he liked me.
It was only polite that I got in touch to offer my congratulations. But that could wait. First I had to be there for Jane Hayers. I barely knew her and she’d not exactly covered herself in glory by marrying an idiot like Tony, but widows are needy people and I was going to do everything in my power to support her. So I sent her a travel clock wrapped in black tissue paper and in a black box – not the ones from aircraft.166 The card was fashioned from black card. Inside in silver Pentel, I’d simply written, ‘You are really sad’ and I’d made the ‘o’ of the word ‘you’ into a smiley face. (I’d thought about doing a sad face but I wanted it to be a celebration of his life.) I posted it to her and only then realised I’d forgotten to sign it.
On the day of the funeral, I was one of the first to arrive. To my surprise Chris Feather was there too. Clearly, this wasn’t the forum to discuss my employment at the BBC so we acknowledged each other with a nod and I set about comforting Jane.
Jane was bearing up well but as I approached I could see the suffering in and around her eyes. I held her and we cried together. She was happy with the travel clock, but was still upset at being widowed. Understandable. I hadn’t been expecting a mail-order clock to cancel out the grief, I’m not suggesting that.
As she wept, I continued to hug her. But in no way was it sensual. Well, certainly not on my part – I can’t speak for her and I guess she was in a bad place. Grief manifests itself in strange ways. Besides, I’ve always thought people can be too quick to judge widows who strike up affairs soon after their loved one has died. Cut them some slack! It’s no reflection on the dead guy – it’s just that, sometimes, the sweet succour of sex can help speed up the grieving process.
It was a day later and, after a respectful period of mourning for a man whose death I was over the moon about, I was in the office of the new head of programmes for BBC Television. Mister Christopher Feather Esquire.
Chris was