I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [70]
All in all, it felt good. I was ready to embark on a new chapter of my life, roughly similar to the one before the one before this but better because my fee was higher. Yes, I’d be back at the BBC making television programmes and earning north of £200k per annum as a result.
My intention was to resurrect Peartree Productions but with better, cheaper personnel. It had been wound down but not dissolved. I thought of it as more of a sleeping volcano, dormant for several months but always ready to ejaculate hot TV content into the air and over the surrounding land.
I moved into a penthouse in Regent’s Park – not because I liked London or wanted to show them, show them all – but simply because it was practical for me to be close to TV Centre. I still drove back to Norwich for my radio shows.
It was an expensive place to rent, certainly. I don’t know the exact figure but it didn’t really matter because I was earning north of £200k per annum. It was really big as well, with four good-sized bedrooms and a kitchen that had a coffee maker built into a wall, like a scalding hot vending machine (never used it).
I was happy there, sipping coffee (I’d used the kettle) and looking out over the high-rise London skyline as I dreamt up the perfect guest list for the new series: Sir Clive Sinclair, Loyd Grossman, Charlie Dimmock, one of the Britpoppers, Sebastian Coe. Yes, these were ruddy good days.
But these days were as fleeting as a collection of fast birds. Upsettingly for audiences and Alan Partridge alike, I was never given the chance to make my much-wanted TV shows. Because shortly after I had left Chris Feather’s office, Chris Feather had died. Right there in his chair.
Yes, within minutes of signing the deal of his life, Chris had breathed his last. I sent a message to his daughter, saying ‘I hope it’s of some comfort to know that the last thing he did before he died was a truly courageous piece of commissioning.’ I know she received it because I got a ‘Read Receipt’ in my email inbox.
At this point, you’re probably thinking ‘because’? But what’s that got to do with it? How does the death of Chris affect a contract between you and the organisation he worked for? And you’d be absolutely right to think that. It’d be like arguing that the Treaty of Versailles is now null and void because David Lloyd George isn’t with us any more.
And, believe me, this was an argument I made very forcefully. A fortnight later, I was in TV Centre with my lawyer (who’s more au fait with citizen’s advice and whether ramblers can traverse your land than TV contracts – and was pathetic actually). Incandescent with rage, I don’t think I’ve ever screamed at television executives that loud before or since.
And what a weaselly collection of pond-life they were. Chris’s successor, Jessica Boyle, was a sigh in human form, every utterance accompanied by a shrug or a rolled eye. For a woman in her position, her posture was a disgrace. Boyle is one of the new breed of BBC TV execs for whom television programmes seem to be a genuine inconvenience.
She was flanked by Kev Butterworth, a once friendly BBC lawyer who might have been a strapping Irishman but is also one of the few men I know who’s beaten by his wife. I think it started from a sex game that went wrong 12 years ago. He once said to me, ‘If only I could remember the code word’ and then began to well up.167
The rest were your usual mixture of John Lennon clones and failed CBBC presenters who have ended up in HR. They pretended to make notes as Boyle outlined exactly why she didn’t want another chat show from me. But it was all viewing figures and audience appreciation ratings and stats and figures.
‘Listen, love’ I said, ‘if TV was all about numbers, they’d put a keypad under the screen and turn it into a giant Casio calculator!’168
This cut no dice with anyone in the room. ‘Alan, sorry …’ they all kept saying, but looking at each other rather than at me.
‘It’s a contract,’ I said. ‘A legal document.’
‘The contract, yes …’ Boyle sighed. ‘I wouldn