I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [83]
I didn’t feel up to the drive home – not least because I had no shoes and felt daft. So I contacted my assistant, who travelled overnight while I lay across the generously proportioned back seat of the Vectra finishing the last of the Toblerones and using the verdant shrubbery as an improvised toilet as and when. My assistant doesn’t own a car and the train was, I felt, too expensive, so she’d taken a National Express coach, clutching my best shoes in a plastic carrier bag.
She told me she’d sat next to the coach’s chemical toilet and I was concerned that my shoes might smell of human waste, so I lost my temper at her a little bit, but was mollified when I smelt the shoes and they didn’t smell of human waste.
She quickly washed and shod me and then began the drive home with the hosepipe dangling from the exhaust like the tail of a giant mouse.194 But, for such a bird-like woman, she was far too hard on the clutch, so after a few hundred metres I took over and drove home myself. I gave her a lift as well.
Little was spoken on the way back. She could tell from my body language that referring to ‘the open arms of Christianity’ was inadvisable, so she listed some of the times when I’d either done something well in my professional life or said something spontaneously witty in company. Afterwards, she used the light from her mobile phone to read aloud from Prima magazine but quickly fell asleep.
I got home and had a can of bitter and a sleeping tablet.195 I subsequently made a number of changes to my life, which resulted in me getting better.196
I’d done it. I’d bounced back. The doubters could shut their faces because I’d done it. And so with fewer work commitments, a slimmer physique, fresher breath,197 less clutter on my desk, and a blanket ban on Toblerones, I felt like a new man.
Quite a turnaround then.198 Yep, it’s a tale of incomprehensible pain and hardship, of bravery and backbone, of me and my success. One that could easily be stretched out into a film or novella – if only because that kind of addiction’s not really been done before and would therefore feel fresher to a reader or viewer. Just a thought!199
The other addictions grab all the column inches – let them! It’s not a grief competition. I don’t know why they think they have something to prove. And sure, maybe there’s something glamorous about a boozeman swigging whiskey on a sidewalk or junkie ‘chasing the dinosaur’ in a squat, but take it from someone who knows: both physically and mentally, confectionery addiction is the worst kind of addiction there is. Nothing comes close to the shame, desperation and unsightly weight gain of chocoholism.
So who’s to blame? Me? Society? Kraft Foods? The Government? Pepsi or Shirlie out of Pepsi & Shirlie? In all honesty, it’s probably a combination of them all, with a slight weighting towards Pepsi or Shirlie from Pepsi & Shirlie. You don’t go pushing something as powerful as Toblerone on someone you’ve only just met. It’s utterly irresponsible, and I’m absolutely furious with her. She could have bloody killed me.
190 You might like to actually do this.
191 Editor – can you check this metaphor? I’ve lost track a bit.
192 Not least because if I was to journey to Skye a boat would be unnecessary because of the quite elegant road bridge.
193 © Partridge.
194 Oh, I should have said – this was for a suicide bid which I didn’t get round to.
195 The drink and drugs of the chapter title.
196 This paragraph is an edited version of a much longer passage, which the publishers felt borrowed too heavily from Bouncing Back (2002), available in second-hand bookshops in and around Norfolk.
197 This would have made more sense if the previous paragraph hadn’t been edited.
198 It certainly is, Alan.
199 © Partridge.
Chapter 27
Chin Up