I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [87]
Of course, in the years to come I’ll probably be able to donate my skin to medical science. And the thought that one day a flap of my tummy might be grafted on to the face of a badly burned woman is a source of enormous comfort to me. Not just her face either. I’ve got enough skin to cover large parts of her body. She really can afford to be as clumsy with that chip pan as she likes.
To summarise then: my drink and drugs heck had taken me to places I never wanted to go. Mainly Dundee. I’d like to say that I came out of the whole ordeal older and wiser. But I’m not sure I did (though I concede that the age one is is hard to dispute). Yet it didn’t matter because, by the spring of 2001, thanks to a hardcore diet and the love of a good horse (cheers, Treacle!) I was back. I had bounced back.
200 Press play on Track 35.
201 That was actually one of the titles I was thinking about for this book – ‘She Bore No Grudge’ – until I realised it made little or no sense.
202 The constables and I laughed about the confusion, though there’s no denying that I looked like a paedophile, many of whom – like myself at the time – are paunchy. It’s said they consume food as avariciously as they do explicit images of children.
203 There’s no need to tell yourself this out loud, although as a habitual sports broadcaster, I found myself automatically providing a third-person commentary of my runs which buggered up my breathing patterns and gave me a painful stitch in my abdomen.
Chapter 28
Bouncing Back204
I’M NOT SURE I’D ever felt so proud. As I walked into the shop, I could feel my chest puffing out like a toad’s throat. In front of me were rows and rows of books. And on the front cover? Yours truly. I reached out and tenderly fingered my glossy, smiling face. That might sound a bit weird, but it wasn’t.
I span flamboyantly on my heels so I could look out of the window of the big-name high-street bookstore in which I stood. As humans of both sexes hurried and scurried about, I nodded in quiet satisfaction. Today Norwich Waterstone’s, tomorrow the Booker Prize for Books!
Allow me to explain. To begin, you must join me as I return to the year 2PD (post-Dundee). Alan Partridge is in a tizz. He just can’t figure out what to do with his experiences. He has been through a major male mind meltdown, surely there’s some good that could come of this? Then one day in the bath tub – Ulrika! – it hit me. I’d translate them into a publishing deal.
As I searched around the soapy depths for my pumice stone, the idea began to take shape. The book would be called ‘Bouncing Back’. (Incidentally the pumice made pretty short work of my calluses. It’s no surprise that this tough yet lightweight material is also used to make insulative, high-density breezeblocks.) On the surface it would appear to be half autobiography, half self-help manual. Yet it would be so much more than that. It would be a system to set free the limitless potential within us all, which just happened to be bound in hardback and sold in all good bookshops. Plus Tesco’s.
I got so caught up in thinking about the book, that by the time I finally emerged from the bath, my skin was as shrivelled as an over-microwaved pea. But you know what? I didn’t care. My only focus now was on Bouncing Back. And I have to confess, I loved the writing process. Sometimes I’d sit in my study and just pound away on the word processor. Other times I’d go jogging with a Bluetooth headset on and get my assistant to type the chapters up as I spoke them to her.
This run-writing worked very well. Unless I was going up a hill. In which case I quickly became too puffed out to talk. My assistant and I would simply maintain a comfortable telephone silence, save for the odd whinny of exertion from my end, until I reached the brow. Then I’d just make up for it by speaking at twice the speed on the descent. She