I, Partridge - Alan Partridge [99]
218 One of the very, very few.
219 I may be wrong about this, but he looks like he could be gypsy. I’m not sure of his ethnicity but I’m reliably informed he once tried to put a curse on Leo Sayer after an argument over the bill in an Indian restaurant.
220 Still clueless over that one. Animals.
221 The name was registered but no business was ever conducted.
222 Postscript – it turned out my assistant’s mum died of colon cancer anyway, so I was absolved/vindicated.
223 ‘Fail to prepare? Prepare to fail!’ – as I once had engraved on the underside of a watch that I’ve subsequently never worn.
224 ‘Every Breath You Take’ – The Police with Sting.
225 North Norfolk Digital Listener Survey, June 2011.
226 So-called because of the time of day it was broadcast and because that’s where Dave was heading if he didn’t cut down on the booze.
227 And it was always bitter.
228 Manual masturbatory relief by a consenting foreign hand.
229 Press play on Track 39. Check out the video!!!!
230 I won’t say too much. I’ve no doubt she’ll be reading this. She still sends me Christmas cards with glitter glued on to a picture of Our Lord with a sort of Ready Brek glow around him and inside the inscription says, For unto us this day a child is born (which is fair enough). But I’ve always found her continued correspondence a bit desperate.
231 My favourite thing about her? Her backside.
232 NB – check word exists.
Chapter 31
Forward Solutions™
I AWOKE AT 3AM to find sweat pouring from all over my body. Something wasn’t right.
But how could this be? I’d bounced back. I was in solid fettle. Slim, happy, professionally successful, I was a published author no less! Things were going fine for me. So what gave?
It wasn’t until after I’d made toilet that things started to fall into place. Whether it was a brainwave triggered by the exhilaration of one of my best ever slashes, or the blissful relaxation engendered by crouching in the half-light, flannelling sweat from my undercarriage, I’ll probably never know. But it was at that moment that my destiny took shape.
Yes, things were going fine for me. But, as I’ve always modestly insisted, it’s not all about me. There are people out there who are lonely, weak, vulnerable, obese, not on the radio, poverty-stricken, drugged to the nines on smack pipes. Things were going fine for me, but what about them? The underpoor, the badlings, the shitsam and flopsam. What could I, Alan Partridge, do for them?
It was obvious. I had a responsibility to give. I had a god-given duty to help others. It was incumbent upon me, Alan Partridge, to summon up everything I’d learnt while bouncing back and run after-work Forward Solutions™ courses for a special corporate rate233 of £299.98 per head, ex VAT.234
A man who does manual labour for a living once accused me of being arrogant. My crime? Taking my wisdom and sharing it with people who would never develop it off their own bat.
Is that arrogant, do you think? To genuinely help people less savvy than you? When Gandhi advocated non-violent resistance or when Moses parted the Red Sea, were they being arrogant? Well yes, maybe Moses was a little bit jazz-hands, but leaders need a little showmanship. It’s what Jesus of Nazareth would have had in mind as he turned loaves and fishes into five thousand tuna butties.235
So no, not arrogant. Helpful.
‘It’s not arrogant, it’s helpful,’ I said, wishing I’d never wound my window down to address him. He was holding a Stop/Go lollipop while his ‘colleagues’ spread gravel across one lane of the carriageway. You would not find a candidate more in need of night school and a shave. And, in a nice way, I’d said so.
I was in the early evangelical flush of Forward Solutions™ – keen to get out there and improve lives. So I’d slapped the door of the Lexus and suggested that if he improved his literacy and appearance he ‘could drive one of these’.
What followed had been good Samaritanism thrown back in my face.