I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan

‘I’ve told you, there’s no point keeping those. They’re not tax-deductible,’ my dad thundered.

‘I think you’ll find they are,’ raged my mum like some sort of feral animal (a badger with TB perhaps).

‘They’re not. You only get VAT back on lunches outside of a 50-mile radius from your place of residence. You effing bitch,’ he seemed to add, with his eyes, I imagined.

‘Alright, fine, I’ll get rid of them then,’ sobbed my mum, her fight gone, her spirit crushed like a Stu Francis grape.

Then the door was shut. Or was it slammed? It was hard to know for sure as I’d now opened my eyes, thus depriving myself of the hearing boost conferred on me by blindness. I curled up on my bed like a foetus (though admittedly, quite a large one) and cried like a baby (again, large). ‘Please Lord, make it stop,’ I snivelled. ‘I’ll do anything you ask of me (within reason and subject to getting permission from my mum). Just don’t let them break up.’ Like an Oxo cube, I could have added.

And with that, I went off to the bathroom to clear my head, not to mention my nose.

Yet miraculously, when I went down to breakfast the next morning, there was no mention of the bitter war of words that had waged so fiercely just hours before. The nightmare that had threatened to rip my world apart like an experienced chef portioning up a ball of mozzarella had somehow been averted.

It was 25 October 1962, and on the other side of the Atlantic, President ‘JFK’ Kennedy had just pulled the world back from the brink of nuclear war. Could I just have experienced my own personal Cuban Missile Crisis?

Yes, I could have.

And so, in summary, mine was a childhood of undeniable hardship – a chilling and far-from-delicious cocktail of neglect, solitude, domestic strife, and abuse.19

I was, if you like, A Child Called It. This was Alan’s Ashes. A protagonist dealt a really shoddy hand by hard-hearted parents. (They’re dead now and my mum’s sister Valerie, who disputes my version of events pretty vociferously, has gone medically demented so I’m really the gospel here.)

But it wasn’t all foul-tasting. For example, I remember the intense joy I felt when my father slipped on some cake and cracked his head open. It was the day of my ninth birthday, and as I sat effortlessly reading a book aimed at 11–12-year-olds, I heard a commotion. It was my father.

‘Delivery for Mr Partridge! Delivery for Mr Partridge!’ he was saying.

He meant me, rather than himself, and although he could have eliminated the obvious ambiguity by saying ‘Alan Partridge’ or ‘Master Partridge’, my instincts told me that he was using the third person, so probably did mean me.

I ran into the kitchen. And there was my father – normally so cruel, as I think I’ve made abundantly clear – holding a cake. It was a ruby red birthday cake, with my name piped on to it in reasonably accomplished joined-up writing. I could barely contain my excitement – more at the cake than the writing. I adored cakes, but was only allowed to eat any on special occasions such as after meals. I began to run over, licking my lips as I sprinted.

Although blessed with cat-like co-ordination, something made me lose my bearings. Perhaps I’d been pushing myself too hard with the book for 11–12-year-olds and my brain was scrambled. Whatever it was, I misjudged my proximity to the table and clattered against it. The cake fell from it and smashed on to the floor in a hail of crumbs and redness and cream.

My father surveyed the scene, his face slowly crumpling with anger. He crouched down, taking the weight of his body on his two haunches and then he addressed me: ‘You’ll never amount to anything,’ he said. ‘You’re that to me.’20

On the word ‘that’, he held his finger and thumb one, maybe two, centimetres apart as if to say ‘not very much’.

I didn’t know what to say, my mind blasted by the twin concerns of spilt cake and parental cruelty. He turned to go and put one of his angry feet on to the remains of the cake. This acted as a lubricant, destroying any traction his foot might have had with the floor. It shot forward and, with his balance now a distant memory, he came crashing to the floor. His back took the first hit, smashing against lino and cake with a bang – ‘bang’. His rump was next – ‘doof’ – followed by his skull – ‘crack’. And for a second he was motionless, before blood began to spill from the back of his head.

As my father lay on the ground, the tension – much like the physical integrity of Dad’s skull – was broken. Suddenly, all the years of neglect, which could easily make a book in its own right and definitely a film, were lifted. The hardship, the loneliness, the disappointment squeezed out of my eyes in the form of hot salt tears. Was I crying or laughing? I didn’t know. All I knew was that these tears felt like a monsoon on a parched African savannah to the delight of a proud but easy-going black farmer. Pitter-patter, pitter-patter.

Pitter-patter. Pitter-patter. I’m back at that tree as an eight-year-old child, my nose still bleeding (but it should scab up in a few minutes). All those childhood thoughts are racing through my mind, even though some of the incidents above haven’t yet happened, so would have only raced through my mind in a very vague form.

These hard hardships, testing trials and tricky tribulations are the things that have made me who I am. Like this tree, I am different. I have staying power, strength, nobility, staying power and the ability to ‘branch’ out.

I wait for the bleeding to stop. It has done … now. The cathartic, cleansing effect of rapid blood loss has made me feel elated.21 And I return to school to face what proved to be a pretty massive bollocking. I didn’t care. Something had been ignited in me.22

I still return to that tree once a year. It’s been bulldozed now to make the car park of Morrison’s. I like to think it was pulped to make the very pages you’re reading now (a huge long shot, admittedly).

But still I stand there each year, smack bang in the middle of a disabled parking bay, and remember its leafy majesty. We’ve both had our knocks (my TV career was bulldozed by a short-sighted commissioner who I’m delighted to say is now dead), but we retain that indefinable quality of excellence. And I think back to that turning point, that fulcrum of my early years when I first fully realised what I had, where I was going, and who I was. I was Alan Partridge.

5 Press play on Track 1 of the soundtrack.

6 In more ways than one, as it transpired. Years later, I took a walk to this place at dusk and saw a teenage couple sullying my memory of that tree with some pretty vigorous frottage. I was going to run at them with a stick, but in the end I didn’t.

7 ‘I do not know what’.

8 Press play on Track 2.

9 By the way, update on the Murray Mints: one’s already gone, the other is a shadow of its former self.

10 Bear in mind, this was the late 60s. Everyone was experimenting. We’d just put a man on the moon, anything seemed possible. In this case, of course, it wasn’t. But then we didn’t have Google. If you wanted to find out if something was possible you had to try it for yourself. Terrible business.

11 Of which more later! (possibly)

12 Press play on Track 3.

13 Internet’s down.

14 Internet’s still down.

15 Time of me writing, not time of you reading.

16 Didn’t read it out.

17 Divorces.

18 It’s a technique I still use to this day when talking to quiet people at cocktail parties.

19 Naysayers have suggested that I’m dramatising details of my early years because my publishers were concerned that my childhood was boring. How wrong they are. If anything I’m bravely playing down some of the hardships I faced in a way that critics might choose to describe as ‘stoical’.

20 Auntie Valerie, who was there that day, is adamant that Dad said absolutely nothing of the sort. But, like I say, this is a woman who often forgets her own address, so you can strike her testimony from the record.

21 This was a feeling I would come to know well in later years. Major blood loss has been a close friend of mine – be it the kind I’ve endured (impaling my foot on a spike before a sales presentation, sneezing blood over a nun’s wimple) or the kind I’ve inflicted (punching a commissioning editor, shooting a guest). And on each occasion, the initial regret has been swiftly replaced by a joyous high, brought on by relief, defiance or morphine. In this case: it was a brand new sense of purpose.

22 Metaphor.

Chapter 2

Scouts and Schooling

I JOINED LORD BADEN Powell’s army of pre-pubescents – and it is an army – in the heyday of the Boy Scouts. In those days we were truly legion. Some say there were close to a million UK scouts in the early 1960s, a terrifying proposition if you imagine them all running at you across a field or chanting ‘Ging Gang Goolie’ again and again and again and again, but slightly louder each time.

Even among such a vast number, I stood out as a quite outstanding officer in the North Norwich district, (HQ’d in Costessey). I excelled at outdoor tasks, mastering knots that could (theoretically) lash a small boat to a jetty or splice together a child’s shattered leg; identifying clues to help me track a stricken comrade; spotting dock leaves from 50 paces. But I was even more adept at the domestic chores that Scouting taught. I could embroider badges on to the shirts of every scout who asked and was an absolute whizz at buffing shoes, tying neckerchiefs and adjusting woggles.23

I might as well admit now, before any member of my troop publishes a counter-memoir, that I never mastered fire-lighting. I admit that – I couldn’t do fires. I could build them into sturdy wigwams of sticks and newspaper, no problem. But I found it very, very hard to make them catch fire. In fact, I still can’t, which is why gas BBQs are such a blessed relief.

I’m often asked, what do Scouts do? Well, although highly trained and physically fit, Scouts are not invited to defend Britain in international conflict. Instead, much of our effort went into the production of our annual Gang Show – my first taste of showbiz.

My aptitude for knot-tying meant that I was called into action as a stage-hand, hoiking up scenery panels and then lowering them down again. I was good at it and felt no real calling to be on stage … until the night of our first show.

Scout Leader Dave Millicent was MC. Smartly dressed and with his hair parted to one side, he worked the crowd beautifully and introduced each turn with real panache. He was, in a very real sense, a presenter that night. And it was at the show’s pinnacle – as he cued up the backing track to ‘Crest of a Wave’ and told them to ‘take it away’ – that I think I first knew what I wanted to be. I wanted to present.

Many years later, I contacted Dave and asked him to co-present my show on hospital radio, but he said he didn’t want to do it and didn’t remember who I was. Still, he was a good man and a very talented Scout.

What most appealed to me about the Scouts was that it was a true meritocracy. If you were diligent and resourceful and attended each week, you could orienteer your way to the very top. I’m proud to say I achieved the rank of Patrol Leader in no time, with six good Scouts under my command.

You’d think that this would automatically confer on me a bit of respect and obedience from others in the patrol. Sadly, many in the troop felt the Scouting hierarchy only applied during our weekly meetings. One member of the troop, Phil Wiley, was in my class at school – and his behaviour towards me, a superior officer, was quite, quite shameful.

On one occasion, he stole my swimming trunks, dropped them in a urinal and laughed. This was in front of the whole class, many of who(m) were in my troop. Of course, I couldn’t let this slide, and ordered him to rescue and wash them. He sniggered. I took a breath.

‘Do as I say,’ I said calmly.

He began to walk away.

‘Do as I say, Scout Wiley,’ I boomed.

‘What did you call me? Scout Wiley?’

He laughed again and indicated to the rest of the class that I was mentally defective, by twirling a finger by the side of his head. Well, this was rank insubordination.

‘Do as I say. I’m your Patrol Leader!’

‘Oh my god …’ he attempted, weakly.

‘I am your Patrol Leader.’

‘You are such a tit.’

‘I am your Patrol Leader!’

‘Fuck off.’ He actually said that to me.

‘I am your Patrol Leader! I am your Patrol Leader! I am your Patrol Leader! I am your Patrol Leader!’

I continued to shout this until I was the only person left in the changing rooms, and then I fished my trunks from the well of piss with a fountain pen, and showered them off for a few minutes before repeatedly hurling them against a wall to release the excess liquid. Yes, I’d had to save my trunks from someone else’s urine, but I’d left my class colleagues certain of one thing: I was the Patrol Leader.

The following week, I reported Wiley to Scout Leader Dave and was told not to tell tales, which didn’t really bother me much at all. (Wiley left the troop shortly after and his school work began to decline markedly. Without the discipline and brotherhood of the Scouting Movement, he drifted into a spiral of underachievement, culminating in his having sex with a lab technician. Because of pregnancy, she gave birth to a child, although Wiley has as close a relationship with it as you or I do.)

I treasured my involvement with the Scouts – of course I did. But it didn’t compensate for the absence of love and affection I received in my home life. That is a fact.

Do you believe in guardian angels? I do.24 Not the winged ones you see in films. As I’ve often explained to my assistant (a Christian female), as well as being aerodynamically unfeasible, wings sprouting from the shoulder blades would pull the ribcage backwards and gradually suffocate the angel – a cause of death that’s similar, ironically, to that of crucifixion.

No, by guardian angels I mean ‘nice people’. And I do believe in them. (Although I reserve the right to be deeply suspicious of anyone who is unilaterally kind to me.)

My guardian angels were the Lambert family. They took me in when I had nowhere to go. They gave me food and shelter and love when my own parents had deserted me. I remain forever in their debt.25

I was temporarily fostered by this kindly family in 1961. As family friends who were friends with our family, theirs was a loving home and I stayed for more than three weeks, returning home only because Mum and Dad had come back from their holiday in Brittany and it was time to go.

This was the first time I’d experienced the warmth of a caring family. Not for them the bickering over VAT receipts or making their children pick up privet cuttings in the rain. Instead, I was treated like a human being.

The father, Trevor, was an asthmatic, but what he lacked in being able to breathe quietly, he more than made up for with his parental skills. He always found time to not hit his children and I remember thinking that was tremendous.

‘Got to say, Trevor,’ I remember announcing, on my second day there, ‘you have a wonderful way with your kids. You’re a credit to yourself. I for one am impressed.’

‘Thanks, Alan,’ he said.

‘Yes, that’s lovely of you, Alan.’

I turned to see Mother Lambert, better known as Fran, handing out fresh milk and cooked cookies to her three children: Kenneth, Emma and Sheila. The children were marginally older than I was (and remain so to this day) but they reached across the age divide to show me friendship and good will.

But it was Fran who was the chief supplier of love. From day one, I was clasped to her bosom – not literally. Not literally at all. There was no suggestion of any sordid behaviour. Please don’t think there was, just because I’ve created the image of my face being pulled towards an older woman’s breasts. No, I don’t want you to take away even a residual inkling that this was a family marred by a proclivity for child molestation. I’m in two minds now whether to keep this paragraph in at all, in case the denial of any wrongdoing makes you think there’s something that needs denying. There isn’t. They were a lovely family. Kept themselves to themselves and neighbours have said they seemed perfectly normal. Actually, that makes them sound worse.

I was happy there and saw no reason why I couldn’t stay among the Lamberts for the rest of my life. But the nature and length of my stay there hadn’t been adequately explained to me. And so it was that one cold summer’s morning, I looked up from a genuinely difficult jigsaw puzzle to see my mother and father standing there, my coat in Mum’s hands. I burst into tears.

The Lamberts cried too (inwardly) as they waved me off. Mum and Dad thanked their counterparts. ‘Say thank you, Alan,’ Mum said.

‘Thank you,’ I snivelled.

‘Don’t mention it,’ said Trevor Lambert. ‘You can come and stay any time you like.’

I stopped crying. ‘Pardon?’

‘Come and stay any time you like.’

And with that, I was driven away. But my life had been touched by guardian angels – their kindness ringing in my ears like chronic tinnitus. I pressed my hand against the window like they do in films and at this point the director might like to do a slow fade to black.26

‘Smelly Alan Fartridge! Smelly Alan Fartridge!’ The words spewed from my classmates’ mouths like invisible projectile sick, landing in my ears and ending up caked all over my shattered self-esteem. My inner confidence must have reeked.

Short of doing me in with a blade (it wasn’t that sort of school), there was nothing that these educationally slow children could have done to hurt me more. But still they shouted.

‘Smelly Alan Fartridge! Smelly Alan Fartridge! He loves his mum, he lives in her bum. You think that’s bad, you should smell his dad. Smelly Alan Fartridge!’

It was agony on so many levels. For starters, they were bellowing over the sound of English teacher Mr Bevin – academically suicidal given that mock exams were just weeks away, and a personal affront of Mr Bevin who, although timid and stuttering, knew his onions, English-wise.

For mains, it was the dunderheaded wrongness of what they were saying: I did not smell. I was a keen cleanser, diligently showering each day and making sure that my body, privates, face and mouth were stench- and stain-free. If I smelt of anything, it would have been Matey (now Radox) and Colgate.

And for afters, their catcalls were a depressing reminder of my own father’s suffering. Having signed up to the 2nd Battalion of the Royal Norfolk Regiment in World War II (for my money the ‘Great War’), he learned that a sloppy administrator had spelt his surname: PRATridge (my capitals). The consequent teasing and name-calling he received at the hands of his comPRATriates (my caps) cut him deep. The horror of war. Up there with trench foot and being attacked with guns.

Smelly Alan Fartridge. Say it to yourself a few times. Pretty annoying isn’t it? About 3% as clever as it thinks it is, it’s a piece of infantile wordplay that most right-minded abusers would dismiss as rubbish but which a small minority of backward Norfolk underachievers repeated again and again and again and again.

They were led by one child whose name I can barely even remember. In fact, his name was Steven McCombe. You won’t have been able to tell, but I had to think for ages then, between the words ‘name’ and ‘was’, so insignificant is he in the roll call of people I’ve encountered.

McCombe – let’s not bother with first names – was, and I’m sure is, a grade A dumbo. He could afford to lark around in class, so certain was his fate as a manual worker – the kind who’d never have cause to rely on school teachings unless it’s for the tie-break round of a pub quiz (where the top prize is some meat).

McCombe didn’t just squawk ‘Smelly Alan Fartridge’ at me a few times. His was a campaign of petty abuse that was awesome in its length and breadth. Between 1962 and 1970, McCombe – and again these are events that bother me so little my brain has filed them under ‘Forget if you like’ – waged an impressively consistent war on me. This frenzied attack on me and my rights took several sickening forms: he stole, interfered with, and returned my sandwiches; he mimicked my voice when I effortlessly answered questions in class; he removed my shorts on a cross-country run and ran off fast; he reacted hysterically when I referred to a teacher as ‘mum’; he threw my bat and ball into a canal; he spat on my back; he daubed grotesque sexual images on my freshly wallpapered exercise books; and, in a sinister twist, he tracked the progress of my puberty, making unflattering comparisons to his own and the majority of my classmates’. This was psychological torment that few could have withstood. I withstood it.

One day, I decided enough was enough, so I plucked up the courage to confront him for an almighty showdown. It was 5pm on a wet Tuesday and I took a deep breath and went for it.

‘Oi,’ I said. ‘McCombe.’

He hesitated. ‘What?’

‘Watch it, mate.’

A pause. The guy was rattled. ‘What?’

‘I said watch it. Watch what you say and watch how you say it, you snivelling little goose.27 You might find you push someone too far one day and they unleash hell in your face.’

‘What?’

‘Stop saying “what”. Listen to me. You’re going to start showing me a bit of respect, buddy boy. Or you will reap a whirlwind. The days of infantile name-calling and sexually explicit graffiti are over. It stops. Right?’

‘What? I can’t hear you, mate.’

‘I’m not your mate.’

‘What?’

This was infuriating. I unwrapped my jumper from the mouthpiece. Oh, I forgot to say, this was on the phone.

‘Just watch it, McCombe.’

‘Who is this?’

‘See you around.’

‘Is this Partridge?’

I hung up. My point made. My parting shot – ‘See you around’ – had sounded particularly menacing. I would have said ‘See you in school’, but we’d both left a few years before. And ‘around’ sounded more threatening anyway.

McCombe had left school at the first opportunity, his mindless decision-making conducted almost entirely by a hormone-addled penis desperate to impregnate the first chubby cashier it could slip into. Sure enough, McCombe and Janice have a litter of four children, not much younger than they are. Way to go, guys.

McCombe worked for several years in the warehouse of British Leyland before a back injury scuppered his forklift-truck driving. He now lives on disability allowance in Edgbaston and has gained a lot of weight. No prizes for guessing which of us is the ‘Smelly’ one now.

Interestingly, McCombe’s career-ending back complaint is so cripplingly debilitating, he can only manage the three games of tenpin bowling per week, a fact that may or may not have been documented and photographed by my assistant.

The dossier may or may not have been passed on to Birmingham City Council. And I may or may not be waiting for a reply, although this is the public sector so I shan’t be holding my breath!

The divergence between our two lives (mine: successful, his: pathetic) is best illustrated in our choice of garden furnishing. I’ve enhanced my lawn with a rockery. McCombe has chosen a broken washing machine.

And what a pair he and Janice make. I spoke with her once, when she asked me what I was doing outside their house,28 and her language was appalling. Very aggressive woman.

McCombe rarely, if ever, strays into my consciousness now. But in some ways I thank him. The ribbing that he orchestrated – and to be fair there were probably others involved too29 – has given me a thick skin that has served me well. I grew a teak-tough, metaphorically bullet-proof hide, essential in the very real warzone that is broadcasting.

I could give you three examples right now of times that the ‘Smelly Alan Fartridge’ barbs have stood me in good stead. When Bridie McMahon (failed TV presenter who you won’t have heard of) pointed out on air that an anagram of Alan Partridge is Anal Dirge Prat, sure, I wanted to shove her in the face, but had the self-discipline not to. When formerly significant TV critic Victor Lewis-Smith described my military-based quiz show Skirmish as ‘a thick man’s Takeshi’s Castle’, I wanted to hurt him physically, but had the restraint not to. I just left 60 abusive voicemails on his mobile (plus 12 on Valerie Singleton’s for which I have apologised. She’s above him in my contacts list.) There’s probably a third example too. But the point is, the inane taunts from my school days had given me strength and perspective.