Alan Partridge

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Image:Partridge-ruddyword.jpg Alan Partridge is a fictional character portrayed by English comedian Steve Coogan. Two radio and three television series have presented this spoof television and radio presenter through his career - as well as several TV and radio specials, plus appearances on BBC's Comic Relief.

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Early years

According to the fictional world of Alan Partridge, he was born Alan Gordon Partridge on April 2 1955, and spent his childhood in Norwich. Alan was bullied at school by a boy named Stephen McCoombe, who called him 'smelly Alan Fartridge'. Alan won an essay writing competition on the subject of sport (his first foray into the sporting world) and later went on to attend East Anglia Polytechnic.

After graduating, and working his way upwards from hospital radio DJ, Alan garnered a slot presenting sports news on BBC Radio 4's On the Hour programme (1991) presented by Chris Morris. In On The Hour Alan suffered from a severe lack of any sporting knowledge. And it is here that he first developed his amazing talent for mixed and/or nonsensical metaphors.

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Knowing Me, Knowing You

Alan got his first starring role in 1992 as host of BBC Radio 4's Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge (a spoof chat show with fictional guests). Alan managed to offend people on his show who would then attempt to disgrace the host. During his tenure on the chat show, Alan hit a child genius, unknowingly took cocaine, lost his wife's car in a bet, was openly homophobic, forced the resignation of a (fictional) Junior Government Minister and, in the series finale, his guest Lord Morgan of Glossop died of a heart attack.

There was also a one off spoof-documentary about the show called Knowing, Knowing Me, Knowing You. It gave a behind-the-scenes look at how the show was put together and the antagonism between Alan and those who worked for him, as well as giving insight into the problems with his marriage to his wife, Carol.

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Television

On The Hour transferred to television as The Day Today in 1994, where Alan continued as the Sports Reporter ('This is Sports Desk... I'm Alan Partridge'). The transition to television was to be a success for Alan and was swiftly followed by a television version of Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge. The format was largely the same as the radio show, with the addition of a "house band" under the directorship of Glen Ponder (played by musical comedian Steve Brown). In the sixth episode, Alan accidently shot dead one of his guests (Forbes) on air while examing one of Lord Byron's duelling pistols. Alan was later cleared of any wrong-doing by an internal BBC investigation.

In reality, KMKYWAP was a huge success — but in the fictional world of Alan Partridge, it suffered from terrible ratings ("It started badly and went downhill from there"). In the end the show was taken off the air at the end of the first series, but fate was to give Alan a ticket for one last ride on the 'Chat anooga Choo Choo'.

In 1995, Alan hosted a Christmas special of KMKYWAP, humorously titled Knowing Me, Knowing Yule. One of his guests was the (fictional) Director of Programming at the BBC, Tony Hayers (later to become Alan's nemesis, played by David Schneider). Alan, with a characteristic lack of subtlety, was seen probing for a new series of KMKYWAP. However, the show was an unmitigated disaster for Alan, as his product placement was blatantly exposed, and the show climaxed with Alan punching both a man in a wheelchair and Tony Hayers (twice) with a turkey stuck on his hand. As Alan cried at the end of the show, "I'll never chat again", Mick Hucknall of Simply Red played the show out. It was the end of his chat-show career at the BBC.

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I'm Alan Partridge

Partridge next appeared in I'm Alan Partridge (1997), a look behind the scenes of his rapidly failing career. In this television series, he is seen having gained a slot on the fictional Radio Norwich. He continues to cause offence, this time mainly to his listeners and also his colleague Dave Clifton. Alan had by this stage taken up residence in the equally fictional Linton Travel Tavern, which was "equi-distant between London and Norwich". The first episode featured Alan meeting with Tony Hayers, begging for a new series on the BBC. Hayers was not impressed, and Alan had to wrap up his production company Peartree Productions, firing all its staff. During his time at the Linton Travel Tavern, we discovered more about Alan's failed marriage, his children (Fernando and Denise) and of course his obsession with "Bangkok Chickboys". Alan was also nearly kidnapped by his "number one fan", a crazed lunatic called Jed Maxwell. In the final episode, Tony Hayers died after a fall from a roof, and one of Alan's old friends, Chris Feather, took over as Head of Programmes at the BBC. However, at the decisive moment when the new executive was about to sign a five year contract, he keeled over and died, forcing Alan to forge the dead man's signature.

(Note: in the fictional world of Alan Partridge, this was not a documentary, but actually a "post-documentary". In the commentary on the DVD, Alan explains that all the events depicted in the series actually occurred, but everyone in the show, apart from himself and his Personal Assistant Lynn Benfield (played by Felicity Montague who went on to play a vicar's wife in Nighty Night (2004)), were actors hired to portray the events in the Linton Travel Tavern after they had actually occurred.)

Alan's next appearance was in a 1999 half hour special filmed for Comic Relief in which Alan started to "lose the plot", forshadowing his mental breakdown in the second series of I'm Alan Partridge. A simulcast between BBC2 and Radio Norwich, Alan appears incoherent and incapable of keeping track of the format of his own show.

Coogan was apparently reluctant to continue playing the character, but returned for a second series of I'm Alan Partridge in 2002. This time around, Alan was temporarily living in a caravan while waiting for his new house to be built. Despite his five-year contract with the BBC, according to Alan there was "bad blood" between them and they were "shits", so they had to let him go.

Alan was at this time still working on the radio, but had secured the "third best slot on Radio Norwich", presenting as he does Norfolk Nights, a big leap from his former timeslot of 4 to 7am, when he presented Up With the Partridge. Alan also presents a military based quiz show called Skirmish on the (fictional) cable station UK Conquest, and has a deal with Meteor Productions to make the Crash! Bang! Wallop!... What a Video/Scum on the Run series of car crash videos, and has produced a poorly selling autobiography called Bouncing Back.

In the period from his time at the Linton Travel Tavern to his residence in the "temporary static home", Alan suffered a severe mental breakdown and incresed in weight, or as he put it, he was "clinically fed up for two years". This collapse culminated in Alan driving a Vauxhall Vectra to Dundee in his bare feet, while gorging himself on Toblerones (in a similar incident, Alan recounts throwing all his tax receipts off a North Sea ferry). However, by 2002, his life was firmly back on track, save for the odd glitch. He even had a Ukrainian girlfriend called Sonja, who was 33 years old - 14 years younger than himself.

Memorable moments of this series include Alan dry-vomiting his way through a speech about fireplaces, Alan mistakenly getting involved with swingers, Alan attacking a six-foot stuffed Beefeater bear, Lynn's Christening at her Baptist church and of course, the sad pulping of his autobiography which, despite him spending four weeks of his life writing, simply wasn't selling well. Unfortunately, Alan tells us, it seems the general public was more concerned with buying gangster autobiographies like Bad Slags.

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Personality

Alan appears a rather superficial and shallow person, concerned largely with the status and level of his fame and, to a lesser extent, the material possessions this allows him to acquire (such as his beloved car and Bang & Olufsen stereo systems.) From I'm Alan Partridge onwards, most of his life is consumed by his desire to get back onto television in any way, shape or form, and the various (frequently disastrous) attempts he makes to achieve this goal. He is frequently found reciting surreal, and ever more desperate, ideas for programmes (several involving Jet from Gladiators) into a dictaphone.

Beyond this, Alan doesn't appear to have a particularly rich or detailed personal life, and seems to while away the hours fixating on trivialities. In one episode, whilst still living at the Linton Travel Tavern, he walks to a service station to acquire twelve bottles of windscreen washer fluid for no apparent reason. Most of his interests appear to reflect his taste for the superficial and flashy; it is perhaps notable that he once described Paul McCartney's band Wings as "The band the Beatles could have been".

Politically, Alan leans towards the conservative. He describes himself as being 'homoskeptical', but appears to possess some hidden homoerotic or bisexual tendencies; in the first season of I'm Alan Partridge, he frequently finds himself fantasizing about performing an erotic dance for a selection of men (usually those who can help further his career in some way, such as Tony Hayers) in a peephole Pringle jumper and leather codpiece. Sexually, he appears rather repressed, illustrated by the lengths he goes to deny his interest in 'Bangkok chick-boys".

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Anglian Lives

In 2003, Alan again returned to our screen in a half-hour special of Anglian Lives, a fictional regional BBC show. This was presented by Ray Woollard (Peter Baynham) and 'Digital Dave', and was basically a sycophantic look at Alan's career, past and present.

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Future Alan

Anglian Lives was the last time Alan Partridge appeared on TV in his own programme. It is unknown whether he will return, but writer Armando Iannucci says it is "doubtful."

In 2004 Coogan also gave an interview with Now magazine, and when asked "Is it true that you're killing off Alan Partridge?", Coogan replied: "No, not at all. What's he up to at the moment? Well, I'd say he's being cryogenically preserved next to Walt Disney. Don't worry - when the day comes that I feel like I need to do something else with him, I'll defrost him and make him funny again."

This occurred briefly for Comic Relief 2005, when Alan appeared to interview a grown up, openly gay Milkybar Kid (played by Simon Pegg). This involved a lot of recycled material from previous live appearances. However, there was some bizarre homoeroticism between Alan and the 'Milky Bar Kid' which resulted in Alan agreeing to rent a caravan and go hiking with him.

Armando Iannucci hinted in a BBC Radio 2 interview with Jonathan Ross in May 2005 that the idea of making a one-off special episode of Skirmish (Alan's fictional military based game show on 'UK Conquest') has been discussed, but no firm plans, script, or rules of the show exist.

However in August 2004 a small piece appeared in the Metro newspaper which claimed that: "Steve Coogan got the green light from a US studio to play the spoof DJ on the big screen." Coogan reportedly said: "It's always been my plan to make Alan go global. It's what he lives for really, not just doing the show on Radio Norwich." Other sources confirm the film will be going ahead and ITV has reported that Victoria Beckham will be playing a "demanding diva" in the film. Coogan has since denied that Beckham will appear.

In mid 2005, the Internet Movie Database submitted that an Alan Partridge movie was in pre-production, and rumours circulated that it may involve a plot with Al-Qaeda (the terrorist organisation) as a feature, or Alan as a go between in a hostage situation of some sort, but this speculation has not been verified.

Although not appearing per se, Alan Partridge does feature in the 2006 film, A Cock and Bull Story. In a complex, multi-layered film which blurs the viewers' perception of fact and fiction, Steve Coogan plays an egotistical, philandering film actor (called "Steve Coogan") who is most famous for his television work in the guise of "Alan Partridge". Despite his best efforts to leave Partridge in the past and move onto new projects, other characters in the film constantly remind Coogan of Partridge, even going so far as to mimic Partridge to mock Coogan. In one incredibly self-referential scene, famous journalist Tony Wilson (who Coogan played in the film 24 Hour Party People), playing a journalist called "Tony Wilson", insists on interviewing Coogan's character, actor "Steve Coogan", in Alan Partridge's "Knowing Me, Knowing You" style. The self-referencing here is particularly dense because Coogan's earlier portrayal of Wilson had been reminiscent of Alan Partridge, and it has been speculated that the Partridge character was partly based on the real Wilson [1], [2].

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List of appearances

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Classic Partridge

Selected quotes:

  • In response to Jed Maxwell wanting Alan to meet his brother - "No way you big spastic, you're a mentalist!"
  • In response to the offer of a drink at a swinging couple's house, Lynn says "No thanks, I don't want to be part of your sex festival." Alan questions, "Festival?"
  • After he eats an apple pie heated in a microwave, Alan exclaims "How long did you put that in for Lynn? It's hotter than the sun!"
  • After it is explained to Alan why jockeys are short is stature: "I see! That's why you never see people like Brian Blessed riding horses, it makes sense."
  • Explaining to Sophie, the receptionist at the Linton Travel Tavern, about the obscene graffiti on his car: "Do you know what it says on my car?" Alan asks rhetorically. "Tosser?" Sophie speculates. "No. Well, you're in the right ballpark. No, it actually says 'Cock, Piss, Partridge'." Alan replies.
  • Alan proposing a possible programming idea: "Jet from Gladiators to host a millennium barn dance at Yeovil aerodrome. Properly policed. It must not, I repeat not, turn into an all-night rave."
  • The superbly scripted rhetorical argument: "I just want to be able to say 'I'm Alan Partridge. Join me tonight when my guests will be, I don't know, Chris Rea'. Actually, he lives in the area. I could have had him over. 'Alright Chris!', 'Hello Alan I didn't know you'd moved in', 'Yeah, just moved in, last week. I'm having a barbecue, fancy coming over?', 'I'd love to! Do you mind if I bring my guitar?', 'I'd rather you didn't, it's not that kind of area. Do you like Mini Kievs?', 'I love them! But my wife's vegetarian', 'Doesn't matter. She can have fish, 'No she won't eat that either, 'Oh forget it!. You people'. Go on, Lynn. These people are starting to annoy me."
  • Alan addressing the widow of a recently deceased 40 year old: "All those people who go around saying 'Life begins at forty'. They're notable by their absence. The nerve."
  • When asked what upset him at the country fair, Alan replies: "Just people. I just hate the general public"
  • Alan prepares for a confrontation: "The temperature inside this apple pie is over 1000 degrees. If I squeeze it, a jet of molten bramley apple will squirt out. Could go your way; could go mine. Either way, one of us is going down!"
  • Alan noting the behaviour of a visitor to a petrol station: "Is he gonna get any petrol? No he's using the forecourt to turn around... he thinks he's Rod Stewart!"
  • Alan, when imagining himself gyrating seductively in front of the BBC Director General, wearing only his Y-fronts, socks and a golfing sweater with "nipple holes" cut into it... "Would you like me to lap dance for you?"
  • Talking to two Irish television producers about the Irish Potato Famine: "At the end of the day, they will pay the price for being a fussy eater. If they could afford to emigrate, they could afford to eat at a modest restaurant."
  • While explaining the opening scene of The Spy Who Loved Me, "He's being chased by these Russian shits in black jumpsuits, with lemon piping"
  • When viewing a house he is thinking of buying, and inspecting a table in the dining room, "Yes, it's an extender!"
  • When trying to conjure up images of 'real Irish people' he says they have "badly tarmacced drives in THIS country."
  • Commentating on World Cup football, "That goalie has football pie all over his shirt!", "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!...That, was a goal." and "Shit! did you see that!? He must have a foot like a traction engine."
  • "My girlfriend is 14 years younger than me. Cashback!"
  • Contemplating his relationship with his girlfriend "Well Sonja, that was classic intercourse"
  • When talking to an East Anglian farmer on his radio show, "You feed beefburgers to swans"
  • After having one of his James Bond tapes recorded over by Michael's friend; Tex:"I really wanted to see America's Strongest Man..." -- Alan:"Well now you've got Norfolk's Maddest Man!"
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External links

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