Free I, Partridge by Alan Partridge Page A

all. Not even with each other. 63
    So yes, in London, I was very much in my shell. But back in Norwich, things couldn’t have been more different. Anyway, this chapter’s over now.

Chapter 8
A Mighty Big Fish for A Pond this Size 64
     
    ‘WHO ARE YOU? I don’t bloody know you any more!’
    Carol was shouting at me, tears streaming down her ruddy 65 cheeks, as I tried to barge past her. She grabbed at my jowls, imploring me to look at her. But she was right. This was a different Alan Partridge and he wasn’t in the mood.
    I eased her out of the way and put the takeaway menus – the glossy food-describing documents that she’d so carefully placed in my hands – back into the top drawer. It should have been second drawer down but I wasn’t thinking straight.
    She swung me around and fanned some of my breath into her nostrils. ‘Have you … been drinking??’ Her voice was shaking. I turned away. I’d had a half-bottle of wine – I don’t remember the colour – on the train back home and was out of control.
    Friday would usually have been our takeaway night, but tonight I wasn’t hungry – I’d been in the BBC club, enjoying a buffet put on to celebrate 26 years of Tomorrow’s World . (For the uninitiated, the BBC club is a subsidised bar-cum-restaurant, laid on by licence fee payers for the talent and crew of the BBC alike. It provided a public-free environment for BBC staffers to carouse and unwind, to share ideas and to complain about working conditions. It was where a star-struck Alan Partridge would buy a sandwich most days in the hope of spotting Esther Rantzen, Andy Crane, Karl Howman.)
    This was a new experience for me. I was starry-eyed, my mind addled with possibility and adventure, recognition and more adventure. Which is how I found myself seduced that night by the lure of glamour, sausage rolls and a chat with Maggie Philbin.
    Not many people had turned up to the soiree – the 25th anniversary in 1990 had been a much bigger do – but I had lost track of time, arguing with Howard Stableford about the possibility of time travel, and had missed my usual train. On the next scheduled service, I thought I’d wash down the rolls with a drink. Frig it, I said aloud, why not? I work hard, it’s Friday night and I want a glass of wine (still can’t remember the colour).
    I had some crisps as well, and the sliced potato snacks had lopped a fair bit off my appetite. I didn’t want a bloody take-away. I wanted another slice of quiche and another half of bitter. I wanted to be back in the BBC club, the happy filling in a Kate Bellingham/Judith Hann sandwich, not sat in with Carol as she decorates her face with spare rib sauce.
    And when she handed me the menus, my response had been withering. ‘I’m not peckish. I don’t want to eat a take-away meal tonight.’
    That’s when she shoved me and burst into uncontrollable (but still annoying) sobs. ‘Who are you? I don’t bloody know you any more!’
    Yes, reader, London had changed me. My career was going stratospheric, with millions of radio listeners hungrily eating the sound of my voice as it fed them sports-centred info. It was all so new to me. New and intoxicating and fun.
    I slumped in front of the TV and Carol sat next to me, ordering a takeaway for one. Armed with a new understanding of London broadcasting, I was able to provide a kind of Director’s Commentary on current affairs TV shows, pointing out what the presenters ordered from the BBC club, if they were taller/shorter than they appeared on TV and generally providing helpful info on the production process. Carol said nothing.
    Sue Cook appeared on screen, and in my tipsiness I began to talk in gushing terms about her. She’d always reminded me of Jeff Archer’s wife, Lady Archer. Sophisticated and demure. But having got to know her a little bit, I’d realised she had a wonderful sense of humour and had a loathing of other presenters that I found quite wonderful. I mentioned this to