ALAN PARTRIDGE ALAN PARTRIDGE
‘I often feel that Alan Partridge is just above me, hovering on a cloud’
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As soon as I saw that kitsch set in Knowing Me Knowing You, I have to say the person I thought of was Alan Titchmarsh. The story varies as to whether Armando actually based it on him or not. I like how Partridge has the opposite of empathy with his guests, he’s not Jeremy Paxman but he thinks he kind of is, so he ends up horribly undermining the people he’s talking to. It’s great to watch. I remember friends saying to me. ‘I love your show, but I have to tell you that you actually said “The hits just keep on coming.”’ At that point, and I’ve admitted this on the air, ‘I know, I’m Alana Partridge!’
FRED MACAULAY Host of MacAulay and Co on BBC Scotland
You can’t avoid it, when you’re broadcasting, you quite often i nd yourself starting off on a sentence with no idea where it’s going, and you suddenly realise with horror what the end game is going to be like when you get to the end of the sentence, and that’s one thing you can see in Alan Partridge.
I started off seeing Knowing You Knowing Me on television, and then going back to the radio work, I enjoyed it all. I guess Alan Partridge endures because of the quality of the writing, the character managed to stay contemporary and remain part of the mood of the time. For me, AP wasn’t so much taking on Pebble Mill as taking on programmes like Wogan, although Terry Wogan was a far better broadcaster than Alan Partridge could ever be. To me, Partridge is more like someone like Simon Bates. You have these instances where someone has come to the end of what they’re doing, they’re moving on, but instead they feel hard done by, they make a self-important plea to the public to save them. Richard Madeley’s another one… there’s something about the way that these people take themselves so seriously that’s ripe for satire.
14 THE LIST 11 Jul–22 Aug 2013
ALISON WALKER Sports presenter and reporter
There’s something really familiar to me about Alan Partridge, he’s like a greasy car salesman, and I think we quite like that as long as we feel we can see through him. He’s insecure, superi cial, he makes faux-pas, he’s thoughtless and seli sh, it’s all the slightly less good things you might think about yourself on a bad day. Then again, we all put faces on for the world, so we can all relate to what he’s trying to do.
I think the bits I like best are the sports broadcasts, where he’s reporting on the Tour De France. For me, he specii cally parodies a certain kind of male, old-school sports presenter. I remember, when I was a naïve young reporter, working with Tom Ferry on BBC Radio Scotland. He had a radio music show, and also presented Sportsound: he was a slick broadcaster. I’m not convinced he knew much about football but he certainly had the gift of the gab and had his groupies as well. There was something about his voice, the exaggeration he used, you always felt he was smiling when he was speaking – he’s the one I think most resembles Alan Partridge. His style wouldn’t survive now – football commentators and presenters on the whole are all so damn serious. Sometimes you have to cover up for a lack of knowledge about the sport itself; you sometimes have to get up to speed very quickly. I had to do that at the Olympics with handball -- it’s a risk. I’ve lived in fear of making a mistake on air, that’s probably why I don’t want to listen to what I’ve said afterwards. A woman once stopped me in Tesco and said: “I’m sorry dear, I recognise you but I can’t think who you are” and then said “I’ve got it! You’re Hazel Irvine.” That was an Alan Partridge kind of moment for me. Except Alan Partridge would probably have corrected her. I just smiled and walked away.
Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa on general release from Wed 7 Aug.