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Alan Partridge

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Alan Partridge
First appearanceRadio: On the Hour
Television: Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge
Portrayed bySteve Coogan
In-universe information
GenderMale
OccupationRadio and Television Broadcaster


Alan Partridge is a fictional character portrayed by English comedian Steve Coogan. Two radio and three television series – as well as several TV and radio specials, and appearances on BBC's Comic Relief – have tracked the spoof television and radio presenter through his career.

Character

Partridge is depicted as a rather insecure, superficial and narcissistic 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 Rover and Lexus cars and Bang & Olufsen stereo systems). Whereas many of his personality defects are apparent in his appearances in shows such as The Day Today and Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, it is largely from I'm Alan Partridge onwards that his creators began to explore his personality in depth, and most of the observations that follow originated in that show. These shows depict a marked downturn in his fortunes as his BBC television career ends, and most of his life from I'm Alan Partridge onwards is consumed by his desire to get back onto television in any 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.

Despite being a professional chat-show host, Partridge is socially incompetent and awkward. He displays deep insensitivity to social norms, and at times he appears to be a somewhat ghoulish character, displaying thoughtlessness, selfishness and lack of interest in anything or anyone outside of his own needs and desires. He seems unable to forge genuine friendships, usually needing only a sympathetic ear for his terrible jokes, comically banal topics of conversation ("bowl of bread there") and overall inanity. Most of his attempts to form friendships with others - such as the staff of the Linton Travel Tavern in the first series of I'm Alan Partridge, and the builders constructing his house in the second series - are doomed to failure, as others are quick to see his unpleasant, self-involved nature.

Among his few 'friends' are Lynn Benfield, his put-upon and long-suffering personal assistant, and Michael, an emotionally tortured ex-soldier from Newcastle-upon-Tyne; it is notable, however, that he treats even these people with little more than disdain. In the first series of I'm Alan Partridge he does not even seem to be on first-name terms with Michael, who usually refers to him as "Mr. Partridge". Despite showing them little concern or regard, Partridge nonetheless appears to expect them to be devoted to him in return, and is genuinely appalled when this is revealed not to be the case: in series one of I'm Alan Partridge, he threatens to fire Lynn when she laughs at a joke made at his expense and for "joining in fun in a way that excludes her employer". On one occasion in series two, upon discovering that Michael has other friends than just him ("Michael, what the hell's going on?!"), Partridge breaks up their friendship before storming out in an over-protective huff.

Partridge appears not to have a particularly rich or detailed personal life. He often occupies himself with pointless or needless tasks, seemingly just to give himself something to do; in one episode, whilst still living at the Linton Travel Tavern, he walks to a petrol station to acquire twelve bottles of windscreen washer fluid for no apparent reason. The same episode also sees him drive around a ring-road repeatedly and purchasing tungsten-tipped screws he has no intention of using, seemingly just to kill time. Abandoned by his friends on another occasion, he goes to an amusement arcade and reveals a childish tendency: "Then I fought some zombies with a boy in care. Wiped the floor with him."

Most of his interests appear to reflect his taste for the superficial and flashy; it is notable that he describes Paul McCartney's band Wings as "the band The Beatles could have been". He is also fond of the music of Kate Bush, the Electric Light Orchestra and Abba, and appears to be stuck in a time warp with regard to modern society. He also boasts about his six-figure income and self-built five-bedroomed house in a "good part" of Norwich. His few hobbies include driving, rambling, birdwatching and collecting celebrity memorabilia.

Politically, Partridge leans towards the conservative, and he is a strong Thatcherite. His favourite newspaper is the Daily Mail, a right-leaning publication which he claims is "arguably the best newspaper in the world". He is very pro-law and has a strong stance on criminality, viewing hoodlums and miscreants as "sub-human scum". He is also in favour of the death penalty for "treason and murder".

Sexually, he appears rather repressed, illustrated by the lengths he goes to deny any interest in Bangkok "lady-boys" ("fascinating creatures, though. Looks like a lady, but really it's a man. I don't find them attractive, it's just confusing"). He describes himself as being a "homosceptic", but appears to possess some hidden homoerotic or bisexual tendencies. In the first series of I'm Alan Partridge, he frequently finds himself fantasising 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 vulcanised rubber pants; he was also apparently once witness to naked bare-knuckle boxing in a "barn in Somerset". He can be prudish, too, as when he insists on "letting battle commence" with his soon-to-be-unemployed receptionist with the room in total darkness, then gets upset when she decides to apply chocolate mousse to his person. When it turns out that his new best friend Dan and his wife are swingers ("they're sex people, Lynn! They're sex swappers!") he leaves their house very quickly. Despite this, Alan and his ex-wife did once make love behind a large boulder in Helvellyn for his birthday.

Misogyny could also be said to feature quite markedly in Alan's life. He tends to "objectify" women, often patronising those he comes across. In addition to his failed relationship with his ex-wife, almost every woman he meets ends up ridiculing, ignoring, or detesting him, because of his manner toward them. In the second series of I'm Alan Partridge he does manage to sustain a romantic and sexual relationship with Sonja, a 33-year-old immigrant from Eastern Europe who is quite devoted to him, despite the linguistic and cultural barriers between the two and her scatterbrained personality. However, it is apparent that her affection towards him is largely unreturned and that his relationship with her is mainly based on the boost to his ego that their fifteen-year age gap provides (which he is frequently heard boasting about). "I love you... in a way", he says at one point, and after comparing her to a James Bond "femme fatale" he mentions that he "doesn't trust her". At the end of series 2, when she is evicted from her flat, he lets her stay in the caravan - "if they can come to some arrangement".

Alan is also fairly isolated from his family. Both of his children are estranged and wish for nothing to do with him, and he is divorced. Alan has one sister, a nephew, a cousin (Who owns BBC Radio Norwich), an uncle who died a virgin, and a brother-in-law who Alan finds irritating on account of his constant whinging about his Parkinson's Disease. Alan's father is deceased but his mother is mentioned in the DVD commentaries as alive but ill. Alan doesn't seem particularly close to anyone in his family, and we have never seen any of them. His chronic lack of social skills further cements his alienation from his family.

He apparently considers Dave Lee Travis to be his nemesis.

Fictional biography

Early years

Alan was born Alan Gordon Partridge on April 2 1955 in King's Lynn, Norfolk, England, and spent his childhood in Norwich. He was bullied at school by a boy named Stephen McCoombe, who called him "smelly Alan Fartridge". At Sir William Dunwoody's High School he was known as "Alison Partridge", and was once caned for having a chalk penis drawn on the back of his school blazer, an incident about which he still feels bitter many years later. Alan had a lonely childhood in which he would ramble about the Norfolk countryside in solitude, singing his favourite pop songs. His father once laughed at Alan for crying at "Billy Don't Be A Hero" by Paper Lace, and it is obvious he had a very sheltered childhood that was to mould him into what he was to become in later life. At school 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. He passed his driving test when he was 17, celebrated by getting a Mint Cracknell, and bought a white Austin Maxi for £60 from a copy of Auto Trader.

Alan achieved 4 Bs and 2 Cs at O-level, and a C in Art and a B in General Studies at A-level (he dropped French). He later admitted to framing the certificates and displaying them in his office.

He later married Carol, who gave birth to Alan's son Fernando and daughter Denise. Carol later left Alan for a fitness instructor, and took the children with her.

Radio career

After graduating, Alan worked his way upwards from a position as a DJ on Radio Smile on St Luke's hospital radio, until he left, following arguments with patients. He then began presenting the drive time Traffic Buster show on Radio Norwich, where he stayed for five years and was named Sports Reporter Of The Year in 1988. He then became a presenter on the BBC's Scoutabout programme, where he entered into the top eight of BBC sports reporters. Alan soon garnered a slot presenting sports news on BBC Radio 4's On the Hour programme (1991) presented by Chris Morris. On that show Alan suffered from a severe lack of any sporting knowledge and developed a notable talent for mixed and/or nonsensical metaphors.

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). He managed to offend people on his show who would then attempt to disgrace the host. During his tenure on the show, Alan hit a child genius, unknowingly took cocaine, bribed rent boys, lost his wife's car in a bet, was openly homophobic, forced the resignation of a junior government minister and, in the series finale, his guest Lord Morgan of Glossop died from an apparent heart attack.

There was also a one off spoof-documentary about the show called Knowing, Knowing Me, Knowing You. It provided 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.

The Day Today

On The Hour transferred to television as The Day Today in 1994, where Alan continued as the inept sports reporter ('This is Sports Desk... I'm Alan Partridge'). Here he bungled his way through a feature on the 1994 FIFA World Cup, gave a colourful report on the previous sporting season, and was beaten up by a female martial-arts instructor.

Knowing Me, Knowing You

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 accidentally shot dead one of his guests (Forbes McAllister) on air while examining 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; in the fictional world of Alan Partridge, it suffered from terrible ratings. This was because of 'poor scheduling' (The show was aired at the same time as the News at Ten) and Alan's PA, Lynn, claimed that "the show started badly and went downhill from there". In the end the show was taken off the air at the end of the first series.

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 attempt at 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 beginning of the end of his time at BBC television (he was "kept on the books", as it were, for a short while, but after a particularly harrowing meeting with Hayers at the BBC cafeteria (which involved assault by cheese) he was left in no doubt that his BBC TV career was over).

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 been kicked out by his wife (who was living with a fitness instructor) and, after wandering around a John Menzies for five hours in a state of depressed homelessness, Alan had been forced to take 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 Montagu 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’, foreshadowing his mental breakdown in the second series of I'm Alan Partridge. A simulcast between BBC Two and Radio Norwich, Alan appears incoherent and incapable of keeping track of the format of his own show. A second Comic Relief appearance followed in 2001, showing him interviewing a boxing manager, played by Peter Kay. Eventually, this resulted in Alan taking on one of the boxers in the ring and being beaten by the boxer, the manager and his friend Michael.

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 returned to radio, securing the ‘third best slot on Radio Norwich’, presenting 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.

In the period from his time at the Linton Travel Tavern to his residence in the temporary 'static home’, Alan suffered a mental breakdown and put on weight, or as he put it, was ‘clinically fed up' and 'repellent to women 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 ("back of the net!"). This period in Alan's life is documented in his autobiography Bouncing Back, which Alan claims has been described as "Lovely stuff" by entertainer Shakin' Stevens.

Memorable moments of this series include Alan dry-vomiting his way through a speech about fireplaces; mistakenly getting involved with swingers; attacking a six-foot stuffed Beefeater bear; his summing up the entire opening of The Spy Who Loved Me in less than a minute; Lynn's Baptism at her Baptist church and, of course, the sad pulping of his autobiography which, despite taking up four weeks of his life to write, simply wasn't selling well (partly because every anecdote ended with the phrase "Needless to say, I had the last laugh".) Unfortunately, Alan tells us, it seems the general public was more concerned with buying gangster autobiographies like Bad Slags.

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; the credits listed it as being executive produced by Alan himself. It shed more detail on Alan's hatred of London, his Toblerone addiction, and his future.

Future

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. It was later revealed the film would involve an al-Qaeda siege. However, due to the sensitivities of such a storyline post the 7 July 2005 London bombings, the project now appears to be on hold.[1]

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 about Partridge, going so far as to mimic Partridge in order to mock Coogan. In one highly self-referential scene, journalist Tony Wilson (whom Coogan had 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, by the actor's own admission, reminiscent of Alan Partridge [1], and it has been speculated that the Partridge character was partly based on the real Wilson [2], [3].

Steve Coogan's profile on the BBC Comedy website talks of another series featuring Alan Partridge, entitled I'm Still Alan Partridge. However this was in fact the provisional title for I'm Alan Partridge series 2.

List of appearances

Reference

  1. ^ Guy Adams, The 'red-socked fop' returns to the fray, The Independent, 13 April 2006, accessed 19 January 2007
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