It was a time of sex, drums and rock and roll, and these three things (or four things depending on whether you count ‘rock and roll’ as one item or two) provided the backdrop to a very crazy time. I know for a fact that I would have developed a pretty impressive booze habit and had full sex had it not been for the fact I was expected home for 6 to 6.30.
You’ll notice I said ‘full sex’. Oh, I’d dabbled alright. Gentlemanliness prevents me from recounting some of the early incidents involving my nascent but powerful sexuality, but suffice to say, I was no frigid. I did quite a lot of kissing, some of it vigorous enough to chap lips (mine and hers). On other occasions, I enjoyed erotic and informative afternoons with a student whose essays I was writing. Years ago, I’d have been too prudish to discuss these sexual experiences in print, but hitting 50 has given me a new candidness. I’m happy to recall those eye-opening afternoons, with me and Jemima sitting bollock naked on her bed – me exploring her body with my quivering hands while she coquettishly feigned indifference by reading album sleeves or smoking.
Young I may have been, but I was confident enough to speak my mind. This strutting, young, cockcertain Alan would often dish out compliments as he perused and felt her body.
‘You’re a really busty woman, Jem,’ I once said. ‘One of the bustiest on campus.’
‘Thanks,’ she said through her cigarette.
‘You’ve got quite a long torso, but your legs aren’t in the least bit thick. Believe me, if I didn’t have lectures, I’d love to kiss your back from top to bottom and from side to side. Also diagonally.’
Things like that.
And I knew how to party. Typically, I’d press a blade crease into my cords,36 comb my thick hair past my ears like a glossy hat (the style at the time) before pitching up fashionably late to a house party, where my appearance through the frosted glass of the door would provide hushed whispers of anticipation inside.
Perhaps subconsciously aware that I’d soon become a disc jockey (DJ), I’d bring albums with me and sit in front of the record player, treating my fellow carousers to the latest cuts. And what cuts! You couldn’t pigeon-hole me if you tried. The Swingle Singers, Nana Mouskouri, John Denver, The Seekers, The New Seekers, and then I’d throw them a curveball with some Steeleye Span. And all the while I’d sing along at a steadily increasing volume. (My warm tenor actually improved many of the tracks, some of which were marred by the rock stars of the time adopting a screechy higher register.) I’d do all this while getting roaring drunk on a Watneys Party Four – it was four pints of foaming beer in a can or, with Shaw’s Lemonade, six pints of shandy. What’s more, I knew a lot about my selected artists and would regale the fellow partygoers with interesting facts about the artists we were listening to.
On one occasion, I woke up to find my records had disappeared, no doubt pilfered by a new convert to my fresh rock sounds. Although it was only 9pm, the party had completely wound down, with guests no doubt annoyed into leaving by the noisy party going on next door.
Fun as these times were, I’d begun to grow disillusioned with university life. My relationship with Jemima had burned brightly (certainly on my part), but our encounters stopped when we had a blazing row (ah, the passion of youth) on the subject of female armpit hair on which I had – and have – pretty trenchant views. I’m in full agreement that women should enjoy sexual equality with men and not feel expected to live up to an unrealistic ideal, but if you’re a lady and you don’t shave your pits, you look like a ruddy bloke. End of.
To be honest, the end of this affair came as a blessed relief. I’d experienced a COLOSSAL sexual enlightenment, learning much about my own capabilities and the ins and outs of female anatomy, but Jemima was undeniably one of those uppity, over-confident types who think they can live by their own rules. Listeners to my current radio show (don’t worry, we’ll come to that!) will know that I actively relish the regimented parameters and enforced norms of broadcast media.
Smoking ‘doobies’, buying books second-hand and getting out of bed after midday is all well and good (it isn’t), but it’s far from productive. These people might be able to tell you which French films John Luc Picard was in, but I bet you any money they wouldn’t be able to reattach a stop cock if it came loose. Utterly useless people.
My measure of success – and it’s stood me in pretty good stead over the years – is how well someone would cope in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of a nuclear war. Trust me, when it comes to staving off radiation poisoning, repopulating the human race or restoring some semblance of sanitation, having an encyclopaedic knowledge of subtitled films is going to be pretty low on the agenda. I’d much rather stand shoulder to shoulder with someone whose video collection featured one video of The Goonies and another of The Tuxedo with Jackie Chan but who was a Polish plumber.
That’s why students and their incessant status quo bashing are so wrong. Challenging convention should be left to those of us who truly understand convention – and you can only understand convention if you’ve stuck rigidly to it 99% of the time. That’s basic.
I regretted going to university deeply. Education is clearly important (we’re repeatedly told by those who have a vested interest), but it’s borderline self-indulgent to devote several years of your life to a single subject. That kind of blinkered obsession with one topic at the expense of all others doesn’t sit easily with me. I say that as a man who can gen up on any subject to university standard in an hour and then chair a radio phone-in on it that informs and entertains. Wikipedia has made university education all but pointless.
My mind was already on the next exciting stage of my life. What would I become? How would I make my mark? I still didn’t know. But as I bellowed from a park bench to everyone and no one after another Party Four one night – ‘Alan Partridge is coming!’ (The same phrase I’d hear shouted up the stairs when I turned up at parties.)
30 I think it was golden anyway.
31 And it’s always a man.
32 A modern-day New Faces in which the audience wear t-shirts with the contestants’ names on them.
33 I’d actually taken three but obviously I didn’t count the one I dropped.
34 Press play on Track 6.
35 Sometimes called ‘Naughty Norwich’.
36 You could have sliced cucumber with it, were it not for the lint.
Chapter 4
Carol
THUMP, THUMP, THUMP, WENT my heart, like Phil Collins hitting one of his drums. My breathing was shallow, my limbs were shaking and my sweating palms were crying out for the absorptive powers of a chamois leather. I don’t think I’d ever been so nervous.
The date was 13 April 1978 and I, Partridge was about to be wed. My intended? A female by the name of Carol Parry.
Our relationship was to be given full legal status in St Edmund’s Church in the Norfolk village of Caistor St Edmund. We’d been to visit the previous summer and had both fallen madly in love with the place – Carol for its pretty graveyard, its cherry blossom and its old-world charm; me for its ample parking and easy access to junction 5 of the A47.
Of course there were limitations too, most notably the lack of wheelchair access. And while all of our guests were able bodied, the marriage was still nine months away – ample time for one (or more) of them to be involved in a serious road traffic accident or develop a degenerative brain disease.
In the end we decided to follow our hearts and book it. Besides, we figured that if anyone did end up paralysed come next spring, our two ushers – one taking the feet, the other the hands – could easily carry them into the church in a safe and dignified manner.
The intervening months passed in a blur, until suddenly the day had come. I rose early, breakfasted on an egg medley (one poached, one boiled, one baked), changed and headed off to St Edmund’s. I got there with just two hours to spare. For what seemed like an eternity I wandered around the grounds of the church, killing time, trailed by an almost constant stream of – without wishing t
o be crude – my own bum gas.
Soon enough, though, the guests arrived. I smiled to myself as I noticed that none had succumbed to any form of disability. And as the clock struck three minutes past eleven, a hush fell over the congregation. There, at the end of the aisle, was Carol. Clad in a pleasant white dress, her lace veil glistening in the sunlight like some sort of semi-transparent burka, she really did look a thousand dinars.
Half an hour later, and despite a ceremony which I felt had been deliberately marred by the vicar’s lisp, we were man and wife. But as I locked lips with my comely bride, tasting her distinctive spittle in my mouth, little did I realise that we would never be this happy again.37
There’d been girls before,38 of course there had (look at me for goodness sake!), but no one like Carol. Carol just ‘got’ me.
We’d met in southern Norwich at a local café called Rita’s. I was at polytechnic at the time and had popped in for a bite to eat (Rita made some of the best toast around) on my way back from Scottish country dancing practice.
I placed my order – ‘Toast please, Rita. Just been to dancing’ – handed over my dosh and took a seat at my usual table. As I plonked my aching limbs down on the chair (SCD had been horribly gruelling this week), I saw a young lady/old girl stood nearby. She was fashionably turned out and had brown hair that was so glossy it genuinely wouldn’t have looked out of place at a dog show. Immediately I wanted to know more.
In her right hand, she had a cup of tea. And in her left, she didn’t. But something about the way she was looking at that cuppa didn’t add up. She seemed somehow disillusioned. Yes, the tea had that layer of scum that comes from adding the water before the milk, but something inside me said it wasn’t that. I just had to find something to say to her. But what?
Suddenly my mind, normally so richly populated with premium quality chat, had gone completely blank. She turned to go, the swirl of her glossy hair revealing a neck bejewelled with moles. It was now or never. But just as I thought I’d missed my chance, it was as if I went into auto-pilot. Before I knew what I was doing, I had gone over and started talking to her.
‘Tea and coffee are okay,’ I said, casually. ‘But they’re not the be-all and end-all. Surely there’s room in life for a third caffeinated beverage option?’
Suddenly I came out of auto-pilot. What the hell was I doing?! In the ten years since I’d come up with that view, how many people had ever agreed with me? I’ll tell you how many – zilch. At best it provoked an indifferent grunt, at worst it had cost me friendships. It was chat suicide.
Or so I thought.
‘I know,’ she said, her brown hair even glossier in close-up. ‘I’ve been saying the same thing for years.’
Cha-ching! Instantly my confidence returned to its normal level. Then just carried on soaring; soaring like an eagle that didn’t care if it went so high that it blacked out. Within seconds I found myself sharing another of my ace theories – that it was time to go beyond salt and pepper and begin the search for a third primary condiment.
This time she disagreed (she actually got quite angry), but it didn’t matter. By now a bond had been formed, a bond that nothing – save for 16 years of attritional bickering and one pretty choice piece of philandering (hers, see Chapter 15, the bitch) – would ever be able to undo.
Those first couple of years flew by like a car doing 50 in a 30 zone. Maybe even 60 in a 30 zone. Depends who you ask. We were the principals in our very own Norwich-based Hollywood romcom. She was a thinking man’s Meg Ryan, I was a non-Jewish Billy Crystal.
We soon moved in together, and it was when we did that I took another giant leap into the warm waters of adulthood. A gentleman doesn’t dwell on such things, but let’s just say that when two healthy and hygienic adults enjoy two bottles of wine on an empty stomach, strip naked, lie on the kitchen floor and place their genitals within spitting distance of one another, there are going to be fireworks.
I’ll admit that there was a certain awkwardness to those early romps. Whereas I was flying my first sorties into sexual territory, Carol had been hymen-free for the best part of six years. My caution didn’t last long, though, and within about three months I was able to perform my duties quietly, competently and with a minimum of fuss.
With things continuing to go well, it seemed only logical (I sound like Spock!) to proceed to the next step – marriage. So, in early 1977 I cycled the 26 miles to Carol’s parents’ house to meet with her father and request his daughter’s hand in marriage. But when I got there I was on the receiving end of an almighty curveball.
‘Hello, Alan,’ said Carol’s dad, Keith.
‘Hello, Alan,’ said Carol’s mum, Stella, not bothering to think of a greeting of her own.
Within seconds, I had nodded back at them. I would have spoken, but I’d just cycled the equivalent of a full marathon.
‘What brings you out this way?’
I put my hand up as if to say, ‘Give me a minute, will you, Keith? I’ve just cycled the equivalent of a full marathon.’
Yet no sooner had I got my breath back than I spotted something truly incredible. Sat on the lawn, as bold as brass, was a brand new FlyMo. Now not only did I not know Keith was getting a FlyMo, I didn’t even know he was considering it.
I was completely floored. This machine was science fiction brought to life. It was based, of course, on the original design for Sir Christopher Cockerell’s hovercraft. And you really did get a sense of that – apparently it simply glided across the turf, as light as a feather, as nimble as a ballerina. I’d even heard rumours that owners didn’t mind the back-breaking job of collecting up the cuttings afterwards. And that speaks volumes. Clearly, it was an honour to mow with.
Of course I was so distracted by this turn of events that I never did get his permission. I did make another attempt the following month, though. I faxed through a request to his office. But I’d got the extension number wrong and it went to a different man.
The most profound moment of my life was still to come, though.39 And I’ll never forget the moment I heard the news.
I was banging about in the cellar, trying to find a pewter tankard that a friend of mine, Pete Gabitas, had suggested could be worth a fair bit of money. Sweaty, angry and pretty pissed off, I was not in the best of moods. Carol approached with a glass of lemonade, but it was homemade and I preferred the bottled fizzy kind so I took it without saying anything. Straight away, she looked hurt and I could tell she was troubled by something.
‘Out with it, Carol,’ I said. ‘I’m trying to find a ruddy tankard here.’
‘Alan,’ she said. ‘I’ve fallen –’
Freezeframe!
Let me tell you something about Carol. Over the years I spent with her, I learnt that ‘I’ve fallen’ was an opening gambit that could go one of two ways. One was very good, the other very bad. There was no middle ground. On the bad side, the sentence could end, ‘… off some step-ladders’ or ‘… out of love with you’. On the good? ‘… for one of your practical jokes’ or …
Unfreeze!
‘… pregnant.’
She was with child, and I was to be a dad. I’m told that some men have written entire books about the experience of becoming a father. And while that’s clearly too much, there’s certainly plenty to be said on the subject.
This child, my first, was Fernando. He was conceived in January 1980, the same month that President Carter announced a grain embargo against the USSR. Carol and I had been hiking and stopped for a toilet break behind a large boulder on Helvellyn. One thing led to another and soon we’d taken off our Gore-Tex trousers40 and were having, for want of a better phrase, full sexual intercourse. (I should add that before getting ‘hot and heavy’ we’d moved a good metre due east of the piddle zone.)
As to how it happened? Well, Carol hadn’t been on the pill, so I can only hazard a guess that the prophylactic had got punctured in the cut and thrust of what was some fairly robust lovemaking. Not that we cared. We were to
be parents! In just under nine months I would be welcoming a child into the world in much the same way as I would one day welcome the guests on to my primetime BBC chat show. Namely, very warmly indeed. (And ideally with the musical backing of a 22-piece house band.)
The early stages of the pregnancy were equally tough for both of us. For the first ten weeks Carol suffered from almost incessant nausea, not to mention frequent bouts of oral vomiting. While, for my part, I was having hell’s own job getting a reasonable quote for a new fan belt.
Eventually, though, things settled down (I ended up going with NDB Autos on King Street) and we could begin to enjoy learning about the different stages of the foetus’s growth. One week it was the size of a pea, another a walnut, then a plum, an apple, a beef tomato, by which time the novelty of being able to equate my child’s size to the mass of a common fruit or vegetable had really started to razz me off.
When the birth came, though, I have to confess that I didn’t find it especially traumatic. After all, I’d been through it myself some 25 years earlier, and that experience (see page 3) seemed to stand me in good stead. Carol, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so keen. It took her two days and two nights to deposit our first-born from her loins. But finally, almost as if he knew there were only minutes left on my car-park ticket, Fernando Partridge was born, weighing in at 9lbs 4oz (roughly the size of nine one-pound bags of sugar).
There he was, his skin covered in a thick film of my wife’s innards. Tears streamed down my face. I was so happy I wanted to shout it from the rooftop. But at the same time I knew that that afternoon’s downpour would have made the slate tiles so slippery that achieving any kind of purchase would have been impossible. Equally, I was acutely aware of the car-parking situation mentioned above.
I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan Page 4