Alan Partridge: Nomad

by Alan Partridge

A retired headmistress I once briefly dated said I had the BMI and muscle definition of a man five-sixths my age. I’d stood up in my underpants to show off the results of a Sizzling Summer abs workout I’d read in the Daily Mail’s Femail magazine, and while my abdomen wasn’t anything like a six-pack, I enjoyed being able to slap my belly without it making a loud clap.

Next door, I’m greeted by the owner of the guesthouse. I introduce myself – ‘Alan Partridge’ – and she tells me her name is ‘Mrs’ Lancashire in that guarded way people of a certain generation tend to – as if my introduction is an elaborate form of phishing, and by telling me her first name she’s divulging online banking login details. Absolutely ridiculous.

It is they who spread rumours about us. Not least – and let’s confront this head on because it’s the elephant in the room – inbreeding. I have lived in East Anglia for over half a century and I have never – never – been made aware of, witnessed or been involved in so much as a single act of human inbreeding. When it comes to allowing the gene pool to stagnate, we simply do not have a charge to answer. All right, you might say, it doesn’t happen now, but it used to. And fair enough, it did used to. But what people fail to recognise is that East Anglia is in a remote part of the country. There’s very little passing traffic there. So in centuries gone by, before technological advances such as the motor car or Tinder made it easy for people to make more genetically advisable choices, it was inevitable that on a cold winter’s night, when everyone else in the house was asleep, a randy brother might walk down the corridor and gently knock on his sister’s door.

To give me energy for the day ahead, I have prepared my own take on the glucose sachets now favoured by endurance athletes and bin men with particularly long rounds. A far cry from the overpriced equivalents of the big brands, mine comprise of a spoonful of jam tightly bound in cling film. Whenever my performance starts to flag, I will just place one of the pellets – known colloquially as ‘jam bombs’ – into my mouth. As I bite down, the jam bomb – not to be confused with the French word jambon, meaning ‘ham’ – will detonate, its payload of thick fruit plasma oozing onto my tongue and into the mouth or mouths of my grateful taste buds – ‘Cheers, Al! Love your radio show, by the way.’ If my calculations are correct, I’ll then feel a brief high, followed by a sustained period of extra energy. When the slump comes – and it will come – I’ll simply repeat and continue. Some sports scientists believe this kind of short-term ‘jam dosing’ is bad for your health. Then again, sports scientists say a lot of things. It doesn’t make them right. How much actual science is involved in being a sports scientist anyway? I mean them no disrespect but they’re PE teachers with laptops.

As I head towards the district of Braintree, I begin to muse on the word ‘Braintree’. You can imagine it, can’t you? A brain tree. Like an apple tree except instead of apples it bears human brains. I could think of a few broadcasters who could do with one of them in their garden! And yes, that amusing thought sustains me for a short time, helping to keep my ragged mind off the pain of walking. Of course it did, it’s a funny thought. But is it going to make you laugh for any more than, what, twenty or twenty-five minutes? Probably not. And yes, you can muster additional laughs by thinking up variants on the ‘brain tree’ theme: I imagine there are towns called Spleenbush, Lungshrub, Bowelplant, etc., etc., and picture what the corresponding plants would look like. Funny, sure. And great – you’ve bought yourself another twenty minutes of amusement. But beyond that?

The Irishman in question was Pat Farrell, whose weekday evening show Roll Out the Farrell had been a feature of the station’s output for years, in the same way a benign mole is a feature of a woman’s back: it’s not a problem per se but you’d rather it wasn’t there.