I, Partridge (28 page)

As I searched around the soapy depths for my pumice stone, the idea began to take shape. The book would be called ‘Bouncing Back’. (Incidentally the pumice made pretty short work of my calluses. It’s no surprise that this tough yet lightweight material is also used to make insulative, high-density breezeblocks.) On the surface it would appear to be half autobiography, half self-help manual. Yet it would be so much more than that. It would be a system to set free the limitless potential within us all, which just happened to be bound in hardback and sold in all good bookshops. Plus Tesco’s.

I got so caught up in thinking about the book, that by the time I finally emerged from the bath, my skin was as shrivelled as an over-microwaved pea. But you know what? I didn’t care. My only focus now was on
Bouncing Back
. And I have to confess, I loved the writing process. Sometimes I’d sit in my study and just pound away on the word processor. Other times I’d go jogging with a Bluetooth headset on and get my assistant to type the chapters up as I spoke them to her.

This run-writing worked very well. Unless I was going up a hill. In which case I quickly became too puffed out to talk. My assistant and I would simply maintain a comfortable telephone silence, save for the odd whinny of exertion from my end, until I reached the brow. Then I’d just make up for it by speaking at twice the speed on the descent. She’d really struggle to write as quickly as I was speaking, but that’s not my problem.

One morning, though, I decided to do something different. I resolved to write in the park. I rose early and, just as dawn cracked, I found myself a nice little bench by the pond and began yabbering merrily away into my Dictaphone. This only lasted a couple of hours, though, because my audio kept getting polluted. If I learnt one thing in the writing of that book it was that the pained cackle of a swan in labour really does carry on the breeze. Disgusting.

After what seemed like an eternity, the book was finally written. It had taken three long weeks. As I typed the very last word – ‘Allah’ – I collapsed on to my keyboard. I was spent, every last drop of me had been poured into that book (save for a couple of anecdotes that I took from Russell Harty and re-badged as my own – and there’s nothing he can do to touch me).

A wave of relief rushed over me as I began to dribble on the space bar. If pony-trekking had soothed my troubled mind, writing this book had been a full radiator flush, removing any traces of magnetite sludge from my system. My demons hadn’t been exorcised, they’d been rounded up and shot. And now, as I bulldozed them into a mass grave with a fag in my mouth, I could move on with my life.

Of course there was still the small matter of finding a publisher. My previous work ‘
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Stadium to Alan Partridge by Alan Partridge
’ (a wry collection of amusing anecdotes about my experiences as a sports reporter) had been published by Peartee Publishing, the publishing wing of my now defunct company. (PP had gone under years before, after an injunction from former goalkeeper Ray Clemence who angrily questioned the validity of one of the anecdotes.
²⁰⁵
)

So we needed to source a new publishing house. I’m told by my assistant that it only took about a month – after all, anyone reading the manuscript would quickly see that snapping up the rights was a total ‘non-brainer’ – but can’t recall the exact details as I was drinking a lot of cider at the time. I don’t really like cider but there’d been a very good deal on at Thresher’s. And this explained my somewhat distracted response when she’d phoned with the good news.

‘I’ve found you a publisher!’ she squeaked.

‘What?’

‘For your book.’

‘What about it? It’s ace.’

‘You asked me to find you a publisher.’

‘For what?’

‘The book, Alan. You asked me to find you a publisher for the book and I’ve spent the last month sending it to various companies and now one has come back and said they’re willing to publish it!’

I hesitated. Was the news sinking in?

‘Just get me some crisps.’

No, it wasn’t. The next day, though, with all the cider now either drunk, spilled or thrown, I soon shaped up. And let me tell you, I was elated. My strategy of combining searingly honest admissions about my own life with a liberal use of the Roget’s thesaurus, had worked a treat. I was to be published!

I immediately phoned Carol, before quickly hanging up when I remembered we were divorced. I know – Fernando.

‘Son?’

‘I’m just in the loo, Dad.’ He was such a joker!

‘Son, I’m to be published!’

‘That’s great, Dad.’

‘The book will share my own life experiences and teach people a system for setting free the limitless potential within us all.’

‘So like half autobiography, half self-help manual?’

‘Kind of, but also so much more than that.’

‘Great, Dad.’ I heard a plop. Either he hadn’t been joking about being on the loo, or he was dropping stones into a well.
²⁰⁶

‘Fancy meeting for a drink to celebrate?’

But the line went dead. In his excitement at my publishing deal Fernando had cut the call off. No matter, because I was still as pleased as the punch I would later make at home from whatever I could find in my drinks cupboard.

Fast forward a few months and it was launch day. It was ten minutes to opening time and I was explaining to the manager of Waterstone’s where best – and in what quantities – to position my book in the store. I grabbed a nearby book (not one of mine) and tore out a blank page to quickly sketch a store map. I clicked my pen into life, its inky nose jutting obediently into view, and began to write.

‘Biographies: 10; Health & Wellbeing: 10; Mind, Body & Spirit: 10; New Releases: 6; Bestsellers: 6.’ (I knew this was cheeky, as the books hadn’t even gone on sale yet, so I drew a smiley face after it to quell the shopkeeper’s anger.) I also penned in 5 to go by the cash tills because I’d read something about Cadbury’s Chomps doing the same to cash in on impulse purchases.

Next, I headed home and began sending copies to friends, family and a raft of BBC executives, past and present. This wasn’t an attempt to show them that I’d bounced back from their rejection fitter and stronger than ever. No, it was simply because they all went to Oxbridge so I know they liked reading and didn’t really watch any TV. Out of respect for the dead, I also sent copies to the widows of Tony Hayers and Chris Feather. It was a classy touch.

In the end there weren’t that many left for friends and family, but I figured Denise and Fernando wouldn’t mind sharing one, on the basis that they were siblings. And on the basis that we were now divorced, I decided my wife Carol could buy her own. Or, worst-case scenario, rent it from the library. (As I wouldn’t be receiving a new royalty every time a copy was taken out, I suggested to Norwich City Council that I get a cut of any late fees instead. They didn’t go for it.)

One thing that did thrill me, though, and I knew it would thrill the reviewers, was that I had managed to stretch it to over 300 pages. It had a real meatiness to it. I banged it down on the kitchen table so I could enjoy its undeniable thud factor. ‘Thud,’ it went. ‘Thud,’ I repeated, like a parrot trained to accurately mimic the noise of books.
²⁰⁷

Yet my happiness was to be short-lived. Sales were disappointing. My refusal to dumb down (if anything, I had dumbed up) had cost me dearly. I received word via fax that a lot of stores were going to take it down from the shelves. I was absolutely thunderstruck (thanks, Roget’s).

I marched into the offices of my publishing company and read them the riot act. ‘There’s only one course of action I will settle for,’ I roared. ‘A raft of nationwide TV adverts to give the book the push it deserves.’ The subsequent silence that fell over the open-plan office told me that my message had got through loud and clear. You could have heard a pin.

As ever, though, there were logistical headaches to be addressed, so in the end we hammered out a compromise. Instead of running a series of nationwide TV adverts, they were not going to run a series of nationwide TV adverts.

By this point I was left with no choice. I had to take matters into my own hands. Sales needed to be boosted, and fast. I quickly formulated a plan of action. Every day for the next fortnight I would go down to Norwich train station, set up a stall and see if I could shift a few units myself. It would be stripped-down concourse retailing in its purest form. I launched myself into it like a small circus man being shot from a cannon. What a buzz! I’d literally flog to anyone. It didn’t matter if they were travelling inter-Norfolk, trans-county or intra-Anglian, they were all fair game as far as I was concerned. I felt like I could sell coal to the Eskimos.

I was rigged-up with one of those cordless mics that you fix to your head. I loved it, with its sponge-covered microphone dangling in front of my mouth like a big black grape. When a sale had gone well I almost wanted to reach out and lick it! (Couldn’t though – tongue too short. Oh to be a lizard!)

Better still, it gave me total mobility (within a radius of 20 metres). If I headed out to its distant eastern rim, the radius took me within spitting distance of WH Smith. (Literally, in the case of one chap who flicked me the Vs. I’ll be honest, I lost it.) And this meant I had a captive audience. After all, what do we all do if we have time to kill before catching our train? We head to Smith’s to browse the latest issue of
What Car
magazine, even though we’ve already got it at home. And possibly have a flick through
Cosmo
if someone’s taken one out of the packaging.

It’s safe to say that my maverick tactics caused quite a few sleepless nights over at WHSHQ (WH Smith HQ). They were petrified I was going to snaffle their customers. It’s not that they came over to have a word, it’s that they didn’t. They tried to act like it didn’t bother them. And in many ways I thought that was much more revealing.

I may have resembled a market trader, but in fact I was a bookshop without walls. And they knew it. The only thing they had over me was that I didn’t do snacks, mags, chocs and pop. Although I was giving away a free Danko torch with every sale. And I know which I’d rather have. If the power goes while I’m tucked up in bed with a good book, I’m hardly going to be able to keep reading using a bag of Revels. No further questions, your honour.

I remember the first book I sold to a WH Smith customer. He was a man by the name of Warren. Before he’d been sucked into my sales tractor beam, he’d been innocently copying out a recipe for white bean stew from the BBC
Good Food
magazine. Yet within minutes he was writing me a cheque, £8.99 poorer but one
very
good book richer. And I remember that I did use those exact words.

It might seem weird that I remember the name of a man who bought a book from me almost 15 years ago, but in my defence he did have a lisp. Not that I realised at first. I thought he was just being silly. But the more I chatted to him, the clearer it became. There were no two ways about it – this man had a disabled mouth. Out of interest, I enquired if it entitled him to a badge for his car. It didn’t. Justice? Not in this world, mate.

Good on him, though. He could have stayed at home, resenting his impediment, a cut-out of a big letter ‘s’ on his dartboard. But no. Here he was, bold as brass, out and about. He may not have been able to say the word ‘sausages’. (Or the word ‘say’, come to think of it.) But nothing – and I mean
nothing
– was going to stop him getting the 10.02 to Newmarket from platform nine. If memory serves, he needed a new Ethernet cable from PC World – something, he noted with a wry smile, that he could ask for safe in the knowledge that everyone involved would remain bone-dry.

And besides, if he did suddenly get a craving for sausages on his way back, he could simply bob into Morrison’s and get them from the chill cabinets. He’d never actually have to say the ‘s’ word. Unless he was insistent on buying direct from a butcher.
²⁰⁸
In which case, just point. I know for a fact that’s what Mike Tyson does on his weekly shop. It’s either him or Toyah Wilcox anyway.

No, I liked this guy. As I pretended to have an itchy cheek so I could wipe another fleck of his spittle from my face, I understood that we all have our crosses to bear. His just happened to be a chubby tongue. It was incredible to think that the letter ‘s’, such a simple concept to even the youngest of children, was like a foreign country to this man. It was the enemy in a lifelong war his mouth was never going to win. Like a kind of oral IRA (pre-ceasefire).

Before he left he was good enough to take a photo of me, for posterity (see picture section). Sadly though, my one-man station-based sales frenzy only delayed the inevitable. Alas and alack (Roget’s again), I had failed. I started to sense something might be wrong when I received an email entitled ‘Bouncing Back is going to be pulped’. My god, this couldn’t be real. What was being proposed was nothing short of literary genocide.

I picked up the phone to Henry Chesney, my contact at the publishing company.

‘Henry, there has to be some sort of mistake here.’

‘There’s no mistake.’

‘Damn you, man, we can turn this round! I know we can.’

‘We’re not doing a raft of nationwide TV adverts, Alan.’

‘Okay then, a stunt. We’ll make a house out of a thousand copies of
Bouncing Back
. Then bequeath it to the homeless. We’ll be on the front page of every paper in the land (of Norwich). Though the structure may lose rigidity if it rains.’

‘The book’s being pulped tomorrow. It’s over, Alan.’

‘Henry, I’m begging you. I’m literally on my knees.’

‘It sounds like you’re driving.’

‘Okay then, not literally. Just throw me a bone here, buddy.’

‘Well if it’s any consolation you’re more than welcome to go along to the pulping.’