I, Partridge (34 page)

I picked up the pace. The only person I’d ever heard cause such an uproar in that snug before was, well, me. Phil Shepherd had them crying with laughter in the saloon bar one night last year but, like I say, that wasn’t in the snug. I couldn’t imagine who it could be. Hmmm, I mused, curiouser and curiouser.

As I entered the pub I instantly spotted the source of the mirth. It was a man in his early 30s wearing an ‘out there’ Hawaiian shirt and sporting a beard that was a sort of gingery browny gingery browny ginger. His name was Simon Denton and –
Understatement Alert!
– he was
seriously
funny.

The joke he was telling when I walked in was an absolute groin-wrecker (is that a phrase?). But it was also wholly unsuitable for publication, touching as it did on the rather delicate subjects of race, sexuality and Phil Shepherd’s mum. Me and the guys took it in the spirit in which it was intended, but if the PC Brigade saw it in print they’d have an absolute eppy. The second and third gags were just about fine, I thought, but HarperCollins disagreed so I can’t share them with you. Let’s just say that what I regarded as gentle joshing of the opposite sex, they regarded as plain hateful to women. Ditto a handful of Jew jokes. Ah well.

But petty questions of taste and decency aside, the point is that me and Denton hit it off large-time. We were like Siamese twins separated at birth by a combination of surgery and adoption. We both enjoyed a drop of real ale. We both had the same views on artificial insemination. And we were both absolute naturals at that thing where you lean on the barstool in a way that means you’re sitting and standing at the same time.

More than anything else, though, we were just funny guys. As I drove home that night I thought my brain was going to short circuit. Had I been a robot,
²⁶¹
I think it probably would have done. What the hell had just happened back there? Who was this guy? It was back at
Chez Partridge
later on as I drank a pint of tap water in just three gulps (a new PB) that it occurred to me. Why not invite Denton to become part of
Mid-Morning Matters
on North Norfolk Digital?
²⁶²

Of course! It was so obvious. Comedy was the only thing the show hadn’t nailed. Everything else was there by the bucket-load – music, guests, sound effects. We had a whole phalanx of killer features too: Alan Describes Art, A Partridge in a Pun Tree, Creed Crunch, Word Scramble, Gender Thrash.

Yet every night in bed, there was a nagging doubt in my mind. I’d lie there absent-mindedly tossing my ball bag from one hand to the other, and I knew something was missing. What we were lacking was the truly big laughs found on, say,
Bedtime with Branning
or the aforementioned Wally Banter’s
Junk Box
.

Not that it was my fault. I was forever bringing a wry smile to my listener’s ears, but there was only so far I could go. As one of the most trusted voices in Norfolk,
²⁶³
I had a responsibility to be taken seriously. It wouldn’t do to have spent the entire show speaking like a quacking duck (which admittedly would be very funny) if I then had to read out an urgent newsflash about a dirty bomb going off in Wisbech.

So that was where Denton would come in. Not specifically for the quacking (in fact, least of all for the quacking – animal noises were a glaring weakness of his), but just to be the person whose sole job it was to bring the laughter. But my thinking was even bolder than that. I wasn’t envisaging that Denton would come and go like a weather girl or a traffic and travel person. Instead he would be by my side throughout, free to lob in a gag at literally any time.
²⁶⁴
It would bring a real freshness to the show to have this unique comic mind chucking in dry comments the second they popped into his head.
²⁶⁵
And a bonus: thanks to (a) the webcam and (b) his striking resemblance to Clyde from
Every Which Way But Loose
, even the deaf could enjoy him.

Not that I was talking about a co-host. That would be taking it way, way, way, way, way, way, way too far. I’d already betrayed the trust of my digital devotees by introducing a sidekick at all. To go any further would have been insane. I like risk, but I’m not a dick. To make that point crystal clear I decided to enshrine his role in his on-air nickname,
Sidekick
Simon. His job would be to enhance the show, not to share it. Never to share it. Not ever. No, that wasn’t going to happen, pal.

He would be the polish to my car, the buff to my shoe, the sun cream to my back. Just to be certain I was making the right decision, I consulted my assistant. She seemed unsure that a lowly lab assistant could cope in the pressure cooker atmosphere of digital local radio. This was good enough for me. I hired Denton there and then.
²⁶⁶
At many of the pivotal points in my life I’ve found that the best way to reach a decision is to find out what a Baptist would do, then do the opposite.

Yet ‘Sidekick Simon’s’ first show did not go well. I’d given him the perfect tee-up, advising listeners that major laughs were guaranteed: ‘If you’re standing, sit down. If you’re driving, pull over. And if you’re in a wheelchair, for god’s sake keep away from the top of the stairs.’

In the event I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. Denton didn’t just let me down, he let himself down too. He was riddled with nerves, his usually hilarious asides turning into little more than muttered rubbish. I’d advised to him to have a couple of drinks before he came on, to loosen himself up a bit. But he hadn’t. He said he didn’t want to start drinking when it wasn’t even ten o’clock. I was absolutely furious. It was so unprofessional.

Time after time I was forced to intervene and send my audience into fits of uncontrollable laughter after another one of Denton’s gags had fallen horribly flat. It was easy enough for me to do this, but that wasn’t the point. That night I thanked my lucky stars that the Wisbech nuclear scenario had not come to pass. I’d had an incredibly lucky escape.

We limped on for the rest of the week, but on Sunday I told him to meet me for brunch. It was a session we’d go on to repeat many times in the future. I’d canter in with the Sundays under my arm and plonk myself down by the fire. There’d always be a tussle over the motoring section, which I would invariably win, either through brute force or just by invoking the Paper Purchaser’s Prerogative (my capitals, my whole phrase actually). Yet this particularly Sunday, it was serious. It was time for showdown talks.

I made my position clear. The nerves had to be dealt with. He was free to do as he wished at the weekends, but as long as he was appearing on my weekday show, I needed to know that he had been drinking. I obviously wasn’t going to enforce this with a daily breathaliser test (couldn’t get hold of a breathaliser) but, believe me, I would just know.

Happily it was a solution that seemed to work. He got over his nerves and I survived with my reputation intact. Other than those moments when I have either punched or shot people live on air, the name Alan Partridge has come to be a byword for broadcasting excellence, and I didn’t want that to be compromised.

Denton’s morning drinking did end up costing him his driving licence, but despite his incessant moaning both he and I knew that he could still make it into the station by using as few as three buses. While he and his fellow passengers could just sit back and effectively be chauffeured into work, the rest of us had to undergo the daily headache of changing gear, looking in our mirrors and turning the steering wheel.

I liked having a sidekick, though. It was a rush. It took me back to my days at hospital radio. I didn’t have a wingman as such, but we used to do a feature where any child that was recovering from an operation could be wheeled down to the studio. They’d pick a few songs and read the traffic and travel (subject to their voice having the requisite clarity and authority). It was a really lovely part of the show actually. And while the music played they’d have the chance to tuck into Alan’s Cookie Jar (a ‘biscuit barrel’ in old money). Of course, kids will never say no to a sugary treat, so they used to love this, though I did have a strict rule of no more than two biscuits per child. The last thing they needed was to be brought back into hospital the next month for a gastric band or a filling.

Plus, they didn’t come cheap. It’s not like biscuits grow on trees (note to self: possible film idea). You might think that buying a bag of broken bourbons from Norwich market doesn’t cost much, and you’d be right, but when it goes on for week after week after week, the financial burden can become pretty crippling. If they’d served a medical purpose I would have turned a blind eye, but with the best will in the world, it’s not like biscuits can heal broken bones (note to self: possible film idea).

Denton and I became moderately firm friends outside of work too. Despite being a lab assistant he was actually an okay guy. His B in chemistry, C in biology and B in physics (all at GCSE) had left him with some pretty amazing knowledge. The speed at which he could tell you the colour any given metal would turn a Bunsen burner flame was nothing short of incredible. As I found out one memorable night in the pub …

‘Barium?’

‘Light green.’

‘Potassium?’

‘Lilac.’

‘Sodium?’ This is me asking the questions, by the way.

‘Orange.’ And that’s Denton answering.

‘Calcium?’ Me again.

‘Brick red.’ Denton again.

Of course he could have been lying. After all it’s not always easy to trust the bearded. Not since Peter Sutcliffe anyway. I find it’s easier to trust a man with a moustache. In modern times those with upper lip coverage seem to have been pretty good eggs, with the exception of Saddam Hussein, Joseph Stalin, Adolf you-know-who and several others. Freddie Mercury seemed alright, though, despite his tendencies, ahem!

Denton is no longer my sidekick of course.
²⁶⁷
The trajectory of our working relationship – from strangers-in-pub to partners-in-crime in six days – was clearly unsustainable, and so it proved.

I felt that Denton began to develop ideas above his station. Don’t misunderstand me – I wasn’t expecting him to pucker up each morn and kiss my rump, but I would have liked a little loyalty and gratitude. Sadly, these basic Partridgian values are commodities – like Sterling, or leaded petrol – that the public has deemed dispensable in recent years.

The warning signs appeared when Denton began to turn up late. On North Norfolk Digital, this ain’t on. (I still have the internal memo that makes that very point.)

Me, I have a routine. Although my show doesn’t start until 10am, I try to get to McDonald’s for 7 (otherwise you don’t get the booth by the window) with a pencil and pad. Before I do
anything
, I work out the tracklisting for the show and come up with scripted chat that I’ll pass off as spontaneous quipping when I flag in the final hour of the slot.

A couple of coffees and seven hash browns later, I’m in the toilets putting my shirt back on after a good wash before brushing my teeth and grabbing another coffee on the way out. I’m beeping my horn outside Denton’s flat no later than 8.50am.

Within weeks of being granted sidekickhood, Denton’s punctuality became a problem. He’d keep me waiting for two, sometimes three, minutes, before rolling into the car without a word of apology. His foul breath told me he’d recently woken and the cakey orange build-up in the corners of his eyes was a sure-fire sign that waking early and/or washing had
not
been on his to-do list.

I said nothing of course, preferring to make clear my disdain on air – by quelling my laughter, talking over him or making him explain his ‘jokes’ in great detail.

I’m a forgiving man – I even returned a prized album of family photos to Carol after she left, going as far as gluing the torn shreds back together with Bostik and drawing in bits that had been lost – but I felt that Denton was pushing his luck enormously here.

The final betrayal, when it came, was still a shock. I was woken one night by a text from my assistant. ‘Emergency,’ it began, but then it always does. ‘NND now. Not home.’

I ignored the message, temporarily forgetting that when she texts ‘home’, she more often than not means ‘good’. I am continually staggered by her failure to grasp T9 predictive text, despite having used it for a decade.

So it wasn’t until the following day that I realised the news was bad, and that I would be bidding ‘home’ riddance to my sidekick in a matter of weeks.

Turns out Denton had been moonlighting for
Bedtime with Branning
, supplying wry observations and wacky character-led monologues to a presumably bemused late-night audience.

Well, this was a clatter in the chops! Bang! I mean, I’d not demanded that Denton sign an exclusivity agreement, as his humour seemed so suited to mid-morning, but even without a legally binding contract, I’d have thought it obvious that he was mine.

Apparently not. And so with the relationship visibly curdling by the hour, we limped on for another few weeks, before we decided to call it a day.
²⁶⁸

His departure gave the show a new lease a life – you’d have to be deaf not to recognise that – and my listeners were grateful that they were getting more Alan in their mid-morning diet. I pledged never to allow a sidekick to eclipse, obscure or impinge ever again. I’ve stuck to that pledge too – although, on occasions, I’ve shared mic-space with a girl whose name, I think, was Zoe.

And what of Denton? Well, we bumped into each other in the King’s Arms three weeks ago, eyeing each other warily from across the bar, peeking out now and then from behind a strip of Scampi Fries.

With them in my eye-line, it was inevitable that I’d buy a packet and, once opened, I offered one to the woman I was having a drink with.