Book Review: I, Patridge by Alan Partridge

There were sections of Alan Patridge's autobiography (ghost-written by Rob & Neil Gibbons, Steve Coogan and Armanda Iannucci) which I found heartbreakingly sad. The foreword, for example, is little more than a bland employer's reference which describes our hero as "honest and trustworthy... a relatively good ambassador for the station... with an average of 1.5 sick days taken per year of employment". The joke, of course, is that for all Alan's supposed celebrity pals (Bill Oddie and Sue Cook among them), the best he can get anyone to write about the chronicle of his life is "I would have no hesitation in recommending him". That's funny, yes, but I also find it terribly pathetic (in all possible definitions of that word), and it's that pathos which makes the character of Alan Patridge more than just an egomaniac media monster. It makes him tragically real. Especially for someone who's worked in the awful industry of local radio where Alan has spent the majority of his career since he "shot a man through the heart with a gun" on the final episode of his ill-fated BBC TV chat show.

I, Partridge is a hilarious pastiche of the kind of woeful celebrity memoir that clogs the bestseller lists around Christmas, and like many such books it's most successful in the earlier chapters (revealing insight's into Alan's childhood) and the mid-section (the material already immortalised in Alan's various TV outings). The gags-per-page ratio drops towards the end as Alan's career slumps further into obscurity as mid-morning present on North Norfolk Digital (North Norfolk's Best Music Mix), but there are some very funny moments along the way and plenty of hideously overwitten prose. My favourite bit was the blackly comic role call of young Alan's first radio comrades, including...

Brian Golding. 'Bonkers' Bri combined a wacky sense of humour with a genuine mental illness and went on to co-host Drive Time on Signal Radio before killing himself in 1991.

There's something to Alan's pompous, self-important tone that makes me cringe for myself too. Reading his book comes a little too close to reading a really bad blog (say, for example, this one). He's even included his own playlist, to be enjoyed during specific chapters, featuring all the usual suspects (Midge Ure, Fleetwood Mac, Classix Nouveau, and, of course, Abba) having long since reached "a startling but unshakeable conclusion: no genuinely good music has been created since 1988". It almost me want to chuck in blogging and go find something less embarrassing to do with my time. Maybe we've all got a little bit of Alan in us...

30 Songs - Day 16

Day 16 - A Song You Used To Love But Now Hate

Ah, the Beatles. You've got to love 'em, haven't you?

As mentioned previously, despite being a huge Lennon & McCartney fan in my youth, I burnt out on the Fab Four some years ago. It's the sheer damn ubiquity of them that gets me. And while there are still many Beatles songs I can hear without having to rush over and turn off the radio (generally post-Sgt. Pepper), there are some that send me into a Macca-stomping rage. Hello, Goodbye is the worst offender... though I can't explain why. It has that irritating singsong quality of McCartney at his chirpy-chappiest.

The curious thing is, I don't hold the same animosity towards Wings or solo McCartney. I can do without seeing his perma-grinned face gurning out of the TV at me, but I'd still sing along at the top of my voice to Jet, like Alan Partridge in his hotel room. But as Alan himself always says - "Wings - they're the band the Beatles could have been."

Erm...