I, Partridge (14 page)

‘Good morning, Alan!’ reply my staff.

‘How are we today?’ I continue, genuinely wanting to know.

‘Great/not bad/back’s still playing up/very well/fine/bit tired as my neighbour decided to do the fucking hoovering at two o’clock in the fucking morning,’ reply my staff.

By now Peartree Productions was a well-oiled machine. We had some great people, working at optimum level.

Jason had been promoted to an assistant producer and had a newfound confidence since his psoriasis had cleared up. I had taken on George Dwyer as creative director. He had worked as PR man for the Russian Circus
⁹⁷
and had some daring, out-there ideas, few of which made it through compliance. He’s been living in the Wormwood area of west London for ten years.

Jill on reception was good to have around the place, clinging on to the last of her good looks and happy to buy choc treats for us all every Friday. Rupert Summers, who had experience of live TV from manning the telephones on ITV Telethon ’88, would produce the show.

But it was Lewis Hurst, a theatrical agent who had invested some money in the company, who really pulled the strings. A bearlike homosexual, he was well-connected and well-to-do in a way that puts some people
⁹⁸
massively on edge. But it was Lewis who had put in a call to Roger Moore and secured him as a guest in our first show. I was so pleased I insisted he join me round the back of the office block to take a photographic record of my feelings (see picture section).

It was also he, with a trademark tuft of jet-black nasal hair hanging down from each nostril, who had rushed into my office one day to tell me that celebrated
chanteuse
Gina Langland had agreed to appear in show three.
⁹⁹

But there were quite a few others in the company too who I’m unable to name. I’ve not forgotten them, having not known what they were called in the first place. My management style was that of an estranged father. At times caring, at times distant and with little to no interest in the individuals under my charge. And believe me, it just works.

The show began and was an unmitigated success. Viewing figures collapsed as the series went on, but only because it was getting lighter in the evenings and more people were out rambling or sitting in beer gardens.

The fan mail came in by the sack-load. Jason suggested I save it until the end of the series so that I could maintain concentration, which I did.
¹⁰⁰

There were one or two hiccups, but that’s the nature of live television and I honestly don’t think people noticed. Again, some of the guests were a little surly, but that has to come down to the booker and at the end of the series Jason was duly dismissed. (He went on to make his name producing a certain Orwellian house-based reality show that demeans us all.)

Tony Hayers gave us a few notes after the first show, and repeated the same ones after the second, third and fourth, but crucially didn’t after the fifth or sixth, which suggests he was deeply satisfied with the trajectory of the series. We also bore in mind that he was only in the role to cover Georgia Harrison’s maternity leave, so we didn’t need to keep him onside for the long-term.

Success came very naturally to me. I’d go into a steakhouse or swimming pool and people would turn and exchange knowing glances. I was suddenly hot, appearing on
Through the Keyhole
and
Points of View
. I was also a guest on Clive Anderson’s chat show (see picture section), embarrassing my host by revealing to the audience that he had started out as a humble barista. (I remember he resorted to feigning bewilderment at one point when I yelled at him, ‘Now get me a mocha, baldy!’)

I could get tables
¹⁰¹
at a moment’s notice. I was stopped on the street by people telling me how ‘unbelievable’ my show was. I was hot and it felt gooooooood.

And then, live on air in the sixth and final episode of my chat show, I shot a man through the heart with a gun.

97
Not the State Circus, another one.

98
But not me.

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Better still, she would join me in singing an Abba medley live on air (see picture section). And what a medley it was! It was so in-tune it was almost out-of-tune!

Behind the scenes, though, it hadn’t been quite so easy. On the night Gina had chosen to wear one of those dresses that stops before the armpits. She looked amazing in it but odour-wise it was an error. So while my eyes were happy, my nose was anything but. I’d spotted the potential whiff prob in our dress rehearsal and had quietly asked my people to take the microphone I was going to use for our duet and spray it with aftershave or, failing that, some of that lovely air-freshener from the loos. And it really did the trick. Whenever I got a second to turn away from the audience I was able to raise the microphone upwards and give it a good, deep sniff. It was basically an improvised nose sorbet.

100
The sacks of letters were sadly destroyed in a fire before I could peruse them.

101
Restaurant or snooker.

Chapter 14
The Death of Forbes McAllister

CANTANKEROUS BON VIVEUR FORBES
McAllister had brought with him two of Lord Byron’s duelling pistols, purchased in auction from under the considerable nose of Michael Winner. As I politely inspected them mid-interview, I discharged one and the bullet penetrated and destroyed Forbes’s heart. As with so many gunshot wounds to the heart, it proved fatal.

I won’t have been the first British chat show host to kill a man on air, and I won’t be the last. But I make no excuse for what happened. I accept complete responsibility and you’ll not find me making mealy-mouthed excuses for what was a truly tragic event.

What I will say is this. Forbes McAllister had led a long and full life, but with a diet rich in cholesterol and alcoholic booze, it’s very probable that his health was failing. We can only speculate as to how badly his health would have deteriorated or how painfully drawn out his eventual death would have been – because I ended his life in episode six of my chat show.

Forbes, who may or may not have had a violent temper, was to be the final guest on my show. I remember in the green room before the show that he had incredibly sweaty hands. It’s rare that I notice another’s man palm-piss because my own inner-hands tend to work up a torrent of clamminess straight after towelling, one of the many reasons why I often greet new acquaintances with a curt nod or a wave. But I thought, ‘Jesus Christ, now they’re wet.’

This should have rung an alarm bell, because although I didn’t know it at the time, our perspiration would soon create a lethal lubricative effect, which when combined with studio lights and a hair-trigger pistol would blast a man’s chest into kingdom come. (Note that this in no way tallies with the findings of the coroner. These are my findings, not the Crown’s.)

The show had been quite a strong one. It was certainly a little fruity. Of the six people on the sofa, 50% were gay. (Two lesbians and a gayman – although the gayman, Scott Maclean, was only ten at the time and probably unaware of his sexual trajectory.)
¹⁰²

Not on the sofa, but undeniably on the show were Joe Beasley and Cheeky Monkey. Having Joe appear was my one big regret in this episode.
¹⁰³
I’d seen him at Bournemouth Hoseasons way back in 1979, before so-called ‘alternative’ so-called ‘comedy’ had been foisted upon the world. Joe was streets ahead of his time, writing his own material and bringing a fresh perspective to the art of stand-up comedy. Unlike ‘alternative’ ‘comedians’, Joe’s act – classy ventriloquism mixed with snappy one-liners – was mercifully unencumbered by the need to provide ‘social commentary’, unless he represented the Tories and the monkey whose rectum he forced his hand up represented coal miners or something.
¹⁰⁴

At Hoseasons, he’d raised the roof. I saw members of the audience doubled over, desperately trying not to wet themselves. Afterwards, Joe modestly suggested this was more to do with their age than his act, but I know good comedy when I see it. So I promised him I’d remember his name and give him a TV break as soon as I could. I honoured that promise on 21 October 1994.

I don’t feel that Joe prepared properly for the show, and his act suffered as a result. I happen to believe that his joke about a Swedish Fred Flintstone
¹⁰⁵
is a quite beautiful piece of writing, but he struggled to remember its precise mechanics and it slithered out of his mouth like a bad oyster. I stepped in to put him out of his misery
¹⁰⁶
after about 90 seconds.

It had been an experience best forgotten but shamefully, in the years that followed, Joe did his best to trade on his disastrous TV appearance – he even attempted (unsuccessfully) to claim legal ownership of the sobriquet ‘troubled TV funnyman’ when the whole Barrymore thing blew up. Lesson learnt, Alan! I’ve never given anyone a break since then. It’s just not worth it. Joe never bothered to apologise, not even through the medium of the monkey.

But ignore that. This chapter is about Forbes McAllister. And I’d hate for my guests’ unprofessionalism or sexual peccadillos to detract from the solemn death of a good
¹⁰⁷
man.

To be fair to myself for a change, Forbes had been a pretty awkward guest and had brought the pistols on to the show himself and had very sweaty hands and was making sudden movements and saying some pretty off-putting things about bagpipers.

But, as I say, no excuses. At the show’s denouement – trust Mr Professional here to time the slaying so it gave the show a neat conclusion! – Forbes gave me his sweat-drenched guns to inspect and shocked me with a loud bark of ‘Be careful with that!’ One thing led to another, and a bullet led to his heart.

I covered him with a plastic replica of my face and did my best to close the show. The two lesbians, Wanda Harvey and Bridie McMahon, went a bit hysterical. They’d been told to stick around on the sofa until the credits rolled, but when Forbes’s remains slumped in their general direction, they bolted – in a pretty craven attempt to spoil the series sign-off. For that, I’ve never forgiven them.

It was a bit of a blur after that. My producer Rupert Summers lost his head and said a few mean things to me. I let that go. He was in shock and needed help not censure.

The police arrived and with Forbes bleeding over the sofas, which we’d actually only hired,
¹⁰⁸
I signed off series one.

Then I looked over to where a policeman was putting the pistols carefully into transparent freezer bags. Those flippin’ guns, I thought. I hated them just then. In the intervening years, I have received a great many letters from gunsmiths who have said that the greatest professional sadness a gunmaker endures lies in spending hours perfecting the release mechanism of a flintlock pistol, only for a collector to display it ornamentally. This was exactly what Forbes had in mind for them. I had at least prevented that. (I always think that like a dangerous dog sinking its teeth into the waddling rump of a fat postman, a pistol must experience the bittersweet bliss of fulfilled destiny at the moment of discharge – before quite rightly being destroyed.)

At least, my gunmaking friends seem to suggest, Lord Byron’s beautiful and ballistically awesome pistols were allowed to perform the task for which they were painstakingly created – killing a man.

This was reality TV before the term was invented – real and raw and red in tooth and claw. Peter Bazalgette of Endemol fame is sometimes wrongly credited with the invention of reality TV.
¹⁰⁹
In fact, it was Alan Partridge.

I’ve been asked many, many times what happened next. When the cameras stopped rolling and the audience filed out, what happened to muggins here? Well, I’ll now do my best to describe it.

For added drama, I’ll be slipping into the present tense, but I don’t want that to suggest in any way that this took place anything other than a long, long time ago.
¹¹⁰

‘Why did you do it? Huh? Why the eff did you do it, Partridge?’

A bad-breathed copper shouts in my face and I turn my head away from what I think is the odour of Walker’s Smoky Bacon – which I usually quite enjoy.

‘What’s your motive, Alan?’ says a woman detective constable. ‘Whatcha kill the victim for?’

I’m in a dark, dank room deep in the nick, handcuffed like a common criminal. A strip light flickers and buzzes as a rat scuttles across the floor.
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The woman detective constable screams in frustration and slaps me across the face.
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My eye closes up but I look back at her defiantly.
¹¹³

The interrogation goes on for ages. ‘Please,’ I hear myself say. ‘I’ve told you all I know. Can I please just go home? I’m doing a store opening at ten for World of Leather.’

‘The only thing you’ll be in tomorrow is a World of Trouble,’ says the copper, a line that even at the time I thought was pretty good for someone who probably didn’t get any A-levels.

Truth is, there is no store opening. With negotiations for a second series of
KMKY
going well, I have two other meetings the next morning that could shape my career. A current affairs show for a soon-to-be-launched TV channel from the mind of Kelvin McKenzie (alongside Derek Jameson), and a quiz show for Maltese television that was based on
Blockbusters
. Both meetings are slated to take place in the same branch of Harry Ramsdens. I need to be there.