I, Partridge (39 page)

The place of my birth, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital, King’s Lynn. In an era before MRSA, cleanliness was maintained by a combination of soap and aggressive, largely buxom matrons. NHS car parks were free, too, although those days are now a distant memory. It’s not too bad if you’re just bobbing in to drop off some grapes or beer for a loved one. But for expectant fathers it can be cripplingly expensive, especially if the birth is being slowed down by your wife having an unusually long cervix. (It seems wrong that wealthy dads whose spouses have shorter birth canals and more elastic vaginas should pay less.) The council say they’re trying to encourage people to use public transport but I think that’s horseshit.

Norfolk, 1956. I’d just crawled into this group photo and taken centre stage – nothing changes! I remember being irritated that the girl behind me had put her hands on my shoulder when I was perfectly capable of sitting upright on my own. I don’t know what any of their names are, though some have suggested that the girl is Anne Frank. However, for a number of reasons this seems unlikely.

One of the many places where I attended Scout camp. I remember how we’d all sit around the campfire singing ‘Ging Gang Goolie’ until the sun came up, or until our 10pm bedtime, whichever came sooner. Then we’d all snuggle up in our sleeping bags to tell ghost stories or see who could shine a torch into their mouth for longest. I never got involved with this, wrongly assuming it carried a significant cancer risk. It was while camping at this exact site that I first mastered the sheepshank. People say knot-tying is a useless skill but try telling that to my bin bags!

On the day this was taken, my parents had been called into school by the headmaster because he was concerned my posture had homosexual overtones. He’d been alerted by my tendency to turn in my right knee and my preference for slip-on shoes. Also note that my father had insisted I tuck my tie into my shorts. In terms of psychological abuse, this was just the tip of the iceberg.

A semi-detached house in Edgbaston, Birmingham, much like the one my childhood nemesis Steven McCombe lives in. We never saw eye-to-eye but I’ve moved past that now because I prefer to let bygones be bygones. It’s not, as some have suggested, because I earn a lot more money than he does. It doesn’t matter to me in the slightest that McCombe wouldn’t know the top tax band if it broke into his house and attacked him while he slept. Nor that the engine in my car has double the cubic capacity of his. FYI, I also drive with more skill (e.g. can go round roundabouts using only one hand).

Me, reporting on
The Day Today
, where my beat was sport (plus the Paralympics). I used to warm my voice up beforehand by singing the national anthem to the tune of
Live and Let Die
. Not easy, but it can be done.

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