Alan Partridge Quotes

Putting a damp spoon back in the bowl is the tea-drinking equivalent of sharing a needle. And I did not want to end up with the tea-drinking equivalent of AIDS.

Hello, Alan." said Carol's dad Keith. "Hello, Alan." said Carol's mum, Stella, not bothering to think of a greeting of her own.

I love Sherlock Holmes. I've got all his books, leather-bound. What I thought was great about Sherlock Holmes was that not only was he a supersleuth, he was also a hard worker. Not only did he go out and solve the crimes, he came home and wrote it all down. Fantastic. That's why I admire him.

Her yelling continues until I answer the door to find her on her knees shouting through the letterbox, like a gynaecologist bellowing into a woman.

The father, Trevor, was an asthmatic, but what he lacked in being able to breath quietly, he more than made up for with parental skills.

Snowflakes fell from the sky like tiny pieces of a snowman who had stood on a landmine.

I’d spend hours in HMVs, Virgin Megastores and second-hand record shops staffed by greasy-haired 40-year-olds dressed as 20-year-olds, listening to contemporary music of every genre – Britrock, heavy maiden, gang rap, brakebeat. And I came to a startling but unshakeable conclusion: no genuinely good music has been created since 1988.

I can’t bear the smell of cigars, can you?” said Lady Partridge. “Lionel hates it too,” murmured Rachel. As did Nick, to whom the dry lavatorial stench of cigars signified the inexplicable confidence of other men’s tastes and habits, and their readiness to impose them on their fellows.

Sadly, I can't say the same for my Father, who is probably in a different place - Hell.

I woke with a start. At first I assumed I’d trumped myself awake again .

He is also a keen cook, gardener and birder. He has no middle fingers on one hand, so he can't swear but is permanently doing the heavy metal sign.

The human brain comprises 70% water, which means it's a similar consistency to tofu. Picture that for a second - a blob of tofu the size and shape of a brain. Now imagine taking that piece of tofu, and forcing your thumbs into it hard. It would burst wouldn't it? Okay, now imagine those thumbs weren't thumbs but thumb-shaped pieces of bad news. And there weren't two of them, they were about half a dozen. Imagine you were forcing all six pieces of bad news - a divorce, multiple career snubs, accusations from the family of a dead celebrity, estranged kids, borderline homelessness, that kind of thing - into a piece of tofu. With me? Good. Now imagine it's not tofu, but a human brain. And they're not pieces of bad news but six human thumbs. That's what happened to me. In 2001, my brain had half a dozen thumbs pushed into it.

For three long days, I felt the cold hand of death on my shoulder. Lost in the depths of despair I tried to figure out what I had done to deserve this. I wasn't an evil person. The worst thing I'd ever done was kick a pig - School trip to Heston Farm, 1964, I maintain it was self-defence.

As I write these words I’m noisily chomping away on not one, but two Murray Mints. I’ve a powerful suck and soon they’ll be whittled away to nothing. But for the time being at least they have each other. For the time being, they are brothers. Which is more than could be said for me, for I was an only child. I

Sport, on the other hand, is straightforward. In badminton, if you win a rally, you get one point. In volleyball, if you win a rally, you get one point. In tennis, if you win a rally, you get 15 points for the first or second rallies you’ve won in that game, or 10 for the third, with an indeterminate amount assigned to the fourth rally other than the knowledge that the game is won, providing one player is two 10-point (or 15-point) segments clear of his opponent. It’s clear and simple.

My heart is, in the wise words of Billy Ray Cyrus, achy breaky.

Now, this is an uncomfortable thing to discuss, but I run towards discomfort like a man who has strapped truth explosives to his body and made his peace with God.

A friend of mine once said he like his women like his parmesan: strong smelling and shaved. I don't agree with that, but I don't like hairy women.

I, myself, would never shoot big game (and would hesitate to even lay traps for them). You see, as a committed animal liker – #animals – I think very carefully about which animals I am and am not prepared to kill.

Tears streamed down my face. I was so happy I wanted to shout it from the rooftop. But at the same time I knew that that afternoon's downpour would have made the slate tiles so slippery that achieving any kind of purchase would have been impossible.

If I was feeling like a challenge, I'd kick out the plug, turn the taps on and see if I could maintain the exact water level. It was a bit like balancing the clutch in an old Mini Metro. Although tricky at first, by the time I checked out I could find the bath's biting point within three minutes. Satisfying? Just bit.

My bottom is itchy so I stop in the middle of the landing and scratch it lightly. The fiddling merely tantalises the itch, and it becomes more aggressive. I respond in kind, dragging my fingernails across my fundament in a frenzied jerking motion. With one hand braced against the wall, I’m now grabbing and clawing at the angry aperture, slashing and scraping in a bid to ease the sensation. It’s a delicious relief but I know it’s merely stoking the irritation. And so after a final flurry – scrit, scrit, scrit, scrit, scit, scrit, scrit, scrit, scrit, scrit, scrit, scrit, scrit, scrit, scrit, scrit, scrit, scrit – I stop scratching. My backside pleads with me to continue but I resist, and in a few seconds the itch subsides on its own, as I knew it would.10 I

I woke with a start, at first I thought I had trumped myself awake again - it was summer so there was lots of fresh vegetables in our diet. But as I listened through the darkness I realized that something far worse was going on. My mother and father were having the row to end all rows. A sudden shot of fear ripped through my pre-pubic body. And now I did trump. The noise fizzled out of my back passage like a child calling for help. That child was me.

Like a good-looking John Merrick, mine was a face that looked really shit.

I've told you, there's no point keeping those. They're not tax-deductible,' my dad thundered. 'I think you'll find they are,' raged my mum like some sort of feral animal (a badger with TB perhaps). 'They're not. You only get VAT back on lunches outside of a 50-mile radius from your place of residence. You effing bitch,' he seemed to add, with his eyes, I imagined.

1974 was a crazy, hazy time for Alan Partridge. The Sixties had come to East Anglia and it was a time of free thinking, free love and in my case free university accommodation.

Putting a damp spoon back in the bowl is the tea-drinking equivalent of sharing a needle. And I did not want to end up with the tea-drinking equivalent of AIDS.

gingerly. Usually, I avoid opening boxes I don’t recognise – ever since

Like the name of a cartoon Belgian detective said in a Scottish accent, it’s 10:10.’11 It

With my alarm set for 5, I hit snooze every ten minutes until just before 7, at which point it’s time to start the day. With

Surveillance isn’t easy, though. You’ll need warm clothes, a camera with telephoto lens, two Thermos flasks (one for tea, t’other for wee) and for God’s sake remember your sandwiches.

Meanwhile, for those of you on crowded public transport who chose not to say the words aloud, you’ll feel no different, and that’s your own fault because, as I say, you lack class and are assholes.

Well suited to those with large shoulders and feet like spades, swimming enjoyed a boost in popularity in Victorian times when, due to advancements in water husbandry, we were able to domesticate H2O, trapping large amounts of it in four-sided pits or ‘pools’.

my remarkable walked

(The British are notorious for having never quite got the hang of ‘smart casual’; think Alan Partridge in green or mauve blazers.)

For the last three years I had been a hospital radio DJ at St Luke’s in Norwich. It was a smashing little hospital and many of the people who went in there didn’t end up dead. I loved my job, though.

Aha!" I said. (Not the catchphrase just a thought.)

I do so love books. I can’t think of many truer pleasures than settling into a fat armchair, letting my mouth fall open, and reading a novel. And I mean really reading one – not just skim-reading it before a live TV interview, or pretending to read Middlemarch while smiling sagely to look more attractive in a departure lounge – genuinely reading. For me, books aren’t just a feast for the eyes. I love the feel of books: the flaps of reformed pulp nestling compliantly in the crook of my hand, my fingers tracing their supple spines; I love the sound of books – I don’t mean audiobooks, I don’t like audiobooks, I’ve never liked audiobooks: If I want to hear Sam West reading Inspector Morse out loud I’ll go to one of his garden parties; no, I’ll only allow audiobooks if you’re operating heavy machinery or are just plain blind (and don’t forget they have been given braille) – I mean the sound of a book: The moth-like thrum of flicked pages, the gedoink of a thudding tome as it lands on a bedside table. But most of all, I love the stench of books; the thick odour that leaps from their pages. If I’m feeling a little low and I’m in a library, I’ve been known to open a book (just a little), slot my nose into its tempting crevice, and inhale a deep whiff of book until my eyes roll back in their sockets and I have to lie down in a section where no-one goes (such as African literature). For me, nothing beats the delight of quietly slipping my nose into the crack of a Brontë or A Few Good Men and letting the aroma tantalise my olfactory nerve endings. Oh, the smell! Oh! The! Smell! The trusty, musty, dusty, fusty, crusty, and (if it’s a Jilly Cooper) busty and lusty smell of literature!

Could professional disappointment have been what made him so bitter, like it did with BT Sport’s Ray Stubbs?

More importantly, as a major public figure it pays to be vigilant around suspect packages. This comes from personal experience. When North Norfolk Digital was sent a box of heavy metal CDs,19 muggins here was about to open it when fellow DJ Rudy Gibson shouted over, ‘Careful, Alan. That contains anthrax.

I quickly realised Gibson had been joking and that Anthrax was the name of a heavy metal band or singer whose CD might have been in the box. I looked up at the window and waved and laughed and dressed and mused on how fantastic it was to have colleagues who could share practical jokes like this. Sure enough, I got into the spirit and played a practical joke on Gibson by getting my assistant to phone him during one of his shows to tell him his elderly mother had had a fall. He was all over the place!

It’s 20 February 1995. I am standing by a graveside, the wind whistling through my hair like a wind whistle. My father died on 15 February, and has now been buried. At a sparsely attended funeral, his casket has been blessed and lowered into the ground. I am invited to be the first to throw earth into the grave. I crouch down and, unsure of how much to put in (why don’t they just tell you?), I push up my jacket sleeves and use both arms to sweep an enormous mound of earth from behind me and into the hole – like a couple of arm bulldozers. I figure that the more dirt I put in, the more helpful I’ve been, and I’m about to sweep in a second mound when I look up, my shirt sleeves stained jet brown by cacky soil, and I realise this isn’t the done thing. My mother tuts and looks away.

Get into QSPC in the next two weeks or the walk to Dungeness will surely – surely – kill me. But is such a transformation even possible? Well, other than the fat back that’s dogged me since the age of forty, I have a surprisingly toned body. Well proportioned and naturally hairless, it’s a physique that’s still able to draw admiring glances to this day, whether on a tropical beach or in the leisure-centre showers.

Her voice hung shrill in the air like a shot partridge.