S01E03: Dating

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I'm Alan Partridge, and this is my podcast. From The Oasthouse!

I'm wearing a black cashmere polo tucked into black trousers, with a shiny black boss belt above the shiniest pair of black shoes you've ever seen. 

Why am I looking so Lazenby? 

Well, it's because I'm preparing to go for dinner with a woman who owns not one, but four dog grooming parlours! That's right, I, Alan Partridge, am going on a date. It's not that I'm desperately in need of a girlfriend, I've got plenty of company. I've more mates than you can shake a foul stick at, two kids, Denise and Fernando, but there's no shame in wanting a little romance. 

So, what I thought I would do today is theme the podcast around love and relationships. I'll be talking about how to find love, how to make a date go swimmingly... er... What do you think about French kissing? I like it! Not everyone does. 

On Twitter, I've been asking for your thoughts too, got one here from John in Aldershot, Aldershot, who's tweeted to say "Men are quick to judge women's appearances but maybe they should take a look closer to home. Men put women off by being unclean, untidy or unkempt. And if they do, they have no one to blame but themselves". Could not agree more, John.

Women have taken a leaf out of men's books; leadership, decisiveness, important jobs which they seem to be getting to grips with! Maybe men should take a leaf out of women's books, take a bit more care of their appearance, spend-spend a bit more time in Boots. 

In fact, er, you... it's quite interesting this week because, not to alarm you, but I'm sitting cross legged on my bed! Because I'm partway through my own pre-date grooming regime, and let's talk about it! Many men are very self-conscious about what they might regard as preening.

This day and age that is absolutely no reason why one man shouldn't be able to go up to another man in a gym, look him square in the eye and say "I have a personal grooming regime. What's yours?".

I'm not reinventing the wheel, I'm just 'tidying the Alan', so it's toenails, fingernails, shave the face, shave the neck and then a very, very hot shower, followed by a roll-on, skin lotion and then talc the crevices. 

I generally walk around with my towel, humming a pop song, picking up clothes, laying them out on the bed, and then I'm ready to attack the hair! First thing get it dry! I always leave the hairdryer on for six to eight minutes before I use it. Much like the shower, it's vital that the air is as hot as your scalp can stand. Then dry, lacquer, comb and set.

I've taken a little extra care today as I say my my date is a dog groomer, so she's going to be all about the detail. If I turn up a little fluffy around the temples or not really glossy on top that ain't gonna fly. 

But looking good on a date isn't just about your wardrobe. If clothes maketh the man, then surely exercise improveth the body. So I'll perform... sixty press-ups directly before leaving the house. If I get to the rendezvous fast enough and wear a top tight enough, the extra blood flowing through the muscles should mean that they're still a little bit bulked-up when we meet. 

You do need to arrive between 30 and 60 minutes after exercise, any later and the muscles will have subsided, any sooner and you'll just have a big, red head! Clothes-wise, well, as I say, the look I've gone for is 'sleek black' and I like it. 

My assistant says I look like a stagehand, but that's because she doesn't understand fashion. And anyway, she wears tights that are too big and so baggy that the nylon gathers in coils around her ankles, makes her legs look like springs. I told her that she looks like two Zebedees under a big coat, and to be fair to her she did she did laugh a little, before adding that I looked like the Milk Tray Man, and I said "Good! That was the desired effect". 

But those of you unfamiliar with the Milk Tray Man, Google it and you'll find YouTube clips of a daredevil who dressed in black and broke into women's houses to leave a box of chocolates without nicking anything. 

A bit like James Bond, not like today's heroes. Far from being impressive, I gotta say that superheroes and superhero films, pretend men and women with super powers get on my nerves! I haven't seen any of the films, but their presence in their tight, colourful suits on posters and billboards, I think, are visual pollution into one's daily aesthetic experience. Everywhere you look at Spider-guy or Super-cloaked-flying-guy... Man With Claws For Fingers, you know, a sword for a head. 

Anyway, the heroes I like are The Milk Tray Man or George Lazenby as Bond. They didn't need superpowers they just kept fit, sprinted everywhere and had a grappling hook, it's all they needed to get into a woman's bedroom. 

I once read an interview with George Lazenby where he said the trick to looking like a secret agent is to walk like a panther, and I sometimes do that on the landing, past the mirror and just try and catch myself with my peripheral vision. I don't look at myself directly in the mirror because I go a little shy and feel like a tit. Similarly, if I'm in my stockinged feet, and my balance is good that day, I might slide across the kitchen floor to get the milk from the fridge, it just sort of gees me up.

I'm too old for Bond now of course, just as when an actor reaches the age of 40 realises he's too old to play Hamlet, there's a similar experience normal men have when they're approaching 60, and they have to look themselves in the mirror, literally, and say "I will never be Bond now!". 

Don't mourn for what you've lost, look back and cherish the times when you could have been Bond! We've all looked at ourselves and thought "I could be Bond!", it' s as natural as breathing for any man. 

I've got a wonderful Polaroid from 1995, wearing a dinner suit in Hall 1 of the Birmingham NEC, shaking hands with Alan Sugar and giving an award to the Amstrad employee of the, er... Heady days. And when you look at the picture, the myself and the chap who was winning the award could easily have been Bond. Not Sugar, he's Jewish so that doesn't work. 

Okay.

So as I say, I don't... I'm not... definitely Bond but I do bear a passing resemblance at night-time to the Milk Tray Man. Maybe I will get her some Milk Tray. Actually, she did say in her email. She likes to be pampered. So , erm... second thoughts, I... I might not. 

Milk Tray always reminds me of a woman I dated soon after I separated from my wife. We were eating Milk Tray one night and I started to call her Hazelnut Swirl, which is the name of one of the chocolates. 'Hazelnut' because her name was Hazel and 'Swirl' because she had a birthmark that looked like a vortex. She called me Caramel Softy, because of my personality not because of my loins.

And after the month, we went through the whole selection calling each other Exotic Delights, Truffle Hearts, Strawberry Temptation, she was red-headed, and Surprise Parcel. 

But then she sent a giant Christmas card from the two of us to a businessman who... I know but wouldn't... describe as a friend. And she signed it 'From The Fudge Duet'. He wasn't in on the joke, he thought it was some sort of overture and he turned up drunk in Hawaiian shirts, which I really didn't like. So I ended the relationship between Christmas and New Year. 

But I gotta tell you, there is nothing more likely to put a spring in my step than the prospect of dinner with what I can... only safely described today as... a woman.

Sad that, you can't use adjectives, can't describe someone as plain, can't say they're beautiful, can't say they're fat. You can call them thin though. Riddle me that one!

So no Milk Tray tonight, just a lovely dinner with a bubbly woman who, on all her photos, has a few stray dog hairs on her clothes. And that's fine, she's a dog lover, and so am I and er... I told her I noticed the dog hair and she said "Don't worry, that's the only hair you'll find on my body". And I thought, "Eurgh. I wouldn't have said that". Even though the same thing applies to me.

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Just time for a few more of your messages, one chap says "It used to be that you could get a girlfriend by getting hammered as a works' do. But with Me Too being what it is, there's no fun at work anymore. Where're you supposed to meet women?" 

He's right actually, work dos were once hotbeds of fun gossip and pissed colleagues snogging on staircases. Now they're little more than board meetings, and you can spell 'board' any way you like, with with white wine and nibbles. Is it good? Is it bad? 

I met the lady I'm meeting tonight I won't give her real name. But let's call her Janet because she looks like one. The introduction came from an elite agency called Echelon, which is invitation-only and for high-wealth or high-class individuals looking to encounter similar.

Now Echelon run by a couple called Wilf and Fi are extremely hands on. It's not a case of just swiping left through hundreds of subscribers, the idea is Wilf and Fi get to know you, and then present a tightly-curated list of matches based on what you're like. So they come and spend time with you. And the idea is, you just go about your day and they just hang out, they just chill with you. Maybe go for a walk or popping out for lunch.

When they visited me. I basically cleaned out the garage while they just stood to one side. But from that afternoon, they were able to get a handle on what makes me tick, you know, and find the perfect match. 

This is actually the second one they found for me. They found one for me last year. And for twelve months I was  in a very happy, sexless, romantic relationship. We'd kiss, we'd cuddle and we'd pet and you know something? It was fun! We talked about the garden, politics, very pleasant. Just nothing genital. 

And I'm not saying it was completely chaste either! Very occasionally we'd stop mid ramble to look over a fence at some cows. I'd put my hand down the back of her trousers and, "Hello!", she'd put her hand down the front of mine! After about twenty minutes, we'd wander back to the house and she made me the biggest beef paste sandwich you've ever seen! 

A friend of mine said, "Yeah, but without the sex, it must have been like dating a mermaid!". I said, when I was seven years old, I'd love to have gone out with a mermaid! I'd love to have gone out with a mermaid when I was seven years old, the adventures we'd have under the sea! I'd rescue her from trawler nets, and she'd give me a kiss as a reward! But it ran its course. And now I'm very much back on the market with high hopes for tonight.

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Now, I'm not saying everyone can afford to employ an expensive agency like Echelon that's run by... I hesitate to say experts... I'm very much like Michael Gove in believing that people have had enough of experts. Like where do they get off? 

When I was building the Oasthouse, from which we are podcasting, I had a structural engineer - a real pen-pushing anorak! - who said, "If you're knocking out a load-bearing wall, you'll need a steel lintel put in!".

I said, a stone arch will do the same job as a lintel without ruining the rustic aesthetic. "Doesn't pass building regs!" he said, with a barely-disguised glee. I said, er,  if you do a load-bearing demonstration with a supervised stress test then it will pass building regs and he just stared at me. Then he pretended he hadn't heard and started talking about the European Directive for heat insulation. I said yeah, we'll comply,  except it doesn't square with the bat survey!

He didn't know what to say to that! I swear to god, if he could have put the red tape around my throat and garrotted me, while forcing his knee into my back until I died from either asphyxiation or decapitation, he would have done it! He would have just wandered off with his pen over his ear whistling, happy as Larry. No, I won that battle but I knew he'd be back.

In the end, it boiled down to a choice between go round and thump him or back down, so I flipped a coin and... erm... back down won. What I'm going around houses to tell you is that Wilf and Fi know their onions, their 'love onions', and it does provide reassurance that your date isn't a time-waster. 

That's why I don't do Tinder because some of those people, I'll be honest, just want to make fun of me. You know, she'll ask me questions, leading questions, trying to trying to make me put my foot in, and at the end of the night, I get no action. I'll go to kiss her, and just as my lips go to kiss hers, she'll turn her cheek to me. And I'll be honest, it's very, very hurtful! So I'll adjust my trajectory, and she turns her head even more! Before I know it, I'm chasing her lips around the back of her head!

It's like trying to shag an owl! And, as I say, it's very, very hurtful!

But I'm confident tonight, I've done my prep, just some ideas on what to talk about. So I have here one A4 page of notes, potential talking points, that kind of thing. And of course, I've practices my ad-libs., so as an icebreaker, as we sit down to dinner I might say, if it's a very ornate place, "Who designed this place, Genghis Khan?!". Or if it's austere, "Who designed this place, Oliver Cromwell?!". 

It does rely on a little bit of general knowledge, if I sense that she doesn't know that Oliver Cromwell was a Puritan - it happens! - I'll instead say "Who designed this place, Stevie Wonder?!". 

The only time it went wrong was when the woman said, "Why?", and I said because it looks horrible. And she said, "What, you think black people are shit architects?" I said, "No, not... no, absolutely not black people! No, blind people! I love black architects". And she said "Name one black architect" and I panicked and and and I just said "I'm not obliged to answer any of your questions"... which soured the evening... and she made her excuses and left. But I saved a few bob on dessert!

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If conversation dries up, pick a feature of theirs to talk about! If she has a strong, Roman nose, say "I like your strong, Roman nose!". If she has a beautiful necklace, inquire "Who bought that for you?". "What beautiful earrings!", if they dangle, finger them. "Who does your hair?",  "Are you keeping your coat on?",  "Is that your natural skin colour or a tinted foundation?".

Sometimes people are too general. "What are you up to in life?", I mean, how can you answer that?! So I ask more specific ones, I might say What were you doing, where were you between the hours of three and five o'clock this afternoon?". And just wait for them to answer. You know, don't fill the silence, it's their silence not yours.

Be forward, you know, for example, say what are you doing next weekend? And if she says, "Oh, I'm visiting my sister in Northumberland, what about you?", I'll stare at her and say, I dunno! You tell me!

Or say, "I don't believe it! I'm going to Northumberland this weekend too! There's a book there they've got in their library I want", or "There's a car I've been meaning to visit! Why don't we travel together? I mean, we're both going there!".

[advertisement, hurried classical violin music plays]

This is Alan Partridge, and as accomplished Caster of Pods, podcaster, I just wanted to mention a couple of other podcasts that I think are knocking it out of the park, er, but not into the gardens that back on to the park. That's private property! I'm sure they wouldn't do that. 

First up, Saddle Stories! Join two of the best lady horse-riders in Norfolk as they regale you with their equestrian anecdotes amid gales of laughter! Not for me this one, but very popular with women over forty.

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Next, How Do You Solve a Problem Like Ireland? A weekly debate podcast with some of England's best newspaper columnists, backbenchers, and ex-servicemen discuss in detail what to do about Ireland and ask some difficult questions; "How do you separate the good ones from the bad ones? You know, they they are very similar!", "Is it too easy for some Irish people to travel?", some of the suggestions for weeding out undesirables are radical, certainly, but often compelling, such as stopping ferries but allowing air-travel, which would certainly sort the wheat from the chaff. And they also speak to an Irish person who's very nice!

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And finally, Recall, exclamation mark! Very much one for fans of Chernobyl or Watergate, Recall! follows in minute detail the lead up to, and fallout of the 1973 product recall of the Triumph Toledo. Featuring interviews with senior executives, government sources and private investigators, this twelve-part series takes a forensic look at the circumstances surrounding the biggest automobile recall the United Kingdom has ever seen! Eventually honing in on a front radius strut in the front suspension assembly! Narrated by John Stapleton.

Before I go, quick spray of aftershave! This is called Robust, not heard of it? Not surprised, because that's the name given by me to my own aftershave, which is my own bespoke recipe. Now anyone who reads GQ will know that, after cufflinks and watches, the most important thing to get right is your man pong, right guys?!

I love, actually I do love dipping into GQ now and then. It's for guys who like to look good and think about stuff, but not too much! It tells you just a little bit about an awful lot. Good mag!

Yeah, I love to experiment with smells! So generally I'll mix or blend four or five aftershaves to create something that is quite simply just a better smell. I might start off with some Davidoff poured into a gravy boat, pep it up with some M&S Woodspice, give it a whiff. Mmm, a bit too musty, needs  freshness! I'll add a couple of egg-cups of Joop! Now we're talking, that's your base-smell. 

Then it's just how you feel that day. A dusty Molton Brown miniature from a long-forgotten holiday, stick it in! A little bit left in a bottle of Lady Musk, "Hello!". What's this, came free with a magazine? That's going in! It's giving off leather, musk, spice, all good smells! Choose one, in it goes! And this, the coup de gras, a tiny sprinkling of powdered white pepper! Give him a stir and that is Robust! Or as near as I can remember. 

[advert VO voice] "Robust! For a smell as strong and powerful as you are. Join me-" [normal voice] sorry, join me next time to hear it all went! But for now, I've been Alan Partridge, from the Oasthouse!

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