S01E11: Corporate Work

[theme music]

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

...And today I am physically excited, not aroused but in that ballpark, because I'm about to undertake the type of work that gives me more pleasure than any other. It's not my TV work, OFCOM have seen to that, I mean what is wrong with the word midget? It's a legitimate size comparator!

And it's not my charity work, because I've stopped doing that after an incident at Remembrance Day, when I turned up to the Cenotaph dressed as a giant poppy. Now, the reason is, I've always felt that it's a very sombre day, and a little, a little levity wouldn't go amiss. But it was a misjudgement, and even the Help For Heroes boys were askance.

And I said, "Mate, it's not like that!". And they were looking at me, and they just said, "What the- what are you playing at?". I said, "I was trying to cheer people up. It's not like I had it made especially. A friend of mine dressed as a tulip for Gay Pride, and I merely opened out the petals, and added a small black bin lid for the button, which I thought was rather inventive!". 

But, you know, people will say what they will. I mean, why is it okay to wear fancy dress for Gay Pride, but not Remembrance Sunday? It just seems... peculiar, you know? Are we saying that gay people are better than dead people? Because you've got to be very careful about suggesting that! No, the work that gives me more satisfaction than any other is my corporate work. And tonight's gig promises to be a real humdinger!

I remember seeing the launch of a new social media channel for a well-known Korean car brand. I really can't wait. I just feel, I don't know how to say it really, fizzy!

Why do I like these gigs? Well, A, they're lucrative. I mean however I travel, I'm on a wide chair. B, I genuinely like the people, unlike in my TV or charitable work. And C, unlike in my TV and charitable work, I know I'm making a difference. Yes, corporate work is very much in my wheelhouse. There's a sense of being part of a team or a family, too, which is especially nice for me because my own children don't massively like me.

Do some work for Shell or Esso and you become part of a global family that stretches right from the hired mercenaries working hand-in-glove with local militia in West Africa to ensure the safety of oil pipelines, to me at the Grosvenor Park Hotel, making damn sure executives get quality presentation and a good conference experience. And the companies get something out of it, too. Proximity to a celebrity is a sure-fire way to boost your brand.

Imagine, if you will, a Vauxhall Astra sitting on a dealership forecourt. Am I interested in the improvements to the 2019 model? A little bit, but I got stuff to do! Now rewind, and imagine it has Anton Du Beke sitting in it saying, "By god, she's roomy!", while a hundred local press photographers snap away frantically.

Now am I interested in improvements to the 2019 model? Big time! Suddenly, customers are making a beeline for the Astra and not because it's roomy. It's not, it's like a comfy cage! It's because Anton Du Beke has sprayed his pizzazz all over the seats! 

Another example, imagine a Ford Focus at a motor show, and one of the promo-girls shimmies over and says, "Can I interest you in the new Ford Focus?". No-o-o! I want to go over there and stand next to a Jaguar. Now rewind and imagine it has Michael Aspel sitting in a fold-up chair next to it. "Is that Michael Aspel sitting in a folding chair with a blanket over his knee next to a Ford Focus?", before you know it, you're in the driving seat pretending to change gear, and opening and closing the glovebox. Now can she interest you in the Ford Focus? I just said I'm sitting in it, so of course she can! I have another example involving Des Lynam and a van, but you get the picture. 

[theme music sting]

Corporate work ain't for everyone. Among most BBC presenters, 'corporate' is a dirty word, like fanny or piss. Yet, while they claim to give the business dollar a wide berth, the truth is often a little more grubby. Take the BBC's Head Girl, Fiona Bruce. Get stuck with her at a cocktail party after she's had a few, and she'll give you chapter and verse about her public service duty.

Except, oh look, what's this? It's a back-copy of Cheshire Life magazine I stumbled over last year. And, oh! Oh, look again, who's this? It's Fiona Bruce and, I quote, "I love my local area, but the jewel in the crown has to be Isley Garden Centre. An oasis of calm in an otherwise pretty frantic world. It's a great place to spend a Sunday". 

You holding your noses? Well, you should be, because that hypocrisy stinks! It's flagrant corporate promotion, for one. For two, it's not even honest. Great? The Wall of China is Great. Alexander was Great. Yarmouth is Great. But a garden centre in Cheshire? Use your noodle, Fiona! It's not great, it's just really good!

Some of my sniffy BBC peers think corporate work is soulless and creatively unrewarding. Holy mama, they couldn't be more wrong. Trust me, a TV exec muttering, "Ace show, Alan!", the Radio Times describing me as a safe pair of hands, they are mere piffle compared to a thumbs up and a "Nicely done!" from the managing director of Morphy Richards. Remember, he's kept awake at night by the most pressing kettle and toaster-related issues imaginable! E.g. "My toasters are available in in red, cream, silver and black. Is there anything I've missed?". And yet he still found the time to offer congratulations. I actually got a bit choked up. 

He said, Come on, let's step outside, get some air. And so we wandered around the car park for a bit looking at the various cars and I said, "Morphy, you didn't have to do this. It means a lot". And he said, "I'm not called Morphy, but you're very welcome". 

[jaunty background music]

This is Alan Partridge, just wanted to say a thank you, and a please.

Thank you for listening. Please carry on listening. 

No, I'm more than happy to admit I prefer corporate work to broadcasting, maybe it's a personality thing? You'd have to ask yourself, who do I have more in common with? Vernon Kay? Davina McCall? Or Doug McKenna, brand director for Robert Dyess, who boosts morale by twisting any team members name and turning it into a rude word! For example, he'll refer to Grant Pope as 'Pant Grope', or Roger Hart as 'Rogered Hard'!

He calls me 'Anal Partridge', it's absolutely savage! But my god, it's a cracking way to get a team buzzing! Who do I feel inspired by? Vanessa Feltz? Paddy McGuinness? Not bad examples. Or how about Brandon Greaves, sales manager for Homebase Online, who motivates his team by making them eat Cheerios from a dog bowl if they fail to make a sale! 

Who would I enjoy working alongside? Andrew Neill? Mmm! Sue Perkins? Hmm. How about Derek Eggers, head of social media for Shoe Zone, who will only consider applicants who've achieved a gold medal on the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme. "They didn't do it at my school!", so do it now!
"But I'm 44 years old!", go and do the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme now! What can I say? I like the guy!

So yes, it makes sense, then, to foster close relationships with corporate big dogs, which is why yesterday I took to Twitter and asked, in your opinion, what is the best way to impress our captains of industry? Some terrific thoughts coming in on that. Bryan in Epsom says, "Nothing impresses a businessman more than a firm, confident handshake. Simply grip the hand and move up and down until you've counted to ten or the recipient has stopped smiling, whichever is the sooner. Just remember to breathe and don't count out loud". Couldn't agree more, very solid technique but feel free to mix it up a bit. I might place an additional hand, my left one, on top of the handshake if I'm greeting someone at a funeral, the kind of handshake that goes with a very breathy, "And how are you?". 

Or if I'm congratulating someone who's just stepped out of a rally car, you might give a very quick handshake before rotating the grip into a hand clasp you do during an arm-wrestle. Again, use your left hand if it feels right. Pat them on the shoulder, "Great rallying!". Deliver a mock punch to the jaw. Whatever feels right in the moment! 

If it's a fan, shake their hand as normal, but after a couple of seconds, place your left hand on the upper part of their right arm and gently push them away as you extract your hand. They feel pleased because you've touched them with two parts of you, and you're able to end the unwanted encounter with minimal fuss.

The only time I won't shake someone's hand is if someone in the lavatory asks me to do so.
Any such requests need to be blocked immediately with an insistent and disgusted, "No!".

[long pause, kids playing outside]

Why do they feel the need to chat when they're in nature? Just look at the nature! Sorry, they sometimes take kids along the public footpath that crosses my land. It's just another bunch of deprived kids whose parents have never shown them a cow. It was a permissive walkway, but I forgot to hang a sign which you have to do once a year, saying it's private property. If you fail to do that, then it falls into public access and becomes a public right-of-way. And I hate to say it, but it's my own fault because I failed to hang the sign there on Boxing Day.

Tweet here from someone called Red Star, who writes to say, "The very fact that you laud them as captains of industry is frankly nauseating! Why must we fawn over tax-dodging multinationals who are so morally bankrupt that they put profit over people, then balk at the suggestion that they should give a bit back? The schools that educate their workforce, the roads they use to deliver products, the bin men who remove their waste, all paid for by the taxpayer, and yet we're expected to genuflect at the altar of big business and say, 'Help yourselves!', instead of asking why can't they pay their fair share? I refuse to deify these shameless grifters who achieved their success on the backs of ordinary working people. After the revolution, I would happily march these priority-boarding bastards to the front of the line for the guillotine, muttering 'Chop-chop!'". Hmmm. He's got so many bees in his bonnet, his hair must look like a beehive! I once knew a dinner lady with hair like that. Dead now.

But as I say, I find corporate work deeply rewarding. And it's not just work, by the way. These corporate events form a pretty significant part of my social life. More often than not, team-building seminars, internal awards dues, motivational away days culminate in an evening drinks reception. "Feel free to come along!", most of them say. Thank you. I will come along! And these chaps, holy moly, do they know how to let their hair down? Yes!

What might start as a glass of warm white wine in a hotel conference suite can just hours later be me and three of the more hardcore revellers in a Chinese restaurant talking about anything from Ali G impressions to how their accounts team are cracking down on expenses, y-y-y-you know the kind of thing. 

I've even ended up in nightclubs before now, and while I'll slope off home if they, you know, start wearing their ties around their heads or there's only three of us and the man and woman are having a snog, I mean, some of these occasions have been among the best nights of my life. Ever got fifteen account managers from NatWest to do the Adam Ant Prince Charming dance in an All Bar One? I have.

Yeah, so I'm there tonight to help launch a social media channel for a Korean car brand, and while I don't necessarily know what that means, I do know that they've asked me if I can couch it in a mood of luxury brand humour, and I said to them, "I've got a better term, executive wit!", and they liked that, and that made me like it. 

It's an ambitious note to try and strike, but I'm an ambitious guy. Julian Fellows once told me he had two ambitions in life, to marry into the aristocracy and to be knighted. He's achieved both, and although some people find that nauseating to the point of making their gag-reflex activate so that they puke into their hands with revulsion, I actually admire the guy because it shows focus and ambition. Julian likes to direct Downton Abbey wearing plus fours and a full set of tweed like he's on a grouse shoot, and while many people think he should be slapped across the face for that, I think it shows panache. 

One of my roles tonight will be to chair the Q&A, which will see me not only throw it open to the people in the room, but to Twitter using the hashtag #AskTheCEO. And that promises to be very exciting, I'll be the one clicking the clicker and standing in front of a rolling screen of social media updates, a bit like Steve Jobs does when he wants to crow about his new telephone, before he died.

Then it's a swift change into black tie for the Staff Engagement Awards, a chance to reward the best of the best, the cream of the cream, among what they call Customer Engagement Champions, and I expect it to get raucous! These guys know how to let their hair down, and being largely public school boys, they have plenty of hair to let down. It promises to be a room full of some of the glossiest, bushiest hair in England. Yes, please!  It's weird, isn't it, to think that some people secretly can't stand these people. Don't ask me. Great guys, good attitude!

[theme music sting]

I've got my tie on, pants on, it's best to not do your belt until you've done your shoes but I always undo my belt and lower my trousers before I put my shoes on because if you're over 50 and things don't quite work as well as they did in your youth, you put your belt on snugly. I use my belt as a sort of mini corset, if you like, to just... hold things in a little.

But a tight belt also acts as a tourniquet, and a friend of mine said he knew someone in Australia who was only 44, and he bent down with a very tight belt on, and his heart burst. I don't know if that's true. 

Let's get my coat on. I do my vocal warm-up in the car. I normally pop on a CD of Paul Simon's Graceland, because it has a lot of er, "A-hoomwa!", which is very good for vocal warm-ups. Or I'll sing along to The Lion Sleeps Tonight. "A-wimba-way!"...

[Seldom starts barking] 

It's all right, mate! It's all right, mate, it's just me. Seldy! It's Daddy! Dropped the ball there. I nearly said The Lion King, but I would never, ever sing along to that, because I actually know the guy that designed the set for the West End production of the stage version of the thing, and he never shuts up about it. It's like, Lion King this and Lion King that. I just think to myself, [exasperated sigh] "Fuck off!".

Just time to pack up the old reliables; biz cards, chew gum, fold up hairbrush... Oh, do you know what? I also carry this, it's a faded Polaroid photograph taken in 1989 on a Saxon Radio Summer Roadshow. It's me surrounded by children, maybe twenty of them, and they're coming towards me with a bucket of gunge, and we're all laughing. There's a guy selling hot dogs in the background, and I think there's a bouncy castle, and the usual paraphernalia. Sometimes when I'm at, say, the opening of a new David Lloyd leisure club, or I'm doing a team building session for Esso, I just take a quiet moment in a toilet cubicle, look at this photo, and think how lucky I am that I never have to do a Saxon Radio Summer Roadshow ever again. And that's not gloating, that's just me enjoying my own success, and comparing it to that of other people in the photograph, who've not been so lucky.

Not gloating, just 'gratituding'. I'm drawn particularly to the image of Doug, the roadie eating an ice cream, the only one in the photo looking directly at the lens, here. Yeah, he's a strange chap. Last I heard, he was living in Balham, pretending to be disabled. Doug.

[theme music sting]

[17:17]
All right, night Rosa. 

"Okay". 

You're all right walking? 

"Yes".

All right. Night-night. Have you got the torch? 

[pause] "What?" [it's too late, Alan closes door]

Well, it's 8:15, I've returned to the Oasthouse from what I hoped would be a fantastic piece of corporate touch-basing, and for the most part, it was. You're probably thinking, "Why isn't he at the drinks reception? Did they not have one?", oh, no they did have one. They had ice sculptures, bottles of Becks on the table like ten-pin bowling skittles, the lot. It's just that I decided to make my excuses and leave and for a very good reason. 

What I'm about to tell you has, well, it's wobbled me. You see, for several months now, I've been a target of a social media troll. This man who goes by the Twitter handle High Noon is almost certainly a sexual inadequate who still lives with his mom, has been waging a concerted campaign to terrify and destroy me. Yeah, I'm fairly certain he was at the event today. 

The Q&A was underway. Questions were pinging up on the Twitter feed on the screen behind me. Good questions to you know, "Any updates on the product roadmap for Q4?", "Will next year see us expand our retail footprint in EMEA?". But then a tweet that made my blood run so cold, I could have been an iguana or, you know, any reptile really.

It was from High Noon. He simply said, "Nice trousers, Alan". Now he might have been guessing.
I wear trousers to my corporate work 99.9% of the time. The the only time I recall not wearing trousers was when I when I wore a kilt to a Vodafone induction day, and it was around the time of their tax avoidance controversy. So to get them on side, I was also pretending to be a sort of thrifty skinflint, hence the Scottish gear.

But I got into my head that he was there in the room with me. So I hollered to the stage manager, "Put the house lights on!", but nothing happened so then I added, "Please!", and then he put the house lights on. I said, "I know you're here High Noon! Show yourself, for the time of reckoning is now upon us!". I'm not sure what I meant by that. And I remembered his handle's High Noon. So I said, "Are you going to pull those pistols or whistle Dixie, Noon?". There were titters at this point, which wasn't helping my distress.

My mind was spinning out like... ah... I want to say an Escort doing doughnuts? I don't mean a a a a sex worker comfort eating, I mean, a Ford Escort Mexico with the steering on full lock and the pedal to the metal. Anyway, it was awful! I said, "Stop laughing! Stop laughing, you're upsetting me!". Then the Chief Financial Officer came up and put his hand on my arm and said, "Come on, let's just go and have a chat, Alan". So I said, "I'm just going off for a minute. Er... Why don't you talk amongst yourselves while we decide what to do next?".

I gathered myself came back out and said, "Sorry, I didn't know what I was talking about then. You must have thought I was the head of R&D for Nissan!". Well, it brought the house down. I said, "I love the names of Korean car brands, Kia, Hyundai, SsangYong and Daewoo, they sound like the names of women on some sort of website!". Well, it brought the house down again. One woman walked out, but you know, omelette and eggs. 

When it was all over, it really hit me. I realized he hadn't been there at all, but he'd done something far worse. He'd sabotaged my brain! I actually threw up on the boot of a Jag. I got in my car and went to drive-thru KFC, pulled up to the intercom and said, "Hello, I've been sick and I want chicken".

The voice said, "What kind?", I said, "A bucket of breaded battery bits", and then I just ate them and drove home. 

I'm gonna go now, I want to be with Seldom. Just need to... scrub the smell of KFC off my hands, because he'll be in a mood if he finds out I went without him. 

Right then, bye.

[closing theme music]