S01E12: LA

Okay, well, fingers crossed for your old business venture. Yeah, mugs with slogans, it's a winner. Yeah, cheers mate.

"Actually, do you want one?"

No, I don't want one, I've got plenty of mugs. Alright, you've dropped me off now. 
I'm Alan Partridge, From the Oasthouse, sorry about that, terrible, terrible idea! Not enough mugs to buy them. That's never going to work, poor bastard.

Well, the eagle-eyed, or should I say the Shrek-eared, among you will have heard that I've just jumped out of a taxi which has spirited me from famous London airport, London Gatwick, just outside Brighton, after a much-needed vacation. I'll just pop my key in the door there. And, er, christ almighty,[Alan struggles with the key in the lock] I thought while my adventure's fresh in the old noggin, I've got to do a podcast about it. I mean, I've not slept for thirty-six hours, but I thought, I've just gotta do a podcast about it!

[theme music]

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

Now, where's Seldom? Seldom?! Seldy?! Seldom? Hello, boy. Hello, boy! [Seldom starts aggressively barking] Calm down. Calm down. Please calm down! 

By the way, I wasn't scared then, I've found that if I sound scared and upset, Seldom is much less likely to attack me. I've come to realise that all he wants to be is Top Dog, so I make it quite clear I'm happy to let him be that. He can't know that I'm playing him, otherwise I'm back to square one. Yeah, so every day is like a game of chess with Seldom, Big Dog Chess! 

But jeepers, what a tonic to get away for a while! Don't get me wrong, living here in the British countryside is pretty cool, with a community that's a kind of a club in a way, and everyone here understands it, they get it. And my city friends say, "Well, what do they understand?" And I say, "You wouldn't understand!".

If I was going to give the club a name, I would call it something like 'The Countryside Alliance', and it's basically posh people, and the people who work for them who are happy for the posh people to be in charge, all knitted together. It's a very succinct understanding between them all. The posh people say, "We're in charge, you lot do what we say", and the workers say, "Okay!". And that seems to work really well.

But sometimes I need to get away from it all and head somewhere where I can just rebalance myself mentally and physically. LA, USA. Los Angeles, United States of America.

No siree boy, there is liderally nowhere on earth that can hold a torch to LA apart from maybe, maybe Dubai. By the way, when I'm back over the Atlan'ic, I do pick up the local way of speaking, so you may notice a slight residoo. Yeah, America gets a bad rap over here, but I love it, which is why in the taxi I took to Twitter and said, "Let's share the love, y'all! What is your favourite thing about Uncle Sam?", I would've thought that was a fairly well-known nickname for the US, but apparently not. Lucy in Harwich says, "I don't have an uncle Sam".

Katie from York says, "My favourite thing about my uncle Sam is how he buys us fags and booze from the off-licence while we wait round the corner. Also, he's not really my uncle. He just tells us to call him that when people approach". Aaaww!

Carless... er, or Carlos, says, "Waffles! While, the British kind made by Birds Eye are potato, compacted into a grid formation with clear holes between the lines. In America, they are made with batter, and the grid is merely depressed indentations rather than complete holes. In short, you can see through a British waffle, but you can't see through an American waffle. And for that reason, I prefer American ones". Brilliant tweet.

And actually, I've just had rather a funny idea, because it occurred to me that because some Americans can be more gullible, that Americans can't see through their waffles, and they can't see through waffle. Whereas in Britain, we can see through our waffles, and we can see through waffle! And that struck me as quite funny, and I thought if I do do stand-up I could open my act with that dual-waffle observation. Or I could just give it to one of these new, young stand-up comedians who I'm sure would snaffle that up and possibly improve on it. 

Len in Hunstanton says, "Cowboys". We all love a cowboy. The Stetson-wearing ones, not the sort that come round to your house to fit a shower-tray and say you have to pay for materials in advance. Say they're going to start at 9am, but arrive at 9:30, spend half an hour drinking a tea before starting at 10, then they disappear at 2 o'clock to Screwfix and you don't see them again until 9:30 the next morning. No, Gary Cooper-type cowboys, he means. "I'm a 50-year-old", he said, "And I've recently started riding horses myself. I love to ride bareback, so that the spine of the horse presses into my pudendal nerve, the nerve which carries sensations between the anus-". No... No, that's... No, no. 

Anyway, why am I banging a drum for LA? Well, I didn't want to say this in front of Seldom, and heck, it might be the jet-lag talking, but I am giving serious, serious thoughts to relocating permanently.

Because in LA, life's different. The eight-lane freeways, the shopping malls on every corner. I get off the plane, I just breathe!

No matter how hectic life in Norfolk has become, I get to Los Angeles, stride up Sunset Strip in Aviator Ray-Bans, huge white sneakers and a leather fanny pack, and I can just feel my swagger flooding back into me like hot water into a dormant radiator. And just as a radiator clicks when you switch the heating on, so I click my fingers when I'm in LA, and ideas start flooding thick, and fast, through my veins, like blood through a... like a bleeding radiator? I'm sorry, I'm so tired.

[theme music sting]

When I'm in LA, I have a totally different frame of mind. I ask waiters what dishes they would recommend, something I would never do in an English restaurant. I wouldn't give them the satisfaction!
I like to jump in my rented convertible, drop the roof, elbow out the window, and sit in the rush hour traffic, soaking up the freeway. And though I get back with a red head and a red elbow, I really feel like I'm in the groove. And it's where I first learned to use a raised inflection at the end of sentences.
And whilst I sometimes raise the inflection too early in the sentence, like I'm doing now, I'm getting better at holding off until the last two words? I just like the vibe. It's the city of dreamers.

I remember leaning on the wall of a Starbucks, seeing a guy walk past and I just toasted him with my vanilla ladde and said, "Livin' the dream!", and he held up two fingers. I don't know if he meant a V for victory or if it was a peace sign, but, yeah. Then again, victory and peace are the same thing, as far as I'm concerned. I mean, I can't achieve real peace unless I've been victorious over someone. For example, when someone says, "Between you and I", when they should say, "Between you and me". I point out that it's an error, plain and simple, and once they can see that they were wrong and I am right, I can relax! I'm at peace because I have been victorious. 

[sting; rising synth chord]

Hello, Alan Partridge here. An easy way to remember that grammatical rule is the phrase, "My friend and I would like to dance with you. Would you like to dance with my friend and me?". So it's not, "Me and my friend would like to dance with you. Would you like to dance with my friend and I?", and it's not, "My friend and I would like to dance with you. Would you like to dance with my friend and I?", and it's not, "Me and my friend would like to dance with you. Would you like to dance with my friend and me?", it's the one I said initially. 

"My friend and I would like to dance with you. Would you like to dance with my friend and me?", and that's a phrase I've used on more than one occasion if I'm trying to initiate a three-way dance. Thank you. 

[sting; descending synth chord]

Nobody has jet-lag worse than I do. When other people talk about jet-lag, I can always beat them.

Ultimately I lose because of how it makes me feel, but I sort of win because mine is the worst. Does that make sense? But this time, I eliminated the lag by remaining on UK time for the duration. I didn't plan it, but I got there, lagged to high heaven, and I just thought, run with it, you know? [with an echo] Listen to your body, sorry, I'm in the bathroom. Well, I was running a bath for myself, but Seldom is in here now, so I guess it's for him.

[to Seldom] All right, buddy. All right, matey. Okay.

And it was fine. It was eight hours behind, so I started to get sleepy just after lunch, then generally bed down about 11pm or 3pm, LA time. It meant I never had an evening meal there, and I'd be up and about, ready to start the day at roughly 2am.

Sorry, I'm just going to... turn that off. [Seldom barking] All right. All right. All right, matey! Hop in. It's all right. It's all right. Just turning it off. That's all right! Your bath! Your bath. I'm just going to sit here in the bathroom while Seldom soaks a little.

Yes, I'd get up and jump into my hired Mustang convertible. Although it was still pitch-black outside, I'd hired a convertible, and I was darn well going to convert her. So with the top down, I hit the roads of LA and just cruised it up! By around 4:45am, I'd be ready for lunch, luckily they have 24-hour diners, so apart from the darkness and the slightly-odd clientele, generally a mixture of hookers, hobos and homos, you can get your three meals a day. 

Now, people said to me, but weren't you tired? No, is the answer, because the great thing about US diners, coffee refills are, quote, 'On the house', which is American for they're not charged per se,  though their cost is factored into the pricing structure elsewhere on the menu. So you can drink a dozen coffees for the price of one, and I'd find myself having caffeinated conversations with liderally anyone. 

One day, I sat in a booth and had a great chat with three sex workers who I'd likened to the Golden Girls, and we spent a good couple of hours chatting out the sitcom of the same name. Anyway, come sunrise, I dropped them all off one by one, and I got to the last one, the older one, and she gave me a full kiss on the lips for about thirty seconds. It was a good kiss, really wet!

[background music; digeridoo and tribal drums]

Hello. If you're a listener from overseas who's in a tribe, Pear Tree Productions would like to hear from you for a special episode about people who are in tribes. Please do say hello. Keep your messages short, and make sure it's in English. Thank you.

 

In the words of Sting, I'm an Englishman in LA. You know, I work in the media, I'm creative. You just kind of feed off the sheer invention of the place. It's a land of schemers and dreamers... of mocha ice-creamers. They're very much can-do. You know, in England, if someone had suggested making yet another Spider-Man movie, they'd be scoffed at. "You can't do that!", people would say. In LA, they'd think, "Sod it all to heck, let's do this bitch!". 'You can't do that' just isn't a phrase you hear over here, unless, of course, you say you want to park your own car in the valet parking. And that's what's kept me coming back, because my time in LA hasn't always been about leisure.

My first trip out there was very much about business, and this is where I should introduce a person who's been a real rock to me over the years. Eric Dorfmeyer, or Eric Dorfmeyer, depending on which syllable you prefer to stress. I tend to emphasize the Eric, Eric Dorfmeyer, but that's just me. 

In the fall of '94, I had a fall... from grace. I mean, we all fall from time to time, whether it be slipping on algae-covered paving slabs which haven't been pressure-washed after a bleak winter, or due to the inconsistency in the rise of some steps where the top step is higher than the preceding ones, which actually breaches building regs, but that's another story. But this was a fall from grace.

I'd been asked to leave my job at the BBC after killing a guest on air, I should add that I hesitate to use the word 'killing', I prefer to say that I 'contributed fundamentally to his sad death', either way I found myself with time, but remember, not blood, on my hands. The next morning, I paged my assistant with the question, "What do now?". She simply replied, "LA". Well, I booked my flight (after checking with the police that I was legally allowed to leave the country) there and then. 

It later transpired that my assistant hadn't intended to advise me to go to Los Angeles. In fact, she'd sent the message before she had intended. She'd been attempting to write the words, 'Lanyard Company', a reference to an exciting business opportunity I'd had on the back-burner for some time, with me as the face of the brand and savvy local businessman Daryl Flench running things day-to-day. We strongly believed that we had what it took to take lanyard technology into the 21st century.

In short, we had developed a reusable lanyard. The disposable lanyard industry would have hated it, but we didn't care. You know, we were going to be a thorn in the side of Big Lanyard.

Don't care. Kick over the table. Punk it up, lanyard style!

Yeah, we were going to do online ads with me right up in the lens, with the name of the company on the lanyard, but we couldn't decide on the name. I wanted Big Lanyard. He wanted Lanyard 3000. We just couldn't agree. It got so heated, we went into the car park to have a fight, but we just ended up with two stretched jumpers and some broken lanyard dreams. We're get on great now, I'm godfather to both of his dogs. 

[theme music sting]

Yeah, weird. It all started with a mistake.

My assistant Lynn sent the message after typing the first two letters, her intentions scuppered by fingers as nervous as they are sausage-like, and so it was I found myself boarding a British Airways flight to LAX to take a restorative holiday. It took me a while to get my bearings, I was extremely jet-lagged and found myself at Venice Beach just wandering aimlessly among the muscle-men. A cab driver pulled over, thinking I was lost. I said, "I'm not lost, I've just got nowhere to be, and I'm standing still". He laughed his head off and said, "Can I grab you a coffee?", I thought, "Wow, what a friendly guy!". 

Anyway, as he drove we got chatting. I told him what I did, and he said, "No kidding, I work in TV myself!". Because that man was Eric Dorfmeyer. Turned out he was driving the taxi because that's something he likes to do as a hobby. His real job was as a Hollywood Fixer.

Now, that's a thing we don't really have in the UK, fixers. If you go to the BBC in Salford and say you're a fixer, they'd likely as not to get the caretakers to show you the fuse box! Silly people.
But in LA, fixers make things happen. They're the glue that lubricates the cogs of the Hollywood machine. I've just realised, of course, glue wouldn't actually lubricate anything, it would just snarl up the cogs, potentially destroy the whole machine and make a lot of people very angry. I suppose what I should have said is he's the WD-40, which eliminates moisture from the machinery. 

[sting; rising synth chord]

Hello, Alan Partridge here. WD-40 is so called because it was one of a series of attempts by scientists to develop a formula to disperse water. They achieved it on their 40th attempt. Water-dispersant, 40th attempt. That's right, WD-40! 

[sting; descending synth chord]

And I've got to say, Eric was an awesome guy. He was tanned, well-dressed but, above all, he had good, big teeth. Out of every pore, and remember we were confined in a taxi cab together, he just oozed LA! Before we'd even got to my motel, we'd cut a deal. He'd used his contacts to get me meetings with the top TV networks. His fee would be $10,000, payable in advance. Now, at first, I wasn't sure. Something didn't feel right. I said, "I don't know, something about this doesn't feel right!". But he said to me, "Alan, you seem like a solid kind of a guy, so why don't we say 5K now, the other 5K if we get the commission?". And I thought, "You know, that's pretty good!". If we don't get the commission, he doesn't get the rest! 

In the end, Eric couldn't set up the meetings because they'd had a new switchboard installed at NBC, and everyone had different extension numbers. But in hindsight, that did save me $5,000. So I was grateful to him. 

Didn't actually hear from him again for about two years. Then he called me one day out of the blue.

He said, "Alan, I'm in Thailand. I'm actually here with the head of Thai TV, and he's very interested in one of your show ideas. If you can wire me $5,000, I can secure you a meeting with him when he comes to London next week. This could be big, Alan!", but again, I wasn't sure. 

I said, "Something doesn't feel right". He said, "I'll tell you what, why don't you wire me half now, half when you've had the meeting?", and I thought, "That's pretty good!". If the meeting doesn't happen, I don't have to pay the rest.

After that, I never saw Eric again, and I never will. Because a year later, I bumped into his twin brother who informed me Eric had died. Awful business! He said they were also having problems financing the funeral, and no one wants that at a time of grief. So to ensure that Eric got a good send-off, I gave him everything I had in my money belt, and we hugged. I did get a result, though, which is pending. I pitched an idea to a TV network the other year, it was a travel program in which I crossed the US in a lorry, or truck, as they say.

The commissioner said to me, "Stephen Fry did that in a black London taxi, Ewan McGregor did one on a motorbike. How is your show different?" And I said, "Well, it's what's inside the truck, Gerard!".
He said, "Well, what's inside the truck?", I said, "That's a good question, Gerard. And I'm happy to answer it", but I was stalling, I had no idea.

In the end, I just said cushions. Because everyone loves cushions! "I challenge you," I said, "To find anyone, anyone, who doesn't love a cushion!". By this time, I was up on my feet, pacing around the room. I said, "So I travel around America, meeting people, and as a way of breaking the ice, I say, hey, want a cushion? Because no one has ever been hurt by a cushion. Unless it's Mossad trying to smother an Arab. But these are very much exceptions!". 

He said, "What about the other episodes?". I said, "What about the other episodes?". He said, "What's in them?". I said, "That's a good question, Gerard. And I'm happy to answer it!". Again, I was stalling. I said, "I have loads of ideas for episode one, I was going to be out on horseback with cow wranglers. Just lasso a big cow, knock her off her feet, then, when she's subdued, crouch down next to her face and just go, 'There, girl! There, girl!'. Then I get back on my horse and go, right, shall we do another one?" 

Another one was going to be me in the 'hood. It'd start with me in a plush hotel room, then I'd just stick on my sneakers, mosey on down to the projects. For those who don't know the projects, it's basically their version of Birmingham, or Glasgow. But that was a very animated meeting, and I'm very hopeful about the prospects for Cushion Wagon USA. 

[theme music sting]

I like to travel alone when I travel. Interesting fact about me, I never check luggage, that means check my luggage in. So I just wheel the largest permissible carry-on wheelie bag that can be stowed in an overhead compartment. Yeah, Bear Grylls told me that.

On my last trip to LA, I made the mistake of bringing my assistant with me who, to put it succinctly, is a Colossal style-cramper. She kept referring to the sidewalk as the pavement. Then she was in a restaurant asking for tap water. I said, "Lynn, the term is faucet, or fahcet". Thankfully, I didn't have to endure that 24/7. I was in a business hotel but obviously that wasn't appropriate for my assistant, so I had to book her into a motel on the road out towards the airport.

But the time we did get together was pretty fractious. She'd been banging on about going to a casino, so eventually I relented and we did, though Lord only knows where in the Bible it gives permission for a fundamentalist Baptist to go on the blackjack tables. I was chatting to a waitress with a plunging, backless dress. It had what I can only describe as a hint of buttock cleavage at the base, very erotic actually! And as I was staring at it, it struck me how unerotic it would be to see the same cleavage on an Irishman laying carpet. Curious. 

But I heard a shriek, and when I turned back, I saw that Lynn had won $5,000. She just kept hopping up and down, shouting, "Yee-haw!", and I said, "All right, keep your knickers on!". It's funny, isn't it, when people win money, it changes them. I've never seen anything like it, she was giving away $20 bills to men who came up and spoke to her. She must have given away $400 in an hour at one point. I said, "Is your name Lynn Rockefeller now?". She sort of grunted a laugh and handed me a twenty. I said, "I don't want your filthy lucre!". And I think that upset her. 

I found her a bit later in a shopping mall near a sort of computer-controlled fountain. She'd said a prayer, and she was now feeling a bit regretful about winning the money, she was worried it was going to change her. I put my hand on her shoulder and said, "Lynn, however much I want you to change, I really don't think five grand is going to do it!". And she appreciated that kindness.

About a month later, she told me, "I feel a bit better about the money now, Alan. I spent half on a trip to Rome and gave half away to Age Concern", which meant she'd really just spent it all on herself. 

A couple more of your tweets on what you love about America. Paul Singh says, "My favourite thing about America is Cadillacs. I enjoy looking at long cars, especially those Cadillacs from the 1950s with the big fins on the back that make them look like rockets on their way to the moon!". Interesting fact about Cadillacs that you might like to know, Paul, is that the fins on the front used to be called kidney slitters, an amusing reference to the horrific renal damage they would inflict on pedestrians straying into their path. 

Robin says, "The best thing about America is the national anthem. I adore the melody and hum it in the kitchen when I'm washing up, although it annoys my wife no end". He adds that she is Somalian and lost a family member in a US drone-strike. 

[theme music sting]

Well, it's 24 hours later and I think, in retrospect, I was a little drunk on America, coupled with the jet-lag, and so I'm seeing things a bit more clearly now, because earlier today I was sitting having a pub lunch with a friend in Ipswich and I thought, well, the food's not great, staff are surly, the lighting was bad, there was a fruit machine, chewing gum on the carpet, there was a big, bald man in the corner with a dangerous dog, behind him some discarded, coiled up St George's flag bunting, and the menu's in those maroon, white, clean vinyl folders because they can't be bothered to print out a new menu every day.

But, it's British. And I like it because I am British. Moments later, fresh from the microwave, [match striking] I got a piping-hot lasagne with a pint of Guinness and I thought to myself, it doesn't get more British than this! And then I knew exactly how to end the podcast. 

I decided to let you listen to me lighting a fire in my wood-burning stove. A lot of people have asked about that, so, listen to this now. Listen [sound of fire and wood logs crackling] Listen to the draw on that. Can you hear the draw? You won't get that in LA. I'm Alan Partridge, a British man in a British home, with a British wood burner, burning British wood. Listen to the draw. Good bye.

[closing theme music]