S03E11: Wake

[opening theme music]

Just get a piece of bread, scoop, spread on the slice, and boom! Onto the next. 

Bread, scoop, spread, boom.

Bread, scoop, spread, boom. 

I can do it quicker than I can say it! [laughs] Great fun! 

Bread, scoop, spread, boom.

Bread, scoop, spread, boom. 

I can do this with my eyes closed. Ah, shit, I've got it on my tie. It's all good, it's all good. Hello, and welcome to, From the Oasthouse, where I'm buttering slice after slice of cheap white bread. I say buttering, the spread I'm using is a 2kg tub of Stork margarine, a post-war baking fat made from palm oil and water. Brings back many happy memories for many people. 

Not what I tend to buy these days, but this ain't my kitchen, and it wasn't my decision. Of course, the fondly remembered butter substitute has little to no nutritional value, but it's there more as a lubricant to facilitate mastication than provide flavour for the dry mouths of the aged.

I've got to say, when it comes to friendly, no-nonsense, unpretentious matter to fill your stomach, you can't beat it. Just depends on what attitude you're adopting on any given day, some people regard it as cheap and cheerful, others regard it as just plain, nasty margarine.

What's going on? Well, I'm here to help cater for a wake. I'm in my assistant's kitchen, and the place is abuzz with cardigan-clad women and cheap cakes. If there was such a thing as a Jihadi Mr. Kipling, this would surely be his idea of the reward awaiting in paradise after visiting a large-scale atrocity on millions of innocent people, which some may argue is exactly what he's done with his selection of long-lasting and exceedingly good, er... cakes? Yeah, cakes, just about. 

The nosh at a wake has to be the bleakest meal a person can experience. So, as well as spreading cheap margarine, I'm trying to spread a little positivity.

Okay, so who's died? Well, regular listeners to this podcast may have heard me mention a woman called Moira, who in recent months has become a firm friend of my assistant Lynn. Theirs is a friendship that had burned very brightly, very quickly. Like magnesium. If you can imagine a piece of magnesium chatting away to another piece of magnesium at a hairdressers. 

Unfortunately, they are no longer friends. Moira passed away last week, effectively ending the friendship by virtue of not being alive anymore. The combination of an incredibly sedentary lifestyle with a high-cholesterol diet, rich in lasagne and custard, finally caught up with her. She was 80. Not bad, not bad for... someone who ate whatever she wanted, and moved around very little for eight decades, wow! 

Lynn had high hopes for the partnership, she saw them becoming as celebrated as Rosemary and Thyme, or Scott and Bailey. They used to refer to themselves, jokingly, as Starsky and Hutch, which made them laugh. 

I mean, I thought it warranted no more than a quick smile, so I made it slightly more humorous, I just referred to them as 'Starkey and Crutch'. So Lynn gave me that sort of quizzical, puzzled look. And I said, "Well, Moira is Crutch, obviously, because she uses a crutch on account of her type 2 diabetes, and you're Starkey because, of course, you share many of the right-wing views of Professor David Starkey", and she just nodded. And... I think he's the only gay she likes.

Happier times, because I'm afraid Lynn has not taken it well, but then she is prone to moroseness. As her employer, I feel it is incumbent on me to shepherd her through the long reeds of distress.
I remember when her mother died, I insisted she take 36 hours off, whether she liked it or not. The allotted hours could be taken at any time in the first month, but in units of no more than three hours at a time. Any longer than that, and the grief could turn into wallowing self-pity.

The Flexi-Grief system, as I coined it, worked well, but Lynn seems to have been winded, really winded, by Moira's death, more than that of her mother. She doesn't need time, I think, so much as purpose. Give her a goal, and she'll direct her energies towards that, leaving no bandwidth for moping, sulking, or huffing, let alone puffing. 

As I explained to her, I said, if we assume that around ten percent of your daily energy reserves are lost through huffing and puffing, and you perform ten tasks a day, then... if all the puffs and huffs were eliminated, you'd be able to carry out one extra task each day with no additional expenditure of effort. 

And she replied that what my theory did not take into account were the less easy-to-qualify psychological benefits of huffing and puffing, namely the release of endorphins and serotonin, which act as a countervailing force against energy depletion, meaning the net benefits of eliminating vocal expressions of emotional fatigue, huffing and puffing, she said, were so negligible as to be not worthy of consideration.

Yes, she's not in a good place. So, as a duty of care, I need to busy her. So, to that end, I've sent her out to B&Q to buy a big bag of 4-inch gyroscopular screws. Now, obviously, there's no such thing as gyroscopular screws, 'gyroscopular' isn't even a word, but the important thing is, Lynn doesn't know that, and she'll bustle from B&Q to HomeBase to Wickes, to every local hardware store, muttering the word 'gyroscopular', like a rabbi muttering... whatever it is they mutter at the Wailing Wall, hell-bent on finding the fictional product until it's time to come home, and that should distract her from what Churchill called the 'Black Dog of Sadness'. 

Although every dog to me is a Black Dog of Sadness, because it reminds me of my ex-dog, Seldom. Yeah, still not got over that, got to be honest. I did try to get another dog to replace Seldom, but... yeah, I don't know, it just... it just wasn't the same. Had the dog escorted from the premises. 

Moira's passing is doubly sad, because as she went cold, so did the trail in our pursuit of my friend, Michael. Moira had been the driving force behind that investigation, having the free time I lacked, and the broadband speeds my assistant could only dream of. You'll remember, in a previous episode, we tracked a man resembling Michael to a resort in the Algarve. Well, it was Moira who phoned the manager of the resort.

He said the man no longer worked there, and was unable to say if his name was even Michael. Now, did that put Moira off? Not a bit of it. You know, when Moira got her teeth into something, she was like a dog with a bone, or Seldom with another dog, or a swan once.

But, through sheer tenacity, she got hold of what she believed was a UK phone number for Michael. Alas, as she jotted down the number, it seems she overexerted herself in the excitement, and before the ink had even dried, her heart gave out, and she was found face down on her writing pad. So by the time Lynn arrived, the desk had been cleared of her notes, but incredibly, the ink from the phone number had come off on her cheek.

With her family's permission, Lynn was able to copy the number 0118 0111510, er... 0118 being the area code for Reading. Ironic, as Reading, or reading, was something Michael had always hated. 

The following day, Lynn and I gathered round the phone, I dialled, and nothing. The number wasn't in use. We'd reached the end of the road, a cul-de-sac. Clearly, Moira had been given a bum lead. A sign, perhaps, that this just wasn't meant to be. Lynn rallied against it, sniffing, "It's not supposed to end this way!", you can imagine. But I sat her down and I explained that sometimes, sometimes, you don't get the ending you want. Things don't always come to a satisfying crescendo.

Sometimes things are messy, they fizzle and taper and dangle and flop. Look at the end of my marriage. I'd imagined an almighty showdown that would bring things to a head, maybe Carol would come back to collect a few things, leaving her fitness instructor boyfriend in the car. We'd exchange a few curt words, and before long, insults would fly, years of pent-up hostiligy coming out of the mother of all quarrels. 

We'd shout and shout, and our faces getting closer and closer, until suddenly, we'd be kissing. A big snog, full of 'Mmm!' noises, then silence. Carol would gather her things up, her voice breaking, and say, "I have to go!". I'd say, "Tell me you didn't feel it, Carol! Tell me that kiss wasn't electric. It wasn't just electric, Carol. It was electronic, ie. it was a kiss from the future! Our future!". 

Her hand would be on the door handle, and she'd turn to look at me. Cut to the car, waiting outside. All of a sudden, my Rover 800 smashes through the garage door and Carol and I zoom past the young fitness fanatic in his shit Maestro 1.3, and drive off, heading to our favourite campsite in Anglesey for a brilliant long weekend where we'd visit Beaumaris Castle, marvel at the Menai Suspension Bridge, and make love on the beach at Red Wharf Bay, where the rudimentary designs for a go-anywhere vehicle constructed from excess aeronautical panels were first sketched in the sand by two young engineers. Sound like a couple of nut-jobs? What if I told you they'd just invented the Land Rover? 

But in reality, when Carol came back for her things I was watching Smokey and the Bandit with the volume up on the downstairs TV, and didn't even hear she was in the house! It was only the next day when I went to have a sad look at her knickers in the drawer that I realized her knickers had gone. There was just one pair left. I tried to tear them apart but, unfortunately, Carol always bought strong knickers. In the end, I kept it as a rag to check the oil on the car. It was all her knickers deserved. 

Was it the ending I wanted? No. But, was it the ending I needed? Again, no. Same with my second stint at the BBC. After my final show, I stewed and stewed, fantasizing about that year's last night of the proms and imagining a bit where, during Land of Hope and Glory, the conductor suddenly stops the orchestra, turns to face the audience. People look at each other and say, "What the hell is going on?!".

Then the conductor removes his glasses and wig and moustache to reveal it's me, Alan Partridge, in disguise. I snap the baton and just say, "Show's over!", and the entire orchestra follows as I just walk out of the building. Well, everyone goes ballistic! It's an amazing moment and has the BBC top-brass thinking, "We messed with the wrong guy there. And I didn't know he could conduct. Amazing!". Unfortunately, I couldn't figure out how to logistically achieve any of those things, and the most I did to inconvenience the BBC was pay my TV license with a cheque.

I guess... the Michael thing was a bit like that. Lynn might have longed for a big climax... hmm...  a final instalment, more in keeping with the drama of previous episodes, but life's not like that! Is it the ending Audible wanted? Absolutely not, They've been very vocal about that. They actually wanted me to lie and make a better ending but I told them, if they wanted me to lie, they'd either have to kill me or up my fee. But, sometimes, you have to make do with something smaller and sweeter.

A simple podcast about the pleasure of making a sandwich. Don't forget, things can be metaphors. Because Lynn's agreed to host a wake for some forty guests later today. 

So, with her scouring Norfolk for gyroscopular hardware, I've agreed to help with the sandwiches. For most of us, funeral sandwiches are provided by a professional caterer or bought in a plastic-domed platter from M&S. But this send-off is very much at the budget-end of the market, a product of Moira having no funeral plan and not very good pension and not buying a second home in the '90s. 

So, instead, friends and acquaintances are rallying around and mucking in. Got a bit of a production-line set-up, haven't we, girls? 

"Yes".

"Yes".

They're my partners in catering, Julia and... sorry, I've forgotten your name? 

"Nadine". 

Julia and Nadine, both 70. Yeah, we have a good system going on. I take the bread, liberally apply Stork. It may be grey in colour, but it's cheap and it is soft-making, spreading an absolute breeze. I think someone once told me it's fifty percent plastic, and that deluxe, high-gloss masonry paint has more edible food content than Stork, I'm sure that's not entirely true. 

The Storked bread is passed on to Julia, Julia applies a splodge of egg mayo or a crumple of ham, then plonks the second piece of bread on top. If it were me, I'd give it a blast of salt and pepper first. But Julia used to be a dinner lady, and I can honestly say I have never seen a dinner lady season food. And maybe today, that's as it should be. Grievers tend to want the gentle caress of only the blandest foods. Certainly seems to be the case. 

Interesting question, have you ever used Tabasco at a wake? 

Julia passes the sandwich to Nadine, wielding the bread knife like a permed samurai, she slices the sandwich, rents the two halves asunder and places them central-side up on the tray. We ironed out a few crinkles already.

No two sandwich makers will ever be the same, but I've insisted on two things. One, distribute the sandwich filling evenly. Anyone who's ever bought a sandwich from Boots will be wary of a practice known as 'central packing', an all-too-common ruse that sees the filling bunched into the centre of the sandwich, when sliced through the middle and presented in cross-section it gives the illusion of a plump, generously-filled sandwich. It's only after buying one that you find the filling tapers at the edges down to a barren tundra of unoccupied bread. I don't want these mourners facing the additional blow of an underwhelming sandwich, they've been through enough. Sandwich makers, stop fucking us around! 

The second rule I say to Julia and Nadine, cut the sandwich on a diagonal. You're not ten years old! Cut the sandwich diagonally! 

We make for an efficient production line, me and these ladies, toiling away like a prison chain gang, although hard to imagine neither of these girls committing a crime seriously enough to warrant an ankle chain, let alone a custodial sentence with hard labour, or any crime, really. I mean, at a push, you could just about picture Nadine's glassy smile as she empties a hot-chip pan over a neglectful husband. 

Julia would be more hardened. With her bleached blonde hair and gold jewellery, she looks like the matriarch of an East End crime family. You can imagine her using a cigarette to light a Molotov cocktail before tossing it casually through the window of a black Range Rover containing the bodies of a rival family. 

No, they're good girls, they're good girls, and a pleasure to make sandwiches with. And, hey, I'm happy to do whatever I can today. If Lynn wants me to say a few words, happy to do that. I'm very good at making a generic speech about a dead person who I don't know very well. I have delivered eulogies before, last time was on the death of Prince Philip. It's one of those things, isn't it, people always say, "Do you know where you were when you heard of Prince Philip's death?", and, of course, everyone knows, don't they, exactly where they were when they heard about the death of Prince Philip. 

Yeah, it was Men's Day at the Racquets Club when the news came through that His Royal Highness, the Duke of Edinburgh, had passed away. A ball boy came running in, his eyes filled with tears, words spilling out of his mouth. We told him, "Hey, hey, calm down, calm down, speak clearly". He said, "Sir, His Royal Highness Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, he is no more, Sir". Obviously, we thought it was a joke. Prince Philip is indestructible. The guy's like a geriatric Terminator.

But it soon began to dawn on people that Philip was actually gone. I was thunderstruck. People were wandering around in a daze, nothing seemed to make sense, how- how could this have happened? The racquets fell silent that day. Squash balls, shuttlecocks, tennis balls lay un-thwacked. People were just numb, you know? I mean, they should have fallen silent anyway, this was during COVID lockdown, so it wasn't technically meant to be open. But even so, it was weirdly quiet. I just thought, someone's got to say something here. I found myself clinking a coffee cup with a teaspoon or... maybe a teacup with a coffee spoon, I can't remember. 

I was pretty numb too. And standing on the reception desk, which you're not really allowed to do, I said, "Guys, we lost a great man today. He wasn't just the Duke of Edinburgh, he was also Prince Philip. And he wasn't just the Duke of Edinburgh, he was the Duke of Hearts. I mean, the organ, not the county. We'd all been hoping he'd make one hundred, of course, just to see if the Queen would post him a telegram or ... pass it across the breakfast table".

"T'was not to be. He lived for damn near one hundred years, and if we can keep his memory alive, we can keep him alive for a hundred more! Goodnight, sweet prince! To me, you were more than a prince. To me, you're the bloody King of England!". 

I could feel my voice trembling so I stopped, and in the gap, someone, I don't know who, just a lone voice started to sing Candle in the Wind. I think it was Bill Titchell, actually. And, god, I'm getting goose bumps. The room was soon filled with the sound of thirty men who, as I say, should really have been at home because of lockdown, singing an ode to a great, great man. If they weren't weeping, they were singing. If they weren't singing, they were weeping.

As I speak, I have reached the end of the last loaf. Biiiiiig helping of Stork! Slather it rrrright the way to the edges... and it's all yours, Julia. Job done. Quite the spread!

Lynn's house hasn't entertained this many people since she came back from holiday to find her nephew Tim using her house for one of his chemsex parties. Oh, poor guy. He lost his way. Lynn was flummoxed, to say the least. I said, "Just have the place fumigated", but Lynn would have none of it.
Being no nonsense, she simply called the parish exorcist, Stephen Shaw, who popped over with a jerrycan of holy water and set to work. 

We've got egg sandwiches, ham sandwiches, shop-bought sausage rolls, served cold and dry, traditional way, and there are chicken drumsticks looking like Andrew Marr when he wears his shorts. Then for afters, there's a legion of Kipling cakes, a bowl of Smarties, a huge salad bowl filled to the top with Wotsits, and at the very centre of the table is a cake on which someone has tried to print Moira, but it actually says, is Ariom, with the R backwards. 

I think what they've done is they've carved her name into a potato, dipped it into the chocolate icing and used it as a stamp. The simple task of reverse engineering, of having to flip the text before it's printed, is simply beyond the skills of these poor daft women.

Reversing the text. Oh my god! The phone number that they pressed, the phone number that was pressed onto Moira's face! We didn't reverse the number! It wasn't 0118 011510. It was [dialling] 0151 108110! 

Oh, my God, I've cracked it! This is like the Da Vinci Code, the best book ever written. [number unavailable tone] Oh, out of service.I really thought that would work. 

[Julia] "Maybe the five's back to front as well".

They're all back to front.

"No, if it's lowered, then maybe the number five is actually a two". 

0121? But that's a Birmingham number. I mean, why would he... voluntarily... I mean, if you go into Birmingham, you're going to need a damn good reason! I'll try 0121, then. 

[TouchTone keypad dialling] [ringing]

Oh, my God, it's ringing. I think I might have solved it. 

No, he's absolutely going to hate... [phone picks up]

Hello? 

"Hello?".

Michael? 

"Aye?".

Oh, my God. Michael, it's Alan. 

"Sharples?".

No, Alan Partridge!

"Oh! Oh, hello Mr Partridge".

Yeah, that's me, yeah. I knew you'd remember! Oh, my God, I can't believe I'm talking to you! 

[Michael, flatly] "Aye".

I can't believe it's actually you. Hang on, I'm just going to pop you on speakerphone. I'm with two women.

[more animated] "Haha! Ya dirty get! Hey, save the ugly one for me!".

Michael, they can hear you. You're on speakerphone. 

"Oh, right. Sorry!".

It's actually you. You didn't drown, then? 

"Me? No, no". 

Are you all right? 

"Aye".

Well, I'm glad, because we used to have fantastic chats, didn't we? 

"Oh, aye, champion!". 

Yeah, yeah, fantastic chats. I was telling the listeners all about them. I have a podcast now. 

"What's a podcast?".

You don't know what a podcast is? 

"No". 

You don't know... You've never heard of a podcast? 

"No". 

It's online audio conte- It doesn't matter, how the devil are you? 

"Aye, I'm just eating some toast".

Just trying to think of where to... You've probably got a million bloody questions for me as well. 

"Aye". [pause] "Well, what's a podcast?".

I mean, about me, Michael.

"Oh. I cannae think, like". 

Yeah, I'm just buttering some bread with... I say butter, it's a cheap butter substitute which I'm not keen on, did you ever like Stork? I can't remember. 

"Stork? No, not really. I've got to eat that Olivia shite, 'cos me cholesterol's, like, oot through the roof, you know?".

Yeah. 

"Ha. D'you remember that, 'Can you tell the difference between Stork and butter'? Eeesh. Ya stopped me in the street for that, you get?".

I mean, we should definitely talk again sometime. I could take you for a drink. We could get together. 

"Aye, in a bit, aye. I've just got to deal with this fella. I'm keeping his digger at the back". 

Right. Why is that? 

"Well, cos he wouldn't pay us".

Well, and what for? 

"Well, for digging a hole. Pay us for that, and then he can have his digger back". 

Well, I hope you resolve it.

"Well, we won't until he gets out". 

Right. Is he locked up? 

"Aye".

Imprisoned? 

"No, in the back, with the dogs". 

Oh, Michael, we've got so much to talk about. 

"Oh, I've got some stories, aye. Loads saved up, like". 

I don't doubt it. I don't... That's exactly what I wanted to hear!

"Anyway, nice chatting and that. Bye!". [hangs up]

Wow, that was amazing! I've got goose bumps again now. 

[instrumental theme music]

[Lynn's voice] Is this recording? Oh, yeah. 

Dear Audible, please find enclosed the credits for From the Oasthouse podcast, series three.

From the Oasthouse was written by Steve Cogan, Neil Gibbons and Rob Gibbons. 

Starring Steve Cogan, Felicity Montagu, Simon Greenall, Yusuf Kokur and Lourdes Faberes. 

Also featuring Martin Coogan, Joe Fraser, Rob Gibbons, Elaine Gibbons, Anna Stockton, Romy Quinnen, Kwame Speed, Dave Lambert, Sarah Crystal, Ted Dowd, Pauline Connor, Daisy Connor, Olly Slack and Louis Tuckwell.

Directed by Neil Gibbons and Rob Gibbons. 

Produced by Joe Fraser. 

Sound recorded by Will Whale.

Edited by Jonathan Cronin and Joe Fraser.

Sound design and mix by Sounds Like These. 

Music by Martin Coogan.

Head of production for Baby Cow, Xinyi Liu. 

Production coordinators; Chloe Patterton and Emily Betts. 

For CH Podcast, the executive producer was Louise Bury.

For Audible, the executive producer was Sam Bryant. 

The production executive was Hayley Nathan and the commissioning editor was Sam Bryant. 

I'm sending this over to you, Alan, just in case you had any thoughts. But I'm really happy with that. 

[closing theme song]