MMM S01E02: Who Does Alan Think Alan Is?

ALAN

This is Alan Partridge on North Norfolk Digital. I'm here with Sidekick Simon, who's about to give us a sideways look at the week's news! 

SIMON

I am.

ALAN

Simon... 

SIMON

Okay. 

ALAN

What have you got for us?

SIMON
What I have is a story about a... a story about a... a story about... a postman, it should be here...

ALAN
He's... he's... he's rapidly rustling, he's leafing through his paper like a man possessed! 

SIMON

I am, I'm like a mad man. What... what's it... I've got...

ALAN
You should turn the corners down on the, er...

SIMON
I did, well, I found it... Yes, I found it and turned the corner down, and then what's happened is it must have come back up. Sorry.

ALAN
You're listen- er... Okay...

SIMON

Sorry, Alan. 

ALAN

You're listening to sidekick Simon. [presses button on sound desk]

JINGLE [clownish sound effects, wacky vocal]

Sidekick Simon, Sidekick Simon! Sidekick Simon, Sidekick Simon! Sidekick Simon, Sidekick Simon! [shave and a haircut, two bits]

ALAN [while the JINGLE is playing]

You've got to find it, find it.

SIMON
Yeah, I've got to find it... 

ALAN

You've got to find it quickly. 

SIMON [still rifling through pages of the newspaper]

It's on the left. It's on the left.

ALAN 

You've got to find it quickly.

[the JINGLE ends, SIMON is still looking]

SIMON
It's on the left... Okay, a beach... well, this is not the one, but a beach litter-pick is being held at Cromer. 

[ALAN looks deeply unimpressed]

SIMON

No? Got it! Okay, so a... Sorry, Alan! 

ALAN

We're in business! 

SIMON

There we go! So a, um... a postman was expected to return to his family home on Friday evening at Aylmerton, but did not arrive and was reported missing that night. Now, my thing is that maybe he will arrive, but at the wrong address, in about three weeks down the line, they'll arrive back, but at the wrong address!

ALAN
Yeah. But his body was found in a canal this morning, that's the thing. 

SIMON [nervous pause] 

So it sort of works!

ALAN
Uh, yeah! [laughs] Well, it's the wrong address, isn't it?

SIMON
Yes, massively. It's in the canal!

ALAN
Okay, right. Just time for news. 

JINGLE [serious male current affairs voice]

The headlines on the hour.

NEWSREADER

The body of a postman, reported missing on Friday...

[cut to black]

 

ALAN [reaching for fax, we can see a drawing of a naked woman through it]

You're listening to Mid Morning Matters with Alan Partridge. Now it's time for Alan Describes Art, in which I attempt to describe a piece of art created and submitted by one of our listeners. Today's comes from Mick Lindop of Heathersett, so here goes. Well, it's a charcoal drawing of a nude lady. She is splayed, let us say, can't go into any more detail than that... And she has a C... D-cup bust, pleasantly curvy elsewhere. All in all, a good body. And Mick entitles this, uh, "Family". Which is a bit odd.

[ALAN shows the picture to the webcam]

  

ALAN

Perhaps it's... perhaps it's his old mum. But... it's an interesting question, when does something stop being art and start being point-blank rude? Interesting topic there, perhaps we'll revisit that. 

[CUT TO: off-air, ALAN and a female studio employee are standing, she is holding a mug]

ALAN

Can I have a coffee, please? Two sugars. Can you make sure you stir it this time? Because last time I ended up with a rather bitter drink, followed by several teaspoonfuls of coffee-infused sugar sludge!

ASSISTANT
I'm sorry about that.

ALAN
I'm not having a go at you. I like you. And the coffee sludge was rather, in and of itself, quite tasty! You could serve it to one of your suitors! Are you being suited at the moment? Suited and booted?Sounds like you've been taken for a meal and then afterwards kicked! Which does happen. I mean, that's the terrible thing.

ASSISTANT
I'll just give it a good stir then. 

ALAN

Yeah, precisely. 

[CUT TO: on-air, ALAN and SIMON present]

 

ALAN

I'll tell you how I met this chap. I had a god-awful day last Tuesday, I was having lunch with an entrepreneur from Nottingham. Let's call him Brian, not his real name, his real name's Keith. And I decided, foolishly, to experiment by trying out a new restaurant. It was just called Williams, and I like the simplicity of the name. So I went in there and I ordered a...

SIMON [interjecting]
Just...

ALAN
What? 

SIMON

Just Williams? 

ALAN

What do you mean?

SIMON
Just William. 

ALAN

Just William?

SIMON

Just... Exactly. Just William. 

[ALAN, nonplussed, gets the reference but dismisses it immediately. SIMON winces]

ALAN

I ordered macaroni cheese. It was awful, I'm sure it was microwaved! I suggested that we partake of some... flagons of foaming ale and quaff merrily, whereupon we alighted the... I'm going to stop being a presenter from the past now. We went in and we decided to quaff... I'm doing it again! We went in a pub...

SIMON

We had a beer.

ALAN

...and had a pint of bitter. We had two pints of bitter. But when I went in there, this guy here [thumb-pointing to SIMON] had me on the floor! Shoot me a pearl. Shoot me one of your pearls. 

SIMON

So, something from the pub or...

ALAN
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SIMON
Naked chess match? 

ALAN

What? 

SIMON

Shall I do the one about the naked chess match?

ALAN
No, don't do that. What was the thing when your friend phoned up? 

SIMON

Darren? Oh, so Darren phoned...

ALAN
His friend phoned up because his wife had just given birth to a baby. 

SIMON

Yes.

ALAN
Take... Hit it. 

SIMON

Yes, take it away. So Darren's wife had given birth to a baby and I put the phone down and I said to you, she's just given birth, and she's given birth to some pastry, I think I said, and some cheese and some eggs. And I said to you, guess what she's called? And yeah, you didn't know. And I said Lorraine. 

ALAN

Yeah. Because it was a quiche.

SIMON

Because it was a quiche, the name is Lorraine. 

ALAN

Lorraine. Quiche Lorraine! That was the joke. And I said, imagine the midwife taking all this pastry and hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot, hot ham and cheese and pastry out from the crevice of a woman. Do you write sketches? 

SIMON

No.

ALAN
Okay. We'll, let's have a bit of Duran Duran after that, and listen to the dulcet tones of Simon le Bon, which is actually French for Simon the Good.

[ALAN pushes a slider up, Girls on Film by Duran Duran plays. Cut to black]

 

[SIMON is relegated to the rear banquette as his seat is filled by HENRY SPRING, a balding middle aged man in a cheap shirt and tie, he has a stack of loosely-arranged documents in front of him]

ALAN

I see you're very well prepared, all your papers and notes. [to SIMON] Simon. Now it's time for, who does Alan think Alan is?

JINGLE [pastoral oboe and piano  music, female voice]

[taken aback] Who do you think you are? 

ALAN

Just to explain, the sense of that line was not properly explained to the voiceover artist before she went into the booth, by the time I found out she was already in a cab. A complete waste of thirty quid, she sounds like she's been touched on a bus! My main guest today is one of the genealogists from BBC1's 'Who Do You Think You Are?', please welcome Henry Spring.

HENRY
Hello! Our journey begins with your great-grandmother, Annie Partridge. Do you remember her?

ALAN
I do. Granny Annie. She died when I was a toddler, she used to make me Chucky Egg, egg and butter chopped up in a bowl. You can add that to your files, Send it to the boys at W-D-Y-T-Y-A-H-Q. Who Do You Think You Are Headquarters.

HENRY
Ah! Well, like many women of her time, she was a stay-at-home mum, wasn't she? 

ALAN

She was unemployed, yes. 

HENRY

But what you might not know, is that if we delve one generation further back, we find she had an aunt who lived quite near here. So that would have been your great-great-aunt.

ALAN
It's fascinating. Please tell me more.

HENRY
She lived in a semi-detached house in Sheringham at the very end of the 19th century.

ALAN
That must have been one of the first semi-detached houses in Norfolk.

HENRY
Not in Norfolk, but it may have been one of the first in Sheringham.

ALAN
But that's still fascinating! It sends a shiver down your spine!

SIMON
Do you want me to get you a...

[ALAN gestures at SIMON to stop talking]

ALAN
Rest in peace, great-great-great-aunt... What was her name? 

HENRY

We don't know. We just have the initial E. 

ALAN

Rest in peace, Mrs. E... Was she married?

HENRY
We don't know that either. 

ALAN

Rest in peace, E. Partridge. 

[ALAN pushes a jingle, he takes his headphones off and turns to SIMON]

JINGLE [audio whoosh, male voice]

North Norfolk Digital. North Norfolk's best music mix.

ALAN

What was the joke you were going to do?

SIMON
I was just going to say, shall I go and get you a hot water bottle, when you said you had a chill in your spine.

ALAN
Oh yeah. [weak chuckle] I think I was right to stop you though.

SIMON
Oh, yeah.

[the JINGLE ends with dramatic alternating synth chords, ALAN puts his headphones back on]

ALAN
Henry, I'm right, am I not, that my distant relative was involved in perhaps one of the most important pieces of town planning that Norwich has ever seen? 

HENRY

Well, he worked in the Office of Town Planner. 

ALAN

Changing what was Dearing Square into what is now Dearing Lane.

HENRY
They effectively made it a thoroughfare, yes. 

ALAN

I mean, it's just, it's amazing. I mean, the number of times I've parked on that road, never knew. I mean, I know it's loading only, but you park there after six, they never get you. I almost feel like crying.

HENRY

Certainly made getting into the centre of town that bit more straightforward.

ALAN

[scoffs] And the rest! If it weren't for Dearing Lane, you'd have to come in along the ring road! I mean, it's just amazing that a... an ancestor of mine had to wrestle with that awful decision! I mean, on the one hand, you know, the Square gave people somewhere to sit, a respite from the frenetic pace of life in Norwich. And yet on the other, I mean, direct access to Hobbs Road must have been like ... the Promised Land to civil engineers, cutting journey times from the east half of the city in half! He was caught between a rock and a hard place! It must have been ruddy hard. I sent a shiver down my spine. Another one! 

[ALAN gestures to SIMON not to join in]

ALAN

That's the second one in half an hour, I almost feel like I should get a hot water bottle to reheat my spine! 

[CUT TO: ALAN, alone in the studio, looking through a stack of papers atop the sound desk, before cutting back to the On Air conversation]

ALAN

Now, a little genealogical bird tells me that there's a bit of a dark horse in the Partridge Clan, a bit of a loose cannon...

HENRY
Yes. His name is...

ALAN [interrupting]
A black sheep! That's the third one.

HENRY
...Edmund Partridge. He was around until the... late 1880s. Had a spell in prison...

ALAN [admonishing tone]

Did he now...?

HENRY
...for debt. And then he moved to France, Paris, where he died.

ALAN
Yeah. He sounds like a right rum 'un! And what sort of roguery befell him? Was it, what, a brawl in a brasserie, how did he meet his maker? What was the cause of death?

HENRY
Well, the coroner's report says the cause of death was syphilis.

ALAN
Right. You can make eye contact with me when you say that. I haven't got syphilis. 

HENRY

Sorry.

ALAN
You're looking away like that. [ALAN grabs the 'Family' drawing from earlier away from HENRY's view] This has nothing to do with it. You should be careful bandying around causes of death, willy-nilly!

HENRY
The coroner's report does state it, so we can be pretty sure. 

ALAN

If I was going on a man's radio show to accuse one of his ancestors of a sex disease, I'd want to be more than pretty sure! I'd want to be the next one up, which... presumably is uber-sure!

HENRY

OK, then we're uber-sure. 

ALAN [annoyed]

Why are you doing this?! I have sponsors who will walk away like [clicks fingers] that if they get a sniff of VD!

HENRY
Well, you asked me to look into it, so... 

ALAN

How would you like it if I said your great-grandmother soiled herself at George Formby's house... and had a hump? 

HENRY

She wouldn't, and she didn't.

ALAN [to SIMON]
You have a... Use one of your sense of humours, your jokes on him.

SIMON
Well, I can do but a minute ago you were telling me to shut up! 

ALAN

Well I've changed my mind! 

SIMON [to HENRY]

You come on here and you start dragging the Partridge name through the muck... Who do you think you are?!

ALAN
That is the best joke you've done all day! Absolut- six of those a show and you're away! [turning to the sound desk] Keep your clubs away from his young. It's Seal!

[ALAN fades music up as we cut to black]