S04E06: Downton

Okay Lynn, use the sat-nav to get back to Norwich, yeah? 

"I know!". 

I know you don't like her voice, but she's there to help. I'll be home by nightfall! 

[car engine struggling]

Fan belt slipping! She won't know what that noise is, she may well think it's in her head. And the car's not... hardly likely to overheat, the way she drives it.

Hello! Or should I say, hello. You join me in a new type of walking expedition, one that adds a certain frisson to my regular strolls, an element of danger. I call it my Black Ops Ramble. Why Black Ops? Because it involves me getting dropped behind enemy lines in a hostile county. Not a hostile country, but a hostile county. In this case, Suffolk.

Suffolk, very much Norfolk's poor cousin. Or brother. Or both, that's the sad thing. No, but that's a much bigger topic, but you do, I'll tell you, you do see some funny faces. I've driven to a random location, left by the roadside, and with a rucksack full of essentials, and a bum bag full of Minstrels, as they don't melt. They do melt on the inside, but the outside shell contains any mess, so that you break through it with your teeth.

You either chew on the chocolate if it's cold, or if it's warm, the chocolate just slides down your throat. It's almost like cracking through a small brown egg with a chocolate yolk that bursts into your mouth. You know, just good.

Black Ops... brown chocs... beige socks... white... hat. Yeah, good podcast. So how does it work? Well, I've driven to this random location, and I ramble myself back home! It's not life or death, I might be slightly overplaying the friction between the rival counties. Norfolk and Suffolk aren't officially on a war footing, but unofficially there's a very real Cold War going on.

And as someone intimately linked to Norfolk, I'm not what you'd call welcome. I mean, I've never been subject to violence by any Suffolk lads, but I was once collared at a charity sports day, and under the guise of horseplay, I was trussed up like a turkey by the Ipswich Round Table tug-of-war team. Very mean men! Very mean men. 

So how does Black Ops Ramble... sorry, how does a Black Ops ramble work? Well, once my assistants have chosen a random point to set me down, I'm left alone, and I need to think fast. We don't use mobile phones or sat-nav technology. This is a strictly OS, Ordinance Survey. I have to use the topography I see around me. Might be a road or a church. Reading the contours of a hillock to pinpoint my location. Map an exit route, then navigate myself to safety. I have to say, the satisfaction that comes from orienteering your way back home is immeasurable!

Other people like to be told what to do by the robot voice of a sat-nav, albeit a sexy one. Rather stern, female sat-nav robot voice. Okay, so I can see here there's a straight road to my north, with another more wiggly road coming off it at a right angle, let me check the map. There's absolutely loads of them. No help whatsoever. Any other identifying features? Not really. That's Suffolk for you. I guess I'll just pick a direction and walk, which is something you can do until you find your bearings. You will do. You will do. You know, it's good to come to new places.

As much as I love Norfolk, I've been there and done it. You realise, you know every bend of the road, every creak of the stile, every lay-by picnic area and dogging hotspot, often one and the same place, which can either add something or spoil what you're eating, for either group. But this is as fresh and new as the pat of cow dirt I'm jumping over... now! [concerted leap] 

Hello. 

[passer-by] "Hiya".

I was just jumping over some dung. A cow soiled herself on the floor. 

"Alright".

Can I pet your dog? 

"Yes". 

[pause while Alan pets a dog]

Okay, bye!

"Bye".

Yeah, he's walked off. Quite a curt goodbye there. Not even goodbye, just sort of bye, bye. Might have just been a burp. You're listening to Audible. 

[theme music sting]

Well, I'm pretty sure I've identified my location. The county line should be about four clicks due north. It's just a matter of putting in the hard yards and yomping my way home. That's the one thing about a Black Ops ramble, it's great for getting your steps in. Anyway, to Norfolk, and if my orienteering skills are up to scratch, then I should be approaching a canal. 

Oh, no, I've ballsed up. What's this then? A big house. Very grand. Very Downton Abbey. You can imagine Lord Julian Fellowes dining in a home like that. Napkin tucked under his collar, sucking the meat from a lobster claw. Clarified butter all over his jowls. 

Oh, God. Ah, shit. You can probably hear, sorry for saying shit, the heavens have opened, as it were, and it's like heaven's waters have broken. It really is very heavy! I'm going to put this rucksack over my head. The kind of busy, battering, sideways northern rain, against which an umbrella is all but useless. It's the kind you get when those fat grey clouds just let go, which accounts for the rather sullen attitude of the Gallagher brothers, for example.

I'm going to try the house, see if I can get some shelter until the worst of it passes. If Lord Fellowes' celebrated TV drama is anything to go by, I've no doubt the Lord and Lady of this manor would be only too happy to extend a hand of kindness to the hoi-polloi, especially a wet one like me.

No, your Corbynites don't want to hear it, but people who live in stately homes are, by and large, lovely people who are more than happy to open their estate to the public for twenty-eight days a year, partly because they want ordinary people to enjoy their house, and partly so the property will be exempt from inheritance and capital gains tax. And thanks to their largesse and prudent approach to tax avoidance, anyone can visit, even those who wear trainers and pierce their children's ears. 

I'm just trying to find the door of this place. Actually, I'm not sure anyone is home. Hello?! Hello? It does seem strangely quiet. Hello?! And I can see a lot of the ground floor windows are boarded up, much like a Woolworths. Access denied, no room at the inn, in the words of the Jewish hoteliers who famously spurned the Christ-child when they didn't know who he was going to be! Can't blame them, really. 

If someone came to my house in a donkey, I'd tell them to piss off. I'm not sure I'd even let them stay in the garage, because that's where I keep my MG. So there's an awning here, there's some sort of rear door, loose boarding hanging off slightly. I don't see many concerned neighbours, I must say. In Norwich, it would be a different story, we look out for one another. Norwichians are no softies when it comes to standing up for what's right.

Some locals near my home came together recently to corner a peeping Tom, and mete out some swift justice. I mean, it turned out to be just a window cleaner in the end, but he survived, and they had a whip round for him. He's got the blue badge now, he can park anywhere.

But here, I can't see a soul. I wonder if I can jemmy that open. I'll just use this. Jemmy, of course, one of those old petty crime words that seem to have fallen out of favour once upon a time. You would jemmy a window open, chin up a drainpipe, bludgeon the resident. Now you prise the window, climb the drainpipe, and batter the guy! Right, I'm in! 

[passage of time pause]

Oh, that's better. I'm glad I wore my plastic poncho, which also doubles as a heat-retaining garment. It's silver, so from a hundred yards away, I may look like the Tin Man, or some sort of invented enemy for Batman. But my clothes are dry, and I've retained heat, so I just do not care.

Here we are. Now, this is quite something. I, Alan Partridge, find myself in a stately home, my circumstances due, in no small part, to the weather without. And it feels right! It feels right. Just like it felt right when my divorced friend Gareth moved into a YMCA, it just worked. Hello? Hello?! 

I know we see these big old haunted houses, you know, spoofed in Scoopy-Doo, but that doesn't really capture the atmosphere. Not for me, not really. What an odd feeling, very eerie. It's as if it's been deserted in a hurry. The furniture's still here, albeit covered with sheeting. Bits and bobs lying around. Big mattress, there. Yeah, no stains on it. Oh, no, they're a good sort here. Oh, no, there is a stain. Yeah, you gotta have fun, haven't you? Why would they disappear? It's interesting, it's like a mystery. Well, it is literally a mystery. Picture of a boy there. Looks quite young. Perhaps he's the reason why. Looks quite confident.

Maybe he's a bit too confident. Probably the youngest son, no more than 18, gets a little boisterous after a few pints in town. Meets a local girl, knows just what to say, compliments her on her smile. She's in awe, can't believe he's noticed her. They go for a walk, he puts a flower in her hair. Calls her Buttercup. And then he gets too hot and heavy. She rejects him, but he won't take no for an answer because no-one's ever said no to him. So he takes what he thinks is his due.

The knock on the door in the morning, the police are there. "Is your father home? There's been a complaint". Father makes it clear to the officers that their careers won't advance if they choose to pursue this. How dare they drag his name through the mud? He's about to go up to Oxford to study medicine. Eventually they come to an arrangement with the officers that meets their satisfaction and puts the whole issue to bed.

Son's forced to move away. The shame of his alleged sex attack enough to drive him from the only home he knows. And when the parents pass away, it lays dormant. But as I say, absolutely no suggestion that any of that happened here, and any intimation it did is quite, quite wrong. I'm sure there are lots of reasons to abandon a stately home.

Inheritance tax, for one. People who, through no fault of their own, come from good stock. You know? It's not their fault they have incredibly wealthy parents, and it breaks my heart. I know some people care about the Middle East, but the lack of justice for persecuted landowners is just an affront to the values I thought we held dear. And I'm pretty sure it does ride roughshod over international humanitarian laws.

They seem to think that earning revenue for the Treasury is enough to justify wiping out our country's most respected farming families. I say 'stately', I mean, it's nothing palatial. Suffolk can't lay claim to a country residence anywhere near as wonderful as Blickling Hall in Norfolk, which incidentally was where royal troublemaker Anne Boleyn was born. Very much the Meghan Markle of her time. Anne was, by all accounts, a spirited young lady. Headstrong, but to a fault. 

Although I tend to blame King Henry more than Anne. I do have a lot of time for the apple-bodied, twiglet-legged former monarch. Saying "Up yours!" to the Church in Rome is basically his Brexit, but you cannot cut your wife's head off. She's your wife! Count to ten. Take a deep breath. Phone her dad. That's what I used to do. 

Right, I'm going to have a walk around. They've left quite a lot of stuff behind, a big pile of paintings stacked in the corner here. Let's have a look. I imagine they're family portraits. Generations of the family going back centuries. The thing about these narrow bloodlines is that they all end up looking the same, which is a godsend for a portrait painter. Once you've cracked the face of Lord Ponsonby-whatever, you can pretty much replicate it for all of his progeny.

Scale it down for a child, add long hair and a bosom for a woman, insert a pencil moustache for a gay cousin, bulk out the cheeks for an underactive thyroid, but it's all the same face. Let's just get these out of the way. Yes, these aren't portraits, they're landscape paintings of the grounds. Looks like one of the family was a bit of an artist. They're not really worth much, but I can relate to the amateur artiste, which is sort of a French, gay way of being an artist. I reckon these were painted by the fellow over there with the... the moustache. Don't know why. Don't know why. He's got a feeling that he painted these. Looks quite sensitive. Same eyes too close together and no chin, but there's something going on there, unlike the others. 

No, but I understand the artist. I dabble from time to time. Mine are quite raw, but it's something I enjoy. And... I never thought I would like abstract painting. That's the thing. It started when I kicked a tin of emulsion against the garage wall because I was annoyed my dog had gone and died on me. A friend said it was good, and a man I chat to said it might help. So over time, I've painted angry lines over it, and the words "Here, boy". And I quite like looking at it. Yes, It is abstract, but like I say, I do like to look at it. I now realise that abstract art is really good to look at. You know, if you've got a man in a bow tie to explain it to, or a goofy nun. I like some nuns. 

And through here, there's a box here, framed pictures, which I'm very much interested in. This is a framed photo of the family. Well, well, well, look at them. Now that's not what you'd expect, not at all what you'd expect. I'll try to describe it; a mother and father in their mid-40s with a son and daughter who are no more than 12... And I'm going to say it's the mother, presumably the lady of the house, is of mixed race, which is very, very modern. And actually a sign that for all the criticism that comes their way, the landed gentry in Britain are surprisingly forward-thinking. 

There will have been teething problems. Some of the staff would have bristled at being given their orders by someone they'd ordinarily have chased off the land. But over time, she'll have earned their respect. And, I dare say, their affection. And the lord of the manor, I'm sorry, I don't know the family name, would appear to bear that out. He's not wearing anything as august as tweed plus fours. No, he's very much from the David Cameron School, and probably David Cameron's school, who wears his breeding lightly. He's in a simple white shirt, sleeves rolled up, beige chino, and two simple brown slip-ons, one for each foot.

What a wonderful couple, with two wonderful children, who, together, comprise a quite wonderful family, a picture of modern Britain, hewn from the past but forged for the future. Photographed here at play. The boy's holding a basketball, and I've just realised this is a picture that comes when you buy the frame.

Ah, here's the actual family. Yes, it's exactly as you would have expected, affable and chinless. Okay, and that's fine, and that is absolutely fine.

What do we have here, though? Narrowness and narrow, windowless hallways, small rooms... scullery... an old iron. I'm pretty sure these are servants' quarters through here, and they're perfectly serviceable, too. I remember when I was building the Oasthouse, my Oast-styled-house, and I toyed with the idea of building living quarters for my staff. I have Lynn, a personal assistant, Rosa, Philippine housekeeper, and a gun whose name I don't know, and I considered building them a space so they don't have to drive or get the bus back to their own homes. On the back of a napkin, I sketched out a subterranean warren of bunk beds with a shared toilet and a kitchenette and said to my housekeeper, "You live here, you not go home!". She screamed. It was a very crude sketch. I probably should have drawn on windows in the door. I think it had echoes of Joseph Fritzl, which was not my intention at all.

I should have told her that, but I think if I'd mentioned his name with her broken English, she would have got the wrong end of the stick again. But in the end, I decided against it for cost reasons. It was either servants' quarters or under-floor heating in the bathroom, and I like to have warm feet when I toilet at night.

I can't actually picture myself in a country pile like this, I like to think I'd follow the Downton model. The help would know their place in the hierarchy... And there should be a hierarchy, I wouldn't say, "Call me Alan" or "Help yourself to the drinks trolley", that way anarchy lies. But I would govern the house in a benevolent way.

I'd teach them to read, send them on away days to an ice rink and allow them to briefly talk to my doctor if they had consumption. But there'd be no doubt as to who was in charge. Gross misconduct, whether it's touching a colleague below the hips, breaking a vase, or buying the wrong flavour of Tony's Chocolonely would be met with swift justice. They'd be thrashed, or have their wages docked, or reported to the UK Border Patrol to see if their immigration papers were in order. Yes, I could see myself here. 

[gentle piano music]

Swans, majestic, serene, and a living symbol of Britain's waterways. Swans are among our favourite waterfowl. But they're becoming a problem. As every man knows, a swan can break a man's arm, or a child's neck. And while there may have been no reports of the latter, it's surely just a matter of time before we hear snap! 

And so, with numbers rising anecdotally year on year and reports that their behaviour becomes even more bolshie, it's time to have a grown-up conversation about culling our swans. This is a chance to share your views. How many swans should we cull? How should we cull them? Should we cull them? Should we just let farmers cull them? We want to hear a range of views to get a measure of Norfolk's attitude towards these feathered aggressors.

A personal view is that we should cull swans, having been followed by some swans at a National Trust event. What do you think? To get involved, text SWANCULL, followed by your message to 745645 today. 

Well, I've been here just over an hour and a half now, the rain abated some time ago, but I've just been spending a bit of time walking the corridors, both hands behind my back, and with a wry smile playing on my lips, picturing how life could be very different. Lord Partridge, patron of the Partridge Trust, who funded the Partridge Rooms at the National Portrait Gallery, and the Partridge Prize for New Writers of Fiction Who Are Women. Who lives at a wonderful country retreat, known as simply Planshmere. No, Fentleton. No, The Ridings. Alan Partridge House, or Fentleton.

It's hard being rich! There's a cardboard sign stuck in the window here. Let's see what it says. "Deliveries. Please direct all deliveries to the gatehouse between 6th March, which is today, and the 9th March, as the house is closed for fumigation due to an infestation of Australian spider-beetles. Please do not enter as their eggs can find their way onto most fabrics".

Oh, Chris! Oh, my God! It's not deserted, it's being pest controlled! Ah, shit. I don't like spider beetles! I've never heard of spider beetles, what even the hell are they? But I do not like spider beetles! I wasn't going to say, but I was pretending to... Oh, my... It'll be on my hair. I had to lie down on the bed before. I wasn't going to say, but I was pretending to be Goldilocks. I didn't realise the place was teeming with insects. I feel horrible! Oh, my God. I've got to get these off... I'm going to get this off, because I've got to get my clothes off. I don't want eggs inside me. 

[outbound ring tone]

[Lynn] "Yes, hello?".

Lynn, you've got to come and get me! I'm at Fentleton Hall. I mean, the big house that's near where you dropped me off. About half a mile from where you dropped me off.

[theme music sting]

I'm just waiting for my assistant to arrive. I'm at the stately home, I'm no longer wearing my clothes, for fear they may have picked up a cache of beetle's eggs, not wanting to travel in my assistant's car, bollock naked, because she'd look in the opposite direction, but she'd have a slight smile on her face. I would hate it. She still misses Benny Hill. That's it, that's all you need to know. 

Anyway, I found some clothes in a sealed bag. I've opted for a woman's denim jumpsuit with flared trousers, something.... something you imagine ABBA girls might wear at the weekend. And I have to say, it's actually incredibly comfortable, it feels fantastic! Especially without underwear! Oh, great, she's here.

Lynn! Here! Lynn! [whistles] Here! Hi, Lynn. Okay, let's go. 

"What have you got on?".

It's a woman's denim jumpsuit with flared trousers.

"It suits you!". 

Are you being sarcastic? Because I think it does, if I tuck the trousers in. 

"You look like a Charlie's Angel!".

And you look like Charlie's aunt. Come on, Lynn. Let's go and get two sausage rolls.

"Right". 

Actually, three. One for me later.

[closing theme music]