S04E09: Analogue

[a series of electronic bleeps and bloops]

I'm Alan Partridge and, like many of you, these are the sounds I live by. The beeps and pings of smartphones, tablets and laptops, these sounds have become woven into the sonic fabric of our lives, replacing the 'clank, g'dunk, vrrrrr', of the factory production line, and the 'ka-clank, ka-clank, ka-clank' of our cotton mills, and even the 'tap-tap, tap-tap, tap-tap, bring-bring', of our once-bustling offices.

And yes, these newer digital noises sound like a life of blissful ignorance, but play them again, with reverb over a low droning sound, and they take on a far more sinister bent. But what's sinister about using our phones? I'm glad you asked. 

2017, a farmer using Snapchat veers off his land and ploughs up a road, causing damage to tarmac. 

2019, a nurse Whatsapping a friend leaves a rubber glove in a man's tummy. 

2021, a lifeguard browsing eBay sits idly by as ten horses drown in the sea just yards away. 

2023, a teacher scrolls through Facebook while children sell skunk in the classroom. 

2025, a hairdresser looking at Instagram cuts a man's hair too far up the side of his head, drawing attention to his ears, which he does not want because he thinks they are bigger than they should be. 

Five unconnected incidents, two of which are made up, and one of which happened to me, that amply demonstrate the dystopia we're sleepwalking into. For it is my contention that if we carry on on this trajectory, eventually phones will be in charge, and we, human beings, will just be a pet owned by a phone.

They say Video Killed the Radio Star, but if the Buggles were to reform and re-record that song, they might very well sing 'TikTok Killed the Podcast Champ'. 

[background bleeps reach a crescendo and suddenly stop]

Which is why, as you can probably hear from my shallow breathing and plodding footsteps, I am off-grid. And it feels liberating! Usually when you stray out of signal, you jog back into range as quickly as possible in case your girlfriend is trying to contact you and can't get through and is getting annoyed. 

But today, being off-grid is the point. I'm a modern guy, and while I usually pride myself on a vibe that's as fresh and 'with it' as BBC Radio 1, today I haven't even brought my phone with me. Why? Well, I am on a mission. For today, at least, to disentangle myself from the ropes of modern technology. I'm hacking off the tentacles that keep us constantly online so they fall limp and go black. I'm saying no to screens, to messages, to the internet, and I'm living life in the here-and-now. 

The birdsong you can hear, that's the kind of Twitter I like! I know that sounds a bit touchy-feely, but if you'd told me a month ago to get off my phone and be more present, I'd have said you're a hippie who should be shaved and put through National Service, made to salute the Queen... the King. Can't believe the Queen's gone.

But two recent incidents have completely altered my view. One happened to me. A friend of mine called David has recently come into some money because he married a rich woman who was lonely.
So he fulfilled a lifelong dream of buying a brand-new Harley Davidson motorbike. A few weeks ago, he invited a few of us round to have a drink and look at the motorbike. But on the morning of our visit, I became involved in a Twitter spat with a man who thought Doctor Who was good.

Things became heated, and our disagreement distracted me for much of the day. That night, another friend asked me if I'd looked at the motorbike. I said, "Yes, it was a good motorbike". He said, "But did you really look at it?". That's when I realised when my other friends were looking at the motorbike, I'd just been glued to my iPhone. He said, "Be careful, Alan. Seeing a friend's motorbike for the first time is a kind of special moment you can't ever get back". And he was absolutely right. Absolutely right. 

These beautiful human moments happen but once. And, yeah, we have to make the most of them. When was the last time you stopped to look at a butterfly? Or a rose? When was the last time you bent over to sniff anything? Van drivers and builders don't even wolf-whistle anymore. They're too busy looking at videos of busty women firing machine guns. Progress? I sometimes wonder. 

Even I'm guilty of this. I've spent so long watching videos of cats scared of cucumbers that I hadn't even noticed my own cat - I have a cat - sitting next to me, watching, wait for it, the cat video. That's right, even cats watch cat videos now. I mean, think about it. Think about it. Do you really want to be on your deathbed, surrounded by loved ones, and when someone asks you, "If you could name one incident in your life, what would your favourite moment be?". 

Do you really want to say, "The favourite moment of my life was the sneezing panda I saw on YouTube in 2010 when the baby panda sneezes and makes the mummy panda jump?". I mean, do you really want your last words to be 'makes the mummy panda jump'? Our favourite moment should be when our child gets an A in French. Teaching your wife to ride a bike. Firing an air rifle at a bird in a tree. Smashing some ice over your head and it bleeding a bit. 

Or even silly things like turning a snowman into a giant dick. Simply remove the facial features and pop two big snow bollocks on his feet. Turn the scarf into a foreskin... hey presto, big, cold cock. It's a bit rude, but it's a memory! More recently, Lynn, an elderly woman who works for me, experienced first hand the disconnected world we live in. 

It was Friday, she'd completed her mandated working hours and as such was permitted to go home. She did so, and she was crouching to look in the fridge because she owns one of those small ones, the size of a dishwasher, that fits under the worktop, when something fell out and rolled behind the fridge. She thought it might be a block of cheese even though, as a cuboid, clearly that wouldn't roll.

So she reached behind the fridge, it shifted slightly, and like that she was wedged. Lynn told me she happened to be holding her phone and assumed she could call for assistance. Wrong! Her kitchen is a mobile phone blind-spot because the locals kicked off when Vodafone tried to install a mast. And suddenly her community of online friends wasn't worth a hill of beans, slash rat's ass. 

So, what to do? Well, remember this was Friday evening. Normally she works for me on a Saturday, but muggins here had given her the day off, which meant she wasn't expected back at work until Monday. She was stuck. Fortunately, she's never watched the film 127 Hours, where the hiker gets his hand stuck under a boulder and has to hack his arm off to get free. She doesn't watch films like that. She prefers that show where they give a dog to a sad family to make it happy again. I like that one too.
She loves the Lassie films, she said she loved those growing up. I told her there's about five or six dogs when they make those films and none of them are called Lassie. But she just refuses to accept it. Doesn't bother me. Don't care how many dogs there is. They're still amazing stories. 

My dog's dead. Do you believe in ghost dogs? I do.

Anyway, Lynn was only discovered later that night after she had started to sing at the top of her voice. Her neighbours heard her singing her favourite hymn, 'Jesus is Coming to Get You Sunday Sometime', through the prefab walls, using her dead mum's ring on her free hand to pat out the rhythm against the floor. 

She pointed out later that singing served the dual purpose of attracting attention and keeping her spirits up, and she was proved right because the neighbour came round to reason with her and spotted her through the letterbox, jammed in the kitchen corner, and was able to call for help. She was quite shaken, obviously, but relieved. I sat with her while she had a cup of sugary tea and a Breakaway, which I didn't even know they made anymore! An incredibly cheap biscuit! 

And she told me that she thought she was a goner. She said the whole of her life flashed before her eyes, which, whatever that entailed, I imagine it's probably like one of the weaker episodes of Last of the Summer Wine. It goes to show that our online network isn't much of a network. Social media should bring us together, but it only creates rancour and bile. So, as I say, this episode, I want to step away from the screens and the algorithms to just live again! 

To that end, I'm about to pop into Norwich and simply go about my day unplugged from the matrix, without the accoutrements of digital living. Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, mobile telephony, apps... Gone. I'll even be driving a car without an on-board infotainment system. Think it has CarPlay or MP3 connectivity? Think again! As we speak, I'm hiking across the fields behind my house to a local farmer who's agreed to lend me a 1990 Ford Fiesta, once owned by a dead teacher. He says it has an MOT, but that's almost certainly a lie. He lies.

So, yes, the plan is to cruise into town, have a pint with a friend of mine, all without resorting to gadgets or gizmos. Here goes. 

[theme music sting]

Alan Partridge here, coming to you from behind the wheel of a blue Fiesta, and you'd be surprised how refreshing it is to drive a car when you're not being bombarded by information and messages from the outside world. The last time I had this kind of freedom in a car was five years ago, in the Isle of Wight when I borrowed a Toyota Yaris in a similar condition... but with a cassette of Grandmaster Flash in the glovebox, which I re-spooled with a pencil and donated to a charity shop. God knows what those old ladies made of it, they probably thought the white lines were Daz! 

When you're not following an arrow on screen or talking on the phone to, I don't know, a financial advisor about whether if you bought your grandkids' clothes off them for, say, 50K, that would be tax deductible as a business expense, suddenly your eyes are open once again to the world around you. I noticed they boarded up that youth club, for example. It's a shame, I gave a talk there once about the dangers of pirate radio, and I thought it went very well. Shame, it's a good club. Apparently one of the volunteers got a schoolgirl pregnant and her dad kicked up a stink, closed the whole place down. It does seem a bit extreme, cause a big brouhaha, when it was, erm... as far as I'm aware, just the one girl. And it was well known that the youth worker had a reputation as a colourful character. So you take the rough with the smooth.

Ah, now, just up here is the home of my friend Nicholas C[bleep]tle. That's genuinely his name, yeah. Nicholas C[bleep]tle. I've been meaning to check this out, he regaled us for a year with boasts about the outdoor swimming pool he was building, but then he had to fill it in because he hadn't sought planning permission, so now he just has a big concrete rectangle on his lawn. He put the correct markings on it for a tennis court, but it's just too small! Yeah, there it is. 

[clicking of a car intecator]

Driving this is a completely different experience without sat-nav, I've had to plan and learn my route in advance using an AA road atlas. I feel like a scout again. But it means I feel alert and present, a
far cry from today's lobotomised driving style in which the road user sits in a daze, awaiting instructions from Alexa or TomTom, which sound like the names of Kirstie Alsopp's kids. Looking up maps on the internet might be quicker, but when you're reading an atlas, you don't have a man popping up trying to sell you gardening trousers, or a woman popping up asking you to buy Viagra, or offering to show you videos of busty women firing machine guns. What makes you think I'd be interested in that? 

Well, I've parked and I'm now on foot. Without a parking app, I've had to drive a full mile from my destination to find a car park that takes coins. Again, fine. I get to enjoy the thrill of using my thumb to push a fifty-pence piece into a stainless steel slit, or slot. Plus, it means I've been able to appreciate my stroll through town. My guide, well, whereas normally I'd mosey through our inner cities guided by Siri or Strava, two more of Kirstie's kids, today I'm using a printed paperback A-Z. Thumbing through its pages and hoping the street that I want isn't under a staple is a genuine delight, it's like a breath of fresh air. 

And I have to say, without my head in a phone, I'm appreciating things a little more. Blossom on the trees. A new billboard's been put up for Go Compare, over there. Earlier I saw a man fall over and when he stood up, he had a grass stain on his knee, which, yeah, I enjoyed a great deal.

Very interesting thing happened earlier, I noticed a condom stuck on the finger of a fence. And rather than being disgusted by it, I simply smiled and shook my head before retrieving it with a stick and javeling it into some nettles and then suddenly, no idea why, I suddenly thought time is so elastic. These things pass us by when we live our lives in digital space. And when I lose my way, I just ask someone for directions. Try it, you might meet someone interesting! 

I met a lovely couple, both ladies, and both called Jean. They said they were married, and I thought, good for you! Very practical clothes, I complimented them on their attire, on their fleeces and combat pants. They said, "We dress like this at home". I said, "I don't doubt it!", we all had a good chuckle! Yeah, there was a lovely couple of retired lesbians.

By which I mean, they were retired from work, and they're still active lesbians, as far as I could tell. In fact, giving up work probably freed them for more of, you know, whatever activities they enjoy. There are many different types of lesbians, that's the thing, the long-haired ones you see in videos, the short-haired ones you see in real life. There's someone for everyone, that's the thing.

But as I said, good to see them letting their hair down, putting on a couple of fleeces, snazzy coloured cagoules, and hitting the hills. Nothing was going to get in their way. Delightful pair of Jeans. 
I made that joke. I said, "How come a pair of jeans is wearing Gore-Tex?". They said they don't like to wear denim while walking, because it retains moisture. And we enjoyed eight to ten minutes of cracking conversation.

Then I met two men, of a similar age, who asked me if I wanted to join them exploring the forest. And I said, I wasn't too sure, as I'd only just met them. And they said, that's okay, because they'd only just met each other too. Yeah, it only got a bit odd when one of them said it was getting a bit cold, and maybe we should all camp there for the night. So I just ran back to my car. 

[dreamy synth music]

Do you think there are too many podcasts? So do we, which is why we're asking listeners to help us clamp down on the number of podcasts by signing an online petition, which will be printed out and delivered to Downing Street by some children.

What started as a good idea, spiralled out of control. Think I'm exaggerating? Many people consider that it is only a matter of time before someone like Paddy McGuinness has a podcast. Imagine Paddy McGuinness with a podcast, imagine him giving his opinions on topics large and small, and those opinions being freely available to anyone who wishes to subscribe! 

So we're calling on the governments to impose conditions and qualifications requiring would-be podcasters to pass a simple aptitude test before they're granted a licence to podcast. Just a simple exam to ensure applicants should say 'should have' instead of 'should of', and can differentiate between the three theres. If they can form a sentence using the three there's correctly, and remember to start it with a capital letter, then there - the apostrophe R-E - won't be a problem. 

[long sup from a foaming, nut-brown pint] 

Well, I've now left The Great Outdoors and I'm ensconced in one of the cornerstones of modern society, the Great British Pub. This one's called The Grapes, and it's a regular for me and some of my friends.
Pubs were once the Twitter of their day, opinionated people would gather and crack jokes, debate the big issues, chew over the events of the day, and make some slightly racist but fairly harmless comments whilst suggesting the moon landings were faked. 

Today that mantle has been taken on by social media, and pubs have become far more welcoming. I'm here supping a nut-brown ale with my friend Colin. Say hello, Colin. 

"Hello, Colin". [laughs]

Whip-smart! Me and Colin go way back, he's a fellow member of David Lloyd and one of the quickest, funniest, and chattiest of our WhatsApp group. The guy is a groin-wrecker, and today, without my phone, I simply get to enjoy a bloody good pub in the company of a bloody good friend. Cheers. 

"Cheers!".

I've just been saying, Colin, that today's a bit of a blast from the past, keeping it old school, living like the '90s again. 

"Well, you've got the hair cut!".

You think this looks '90s? Your hair looks like it's from the 1890s, when the only car manufacturer that existed was Peugeot in France.

[phone vibrates]

Oh, was that you? 

"Yeah, it's just the lads on WhatsApp". 

I'll have to check that out later. Definitely will.

[another phone vibrate, another laugh from Colin, followed by the clicks of key-tones]

Do you want a crisp, Colin? 

[vibrate, chuckle from Colin] 

Colin? Colin? 

"Hmm?".

Do you want a crisp? 

"Oh, no thanks, no". 

Is that the lads again? 

"Yeah".

[vibrate, laugh from Colin]

Sounds pretty funny. Whatever it is. You know, you should turn your key-tones off.

"Yeah". 

Yeah. Yeah, apparently this pub was originally a cooper's workshop in the early 1600s, about the time of the English Civil War, used to make barrels for Norwich's brewing trade, but after a fire in the early 1800s, a local widow bought the remains of the building, turned it into a drinking house.

"Yeah, says it on the sign". 

I know, I'm making a conversation, Colin. 

[phone vibrate]

The lads again?

"Yeah". 

Here we go, what are they saying? 

"They're talking about that time you came to the club with your kit dyed pink. Don's saying you must have put a red sock in with your whites".

That was for breast cancer awareness! I was wearing pink deliberately. The guys were meant to check themselves for lumps. You got a problem with that? Turn your key-tone off! 

Well, it's an hour later, and I've supped and made my excuses, and I'm striding past Norfolk's award-winning farmland. Left Colin to his WhatsApp and his key-tones, which again are so easy to turn off.
It's Settings, Sounds, and Haptics, then toggle Keyboard Clicks.

But yes, I still think a collegiate afternoon with a pint and friend is better without a phone to distract you. But you both need to do it, otherwise it's just annoying for the one who's left his phone at home.

Erm... And... what is that? Oh my god, I thought it was a bit of a cloud. It looks to be a little lamb. Is that a lamb? Is it dead? Oh my god. I'm walking past a steeply-banked bit of field [bleat] and, oh my god, there's a poor lamb stuck up there. 

Hello? Are you stuck? 

Are you stuck, lamb? Oh, I think he's hurt.

He's up on that ledge, there's a sort of craggy rock. 

Alright, little fella, I'm coming to get you. 

Just going to get up here.

Hold on. There you are, bleating, crying for your mummy. Miss your mummy? Yeah, I know the feeling. Although I never miss my mummy. There you go.

[continued distressed lamb bleating]

There we go, just get there. That's right. Okay, there we go. I got you, I got you. Easy, easy. Well, this is quite something, ladies and gentlemen, I'm carrying a live lamb. Where's your mummy? Maybe she's dead. I literally climbed up a ledge and I slung the shit-scared sheep over my shoulders, an image any of you who've ever been to a church will have seen in statues of Jesus, the Good Shepherd. We all need a shepherd. Shepherd us through life.

And he's happy as Larry! Larry the lamb! God, I've always wanted to carry a lamb like this.

[car horn]

Yes, hello! I must be quite a sight. Would I havve seen, and been able to rescue, this lamb if I'd been scrolling through Facebook, or trying to find the button to turn off Rory Stewart's podcast? Probably not. 

Okay, he's off, he's off! Come here!

[car horn] 

Yes, all right, thank you!

Well I'm back home now, in my favourite comfy chair. I had to halt recording yesterday when the lamb - which it turns out I had mis-gendered, so he's not Larry, he's now called Helen - wriggled free and into the road. I was frantic and only managed to recapture the little lamb with the help of some jeans. Yes, as luck would have it, walking back with the two lesbians called Jean, they helped me round the lamb up and we had a roadside chat about what to do. My immediate thought was to get her back to the farm, but they reasoned that that was effectively a death sentence.

We were merely handing Helen back to her captors for slaughter. Instantly, I thought, I know what to do! I thought, I'll be its mother, I can feed it, you know, if I have access to the correct pump, the correct machine. To provide it with sheep milk is what I mean, obviously. Come on. 

But Jean, one of the Jeans, noticed the gash on his leg and pointed out that he needed medical attention,
so to avoid Helen being claimed by the farmer, we snipped off the wall marks with paint using one of the Jeans' nail scissors, I phoned the RSPCA, who sent a lovely lady, also a lesbian, to come and collect her. 

I'm sure Helen will return to full health and live beyond her lamb years, well into muttonhood.

And on that, the Jeans and I returned to the pub for a stiff drink. Jean pointed out that in a hot country, a wound like that can be a death sentence for an animal, as it can mean they're targeted by mosquitoes. And I reflected that, while we did the right thing, it was a shame that we had to give the sheep back because it denied me a good ending for the episode. Mine was now a story with no ending. And Jean said, but life doesn't have a neat ending. Sometimes it just stops. You're bumbling along and it ends without warning. There's no reason why a podcast can't do the same. And with that, the two lesbians retired. To their quarters, I mean.

And I was left alone with a man called Graham, a military historian who wandered over when he heard the word mosquito and thought we were talking about the Second World War twin-engined bomber, not the insect. He asked if I knew why the mosquito was different from other warplanes, I said it was made of wood.

He said, "Yes, but why was it made of wood?", and I said, "To avoid radar". Well, we were there till the wee-small hours, and we got shit-faced talking about not only radar, but sonar! Goodbye.

[closing theme music]