Big Beacon, page 23
I watched her after that day increasingly lose her way. Like Icarus, she became complacent, soaring too close to the Sun – and the Mail! – as she began to cavort and caper for the tabloids’ approval, dancing the needy dance of the media darling, never quite grasping that soon they’ll discard her like they discarded me all those years ago.
‘Bye, Jennie,’ I whispered.
But then I made a mistake. In a catastrophic error of judgement, I goaded her with the news that I had secured an interview with Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal Princess Anne. As she walked away, the thinnest of smiles on her lips, little did I realise that she was plotting; plotting to use my oft-trumpeted devotion to H.R.H.T.P.R.P.A. to destroy me.
* * *
109 Approx.
THE POISON INSIDE (OF) ME
March 2023
‘How much did you eat?’ my assistant wheezes, her hands gripping the steering wheel and constantly turning it left and right like they used to do in old movies when they weren’t actually driving, except she is.
‘Eat?’ I exclaim, panicking. ‘I didn’t eat it, it fell in me.’
‘How much fell in you?’
‘I don’t know. It felt like a lot. Maybe four ketchup-sachets-ful? Maybe more. He’s a big animal and he’d had a very big meal.’
‘Oh, God.’
‘Why are you saying “oh, God”? Is that bad?’
‘I don’t know. You’re the one who said it was bad.’
‘Yes, because I read in a magazine in a hairdressers in America that it can be fatal. Guano can contain bacterial bodies, fungal bodies, viral bodies and parasitic bodies. The big four.’
‘What’s guano?’
‘Bird shit! What do you think?’
‘Put your fingers down your throat.’
‘I can’t do that. I’ve tried and I can’t.’
‘I feel sick now.’
‘Drive, woman!’
For ten more minutes we wind along country lanes and down dual carriages, during which she is never once in a high enough gear for the speed we’re going. When we get to the hospital, she screeches to a halt in a way that sounds quite cool but will definitely have been accidental. Hoisting my lifeless body across her shoulders with an ease that is almost bizarrely effortless, the dog-loyal septuagenarian carries me to the door of A&E, hands me to two porters and weeps.
I’m weeping too. I am all too aware of the risks I’m facing. As well as the article in a magazine in a hairdressers in America, I once saw a report on local news of a child whose kidneys had failed after ingesting bird droppings. This is real and it could easily be the end. An awful way to die as well. For weeks my mind has been addled with Britain’s greatest maritime heroes – Shackleton, Scott of the South Pole – good, burly men who had succumbed only to the very worst nature could throw at them. Me, I am about to die at the hands – nay, the backside – of a seagull.
I can feel myself getting hot, as if my throat is constricting. The bright ceiling lights of the hospital, the rush of healthcare professionals, the rapid exchange of information. I am starting to spin out.
‘I am poisoned,’ I say to everyone and no one.
‘Poisoned? With what?’ says a doctor.
‘E. coli; salmonella; listeriosis; campylobacter; psittacosis; toxoplasmosis …’
‘You need to calm down. Tell him he needs to calm down.’
‘A gull did a poo in his mouth,’ my assistant blurts out. ‘Please don’t let him die.’
‘You need to calm down as well, madam. He’s not going to die from a bit of bird poo.’
The words land in my ear canal quite deliciously. How do I feel? As a sensual guy unafraid to talk about feelings and blessed with a rich vein of emotional intelligence, I can tell you I feel three distinct emotions swell inside of me: I feel happy, I feel good and I feel very nice.
I turn to my assistant. ‘Get a couple of Bounty bars from the machine and go and start the car. We have a lighthouse to finish.’
I swing my legs off the gurney and set about unfastening the inflatable blood-pressure collar from my arm muscles, but the doctor puts his hand on my mine to stop me. He looks at the blood-pressure read-out. What he says next leaves me reeling, but as it also strikes me as a good way to end a chapter in any future memoir that might cover this medical emergency, I decide not respond.
‘I’m afraid you’re not going anywhere, Mister Partridge.’110
* * *
110 See what I mean? Good ending, isn’t it?
SELDOM
‘Can I help you, mate?’
‘Yes. I’d like the most dangerous dog you have, please.’
The story of how I came to own my beloved dog Seldom is a moving and nine-hundred-word one. In the exchange above I’ve just arrived at the house of one of East Anglia’s most unorthodox dog-breeders, but the thought process behind coming to own the world’s best (angry) dog began four days earlier …
I’d spent the evening at a recently divorced friend’s house watching a blue movie. With me on the sofa and him in an armchair on the other side of the room, we’d watched in intrigued silence, only choosing to speak once the credits rolled, at which point we ordered a Thai takeaway, turned the lights back on, took our glasses off, and had an honest chat about what we had and hadn’t liked about the film. My friend found it sexy, but I had to admit it had left me cold. Had I expected to find it sexy? You bet I had. But, I dunno, maybe it would have been better if I’d watched it alone.
Maybe then I’d have been able to fully immerse myself in the groundbreaking CGI and heart-rending story of James Cameron’s magical 3D creation.
As I wandered home that night – I say ‘wandered’, I drove – I tried to work out why Cameron had bothered making Avatar when for the same money he could surely have made another two to three Robocops. It was certainly a headscratcher, and as I scratched mine (friend had had heating on all night), I just couldn’t work it out. No, Cameron had made an error of judgement and that was that. I liked the idea of fit aliens as much as the next man, but to dedicate ten years of your life to it? Well, that was a bit pervy.
I arrived back at the oasthouse, drove marginally past it, then reversed smoothly back into the drive without even needing to put my arm behind the passenger seat headrest, and that’s not even a lie. But what greeted me as I got out of my car was the sight every homeowner fears: an open front door. I had been burglarised.
Putting all risk to my personal safety aside, I charged into the house once the police had arrived and done a full sweep of the property. No damage had been done, no possessions taken.
Suddenly, it all became clear. This wasn’t some opportunist robbering person; this had been done to scare me.
‘As I’ve already told you, I was at a friend’s house. He’s recently divorced and we’d agreed to watch a blue movie together.’
‘I see. Actually, would you mind just repeating that for my colleague? Craig, come and hear this.’
No offence to frontline bobbies, but sometimes they just don’t get it. And as I recounted what had happened for the umpteenth/second time, my mind had already moved on to potential suspects. The list was made up of four categories: people I’d had a run-in with at traffic lights or box junctions in recent years; people I’d had a run-in with in the car parks of retail parks or multiplexes; those who feel I have wronged them on my radio show; and Noel Edmonds. Yet with no forensic evidence to go on – no fingerprints on the door, no blood stains and not so much as a trace of the perp’s spunk – I was stumped.
And while the police said there was no suggestion of an imminent threat and that maybe I’d just forgotten to close the door when I’d gone out, my view was that maybe I hadn’t. No, screw the cops, it was time to circle the wagons: I convened an emergency session of my cul-de-sac’s Neighbourhood Watch group. As the three of us (Paul couldn’t make it) began to wargame possible approaches, my view began to solidify: what was needed was a round-the-clock watch on my property. Clive disagreed, feeling that keeping watch during daylight hours was pointless. Unfortunately for him, though, that’s not even what I’d said. If I’d meant 24-hour surveillance I’d have said we needed a ‘twice round the clock watch’, because to the best of my knowledge, a full revolution of a clock only takes 12 hours. Either way, Clive said he hadn’t been sleeping well so wouldn’t be able to help, while Phil said he’d have to bow out too because he had to set an alarm for 3 a.m. every morning to do Judy’s insulin injection.
With my plan A scuttled, I needed another solution. My assistant suggested I get a gun because it’s ‘what Jesus would have done’. And while it was certainly an interesting thought, and one she argued for with passion and by standing too close to me, I disagreed. Jesus had never been a homeowner, and though my assistant didn’t like hearing it, the fact of a life spent wandering around Galilee meant Christ was, I’m afraid, a vagrant. So while a firearm often is the answer, on this occasion it was not. No, what I needed was a guarding dog.
Hence and thus I had found myself at 35 Speke Street, Norwich. Prodding at the doorbell with a ginger finger, I was here to invest – in cash money – in one of the most dangerous dogs in Norfolk. I’d been put on to this place by a friend of a friend’s wife’s friend’s friend. The guy who lived here – Happy Ferguson – was apparently just the person for me. Something of a eugenicist, word had it he’d dedicated his life to trying to breed the perfect unhinged dog. Yet as I explained I was here to buy a dangerous dog, he regarded me suspiciously.
‘Don’t even know who you are, mate.’
‘I’m Alan Partridge. You must be Happy.’
‘Not especially. How did you find out about me?’
‘Your friend is a friend of a friend’s wife’s friend’s friend.’
‘What?’
‘Basically, do you know a fat fella called Barry?
‘Yeah.’
‘Him.’
‘Right. You coming in, then?’
As I followed him into his house, now unsure if he actually was called Happy or if that was just a friend of a friend’s wife’s friend’s friend’s chubby little joke, I clocked the pooches straight away: a dozen big puppies dozing on the floor of the kitchen as their dangerous mother and dangerous father patrolled the back yard.
I was about to ask him what breed they were but quickly realised that would have been silly. They were no breed. Their breed was indeterminate. They were, by design, a biological mash-up, a genetic smorgasbord; they were a Frankenstein’s dog. A pinch of Rottweiler, a dash of Pit Bull, two heaped tablespoons of Staffordshire Bull Terrier, and, judging by the size of them, several entire St Bernards. And Happy? Well, he was the mad scientist at the centre of all this, although unlike most mad scientists he had a shaved head and a West Ham tattoo.
I began to weigh up which puppy to take as my own. I’ve always enjoyed watching the way the judges at Crufts assess dogs. Rough without being violent, at the kind of level where if they did it on a person, that person would take it for a little bit then snap and say, ‘What are you doing?!’ At Crufts, though, the judges have a God-like authority. If those dogs dare to show even the mildest hint of irritation as their hind quarters are felt, their gums are inspected and their tails are lifted to one side to allow their bumholes to be seen and scored, then they have absolutely fucked it. No rosette. No favourite treat. And certainly no mussing of the hair accompanied by a, ‘Who’s a good boy? Who’s a good boy?’ then a pause before, ‘Who’s a good boy, then?’.
It was then that I noticed one of the mongrels was by my feet, specifically my left one.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t bother with him. He’s a pathetic little runt. Wouldn’t say bark to a goose,’ said Happy, adapting the well-known idiom in a way that was actually quite clever and I wouldn’t really have expected given the standard of his house.
But there was something about the way that puppy stared at Happy that was chilling. I decided to leave and come back another day for a second viewing. And though Happy complained that second viewings were only normally for houses, he nevertheless agreed.
I bid the man good day, headed for the door and took a final glance back at that odd little puppy. His eyes remained fixed on Happy, and a small smile seemed to be playing on his jet-black dog lips.
I strolled away, sauntered up the path and shouted, ‘Bye!’ over my shoulder. No reply. ‘I said, “Bye!”’ Still nothing. I took a few steps back towards the door. ‘Bye!’ I said again, since good manners cost absolutely nothing. This time, Happy grunted a long, slow grunt. That’ll have to do, I shrug.
When I got to my car, however, I was greeted by a surprise. The puppy was waiting there for me. I boop-beeped, opened the door with a single finger, and blow me if the cheeky little scamp didn’t just hop right in and plonk himself on the passenger seat!
My God, I thought to myself. Me driving and him alongside? This is exactly like Every Which Way but Loose, for those of us who remember that film. Except rather than a Jeep, mine is a Vauxhall Vectra, and rather than an orangutang, mine is a dog. But other than that, yeah, exactly like Every Which Way but Loose, for those of us who, as I say, remember that film.111
I remember those early days with Seldom through rose-tinted spectacles, although thinking about it, the tint was actually more peach.112 They say dogs grow fast, but Seldom rewrote the rule book. By the time of his first birthday (we celebrated at Frankie & Benny’s) he was fully grown. And by golly he was big. Clearly, he wasn’t going to submit to being weighed and I wasn’t stupid enough to try, but judging from the welt marks left by his paws when he sat on me, he must have been easily seventeen stone.
From there, life settled into a comfortable enough routine. Seldom wasn’t what you’d call an affectionate dog, but then we all express fondness in different ways. Yes, if you thought you could waddle over and give him a stroke that was unsolicited, you needed your head examined, but when the moment came when he did want a bit of love, it was vital you were ready. Because he required you to stroke him for up to an hour, I tended to keep a foam kneeling pad in every room of the house (you can pick them up for around £5 from any good garden centre). That way, if his need arose, I could quickly grab the pad, begin to stroke his tummy while holding his paw, and ensure I wouldn’t be in too much pain.
In life, friends come and go. They let you down, they betray you, they send a message slagging off your new bright red coat to a mutual friend without realising they’ve accidentally sent it to you instead. My old mate Seldom, though? He was always there, and provided the butcher didn’t miss a delivery and you didn’t look him in the eye, you could generally get through the day without too many mishaps.
On Sundays he liked to go for a drive. I’d wind down his window, head to the town centre and let him spend a good few hours indulging in his favourite pastime of staring people out. He seemed to have a particular issue with workmen and Sikhs in wheelchairs. But I just kept one finger on the button that operated his window and we rarely had a problem. And if things did get a bit heated, I was often (but not always!) able to distract him with the emergency mince I kept in the glovebox.
Suffice to say, ours was a blissful existence. My best friend? Try timesing that by a hundred thousand trillion and you’d be about one billionth of the way there.
Then came the night at the funfair. The night described so arrestingly in the opening chapter of this book.113 A dog now dead. An owner now sad. A life that would never be the same. Three short sentences that could very well form the subtitle of a film about that night.
As I arrived back at the oasthouse, my cleaner Rosa was just leaving. She said, ‘Where Good Boy?’ Which was what she used to call him. And I had to say, ‘Rosa … Seldom, he didn’t make it. He passed away at a funfair. He ain’t never coming home.’ And she just crumbled. Rosa could be quite rough with Seldom because she used to own oxen back in the Philippines and I think he respected that, so as a result they’d become quite close. Telling her he’d gone was … hard.
But it was as she drove away in her van that it really began to hit me. Thoughts tumbled round my head like dogs in a washing machine. Memories of Seldom’s likes, his life, his feeding habits. Never one for water, Seldom was one of the few dogs I know who’d love to drink a big salad bowl full of Coca-Cola. I’d never seen a dog burp before then, but my God. He’d burp with such gusto, his eyes would water. I’d just pat him and say, ‘Easy, boy.’ And it had to be Coca-Cola. I once gave him Fentimans Cola and he just put his foot on my foot, and shook his head as if to say ‘don’t do that again, mate’.
I didn’t even bother going up to bed that night. I knew I wouldn’t sleep. I just slumped myself down on one of Seldom’s giant bean bags, opened a tube of sour cream and onion Pringles, opened a family bag of Kettle Chips, opened a tub of Jen & Berry’s cookie-dough ice cream, opened a packet of flame-grilled steak McCoy’s and wept until my snacks were soggy.
They say the death of a dog helps you focus on what really matters in life, and if they don’t, it’s certainly plausible that they might. In my case I came to be aware of the constants, the ever-presents, the things that would always be central to who and what I am – my commercial deals, my profound respect for the Royal Family and Her Royal Highness the Princess Royal Princess Anne, a good head of hair, and, of course, my broadcasting career. As long as I had them, all would be well. Little did I realise that all four of those constants were about to blow up in my face in front of 1.2 million viewers, or 1.4 if you adjust for catch-up.
* * *
111 To this day, something else that still puzzles me is how Seldom got out of the house. Happy refuses to talk about what happened. All I know is that ever since, he’s had to pee sitting down. The only positive about the whole story, and it is a positive, is that I never had to pay for the dog, saving me a cool two grand. And that, as the saying goes, will do me nicely.
