Big Beacon, page 3
My mouth went dry, but I managed to bleat: ‘Simon? Take over.’
I grabbed my coat and walked out of the studio. I bustled through the office, heading for the exit.
‘Have you told Gavin you’re going?’ said a marketing woman called Sue.
‘Nope.’
‘Well, you have to.’
‘You tell him.’
‘Nope.’
‘Guess he ain’t getting told, then.’
And I was gone. The people in the corporate side of the business could be teeeeeedious busybodies sometimes. But they just worked in a different culture. Disc jockeys and sidekicks should be given more licence to do as we please, as we have creative sensibilities that need to be cosseted. So, for example, the office guys had to stay until 5 p.m.; we could knock off whenever.
They weren’t allowed to heat up smelly food in the microwave, but we could put a piece of salmon on full whack and forget about it over the weekend with relative impunity. Things like that. But I wasn’t thinking about office dynamics. I was thinking about what the arrival of the golden woggle meant.
It meant Peter Flint was in trouble.
In 1988, I presented a bi-monthly radio show called Scoutabout on Radio Norwich. Scoutabout was the tip-top, non-stop, hot-to-trot one-stop shop for British Cubs, Scouts, Venture Scouts and, to a lesser extent, Girl Guides (not Brownies). That was my description and I own the copyright to that description.
I was brought in alongside regular presenter Peter Flint, and for a time we were a double act that fizzed like a car battery in a puddle. We co-presented for no more than six months, but in that time a bond was formed that nothing could ever break, a brotherhood cemented one day when we were given a pair of golden woggles by the Chief Scout. A woggle, for the uninitiated, is a fastener for the neckerchief, often made from plastic or leather. These ornamental woggles were cast in gold and awarded in recognition of our support for the wider Scouting movement, a truly humbling honour. Owners of a golden woggle become part of an elite group, one that pledges to always be there for the others, to be a beacon in times of darkness, a trusted ally in times of strife. And it also means you must never tell on one another, which isn’t for any nefarious reason, although now I come to type it, it does sound a bit weird.
Let me tell you something about Peter. He was special. The kind of broadcaster who comes along once in a generation. Peter reminded me of a young Chris Evans or a straight Kenny Everett, a brash, confident force of nature with bags of talent. Peter could have been anything he wanted to be. He was the enfant terrible of regional broadcasting – he would tease an Akela or hoik up a quick rope swing (also known as a tarzy rope) without even asking who owned the tree or whether the branch would withstand the fat kids. He’d be seen with a girl on his arm at the opening of a new leisure centre or opticians. He’d be a fixture in nightclubs and sometimes hosted barbecues down at the marina, on a boat he sometimes borrowed from his wife’s brother.
He was keen to take Scoutabout to TV and wowed the BBC Children’s department with his sheer vivacity; however, kids TV supremo Biddy Baxter did not like him and the show fell into development hell, later emerging on Children’s ITV as Fun House, presented by the bad-haired Pat Sharp. Peter was despondent, both that Pat had pipped him to the presenting gig and that the show had almost no connection to the Scouting movement whatsoever.
When Peter was removed from Scoutabout for getting drunk in his garden on the Queen’s birthday, I was hugely disappointed in him. Nonetheless, we remained friends. He knew we could never be seen together, and that contact between us had to cease. The Scouts would never have permitted me to consort with a man who had got drunk on the Queen’s birthday.
On parting, we clasped hands like blood brothers. He gave me his golden woggle, and I gave him mine, although seeing as they were identical we could have just kept hold of the ones we had. We pledged that if either of us were ever in trouble we should send the golden woggle with the Scoutabout catchphrase, and the other would – nay, must – spring to their aid at once.
Years passed. Peter settled into a succession of lower-key roles on local radio, the wattage of his broadcasting abilities dimmed by the need to throw to the travel news or read out a statement from the council about where to get the flu jab or about a spate of spent condoms being left on a towpath. Radio Ipswich, All Anglia Radio, Calling Canterbury, Peterborough Community Radio and Paddock FM all benefited from the sheer fucking magnetism of Peter’s on-air personality – sorry for swearing. I’d long since lost touch with him but from afar he’d always seemed happy enough. Give him a box of CDs and a £25 book token to give away and he will give you three hours of wonderful radio.
But here was Peter sending up a distress flare in the form of a golden woggle.
I arrived at his home to find a bevy of cars parked outside. Not wanting to park down the street and walk back, I parked in front of his driveway, having cannily clocked that the car parked in it hadn’t been driven for a while. You can tell from the brown leaves that have collected on the front wipers. I do that a lot when I don’t want to park down the street and walk back.
The house had one of those PVC front doors with a door handle so you can let yourself in – why do people have those? – and I made my way inside. In a downstairs bedroom I saw the very thing I had dreaded. Peter was in bed, eyes closed, surrounded by his family. His loyal wife Kathleen sat beside him, a more buxom presence than the former model who went round pubs in Norwich with a holster full of cigarettes for sale, but still lovely looking.
‘Peter!’
One of his family shushed me.
I mouthed to Kathleen, ‘How is he?’
She pursed her lips and did a small shake of the head.
Then … ‘Alan?’
I looked down. Bravely, Peter had opened his eyes. He reached for my hand and I allowed him to clasp it, subtly nudging Kathleen aside with my hip/the side of my bum until I was sitting in the bedside chair instead of her.
‘Hello, old friend,’ gasped Peter. ‘Fall in, troop. Fall in.’
And then together we said, ‘Aaaaaaat ease.’
It was an incredible moment of stunning emotion, which might not be coming across on the page, but take my word, it was quite something. Two former presenters of regional Scout-based magazine show Scoutabout reciting the catchphrase after many years of not doing that. Quite, quite something.
‘Long time no see, old friend,’ I said. Then added: ‘What the hell were you doing getting drunk on the Queen’s birthday?’
He looked crestfallen and I regretted bringing it up.
‘You asked for my help,’ I said, eager to move on.
‘There’s only one way you can help,’ he said.
‘Name it.’
He pulled my ear close to his lips.
‘Make the most of what you have,’ he said. ‘Don’t do what I did, don’t settle for second best. I beg you, Alan, do everything in your power to give yourself the platform that your talent deserves. For talent is like a flower; it needs light and water but most of all guts.’
I’m paraphrasing slightly – I did want to record what he was saying on my iPhone, but the sombre mood in the room told me that would have been frowned upon. He definitely said the thing about flowers needing guts, because I remember thinking that was quite odd.
‘What, you mean …?’
‘Television, Alan. It’s where you belong.’
‘Nah! That was years ago.’
‘Promise me, Alan,’ he said, more urgently, squeezing my hand hard, which hurt, actually. ‘Promise you’ll do everything you can to get back on TV.’
He started coughing.
‘Alright, love, that’s enough,’ said Kathleen.
He closed his eyes. Silence. Then a male voice at the back: ‘Does someone here drive a Vectra? They’ve blocked me in the bloody drive.’
I left the house, Peter’s words chiming around my head, the solemn plea from a man on his deathbed. Although I’ve just remembered he did actually get better after that. Retrained as a financial adviser and apparently made a shitload of money in 2022.
But still. A promise was a promise.
In that moment I decided I was going to get myself back on BBC Television within twelve months. And while I ended up taking slightly longer (it was more like eight years), I would one day achieve that feat.
And yes, enemies of mine say this noble vow sounds like a made-up literary device to justify my clamour for TV work, a fig leaf behind which resides the unsightly cock and balls of my own ambition.
What I will say is that attitude is exactly why Brexit isn’t going very well.
* * *
11 This is the dual narrative thing I was on about. (Oh and while we’re down here, my editor and I disagreed about the monk’s letter that opens this chapter. I felt it should have been a deeply haunting sexually avant-garde work, she didn’t. So forgive this rather bland pseudo William Morris protest letter.)
12 Which in my imagination looked glowing and bright rather than bulbous and sore, the latter usually a sad indicator of alcohol dependency, which does tend to be more prevalent in Nordic countries where reindeer like to live. No, I picture Rudolph’s nose as more of a red-light bulb, the kind they use in brothels, although I shudder at the image of Rudolph for some reason hoisted up to the ceiling of a knocking shop to light the room against his will, the bewildered mammal frightened and confused by the activity taking place below him, all of which he is inadvertently illuminating with his magic nose.
13 Have to try stand-up one day!
14 A new type of job invented only in the last few years, ‘influencers’ are young people – typically aged between fifteen and twenty-five – who post short online videos multiple times a day in which they speak quickly and loudly about themselves. For reasons that aren’t fully understood, this doesn’t infuriate other young people – it attracts them. They come to trust and listen to the views of these young people who speak quickly and loudly about themselves, not even being put off by the fact that they say ‘in hopes of’ rather than ‘in the hope of’, or ‘inside of’ rather than ‘inside’, or ‘super excited’ rather than ‘very excited’. Businesses pay these ‘influencers’ to endorse their products. And it works because millennials would rather follow what they’re told by someone who has no expertise about a product and is only endorsing it because they are being paid to do so over the views of a professional reviewer at a reputable publication providing an assessment that is genuinely independent. What’s my view on all this? Don’t have one, never really thought about it.
15 What twits/twats called headphones.
SEEING THE LIGHT
July 2021
‘I could email the man from Dolphin. He’d buy you lunch if he thought you wanted a bathroom.’
‘I’m talking about a proper restaurant lunch. Last time he drove me to a retail park and bought me a Whopper. Ended up telling me about his divorce with the windscreen wipers on.’
In the weeks after my departure from the BBC, my assistant has been trying to bulk out my schedule. This is a tough time for me.
I am a man who enjoys structure. I like to be busy, or appear busy. People around me know this. Sometimes I’ll open my calendar app to see the shape of my day and say to my assistant, ‘What the hell’s this? Where’s the structure?’ By which I mean there should be one to two activities in the morning, a scheduled lunch, and then something in the afternoon. Evenings are either a social or work event, or she’s meant to leave out a ready meal and write in the diary ‘meal, ready’. Just because I don’t like seeing the phrase ‘ready meal’ written down in my diary.
If no lunch is planned, my assistant will do a ring-round, see if there are gala lunches or charity buffets in the local area, or agree for me to meet with a salesman I’m stringing along so that he can buy me lunch.
I joked to my friend that my diary contained so much white it looked like a blizzard.
He said, ‘It’s good you can laugh about it.’
I said, ‘Kieran, that’s a hallmark of my career. If you joke about something it stops it being a threat.’16 But the fact is, my diary is empty and neither I nor my assistant have much clue how to fill it.
Obviously, dog walking is off the menu (God, I miss him). I can’t even attend my usual racquets club because a complaint I’ve made is under investigation and I’ve been asked not to attend until that has been completed, which I respect.17
But with squash off-limits and no job to go to, I’m struggling to fill my days. This is one of the first times in my life I have been genuinely unemployed. On the other occasion the BBC let me go, in 1994 after I discharged a firearm in the studio and killed a man, I still enjoyed a rich seam of corporate work, even doing a tongue-in-cheek photoshoot to promote a local paintball range, which, to use the vernacular, went down like a shit sandwich with the dead man’s grieving relatives. Fair enough, shouldn’t have done that. The fact that he was universally disliked even by his own family didn’t change the fact that I had taken the man’s life – even someone who, as I say, was universally disliked.
But right now, in 2021, commercial work is sparser. Every now and then, sure, I’ll don some gardening trousers for a promo shoot, or host a Q&A where members of the public can fire questions at the CEO of a flexible-office provider. Or present a one-on-one with a crypto specialist where I’ll say, ‘What do we mean when we say bitcoin?’ and then have to nod furiously until it’s my turn to speak again. But these engagements are far and few between.
I move listlessly around my home, stopping periodically to drape myself over one of my three sofas, but even the leather one I had imported from Pakistan feels scratchy and lumpy. I’m at a loose end and I don’t like it.
I ask Alexa how she is, in the hope that her programmers at Amazon HQ have prepared an amusing answer for her to say, but they haven’t so I say, ‘Alexa, stop,’ and she goes quiet again.
The radio, then. It’s preset to my old station North Norfolk Digital. Three days a week, my former colleague Simon Denton still sidekicks on the show, despite also working on This Time (for now). Still, I enjoy hearing his wisecracks on the radio. The guy’s just a talent – something you can’t say about his on-air partner and the lead DJ of my erstwhile mid-morning slot Chase McPhail. Chase is absolutely awful. I mean, he Stinks. The. Place. Out.
‘You’re listening to Mid Morning Matters on North Norfolk Digital.’ No shit, Chase. ‘It’s Monday, 7 June, which means it’s – drum roll, please! – Sir Tom Jones’s birthday! In a glittering career, Sir Tom scored thirty-six UK hits and nineteen in the United States – an incredible fifty-five hit singles. So today, Simon, whadda we asking?’
A jingle booms: ‘Today’s Big Q!’
And then Simon pipes up: ‘Yes, today we’re asking for your favourite Tom Jones songs. What’s your fave song by Sir Tom? If you don’t know any, maybe you can think of a song by someone else called Tom. Tom Petty or Tom Waits, maybe.’
‘Love it, love it, love it. So, line one, who’s there?’
‘Alan in Norwich.’
I can hear Chase’s tone change as soon as he recognises my voice. But I’m a listener and I’ve every right to call in if I want to.
‘Alan Partridge!’ gushes Chase. ‘Once of this parish, always a treat … What your favouri—’
‘How are you, Simon? All going well on This Time?’ I didn’t bother letting Chase finish.
‘Yeah, good, good.’
‘Anything juicy coming up?’
‘Bits and bobs,’ he says. ‘We’re thinking of doing this returning feature where we renovate a lighthouse and get Princess Anne to open it. She was telling Jennie she’s a Patron of the Lighthouse Board so—’
‘Which lighthouse?’
‘Abbot’s Cliff in Kent.’
I pull a ‘whatever’ face, but you can’t see it on the radio.
‘You should come in slightly quicker after the “Today’s Big Q” jingle,’ I say. ‘ Quite a bit of air in there.’
‘Thanks, Alan.’
‘And Chase?’ I say.
‘Yip?’
Who says yip? ‘Thirty-six UK hits and nineteen US hits doesn’t make fifty-five hit singles. They double up. It was probably thirty-six UK hits, of which nineteen were also hits in America. Rather than thirty-six hits here then another nineteen different songs that were hits in America.’
‘Just reading what it says, buddy! Got a favourite Tom Jones song?’
‘Nope’
‘OK, then …’
‘Alright, bye.’
‘Bye, Alan,’ says Simon.
‘Bye, Simon.’
Three days later and things are no better. Incredibly, I find myself helping my Filipino housekeeper Rosa to ball up my socks, just for something – anything – to do. Later, I hold one end of the bedsheet and she the other, meeting in the middle so that she can fold the sheet, like a sedate version of a Morris dance.
If my friends could see me now, I think, helping a woman to do the very work I’m paying her to do? Why, they’d pee themselves laughing, and they’d be right to piddle themselves. My assistant isn’t laughing. She clomps past theatrically as we work, later observing sniffily that ‘presumably madam will be getting her full wage for doing half the work?’
I know Rosa is humouring me for fear of having her visa revoked or whatever it is she keeps going on about, but I think she gets something out of it too. I sometimes make suggestions that, applied correctly, would improve the workflow of certain tasks. For example, Rosa hadn’t realised that when taking clean crockery from the dishwasher to the cupboard, she could bring dirty crockery back on the return trip, almost halving the amount of journeys required and leaving the dirty tableware beside the dishwasher ready for entry once the clean plates were put away. I tell her it’s all about finding small efficiencies, and although she goes and gets the anchovies from the fridge having mistaken the word ‘efficiencies’ for ‘fishies’, I think she gets it.
