Alan Partridge: Nomad

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By completing your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and authorise Audible to charge your designated card or any other card on file. I reckon the web series from last year, Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle, is one of the best things he's done. The audio recording is excellent, which is what you can expect from Sennheiser recording equipment and the expert use by the much loved UK radio and TV (less so after the shooting) presenter. I'm now listening for the third time and it's been better each time, but that's what I've found with pretty much everything he's been in. Alan finds evidence that his father had an interview at the nuclear power station but never made it to the interview.

There are still some funny bits, and it wasn't awful, but maybe it is getting near time for both Alan, and the character of Alan, to enjoy a well-deserved retirement. For instance, if you live in the South East of England the chances are you’ve ridden Gatwick’s “state-of-the-art” monorail system and you’ll know that it’s anything but. If you're new to Mr Partridge, I recommend you start with his autobiography and then listen to this. Reminded me a lot of Pooter in the Victorian satire Diary of a Nobody, but while that fellow was an upfront social climber, Partridge assumes he's "made it" with condescension for all.This week’s offering was something that I’ve been meaning to read for a long time but wasn’t sure how I would feel about it. And then, almost instinctively, I find myself standing bolt upright, saluting the winged beast above me and yelling up to it at the top of my voice, ‘Good luck, large friend. Sometimes, I find myself filled with a sad pity for him, but when that happens it’s never long before he reminds me that he’s a bellend to his core, and I soon start laughing guilt-free once more. In an attempt to feel closer to his father, Alan decides to follow the journey he once took for a job interview.

Somehow this character always manages to hit the sweet spot and, if anything, as his own career trajectory has declined he has become even funnier. But the authors manage to show the reality as well, filtered through the character’s justifications.Some fall a bit flat, but over half of them are almost laugh-out-loud hilarious; in a blink-and-you'll miss them (or whatever the audible equivalent is) never-ending assaults on your funny bone. For the skies are yours now and you are free, free to soar and swoop, to glide and gambol across the very face of heaven, until you touch down, weary yet elegant in a land far, far away’. The great thing is you can just visualise Alan as he walks in the footsteps of his father to Dungeness Nuclear Power Station. Gregarious and popular, yet Alan’s never happier than when relaxing in his own five-bedroom, south-built house with three acres of land and access to a private stream.

I've somehow missed his previous book, but what really came through for me more here than on TV are the way the character's grounded in multiple layers of deceit - obviously there are the things he knows but refuses to admit to the reader, but then beneath those are the things he genuinely doesn't see, despite their being incredibly obvious to everyone else (though oddly, for me this was least successful in the chapter giving his version of events in the Alpha Papa film, where we've actually seen what went down - it felt like over-egging the pudding somehow, when the rest of the book is so good at making the actual events so clear just by implication). But make no mistake, the weakest chapter is funnier than anything else I've had read to me this year. The deeply personal follow-up to Alan Partridge's deeply personal autobiography, I, PARTRIDGE, charting the highs, lows, and mediums of his one-man walking tour around (certain parts of) Britain. Too short, could have doubled its length but writing like this must take a huge amount of effort to think up punchlines for literally every sentence. Needless to say, Alan digresses considerably throughout this book, touching on his career, his broken marriage, his habits, his purulent foot (which appears to have developed its own pulse), how good a kisser he is, his pearls of wisdom – the list seems endless.

Our walks are as unique as we are—from the pert strut of a Strictly Come Dancer to the no-nonsense galumph of a Tory lady politician. Alan is doing the 'in' celebrity thing of going on some type of journey, which encompasses actual travel, intermingled with a less tangible, personal sense of discovery. He ends up hallucinating wildly due to an infected wound in his foot, and is finally rescued by the kindness of an old lady he meets in a municipal swimming pool. Not much more I can say than 'Pure Genius' If you know Alan Partridge, watched his TV programes, read his books or seen any of his DVD's, you will eat this up very quickly. This makes sense given how Alan himself comes up with the idea for the book within the book but unfortunately no level of meta meaning can compensate for a weak text.