Warm beer and cold hands, the peal of church bells and a healthy suspicion for human rights. Despite the divisive Brexit referendum, widening inequality and a surge in hate crime, these are the things that unite Britons after voting to leave the European union, according to the veteran broadcaster Alan Partridge.
Partridge, the fictional character played by Steve Coogan – who has been a regular fixture on television and radio for 25 years – told the Today programme on BBC’s Radio 4 that he disagreed with doomsayers who say Britain has never been more divided in politics and culture.
Speaking to BBC arts editor Will Gompertz, Partridge said that in researching his latest book, Alan Partridge: Nomad, a deeply personal journal of his travels around the British Isles, he had discovered there were “certain things that unite us all”.
“It’s warm beer and cold hands,” he said. “It’s the clacking of bowling balls, the peal of church bells; it’s tutting when you see an ice-cream van selling hamburgers; it’s a healthy suspicion of human rights; it’s a Punch and Judy show having a giggle at a domestic incident; it’s a dozen sausage rolls in a tupperware box and a pair of trunks wrapped in a towel; it’s an iPhone, it’s an iPhone charger.
“You take my point, don’t you?
“People say Britain’s divided, just because people voted for a Conservative government, which, without hinting at my own political views, is as British as it gets. And what are leftwing politics? An idea developed by a German and popularised by the Chinese. What’s British about that? Julian Fellowes believes Labour voters should be charged with treason, and I think he has a point.”
The Partridge character first appeared in 1991, presenting sports on Radio 4 current affairs programme On The Hour, before being approached by BBC talent spotters to present his own chat show on the station, Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, which was soon transferred to television.
However, by 1997 he was fired from the corporation for punching the then chief commissioning editor in the face with a stuffed partridge, and spent several years in the wilderness of commercial local radio, presenting the graveyard shift on Radio Norwich. In more recent years, following a successful autobiography, he has transformed himself into a chronicler of British life in documentaries and print.
In Nomad, Partridge combines a travelogue of British life with a personal exploration of what has made him one of the country’s best loved personalities. Published last week, it has already been awarded five stars in 18 Amazon customer reviews, and four in the 19th.
“Another volume of pedantic, over-wrought, stylistically and tonally muddled prose from a man who once again comes across as petty, parochial and ludicrously vain,” one buyer writes.
But Partridge said his decision to turn his hand to travel writingcame from more than just a love for his native country. He said: “Britain loves a travel writer. One thinks of Michael Palin, Judith Chalmers, Bill Bryson with his gentle ribbing of this country’s way of life – which is meant to be affectionate but I think is a little bit if-you-don’t-like-it-Bill-go-back-to-America for my tastes.
“So I looked at them, looked at their passion for travel, and crucially how they monetise that passion for commercial gain.”
