This morning, more than 20,000 staff at the BBC arrived at work to an email from their new “colleague” Alan Partridge, ahead of his return to the broadcaster after 24 years.
The round-robin message, written in character, urged the thousands of staff to tune in to his new show This Time With Alan Partridge, while simultaneously taking a dig at his former employers at Sky. “Even if nobody else in the country does, we’re already hitting the kind of numbers my shows were getting on Sky Atlantic.”
It starts: “Yes, some 24 years after my last presenting gig, the BBC have sidled up to me with a short-term offer to co-present your much-loved magazine show, This Time, standing in for John Baskell who’s been taken ill. Well, although my diary is as clogged as John’s arteries (get well, John!) I have agreed to drop everything and step up.”
The note also tackles his old enemies at the BBC, which sacked him for an on-air misdemeanour involving a turkey that led to both his boss and a man in a wheelchair getting punched. He acknowledged that not everyone would be thrilled with his imminent return: “Some of you aren’t going to like that. Some of you made clear when I left that I wouldn’t be welcome back; a woman who worked in compliance called Karen or Kate or Kath who had long wavy hair and apparently still works here sneered so hard I thought her face would turn inside out.”
It continues: “Back I am, as evidenced by this, my own official BBC email address. And with it I reach out to you my colleagues – not to gloat, or settle old scores, or say ‘Hey Karen/Kate/Kath, why don’t you kiss my arse’ – but to be the bigger man and clear the air of any residual stench.”
The email, titled Clearing The Air, finally mocks the BBC through the pen of Steve Coogan’s most excruciating, ingenious creation. “No, it’s time for a clean slate and no hard feelings. Because I love the BBC and I always have. While others might say it’s a smug anachronism full of braying, know-nothing chancers doling out fat commissions to their braying, know-nothing Oxbridge mates, I don’t. I think the BBC is great, and watch the programmes avidly, regardless of their quality.”
This Time With Alan Partridge starts tonight at 9.30pm on BBC One.
