Picture from Wikipedia
After working our way through I'm Alan Partridge we completed the story (although we haven't watched Mid Morning Matters) by watching the film Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa. I didn't know what to expect as movie spin-offs of television comedy doesn't really have a great track record, with the exception of the three film adaptations of On The Buses of course. Thankfully the same writing team that have followed Partridge throughout his on-screen life were on board, and I'm happy to reassure anyone who hasn't seen it yet but are thinking about it that it wasn't ruined. For me the only thing that could have made it appear contrived was the fact that Michael the Geordie was now a security guard at the radio station, having worked at the hotel in series one of I'm Alan Partridge and the petrol station in series two. Would someone really follow a person around either by coincidence or obsession like that?
The story actually had a ring of truth running through it, as North Norfolk Digital is bought out by a large media company who have also bought a rival station. All of the local identity vanished and eventually the listeners were being subjected to the same blandness you get from all commercial mainstream radio with safe music choices and no creative input from the presenters. It all sounds familiar doesn't it? People still talk about the old Radio Trent in a way that nobody will about Capital FM in years to come. A siege at the station follows, including a brilliant scene involving an old road show lorry driving down the road too slowly. By the end of the film Alan Partridge was a hero and hosting the breakfast show on the station, so it was nice to see him winning for a change. Although the character has existed for over twenty years, in my opinion it has only really started to work due to him being older. Partridge needed to be a pompous middle aged man to really bring out his character, (although he has somehow only aged around six years since 2002), the sort of man who would count Mike Read and various other faded but at the same time still working broadcasters as friends.
We had a Chinese takeaway last night, not one of my favourite areas of takeaway food but nice to have occasionally. This morning I recalled the dreams I had during the night. First of all I was outside a pub called The Ship in Marske, where my late Granddad Eddie got out of a car followed by my Nana Freda and my parents in their wedding gear. Having seen the wedding photos I could conjur up a fairly accurate image of the day, although why my dream imagination couldn't have walked five minutes up the road to the church they married in is a mystery. I was talking on the phone to someone about 'what I had to do' in order to leave and return to my own time. Nobody could see me, which was just as well, but my being there in March 1975 had nothing to do with my parents wedding, it was just a coincidence that whatever needed fixing happened on the same day.
Secondly, I lost Jack while I was walking him and ran around the streets crying as I looked for him. There were lots of dogs roaming around which I knew was a bad thing if Jack was loose and eventually a patterdale terrier came trotting down the road to me and growled angrily when I knelt down to make a fuss of him. It was when I noticed that this dog had a full tail, (Jack has been docked at some point in his life before we adopted him, not something I agree with but it has happened and he seems fine). My first thought wasn't that this wasn't the dog that we have grown to love and loves us and has formed a bond that means that he is now part of the family, my first thought was actually that I couldn't take this imposter dog home because Mandi would notice. My final dream was that Eastenders had brought back the character of Pauline Fowler, despite the fact that she died on 2006. To cover up the fact that the actress Wendy Richard wasn't available due to her death in 2009, the BBC used a lookalike who didn't have any dialogue and filmed her from clever angles in the same way a stunt double is used.
This is surely all down to Chinese food so I dread to think what the Chinese dream about.
The Sunday Alternative #46 is available from here.
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July Housekeeping
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