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Chapter 3

East Anglia Polytechnic

‘O-O-O-OPEN IT,’ STUTTERED MY mother, nervously.

‘Y-y-y-yes, open it,’ said Dad, frightened.

‘Cool it, cats,’ I breezed. (This was the 70s.)

In my hand was a golden envelope³⁰ containing the most important pieces of paper I’d ever clutched: my A-level results.

Rectangular in shape and with my full name typed across it in ink, it looked important because it was of real import(ance). The foldable flap hugged the back of the sheath tightly, bound together in a solemn, gummy embrace. Unable to slip my nail beneath its coagulated clasp, I nodded to myself. I was going to have to tear the paper along the top fold. I did so and then reached inside to extract the papery contents.

‘W-w-w-w-what does it s-s-s-say?’ my parents whispered in absolute unison.

I opened it as gingerly as a rookie bomb disposal operative would open a fat letter bomb in a crèche. In a funny sort of way, the contents were just as explosive as a powdered acetone peroxide. They spelt the difference between me attending tertiary education and being consigned to the heap marked ‘Don’t have A-levels’, and that was a mound of slag I did not want to be on.

Like the bomb disposal man³¹ mentioned above, I swallowed hard and began to remove the letter within the ’lope. A single bead of sweat sprinted down my face, skirting round my temple and pausing at the jaw before throwing itself to its death.

I pulled the paper out further, until I could make out the letters it bore, letters that had been formed into words by a kindly typist. I gulped again and looked at my parents, before emitting a sigh.

‘Bad news,’ I muttered. ‘Your son has failed … at failing his exams!!!’

They were confused momentarily by the clever double negative, so I added: ‘I passed!’ (The it’s-bad-news-ha-no-actually-it’s-good-news technique is one I’ve always enjoyed. It was really pioneered by David Coleman on Question of Sport when he’d tonally suggest Bill Beaumont had got an answer wrong … only to reveal at the end of the sentence that he’d got it right! The judges on ITV’s X Factor³² use a similar technique to reveal that a singer has made it to ‘boot camp’.)

My parents were elated. Mum patted me and Dad joined me in one of the first high-fives that Norwich had seen.

‘I passed!’ I kept saying. ‘I passed them both!’³³

The exact grading isn’t important. Suffice to say, I was the proud owner of two shiny A-levels and nobody could take them away from me.³⁴

1974 was a crazy, hazy time for Alan Partridge. The Sixties had come to East Anglia and it was a time of free thinking, free love and in my case free university accommodation.

I was quite the man about Norwich,³⁵ striding confidently through the dreaming spires and hallowed halls of East Anglia Polytechnic – whose alumni included news woman Selina Scott and meteorology whizz Penny Tranter – and soaking up all the knowledge that this seat of learning had to offer.

The free accommodation? Well, enigmatically, I had decided to stay not in the woodworm-infested squalor of university halls, but to commute in from my home (my parents’ home). Although misinterpreted by some of my peers as reluctance to cut the apron strings and live independently, the decision to reside at home was a canny marshalling of my resources. It enabled me to avoid the scruffiness of my shaggy-haired, sandal-wearing colleagues. By using my ‘rent money’ wisely, I was never less than beautifully shod.

Of course, it also meant that I was something of a ‘mystery man’ on campus. While my fellow students lived in each other’s pockets and played out their debauched lifestyles for all to see, I was far less known. I’d be glimpsed at the back of lecture halls, ghosting through the student union with a glass of cider or shushing idiots in the library. And then I’d be gone. This all added to my aura. As did my idiosyncratic dress sense. Thick-knit zip-up cardigans, flared brown corduroys and shiny black pepperpot brogues set me apart from the long-haired layabouts who bore an uncanny resemblance to the Guildford Four and some of the Birmingham Six – Irish long-haired layabouts ‘wrongfully’ convicted of bombing England.

It was a time of sex, drums and rock and roll, and these three things (or four things depending on whether you count ‘rock and roll’ as one item or two) provided the backdrop to a very crazy time. I know for a fact that I would have developed a pretty impressive booze habit and had full sex had it not been for the fact I was expected home for 6 to 6.30.

You’ll notice I said ‘full sex’. Oh, I’d dabbled alright. Gentlemanliness prevents me from recounting some of the early incidents involving my nascent but powerful sexuality, but suffice to say, I was no frigid. I did quite a lot of kissing, some of it vigorous enough to chap lips (mine and hers). On other occasions, I enjoyed erotic and informative afternoons with a student whose essays I was writing. Years ago, I’d have been too prudish to discuss these sexual experiences in print, but hitting 50 has given me a new candidness. I’m happy to recall those eye-opening afternoons, with me and Jemima sitting bollock naked on her bed – me exploring her body with my quivering hands while she coquettishly feigned indifference by reading album sleeves or smoking.

Young I may have been, but I was confident enough to speak my mind. This strutting, young, cockcertain Alan would often dish out compliments as he perused and felt her body.

‘You’re a really busty woman, Jem,’ I once said. ‘One of the bustiest on campus.’

‘Thanks,’ she said through her cigarette.

‘You’ve got quite a long torso, but your legs aren’t in the least bit thick. Believe me, if I didn’t have lectures, I’d love to kiss your back from top to bottom and from side to side. Also diagonally.’

Things like that.

And I knew how to party. Typically, I’d press a blade crease into my cords,³⁶ comb my thick hair past my ears like a glossy hat (the style at the time) before pitching up fashionably late to a house party, where my appearance through the frosted glass of the door would provide hushed whispers of anticipation inside.

Perhaps subconsciously aware that I’d soon become a disc jockey (DJ), I’d bring albums with me and sit in front of the record player, treating my fellow carousers to the latest cuts. And what cuts! You couldn’t pigeon-hole me if you tried. The Swingle Singers, Nana Mouskouri, John Denver, The Seekers, The New Seekers, and then I’d throw them a curveball with some Steeleye Span. And all the while I’d sing along at a steadily increasing volume. (My warm tenor actually improved many of the tracks, some of which were marred by the rock stars of the time adopting a screechy higher register.) I’d do all this while getting roaring drunk on a Watneys Party Four – it was four pints of foaming beer in a can or, with Shaw’s Lemonade, six pints of shandy. What’s more, I knew a lot about my selected artists and would regale the fellow partygoers with interesting facts about the artists we were listening to.

On one occasion, I woke up to find my records had disappeared, no doubt pilfered by a new convert to my fresh rock sounds. Although it was only 9pm, the party had completely wound down, with guests no doubt annoyed into leaving by the noisy party going on next door.

Fun as these times were, I’d begun to grow disillusioned with university life. My relationship with Jemima had burned brightly (certainly on my part), but our encounters stopped when we had a blazing row (ah, the passion of youth) on the subject of female armpit hair on which I had – and have – pretty trenchant views. I’m in full agreement that women should enjoy sexual equality with men and not feel expected to live up to an unrealistic ideal, but if you’re a lady and you don’t shave your pits, you look like a ruddy bloke. End of.

To be honest, the end of this affair came as a blessed relief. I’d experienced a COLOSSAL sexual enlightenment, learning much about my own capabilities and the ins and outs of female anatomy, but Jemima was undeniably one of those uppity, over-confident types who think they can live by their own rules. Listeners to my current radio show (don’t worry, we’ll come to that!) will know that I actively relish the regimented parameters and enforced norms of broadcast media.

Smoking ‘doobies’, buying books second-hand and getting out of bed after midday is all well and good (it isn’t), but it’s far from productive. These people might be able to tell you which French films John Luc Picard was in, but I bet you any money they wouldn’t be able to reattach a stop cock if it came loose. Utterly useless people.

My measure of success – and it’s stood me in pretty good stead over the years – is how well someone would cope in the post-apocalyptic aftermath of a nuclear war. Trust me, when it comes to staving off radiation poisoning, repopulating the human race or restoring some semblance of sanitation, having an encyclopaedic knowledge of subtitled films is going to be pretty low on the agenda. I’d much rather stand shoulder to shoulder with someone whose video collection featured one video of The Goonies and another of The Tuxedo with Jackie Chan but who was a Polish plumber.

That’s why students and their incessant status quo bashing are so wrong. Challenging convention should be left to those of us who truly understand convention – and you can only understand convention if you’ve stuck rigidly to it 99% of the time. That’s basic.

I regretted going to university deeply. Education is clearly important (we’re repeatedly told by those who have a vested interest), but it’s borderline self-indulgent to devote several years of your life to a single subject. That kind of blinkered obsession with one topic at the expense of all others doesn’t sit easily with me. I say that as a man who can gen up on any subject to university standard in an hour and then chair a radio phone-in on it that informs and entertains. Wikipedia has made university education all but pointless.

My mind was already on the next exciting stage of my life. What would I become? How would I make my mark? I still didn’t know. But as I bellowed from a park bench to everyone and no one after another Party Four one night – ‘Alan Partridge is coming!’ (The same phrase I’d hear shouted up the stairs when I turned up at parties.)