Cultural Dessert

'Alan Partridge: Nomad' by Alan Partridge with Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons and Steve Coogan

14 July 2017

When I reviewed the Alan Partridge ‘autobiography’, ‘I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan’ (in May 2012) I was particularly taken with how it managed to replay many of the best known Partridge moments (from radio and TV series going back more than 20 years) without making the book feel like a ‘greatest hits’ exercise, merely replaying old jokes, but actually adding a further layer of hindsight humour by re-telling the various incidents in exactly the way Alan himself would. The ‘sequel’, ‘Alan Partridge: Nomad’ by Alan Partridge with Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons and Steve Coogan (which I have just finished reading as an unabridged audio book, narrated by Alan Partridge) cleverly extends this technique. In this diary of Alan’s ill-fated attempt to get a TV commission for a celebrity walking series (in the style of Julia Bradbury or Clare Balding) by embarking on an emotional trek across East Anglia in the footsteps of his father, he includes his reflections on almost everything that has happened to Alan Partridge since the publication of ‘I, Partridge’. This includes telling us about the events that form the plot of Declan Lowney’s excellent 2013 film ‘Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa’. The whole Alan Partridge canon has become increasingly meta-textual. Rob Gibbons and Neil Gibbons are genuine Partridge fans who have turned their obsessively pedantic (Patridgean?) attention to detail regarding Alan’s history to superb effect in the books.

Labels: Books

posted by Robin Simpson @ 3:32 pm