Alan partridge

Saturday

William Atkinson

Has Badenoch bounced back?

Much like Alan Partridge, Kemi Badenoch hopes to have bounced back. After an unsure start to her first year as Tory leader – hopeless interviews and PMQs showings, and a local election shellacking – she now seems to be on a roll. Her two recent set piece speeches at conference and responding to the Budget were successes, her parliamentary performances have been more assured, and she can now get through an interview without declaring war on her ethnic enemies. The Conservatives are no longer spiralling towards fourth; her personal ratings have ticked up to the dizzying heights of -14. For the first time since Badenoch became leader, I feel a

Thursday

James Walton

Every line in the new Alan Partridge is perfect

By now, viewers of TV thrillers are no strangers to a baffling prologue – but this week brought a particularly extreme example. Nine Bodies in a Mexican Morgue opened with shots of a desert, a cactus, an animal skull nailed to a cross and a moustachioed man driving a battered pick-up truck with a Virgin Mary on the dashboard. So we were definitely in Mexico. For a while, however, that was about all that was clear, as the words ‘Day Nine’ flashed up and the truck’s unidentified female passenger spied on a dilapidated military base through binoculars. Nor did anything fall into place when the base’s soldiers talked about a

Saturday

James Innes-Smith

Steve Coogan should stick to comedy

How amusing to hear Steve Coogan and Emily Maitlis pontificate about the dreaded ‘establishment’ on Maitlis’s News Agents podcast recently. During a discussion about Coogan’s role as Brian Walden in Brian and Maggie – Channel 4’s two-part drama about Walden’s final, sensational interview with Margaret Thatcher in 1989 – the comedian admits that although he identifies with Thatcher’s lower-middle-class background, he had concerns that the script might make her seem too sympathetic. Heaven forbid. Coogan considers the drama to be as much about class as a lament for long-form interviews, suggesting that intelligent outsiders such as Walden, Thatcher and indeed Coogan himself will always struggle to break through the cut-glass ceiling.  

Wednesday

Sam Leith

Joel Morris: Be Funny Or Die

50 min listen

My guest in this week’s Book Club is Joel Morris, an award-winning comedy writer whose credits run from co-creating Philomena Cunk to writing gags for Viz and punching up the script for Paddington 2. In his new book Be Funny Or Die, he sets out to analyse how and why comedy works. He tells me why there are only three keys on the clown keyboard, what laughter does for us in neurological terms, and why Laurel and Hardy could get away with anything.

Thursday

James Walton

What’ll happen next – or what’s happened so far – is anybody’s guess: The Ipcress File reviewed

ITV’s new version of The Ipcress File began with a close-up of a pair of black-rimmed glasses just like those worn by Michael Caine in the 1965 film. They were then put on by their owner (Joe Cole), thus transforming him into Harry Palmer – but also neatly establishing the kind of show we were in for. Sunday’s first episode did a fine job of setting up an impeccably twisty (i.e. confusing) Cold War plot. It spared no effort in its quest to show us that the Britain of 1963 was on the Brink of Social Change. And yet, neither of these things really got in the way of its

Thursday

Tanya Gold

Fare game: life as The Spectator’s restaurant critic

A fictional Spectator restaurant critic called Forbes McAllister appeared on Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge. He was played by Patrick Marber and was obviously based on Keith Waterhouse — bow tie, mad eyes — even if Waterhouse was never the restaurant critic at this magazine. McAllister was on TV to show off Lord Byron’s duelling pistols ‘and a lock of his stupid hair’. He bought them to annoy Michael Winner, then restaurant critic at the Sunday Times. ‘Are you entirely motivated by hatred?’ Partridge asked McAllister. It was his best ever question. ‘Yes, I think I am,’ said McAllister. ‘Rather perceptive of you. I hate you.’ Partridge then