Alan Partridge's 10 best quotes as he returns for new BBC series This Time

Alan Gordon Partridge makes a welcome return to peak time BBC One programming on Monday (9.30pm), in This Time with Alan Partridge. This is a lighter-than-light news magazine programme that makes The One Show look like Jacob Bronowski’s Ascent of Man, and is thus ideally suited to Alan’s talents.

Despite his more recent successes on Radio Norwich (Norfolk Nights, Up With the Partridge) and North Norfolk Digital (Mid Morning Matters, “for the North Norfolk Generation”), in documentaries and a feature film, Alan hasn’t been seen on prime-time television since he shot a guest dead in the final (very final for the guest) edition of Knowing Me, Knowing You with Alan Partridge, back in 1994.

After that things went a bit pear (tree) shaped. His wife, Carol, left him for a fitness instructor and his children, Fernando and Denise, didn’t want to see him. He has, on the other hand, enjoyed a succession of lovers and partners, including scatty Ukrainian Sonja, 14 years his junior (“back of the net”), and a more homely “bird”, Angela, who fell out with him after she found a text message to a colleague expressing Alan’s (unconsummated) desire to play the bongos on her buttocks.

Alan has been involved in a violent siege, been stalked by a fan, suffered addiction (specifically to Toblerone) and, the nadir, once drove to Dundee in his bare feet. He is always bouncing back.

For a professional resume, I can do little better than to reproduce the one by Ray Woollard for Alan’s profile in the Anglian Lives series:

“A journalist, a presenter, a broadcaster, a husband and father, company director, a vigorous all-rounder with a fascinating past and an amazing future.

“Gregarious, popular, a famular man, yet never happier than when relaxing in his own five-bedroom self-built home with three acres of land and access to a private stream. But who the hell is this mysterious enigma?”

Here are some clues:

1) Lap Dancer

Alan is so worried about getting a second series of his chat show that we often glimpse him falling into this bizarre psychotropic-style reverie. Wearing a galvanised leather thong, peek-a-boo Pringle sweater, sports shorts and platform shoes he performs erotic dances for commissioning editors and producers from the BBC and RTE (the latter dressed as IRA terrorists).

2) Dan!

Again, this is from I’m Alan Partridge and shows his desperation to form new friendships, such as with Dan Moody, who owns Kitchen Planet, just outside Norwich. He shouts “Dan!” across the car park 15 times. Alan and Dan enjoy similar likes – banter, Lexus, Director’s Bitter and quality granite worktops – but Alan discovers that Dan and his wife are “sex people”, and that, he decides, is that.

3) Shooting Forbes McAllister dead

Back in 1994, Alan’s first TV chat show series, Knowing Me Knowing You With Alan Partridge, suffered the very worst of luck when Alan accidentally shot dead a restaurant critic/ bore, Forbes McAllister, with the critic’s very own antique pistol, which once belonged to Lord Byron.

4) Septic tank

In the film Alpha Papa, fellow North Norfolk DJ Pat Farrell, goes berserk and takes the entire radio station hostage. Alan has secretly betrayed Pat, and, when Pat discovers this while they are making a slow getaway in the Radio Norwich roadshow bus, Alan seeks unlikely sanctuary in the septic tank under the bus loo.

5) Smell my cheese!

Alan pushes his case for a new BBC series by pitching ideas such as Inner City Sumo, Youth Hostelling with Chris Eubank and Monkey Tennis to Tony Hayers, the sceptical BBC commissioning editor. Hayers is forced to tell him bluntly that his future does not lie with the corporation. Alan takes it badly, and finds himself forcing a whole stilton (a nice one, with walnuts in it) into the face of the bureaucrat with the immortal cry: “Smell my cheese, you mother!”

6) ‘Not my arse’

Alan has always worked hard for charities (though not mental health causes – “don't want to get tarred with the mad brush”). Here, though, we find his good nature being taken advantage of by some over-excited fans, and he is debagged by his audience. Alan’s bare bottom is again glimpsed in a scene in Alpha Papa, where he tucks his meat and veg behind his thighs, thus making Alan’s one of the most famous arses in Britain.

7) Condiments

Alan’s North Norfolk Digital Mid Morning Matters always comes up with the most innovative of phone-in topics. Probably the best posed the question: “You’re stuck on a desert island and only allowed one condiment, what is it to be?”, which prompts this memorable exchange:

“AP: Kev in Norwich?

Caller: Gravy…

AP: That’s not a condiment, it’s a hot sauce.

Caller: Bisto then…

AP: That’s a brand of gravy.

Caller: Branston pickle then…

AP: And that’s a relish.”

8) Countdown to World Cup ’94

Believe it or not, Alan started as a sports presenter. Unlike so many of them, Alan never fails to find a novel way to describe a goal: “Liquid football”; “eat that!”; “he must have a foot like a traction engine”; the proof is in the pudding and the pudding in this case is a football.“ Eat my goal!”; “Twat!”; “And the goalie has got football pie all over his shirt”.

9) I’ve pierced my foot on a spike! It ruddy hurts like mad!

Alan Partridge is a regular at the Choristers Country Club, appreciating the zero tolerance rule on denim; but disapproves of their lax security to the extent of reporting one of the receptionists. So this time when he declares through the telecom, “Hello, I’ve just swallowed a load of anthrax, and I’d like to let-off like mad in the club bar, can I come in?” they won’t let him in without his card. He attempts to leap the gate, piercing his foot in the process. His planned presentation and pyrotechnic display (“a condensed Pink Floyd concert”) for Dante’s Fires, of Reading, gets off to the worst possible start; losing a pint of blood.

10) Ovine congress

Alan hosts some teenagers and it all goes horribly wrong when one of them makes a jokey sheep noise at Alan, who goes berserk: “You’re the sheep shagger. You probably keep sheep magazines under your bed, probably pictures of sheep on their back in a pen with their knickers off. Bet you kiss ’em, swirling your tongue around, play with their teats, get behind it, strum ’em like a guitar, spooning them with your hot balls pushed up against its woolly back.” Alan is reprimanded.