In the week Jenni Murray left Woman’s Hour, I was listening to Alan Partridge on his new podcast, From the Oasthouse, and imagining what he might have been like as her successor. As I chuckled through half a dozen episodes of awkward Norfolk frippery, it occurred to me that, short of taking him on, the BBC could do wonders for its reputation in the wake of Murray’s departure by taking a leaf out of the Partridge playbook.
Partridge, played by Steve Coogan since 1991, has moved with the times. Although he hasn’t changed, his horizons have, and he is doing his best to retain his cringe-inducing record. Ousted from his radio station following ‘an issue with a colleague’, and crippled by the mortgage on his seven-bedroom home, he has down-sized to a mock ‘oast-style’ house from which he is now streaming an 18-part series on his life. Fed up with dating women who turn their cheek when he tries to kiss them (‘It’s like trying to snog an owl’), he has joined an elite dating service.
The BBC could do wonders for its reputation by taking a leaf out of the Alan Partridge playbook
In the third episode he is matched with a professional dog-groomer (‘Let’s call her Janet because she looks like one’).
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