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My in-laws kindly volunteered to do the early morning duties with Phoebe, which meant we got to sleep in until 9.30am. Which is the greatest Christmas gift that parents can get. And even though I thought I’d overdosed on booze, chocolate and cheese last night, I felt surprisingly chipper. In fact my wife and I went out and did another half an hour run this morning and it was pimpsy.
Aside from that it was a lazy Boxing Day. I managed to actually do some reading, which is almost unheard of these days, getting through a good chunk of Alan Partridge’s new book, “Nomad” which is very funny and beautifully put together. It’s weird, of course, knowing that I invented Alan Partridge and yet here I am having to get a copy of the book myself (albeit in gift form) and not receive any of the millions of pounds it will be raising. But let the thieves who stole my ideas from me profit in their mansions, whilst I take the nobler route and actually become Alan Partridge. Because I am that committed to the character that I (more or less) totally created. Out of all the people who “claim” to have created the character, I have easily done the best at imitating his career trajectory and personality, meaning the character can look back at the young idiot mocking him and the middle-aged man being him and pull a wry face.
But I ask you this, my friends, would Alan Partridge write a daily blog, every day for over 14 years, letting everyone know about the minutia of his failed showbiz and personal life? No he wouldn’t. So I am not like him at all.
I would still recommend the book though. It makes a good nod towards fans of Partridge by referencing stuff that they will be familiar with from TV shows and films, but also works in its own right (it might be weird coming to it with no notion of who Alan Partridge is, but in a way might be even more entertaining). I didn’t write it, but if I had written it, then I would make it exactly the same as this, only better. Iimagine that I will also buy and listen to the audiobook too. The first one was amazing. I am not sure even Alan Partridge would lower himself to be a fan of the thing that he incorrectly felt he had originally created. And that’s why I am the better man. In a contest between me and Alan Partridge I come out top in nearly everything.
We watched the Absolutely Fabulous film in the evening, which I can not recommend as heartily, although as always the performances, particularly Joanna Lumley’s are impressive. The script was somewhat loose, to the extent that it didn’t just feel improvised, but that it might have been improvised live, as we watched it, being forced to take its next scene suggestion from a 5 year old child. Though it’s perhaps something you have to immerse yourself in and almost stands outside critical judgement. In the same way that Mrs Brown’s Boys does and there were several points of comparison, I thought.
Maybe it’s partly because in the years since this began the celebrity cameo (which is employed so heavily in this film that it almost transcends this criticism too) has become the easy way to get a big laugh. It doesn’t matter really what the joke is, the surprise value comes from who is saying it. But now that is used in almost every film (for example in the way, way worse similarly fashion-orientated film, Zoolander 2) it is no longer a surprise and just looks hack. The low point in the new Ghostbusters film (apart from possibly weirdly Bill Murray being pretty much the worst thing in it) is the punchline to a scene at a heavy metal gig being Ozzy Osbourne shouting out about having a flashback. Maybe this unamusing trope comes from the Simpsons generally using celebrity cameos so effectively, but these were nearly always characters and even when they weren’t had proper jokes attached to them. So having become obsessed with this as a bad idea in movies, it’s hard to enjoy Ab Fab which does it in every scene (even though it did it, if not first, then long before this current crop).
Anyway there’s something interesting in the way that Partridge is developing the character and Ab Fab feels a bit like a cash-in rehash - a cashhash?). And nothing else happened in my sad, failed showbiz life today, so that’s all I’ve got for you.
