Alan Partridge spends a lot of money Great lighthouse, which makes up at least a third of his memoir, in which he worries about cancel culture. Ultimately, the aging station is the best opportunity for a “woke” rethink. But he has a trump card: he will soften the difficult revelations in advance with mea culpas.
“I [once] “I developed incredibly strong feelings for host Sue Cook, even touching him,” he admits. He told Cook she had beautiful hair and wondered if he would feel it. “I crossed the line and I regret it.”
Elsewhere, concerned about the widespread fear within the BBC, he wonders why Jeremy Clarkson was really excluded from the world of the BBC. Top gear.
“Previously [he] fired just for hospitalizing a producer for not serving a hot meal and calling him a lazy Irish bastard? If this were a crime, Joan Bakewell would have been brought to justice long ago.”
Partridge himself is hardly the arbiter of who is a prime candidate for repeal and who isn’t, which of course makes his obsession all the more fun. This sets the tone for the rest of Partridge’s story. It’s a completely unnecessary addition, but October is also the month of celebrity memoirs, and if Peter Kay and David Jason can produce several sequels, then why not Partridge? These books don’t say much either, and are sold primarily based on the title on the cover rather than the content.
IN Great lighthouse, there is at least a fictional plot. There are actually two of them. Part one looks at North Norfolk Digital’s Alan’s unlikely return to BBC1 primetime as co-presenter This time with Alan Partridge (A Exhibition parody), which ran from 2019 to 2021, and the second is about the purchase of a lighthouse to restore it to its former glory.
But what’s especially compelling about the book is a series of set pieces that cleverly show Partridge as he always was and always will be: a perpetual hugger, unable to see the tragedy of himself as clearly as anyone else.
Despite his recent career rise, he struggles to remain on the C list, spending his weekends barbecuing in the garden of Esther McVey’s home, where he shares cooked meats and passive aggression with Andrew Castle and Gary Barlow. He is also spending time in Qatar with disgraced former Sky TV football pundit Richard “Hairy Arms” Keys.
There’s a chapter called “My Transition Begins (Not Gender)” and it’s later revealed that I’m “one of those people who freezes up relatively quickly” in the bedroom.
Of course, Partridge is so good on screen because Steve Coogan is a brilliant comedic actor. But on the page – and in the scripts – are all his works since 2013. Morning is important – Comedy writing team Neil and Rob Gibbons are responsible for much of the production. They may be the best ventriloquists in the business, because here is a memoir whose audiobook, inevitably narrated by Partridge himself, is almost unnecessary, so loud is his voice in your ear as you read.
This is a deeply stupid book. That’s great too. Graphic novels, such as they really are, are notoriously difficult to hold in your hands, but readable. Great lighthouse You’ll be amazed at how hard the Gibbons must have worked to squeeze not only effective jokes, but genuine laughs onto almost every page.