The Pictures Are Much Much Better on Television

Here’s a question for you. When did Alan Partridge first appear on television?

Caveats: a) I specifically mean television. Radio is brilliant, and also outside the scope of this article. b) For now, ignore any unbroadcast pilots. I’m talking about actual, broadcast telly. c) I do mean material exclusive to television, not just part of a radio programme aired on TV.

If you immediately went for the first episode of The Day Today, on the 19th January 1994, then join the club. That’s exactly where my mind went at first. So that would be this trademark awkward exchange between Chris and Alan:

But wait! The day before each episode of The Day Today aired, BBC2 broadcast The Day Today MiniNews, three minutes of extra material which served essentially as an extended trail for the next day’s episode. Or in other words: the closest you’d get to deleted scenes this side of a LaserDisc, at least in the first half of the 90s.

Partridge makes an appearance in the first one, which was broadcast on the 18th January 1994:

So is that the answer? Not quite. Because, of course, there were trails¹ running for the series the week before air. Here’s one from the 14th January 1994, which features a brief bit of Partridge:

Incidentally, isn’t that a great trail? For all that Chris Morris has the reputation for scowling at publicity, you couldn’t ask for a better introduction to the show.

The above would usually cause me to make a variety of shrill and unpleasant noises, as I vainly tried to find the first transmission of a trail for the series. Luckily, we can sidestep that problem entirely. Because Partridge had an even earlier appearance on TV.

On the 18th December 1993, BBC Two ran one of it’s regular theme nights. You know, a proper theme night, when the Beeb actually had the money to make new programmes, and craft beautiful links between them. This one was under the Arena banner, and was called Radio Night.

I would describe it as a simulcast between BBC2 and Radio 4, except that isn’t strictly true; that would imply that both services played exactly the same thing. Part of the joy of the evening was that both services were playing slightly different soundtracks, so your radio and television could talk to each other. This video of the opening programme, which combines the two soundtracks, gives you a rough idea of what it was like:

Of course, these days, this kind of experimentation would be not only virtually impossible, but actually impossible. The varying digital delays between the different versions of each service would kill the idea stone dead. That’s progress for you.

But we could talk about Radio Night all, erm, night. Let’s get to the point. One of the segments that evening was called “TV Theft, Radio Rip-Off”, all about radio shows which transferred to television. And who do you think showed up?

OK, OK, so it’s just a voiceover with a picture, sure. But I think it counts. The very first televised appearance of Alan Partridge. Almost exactly a month before the first transmission of The Day Today.

*   *   *

The following really is for hardcore production date nerds only. You have been warned. But something about that Radio Night segment gives me pause.

Here’s the relevant bit from the Partridge voiceover:

“So, given that screen image is all-important, I need more time to contemplate the optical implications of Alan Partridge. In the meantime, I’m happy to enclose a photograph which is strictly to be considered a work in progress.”

In other words: TV Partridge isn’t quite cooked yet. Fair enough. At this point, The Day Today hadn’t even aired.

Mind you, it would be instructive to find out exactly when the photograph was taken, so we could know exactly when this “work in progress” snapshot was. Alas, this has proved difficult; unless you’re lucky, and the photo you want to investigate shows up in a stock library, you’re often out of luck.² Suffice to say that photos from this session have shown up in many places, including the cover to commercial releases of the radio Knowing Me, Knowing You itself.

Luckily, we don’t actually need to know the date of the photo; there’s another way to figure out when this version of Partridge hails from. Let’s take a look at another of the earliest “optical implications” of him – the unbroadcast pilot for The Day Today, on the 2004 DVD release:

You will note that pilot Partridge looks virtually identical to the photo used in Radio Night, with even the top being the same:

In his book Disgusting Bliss: The Brass Eye of Chris Morris, Lucian Randall says that the pilot of The Day Today was “completed in January 1993”. I can independently verify this; the VT clock for that pilot is dated 29th January 1993. So the pilot for The Day Today was shot in either December 1992 or January 1993. Which gives us a rough date for this particular limbo incarnation of Partridge.

Next, let’s talk about the actual series of The Day Today. The location shoot, as per the production paperwork, was “June/July 1993”; around six months after the pilot. The studio sessions were 6th-8th October 1993, and the 13th-15th October 1993; around ten months after the pilot.³

Location (June/July 1993)

Studio (October 1993)

Meanwhile, the Partridge section of Arena’s Radio Night? The paperwork confirms that it was written by Steve Coogan and Patrick Marber; but the production dates for the programme as a whole are what we’re interested in here:

13-16; 22, 23 September/
14, 28 & 29 October 1993

Which really does leave us in an interesting quandry. The location footage for The Day Today was shot before the Radio Night piece, that we can be fairly sure of. But the studio material is rather more debatable. If the Radio Night skit was made in September, it was indeed before the studio material in The Day Today; once you creep into October, it starts getting more questionable.

In other words: it is very possible that the “optical implications” of Partridge were still in flux at the time of the making of the Arena documentary. But they were a little less in flux than the team strictly let on to the viewer, seeing as all the location material for The Day Today had already been recorded. And by the time Radio Night was actually broadcast, Partridge was fully out of limbo anyway, as The Day Today had finished production.

Comedy history is always messier than anyone wants it to be, isn’t it?

With thanks to Justin Lewis, Darrell Maclaine and Mike Scott.

1. The BBC term is trails, not trailers, despite someone trying to correct me on this earlier in the year. ↩

2. The paperwork for Radio Night is no help; it simply gives Steve Coogan’s agent as the source. ↩

3. I have to say, despite the huge amounts of location material, I’m still vaguely surprised that The Day Today only had six days in the studio, considering the complexity of the show. ↩

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