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Partridge emails BBC staff ahead of long-awaited return

News, TV, Film & Streaming

by Simon Austin
February 25, 2019

Alan Partridge has emailed everyone at the BBC to let them know “it’s time for a clean slate and no hard feelings” ahead of his long-awaited return to the Corporation.

The presenter returns in This Time with Alan Partridge on BBC One at 9.30pm tonight. His former show, Knowing Me Knowing You, ended 24 years ago when Partridge accidentally shot a guest and attacked a BBC commissioning editor.

In the missive, sent from “my own official BBC email address (alan.partridge-bbc@bbc.co.uk), the broadcaster, played by Manchester-born Steve Coogan, writes: “The BBC have sidled up to me with a short-term offer to co-present your much-loved magazine show This Time, standing in for John Baskell who’s been taken ill.

“My response? Well, although my diary is as clogged as John’s arteries (get well, John!) I have agreed to drop everything and step up. Now, some of you aren’t going to like that.

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“Some of you made clear when I left that I wouldn’t be welcome back; a woman who worked in compliance called Karen or Kate or Kath who had long wavy hair and apparently still works here sneered so hard I thought her face would turn inside out.

“But back I am, as evidenced by this, my own official BBC email address. And with it I reach out to you, my colleagues – not to gloat, or settle old scores, or say, ‘Hey, Karen/Kate/Kath, why don’t you kiss my arse’ – but to be the bigger man and clear the air of any residual stench.

“No, it’s time for a clean slate and no hard feelings. Because I love the BBC and I always have. While others might say it’s a smug anachronism full of braying, know-nothing chancers doling out fat commissions to their braying, know-nothing Oxbridge mates, I don’t.

“I think the BBC is great and watch its programmes avidly, regardless of their quality. All I ask is that you return the favour. All of you. From on-screen talent right the way down to off-screen staff.

“I ask every one of this email’s 20,000+ recipients to tune in tonight at 9.30pm on BBC One. Even if nobody else in the country does, we’re already hitting the kind of numbers my shows were getting on Sky Atlantic. Spread the word to a few more and my viewing figures will show the upward trajectory management is bound to want a piece of.”