{"id":1206,"date":"2018-12-12T23:45:11","date_gmt":"2018-12-12T23:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=1206"},"modified":"2024-02-08T07:27:23","modified_gmt":"2024-02-08T07:27:23","slug":"media-count-arthur-strong-alan-partridge","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/?p=1206","title":{"rendered":"MEDiA: Count Arthur Strong & Alan Partridge"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Count
The one and only Count Arthur Strong.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Time to celebrate two of my current heroes and role-models…<\/p>\n

Two of the best comic creations of the last 20-30 years are, in my opinion, Anal Dirgeprat, er… sorry, Alan Partridge, and Count Arthur Strong. Both might be described as doyennes of light entertainment and legends in their own lifetime.<\/p>\n

\"Alan
Mooo! Alan Partridge, top notch banter.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both capitalise on the excruciating, albeit in differing ways. Another common thread is grossly inflated self-image. But whereas Alan Partridge is crassly self-important and not as successful as he thinks he is or believes he should be, he does<\/i> hold down regular entertainment industry work, and earns enough to feel smugly self-righteous in that Tory my-wealth-means-I-must-be-better-than-you kind of way.<\/p>\n

\"Alan
At one with nature, in Norfolk.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Count Arthur, on the other hand – and I’m talking about Count Arthur as I know him, which is purely from his radio shows, one live show, and some snippets online (I hated the first TV series, and consequently haven’t seen the second or third; more on that momentarily) – is almost psychedelically delusional.<\/p>\n

Ekeing out what seems to be a near poverty level existence in a Doncaster based hinterland of visits to the Shoulder of Mutton, Wilf’s, the Citizen’s Advice Brigade, the church hall\/local Community Centre, etc, the Count survives on memories of his glory days.<\/p>\n

And those memories of his years as a pro on the circuit in the Variety era include his turns as a ventriloquist, with mummified doll Tiny Tut, and Mr Memory, a be-turbaned medium channeling facts from the past. More recent glories, still many years ago, include bit parts in The Archers<\/i>, All Creatures Wise & Wonderful<\/i>, Poirot<\/i> and Juliet Bravo<\/i>, or appearing as an extra in Bridge Up The River Kwai<\/i>, and so on.<\/p>\n

Since then his career has consisted of occasional accidental appearances on the BBBC, or his own farcical local Doncaster productions for one or two bemused punters at St Aidan’s…<\/p>\n

\"Count
Memory Man. Truly extraordinary occult powers!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So despite his TV show being axed before Count Arthur’s went the same way, and despite the footwear-free Toblerone-fuelled pilgrimage to Scotland, Partridge has been and continues to be the more up to date and successful of these two media darlings.<\/p>\n

\"Alan
Peephole Pringle meets the Cones.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both also have books out, despite Bouncing Back<\/i> being pulped by the truckload (and Robin Hood, The Doncaster Years<\/i> seemingly out of print), all of which – whilst fun to read – work best as audiobooks read by the characters themselves. When Partridge delivers the line ‘Her contraptions are massive!’, as he recounts his birth in I, Partridge<\/i>, it’s… well, it’s hard to put into words, but I love<\/i> it.<\/p>\n

\"Count
A classic.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I’ve got Count Arthur’s The Sound of Mucus<\/i> DVD, from his most recent tour, to look forward to, as I happen to know Teresa’s getting it me for Christmas. Seeing him perform live in Cambridge was a great pleasure. I bought all the available radio shows on CD, plus his ‘memoirs’, at that gig. I should’ve met him, as he was signing after. But for some reason I didn’t.<\/p>\n

\"Count
Count Arthur reads from Through It All…<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I had heard that the BBBC were readmitting Alan P to TV-land sometime this year. But it’s nearly over, and there’s been nowt so far. I’ve had to survive and feed my Alan habit with repeatedly listening to his two audiobooks, I, Partridge<\/i>, and Nomad<\/i>, occasional doses of YouTube, where you can watch such things as Scissored Isle, <\/i>and going back to the DVDs of the TV stuff.<\/p>\n

\"Alan
Alan rocks some thumb-slappin’ air-bass.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The slightly more recent Mid-Morning Matters<\/i> stuff is good’n’all, but feels like crumbs compared with the original BBC TV series. Interestingly Alan Partridge made the transition to cinema very successfully, in my view, whilst Count Arthur was bowdlerised and neutered in the transition to TV.<\/p>\n

I like Father Ted<\/i>, although nowhere near as much as I like the Count. But I can’t forgive Graham Linehan for what he did to Count Arthur in bringing it to BBC TV. Now that the Count Arthur TV series has been binned, I do hope he’ll be getting back to the radio series?<\/p>\n

\"Alan
‘I’ve pierced my foot on a spike!’<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Although they’re very different in many ways – Count Arthur the bluff northerner with a penchant for offal, Partridge the wussy fen-boy Toblerone addict – they share more than just a love of a foaming pint of British bitter. They’re both extremely articulate, and very fond of digression. But where Partridge is a sports casual clad pedant, the Count is a ’50s era trilby wearing double-knit clad surrealistic master of mashed up verbal meanderings.<\/p>\n

\"Count
The Count and Tiny Tut. Extraordinary ventriloquism!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Both are arrogant, rude, self-obsessed, and yet utterly lovable, in a strange and perverse way. I think part of their charm lies in the vulnerability their cloaks of delusion are swathing them from. As if in some collective exorcism, we can banish disagreeable traits we are all possessed of into these comic creations, where repellent aspects of our common humanity become very<\/i> funny, even charming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Time to celebrate two of my current heroes and role-models… Two of the best comic creations of the last 20-30 years are, in my opinion, Anal Dirgeprat, er… sorry, Alan Partridge, and Count Arthur Strong. Both might be described as doyennes of light entertainment and legends in their own lifetime. Both capitalise on the excruciating, … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “MEDiA: Count Arthur Strong & Alan Partridge”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paGwUa-js","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1206"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11289,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1206\/revisions\/11289"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1206"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1206"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.sebpalmer.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1206"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}