mostly david ephgrave

It was great to see Alan Partridge return to his much-longed-for home the BBC tonight. I've loved Alan pretty much since the beginning, when tapes of his early appearances in Radio 4's 'On the Hour' and 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' would pass between a few select friends who were in-the-know. I can still remember the first time I saw his face, in a trailer for the TV version of 'Knowing Me, Knowing You' - I didn't get to 'The Day Today' until a little later - and how excited seeing it made me; I was so obsessed, I recorded the audio of his ABBA medley with Rebecca Front with a tape recorder and would often sing along to it in Alan-style. The first series of 'I'm Alan Partridge' was a revelation, coming at the time I'd moved to college to do a BTEC in Performing Arts. Each week, I'd disappear to the upstairs bedroom where we kept our spare telly to watch the latest episode in near-religious style, to then pick it apart rev...

According to Twitter wisdom, twenty-five years ago today, the satirical send up of the media 'The Day Today' first aired on BBC2; a programme that had a huge influence on me as a teenager and I still love to this day. Until recently, I was sure I was introduced to the work of Chris Morris & Steve Coogan et al by a friend from the drama group I used to go to at the Gordon Craig Theatre, when he lent me his copy of the radio version of 'The Day Today' - 'On the Hour' - along with radio episodes of 'Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge' as a kid. I was absolutely certain of this and would have staked my life on it until I happened to see this friend again when he came to one of my shows a couple of years ago and asserted afterwards that I introduced them to him . Now I don't know what to think: it's as if the very fabric of my existence has been metaphorically ripped at source; that, or I've just got a shit memory. Ultimately it d...