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...

Watching a clip of Terry Wogan’s final emotional Radio 2 sign-off on BBC Breakfast this morning reminded me just how warm, distinctive and individual his voice really was. For a child of the Eighties like me, it was ever-present; be it on his chat show, on his famously cutting commentary of the Eurovision Song Contest, on Children in Need or on Blankety Blank. It was something I took for granted, as it had always been there; even if he wasn’t in attendance himself, when the likes of Steve Coogan, Rob Brydon and Peter Serafinowicz would lovingly supply those instantly recognisable lilting inflections in his absence. He somehow managed to be both mainstream and left-field; cheekily poking fun at those around him, and more often at himself. He was a safe, yet off-kilter pair of hands to be left in, particularly when the show he was presenting was loose enough for him to improvise as he would like (which was the ones with long running-times - such as Eurovision and Children i...

Friday 8th August 1969. Just before noonish. Four world-famous faces convene outside EMI Studios in St. John’s Wood. Their bodies convene at the same location; it would have looked weird if they hadn't.  A stepladder is quickly set up in the centre of the main road, just a few yards from a zebra crossing. The four musicians wander down to it, the clean-shaven one kicks off his sandals and they then proceed to walk over the crossing a handful of times - the musicians, not the sandals - whilst a photographer up the ladder captures the moment. I’m referring to the cover shoot for The Beatles’ Abbey Road. Get it? Good. At that point the Fab Four were already at the tail-end of their collective career, only a few brief months from calling it a day.  They’d conquered the world (musically speaking), and in just seven years had transmuted from loveable moptops to less-loveable, even-moppier moptops – and, get this: none of them had yet r...