All roads lead to Alan Partridge:
- Today, I was listening to the Happy Mondays' Pills, Thrills & Bellyaches...
- When Jason IM'ed me about 24 Hour Party People, which I love...
- Only to get home tonight, and find our brilliant TiVo recording "Knowing Me, Knowing You" on BBC America [1].
Aha! [2]
So anyway, I've been watching the first 2 episodes of "Knowing Me, Knowing You" again tonight, and wow, what a fucking brilliant show. Or rather, set of shows, because "I'm Alan Partridge" (both series)—which takes place after Alan has accidentally shot one of his guests on the chat show, and is doing a (very early) morning radio show in Norwich, trying to get back said chat show—are actually even better, IMHO, than "KMKY".
Favorite things that I can remember from both shows [3]:
- Alan's Sports Casual line (wherein Alan shows off his fashion line, "demonstrating a trade that [he's] an Alan of"). Watch it.
- Alan's biggest fan, who has a room in his house with pictures of Alan up all over, and an Alan mask that he puts on.
- The ABBA medley, which has to be the most brilliantly funny thing ever. I'm quite serious: if you follow one link from this post, follow that one, & watch the video. My favorite parts are the "Voulez Vous... AHA!" bits. The link, again: Watch it.
- The Victorian Dogs: Alan mishears one of his guests saying that she liked "Victorian Dolls," so he dresses up some dogs in Victorian costumes.
[1] Granted, "brilliant" may be a bit of an overstatement, since we have a TiVo wishlist item for anything including "Steve Coogan". But still.
[2] The Happy Mondays featured heavily in 24 Hour Party People as one of Tony Wilson's bands at Factory Records (who fared better than A Certain Ratio, happily for them). And they're awesome.
But so besides the fact that Steve Coogan played Tony Wilson in 24hPP & Alan Partridge in "Knowing Me, Knowing You," the character of Alan Partridge & the chat show itself was partially based on Tony Wilson. Which is what brings it all round, and makes it so ironic, meta, etc.
[3] I was quite tempted to make a marathon Steve Coogan/Alan Partridge/Tony Wilson night of it tonight, watching "KMKY", "IAP", and 24hPP all in succession. But our "IAP" DVDs are Region 2, and it's just so much work, so I gave up rather quickly.
So the above list is, truly, mostly from memory, or from the 2 episodes I saw tonight. I haven't watched any "IAP" episodes in a couple of years, which explains the skew.
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