From the Oasthouse with Alan Partridge

[Miguel Wilkins]

#handfan

[Miguel Wilkins]

Alan Partridge swims boldly against the tide in his From the Oasthouse podcast
Steve Coogan's creation takes on schoolgirls, 'Tic Tac' and Rory Stewart in new series
Fiona Sturges
7th July 2025
ft.com

The fourth series of From the Oasthouse, the podcast hosted by Steve Coogan's most enduring creation, Alan Partridge, opens with testimonials from listeners, delivered against a jaunty, daytime TV-style soundtrack. The reviews, which are uniformly glowing, are read out by "the boys and girls from the Norfolk Young Conservatives . . . who are a credit to themselves, to their schools and to their farms." Partridge goes on to point out how his down-to-earth, man-of-the-people status puts his fellow podcasters, such as The Rest is Politics' Rory Stewart, in the shade. "Do you think Rory has ever been inside a leisure centre? Has he ever been to a funfair? Has he had a cooked breakfast in Morrisons? Of course he hasn't."

Listeners with long memories will know how, in reinventing himself as a podcaster, Partridge has in fact gone back to his roots. Coogan's character made his debut in 1991 as a sports reporter on BBC radio's satirical On the Hour, which yielded the spin-off Knowing Me Knowing You with Alan Partridge. Since then, there have been sitcoms, chat shows, a feature film and a clutch of memoirs. But rarely has Partridge sounded so at home than in pod world, where he has the freedom to be his hapless, supercilious self, unfettered by scheduling constraints or the producers' mute button.

The new series finds him variously embarking on a digital detox; orienteering in Suffolk and taking shelter from the rain in an empty stately home; preparing for a photo shoot for a feature in a trade magazine for ferries; and getting stuck in the glazed vestibule of his assistant Lynn's house while she is out at a funeral ("It's like being in a zoo"). These deliciously random set-ups invariably lead to extensive Partridge monologuing.

While the unedited rambling of podcast hosts is one of the curses of the medium, here it is welcome, allowing glimpses into the complex psyche of a local celebrity as he relays his inner thoughts, reflects on his surroundings and makes occasional clumsy attempts at human interaction. Trapped in Lynn's porch, he is recognised and laughed at by passing schoolgirls, which prompts him to decry today's teens and their idea of humour. When he was young, he notes airily, he "used to laugh at really straightforward, solid stuff like a saucy postcard, a man dressed as a woman, maybe a chimpanzee riding a bike . . . They'll probably film this and put it on Tic Tac [sic]."

Behind the bluster and malapropisms is, of course, virtuoso writing that captures Partridge's singular delusion: that he is swimming boldly against the tide and is unjustly maligned and misunderstood. You might think that, after nearly 35 years, his schtick had grown tiresome. But, bolstered by the simplicity of audio, in From the Oasthouse he is in his element, which is to say unfiltered, inappropriate, pure Partridge.

[Miguel Wilkins]

Alan Partridge on the Humblicity of the Microphone