Alan Partridge: Welcome To The Places Of My Life

Alan Partridge: still Jurassic Park after 25 years

I can't imagine ever not finding Alan Partridge funny.

Corporate video presenters quote Alan Partridge

Fans of Norwich radio legend Alan Partridge will be aware that he is no stranger to presenting corporate videos - but what happens when the corporate video presenters get their hands on Alan Partridge?

With the hype building for August's Alan Partridge film, it's time to catch this magisterial comeback from Norfolk's infamous broadcaster, if you missed it last year. Steve Coogan's alter ego fronts an hour-long documentary about his home town which owes a debt to portentous history shows and chummy celeb travelogues. It's as funny as Partridge ever was, but pushes in new directions.

"If you don't do it, Sky will!" Alan Partridge once told BBC commissioning editor Tony Hayers. And now they did... although Inner City Sumo never made it to our screens, Alan bounced back to TV in triumphant style this year with the satellite broadcaster. Welcome to the Places of My Life, Alan's personal assessment of the Norwich area, was classic Partridge straight out of the top drawer - laced with classic anal attention-to-detail and "superb" direction from the Pear Tree Productions helmsman himself.

Alan Partridge has been around for over 20 years, since he first began life as On the Hour's sports reporter. Watching his latest TV outing, he is still going as strongly (or rather tactlessly) as ever.

This is the first in a series of programmes featuring Steve Coogan's most famous character being broadcast on Sky Atlantic. Luckily, for those of us who don't have Sky Atlantic, this particular programme was repeated on Sky1, mostly in an annoying attempt to promote a channel lots of people can't afford to pay for.

Watching this, it's nice to see that some of the Partridge magic is still there. It's amazing that after so long there are still laughs that you can get out of it. In this mockumentary, he gives viewers a quick tour of Norwich, also known as "The Wales of the East".

Partridge is still as ignorant as ever. For example, he somehow managed to persuade his local leisure centre to get rid of a disabled parking space so he could park closer to the building. Then there is his rather disturbing description of the plague as "Flying AIDS."

My favourite moment, though, was when Partridge was in a swimming pool, talking about the sort of people who use it. Well, when I say favourite, I mean harrowing, because it was at this point I realised that I do actually think a bit like Partridge when I go swimming...

Welcome To The Places Of My Life was a great show. I just hope it and the others eventually get released on DVD, because I'm still not planning to buy Sky Atlantic.

Sky Atlantic's Monday-night triple play kicked off with the return of Alan Partridge to TV, with the hour-long travelogue Welcome to the Places of My Life. It's hard to quote from the show, as pretty much every line was a winner. Even the throwaways - "I'm halfway through my Norfolk odyssey, but if you've just joined us, it'll still make sense" - struck home.

So it was that Alan took us round the places that made him who he is, from his desk at North Norfolk Digital's offices (at 800sq ft, larger than a good-quality dentist) to Thetford Forest: "For some it means dogging or suicide, but I'm old school and I'm going for a walk."

Coogan was note perfect: the glances to camera, the over-inflated ego, the strange belief that he is still living the life. Ruddy great stuff.

A good week for sharp writing included Alan Partridge: Welcome To The Places Of My Life wherein Steve Coogan's chat chump took us on a personal tour which included his radio station ("My coalface, my canvas, my lathe"), the fitness centre ("A diet of Tracker Bars means I'm able to lead the kind of physically active life that's simply out of reach for many men my age such as Eamonn Holmes") and his favourite beauty-spot ("For some Thetford Forest means dogging and suicide but I'm old-school and I'm off for a walk!").

There was a glorious reprise for Steve Coogan as Alan Partridge. Older, yes; wiser, emphatically no. As he took us through the "places of my life" around Norfolk, yet again we marvelled at how his confident asides manage to combine the shiveringly banal with the roundly offensive. We started at North Norfolk Digital Radio. "Many are surprised at how small the offices are. But at 800 square metres that's larger than a good-quality dentist's, and could house a Tesco Express." Then Norwich town hall, opened in 1938 by King George VI, "the stammering monarch made famous by hit movie The King's Speech". And his favourite car dealership. "Whether you buy British, or have a short memory and are happy to buy Japanese..." and then the woods. "For some, Thetford Forest means dogging, or suicide. But I'm old-school, and I'm off for a walk." Not one sentence technically wholly untrue, but all supremely wrong, and the whole of it supremely right. It was a wistful, spot-on return for Alan and his leisureware, and at this rate he'll end up a kind of bathetic national treasure.

Welcome to the Places of My Life review

Some of the best bits of Welcome to the Places of My Life are when we get a sense of the cameras rolling for about four seconds longer than they should have done, just like in Knowing Me, Knowing You, Partridge's first TV outing, but also to what Steve Coogan himself is mocking - the overblown ceremony and rubbish incompetence of low-budget telly.

If you could forgive the hypocrisy of Steve Coogan selling out to his supposed nemesis Rupert Murdoch then Sky Atlantic was the place to be on Monday.

However, I found Welcome To The Places Of My Life, Coogan's latest Alan Partridge project, the least impressive of its three new comedies. It had some fine moments, but it just wasn't vintage Partridge.

I worry how much mileage the old guy has left, even if he does buy the new Range Rover (with the tan interior) in time for next year's movie.