Aha! I'm revelling in the return of the King of Cringe... even if Alan Partridge's monstrous lust for fame 持つ／拘留するs up a 乱すing mirror to modern Britain, LIBBY PURVES 令状s

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Nearly 25 years after 衝突，墜落ing out of his BBC career, he’s 支援する: rejoice! Roll out a 都合よく syntheticy, 残余-sale red carpet for one of the greatest comic 創造s of our time: Alan Gordon Partridge, as played by Steve Coogan.

And he is returning to the one place in the universe he finds happiness ― TV.

Vain ― ‘the BBC needs me’ Alan told the 無線で通信する Times last week ― ambitious, self-満足させるd, inept, naff and utterly without self-認識／意識性, empathy or generosity, Partridge 具体的に表現するs a familiar spirit of the times: unearned celebrity, shameless self-昇進／宣伝, vapid 雑談（する）, and a multi-channel broadcast マスコミ desperate to fill space.

This Time With Alan Partridge, is on tonight, 9.30pm, BBC1

He is the King of Cringe. And a very healthy cringe it is, too, because it is when you 停止する a mirror to the a ge that you are 動機づけるd to 改善する it.

Or, at least, laugh in its 直面する.

Alan first turned up in 1991 with a small 役割 in Armando Iannucci’s brilliant parody of 現在の 事件／事情／状勢s broadcasting, On The Hour, on BBC 無線で通信する 4.

He was a sports reporter with a nice line in patronising misogyny, utter disdain for the Paralympics, and a worrying obsession with ‘groin 緊張する’ in his football changing-room interviews.

He was, however, a 攻撃する，衝突する. Before long, he had his own spoof 雑談（する）-show on the same 網状組織, Knowing Me, Knowing You With Alan Partridge, 指名するd after his favourite 禁止（する）d Abba (who also 奮起させるd the show’s catchphrase, Aha!)

It not only showcased his 無資格／無能力, but 供給するd lovely cameos of 正確に／まさに the 肉親，親類d of guests on such shows.

Alan’s hallmark as an interviewer was that he was never really very 利益／興味d in the people he met

His programmes always ended in some 肉親，親類d of offence or 災害, and since at the time I was 現在のing a real talk show ― Midweek ― on 無線で通信する 4, for やめる a few weeks I made a point of ending with one of Partridge’s catchph rases: ‘ . . . And on that bombshell . . .’ until the joke wore thin. Which, I have to 収容する／認める, it did rather sooner for the 生産者 than for me.

I just adored the Partridge character because many of the 落し穴s he 宙返り／暴落するd into in those spoof interviews ― with pretentious artists, crabby old 衝撃を和らげるものs, or the easily 感情を害する／違反するd ― were so very recognisable. They were 類似の to 罠（にかける）s I was 慎重に navigating 一連の会議、交渉／完成する every week.

He WAS a sharp 思い出の品 of the 危険，危なくするs 直面するing all live interviewers ― 特に the 肉親，親類d more thrilled by the fact that they’re on the 空気／公表する than by any of the 支配するs or people they cover.

Alan’s hallmark as an interviewer was that he was never really very 利益／興味d in the people he met.

最終的に, 無線で通信する 4 was too small and respectable a 壇・綱領・公約 for our Alan, and his co-writers ― Iannucci, Peter Baynham, later Neil and 略奪する Gibbons ― over 連続する years recognised he had to grow: ever more monstrous, more self-important, precariously successful, 災害-傾向がある and deluded.

結局, there was even an autobiography, I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan, which is a far better read than that of most real マスコミ 人物／姿／数字s.

It takes him through the whole arc from his 無線で通信する beginnings to that 簡潔な／要約する TV stardom ― Knowing Me, Knowing You transferred to television in 1994 ― and on to 災害, 追放する, minor 地元の 無線で通信する 職業s and 法人組織の／企業の ビデオs.

Never truly 敗北・負かすd, though, even at his lowest he’s 誇るing of ‘事業／計画（する）s on the boil with 24 放送者s around the world . . . although the exact level of かかわり合い from these channels was hard to 計器, they had at least taken my calls . . .’

That 調書をとる／予約する, which I read and re-read, chronicles the TV shows we all remember. In Knowing Me, Knowing You, which ran for six episodes, he 陳列する，発揮するd his limitless ability to ramp up 災害s of his own making, 含むing quarrelling violently with his studio bandleader Glen Ponder and accidentally 狙撃 a guest dead.

He 結局 fouls up in the world’s naffest Christmas Special, Knowing Me Knowing Yule when he punches a 車椅子-bound 競技者, fails to realise his cookery guest is a man in drag and disastrously pitches for a new series while interviewing live the ‘長，指導者 （売買）手数料，委託（する）／委員会／権限ing Editor’ of the BBC, Tony Hayers. His television career is over.

However, Hayers ― played by David Schneider ― 再現するs in a wonderful 一連の mockumentaries, I’m Alan Partridge, in which Alan is 減ずるd to living in a Travel Tavern and 現在のing on 無線で通信する Norwich in the small hours.

The all-powerful (n)役員／(a)執行力のある features in the troubled Partridge’s fantasy yearnings to get 支援する on the small 審査する.

Aways sexually uncertain (his wife understandably ran off with her fitness 指導者), Alan has dreams where he is a （競技場の）トラック一周-ダンサー gyrating before the commissioner, 申し込む／申し出ing his services in bondage leatherwear.

By day, the 追放するd Alan fights for 会合s at the BBC and invents 判型 pitches to try to get 支援する on: ‘Monkey tennis . . . Ladyshapes with Alan Partridge . . . Arm 格闘するing with Chas & Dave . . . Inner City Sumo, very cheap to make, you could do it in a pub car park . . .’

現実に, when BBC3 has done Snog Marry 避ける, and Hotter Than My Daughter, it seems surprising nobody in this desperate age of 見解（をとる）ing has 選ぶd up any of Partridge’s ideas. But that’s the 楽しみ Partridge brings: he is the ultimate マスコミ wannabe.

Through the さまざまな series that followed (含むing the marvellously dreary YouTube and Sky ‘phone-in’ 中央の Morning 事柄s on North Norfolk 数字表示式の, another spoof 文書の on the British class di vide, and a travel programme) he 反映するs the trashy emptiness of so much of our cheap 24-hour broadcasting.

From glitzy personality 雑談（する）-shows to the wittering DJs and pointless phone 競争s, Alan shows us that it is all part of the same spectrum.

At the heart of it all is a monstrous individual: a puffed-up egotist so incapable of any real 関係 that his son (called Fernando ― in another nod to Abba ― 明白に) doesn’t even 招待する him to his wedding.

When his old （売買）手数料，委託（する）／委員会／権限ing editor dies, he …に出席するs the funeral, but roams about trying to borrow phone chargers and is already pitching to his 後継者.

His politics are so witlessly to the fusty-権利 that even the most 保守的な can wince; his choices of ‘sports casual’ outfits make Nigel Farage look like Karl Lagerfeld.

Coogan, a かなりの actor, as we have seen in films Philomena and 現在／一般に in Stan & Ollie, 住むs the character of Partridge with almost 脅すing 有罪の判決, with all his mannerisms and style and mangled metaphors and 反抗的な chippy insecurity.

And like all good actors, he has no 恐れる of looking terrible and 存在 despised. Alan’s uneasy sense that he is ‘政治上 incorrect’ and out of step with modern times means that he has to snap, in a footnote to his foot-in-mouth 発言／述べるs, ‘That’s not 人種差別主義者’ or ‘That isn’t sexism’.

The joke should be over by now. Even the finest sitcom characters run out of steam: if they’re wise, like John Cleese as Basil Fawlty, they 限界 the run to leave us with a few classic episodes.

But the brilliance of the Partridge brand, its performer and its writers is that, through the shows, 調書をとる／予約するs and the 突然に intelligent film Alpha Papa in 2013, he has developed, grown, shown us more and more of his desperati on, history, background and 有罪の判決s ― without ever 現実に moving us far in the direction of compassion.

That’s a clever trick: as one critic said: ‘He feels like a living, breathing person. But a living, breathing person that you want to strangle.’

And we believe in him and his neediness. When in Alpha Papa he accidentally 落ちるs out of a window during a 包囲 which has made him newly important as a 人質, he struggles to get 支援する in. Fame comes before everything for Alan ― just as it does for the new 世代 of reality 星／主役にするs.

The way we enjoy Alan Partridge tells rather more than is comfortable about modern Britain. His positioning in the class system ―an unclassifiable middle-middle-middle ― is clever: from ‘above’ you can look 負かす／撃墜する on his cultural ignorance and cliche speech, but from his own level or from below it you can giggle at his pretentious blazer-badges and 悪賢いd-負かす／撃墜する hair.

Nobody of any class, race or type needs to identify with him; it isn’t like a parody chav or toff. Yet all of us probably have our little Partridge moments. 政治家，政治屋s certainly do in the Brexit 時代.

Lapses into Partridge-ism are not as lovable as Tony Hancock moments, or as pathetically 甘い as Laurel and Hardy pratfalls. But they’re real all 権利.?

This Time With Alan Partridge, is on tonight, 9.30pm, BBC1.?