Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
Dewicking Kick The Son Of A Bitch.
Deleted line(s) 43 (click to see context) :
* KickTheSonOfABitch: When he himself isn't the victim of this, he's often dishing this out to guests in ''Knowing Me Knowing You''. Many are just as standoffish, egomaniacal or heckling as he is, but Alan often dishes out the abuse as much as he takes it.
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Changed line(s) 55 (click to see context) from:
* PungeonMaster: He’s ''deeply'' fond of puns. Although even he seems [[EverybodyHasStandards disgusted]] with "[[IncrediblyLamePun chatty-chatty-bang-bang]]".
to:
* PungeonMaster: He’s ''deeply'' fond of puns. Although even he seems [[EverybodyHasStandards disgusted]] with "[[IncrediblyLamePun "[[{{Pun}} chatty-chatty-bang-bang]]".
Is there an issue? Send a MessageReason:
None
Added DiffLines:
[[foldercontrol]]
!Alan Gordon Partridge
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/06_partridge_bbc.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"My face was designed as a leisure accessory."'']]
->'''Played By:''' Creator/SteveCoogan
-->''"Go to London, I guarantee you’ll either be mugged or not appreciated. Catch the train to London, stopping at Rejection, Disappointment, Backstabbing Central and Shattered Dreams Parkway."''
The main character of the series, Alan, a former sports commentator and host of the BBC chat show ''Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge'', was dismissed from the BBC partly for punching Chief Commissioning Editor Tony Hayers in the face with a stuffed partridge and partly because his programmes were of a low standard, delivering ever-declining ratings. In series one he is divorced from his wife Carol, lives in the Linton Travel Tavern and is reduced to working the graveyard shift on Radio Norwich whilst desperately trying to get back on television in any capacity.
----
* AbusiveParents: Parodied. He claims this in his autobiography, but he's clearly trying to cash in on the trend of 'misery lit' and the incidents he describes are clearly utterly normal. If anything, his parents -- while apparently not the most caring, devoted and loving parental figures if the way their son turned out is any indication -- seem to have been quite boring.
* AmbiguouslyBi: Though he really only shows interest in women, he often has weird dreams where he dances to a crowd of men wearing a codpiece, and he has shown some curiosity towards "ladyboys". However, Alan generally has right-wing leanings and has in the past described himself as a 'homo-skeptic', but has lately become more accepting of it in his attempts to be more politically correct.
* AttentionWhore: His desperate need to be seen and admired is pretty much what drives his every action.
* SugarWiki/AwesomeMoments: InUniverse - after acting out the opening of ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'' in ''Never Say Alan Again'' he gets a deserved round of applause with even Lynne's boyfriend Gordon [who hates Alan] joining in.
* BadBoss: He's too much of a coward to tell his production staff that he didn't get a second series, instead choosing to abruptly fire them one at a time for absurd random reasons. He doesn't tell his secretary she's been fired so he can date her, and later announces she was sacked on the radio. He would even be able to retain two of his staff if he swapped his big Rover 800 for a Rover 100 aka Metro, but he absolutely will not drive a "Mini-Metro", so he opts for a Rover 200 and everyone gets sacked.
* TheBully: Toward Lynn and Phillip Schofield. He frequently belittles Lynn's appearance and usefulness despite relying on her for everything and never shows a shred of gratitude. With Phillip Schofield, he refers to having bullied him with his colleagues during his younger days, which included filling his shoes with piss. Several of his interactions with his guests on ''Knowing Me, Knowing You'' can often take on a bullying, hectoring tone, especially if they've somehow annoyed him or if he's trying to get them to do something they don't want to do.
** BullyingADragon: He often stumbles onto this.
* CaptainObvious: Especially during his clip segments, where he points out the Eiffel Tower.
* CatchPhrase: ''"A-ha!"''
* TheChewToy: His complete failure as an entertainment professional and his endless buffoonery and misery off-stage are almost always PlayedForLaughs.
* ConspiracyTheorist: He's deeply convinced that there's a conspiracy within the BBC to sabotage his career. He also tends to credulously buy into conspiracy theories that he's seen in movies such as ''Film/{{JFK}}'' and ''Film/CapricornOne''.]
* DeadpanSnarker: He does get many.
* TheDeterminator: Once he's got an idea in his head he can be quite determined to see it through to the bitter end. Often deconstructed however, since (a) the idea is often not that great to begin with, (b) he also tends to put himself through a lot of unnecessary suffering as a result, and (c) the goal that he's aiming for isn't really worth it to begin with. For example, in ''Series/ImAlanPartridge'' his determination to see out a low-rent corporate awards gig for a fireplace manufacturer ends up with him impaling his left foot on a spike while trying to climb a fence and refusing to go to the hospital until the gig's over, resulting in him repeatedly vomiting out of sheer pain in front of the audience, completely humiliating himself and tanking his latest business venture.
* DirtyCoward: He frequently tries to avoid confrontations by either getting his assistant Lynn to handle it (and the resulting bad feelings on the part of the person being confronted) or running away.
* DisappearedDad: He's a minor, unwanted presence in the lives of his kids at best, partly because of his divorce but mainly because, not entirely unreasonably, they don't want anything to do with him.
** 'From the Oasthouse' episode 10 covers the fact he never sees his grandchildren, Jack & Ruby [Fernando's children] [[spoiler:Untill the end of the episode where Jack&Ruby arrive for a surprised visit [Jack even shouting 'Ah Ha!] in a rare heartwarming moment in the franchise.]]
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: His early appearances in ''On The Hour'' and ''The Day Today'' take place in a very surreal and absurdist world of which he is, arguably, one of the sanest parts. ''Knowing Me Knowing You'' is still quite absurd and silly but more down-to-earth, and Alan is still relatively sensible (if still egocentric and bombastic). When ''I'm Alan Partridge'' comes along, things are a lot more naturalistic and most of the jokes are at his expense.
* EveryoneHasStandards: He tells a racist old lady not to be racist on his show. Rather hypocritical, since he makes similar comments about Cameroonians in a later episode.
** Also, when he actually kills Forbes Mccalister on TV by accident, he's as horrified as anyone else.
** When invited to join Dan Moody and his wife in there swingers lifestyle, he is genuinely weirded out by it. He also firmly tells Kerry Moody he has a girlfriend in a deleted scene so isn't interested in cheating on Sonja.
** And in ''Alpha Papa'', he's genuinely sad to hear that Pat Farrell's wife died, and uses their favorite song to appeal to Pat so that he doesn't shoot Alan in murderous rage.
* EvilIsPetty: Okay, so 'evil' might be a bit strong, but Alan is a very spiteful and vindictive man who tends to delight in exacting petty and immature acts of vengeance for even quasi-imagined slights.
* FeigningIntelligence: And not convincingly.
* FreudianExcuse: In what little we've learnt about it (and keeping in mind Alan's obvious UnreliableNarrator tendencies), he doesn't appear to have had a particularly happy childhood. Although it was nowhere near as miserable as he claimed.
* HiddenDepths: Played with; Alan is an ''incredibly'' shallow and superficial person with a largely empty personal life, but there are occasionally hints about his backstory that go some way towards explaining why this is.
* {{Hypocrite}}: He's a relentless suck-up to the BBC but curses them with every other breath. He has no problem selling out his principles for a little extra piece of temporary fame.
* HypnoFool: He's hypnotized on one of his shows, inadvertently reliving a past bullying incident.
* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: As ''Series/ImAlanPartridge'' shows, underneath Alan's bombastic and egotistical preening there's clearly a lot of bitterness, insecurity and self-loathing deep within him. This tends to express itself in thin-skinned defensiveness and overly combative responses whenever someone challenges his ego.
* JadedWashout: He would never admit it, but he's still incredibly bitter about his failed career at the BBC.
* {{Jerkass}}: As part of his smarmy persona, and even more so in private.
* KarmaHoudini: Reconstructed. While Alan's career has taken a nosedive, it's often out of proportion to some of his on-screen antics that would have likely earned him a prison sentence in real life. Low ratings were implied to be as much the death blow to ''Knowing Me Knowing You'' as insulting, assaulting or even ''killing'' his guests on air.
* KickTheSonOfABitch: When he himself isn't the victim of this, he's often dishing this out to guests in ''Knowing Me Knowing You''. Many are just as standoffish, egomaniacal or heckling as he is, but Alan often dishes out the abuse as much as he takes it.
* ManChild: Alan's personality, mental processes and attitudes are basically those of a rather spoiled yet simultaneously attention-starved ten-year-old who doesn't fully understand how the world works, is both fascinated with and slightly frightened of feelings and sex, and constructs elaborate fantasy worlds in his head because he's got no friends or anyone to talk to. He reacts childishly to challenges and crises and his relationship with Lynn revolves around her mothering him to a ridiculous degree.
* NeverMyFault: If Alan can find a way to deflect blame from his own failures and shortcomings on to someone or something else, he will.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Alan's portrayal is partly based on TV personality and Creator/FactoryRecords founder Tony Wilson, to the point where Steve Coogan used Alan as a reference for his performance of Wilson in ''Film/TwentyFourHourPartyPeople''. Other British TV presenters with a reputation for being rather bumbling, egotistical and inept are also in the mix, such as Richard Madeley and Piers Morgan.
* NoSocialSkills: The great irony of Alan's life is that he's desperate to be a famous celebrity, in particular a chat-show host, yet possesses almost no social skills that would help him with this whatsoever. He's chronically lacking in charm and charisma, he's no good at small talk, he's boring, pedantic and obsessed with inane trivial minutiae, his interpersonal skills come off as smarmy, he tends to say inappropriate things at the wrong time and has very little filter, he doesn't really seem to understand how the world works, he's thin-skinned and tends to get overly combative at the slightest provocation, he's arrogant and smug with very little justification, he's childish, he doesn't care about other people beyond what they can do for him, and so on.
* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: Although Alan hails from Norfolk, Mancunian Steve Coogan just gives Alan a more smarmy, arrogant version of his own voice. This may be justified by the fact that Alan is a broadcaster, and so has adopted a 'professional' voice as many tend to do; his autobiography details his attempts to develop a professional voice after being criticised for speaking too nasally by former sports commentator Des Lynam. In a meta-sense, Alan's Norfolk roots were only created/revealed several years after Coogan had already started playing Partridge, by which time his voice performance was pretty much locked in despite the incongruity.
* OnlySaneMan: On ''occasion.'' Despite being, well, Alan Partridge, from time to time he deals with people who are even weirder and/or more obnoxious then he is, and at times like that he actually comes across pretty well. This rarely lasts long, however.
* TheParanoiac: A downplayed example; he's deeply convinced that almost everyone he encounters in the media and the BBC is somehow determined to sabotage his career, apparently without considering the fact that he's perfectly capable of sabotaging his own career entirely on his own. He also displays several other traits related to Paranoid Personality Disorder (failure to take blame or responsibility, holding grudges, intense {{Jerkass}}ery, an overly-inflated view of his own importance, etc.).
* ParentalFavouritism: Alan practices this, as it's made abundantly clear that he prefers his son Fernando and treats his daughter Denise as little more than an after-thought. It's also made pretty clear that Fernando doesn't particularly appreciate being his father's favourite and neither kid wants anything to do with him.
* ParentalNeglect: Reading between the lines in his memoirs, this appears to have been the default mode of his parents towards him (although it probably wasn't anywhere near as abusive as he tries to make out). Alan himself also wasn't the most attentive father to his kids.
* ParentalSubstitute:Alan acts as Stepdad to Angela's sons. If Nomad is anything to go by, he didn't do a great job...
** He also tries to be a mentor figure to Simon ocassionally [such as in the Mid Morning Maters episode 'Chef']...again unsuccessfully.
* PungeonMaster: He’s ''deeply'' fond of puns. Although even he seems [[EverybodyHasStandards disgusted]] with "[[IncrediblyLamePun chatty-chatty-bang-bang]]".
* SmallNameBigEgo: Alan gets very angry when people don't recognise his 'greatness'.
* SmarmyHost: Especially towards his attractive female guests.
* SmugSmiler: His smile tends to be a self-satisfied toothy rictus that blurs the lines between a smirk and a sneer.
* SpannerInTheWorks: Through all his self-sabotage, his lack of competence and poor sense of propriety often causes the professional veneer of other media-types in his sphere to break down, exposing their phoneyness or hypocrisy and occasionally giving rise to perceptive questions in his fluff interviews. The writers of ''This Time'' have said that, in a television world where Piers Morgan fronts a flagship breakfast show, Alan’s re-employment by the BBC makes sense.
* StrawmanPolitical: Alan is basically a walking dictionary definition of the stereotypical small-minded "Little Englander" Tory.
* StupidBoss: He disregards Lynn's often sensible advice, in one case refusing to switch from his big Rover 800 to a humble little Metro to help save his production company, but Alan is far too proud to be seen dead driving a "Mini-Metro". He settles for the second smallest car in the Rover range even though it still means sacking all his staff.
* VitriolicBestBuds: Despite his behaviour he does care about the people closets to him deep down [Lynne, Michael, Simon] and does make ameds when fallouts occure [such a with Lynne in ''Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa''].
* TookALevelInKindness:
** While still a jerk, his breakdown between ''I'm Alan Partridge'' series 1+ 2 made him more sympathetic and he seems more content with his lot.
** Has become a very slightly better person by the end of ''Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa''. He still does plenty of nasty things but seems to feel a bit of guilt and actually has a couple of moments of empathy with others. Helping him is that there an even nastier figure like Jason Cresswell around.
** Similarly, in ''This Time with Alan Partridge''. While he's still narcissistic, attention-obsessed and inept, the point is made abundantly clear that there are far worse and far more undeserving people in positions of power and fame than Alan.
* UnreliableNarrator: This is particularly strong in his autobiography, ''I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan''. He goes off-topic, forgets his initial points, contradicts himself, always assumes people are out to get him, boasts about mistakes he doesn’t realize he’s made and outright lies about situations the reader knows about first-hand.
* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: Bad things may happen to him, but he's such a smarmy arse that it's just funny when misfortune befalls him.
* WakingNonSequitur: At one point he wakes up yelling, 'fight you!' (which would be a minor case of WakeUpFighting). He does something similar while daydreaming in Alpha Papa, too. "It's Jason AND THE Argonauts!".
----
!Alan Gordon Partridge
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/06_partridge_bbc.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:''"My face was designed as a leisure accessory."'']]
->'''Played By:''' Creator/SteveCoogan
-->''"Go to London, I guarantee you’ll either be mugged or not appreciated. Catch the train to London, stopping at Rejection, Disappointment, Backstabbing Central and Shattered Dreams Parkway."''
The main character of the series, Alan, a former sports commentator and host of the BBC chat show ''Knowing Me, Knowing You... with Alan Partridge'', was dismissed from the BBC partly for punching Chief Commissioning Editor Tony Hayers in the face with a stuffed partridge and partly because his programmes were of a low standard, delivering ever-declining ratings. In series one he is divorced from his wife Carol, lives in the Linton Travel Tavern and is reduced to working the graveyard shift on Radio Norwich whilst desperately trying to get back on television in any capacity.
----
* AbusiveParents: Parodied. He claims this in his autobiography, but he's clearly trying to cash in on the trend of 'misery lit' and the incidents he describes are clearly utterly normal. If anything, his parents -- while apparently not the most caring, devoted and loving parental figures if the way their son turned out is any indication -- seem to have been quite boring.
* AmbiguouslyBi: Though he really only shows interest in women, he often has weird dreams where he dances to a crowd of men wearing a codpiece, and he has shown some curiosity towards "ladyboys". However, Alan generally has right-wing leanings and has in the past described himself as a 'homo-skeptic', but has lately become more accepting of it in his attempts to be more politically correct.
* AttentionWhore: His desperate need to be seen and admired is pretty much what drives his every action.
* SugarWiki/AwesomeMoments: InUniverse - after acting out the opening of ''Film/TheSpyWhoLovedMe'' in ''Never Say Alan Again'' he gets a deserved round of applause with even Lynne's boyfriend Gordon [who hates Alan] joining in.
* BadBoss: He's too much of a coward to tell his production staff that he didn't get a second series, instead choosing to abruptly fire them one at a time for absurd random reasons. He doesn't tell his secretary she's been fired so he can date her, and later announces she was sacked on the radio. He would even be able to retain two of his staff if he swapped his big Rover 800 for a Rover 100 aka Metro, but he absolutely will not drive a "Mini-Metro", so he opts for a Rover 200 and everyone gets sacked.
* TheBully: Toward Lynn and Phillip Schofield. He frequently belittles Lynn's appearance and usefulness despite relying on her for everything and never shows a shred of gratitude. With Phillip Schofield, he refers to having bullied him with his colleagues during his younger days, which included filling his shoes with piss. Several of his interactions with his guests on ''Knowing Me, Knowing You'' can often take on a bullying, hectoring tone, especially if they've somehow annoyed him or if he's trying to get them to do something they don't want to do.
** BullyingADragon: He often stumbles onto this.
* CaptainObvious: Especially during his clip segments, where he points out the Eiffel Tower.
* CatchPhrase: ''"A-ha!"''
* TheChewToy: His complete failure as an entertainment professional and his endless buffoonery and misery off-stage are almost always PlayedForLaughs.
* ConspiracyTheorist: He's deeply convinced that there's a conspiracy within the BBC to sabotage his career. He also tends to credulously buy into conspiracy theories that he's seen in movies such as ''Film/{{JFK}}'' and ''Film/CapricornOne''.]
* DeadpanSnarker: He does get many.
* TheDeterminator: Once he's got an idea in his head he can be quite determined to see it through to the bitter end. Often deconstructed however, since (a) the idea is often not that great to begin with, (b) he also tends to put himself through a lot of unnecessary suffering as a result, and (c) the goal that he's aiming for isn't really worth it to begin with. For example, in ''Series/ImAlanPartridge'' his determination to see out a low-rent corporate awards gig for a fireplace manufacturer ends up with him impaling his left foot on a spike while trying to climb a fence and refusing to go to the hospital until the gig's over, resulting in him repeatedly vomiting out of sheer pain in front of the audience, completely humiliating himself and tanking his latest business venture.
* DirtyCoward: He frequently tries to avoid confrontations by either getting his assistant Lynn to handle it (and the resulting bad feelings on the part of the person being confronted) or running away.
* DisappearedDad: He's a minor, unwanted presence in the lives of his kids at best, partly because of his divorce but mainly because, not entirely unreasonably, they don't want anything to do with him.
** 'From the Oasthouse' episode 10 covers the fact he never sees his grandchildren, Jack & Ruby [Fernando's children] [[spoiler:Untill the end of the episode where Jack&Ruby arrive for a surprised visit [Jack even shouting 'Ah Ha!] in a rare heartwarming moment in the franchise.]]
* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: His early appearances in ''On The Hour'' and ''The Day Today'' take place in a very surreal and absurdist world of which he is, arguably, one of the sanest parts. ''Knowing Me Knowing You'' is still quite absurd and silly but more down-to-earth, and Alan is still relatively sensible (if still egocentric and bombastic). When ''I'm Alan Partridge'' comes along, things are a lot more naturalistic and most of the jokes are at his expense.
* EveryoneHasStandards: He tells a racist old lady not to be racist on his show. Rather hypocritical, since he makes similar comments about Cameroonians in a later episode.
** Also, when he actually kills Forbes Mccalister on TV by accident, he's as horrified as anyone else.
** When invited to join Dan Moody and his wife in there swingers lifestyle, he is genuinely weirded out by it. He also firmly tells Kerry Moody he has a girlfriend in a deleted scene so isn't interested in cheating on Sonja.
** And in ''Alpha Papa'', he's genuinely sad to hear that Pat Farrell's wife died, and uses their favorite song to appeal to Pat so that he doesn't shoot Alan in murderous rage.
* EvilIsPetty: Okay, so 'evil' might be a bit strong, but Alan is a very spiteful and vindictive man who tends to delight in exacting petty and immature acts of vengeance for even quasi-imagined slights.
* FeigningIntelligence: And not convincingly.
* FreudianExcuse: In what little we've learnt about it (and keeping in mind Alan's obvious UnreliableNarrator tendencies), he doesn't appear to have had a particularly happy childhood. Although it was nowhere near as miserable as he claimed.
* HiddenDepths: Played with; Alan is an ''incredibly'' shallow and superficial person with a largely empty personal life, but there are occasionally hints about his backstory that go some way towards explaining why this is.
* {{Hypocrite}}: He's a relentless suck-up to the BBC but curses them with every other breath. He has no problem selling out his principles for a little extra piece of temporary fame.
* HypnoFool: He's hypnotized on one of his shows, inadvertently reliving a past bullying incident.
* InferioritySuperiorityComplex: As ''Series/ImAlanPartridge'' shows, underneath Alan's bombastic and egotistical preening there's clearly a lot of bitterness, insecurity and self-loathing deep within him. This tends to express itself in thin-skinned defensiveness and overly combative responses whenever someone challenges his ego.
* JadedWashout: He would never admit it, but he's still incredibly bitter about his failed career at the BBC.
* {{Jerkass}}: As part of his smarmy persona, and even more so in private.
* KarmaHoudini: Reconstructed. While Alan's career has taken a nosedive, it's often out of proportion to some of his on-screen antics that would have likely earned him a prison sentence in real life. Low ratings were implied to be as much the death blow to ''Knowing Me Knowing You'' as insulting, assaulting or even ''killing'' his guests on air.
* KickTheSonOfABitch: When he himself isn't the victim of this, he's often dishing this out to guests in ''Knowing Me Knowing You''. Many are just as standoffish, egomaniacal or heckling as he is, but Alan often dishes out the abuse as much as he takes it.
* ManChild: Alan's personality, mental processes and attitudes are basically those of a rather spoiled yet simultaneously attention-starved ten-year-old who doesn't fully understand how the world works, is both fascinated with and slightly frightened of feelings and sex, and constructs elaborate fantasy worlds in his head because he's got no friends or anyone to talk to. He reacts childishly to challenges and crises and his relationship with Lynn revolves around her mothering him to a ridiculous degree.
* NeverMyFault: If Alan can find a way to deflect blame from his own failures and shortcomings on to someone or something else, he will.
* NoCelebritiesWereHarmed: Alan's portrayal is partly based on TV personality and Creator/FactoryRecords founder Tony Wilson, to the point where Steve Coogan used Alan as a reference for his performance of Wilson in ''Film/TwentyFourHourPartyPeople''. Other British TV presenters with a reputation for being rather bumbling, egotistical and inept are also in the mix, such as Richard Madeley and Piers Morgan.
* NoSocialSkills: The great irony of Alan's life is that he's desperate to be a famous celebrity, in particular a chat-show host, yet possesses almost no social skills that would help him with this whatsoever. He's chronically lacking in charm and charisma, he's no good at small talk, he's boring, pedantic and obsessed with inane trivial minutiae, his interpersonal skills come off as smarmy, he tends to say inappropriate things at the wrong time and has very little filter, he doesn't really seem to understand how the world works, he's thin-skinned and tends to get overly combative at the slightest provocation, he's arrogant and smug with very little justification, he's childish, he doesn't care about other people beyond what they can do for him, and so on.
* NotEvenBotheringWithTheAccent: Although Alan hails from Norfolk, Mancunian Steve Coogan just gives Alan a more smarmy, arrogant version of his own voice. This may be justified by the fact that Alan is a broadcaster, and so has adopted a 'professional' voice as many tend to do; his autobiography details his attempts to develop a professional voice after being criticised for speaking too nasally by former sports commentator Des Lynam. In a meta-sense, Alan's Norfolk roots were only created/revealed several years after Coogan had already started playing Partridge, by which time his voice performance was pretty much locked in despite the incongruity.
* OnlySaneMan: On ''occasion.'' Despite being, well, Alan Partridge, from time to time he deals with people who are even weirder and/or more obnoxious then he is, and at times like that he actually comes across pretty well. This rarely lasts long, however.
* TheParanoiac: A downplayed example; he's deeply convinced that almost everyone he encounters in the media and the BBC is somehow determined to sabotage his career, apparently without considering the fact that he's perfectly capable of sabotaging his own career entirely on his own. He also displays several other traits related to Paranoid Personality Disorder (failure to take blame or responsibility, holding grudges, intense {{Jerkass}}ery, an overly-inflated view of his own importance, etc.).
* ParentalFavouritism: Alan practices this, as it's made abundantly clear that he prefers his son Fernando and treats his daughter Denise as little more than an after-thought. It's also made pretty clear that Fernando doesn't particularly appreciate being his father's favourite and neither kid wants anything to do with him.
* ParentalNeglect: Reading between the lines in his memoirs, this appears to have been the default mode of his parents towards him (although it probably wasn't anywhere near as abusive as he tries to make out). Alan himself also wasn't the most attentive father to his kids.
* ParentalSubstitute:Alan acts as Stepdad to Angela's sons. If Nomad is anything to go by, he didn't do a great job...
** He also tries to be a mentor figure to Simon ocassionally [such as in the Mid Morning Maters episode 'Chef']...again unsuccessfully.
* PungeonMaster: He’s ''deeply'' fond of puns. Although even he seems [[EverybodyHasStandards disgusted]] with "[[IncrediblyLamePun chatty-chatty-bang-bang]]".
* SmallNameBigEgo: Alan gets very angry when people don't recognise his 'greatness'.
* SmarmyHost: Especially towards his attractive female guests.
* SmugSmiler: His smile tends to be a self-satisfied toothy rictus that blurs the lines between a smirk and a sneer.
* SpannerInTheWorks: Through all his self-sabotage, his lack of competence and poor sense of propriety often causes the professional veneer of other media-types in his sphere to break down, exposing their phoneyness or hypocrisy and occasionally giving rise to perceptive questions in his fluff interviews. The writers of ''This Time'' have said that, in a television world where Piers Morgan fronts a flagship breakfast show, Alan’s re-employment by the BBC makes sense.
* StrawmanPolitical: Alan is basically a walking dictionary definition of the stereotypical small-minded "Little Englander" Tory.
* StupidBoss: He disregards Lynn's often sensible advice, in one case refusing to switch from his big Rover 800 to a humble little Metro to help save his production company, but Alan is far too proud to be seen dead driving a "Mini-Metro". He settles for the second smallest car in the Rover range even though it still means sacking all his staff.
* VitriolicBestBuds: Despite his behaviour he does care about the people closets to him deep down [Lynne, Michael, Simon] and does make ameds when fallouts occure [such a with Lynne in ''Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa''].
* TookALevelInKindness:
** While still a jerk, his breakdown between ''I'm Alan Partridge'' series 1+ 2 made him more sympathetic and he seems more content with his lot.
** Has become a very slightly better person by the end of ''Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa''. He still does plenty of nasty things but seems to feel a bit of guilt and actually has a couple of moments of empathy with others. Helping him is that there an even nastier figure like Jason Cresswell around.
** Similarly, in ''This Time with Alan Partridge''. While he's still narcissistic, attention-obsessed and inept, the point is made abundantly clear that there are far worse and far more undeserving people in positions of power and fame than Alan.
* UnreliableNarrator: This is particularly strong in his autobiography, ''I, Partridge: We Need To Talk About Alan''. He goes off-topic, forgets his initial points, contradicts himself, always assumes people are out to get him, boasts about mistakes he doesn’t realize he’s made and outright lies about situations the reader knows about first-hand.
* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: Bad things may happen to him, but he's such a smarmy arse that it's just funny when misfortune befalls him.
* WakingNonSequitur: At one point he wakes up yelling, 'fight you!' (which would be a minor case of WakeUpFighting). He does something similar while daydreaming in Alpha Papa, too. "It's Jason AND THE Argonauts!".
----
