History Literature / IPartridgeWeNeedToTalkAboutAlan

* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: As with the previous book, there are ''buckets'' of this trope. In particular, Alan certainly isn't just doing this walk as a cynical and thinly-veiled attempt to recapture the limelight by spinning it into a six-episode mini-series shown on BBC 1 with an accompanying book deal and merchandising, and he honestly just wishes you'd let it go (despite the fact that he's the only one who ever brings it up). He's also not bothered in the least that high-powered agent Harvey Kennedy won't return his calls on the subject, and only takes a 120 mile diversion off his route to first try to visit his house and then ambush him at Gatwick Airport because it's convenient. And, of course, he's naturally entirely happy with his trip[=/=]life in general despite how dismal and disastrous it is. Needless to say, pretty much any time Alan insists that everything's fine, he's having a super time and that he's perfectly happy with the way things are or have turned out, you can assume the exact opposite.

* BringYourBrownPants: In his reflections on the radio station hostage situation, Alan gets some revenge on the other men who were present (who all apparently managed to profitise the event much more successfully) by claiming that they spend the bulk of the crisis voiding themselves loudly and disgustingly. As in, according to Alan they literally spent hours just shitting their pants.

* UnreliableNarrator: To a truly jaw-dropping degree if you're familiar with the TV series. To hear Partridge tell it, humiliating disasters and embarrassments become glorious triumphs and moral victories. A good rule of thumb is that any time Alan insists that he's fine with how something turned out, how something that happened wasn't a problem

* DaddyIssues: More than the previous work, this book focuses on Alan's difficult relationship with his father. Though given the UnreliableNarrator, precisely ''how'' difficult it was is hard to determine; Alan certainly has a lot of bitterness towards the man and paints him as a borderline CompleteMonster, but reading between the lines and adjusting for the fact that Alan cannot be trusted to accurately recount anything about his life suggests that the man probably was a bit of a {{Jerkass}} but was nowhere near the kind of abuser Alan tries to depict him as.

* FreudianExcuse: Played with. Alan's status as an UnreliableNarrator means that it's hard to determine precisely how much of his recounting of his unhappy childhood can be taken at face value, but even allowing for his exaggeration and BlatantLies he does appear to have been rather starved of affection as a child. His relationship with his father appears to have been a bit tense (although the man was probably not as abusive as he makes out) and it seems that he genuinely did both have difficulty making friends and suffered a lot of bullying as a boy.

* UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist: The book manages the achievement of making Alan seem ''worse'' than he does on TV (which is really saying something). His every desperate attempt to convince the reader that he's a likeable and sympathetic guy will usually just further convince them of how utterly loathsome and repellent he truly is.

* DaddyIssues: More than the previous work, this book focuses on Alan's difficult relationship with his father. Though given the UnreliableNarrator, precisely ''how'' difficult it was is hard to determine; Alan certainly has a lot of bitterness towards the man and paints him as a borderline abusive monster, but reading between the lines and adjusting for the fact that Alan cannot be trusted to accurately recount anything about his life suggests that the man probably was a bit of a {{Jerkass}} but was nowhere near the kind of abuser Alan tries to depict him as.

* DidNotThinkThisThrough: Alan's walking trip is poorly planned, and tends to resulting in a cascading effect of unfortunate results for himself. For example, he initially buys an expensive large camping backpack for himself because it's the top-range option available, not stopping to consider that it's impractically large and heavy for his purposes and unnecessary given how he's not even camping. He then hits on the idea of sending the backpack ahead to his resting points, only to eventually realise that frequent short-range courier payments make this impractically expensive for his entire journey. He does barely any long-distance walking to train himself. And of course, there's the fact that for some reason (mostly likely so that he can pad out his proposed TravelogueShow) he's decided to make a long walk out of a journey that takes about three hours to make by car.

* NeverMyFault: As with the previous book there's bucketloads of Alan trying to shift responsibility for his own failures and disasters onto others. One notable example comes when after his final disastrous meeting with Harvey Kennedy has made it abundantly clear that "Footsteps of My Fathers" will end up nowhere near a television screen, he's sulking in a cafe reflecting on how he's needlessly gone out of his way on a 120 mile diversion around central London "based on reassurances that were not fulfilled". Needless to say, these reassurances didn't exist anywhere outside of Alan's own self-deluded mind.

* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: As with the previous book, there are ''buckets'' of this trope. In particular, Alan certainly isn't just doing this walk as a cynical and thinly-veiled attempt to recapture the limelight by spinning it into a six-episode mini-series shown on BBC 1 with an accompanying book deal and merchandising, and he honestly just wishes you'd let it go (despite the fact that he's the only one who ever brings it up). He's also not bothered in the least that high-powered agent Harvey Kennedy won't return his calls on the subject, and only takes a 120 mile diversion off his route to first try to visit his house and then ambush him at Gatwick Airport because it's convenient. And, of course, he's naturally entirely happy with his trip[=/=]life in general despite how dismal and disastrous it is. Needless to say, pretty much any time Alan insists that everything's fine and that he's perfectly happy with things, you can assume the exact opposite.

* UnreliableNarrator: Once again, Alan proves a less-than-trustworthy source on the subject of his life and past, including things we saw for ourselves. A standout case is when he talks about the siege from ''Film/AlanPartridgeAlphaPapa'' and claims that Simon knocked himself out with the fire extinguisher (which was of course Alan's doing in the movie).

* UnreliableNarrator: To a truly jaw-dropping degree if you're familiar with the TV series. To hear Partridge tell it, humiliating disasters and embarrassments become glorious triumphs and moral victories.

* SuspiciouslySpecificDenial: As with the previous book, there are ''buckets'' of this trope. In particular, Alan certainly isn't just doing this walk as a cynical and thinly-veiled attempt to recapture the limelight by spinning it into a six-episode mini-series shown on BBC 1 with an accompanying book deal and merchandising, and he honestly just wishes you'd let it go (despite the fact that he's the only one who ever brings it up). He's also not bothered in the least that high-powered agent Harvey Kennedy won't return his calls on the subject, and only takes a 120 mile diversion off his route to first try to visit his house and then ambush him at Gatwick Airport because it's convenient. And, of course, he's naturally entirely happy with his trip[=/=]life in general despite how dismal and disastrous it is.

* BlatantLies: Once again, Alan does not appear to be a trustworthy account of his experiences. In one chapter, he has a conversation with a homeless man who, despite apparently not being very familiar with television to the extent of having never heard of the ''The One Show'', suddenly becomes an expert on behind-the-scenes production (including terminology such as "proof-of-concept") when discussing whether Alan's experiences are worth making into a television show.

* DidNotThinkThisThrough: Alan's walking trip is poorly planned, and tends to resulting in a cascading effect of unfortunate results for himself. For example, he initially buys an expensive large camping backpack for himself because it's the top-range option available, not stopping to consider that it's impractically large and heavy for his purposes and unnecessary given how he's not even camping. He then hits on the idea of sending the backpack ahead to his resting points, only to eventually realise that frequent short-range courier payments make this impractically expensive for his entire journey.

* ButtMonkey: Alan's assistant Lynn. Apparently, ''Series/ImAlanPartridge'' actually ''downplays'' just what a huge bell-end he is towards her. To add insult to injury, he doesn't even refer to her by name throughout the entire book (although she is given a cursory mention in the acknowledgements).

* [[DaddyHadAGoodReasonForAbandoningYou Daddy And Husband Had A Good Reason For Abandoning You]]: Subverted; Alan is clearly not a very good husband to his wife or father to his children (and in particular treats his daughter as something of an afterthought), but his only justification for this is that he was trying to build a television career. Of course, in his mind, that's a ''perfectly'' good reason. He also includes a self-written letter purportedly from his wife (or at she at least allegedly agreed to being published[[note]]she didn't respond when he forwarded it to her, which he interpreted as consent -- it's far more likely that she simply didn't bother to read it, didn't feel it worth dignifying with a response, or that she simply never received it[[/note]]) which basically absolves him of blame on this score for these very reasons.

* EveryoneIsJesusInPurgatory: An in-universe example. Alan is ''constantly'' reading way too much into not just what people say, but how they say it, the way they shake hands, nod their heads, and so forth. In many cases, it's clearly a desperate attempt to latch on to even the smallest sign, no matter how tenuous, that the person he's talking to likes him, thinks he's the best thing ever, wants to make a television show with him in it, and so forth.
* FailedAttemptAtDrama: Alan tries to stage his confrontation with his wife over her infidelity as if it were a scene out of a soap opera, but his failed attempt at smashing a wine glass, her general indifference to him and Bill Oddie of all people showing up at an inopportune moment to collect the binoculars Alan borrowed from him serve to leech away any dramatic effect he might have been going for.

* SeriousBusiness: Alan treats and tries to depict his over-indulgence on Toblerones following the total collapse of his career as if it were a gritty heroin addiction rather than the minor eating disorder it so clearly was.

* SlowClap: In Alan's retelling, his final meeting with Tony Hayers in which he is informed that he's not getting a second series of his chat show ends with him delivering a withering put-down to Tony (or at least what Alan ''considers'' to be a withering put-down) and exiting the BBC restaurant to thunderous applause of this nature from everyone around him "like in a really good movie". In [[Series/ImAlanPartridge reality]] it ended with him throwing a tantrum, assaulting Tony with a block of cheese he'd impaled on a fork and running out screeching, while everyone around him watched in bemusement.

* StalkerWithoutACrush: Despite his repeated insistance that he's completely over the torment he got from his childhood bullies and has "forgotten all about it", Partridge seems to know a remarkable amount about where they live (one of the photos in the book is of a semi-detached house "much like the one my childhood nemesis Steven [=McCombe=] lives in", and he mentions a confrontation with the wife of one of them after 'coincidentally' stopping outside their house), what they do for a living, who they're married to, and even in some cases their ability to drive.

* ShaggyDogStory: It should come as no surprise that Alan's walk eventually ends up as this. [[spoiler: After his desperation to meet up with Harvey Kennedy Alan eventually ends up getting drunk beforehand and humiliates himself, meaning that his walk is decisively not going to end up on television (not that it was to begin with), and although he eventually does manage to make it to the perimeter fence of the nuclear power plant, he finally collapses due to his injured foot before he can make it all the way.]]

* AttentionDeficitOohShiny: Young Alan goes to see his father in law to get permission to marry, but is so engrossed by a brand new Flymo that he forgets to ask.

* [[DaddyHadAGoodReasonForAbandoningYou Daddy And Husband Had A Good Reason For Abandoning You]]: Subverted; Alan is clearly not a very good husband to his wife or father to his children (and in particular treats his daughter as something of an afterthought), but his only justification for this is that he was trying to build a television career. Of course, in his mind, that's a ''perfectly'' good reason. He also includes a self-written letter purportedly from his wife (or at she at least allegedly agreed to being published[[note]]she didn't respond when he forwarded it to her, which he interpreted as consent[[/note]]) which basically absolves him of blame on this score for these very reasons.

''I, Partridge'' -- or, to give the full title, ''I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan'' -- is a chronicle of the life of [[UnsympatheticComedyProtagonist broadcasting legend]] Series/AlanPartridge, as written by the man himself[[note]]with Rob Gibbons, Neil Gibbons, Armando Iannucci and Steve Coogan[[/note]] and released in 2011.

* NoodleIncident: A half-page description of Alan's visit to a Scientology compound is mostly redacted aside from a handful of bizarrely chosen words, including "needless to say" and "the last laugh."

* UnreliableNarrator: Once again, Alan proves a less-than-trustworthy source on the subject of his life and past.