Of course, these days the institution of marriage is in crisis. It’s crumbling like an Oxo cube. I don’t have the exact figures to hand,13 but it’s probably correct to say that half of all marriages end in separation. Take the royal family. Elizabeth and Phillip – solid as a rock; Charles and Diana – crumbled like an Oxo cube. Charles and Camilla – rock; Andrew and Fergie – Oxo. Edward and his wife14 – rock; Anne and Mark Phillips – Oxo. You see, exactly one in two.
‘Marriage is dead!’ I shouted to the listeners of Mid-Morning Matters, not six weeks ago.15 Then I paused for dramatic effect and to finish my mouthful of sandwich. ‘Someone inform the relatives. Time of death: 2011. Cause of death … well, why don’t you play Quincy? Get in touch and let us know why you think marriage passed away.’
It turned out to be a really insightful phone-in. Dealing with unemployed listeners five days a week, I’m still sometimes pleasantly surprised that they can be brainy. Regular caller Ralph laid the blame at the door of the Mormons. Other less angry listeners put it down to the rise of contraception, E-numbers giving us attention deficit, and tax law, while my assistant texted in to say it was a symptom of terrible ungodliness.16
Me? I put it down to a combination of all these factors. Apart from the one about ungodliness. And the one about Mormons. Whatever your view, in the last hundred years there must have been more divorces than marriages.
Fifty years ago things were kinda different though. It was as rare to see a divorce as it was to see a four-leaf clover or a black chap in a position of authority. If only things had stayed that way.17
Now, I’d thought my parents’ union was in the rock-solid camp. But I was wrong. Because one night something happened that threatened to turn my world upside down like one of those paperweights with fake snow inside. It was an incident that made me have a terrible, terrible thought. What if the rock of their marriage was actually a rock made … of Oxo?
I woke with a start. At first I assumed I’d trumped myself awake again – it was summer time so there were lots of fresh vegetables in our diet. But as I listened through the darkness, I realised that something far worse was going on. My mother and father were having the row to end all rows.
A sudden shot of fear ripped through my pre-pubic body. And now I did do a trump. The noise fizzed out of my back passage like a child calling for help. That child was me. I cupped my hands behind my ears creating a sort of makeshift amplifier. Look and Learn Magazine was right – it really did work.18 But still I couldn’t quite hear everything. I shut my eyes in the hope it might make me hear better, like they say it does for blind people.
‘I’ve told you, there’s no point keeping those. They’re not tax-deductible,’ my dad thundered.
‘I think you’ll find they are,’ raged my mum like some sort of feral animal (a badger with TB perhaps).
‘They’re not. You only get VAT back on lunches outside of a 50-mile radius from your place of residence. You effing bitch,’ he seemed to add, with his eyes, I imagined.
‘Alright, fine, I’ll get rid of them then,’ sobbed my mum, her fight gone, her spirit crushed like a Stu Francis grape.
Then the door was shut. Or was it slammed? It was hard to know for sure as I’d now opened my eyes, thus depriving myself of the hearing boost conferred on me by blindness. I curled up on my bed like a foetus (though admittedly, quite a large one) and cried like a baby (again, large). ‘Please Lord, make it stop,’ I snivelled. ‘I’ll do anything you ask of me (within reason and subject to getting permission from my mum). Just don’t let them break up.’ Like an Oxo cube, I could have added.
And with that, I went off to the bathroom to clear my head, not to mention my nose.
Yet miraculously, when I went down to breakfast the next morning, there was no mention of the bitter war of words that had waged so fiercely just hours before. The nightmare that had threatened to rip my world apart like an experienced chef portioning up a ball of mozzarella had somehow been averted.
It was 25 October 1962, and on the other side of the Atlantic, President ‘JFK’ Kennedy had just pulled the world back from the brink of nuclear war. Could I just have experienced my own personal Cuban Missile Crisis?
Yes, I could have.
And so, in summary, mine was a childhood of undeniable hardship – a chilling and far-from-delicious cocktail of neglect, solitude, domestic strife, and abuse.19
I was, if you like, A Child Called It. This was Alan’s Ashes. A protagonist dealt a really shoddy hand by hard-hearted parents. (They’re dead now and my mum’s sister Valerie, who disputes my version of events pretty vociferously, has gone medically demented so I’m really the gospel here.)
But it wasn’t all foul-tasting. For example, I remember the intense joy I felt when my father slipped on some cake and cracked his head open. It was the day of my ninth birthday, and as I sat effortlessly reading a book aimed at 11–12-year-olds, I heard a commotion. It was my father.
‘Delivery for Mr Partridge! Delivery for Mr Partridge!’ he was saying.
He meant me, rather than himself, and although he could have eliminated the obvious ambiguity by saying ‘Alan Partridge’ or ‘Master Partridge’, my instincts told me that he was using the third person, so probably did mean me.
I ran into the kitchen. And there was my father – normally so cruel, as I think I’ve made abundantly clear – holding a cake. It was a ruby red birthday cake, with my name piped on to it in reasonably accomplished joined-up writing. I could barely contain my excitement – more at the cake than the writing. I adored cakes, but was only allowed to eat any on special occasions such as after meals. I began to run over, licking my lips as I sprinted.
Although blessed with cat-like co-ordination, something made me lose my bearings. Perhaps I’d been pushing myself too hard with the book for 11–12-year-olds and my brain was scrambled. Whatever it was, I misjudged my proximity to the table and clattered against it. The cake fell from it and smashed on to the floor in a hail of crumbs and redness and cream.
My father surveyed the scene, his face slowly crumpling with anger. He crouched down, taking the weight of his body on his two haunches and then he addressed me: ‘You’ll never amount to anything,’ he said. ‘You’re that to me.’20
On the word ‘that’, he held his finger and thumb one, maybe two, centimetres apart as if to say ‘not very much’.
I didn’t know what to say, my mind blasted by the twin concerns of spilt cake and parental cruelty. He turned to go and put one of his angry feet on to the remains of the cake. This acted as a lubricant, destroying any traction his foot might have had with the floor. It shot forward and, with his balance now a distant memory, he came crashing to the floor. His back took the first hit, smashing against lino and cake with a bang – ‘bang’. His rump was next – ‘doof’ – followed by his skull – ‘crack’. And for a second he was motionless, before blood began to spill from the back of his head.
As my father lay on the ground, the tension – much like the physical integrity of Dad’s skull – was broken. Suddenly, all the years of neglect, which could easily make a book in its own right and definitely a film, were lifted. The hardship, the loneliness, the disappointment