Alan’s heroic lack of self-knowledge, his insecurities, his bitchiness and resentment, his sublimated homosexuality, his gracelessness, his pettiness, his role as brand ambassador for Corsodyl – all are consistently on show to the reader and invisible to the author. While we do get some more insight into other characters, the main "plot" is a bit simple and moves at a slow pace. But then again, it seems people from further afield find Partridge funny anyway, so maybe I’m just spewing drivel… again.

Somehow this character always manages to hit the sweet spot and, if anything, as his own career trajectory has declined he has become even funnier.Expect loads and loads of laugh-out-loud moments, some introspection, and an overall fun time reading.

The satire is scrappy too, half the time Alan's views are being mocked, while the other times Alan seems to be being used as a mouthpiece for the authors' more right-on metropolitan views. If you read the other reviews of this book you will probably waste a good deal of your time and I can tell you why. There’s a great section about his rivalry with Noel Edmonds and an incredibly funny repeated joke about Clare Balding’s hair. That’s long enough to assume that people have seen it and it seems unlikely that you’d pick up this book if you hadn’t seen the film. When Partridge first appeared in On The Hour in 1991, he was a sort of generic parody of sports presenters, mashed increasingly with a nightmarish caricature of Richard Madeley.

It should be keenly noted by all readers that the top five global routes as ranked according to passenger-kilometres are all out of LHR. I don't normally listen to many of them because I often find myself drifting off in my own thoughts and missing large chunks; so it's not really suitable for a lot of the statistic and information heavy texts I tend to read a lot of. Everything he says has come through a filter in his brain, a filter which consistently obscures the empty chasms of his ego and his omnipresent insecurity from no one but himself. There are still some funny bits, and it wasn't awful, but maybe it is getting near time for both Alan, and the character of Alan, to enjoy a well-deserved retirement.

A merciless piss-take of every bullshit 'personal journey' every celeb ever undertook, as Alan undertakes the Footsteps Of My Father TM walk to come to terms with the memory of his late father, and definitely not because he's under the mistaken belief he might get a new TV series out of it (because he's perfectly happy working on North Norfolk Digital's mid-morning slot, OK? The latter, a perfect look at the celebrity autobiography, the former having elements of the same, but with a genuinely Bill Bryson-esque look into Britain. I’ve gone with 3 stars just because I think that I, Partridge: We Need to Talk About Alan (a solid 4 star book) is probably the slightly stronger of the two: its humour comes a bit more naturally where Nomad sometimes feels like it’s trying to beat you over the head with jokes, plus, it came first, so more marks for originality. The key to the character’s success over the years has been how Coogan has used him across different formats and styles, changing it up with new new show to avoid it all getting stale.I listened to the audiobook version and enjoyed many a hearty laugh, a lot of chuckles and numerous smiles. When I purchased this audiobook I had assumed that Alan Partridge was a real British celebrity, with this the story of his walk through Britain an actual travel narrative. Ok, it's not deathless literature, but I can't imagine that anyone who has enjoyed Partridge in his other media incarnations wouldn't get a big kick out of this.