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. This makes sense given how Alan himself comes up with the idea for the book within the book but unfortunately no level of meta meaning can compensate for a weak text. And I’m fine with that, not least because these photographs, taken at the start of each financial year, are purely for my own records. It's a lazy book, too long in the making that forgets the warmth of affection people have for the character and winds up outstaying an awkward reunion. The joy of Alan has always been the hug divide between his sense of self and the person he actually is.

I listened to this as an audiobook, and I can’t imagine that reading the book yourself could be better. 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? With one hand braced against the wall, I’m now grabbing and clawing the angry aperture, slashing and scraping………” …. This is the second of his books, and where I, Partridge took on the celebrity autobiography generally, this one is much more focused on describing Alan's intense, personal journey of discovery as he retraces ‘The Footsteps of My Father’, in the futile hope of possibly getting a TV deal out of it.Alan is a modern day Renaissance man looking to connect with his dear departed somewhat grouchy fatbacked dad. 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. The first book worked well since it was a satire of the bitter memoirs of a washed up celebrity, but the central idea here is much to flimsy to base an entire book upon. I’m positive that I’d have heard Alan’s voice in my head had I read the book but Coogan has such an understanding of this character that it feels like a book that needs to be listened to.

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've somehow missed his previous book, but what really came through for me more here than on TV are the way the character's grounded in multiple layers of deceit - obviously there are the things he knows but refuses to admit to the reader, but then beneath those are the things he genuinely doesn't see, despite their being incredibly obvious to everyone else (though oddly, for me this was least successful in the chapter giving his version of events in the Alpha Papa film, where we've actually seen what went down - it felt like over-egging the pudding somehow, when the rest of the book is so good at making the actual events so clear just by implication). Alan is going to honour his dead father, even though he didn't like him, by walking from Norfolk down to Dungeness. 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. For those of you familiar with the work of Partridge, he does ‘over-share’ and in typical praeteritio style he plummets to great depths of poor taste, over the top open disclosure and unashamed narcissism.

Diarising his ramble in the form of a 'journey journal', Alan details the people and places he encounters, ruminates on matters large and small and, on a final leg fraught with danger, becomes not a man (because he was one to start off with) but a better, more inspiring example of a man. Another problem with the idea is that his father has gone from being a fairly average nonentity in the first book to being an unpleasant bully in the second, thus undermining the fiction. A lot of this seems to be thanks to Rob and Neil Gibbons, the brothers who started writing for the character in 2010 and have worked on all of these projects with Coogan and Armando Iannucci ever since. Needless to say, Alan digresses considerably throughout this book, touching on his career, his broken marriage, his habits, his purulent foot (which appears to have developed its own pulse), how good a kisser he is, his pearls of wisdom – the list seems endless. First off, if you’re not a fan of Alan Partridge - and amazingly some people aren’t - then you won’t enjoy this book.

One of those funny little books that are well worth checking out if you're a fan of the character, or if you just like eccentric British comedy on the whole. The plot of the book, such as it is, concerns Partridge’s attempt to follow in the footsteps of his late father by hiking from his beloved Norwich to the Dungeness “A” Nuclear Reactor – where Partridge Sr once apparently had a job interview he never showed up for. I'm fairly Anglophile, but some of the cultural references still went past me, but I'm confident I inferred the point correctly when that happened.You’ll need warm clothes, a camera with telephoto lens, two Thermos flasks (one for tea, t’other for wee) and for GOD’s SAKE remember your sandwiches! Not much more I can say than 'Pure Genius' If you know Alan Partridge, watched his TV programes, read his books or seen any of his DVD's, you will eat this up very quickly. Of course, it’s all coming from his point-of-view so all of these insights are hilarious rather than meaningful.

In Nomad we find Alan attempting to complete the journey that his father never could, a walk to Dungeness A through a somewhat unscenic Kent. There aren't many comic actors who have grown into their characters the way Steve Coogan has grown into Alan Partridge.Hadn't realized this is actually a sequel, so got the first book for a time when I need guaranteed laughs. Moreover, the constant references to the publisher as a way of highlighting the underlying satirical purpose are tedious, and would anyway have been deleted by an editor.