Mar 23, 2003
Aa-haa!
Alan Patridge is alive and well and currently working on bid-up.tv as an on-air auctioneer.
Of course, he calls himself Andy Hodgson, but we can tell the real McCoy when we see it – or rather, hear it. Close your eyes and he’s there.
Picture the scene: it’s Sunday night. We’ve spent the day returning a rental car and then walking home along Chiswick High Street in the sunshine, peering in estate agents’ windows and stopping for coffee along the way. Feeling completely grotty, I spent a good chunk of the afternoon collapsed on the sofa, flipping between BBC News 24, Sky News and ITV News channel. News. News. War. War. News. War. More war.
With nothing else on, and looking for a little light relief, this evening I flipped over to bid-up.tv, the auction channel, to see what I didn’t want to buy today. The answer? Plenty. But Andy Hodgson somehow kept me captivated (well, if you include having him rambling on in the background while I read the paper and folded the laundry) for an hour.
See, Andrew (Andy) Hodgson is an auction TV god. He has the capacity to witter endlessly and with seemingly boundless enthusiasm about products ranging from drill bits to diamond bracelets, and including a perplexing number of limited-edition gold-discs of Queen, Pink Floyd and Bon Jovi albums – yours for the bargain price of only �8976 (RRP). The mind boggles.
In flogging these items, he throws in all manner of personal anecdotes, random asides and inane comments. Is it the studio lights getting to him? Has he hypnotised himself into some sort of trance? How does he do it?
Other presenters on the same channel approach the auction challenge slightly differently – when flipping through the digital channels after dinner, we occasionally stumble across Peter Simon (formerly of Double Dare fame), who always looks as if he’s about to lose it, go postal. It’s easy to picture him in his dressing room before he goes on for a three hour stint, slapping himself in the side of the head and chanting motivational slogans at his reflection in the mirror – “I can do this! I’m going to do this!”.
Jenny Harrison, though endowed with a geography degree from Durham University, seems to be little more than a professional neck, modelling a long series of ugly neck jewellery while trying to supress a bad case of the giggles. Andy Hodgson, however doesn’t appear to give a toss. He just says anything he wants – regardless of relevancy or appropriateness. And it works.
Suffice to say, I’ve found a new media hero.
Either that or the Night Nurse has finally started to kick in.
