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. For the skies are yours now and you are free, free to soar and swoop, to glide and gambol across the very face of heaven, until you touch down, weary yet elegant in a land far, far away’. 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. Sometimes, I find myself filled with a sad pity for him, but when that happens it’s never long before he reminds me that he’s a bellend to his core, and I soon start laughing guilt-free once more. Some fall a bit flat, but over half of them are almost laugh-out-loud hilarious; in a blink-and-you'll miss them (or whatever the audible equivalent is) never-ending assaults on your funny bone.

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. Normally, that would make a character insufferable; here, however, there are moments of self-deprecation. To get a lot of the jokes in Nomad you need to at least semi-understand the local trivialities of what he’s on about. Yet within minutes it loses its way, like an old friend you find you have nothing in common with anymore.The main trait of Alan Partridge is how oblivious he is to him own shortcomings, and how he is able to convince himself that life is working in his favour. Like Julia Bradbury, Clare Balding and Michael Portillo before him he will be walking through history and amazing places except Alan does not want any publicity or a TV series about. But if you're a fan of the character and you can't get enough of his regional quips, boring facts or complete lack of self-awareness in many situations, then you're going to want to check this out. I get the feeling that this would have made a good episode or 2 of the TV show with all of the body language and the different edit choices that would go into that kind of project but as a book it falls flat and although I got through it, it dragged quite a lot and I only genuinely laughed once. The running joke of Alan running into celebrities was a bit irritating too, is it really likely to happen randomly so often, and what was the purpose of making minor celebrities most of us have forgotten into such grotesques?

Through witty vignettes, heavy essays and nod-inducing pieces of wisdom, Alan shines a light on the nooks of the nation and the crannies of himself, making this a biography that biographs the biographer while also biographing bits of Britain. 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. Now, he's 52 himself, and has more or less resigned himself to inhabiting the character with alarming verisimilitude. 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.

We’re in Gravesend so it’s likely to be more Morrisons than Waitrose, but (and this is lovely writing) beggars literally can’t be choosers. Alan Partridge, under-appreciated TV chat maestro and King of East Anglian daytime radio, embarks upon a trek from Norwich to Dungeness in the footsteps of his late father, determined to solve the mystery of how he failed to get a job with British Nuclear Fuels. 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. You're probably not going to get it unless you're a Partridge fan, of course, as there are so many references to his backstory. Alan is going to honour his dead father, even though he didn't like him, by walking from Norfolk down to Dungeness.

It means I can get everything else I need to finish and that I’m not focusing on listening for too long. 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). 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.Regardless, I did get some laughs from this, albeit not as good as his first autobiography, and it’s nice to have for free on Spotify. Early on in the book Partridge admits to padding the word count with meaningless filler, and it's depressing to realise that it's not merely a gag but the literal truth. 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 reckon the web series from last year, Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle, is one of the best things he's done. Although, you might find yourself getting a few funny looks from fellow passengers because there's no way you'll be able to get through even a single chapter without letting out at least one or two audible giggles. 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.But analysis seems pointless – better to just skim through some of my updates and remind yourself what all the fuss is about. We hear of the emotional and physical struggles of Alan attempting to walk in the footsteps of his father while simultaneously struggling to promote his walk to TV producers. I'm not normally one for audio books but 'Nomad' being read by Coogan as AGP himself is what makes it even funnier.