Alan Partridge Mural

Norwich’s best-known fictional creation

Perhaps the most famous denizen of Norwich is a fictional one: Alan Partridge, the extraordinary, self-obsessed, fatuous and almost always hilarious comic creation of comedian Steve Coogan. Partridge’s image appears on an outside wall of the Anglia Square car park, just off Magdalen Street. He’s seen in full OTT presenter mode, with his signature beneath. Created by one David ‘Gnasher’ Nash, the mural is essential viewing for any Partridge fan.

Partridge was ‘born’ in the early 1990s, having featured as a sports reporter in the satirical radio show On the Hour and then in his own spoof chat show, Knowing Me, Knowing You. Both shows transferred to TV in 1994, and Partridge found a much wider audience, later spawning the comedy I’m Alan Partridge, which ran for five years and won two BAFTA awards, and another show – Mid-Morning Matters –which was similarly successful. However, the pinnacle of Partridge’s success was perhaps the 2013 feature film Alpha Papa.This was partly filmed in Norwich and Norfolk, and famously premiered at Anglia Square’s Hollywood cinema – now closed.

Alan is inextricably bound up with Norwich and Norfolk: in the film he works for North Norfolk Digital Radio, while at one point he also presents a show for Radio Norwich, and was so synonymous with the city that a statue of him was briefly erected outside The Forum a couple of years ago. Opinions are divided as to whether Partridge has been good for Norwich or not, but it doesn’t seem to have done the city much harm, even when he took a tour of the county in a one-off TV mockumentary, Welcome to the Places of My Life. In this programme he introduces viewers to ‘East Anglia, the Plump Peninsula, Home of the Broads… the Wales of the East… Norfolk’, channels Hitler on a visit to City Hall, and takes a tour of Norwich Market, snaffling as much free food as he can.

Address Anglia Square, Magdalen Street, Norwich NR3 1DZ | Getting there Multiple buses go past Anglia Square and up and down Magdalen Street; 15 – 20-minute walk from the railway station | Hours Visible 24 hours | Tip In a ‘Knowing Me, Knowing You’ Christmas episode, Alan tours Norwich, jogging through the cathedral cloisters and visiting the old Norwich & Norfolk Hospital before it moved out of town.