We’re Just Fans, Alan: The Alan Partridge Fan Festival will be coming back to Norwich in 2027, with 250 fans expected to attend.
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Organised by Paul Wassell, the fan convention is set to be held at Mercure Norwich Hotel on February 27 the year after next.
Tickets will go on sale on January 5, with fans thought to be travelling from as far as Norway to be there and celebrate the fictional broadcaster, portrayed by Steve Coogan.
Wassell, who is the director of an educational publishing firm, said he was “tremendously excited” to bring the event back after it first took place in October 2021. It was delayed by 17 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic before it finally happened, and Wassell hoped to repeat it again a year later, but it proved too difficult to arrange on his own.
He put together a committee and decided to organise a second festival after friends agreed to get involved, explaining (via BBC) that he’s running the event “out of passion and nerdiness rather than… making money.”
He added: “We want to deliver a convention that is worthy of Alan Gordon Partridge and, given the positive feedback we received from previous attendees, we think we can upgrade the festival and make it truly textbook.”
Attendees will be able to take a look at the table centrepieces, which could again include items such as a 1970s Cliff Thorburn snooker skills book – Wassell said in 2020, “Alan Partridge loves the trivial and mundane and there will be centrepieces of different items on every table.”
There could be another air bass guitar contest, too, in tribute to Partridge’s own memorable solo to Gary Numan’s ‘Music For Chameleons’ in a season two episode. Wassell described the competition as a “unique experience and people willingly put aside any notion of dignity for the sake of a good laugh.”
He also revealed that they were planning an appearance from a mystery guest. But when asked if he thought Partridge might like the festival himself, he said he’d be both “honoured and horrified”.
“Alan loves any attention that goes his way,” he explained, “But I think he’d be quite terrified of being surrounded by lookalikes travelling from as far as Norway, Chester and Stoke, and constantly quoting his own words in his face.”
Partridge, whom Coogan first created in 1991 alongside Armando Iannucci, returned last month for the spoof documentary series How Are You? It’s Alan (Partridge), in which he returns to Britain following a brief work trip in Saudi Arabia, and investigates the nation’s mental health.
Coogan has also been working on a new season of The Trip alongside Rob Brydon. The Trip To The Northern Lights is the fifth instalment of the comedy series and was announced in June. It will see the pair head to Scandinavia, and Sky shared at the time that it would begin shooting later on in the year.
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