Gorillas and Partridges

When Mark Steel visited Norwich recently, with his usual formula of finding the quirky oddities of your town, he didn't mention Alan Partridge, perhaps thinking that was too obvious a way to go. And yet the DJ has certainly hit the news in the last couple of months, with the release of his film, Alpha Papa. There was even a campaign to hold its grand opening in Norwich, which came to pass in Magdalen Square, along with an Alan Partridge gorilla, as the city is presently full of multi coloured gorillas, gogogorillas.co.uk/‎ following a previous invasion of elephants, a couple of whom still hang around in the Forum.
But by coincidence, I have been reading Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods (1997), about his travels along the Appalachian Trail, and when he reaches Norwich, he mentions Alden Partridge, born in the American city in 1755,  who Bryson reckons may have been the first person to have walked long distances purely for pleasure. This ancient Partridge set up the American Literary, Scientific and Military Academy (now known as Norwich University), coined the term physical education, walked from Norwich to Williamstown, 110 miles on a typical hike. He travelled up just about every peak in New England before there were maintained pathways.
Norwich itself, Bryson notes, was pronounced Norritch - like the East Anglian pronunciation- until outsiders changed it to Nor-witch in the 1950s. It was most likely the town that inspired the Bob Newhart tv show which ran from 1972 to 1978 , centred in an unnamed Vermont town, where Newhart ran an inn and all the locals were eccentric. Oddly enough, the (Norfolk) Norfolk Playhouse hosted an evening dedicated to Bob Newhart and Tom Lehrer in 2011. Whether the Norwich link was mentioned then, who knows.
So all this leaves me wondering, when  Steve Coogan, Armando Iannucci, and the other writers on BBC4's On the Hour first aired Alan Partridge in 1991, had they heard of the A. Partridge from New England's Norwich, even if perhaps only using his name subconsciously, and had they seen Newhart?  Obviously Alan Partridge is a different kettle of fish, or brace of birds, to Tom Newhart, or Alden Partridge for that matter, and he's been moved on a stage again in the movie, by all accounts. The film topped the UK box office in its opening week.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-norfolk-23421003