EP.275 - KATHY BURKE

Adam talks with English actor, comedian, writer and director Kathy Burke about her memoir A Mind Of My Own, https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/A-Mind-of-My-Own-Audiobook/B0F449MVNB including her relationship with her Dad, Punk, being a Two Tone skinhead, the comments that stoked Kathy's anxiety over her appearance and the kind words of Clash frontman Joe Strummer, the genesis of Kathy's character Perry, meeting Peter Cooke, frustrations on the set of Straight To Hell, plus thoughts on comfy trainers, painful bras and getting older. CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE Conversation recorded face-to-face in London on 5 June, 2026 SUBMIT QUESTIONS FOR Q&A EPISODE: [email protected] mailto:[email protected] Thanks to Diggory Waite and Claire Broughton at Hattrick and Séamus Murphy Mitchell for production support. Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ SUCCESSPOD https://www.audible.co.uk/search?keywords=successpod&k=successpod - 2026 (Audible) ADAM BUXTON BAND https://www.eventim.co.uk/artist/the-adam-buxton-band/#calendar-start=2026-06 @ Hoxton Hall, London, 23 & 24 June, 2026 (Eventim) ADAM BUXTON PODCAST LIVE WITH MAWAAN RIZWAAN https://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/adam-buxton-podcast-cf/ @ Roundhouse, London, 5 August, 2026 (Roundhouse) RELATED LINKS CARE https://www.youngvic.org/whats-on/care?gclsrc=aw.ds&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=12868952336&gbraid=0AAAAADct7wRLCpuPKi1c7JwCEo69BxN34&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIx_HXur-JlQMVLZZQBh3tJS0uEAAYASAAEgLDbfD_BwE Directed by Alexander Zeldin, starring Linda Bassett - current run ends 11 July 2026 (The Young Vic) KATHY ON ACTING AND BEAUTY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kfm7cLYHuUY- 1989 (YouTube) JONATHAN ROSS - THE LAST RESORT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-Fz91W2VcI featuring Kathy as Tina Bishop, a young Vic Reeves drawing portraits of guests (Keith Allen, Lysette Anthony, Roland Gift, and a heavily sedated Malcom McLaren) - 1988 (YouTube) THE NYAH FEARTIES - Bludgeon Man https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qbJ6LplEb08 on The Tube - 1986 (YouTube) THE PROCLAIMERS - THROW THE R AWAY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnnyDDldRn8&list=RDxnnyDDldRn8&start_radio=1 Debut performance on The Tube - 1987 (YouTube) STRAIGHT TO HELL Directed by Alex Cox https://www.google.com/search?q=straight+to+hell+film&sca_esv=ab325edc4e2c3391&biw=1498&bih=860&ei=pvYvauTSEfe8hbIPn9PGoQ8&ved=0ahUKEwjkvcvqpYmVAxV3XkEAHZ-pMfQQ4dUDCBI&uact=5&oq=straight+to+hell+film&gs_lp=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-oUwgcGMC42LjE1yAdSgAgB&sclient=gws-wiz-serp#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:29d7c294,vid:p38TxQNzQ98,st:0(Trailer) - 1987 (YouTube) KATHY IN THE SID AND NANCY BEHIND THE SCENES FEATURETTE https://youtu.be/4pICoRDuiXs?t=776 - 1986 (YouTube) KATHY COMEDY AWARDS ACCEPTANCE SPEECH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huayAma6y0Y for Gimme Gimme Gimme - 2002 (YouTube) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Adam Buxton?

  I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk. Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke. My name is Adam Buckston, I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

• 0:31Adam Buxton?

  Hey, how are you doing, podcats? It's Adam Buckston here. I'm reporting to you from a crunchy Norfolk farm track in the middle of June 2026. I'm here with my best dog friend, Rosie Buckston, of Success Pod fame. How are you doing, Rosie?

• 0:53Speaker 01

  I'd love to know when I'm getting paid.

• 0:55Adam Buxton?

  What did you think those sausages were last night?

• 0:57Speaker 01

  Sausages?

• 0:58Adam Buxton?

  Sausages, yeah.

• 0:59Speaker 01

  Sausages?

• 1:00Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, sausages.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Perfect.

• 1:02Adam Buxton?

  Yes. Hey, speaking of Success Pod, my new six-part comedy series on Audible. Thank you so much to all of you who have checked it out, sprinkled it with stars, left a review. Much appreciated. It makes a big difference in the numbers-based ecosystem of a major audiobook platform. It's an important part of encouraging the powers that be to consider making more, which I would love to do at some point.

• 1:34Adam Buxton?

  Before I tell you a bit about podcast number 275, just a reminder about a live podcast show later this year on the 5th of August. It'll be here before you know it. I'm doing the show as part of the Roundhouse Comedy Festival, appearing at Camden's iconic Roundhouse venue, where I will be waffling onstage with former YouTube sensation turned BAFTA-winning writer and star of TV sitcom Juice and other TV projects, Ma Wan Rizwan. I'm looking forward to meeting Ma Wan and having a good old waffle. And I should think there'll be some other stupid bits and pieces too.

• 2:16Adam Buxton?

  That'll be the only live podcast show that I do this year, as far as I am currently aware. Link in the description for tickets. Hope you can come along. But right now, podcast 275, this one, features a rambling chat with returning friend of the podcast, English actor, comedian, writer and director Kathy Burke. Cathy facts. Cathy was born in 1964 in Islington, North East London to Irish parents. Her mum, Bridget, died of cancer when Cathy was just 18 months old. So she and her two brothers Barry and John were brought up by their father,

• 2:57Adam Buxton?

  who struggled throughout their childhood and beyond with alcoholism. Cathy writes vividly about those childhood years in her memoir, A Mind of My Own, published in late 2025. It was an audiobook highlight for me earlier this year when I listened shortly before recording with Cathy for Success Pod, and I was glad to get another opportunity to talk to Cathy about A Mind of My Own, which I really loved. The book also covers her career trajectory from securing a place at Anna Sheer Theatre School in North London, being cast at the age of 18 in director Mai Zetterling's film Scrubbers, about a British reform school

• 3:41Adam Buxton?

  for girls, writing her first play, Mr. Thomas, at the age of 22, which starred a young Ray Winstone. And of course, she writes about becoming known as a comedy actor on TV in the 1990s via Harry Enfield's programmes, in which she featured as, among many others, Waynetta Slob, a lovely wobbly randy old lady, and Kevin, the teenager's best friend, Perry. Of course, last week's guest was Harry Enfield, and it was just a happy quirk of my random scheduling system that Cathy ended up being the next guest after him. A Mind of My Own also describes Cathy's cinema acting adventures, including the film that earned her a Best Actress

• 4:24Adam Buxton?

  Award at Cannes in 1997, Nil by Mouth, directed by her friend Gary Oldman, in which she played Valerie, a woman who suffers extreme abuse at the hands of her husband, played 10 years after Mr. Thomas by Ray Winstone. My conversation with Cathy was recorded earlier this month, June 2026, at her house in Islington, not far from where she grew up.

• 4:51Adam Buxton?

  And we talked a bit about her relationship with her dad, as well as a few of the childhood moments that left Cathy feeling insecure about her looks, and how Joe Strummer of The Clash was one of the few people who encouraged her to value herself a bit more in that respect. Cathy was always a big music fan, and we talked about how important the punk and two-tone movements were for her in the late 1970s and early 80s, when she was part of the non-racist faction of the skinhead scene. And she told me how exciting it was for her to spend time with some of her musical heroes,

• 5:32Adam Buxton?

  including Joe Strummer and Elvis Costello and Shane McGowan of The Pogues, when she landed a part in the 1987 film Straight to Hell, directed by Alex Cox, who the previous year had also cast Cathy in Sid and Nancy, starring Gary Oldman. There's a behind-the-scenes featurette for Sid and Nancy on YouTube, in which you will see a young Cathy popping up about halfway through, hanging out on a boat with Alex Cox and his partner. I've put a link to that in the description of today's podcast, along with a few other clips of things that came up in our conversation. Cathy talking in 1989 about acting and beauty,

• 6:13Adam Buxton?

  a clip from Channel 4 music show The Tube of Scottish band Nia Firties. Nia Firties! Who Cathy enthuses about seeing supporting the Proclaimers in the 1980s. And there's an episode of The Last Resort with Jonathan Ross from 1988, on which Cathy appears as her character Tina Bishop, who preceded her character Perry, which she also did on one of Jonathan Ross's shows a few months later. And I've also included a clip of Cathy, that we didn't talk about, but just made me laugh, of her at the British Comedy Awards in 2002, giving a typically funny and unfiltered speech

• 6:55Adam Buxton?

  as she picked up a Best Actress Comedy Award for her sitcom Gimme Gimme Gimme. Also in today's description, there is a link to the play Care at the Young Vic. That's about one family's experience of grief and the care system, which Cathy enthused to me about in the context of getting older, which we spoke about towards the end of our conversation. I'll be back at the end to say goodbye, but right now with Kathy Burke. Here we go.

• 8:06Adam Buxton?

  Are you still enjoying talking about the book? Or do you feel like, okay, I'd rather talk about other stuff now?

• 8:13Speaker 02

  Well, I haven't got any other stuff to talk about. So when the book came out in paperback yesterday.

• 8:19Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 8:20Speaker 02

  Because it came out in hardback. When was that in October, November? And I'm over the moon at the reaction and very sort of surprised. I thought it would do well with people that were sort of fans of my work from the nineties and stuff, you know. But it's sort of gone beyond what I expected in the sorts of people that have been reading it and getting in touch about it. And I can honestly say I have not been stopped in the street more since I was in Harry Enfield and Jums.

• 9:01Adam Buxton?

  Oh, really?

• 9:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, for people talking to me about the book. I don't know, I think I was lucky really because. My childhood is in the sixties and the seventies. So that's really interesting to people, do you know what I mean? And people of my age group especially. So it's triggered memories for people, for them, you know. And then becoming sort of well known in the nineties. But I did a lot of stuff before I became well known. There was sort of like over ten years' worth of work before I sort of became. Oh, people knew my name. So that's been quite nice. People go, oh my god, I didn't realise you did that and you did this and

• 9:46Speaker 02

  you were directing plays before you became well known. Do you know what I mean? That sort of stuff.

• 9:52Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 9:52Speaker 02

  Although one lady did stop me in the street and said, she said, ah, I wish you'd given us a bit more gossip or something. I said, what do you mean? Well, basically, she just wanted me to say who I'd shagged. And she said, I was really disappointed that you didn't say who you shagged. And I was like.

• 10:12Speaker 02

  No, no, that is my business, you know, but it did really make me laugh.

• 10:16Adam Buxton?

  Were you careful about the people that you talked about? Did it worry you that people might be upset by some of the things you were saying? Did you check with people?

• 10:26Speaker 02

  Oh, I checked with people that I loved, that I love, just wanted to make sure I'd got certain things right. And yeah, that they were happy. I've got two brothers, so they read it before anybody else. Because I wanted to make sure they were happy.

• 10:43Adam Buxton?

  Were there things that they remembered very differently from you?

• 10:47Speaker 02

  Yes, of course. And and there were things that they'd completely forgotten more than anything because they were living their lives. So yes, definitely. Like my my brother Barry, because I talk about when I was little, when we moved into the top floor flat and there was a sort of ledge outside the windows. It was like a piece of guttering, really, a wide piece of guttering. So I used to go out there and sit on this plinth. I mean, it's four storeys high, these flats, you know. And I used to sit on this plinth and have a cup of tea. And Barry said he did that as well. So I thought I'd got the idea from a window cleaner. But I think I'd probably seen my brother do it and just copied him.

• 11:31Adam Buxton?

  Aged how old?

• 11:32Speaker 02

  Well, we moved into that flat when I was around ten.

• 11:35Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  So I was probably ten, eleven, yeah, crazy. No wonder I'm scared of heights. Cause I wasn't then.

• 11:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  And yet, when I remembered doing that, and I thought, oh fuck, I better put that in the book. That night when I was trying to go to sleep, just before I nodded off. I remembered myself out on that ledge, but this time I fell. And I just sort of woke up with a start. I was like, oh my god, what the fuck were you doing?

• 12:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, but you never actually did fall in real life, right?

• 12:09Speaker 02

  The cat fell.

• 12:10Adam Buxton?

  Oh god.

• 12:10Speaker 02

  Nobby the cat fell off a couple of times, but uh.

• 12:13Adam Buxton?

  Four stories?

• 12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 12:15Adam Buxton?

  And survived?

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, but he was really damaged. I mean, we we had to have him put down in the end, yeah, yeah.

• 12:24Adam Buxton?

  Blimey.

• 12:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:25Adam Buxton?

  You write brilliantly about your dad. I mean, I'm a sucker for dad stuff anyway. People's relationships with their dad. I mean, your mum died when you were only not even two.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it was eighteen months, yeah.

• 12:38Adam Buxton?

  So you don't have any memories of her presumably?

• 12:41Speaker 02

  No, not at all, no.

• 12:44Adam Buxton?

  So your dad sort of got depressed after she died, do you reckon? Like, and then started drinking?

• 12:49Speaker 02

  No.

• 12:50Adam Buxton?

  After then? Oh, he would always been a heavy drinker?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:53Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay.

• 12:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. So therefore, when I got older, and my dad got older, and my dad stopped drinking. I mean, he did it by himself. He didn't go to A A or anything like that. He stopped smoking when he was forty. And he stopped drinking when he was fifty. And.

• 13:11Adam Buxton?

  What made him stop? He just bottomed out, did he all?

• 13:13Speaker 02

  I think he was probably told by the doctor, you're gonna die if you don't stop, you know? So he did stop. So the last ten years or so of his life, he was sober. Worked and saved money and went on holidays and all that sort of stuff. But the problem was, when you've grown up with someone, and especially when they're a binge drinker. So you sort of get a couple of months where they're sober. And then you get a couple of months when they're pissed again. And it's a very erratic way to live, you know? So therefore, when he did properly sober up, I never really trusted it. I never trusted that the drink wasn't gonna start again.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  So therefore, I was very much, um, not as warm as I could have been towards him and. Yeah, it was about trust.

• 14:10Adam Buxton?

  He was physically abusive though as well.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 14:13Adam Buxton?

  Like just sort of whacking you and?

• 14:16Speaker 02

  I mean, but listen, when I talked to mates of my age group, you know, we were all hit.

• 14:23Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 14:23Speaker 02

  You know, it was sort of the discipline thing. Now, being hit to be disciplined. You understood it. But just being hit because he was pissed and angry, that's not great. Do you know what I mean? So there was quite a lot of that, really. And then a lot of actual fights, you know, between when my brothers were getting bigger. You know, and then it would be they could hit back. So then, you know, it was like. Pub brawls going on in the house, you know? So it was quite difficult. I didn't sleep much as a kid and.

• 15:03Speaker 02

  I was on edge. I was quite frightened a lot of the time. I was quite fidgety and scratchy and. But, you know, one of my school friends, Claire, that I was at primary school with. You know, she messaged me and said, Kath, I had no clue this was going on. Because you were just always laughing. And there we go, there's the old cliche, do you know what I mean, of masking and covering up and being the class clown. To sort of go. Protect, everything's fine, everything's fine, you know, I don't know why we do that.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  And why we have this sort of, as children, a sort of loyalty to not tell anybody what's going on, you know.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  But also I was surrounded by a lot of love, a lot of people that did care. You know, and and looked at my auntie Joan, who was a foster mum, and my auntie Nellie, who was my godmother. Uh, this woman called Pat that used to take me out. So it wasn't all doom and gloom, do you know what I mean? And actually, when dad wasn't in the house, when dad was off on a bit of a drinking binge and, you know, we wouldn't see him for a few days. And then that was great, because then it was just me and my brothers. Do what we want, eh, when we wanted, we watched what we wanted anyway on the telly. But it just felt like a more relaxed home.

• 16:39Adam Buxton?

  Was he remorseful, your dad, after he'd been violent or after a particularly bad scene?

• 16:46Speaker 02

  Oh, sort of.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  God love him, but he seemed to. He felt sorry for himself more, but that's the alcoholic, you know, they're full of self pity.

• 16:59Adam Buxton?

  Well, it's a kind of tussle between self loathing and self pity, isn't it?

• 17:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:04Adam Buxton?

  Spiral.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:07Adam Buxton?

  What were the things then that made life fun in those days? What were you into?

• 17:12Speaker 02

  Well, as a kid, just playing, playing in the flats. Being on roller skates, music, because my brothers are older than me, they're eight years and six years older than me. So, once they could start doing Saturday jobs or working in the summer holidays. And a stereo system was bought and albums started to turn up. That was brilliant and I used to love that and I I was sort of on my own quite a lot in the flat, so. Yeah, I'd just play records and sing and pretend I was in the Beatles and pretend I was David Bowie or, you know, um.

• 17:54Adam Buxton?

  And then punk comes along.

• 17:55Speaker 02

  Well, punk, the timing of that was fucking brilliant. Because I was thirteen, twelve, thirteen, when punk hit, and that was amazing for me. I mean, the music I really loved, but it was the attitude and it was just. It was so naughty, you know, that people were saying fuck off on the television and fuck off in their music and. Oh my god, it was just incredible.

• 18:23Adam Buxton?

  But you were too young to see gigs and stuff, though, right?

• 18:26Speaker 02

  Well, you know, everything was a little bit more relaxed back then. So I did start going to gigs when I was like fourteen, fifteen.

• 18:33Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 18:34Speaker 02

  They'd let you in, you know, pub gigs mostly down in Finsbury Park and stuff.

• 18:40Adam Buxton?

  Who did you see? Did you see anyone great that you remember?

• 18:43Speaker 02

  Well, I saw when the two-tone thing hit, so I saw Madness at the Hope and Anchor and the Specials. I saw the Clash a little bit later, you know, and they did a series of gigs. At the Hannah Smith Odian, I think it was, but I was a bit older then, I was about sixteen, seventeen. And then it was just sort of bands that didn't become anything. But when I got into my twenties. I think I was at like the first London gig of the Proclaimers.

• 19:17Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 19:17Speaker 02

  You know, because I'd sort of got to know the Pogues. So then my mate James Fernley would say, oh, there's this Scottish group, they're brilliant, we're gonna go and see them, they're playing in this pub. In Finsbury Park, and it was the Proclaimers. I mean, it's it's weird the Proclaimers, because I always forget about them.

• 19:36Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I wasn't expecting you to mention that.

• 19:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I'm so glad I've sort of remembered them now. Because they were just brilliant.

• 19:46Adam Buxton?

  Right, but they're they're for most people, I think, they are just crystallized in a couple of songs and and they're sort of a novelty act. Because they looked so striking and they had the glasses and everything and their style was quite unusual.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:01Adam Buxton?

  So it's um, Letter from. America and I would walk one thousand miles.

• 20:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's a bit later. I think that that's like later stuff of theirs, really. But no, they were fantastic. And they had this support act called the Near Fiaties, I think they were called, that were just crazy. It's just this guy hitting himself on the head with a a tray, you know, and it was. It was that sort of Celtic punk, you know what I mean? So it had all the anger and all the rage, but there was a real stomp to it, a real sort of rhythm and jig to it.

• 20:39Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 20:39Speaker 02

  So I lo- I loved all that.

• 20:41Adam Buxton?

  And at one point you write about a sliding doors moment when you bump into the Clash.

• 20:46Speaker 02

  Mmm.

• 20:47Adam Buxton?

  And more or less get an invitation to sort of spend your life on the road with the Clash for a while. Is that right?

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, it was from one of their roadies, I suppose, this young guy. And I had my new musical express in my bag. It was nineteen eighty. So I was coming up for my sixteenth birthday. It was May, that great time when you're just about to leave school forever. And I was walking, my school was in Houston, so we used to walk through Houston Station and then King's Cross Station. To then lead us up to Pentonville Road that would lead us up to the Angel and home. And I just thought, oh my god, I thought I'd spotted Paul Simmon from the Clash in King's Cross Station.

• 21:35Speaker 02

  And then realised it was him and then saw the other band members. And it was like, oh my god. And I was with my friend Mary. And I was like, it's the fucking, you know, it's the Clash. And she wasn't into punk or anything. And so I went up to them and asked Joe Strummer if he'd signed my new musical express. Which was an iconic cover because Ian Curtis from Joy Division had died. So there was this cover which was R I P Ian Curtis, you know. So he signed it and then the other lads came over and signed it and. And I'd cut Clash into my arm.

• 22:12Adam Buxton?

  Oh my god, like what with a.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  Well, I say in the book it was a compass needle. But I think actually it might have been like a little, my brother John used to do cutouts, you know, lino cutouts. Cause he was, he's an artist, you know, so he had these little like surgical knives, you know, artist knives. Craft knives. Craft knives, that was it. I think I actually did it with one of those, um. And it was gonna be, and it was quite big clash, you know what I mean? It was quite big letters. And it was gonna be Indian inked. I was waiting for it. Thank god that didn't happen. But anyway, Joe Strummer spotted that and told me off about it and said, what, what, you know, no, no, no, no, you shouldn't do that.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  And, and I said, oh no, I'm gonna get it Indian inked, cause I thought he meant it looked bad, that it's just a cut, you know? And I mean, now they call it self harming. I didn't know I was doing that. I was just sort of, you know, sticking things in me and, you know, and all that, and then decided to write clash on my arm. Anyway. And he said to me, um, no, no, no, no. He said, don't destroy your beautiful skin, not in our name. And I remember thinking, beautiful skin? Nobody ever used that word beautiful to me at all, until that moment. So it was wonderful. But anyway, then he had this young roadie guy.

• 23:40Speaker 02

  Who sort of hung around when they all went off to W H Smith's, cause they'd missed their train. That was why they were sort of there. And anyway, this young lad said to me, I hang about with them now and I do jobs for them and uh, running around and stuff and they've got some gigs coming up. Why don't you come and maybe you could do that too, basically? And it was just a, like a sliding door moment, yeah, cause I ju- I remember thinking, fuck, you know, that would be amazing. I'm just about to leave school. That would be incredible.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  But I'd also been waiting a couple of years to get into this place called the Anna Sheer Theatre. Which was workshop drama classes that you did after school, after college or whatever. And that Monday, I'd got the letter saying, finally, I'd got in, cause it's a waiting list system. And so it was just that quick thing of could I do that and it's like but I've been waiting for this for two years. So no, I won't do that. I've got to go to the Anna Sheer Theatre and see if I can be an actor.

• 24:55Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. So you didn't have to think about it too long to realise.

• 24:58Speaker 02

  No, no, it was just a sort of split second moment.

• 25:02Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, where you suddenly saw.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:05Adam Buxton?

  Different.

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Yeah. And you know, for all that was going on at home with dad and everything. I didn't wanna cause any trouble. And if I ran away. That would cause a lot of trouble and a lot of upset. And. All I ever wanted at home was peace, peace and quiet. So. Yeah, that would have really fucked things up for my brothers if I'd suddenly run away from home and, you know. So, yeah, I was a good girl.

• 25:41Adam Buxton?

  Well, it was the right call.

• 25:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I didn't get the Indian ink for my arm, thank goodness.

• 25:47Adam Buxton?

  Okay, good. Yeah, cause like what's the best case scenario of you going off with the clout? I mean, it would have been cool, you would have had some good stories and who knows what opportunities might have tangentially arisen, but.

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I wouldn't have liked that, what, making cups of tea for them and going to the shops and I I don't think I'd have liked it. I mean, what it might have done was led me to being in a band myself.

• 26:13Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  You know, because sometimes I look back and I think, why didn't I do that? Why didn't I. Sort of form a band. I mean, I knocked about with bands. But I think, and I'm not saying this to get the violins out. But I think because I wasn't considered pretty.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  I think I just thought, oh no, I can't be the singer in a band because I'm not pretty. And you sort of have to be pretty. You know, it's Debbie Harry, it's polystyrene, it's Suzie Sue. You know, they're all very attractive. Girls, you know, crazy high, you know.

• 26:56Adam Buxton?

  I guess Debbie Harry is the most conventionally attractive of those. But the others have unconventional beauty.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:04Adam Buxton?

  And also, you know, you were not in any way a hideous young person. But in the book, you do talk about this feeling of not being pretty.

• 27:13Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 27:15Adam Buxton?

  That you sort of become aware of around twelve, thirteen or something like that. And there's a very upsetting anecdote in there, which is so strange. You're getting ice creams.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Oh, I was very young then. I must have been about eight or nine then. So we were all queuing. The ice cream van was there. There was a queue for the ice creams. I didn't have money for an ice cream, but you sort of hovered around just in case somebody said, would you want one? Anyway, there was a woman there, a Cockney woman, who was just walking past and said, I've had a win on the bingo. Who wants an ice cream? So we were thrilled, do you know what I mean? And I was like, yes, misses, thanks, misses and all that. And I had horrible teeth.

• 28:01Speaker 02

  And she just looked at me and she said, oh, aren't you ugly?

• 28:05Speaker 02

  It was extraordinary. I was mortified.

• 28:10Adam Buxton?

  Of course.

• 28:11Speaker 02

  I was so embarrassed.

• 28:14Speaker 02

  But again, I just quick and I came back with, I'm the best dancer at the ugly bug ball. And then did the dance. And everyone laughed and they laughed more at me than they did at her saying that. So then when she gave me my ice cream, she did say, I'm really sorry I said that, love.

• 28:34Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that's almost the most upsetting part of the story in a way. Do you know what I mean?

• 28:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 28:39Adam Buxton?

  That she. Who says that to anyone? Who says that to anyone, let alone a child?

• 28:47Speaker 02

  Well, she obviously wasn't that bright.

• 28:49Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay.

• 28:50Speaker 02

  Do you know what I mean?

• 28:51Adam Buxton?

  But she was bright enough to understand that it was not okay to say it, and then she sort of apologized afterwards. She had enough self-awareness to do that.

• 28:58Speaker 02

  Did, but she just had a reaction to my face.

• 29:02Adam Buxton?

  But it wasn't your face, though. It was something weird, because you just looked like a normal.

• 29:06Speaker 02

  I know, but.

• 29:07Adam Buxton?

  Kid.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:09Adam Buxton?

  You know, and yeah, maybe she didn't like the look of your teeth or whatever it might have been, but it was like. Such a strange thing, and obviously you remembered it, obviously.

• 29:20Speaker 02

  Oh, my god, yeah, I've never forgot it.

• 29:22Adam Buxton?

  Well, exactly. All it takes is a one or two of those moments, and that suddenly becomes how you think of yourself.

• 29:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh, absolutely. And I didn't write about this in the book, and then when I was about thirteen. You know, I had a couple of moments where a boy asked me out, and I said yes, and then he laughed and said, are you mad? I don't wanna go out with you, and you know what I mean? It was like a big joke. So that didn't fucking help either, you know? So, yeah, so I think I just resigned to the fact that, oh, I'll be the funny one then, you know? And it didn't help that every friend I had, best friends, seemed to be extremely pretty. Do you know what I mean? So.

• 30:10Adam Buxton?

  Maybe you gravitated towards those people, do you think? Like, I, my thing was I didn't like being short. And I ended up marrying a tall woman, being friends with a lot of tall people. I don't know if it's just a coincidence.

• 30:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's funny, isn't it?

• 30:25Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, maybe I went towards the pretty girls because also I wanted to be the one that was the funny one. I wanted to be the funniest, you know?

• 30:35Adam Buxton?

  Ultimately, that's more valuable currency, isn't it? Don't you feel like?

• 30:39Speaker 02

  Well, it's turned out that way.

• 30:40Adam Buxton?

  Sure.

• 30:42Adam Buxton?

  But it's weird, I saw an interview with you in nineteen eighty nine, I think.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  God.

• 30:47Adam Buxton?

  On the set of a play, maybe.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 30:50Adam Buxton?

  Being interviewed by the BBC and you were talking about the kind of parts that you were getting.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  Oh, right.

• 30:56Adam Buxton?

  And you were saying, you know, I get cast as the kind of weird friend of the pretty one.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 31:03Adam Buxton?

  And you were saying, I don't mind because they're the best parts.

• 31:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:07Adam Buxton?

  And you said you had been cast as the attractive wife in something, and actually it was the most boring part.

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah.

• 31:14Adam Buxton?

  But obviously you were still very aware of that, that that narrative was still playing out in your head. And, you know, I'm watching this interview and you look like a normal woman.

• 31:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 31:23Adam Buxton?

  It's not like, whoa, look at her.

• 31:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:26Adam Buxton?

  So it was something that really stuck with you and.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  I think so. And also, I suppose, you know, mums are very good at letting their daughters know that they're pretty or they're attractive or if they're not, you know, how to improve themselves. Do you know what I mean? And so I never had that. So I never sort of went home to anybody and said, this woman just called me ugly. And so no adult said, well, how fucking stupid was that person?

• 32:02Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 32:02Speaker 02

  So you know what I mean? I just sort of kept that to myself, really, and held it in. And just thought, well, there's a truth to it, you know. Anyway, it's crazy, isn't it?

• 32:14Adam Buxton?

  And it just makes you realise that so many people have that kind of experience, one way or another. And they end up with a sort of very distorted picture of what they mean to other people.

• 32:25Speaker 02

  Exactly. You know, I've known so many, like particularly, not just girls, but that have terrible eating disorders because someone said, oh, you're a bit fat or, oh, but you're getting a bit chubby. And then the rest of their life is sort of fucked, you know, with insecurity. And, oh, I better not eat that. And I better, you know, oh, God, I'm gonna be fat and, you know.

• 32:52Adam Buxton?

  How do you get out of that? I guess you you just sort of try and do what you are good at and. Realise that.

• 33:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:02Adam Buxton?

  You can be a happy person, you can live a happy life by having the courage to be confident. I mean, that sounds like something you put on a mug.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  But I suppose I always came across as confident.

• 33:13Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 33:13Speaker 02

  Because I would be funny, you know.

• 33:16Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Um.

• 33:17Adam Buxton?

  And you're right about going out with this guy who was a sweet guy, but kind of just got radicalised by skinhead jobs.

• 33:29Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 33:31Adam Buxton?

  And that's a sad story as well.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  Well, he was called Steve and he was lovely and he was my first boyfriend. And he was a couple of years older than me, but he was really gentle and he was funny and daft. And he was a punk and he looked like Sid Vicious. He had the black spiky hair and I just thought he was amazing. And, you know, it's that teenage going out where we went out together for a couple of months, two, three months maybe at the most. And then I wasn't seeing him that much because he was older than me. So he was going to gigs and he was going to parties and all the rest of it. So I stopped going out with him. I packed him in.

• 34:17Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  But I said, but we'll always be friends. And he was like, yeah, you know, he was probably really glad, you know, I think he was just like humoring me a lot of the time, you know, but he was so lovely. And then the next time I saw him and, you know, the skinhead thing started to happen. And I was a skinhead myself. And I'd heard somebody said, oh, Steve is a skinhead and he's got all these tattoos. And I was like, what? Anyway, there'd been trouble, bank holiday, Monday trouble down on one of the seaside resorts. And so the papers were full of this disgraceful fighting on the beaches and all that.

• 35:05Speaker 02

  And on the front cover of one of the papers was this sort of very well known now photo, you can Google it and up it comes. Of this guy getting arrested, sticking his fingers up to the camera, looking really aggressive. And he had made in London tattooed on his head. And it was Steve. And I was gobsmacked, I just couldn't believe it. So I rang his flat and his sister answered, he had a lovely sister called Julie. She was terribly upset. And said he's been arrested and he'll probably get put in a detention centre.

• 35:47Speaker 02

  And all this business and somehow I found out, maybe it was her that told me. That the first thing that was gonna happen though was that he had to go to hospital. Because he had fuck off tattooed on one side of his neck. And a Nazi swastika on the other side of his neck. So these had to be removed. Because it was illegal to have offensive stuff like that exposed to the world. So the judge ordered that he had to go to hospital and get these removed. So I went to visit him in the hospital. And it was so cute really, cause you know, the hair was starting to grow over the tattoos on his head.

• 36:30Speaker 02

  And he's there in hospital pyjamas, bandages on his neck, you know. He was delighted to see me that I'd gone to visit him. He said, oh, thanks for coming to visit me. He said, uh. Can I have your address though? I don't know your address, cause I'll write to you from the detention centre. And I was like, oh, I said, okay. I said, but I can't be your girlfriend again though. And he went, oh, no, that's all right. I've got a girlfriend. She's coming later. Fuck, okay. But he was a nice boy and it was sort of strange that. This photo of him, he looked so aggressive.

• 37:11Speaker 02

  Because he was acting the part of being an aggressive skinhead. That wasn't who he was at all, really, you know.

• 37:20Adam Buxton?

  And that was around the time when. Some of the punks were kind of appropriating the swastika and using it as just a kind of catchall provocative.

• 37:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 37:30Adam Buxton?

  Symbol, rather than it being politically weighted, is that right?

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Yes, but well, I don't know. I can't speak on his behalf about that because. You know, the the skinhead culture was getting hijacked by.

• 37:45Adam Buxton?

  The far right.

• 37:46Speaker 02

  The far right, the National Front and B N P, the British National Party. So, who knows, who knows? I never had a discussion with him about that.

• 37:58Adam Buxton?

  How did you come to be a skinhead?

• 38:00Speaker 02

  Music, just the music.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was when Two Tone came out. So I was sort of too young to be a punk punk, you know, I was a sort of part time, plastic punk. Because that was between the age of thirteen, fourteen. But then Two Tone hit. And yeah, so I could be a skinhead. The clothes were easier to access and. There was a smartness to the clothes, you know, the Fred Perry's and the Ben Sherman shirts and jeans and loafers, you know. Braces. So I really loved the look. I really loved. Being able to be boyish, basically, that it was a fashion to be boyish.

• 38:50Adam Buxton?

  And that music was very politically utopian as well, those.

• 38:53Speaker 02

  Oh, it was amazing.

• 38:55Adam Buxton?

  Mixed race bands and.

• 38:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 38:57Adam Buxton?

  It was just a sort of vision of.

• 38:59Speaker 02

  It was fantastic.

• 39:01Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 02

  But there was still judgment about if you were a skinhead. You know, people didn't know, they didn't know you, whether you were into the.

• 39:12Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Music or whether you were into the politics of what that look was.

• 39:18Speaker 02

  Supposed to be giving off, do you know what I mean? That it meant that you were a racist, you know?

• 39:23Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  So it was very ha- hard.

• 39:26Adam Buxton?

  Right, very confusing.

• 39:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:28Adam Buxton?

  Schism there.

• 39:30Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 39:30Adam Buxton?

  And then some of the racists, though, were still into the music, right? Like, they would show up at some of the gigs, Madness gigs and.

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:39Adam Buxton?

  Bad Manners gigs or whatever.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  A lot of the time, they wanted to cause trouble.

• 39:42Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay.

• 39:43Speaker 02

  It was to fight and stuff, you know. But I thought the specials and the select her and the beat, you know, I just thought they were brilliant.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  I loved them. And then it was sort of strange when they started to become popular enough to be on top of the pops and stuff, and then you're a bit, oh no.

• 40:04Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 40:05Speaker 02

  Oh, fucking hell, now everyone likes them. What do you mean Ghost Town's number one? What? Shouldn't be number one, should be number one on the indie chart, not the fucking Top of the Pops chart.

• 40:16Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 02

  You know?

• 40:18Adam Buxton?

  God, that was a good song.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  Amazing.

• 40:21Adam Buxton?

  But then you got told off by your sister-in-law?

• 40:26Speaker 02

  Yes, Carmelita.

• 40:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Speaker 02

  So my brother Barry met Carmelita, you know, when they were nineteen, I think, eighteen, nineteen. So, yeah, so I was still a skinhead when I met Carmelita. And Barry was, well, he was more what they called a suede head. So it was like you didn't do the full skinhead look, but you had the two-tone suit and you were into the music and all that. And she was herself. She had a mix of sort of rockabilly look and sort of punk, but more rockabilly, you know. I remember she used to wear bobby socks and.

• 41:06Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, that's cool.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Things like that, you know.

• 41:08Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 02

  She was so beautiful. She was so, yeah, and she was mixed heritage from Hackney. Because when she met my brother, they met at a party. And from her point of view, she said she just was frightened of this guy in the corner who just was staring at her. You know, with this sort of skinhead look in his two-tone suit. And she just thought, he fucking hates me because I'm black and that guy wants to beat me up. But I think from my brother's point of view, he basically fell in love at first sight and he just couldn't keep his eyes off her. And then they were, there was a big dance going on or whatever and she fell and he grabbed her.

• 41:53Speaker 02

  And legend says that he said to her, I'm never gonna let you go. And he didn't. Hmm. And that was it. They were married a month after meeting and she moved in with us. So it was suddenly lovely to have another woman in the house. It was like, oh my god, you could smell perfume in the air and. Do you know what I mean? It was just so nice. But then I started to grow my hair out and I started to go to Anna Scher's and she had said to me, you know. Yeah, I'm glad you're not into that anymore because when I first saw you, I just thought, oh my god, who's this stupid little wanker? You know?

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Because that was it. I tried to um ingratiate myself towards her the very first time I met her by telling her a mildly racist joke. Uh huh. Because I thought, oh, she'll like this. Charlie Williams told this joke. He was a black comic on the telly. She made it very clear that she didn't like it. I doubt I wasn't to tell her those sort of jokes ever again. And I didn't. And I never told anybody jokes like that ever again. Yeah, yeah. It was good. I was lucky that she came into my brother's life and therefore my life when I was young. When I was still sort of impressionable, you know?

• 44:13Adam Buxton?

  I loved reading about the journey that you went on with Harry Enfield. And all that lot. I didn't realise that Perry predated.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 44:26Adam Buxton?

  Kevin and Perry.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:28Adam Buxton?

  How did that come about?

• 44:29Speaker 02

  Well, that was on the Jonathan Ross Show.

• 44:32Adam Buxton?

  The Last Resort?

• 44:33Speaker 02

  No, it was another show. So it was after The Last Resort. So I'd done a character called Tina Bishop.

• 44:40Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, who's like a northern.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Yes, she was from Yorkshire, she was from Kethley. And she was odd as nails and she was pregnant. And the whole skit was, you know, she had a bottle of beer and a fat egg. Well, she's very heavily pregnant. And that was through working with Roland Rivron and Simon Brint with their cabaret act, Raw Sex. And Roland was doing work for The Last Resort, Roland Rivron. And he suggested I go on it as Tina Bishop. So that was the first character I did on The Last Resort. And then it was a new, I think it was a Sunday night show. I can't remember what it was called, but maybe just the Jonathan Ross Show. And it was live again and he had guests on.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  But this time there was like a game show incorporated in it called Not Gone Ginger. So there was a big wall of doors.

• 45:32Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 45:32Speaker 02

  And then there was a little one, we'd come out as characters. Because it was a quiz for the audience members. So it was me, Vic and Bob, Paul Warrickhouse and Charlie Higson. So we were all doing various characters. And then the next week, because it was live. Because I was thinking, why didn't I have a contract, like a proper contract? And I think it's because it was live, so they didn't know if the game show was gonna happen every week. So we would turn up, you know what I mean, and just say, oh, are we gonna be on what's happening, you know? And it was Paul that said to me, because I was feeling a little bit.

• 46:13Speaker 02

  Oh, Tina Bishop isn't getting as much exposure as she did on The Last Resort, you know, it's all very quick and all that. And I don't know what happened, but I suddenly needed another character. And Paul Whitehead said to me, I think you'd be really good at doing a little boy character. And I thought, oh, that's a good idea. So. Anyway, there was a costume room in there or whatever, so I wangled together a sort of uniform. But I knew I didn't wanna be like Little Jimmy Cranky, do you know what I mean? So then I remember thinking, ah, no, not a little boy, a teenage boy.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  Cause I said to Paul, if he's a teenage boy, he's going through puberty, so therefore his voice is breaking. And I remember Paul going, oh, that's good. He went, how would you do it? And he'd go, well, I don't know, it's pretty sort of be a bit like that. But then every now and again. He would go a little bit high and then he'd go quite low again. So Paul was like, that's great. And he said, oh, you should call him, uh, you know, we were trying to think of names and Paul said Terry. And I went, no, Perry, cause I had a mate called Perry, Perry Fenwick. So that was Perry's first appearance was on that Jonathan Ross show.

• 47:30Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 02

  And he was Perry the pubescent teenager. So, yeah, I think I only did him twice. I certainly didn't do him more than twice, cause then I left the show.

• 47:42Adam Buxton?

  Well, you found out that you weren't getting paid the same as the other blokes.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  I found out the boys were getting more than me, which is sort of the norm, it's still like that. But I just thought it was outrageous because, I mean, Vic Reeves had done The Last Resort. But nobody else had done The Last Resort. So I just thought, hang on a minute, I did The Last Resort. Tina Bishop went down a storm on The Last Resort. Now I'm doing this show, it's less money than I got on The Last Resort. Because there's more people, so I sort of understood that there's more performers. But then it was Paul again, who unknowingly just sort of told me what the money was that they were getting.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  And it was like fifty quid more than me or whatever. And I just thought, hang on a fucking minute. We're all doing the same amount of work, you know. And I did double check with Paul Whitehouse, actually, when I was writing it, you know, I rang him up and said, Paul, were you a writer on that Jonathan Ross show? Is that why you got more money? No, no, no, he said I was just performing the same as you. So I was like, right, right. So I didn't go back. I think there were like two or three shows left.

• 49:01Adam Buxton?

  I was impressed by that when I read that because I just thought, I think a lot of people would just be so grateful for the break and you're on TV and it's like, well, it'll lead to something else, but you had the confidence then to think, Ashley, no.

• 49:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, the stupidity, I don't know. I just sort of remember thinking, fuck this, I ain't, what am I doing? This is stupid.

• 49:27Adam Buxton?

  What else were you doing at the time? Like, what was the alternative for you?

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Well, unpaid fringe theatre work, you know, box office split. Every now and again, waiting for Dawn and Jennifer to put me in a sketch. So I could get a bit of money, you know.

• 49:44Adam Buxton?

  They were doing comic strip stuff, were they?

• 49:46Speaker 02

  They were doing comic strip stuff. But at the same time, I was doing serious theatre work and plays and, you know, all that sort of stuff. And things like BBC Schools programmes and, you know, I mean, I was just a jobbing actor, really, who was suddenly involved in the comedy world a bit more.

• 50:08Adam Buxton?

  Who else was doing, because as soon as you see Tina Bishop, if you look at it on YouTube now. Your commitment to the character.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  I really, I've not watched it for ye- well, I've never watched it, really.

• 50:22Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, it's good, it's.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Is it alright? Cause I think back and I think, oh, that must have been awful, really.

• 50:27Adam Buxton?

  It's good, it's like, well, you can act, it's not sort of silly and mad. Do you know what I mean?

• 50:32Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:33Adam Buxton?

  It's more the approach that the League of Gentlemen would have taken, do you know what I mean?

• 50:37Speaker 02

  Right.

• 50:38Adam Buxton?

  That kind, it's it's coming from an acting place.

• 50:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:42Adam Buxton?

  Rather than a mad comedy place.

• 50:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, no.

• 50:44Adam Buxton?

  Which makes it funnier and makes it better.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it re- I, Tina used to really divide the crowd, because half the crowd would be like, oh my god. This is really bad, this is obviously someone with special needs, that they've allowed on stage, you know? And then the other half of the audience sort of got it. The influences back then were people like Peter Cook, because Peter Cook would go on to Jonathan Ross and Clive Anderson as characters. And also the brilliant, uh, Barry Humphries, doing Les Patterson and then Dame Edna. So I, I think it was sort of from that school, for want of a better word, you know?

• 51:24Adam Buxton?

  And then you bumped into Peter Cook, when was that?

• 51:26Speaker 02

  Well, that was, I didn't bump into him, he was waiting for me in my dressing room, and.

• 51:31Adam Buxton?

  That was a big charity show.

• 51:33Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah. Yeah, it was charity for Amnesty International.

• 51:38Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 51:39Speaker 02

  And I did Tina Bishop on that. So I decided that Tina had got confused and thought it was Amnesia International. So she sang Memories. Oh, it was terrible, really, but yeah, it was quite exciting to do, cause you know, Michael Palin was on there. In fact, it was directed by Jennifer Saunders and John Cleese. So I think it was Jennifer that sort of got me involved, you know, come and do Tina Bishop, you know? But I found the whole thing quite terrifying. Just because of the people, you know, Peter Cook and Dudley Moore and the Pythons and.

• 52:22Speaker 02

  I felt like a tiny little tadpole in this massive pool of huge fish, you know? I think it was the last night, cause I did three shows, it was three nights.

• 52:37Speaker 02

  And then I went into my dressing room at the end of doing my bit and Peter Cook was fucking sat in my room on the floor. He was quite pissed and I went, oh, hello. I said, I think you're in the wrong room. No, no, I'm not in the wrong room, he said. He said, I just wanted to tell you, he said, I think you're a fucking genius.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  No, it's like, oh, thanks very much. But also I was thinking, there are no witnesses, there are no fucking witnesses. Why are you saying this to me? Why aren't you saying that out on stage? You know what I mean? But yes, I was very embarrassed, but thrilled, thrilled to bits and yeah, but I just got very, very shy. I still am quite, I get quite shy around very, very famous people. I sort of don't know what to say to them, you know.

• 53:32Adam Buxton?

  Is that only if you like what they do or is it anyone who happens to be very well known?

• 53:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, well, obviously there's a bit more of an edge to it if you're a fan, you know.

• 53:43Adam Buxton?

  Were you a fan of the Pogues when you worked with Shane McGowan on Straight to Hell?

• 53:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 53:50Adam Buxton?

  Were you excited about the prospect of going out there and Joe Strummer was on that film as well?

• 53:55Speaker 02

  I mean, God, so excited.

• 53:58Adam Buxton?

  Elvis Costello.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  So this was Straight to Hell, the Alex Cox movie. And yeah, it was like a who's who of sort of indie music and film. Jim John Moose was in it and Dennis Hopper turned up, Grace Jones turned up. I mean, it was crazy. It was a crazy job. There was a lot of drugs, do you know what I mean? And I, of course, by then, I'd been acting for about four or five years. So I was just like, this is so unprofessional. I just couldn't believe the sort of, not so much the debauchment, but Alex just allowing these improvisations to go on and on and on and they were terrible. It was rubbish. And I used to say to him, I used to go, this is fucking rubbish, Alex.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  I mean, I thought the script was rubbish, but I thought I'm still gonna go, I'm gonna go to Spain, you know what I mean? And hang out with Joe Strummer and the Pogues and, you know, it was good fun. But I was always a bit of an old bag.

• 54:59Adam Buxton?

  What was it about?

• 55:01Speaker 02

  Oh, fuck knows. I don't know. The script made no sense.

• 55:06Adam Buxton?

  I'm Googling Straight to Hell synopsis, 1987 surreal spaghetti western parody. Directed by Alex Cox, follows three bungling hitmen and their pregnant gun moll. After robbing a bank, they get stranded in a desert town inhabited by a hostile coffee addicted gang.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, sounds great, doesn't it?

• 56:01Adam Buxton?

  Are you gonna do more acting?

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Probably not.

• 56:03Adam Buxton?

  But never say never.

• 56:04Speaker 02

  Never say never. Last thing I did, I did a little bit for Steve McQueen and a film he did called Blitz.

• 56:10Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yes.

• 56:11Speaker 02

  That was out a couple of years ago, um.

• 56:13Adam Buxton?

  Period. Drama.

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Yes, because I love Steve McQueen. It was just great to work with him and be in his company for a few days. And he actually encouraged me to write my memoir.

• 56:26Adam Buxton?

  Ah, okay.

• 56:28Speaker 02

  Because he said, oh, what are you doing? What are you doing next? And I said, oh, I don't know. I'm sort of humming and harring about whether to do a book, to do a memoir. And he just said, it's very important. It's very important. Working class stories are very, very important. You know, you've got to think about the next generations and, you know, they need those positive outcomes, you know.

• 56:51Speaker 02

  So then when I finished it, I wrote to him and said, well, you've got to fucking give us a quote because I I don't think I'd have written it without you saying you have to.

• 57:00Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 57:01Speaker 02

  You know.

• 57:01Adam Buxton?

  And now you're working on part two.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  I'm not working on it. I'm having a break. I'm having a break. And I'll probably start working on part two next year. But I do think the second book isn't going to be as sort of joyous as, because the second book is full of illness, menopause, do you know what I mean? And being quite bitter about a lot of things that went on. I saw a friend yesterday and I said, oh, God, I think the second book could be called Cunts and Other Animals. Because, you know, I think there'll be a whole chapter on cunts.

• 57:38Adam Buxton?

  The Twitter years.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Yes, and the Twitter years and all that.

• 57:42Adam Buxton?

  There's a lot of laughs there, though. Come on, I think you're still mining the comedy.

• 57:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll try and make it as light as possible, but uh, I don't I don't think it'll be as as because I loved writing about the childhood, even though the childhood was quite tricky. It was still lovely to write.

• 58:00Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 58:01Speaker 02

  And going to Anna Scher's and just the excitement of suddenly being in the industry, being in show business. It was like, my God, you know.

• 58:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that was very vividly conveyed. It was wonderful.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  Um, well, thank you, Adam. I do appreciate it.

• 58:18Adam Buxton?

  And maybe we'll meet again when volume two is out.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  If I'm still here, I mean, fucking hell, sixty two. Tick, tick, tick tock, tick tock. I saw Kevin Bishop a couple of weeks back. Do you know Kevin?

• 58:33Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 58:34Speaker 02

  And I went for a walk with him down in Brighton, because that's where he lives. Can't remember how old he is. He's still, he's just coming up to the fifties, I think. And I said, well, I'm sixty two in June. He went sixty two. He was so disgusted by the love. What? Uh, sixty two? Oh, fucking hell.

• 58:55Adam Buxton?

  I know, in that when we were growing up, it would have seemed impossibly old. I mean, people in their fifties were very old in those days, like they were old guys, you know, with grey hair and bowler hats and a lot of them, you know what I mean?

• 59:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I think we're kidding ourselves because I think people in their twenties do think we're old.

• 59:17Adam Buxton?

  Yes, fair enough. Yeah, I mean. Technically, I suppose.

• 59:20Speaker 02

  I know what you mean. I think, you know, I was talking to a friend of mine, Dominic John Gaul, the other day, and we were talking about, cause now we seem to be going to funerals, but we were talking about the dress code of the funeral.

• 59:33Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  And how much that has changed over the years, which is really good. And I said to him, well, we've got hip hop to thank for that. And he said, really? Why hip hop? And I said, because of the trainers. So now we are all allowed to wear trainers, and that definitely came from hip hop. Did it not? Don't you think, Adam?

• 59:54Adam Buxton?

  I suppose that was part of it, yes. Turning the idea of trainers into something that was fashionable and smart.

• 1:00:02Speaker 02

  And then realising we can be comfortable, we're allowed to be comfortable. We don't have to be in stiff broguey type hard shoes, you know.

• 1:00:11Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 1:00:11Speaker 02

  We can be in nice, soft trainers.

• 1:00:14Adam Buxton?

  But what about this? Maybe it's good for us sometimes to be uncomfortable. That's what my parents would have thought. I think. Maybe they wouldn't have expressed it so directly, but I think they would have thought sometimes you shouldn't be comfortable. Sometimes it is appropriate to be in an itchy suit and to be in uncomfortable shoes. And that's what you do when you go to church and it's not all about being comfortable. And in fact, people are altogether too comfortable these days.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  Well, I agree when it comes to men, but we are constantly uncomfortable because we have to wear bras.

• 1:00:54Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 1:00:55Speaker 02

  So, yes, so therefore you should wear hard shoes.

• 1:00:59Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, okay.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  And now that feeling you get when you take off a pair of hard shoes at the end of the day, that have been so uncomfortable. And then your feet just feel so bliss. That's what it's like when a lady takes her bra off at the end of the day.

• 1:01:15Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 1:01:16Speaker 02

  It really is like, oh my God, thank God for that. Thank goodness, and relax.

• 1:01:22Adam Buxton?

  I mean, do women still wear bras because, forgive me for asking you. Do women still mainly wear bras? For social reasons because they feel that's what's expected of how they should look? Or is it for practical reasons? Or I don't really know.

• 1:01:39Speaker 02

  Well, I think it's a bit of both. And I mean, listen. I love to be relaxed, but I wouldn't dream of leaving the house without my bra on. Because I don't want to be shouted at in the street.

• 1:01:53Adam Buxton?

  What would they shout?

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Saggy tits.

• 1:01:58Adam Buxton?

  Surely, surely we've got beyond people shouting.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Not round here, mate.

• 1:02:09Speaker 02

  Or people start singing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.

• 1:02:14Speaker 02

  Anyway, how did this come about, this conversation?

• 1:02:17Adam Buxton?

  Being comfortable at funerals because they're getting older.

• 1:02:20Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 1:02:20Adam Buxton?

  Kevin Bishop is so disgusted by your.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  By me being sixty two, so, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:27Adam Buxton?

  Well, yeah, I mean, that was the old. Image of what it was to be old was when I'm sixty four, you know, it was like.

• 1:02:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:35Adam Buxton?

  That'll be when you are more or less at the end of your life, because you will have lived three school years and ten is all you're gonna get, right?

• 1:02:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and now people are living longer, you say.

• 1:02:46Adam Buxton?

  Now you've got a whole other chapter when you're in your sixties, you hope.

• 1:02:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:50Adam Buxton?

  Do you feel that way?

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  Um, well, it's sort of you come to terms with the fact that it's possibly the last chapter. That's what you come to terms with, I think. I mean, I've spoken to a couple of mates about this, that, because I had no problem reaching forty, I had no problem reaching fifty. But when I was approaching sixty, every time I thought about it, my tummy turned over. Because it was like, oh, fuck. You can't say, well, sixty's the new forty, or, because it isn't. Do you know what I mean? Sixty is sixty, you know? And I know we're living longer and everyone's sort of. Keeps themselves young, it's a much healthier world in a way.

• 1:03:33Speaker 02

  You know, people are into fitness and healthy food and all that caper. But if you've got to sixty or beyond, it's sort of, oh, right, okay, you're very lucky. To have reached this far. But you, well, I'm speaking for myself personally, I had to face up to the fact, oh crumbs, okay.

• 1:03:57Speaker 02

  This is heading towards the end.

• 1:04:01Adam Buxton?

  What did that feel like? Did that make you depressed?

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  It just, well, like I said, it just made me feel a bit sick every time I thought about it.

• 1:04:09Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  It's sort of strange, you know what I mean?

• 1:04:12Adam Buxton?

  I was on a Radio Four programme the other day. It was one of those shows where you have to kind of like coin new terms or phrases for things. And I won't tell you the phrase I came up with, but I was trying to come up with something that described. That sort of thing, that moment when you feel time moving in an unpleasant way, when you're suddenly aware of it. And at various points in my life, I've had it. I had it when my daughter was young. And she was changing so fast from one month to the next.

• 1:04:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:46Adam Buxton?

  And, you know, I would film her on my phone being sweet. And looking back, like later that day, I could feel the moment.

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:55Adam Buxton?

  Pulling away and.

• 1:04:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:04:57Adam Buxton?

  And it, and it gave me like an actual, you know, not sharp, but a pain in the chest to feel it. Moving away.

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:07Adam Buxton?

  And then you suddenly become aware of how time works and. Suddenly in that moment, you project yourself forward to maybe. Much further in your life or maybe towards the end of your life and suddenly time becomes this really unpleasantly. Elastic thing that is not working in your favour.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Well, that's it.

• 1:05:26Adam Buxton?

  But those are just moments though, right? Like.

• 1:05:28Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:05:29Adam Buxton?

  Philosophically, you're supposed to be trying to live in the moment and and not get trapped in those.

• 1:05:36Speaker 02

  That's it and not worry too much about the future. And just go with the flow, you know, if you can.

• 1:05:43Adam Buxton?

  Are you okay at doing that?

• 1:05:45Speaker 02

  Most of the time, yeah, yeah. But, you know, like, I I went to see a play the other day at the Young Vic. There's a play on there called Care. Which is set in an old people's home, a sort of council-run old people's home. And it was brilliant. But it was so real. And you've got Linda Bassett, who I personally think is one of the greatest actors to ever live.

• 1:06:15Adam Buxton?

  What would I know her from?

• 1:06:17Speaker 02

  Well, I suppose, sort of commercially, she's known for, although I've never watched it, but she's known for being in Call the Midwife.

• 1:06:25Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, okay.

• 1:06:26Speaker 02

  Linda's like a brilliant theatre actress, do you know what I mean? That's what she's mostly known for. And, you know, so you're basically watching the last sort of couple of seasons, I think, of her life. In this care home. Where she slowly deteriorates, you know, she's there. At the beginning, we see her and she's very alert and astute and like, well, I've had an accident, I'm only here for a day or whatever and. Or or in a denial. And then, of course, we see the months drift past and we see her. Slowly becoming old, very old, and needing more and more help.

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  And then we basically slowly watch her die. And.

• 1:07:16Speaker 02

  It was incredible and astonishing and. It's a work of art, really, this play.

• 1:07:26Adam Buxton?

  Well, I'll pop out with the family and see that on my birthday.

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  That's the fucking problem, you see, because it's such a great piece of art. But it's so difficult to recommend it to people.

• 1:07:38Adam Buxton?

  I mean, I can appreciate that it is amazing to see something like that, but. You sort of think, God, it's hard enough to make time to do anything these days and maybe I won't prioritise that one specifically.

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:07:54Adam Buxton?

  But it's a mistake. I appreciate that, you know, seeing those things is always something that is rewarding, but I'm so reluctant sometimes to make the time. It's like The Father with Olivia Colman and Anthony Hopkins.

• 1:08:10Speaker 02

  Oh, that was great, that film.

• 1:08:12Adam Buxton?

  Well, everyone who's seen it says it's amazing. You've got to see it. But I'm like, I just don't know when the right time for the incredibly upsetting father with dementia movie is gonna be.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  I'm the same with really violent stuff.

• 1:08:25Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:25Speaker 02

  About young people, you know what I mean?

• 1:08:27Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:28Speaker 02

  People, young gangs, people shooting each other and I won't waste my time watching those things anymore.

• 1:08:35Adam Buxton?

  But the play you described, though, what's it called again?

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  Care.

• 1:08:38Adam Buxton?

  Care. So what does it give the audience? Why do you feel good about having seen a play like that other than just appreciating the craft?

• 1:08:47Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:08:48Adam Buxton?

  What did it give you?

• 1:08:49Speaker 02

  You know, an understanding of the cuts that have been made in the NHS and that it affects everybody. And it shows the carers, the nurses. The good thing about the play is that there's at no point any sort of official coming in and giving numbers and statistics and, oh, but you, they can't have fruit in the bowl anymore because we can't afford it. Do you know what I mean? And I think that's sort of what's brilliant about it. It's just very subtly letting you know how hard this is. But it's also letting you know about grief and how to deal with grief and, I mean, there were a lot of

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  people in the audience that were upset, you know, because people have been through this with their parents or, you know, I went to a matinee. So, you know, I mean, the demographic of the audience, we're also thinking, how far away is this for us?

• 1:09:50Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:09:50Speaker 02

  Because you've got a character in there played by the brilliant Hayley Carmichael, who's only late forties, who's got early onset dementia, late forties, early fifty, you know what I mean? So, yeah, I don't know what I got from it, really. It was very funny. I went with my young friend, Tom. And young friend, he's in his forties, but he's my young friend. And my taxi driver friend Lee was waiting for us to take us home. And usually, you know, come out the theatre and I'm all smiles and Lee's like, how was that one? And I go, oh, that was this. And anyway, we both came out. We were, we were completely wrecked.

• 1:10:30Speaker 02

  I'd been crying non-stop, I think, for the last half hour of the play, just quietly weeping.

• 1:10:37Adam Buxton?

  This is gonna be good for the poster.

• 1:10:38Speaker 02

  I know.

• 1:10:38Adam Buxton?

  I cried non-stop.

• 1:10:40Speaker 02

  Well, well, I did do a little thing about it on Instagram and I'd said, be prepared to be a quivering wreck. And the young vic have replied to me saying, can we quote quivering wreck?

• 1:10:54Speaker 02

  I, yes, yes.

• 1:10:56Adam Buxton?

  Okay, thank you, Cathy.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Thank you, darling.

• 1:11:05Adam Buxton?

  Wait.

• 1:11:06Speaker 03

  Continue. Oh, this is nice. It's about fucking time, isn't it?

• 1:11:19Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, Podcats. That was Kathy Burke talking to me there earlier this month, June twenty twenty six. And I'm very grateful to Cathy for letting me come over and record with her. It was lovely to see her. And as you've probably realised by now, I thought her memoir was fantastic, A Mind of My Own. I put a link to the audiobook in the description, but as of a few weeks ago, it is also out in paperback. So how are you doing, Podcats? I hope everything's all right with you, wherever you are, whenever you're

• 1:11:58Adam Buxton?

  listening to this. It's a funny old June, I'll tell you that much. As I speak, it is a beautiful evening.

• 1:12:08Adam Buxton?

  But quite cold, not especially Junie. Me, oh, I'm doing fine. Very nice to have Success Pod out in the world. And had some nice responses to it so far. I'm really glad that people seem to be enjoying it. I'm actually going to be talking to another Success Pod guest, Louis Theroux, in a forthcoming episode. Louis, as well as being a guest, was also one of the producers on the show. It was made through his production company Mindhouse. I've been kicking around the idea for a long time and if I hadn't taken it to Louis and his partner Nancy, who run the company,

• 1:12:50Adam Buxton?

  a few years back, I probably would never have got it made. Anyway, I'm going to talk to Louis, a bit about Success Pod, a bit about the manosphere and other odds and sods. I hope that fairly soon I'll be able to give you some details about an exciting live Adam and Joe Show anniversary event in which myself and Cornballs will get together on stage, play some classic clips, some rare nuggets and do some live waffling. Because it was thirty years ago that the first series of the Adam and Joe Show was broadcast on Channel Four.

• 1:13:31Adam Buxton?

  So the plan is to get together and do a handful of live shows to celebrate that anniversary. But we are still waiting, final confirmation on exact dates and venues. I will let you know as soon as I hear more. All right, that's it for this week's episode. Thanks to Claire Broughton and Diggery Wait at Hat Trick for production support and editing from Diggery. Thanks also to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for additional production support. Thanks to everyone at Acast who works hard, liaising with my sponsors, much appreciated. Thank you to Helen Green for her beautiful artwork. I think she might be coming up with a design for an unabsorbent tea towel,

• 1:14:16Adam Buxton?

  which we're hoping to make available at the Adam Buxton Band Shows next week at Hoxton Hall. Sure, it might have been a good idea to sort that out at the beginning of the tour rather than for the end. But you know me, that's. A little bit too organised. Anyway, thanks, most especially to you, for coming back to this podcast and listening right to the end. That's, I mean, blimey. That's pretty nice, I think. That's why I'm proposing a creepy hug. You don't get a creepy hug at the end of The Rest Is Politics. Rogan doesn't give you a creepy hug. Who gives you a creepy hug apart from Buckles? I don't wanna know. But I'm

• 1:15:00Adam Buxton?

  offering you one right now. So, switch off if you don't want one. Hey, how you doing? Come here. Good to see you. Oh, you smell very freshly laundered. Until the next time that you and I share the same sonic space, please go carefully for goodness. Like, one day you think, oh, it's fine. I don't need to go carefully. Everything's fine. That's exactly when you need to go most carefully.

• 1:15:30Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. But look, for what it's worth, I love you. Bye!