EP.259 - ERIC IDLE

Adam talks with Eric Idle about random stuff including the special relationship between comedians and musicians, his friendships with David Bowie, Peter Cook and George Harrison, how he coped with seismic and alarming world events in the 60s and why Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life became more than just a funny way to end Life Of Brian. Conversation recorded face-to-face in London on 27 June, 2025 REGISTER A DECISION TO DONATE ORGANS TO NHS https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/register-your-decision/donate/? ERIC IDLE 2025 TOUR https://ericidle.com/tour/ THE ADAM BUXTON BAND LIVE IN NORWICH https://www.seetickets.com/tour/the-adam-buxton-band OTHER FORTHCOMING LIVE SHOWS https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/events Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for additional editing Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ Listen to Adam's album 'Buckle Up' https://adambuxton.lnk.to/BuckleUp Order Adam's book 'I Love You Byeee' https://lnk.to/iloveyoubyeee_ Sign up for the newsletter on Adam's website https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/ (scroll down on homepage) RELATED LINKS (ON ADAM'S WEBSITE) https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/podcasts/82dyw29p3may2fa-dwb79-eycgn-fahgj-8yxba-c6hde-7lne6-5kthd-7a97e-9s3a8-yy37e-8nxyt 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 joining you from a Norfolk farm track in the second half of September 2025. I'm here with my best dog friend Rosie. She joined me very willingly for a walk today, which is out of recent character. But I'm very glad to have her along. She was even scraping at the door with eagerness. Sure, she is walking somewhat gingerly now, but, well, you know, she's a ginger walker these days. She's a mature dog, 12, so everything's a little bit more cautious for us all, I suppose, right, Rosie?

• 1:14Adam Buxton?

  Uh, leave me out of the age shaming and just get on with your waffles, I would. Righto. It's really a very beautiful evening out here in Norfolk. It's a little windy and it's cool. The light is very beautiful. The fields are very green and it's lovely and quiet. How are you doing though, podcats? Thanks for joining me again. Hope you'll enjoy this one. Let me tell you about podcast number 259. This features a rambling conversation with actor, comedian, musician and writer Eric Idle. By the way, before I go any further, Eric is, as I speak, on tour in the UK

• 1:56Adam Buxton?

  with a show filled with anecdotes and music from across his career. He's in Edinburgh on Monday, the 22nd of September, Bournemouth on Wednesday, the 24th, and he wraps up at the Royal Albert Hall in London next weekend on Saturday, the 27th. The tour is called Always Look on the Bright Side of Life with Eric Idle. There's a link in the description for tickets. Now, this is going to be another slightly longer intro today. If you'd like to skip the rest of this and get straight to the conversation with Eric. Just skip ahead from this point, eight minutes and you will find us waffling. For the remainers, here's some Idol facts for you. Idol facts.

• 2:40Adam Buxton?

  Eric Idle was born in South Shields, County Durham, in nineteen forty-three. His mother was a nurse and his father served in the RAF during World War Two, but he died as he was travelling home at the end of the war. Struggling with depression in the years following her husband's death, Eric's mother made the decision to send her son to a boarding school known by the inmates as the Ofney or the Orphanage, because it was a charitable foundation for children whose dads had been killed in the war.

• 3:13Adam Buxton?

  The school where Eric remained until he was nineteen was harsh, bullying and corporal punishment were routine, and despite developing an anti-authoritarian disruptive streak, Eric coped by working hard and earned himself a place to study English at Cambridge University, where Eric joined the Footlights Sketch Troop, like last week's guest, Emma Siddey. Although, it should be noted, that if Emma had been at Cambridge in the mid-sixties as a woman, A woman. she wouldn't have been allowed to join the Footlights, until, that is, Eric became the first president of the club to allow women to join. Nevertheless, I hereby promise that there will be no more members of the Footlights

• 3:58Adam Buxton?

  Sketch Troop on the podcast this year. However, if it hadn't been for the Footlights, Eric may never have met his future fellow pythons, John Cleese and Graham Chapman.

• 4:09Adam Buxton?

  It was while working on Do Not Adjust Your Set, a nineteen sixty-seven TV comedy show ostensibly aimed at kids, that Eric met the other future pythons, Michael Palin, Terry Jones and Terry Gilliam. Gilliam provided animations for the show. Music was supplied by the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band, whose members included comedian and musician Neil Innes, and singer-songwriter, poet, celebrated eccentric and emcee on Mike Oldfield's tubular bells, Vivian Stanshall.

• 4:41Adam Buxton?

  Monty Python's Flying Circus debuted on BBC One in nineteen sixty-nine with forty-five episodes airing over four series until nineteen seventy-four. Plus two episodes for German TV. And of course, there were the films: The Holy Grail in nineteen seventy-five, The Life of Brian in nineteen seventy-nine, and The Meaning of Life in nineteen eighty-three. Music always played an important part in Python TV shows and films, and many of the songs were composed by Bonzo Dog's Neil Innes, but it was one of Eric's many brilliant compositions for the Pythons that produced an all-time great cinematic moment, as well as providing the soundtrack to countless funerals over the years.

• 5:40Adam Buxton?

  Outside of Monty Python, Eric made two series of his sketch show Rutland Weekend Television between nineteen seventy-five and nineteen seventy-six. In one sketch, Eric, a passionate rock and roll fan since boyhood, played a version of The Beatles' George Harrison to Neil Innes's John Lennon in his parody band The Ruttles, a spoof that was later expanded into the nineteen seventy-eight TV mockumentary All You Need Is Cash, and then The Ruttles Two: Can't Buy Me Lunch in two thousand. The Ruttles even toured and released two albums of music, written primarily by Neil Innes. Side note: Innes's nineteen seventy-three song, How Sweet to Be an Idiot, bore a remarkable

• 6:24Adam Buxton?

  similarity to a song that was a huge early Britpop hit in nineteen ninety-four. Can you guess which one?

• 6:38Adam Buxton?

  When the similarity between ‘How Sweet to be an Idiot’ and the opening line of ‘Whatever’ by Oasis was pointed out, Noel Gallagher, a Rutles fan, held up his hands and settled out of court, handing over a quarter of the royalties from Whatever to Innes and his publishers. Back in the mid-seventies, Eric Idle had struck up a friendship with real Beatle, George Harrison, who appeared in the 1975 Rutland Weekend Television Christmas special, singing what starts out as Harrison’s 1970 mega-smash ‘My Sweet Lord’, but which suddenly becomes

• 7:20Adam Buxton?

  ‘The Pirate Song’, a rock and roll sea shanty written with Eric Idle, their only musical collaboration. Although Eric can be heard screeching in the voice used by characters the Pythons referred to as the Pepper Pots on George Harrison’s 1976 single ‘This Song’. Post-Flying Circus, Eric Idle hosted Saturday Night Live four times, and went on to act in films that included National Lampoon’s ‘European Vacation’ in 1985, Terry Gilliam’s ‘The Adventures of Baron Munchausen’ in 1988, Nuns on the Run in 1990, Casper in

• 7:58Adam Buxton?

  1995, and, way back in 1983, the ill-fated pirate comedy Yellowbeard, written by and starring Monty Python’s Graham Chapman alongside Peter Cook, Madeleine Khan, and Marty Feldman, with appearances from John Cleese, Cheech and Chong, Michael Horden, James Mason, Spike Milligan, and Eric’s friend, David Bowie, uncredited as The Shark. I’ve put various clips illustrating a lot of this stuff on the blog post for today’s episode. You’ll find a link to my blog, adam-buxton.co.uk, in the description of the podcast. More recently, Eric found himself with a huge international hit on his hands in the

• 8:42Adam Buxton?

  form of Spamalot, his musical theatre adaptation of The Holy Grail, which has continued to tour around the world on and off since its Broadway debut in 2005.

• 8:54Adam Buxton?

  My conversation with Eric was recorded face to face in London back in June of this year, 2025. And as well as talking about Eric's early years in the footlights and on Do Not Adjust Your Set, we talked about the special relationship between comedians and musicians, as well as Eric's musical friendships with David Bowie, George Harrison, and Viv Stanshall. Since 1994, Eric has been based in Los Angeles, but he also spends a lot of time in the house he built in southern France. And by coincidence, there happened to be a painting of a Provencal field filled with poppies hanging in the room where we were recording in London. And as you will hear, it caught Eric's eye, as did various

• 9:37Adam Buxton?

  musical instruments in the room. One of these was a device called a Q chord, sometimes likened to a digital auto harp. It's got a pear-shaped body and a neck containing rows of chord buttons. I wrongly identified it to Eric as an Omnicord, and also wrongly claimed that they were originally manufactured by Yamaha. In fact, Suzuki made the Omnicord and the next version, the Q chord, which is the one you'll hear Eric inspecting. I apologise to you, podcats, and to fact-checking Santa for any fact pain caused.

• 10:18Adam Buxton?

  Oh, and as I never quite finished telling Eric, the song that Brian Eno used an Omnicord on was "Deep Blue Day" from Apollo. You know, the one that plays in Trainspotting when Renton dives down the toilet to retrieve his bum drugs. But we began by talking about whether Eric misses life in the UK, specifically London. Back at the end, for a public service announcement and a bit of waffle, but right now, with Eric Idle. Here we go.

• 11:25Adam Buxton?

  Would you ever come back to London, do you think? Would you ever live here again?

• 11:28Speaker 01

  I don't like the weather.

• 11:29Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 11:29Speaker 01

  I love the country, I like the people. So, I wouldn't necessarily stay in America, but um, I like Europe, but unfortunately the buggers stopped me going there. You know, hate them. Like, 'cause I had a house in France.

• 11:42Adam Buxton?

  Who stopped you going there?

• 11:43Speaker 01

  Fucking government.

• 11:44Adam Buxton?

  Which government?

• 11:45Speaker 01

  Brexit.

• 11:46Adam Buxton?

  Oh, right.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  Three fucking months.

• 11:48Adam Buxton?

  What's the, what's the technical explanation for that?

• 11:49Speaker 01

  They just fucking stopped you. I didn't even have a vote.

• 11:52Adam Buxton?

  But if you've got a house there...

• 11:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:54Adam Buxton?

  Don't you have the right to go back to that house?

• 11:56Speaker 01

  No. Because you left the Union, so you can't go anywhere in Europe. Anywhere after three months.

• 12:05Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 12:05Speaker 01

  Don't even get me started on...

• 12:08Adam Buxton?

  On Brexit.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but I, you know, England's always been a great place. I mean, London's always been a great place, too.

• 12:15Adam Buxton?

  An auto harp, a modern auto harp.

• 12:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, an omni chord.

• 12:18Adam Buxton?

  An omni chord.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Have you played with one of those?

• 12:20Adam Buxton?

  No.

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Oh, they're pretty great.

• 12:22Adam Buxton?

  Yeah?

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Have a go.

• 12:24Adam Buxton?

  This is called a Q chord, but originally they were, I think they were made by Yamaha or someone like that. So you've got the...

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Oh, wow. Any of them.

• 12:37Adam Buxton?

  Alright, oh, great, I love that. Chord that you want, and then you can strum.

• 12:41Speaker 01

  Sweet.

• 12:42Adam Buxton?

  In the same chord.

• 12:43Speaker 01

  Sweet.

• 12:44Adam Buxton?

  And you've got different voices.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  I've got my glasses on, so where do you change the key?

• 12:48Adam Buxton?

  Um, so all of these here.

• 12:53Adam Buxton?

  You can take it down to a minor or a seven, or whatever, pretty much anything you want.

• 13:02Adam Buxton?

  You can bend up.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Oh, lovely. Oh, that's sweet. Oh, yeah.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  You know, we have a ding dong every week.

• 13:11Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'm a, I like guitar, but I mean, I love those sort of things.

• 13:17Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, Brian Eno used one. On a song called, um. Do you like Brian Eno's stuff?

• 13:24Speaker 01

  I don't really know Brian Eno's stuff. I met him a couple of times, but I don't, I'm not. I only know he's like, you know, from the, from the old days, Roxy, yeah, yeah. And then a bit through Bowie. It was at Bowie's wedding. They all were. It was Eno, Ohno, Bono. They were all there. Anybody called O. But, but, um, you know, I don't, so I don't actually know his music. No, I don't. But I know he played a big influence with David. He was like, he was very fond of him.

• 13:55Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Huge influence. Okay.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Where's that with the poppies? Is that in France?

• 14:01Adam Buxton?

  That is France. Yeah, that is, that is near Uzès.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Uzès?

• 14:06Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  I know Uzès.

• 14:07Adam Buxton?

  Do you?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Yes. Is it by Tony Daniels?

• 14:09Adam Buxton?

  Yes, it is. Yeah.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  Oh, fuck off.

• 14:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  He's a friend of mine.

• 14:12Adam Buxton?

  Is he really?

• 14:13Speaker 01

  He was. He's dead now. I recognize the poppies and the, yeah, yeah, I've stayed with him in Uzès.

• 14:18Adam Buxton?

  No way.

• 14:19Speaker 01

  Yes, of course. Near Neem, that's where I'm from.

• 14:21Adam Buxton?

  That's right, yeah.

• 14:22Speaker 01

  His sister did up my, our house, where I, when I bought a house in seventy-one, she made it into a house. And that's where I met him, seventy-two, seventy-one. And we went off there and went to his gallery, you know, his launches and.

• 14:36Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  He met Jerry Durrell there and people like that, all buying, and Steven Spender. But he was wonderful, Tony. Did you ever meet him?

• 14:43Adam Buxton?

  I never met him. He's a friend of my, my wife's family.

• 14:46Speaker 01

  Fabulous. He was very funny, lovely. I, I know his niece still. Uh, but hey, well, bravo, eh? How, how, what are the odds?

• 14:54Adam Buxton?

  What a mad coincidence. We've got so many of his paintings. I love them.

• 14:57Speaker 01

  Yes, no, he's, he's good, isn't he? He's nice. And he was a lovely man, a lovely man.

• 15:02Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  And he went about only four or five years ago.

• 15:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  He was, he was, he was good. I knew him very, very well. He was lovely. And we're going to stay with him.

• 15:10Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  And we go to his, you know, Vernissage, the gallery opening.

• 15:14Adam Buxton?

  Whereabouts in France are you?

• 15:15Speaker 01

  We're further over to, in the Vaart.

• 15:18Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  But that's beautiful, that area around Neem and Uzès and that, you know, the beautiful bridge, what's it called?

• 15:26Adam Buxton?

  The Pont du Gard.

• 15:27Speaker 01

  Pont du Gard.

• 15:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 15:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:30Adam Buxton?

  And so would you just stay in France for like?

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Forever if I could, but no, no, till the winter. I I I spend a lot of time there. I've written a book about it. It's coming out next year.

• 15:38Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 15:40Adam Buxton?

  About the whole process of having found it.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Flying and building and doing and living and who came to visit and.

• 15:46Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 15:47Speaker 01

  Tony's in the book.

• 15:48Adam Buxton?

  Doing your sort of Peter Mail bit.

• 15:50Speaker 01

  Much more interesting and much before Peter Mail.

• 15:54Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  You know, Peter Mail didn't go there till the eighties or nineties. I mean, I've been five years on it. I've been writing a book about where I hide away.

• 16:02Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 16:03Speaker 01

  Because I'm getting too old to hide. So. And it was it's been amazing. It was always my retreat.

• 16:10Adam Buxton?

  But it burned at one point, right?

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, we had a forest fire.

• 16:14Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, a couple of times, but we were lucky because we were building, so we cleared the area around the house. It was a tiny little house. We didn't have electricity for eight years. You know, we had no road, no water, had to find water, the whole stage of of life.

• 16:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, the Jean de Floret years.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Absolutely, just like that.

• 16:31Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 16:32Speaker 01

  And people say, oh, no, you can't pass here. Oh, no, no. It's a base resort.

• 16:37Adam Buxton?

  Wow.

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 16:38Adam Buxton?

  And so what would you do for like electricity and?

• 16:41Speaker 01

  Well, in the summer, you have oil lamps.

• 16:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  And then you have gas, those big blue gas pots that will give you hot water. And they give you a fridge and cooking gas, you know, so you had everything, you know, and then you had batteries for music. And a guitar, obviously.

• 16:58Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Oh, my God, it's so romantic.

• 17:00Speaker 01

  It was very romantic. It was, you know. And now we still have it, but it's it's I said it's gone from a shack to a shacko.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  And it's lovely. And every time we had a bit of money, we'd build a bit more or do a bit more of this and expand a little.

• 17:16Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 17:16Speaker 01

  It's wonderful. It's my I'm going on Tuesday. It makes me really happy.

• 17:21Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. You got your helipad there now?

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, fine. No, no, no, no, it's completely in the forest. It's in the wood, you know, and we have three hundred olive trees, so we have our own olive oil.

• 17:30Adam Buxton?

  Oh, wow.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's really nice.

• 17:33Adam Buxton?

  Idle olive oil.

• 17:35Speaker 01

  It's idle oil, but I call it ex-virgin olive oil.

• 17:43Speaker 01

  So it's quite nice.

• 17:45Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's very good olive oil that from there, that part of the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's beautiful. It really is beautiful.

• 17:52Adam Buxton?

  When was that that you came to be out there in the first place? Was that mid seventies?

• 17:56Speaker 01

  That was seventy one.

• 17:57Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 17:57Speaker 01

  And we were doing Python and we'd been doing Python and Python, TV and then film and this and and we hadn't had a holiday.

• 18:04Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 18:05Speaker 01

  And we were moaning. So we got very fortunate and went to stay in this tiny little cabin on it. It was beautiful. And people, you know, were there singing and playing. It was nice. Really, it's lovely part of the world.

• 18:18Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  And.

• 18:20Adam Buxton?

  Can you speak French?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I learned it. Yeah. I went to the City Institute and did that, you know. I can speak very badly. Actually, what's what's quite wonderful is I have a Provencal accent. So I'm I'm in Paris. It's as weird as somebody speaking in a Yorkshire accent in French, you know. It's it's it's a very strange accent for me.

• 18:41Adam Buxton?

  Can you give me an example of a Provencal accent?

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. Well, no, way, way.

• 18:47Adam Buxton?

  Wow, wow.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  But also, I'm very good at body language.

• 18:52Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  So.

• 18:55Adam Buxton?

  So you do the full French?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:57Adam Buxton?

  Full Provencal.

• 18:58Speaker 01

  They're lovely. They've been very nice to me. They didn't find out what I did for a long time.

• 19:03Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 19:04Speaker 01

  It's nice.

• 19:05Adam Buxton?

  I read in your book, you talking about sitting there under the stars and learning about astro- astronomy.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  Astronomy, yeah.

• 19:14Adam Buxton?

  Not astrology.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Not astrology. I thought Brian Cox would kill you. Um, yeah, yeah. Yes, I did. I had a little bit of a retirement. It was lovely. I took all books on astrology and biology.

• 19:26Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 19:27Speaker 01

  And I learned about these things. I thought, I don't know anything about all this shit. So I took these books and sitting under the Milky Way and playing guitar. It's really nice, you know. It just moves gently across and it's. Lovely.

• 19:40Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 19:40Speaker 01

  And then sometimes we'll have six or seven people all playing guitar and doing Beatles songs and ding dongs. It's nice.

• 19:46Adam Buxton?

  Ding dong, that's your phrase for a kind of musical get together.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, we have a ding dong every week in in California.

• 19:54Adam Buxton?

  Oh, wow. That's good for the soul, a bit of music therapy.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Saving, saving grace.

• 19:58Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 19:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:59Adam Buxton?

  So who's in your Provence all ding dongs then in the seventies?

• 20:03Speaker 01

  In the ding dong, I don't think you know the people in, apart from Brian Cox, he came and stayed a couple of times and bought a house in the village nearby.

• 20:11Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  And he plays keyboard and his son George is a beautiful guitarist, he's sixteen.

• 20:15Adam Buxton?

  That's what I always forget with Brian Cox, he was in a band.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Things can only get better.

• 20:19Adam Buxton?

  Can only get better, yeah, you're the uh, uh, Pop-optimist guys, always look on the bright side and things can only get better.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  Cause he always complains about my lyrics of the Galaxy song.

• 20:28Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  And I said, well, at least they're more accurate than things can only get better.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  And he claimed we did a gig in Cambridge on Monday for Pembroke for the master and he said I made his career. Yeah, what do you mean, he said, he said, things can, he played, things can only get better. Claimed to, you know, Lord Smith, Chris, he claimed to have started his career.

• 20:53Adam Buxton?

  Right, yes, used by Tony Blair, wasn't it?

• 20:56Speaker 01

  Oh, so, exactly.

• 20:57Adam Buxton?

  To launch new labour.

• 20:59Speaker 01

  That's right. I think that's when I left the country. Not, it's coincidence.

• 21:02Adam Buxton?

  Yes, and you had, like, I'm a Bowie obsessive, so I'm in awe of the fact that you were hanging out with him. Did he ever make it out to France?

• 21:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, he came and stayed.

• 21:13Adam Buxton?

  Oh, really?

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've got pictures of him Bowie at breakfast.

• 21:16Adam Buxton?

  Bowie at breakfast.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  I took him, yeah, and I took him into the village and it was really, you know, people didn't bother anybody. It was nice for people when they came to stay. They weren't bothered. It was suddenly, I remember Robin Williams took him early on and he just, he was the height of Mork and Mindy. And he couldn't believe it. Nobody recognised him on the dance floor. He went, I'm Mork, I'm Mork. And he went, and carried on dancing. It's very nice for people to get their anonymity back.

• 21:49Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:50Speaker 01

  They can be human beings again. It's nice. So Bowie came, you know, we had a lot of time down in Provence and and you know, we'd often go to opening of his film. I went to see him do the. What was it, that that one blonde, the blonde tour, um, the Sirius Moonlight.

• 22:08Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, the Let's Dance era.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Frasier's. We went, we went there, seen that, it was fantastic.

• 22:14Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:15Adam Buxton?

  Was that around the time that he came to stay with you then?

• 22:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was about eighty three, I think.

• 22:19Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, okay.

• 22:20Speaker 01

  I met him a little earlier. I think, oh, he came to our wedding, eighty one, he came. I think I must have met him in L A about seventy nine, because he loved comedians.

• 22:29Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 22:30Speaker 01

  So Bobcat Goldthwait introduced me. And then we were on holiday with Lord Michaels and people, and we were on somewhere on Ireland, and he, he was such. He was such a great guy. He's an intellectual. I mean, he turned me on to Richard Strauss, The Four Last Songs. And then we're going to stay with him in Switzerland and. He was really in great company.

• 22:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  I was even his best man at his wedding.

• 22:54Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  I've said the most awful things.

• 22:56Adam Buxton?

  What did you say?

• 22:57Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna tell you. I had to ban it from my mind. I go, sometimes I blush and go, you didn't really say that.

• 23:04Adam Buxton?

  I think.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  Please tell me you didn't say that.

• 23:05Adam Buxton?

  Well, Yoko Ono was there, wasn't she?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Yoko was there.

• 23:08Adam Buxton?

  Did you say something spicy about her?

• 23:10Speaker 01

  No, I said something smoky about David. And a lot of smoky things, and then at the end of the thing, I look up and Yoko's standing on the table going like that.

• 23:19Adam Buxton?

  Giving you the thumbs up.

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Thumbs up, and I thought, of course, you can't live with John Lennon and not have a sense of humour.

• 23:26Adam Buxton?

  Right, yeah, and a spicy one at that.

• 23:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:28Adam Buxton?

  Because I always wondered, to take a little tangent into Ruttle World. I always wondered what she would have thought.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  There's a character.

• 23:35Adam Buxton?

  Loved it.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  There's a character in the Ruttles. They loved the fact that she was Hitler's daughter. Because she was treated that way by the press, you know, she was treated as this horrible monster. So to be portrayed as Hitler's daughter made them both roar with laughter, they thought was really funny. And they were, yeah, yes, of course you must have a sense of humour, you can't live with the Beatles or Liverpool people. Without having a sense of humour.

• 23:59Adam Buxton?

  That's not a joke that people would do now, I don't think, or at least if they did, it would be so differently positioned and received. Do you know what I mean? Like, in those days, though, were you angsty at all about doing a joke like that, having a character that was obviously. Well, supposed to be Yoko and she's wearing a Nazi uniform, were you sort of thinking?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  Well, they called awful awful names and, you know, she was Japanese and they, you know, they were quite vile to her, so to be Angela's daughter is kind of like, you know, you've take, you've got to take it further on to be funny.

• 24:35Adam Buxton?

  Right. Did you write the Rutles all on your own?

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:38Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, okay.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, Neil and I wrote all the songs.

• 24:40Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:42Adam Buxton?

  So you weren't sort of sitting around consulting with people when you were writing jokes like that? You weren't sort of going? Do you think this is gonna land right?

• 24:50Speaker 01

  No, I don't, I don't think so. I mean, we're the only censorship thing where I never had was BBC and they really didn't bother us.

• 24:58Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 24:59Speaker 01

  So it wasn't it like everybody said, oh, you can't say that, you can't say that. It wasn't we didn't live in those times. We wouldn't have been able to do most of what we did.

• 25:06Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  I mean, you still can't sing a lot of my songs. You can't sing I Like Chinese, for example.

• 25:12Adam Buxton?

  Right, right, right.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  What are you supposed to say? I hate Chinese, you know, but, but, um you know, we didn't have to deal with that. No.

• 25:18Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  You dealt with what you could get on air. Not what you could, were allowed to say privately or publicly.

• 25:25Adam Buxton?

  Yes, the first time that things got controversial was Life of Brian. And then suddenly you were in the eye of the kind of mad storm around people willfully misinterpreting the idea that it was.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  They were assholes, you know, what was her name?

• 25:40Adam Buxton?

  Malcolm Mugridge.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:42Adam Buxton?

  And.

• 25:43Speaker 01

  What was her name? Miss something of light, the woman?

• 25:46Adam Buxton?

  Oh, it was Mary Whitehouse.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Mary Whitehouse.

• 25:48Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  And luckily my mum looked like Mary Whitehouse. So we brought her on stage on Michael Palin's birthday and said he's his favourite person, Mary Whitehouse, to present him with the cake. And in the Birmingham Mail, it says Mary Whitehouse came on stage and gave him a cake. I saw her in a Rutland Weekend and I thought, oh, it's my mum. But in those days, she was all over the place, you know, and really, you know, it was attacking them. They're quite right to be upset.

• 26:16Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  We were trying to offend them.

• 26:18Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  And I hope we did.

• 26:21Adam Buxton?

  Were you stressed by that? It seems like that famous TV confrontation, which was John Cleese and Michael Palin defending themselves. Michael Palin especially looked stressed, like he looked.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, he did up there upset. Because we took it very seriously. I mean, you know, when it started with me, unfortunately, we were in New York, opening the Holy Grail. And the journalist said to me, what's your next film gonna be? And I said, Jesus Christ, Lust for Glory.

• 26:47Adam Buxton?

  Just as a.

• 26:48Speaker 01

  Just like that.

• 26:49Adam Buxton?

  As a joke, yeah.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  And then we went back and we thought, well, actually, you know, a religious, it's interesting. And then, you know, we studied it a bit. And then we realised you can't actually make fun of Jesus because he's like, the things he's saying, kind of Buddhist and very nice, you know, forgiveness, look after each other, all of that. So the story is actually a tragedy of someone who's mistaken for a Messiah. And you can't get rid of them. I mean, that's the farce of it. That's the story, the plot. He isn't pretending to be. These people have decided he's the Messiah, you know? And that's a kind of comic tragedy.

• 27:26Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  You know, you get crucified for it, for God's sake.

• 27:47Adam Buxton?

  You and I were both at boarding school when we were younger.

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 27:52Adam Buxton?

  Although I think I had a better time at boarding school than you did.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Possibly, where were you?

• 27:56Adam Buxton?

  I was at a place in Sussex that was kind of nice. And this was early eighties, late seventies. And it was coed, you didn't have a uniform.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  What age did you?

• 28:06Adam Buxton?

  I was nine.

• 28:07Speaker 01

  Oh, I was still quite young, right?

• 28:09Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, quite young, younger than I would have preferred.

• 28:12Speaker 01

  I went at seven.

• 28:13Adam Buxton?

  Why? How did you end up? Because you're a boy from a working class family.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Well, my father was killed. He was in the RAF, but he was killed hitchhiking home. For Christmas, and he died on Christmas Eve.

• 28:26Adam Buxton?

  So this is at the end, he's made it through the war.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, made it through the war. Uh, and then, and so my education was paid for by the RAF.

• 28:34Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  And my mother was had to work for a living and she was, you know, health physician, olicy, actually started there. And they paid, you know, they paid for my education and, you know. I think it was very weird because all of my school were all paid for by the RAF and so they didn't have any fathers. But you think about it, a whole society growing up don't have fathers. It's very odd, isn't it? So we were kind of unruly.

• 28:59Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  And managed to find our own fun. And it was, it was good because eventually, you know, everybody left and you were sixteen, seventeen and you're reading, you're, you're educating yourself. And I managed to get to Cambridge, which is kind of very unlikely. Nobody went to university at my school, I went to prison, but, but it turned out to be very good.

• 29:22Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 29:23Speaker 01

  For me.

• 29:24Adam Buxton?

  Was it a shock to go there initially, though?

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, huge shock. I thought I was going home, you know, what do you mean, just staying here?

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Yes, and it was a junior school, about seven, and then eleven, the boarding school was a bit rough. Because it had been an orphanage and now it's like a semi orphanage. So, you know, it was a bit rough.

• 29:45Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 29:45Speaker 01

  I think comedy was a help.

• 29:48Adam Buxton?

  Rough in what way, though?

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Well, physically, you know.

• 29:50Adam Buxton?

  Oh, okay.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  A little bullying and the prefects could beat you with slippers.

• 29:54Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 29:54Speaker 01

  And the masters could beat you with canes. They had the privilege, um, you know, so it was kind of tough.

• 30:01Adam Buxton?

  Did you ever sort of enjoy it in a fairly straightforward way or?

• 30:05Speaker 01

  No, I mean, it was always, you know, what it is, you have to go back, even if it's in your in holiday, you've got to go back. But, you know, the Wolves were good. It was nice to find the Wolves. They were number one in Europe and the world and.

• 30:20Adam Buxton?

  This is the football team.

• 30:21Speaker 01

  Football team, yeah, that was good. And, you know, you found your own things. I mean, I got a guitar at twelve. And my gran gave me a typewriter, which was really interesting. I don't know why she did that.

• 30:34Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  I became writer and write stories and things and if you look back, there are lots of benefits from it.

• 30:43Speaker 01

  I was thinking of writing a book saying, everything I know, I learned only at boarding school. But they put you in the army once a week. And you had to go to camp and reel and march across snow dodea. So it was quite a tough life.

• 30:56Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  And but not in a bad way, prepared you for filming Monty Python, really.

• 31:01Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh. But do you, if you have any anxieties, do you draw a line between your experience at boarding school and some of those anxieties? I know I do personally.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  I think I used to have nightmares about it still. And then, you know, I'm in California, so I had to shrink for a while, and it's very useful. And puts these things into perspective. And now I think more positively about it because it taught me such a lot about life. And then suddenly going to Cambridge. And it's a beautiful place and you don't even have to go to lectures if you don't want to. And I got into comedy. And that was just like a whole fabulous new, I found my way, I was, that's what I did for the rest of my life.

• 31:50Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. What were you studying at Cambridge?

• 31:52Speaker 01

  English.

• 31:52Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  So you didn't have to go to lectures, you just read the book?

• 31:55Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 31:56Speaker 01

  It was a good thing to do because I could spend most of my time doing comedy. We had our own club, the Footlights, you know, with a bar and lunches and. So you learned by doing. And we put on little shows and.

• 32:10Adam Buxton?

  Who were your contemporaries there in the Footlights?

• 32:13Speaker 01

  Well, I was auditioned in my first term at Pembroke by Tim Brook Taylor and Bill Oddie.

• 32:19Adam Buxton?

  Of the goodies.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Two of the goodies auditioned me and put me in the show. And then the first script they gave me was written by John Cleese.

• 32:27Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Who wasn't a member, so he couldn't be in the show. So my first public performance is there watching me do his show, one of his sketches. She's very bizarre. And then they said, oh, you've got to join the Footlights. I said, what's that? Because I'd never heard of it. And you had to audition and join. And that was fun. That was really made it for me, the whole experience.

• 32:47Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. What kind of characters were your favourites to play in those days?

• 32:52Speaker 01

  I'm not entirely sure. I mean, I was very lucky because at the end of my first year. Their show was so good with Bill Oddie and Cleese and I think Chapman was in it, he came back in it. It was so funny, they took it to London and it ran in the West End for seven months. So I got a telegram saying, come back to Cambridge, you're going to Edinburgh. So I was in the Edinburgh Festival in nineteen sixty-three, I'm twenty. And I'm performing for the public, I was on television. And that's where I met Michael Palin and Terry Jones, we're doing the Oxford Review.

• 33:24Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. What TV stuff were you doing there?

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, there was like the festival special or something like.

• 33:29Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 33:30Speaker 01

  Local Scottish television, it wasn't like a big show. But it's still, it's a big deal, you know, going from nowhere to being on television.

• 33:37Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  And it was a great grounding, it was a great learning process.

• 33:41Adam Buxton?

  Do you remember any of the sort of things that you did learn at that point? Like, what were the things that you picked up?

• 33:49Speaker 01

  I think most importantly, I did all the Bill Oddie roles. And Bill did all the songs, so I learned about funny songs.

• 33:57Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  And I thanked him recently and I said, you know, Bill, I think I learned how to do that from you by doing some of your very funny songs. And he was, then went on to do, I'm sorry, I'll read that again, he'd write a funny song every week. And that's a separate skill that you wouldn't necessarily pick up. And I loved doing those.

• 34:17Adam Buxton?

  You were writing those on the guitar, were you?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Well, eventually I would, or I had a friend called John Cameron who played piano. I think we did an early Beatle parody. Called I Wanna Hold Your Handle. And it was like the Hallelujah chorus, ah, ah, ah, ah. And that, they took that one on to Broadway, um, when they went off to Broadway, the rest of the bigger, you know, that, the earlier ones. So that was an early Ruttles attempt.

• 34:43Adam Buxton?

  And what sort of songs would you write though? Because I mean, you weren't really doing too much kind of news satiary stuff.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  No, well, the chat was big because it was on television. But I remember writing a song called I'm Too Old To Be A Popular Star. And then, I think, I did a song, we said farewell to Cambridge, we're going down from Cambridge where the streets are paved with gold. And it's in somebody's book, they put it in as if it was a genuine song, but it was a parody song, you know. We got more into songs when we did Do Not Adjust Your Set, because we had the Bonzos suddenly were in our life, the Bonzo Dog Doodah Band.

• 35:20Adam Buxton?

  So that's Neil Innes and was Viv Stanshaw?

• 35:23Speaker 01

  Viv Stanshaw, and there was lots of them.

• 35:26Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 35:27Speaker 01

  And they were very art school, they come out of art school. And they were very situationist, and it was interesting, because it was more like attitude. And I think it influenced our writing, because we had tight little Oxford Cambridge sketch sheets, you know, but they were. And David Jason was in that show too.

• 35:44Adam Buxton?

  Was he?

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. He played Captain Fantastic.

• 35:47Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  And I wrote that song.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  It was every week at five twenty. And we got an adult audience came in because we were funny, you know, and we decided we wouldn't talk down to kids. We would just be funny, we'd be silly, you couldn't be rude, but we wouldn't be condescending. And it was fairly silly.

• 36:38Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  We did two seasons of that, we won awards and things, it was amazing.

• 36:43Adam Buxton?

  Did you hang out with Viv Stanshaw?

• 36:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, Viv was extraordinary. Yeah, he was a real genius. I sat in for Neil once, he had the flu, I pretended to play the piano on one of the songs. Uh, because they always wanted to be funny, and they were always on the road, and then that was their day off, they'd come down to do the TV show.

• 37:02Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 37:02Speaker 01

  But I had a rather tough life, because they play all the northern clubs and things, you know, so.

• 37:07Adam Buxton?

  How did they go down in those places?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  I have no idea, because they were very in your face, it's your, I mean, that stuff is still very, I think, very fine.

• 37:15Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Urban Spaceman is the one that most people know.

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:19Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 37:41Speaker 01

  Was that the one produced by McCartney?

• 37:43Adam Buxton?

  Oh yeah, maybe.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  I think he produced it. And they're also in the Magical Mystery Tour.

• 37:48Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 37:49Speaker 01

  They're all in that film.

• 37:50Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:51Adam Buxton?

  He's a character, Viv Stanshall, that I, in my mind, I bracket him with someone like Peter Cook.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  He wasn't as disciplined as Peter. He was funny as hell. But then he became a sort of alcoholic, sadly. I think they went to America and it all fell apart. They had a sort of disastrous tour of America.

• 38:11Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 38:12Speaker 01

  And I think so they'd had a single and therefore they could sell it. It must, I think it was McCartney who produced it, didn't he?

• 38:18Adam Buxton?

  I'm gonna Google it.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  I'm the urban spaceman, baby.

• 38:22Adam Buxton?

  Yes, Paul McCartney produced I'm the Urban Spaceman. But he did so under the pseudonym Apollo C Vermouth.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  Apollo?

• 38:30Adam Buxton?

  Apollo C Vermouth or Vermouth.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  Oh, Vermouth.

• 38:34Adam Buxton?

  Apparently.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  Interesting. Maybe he was into martini stage.

• 38:37Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. According to AI overview. But when you say that Viv Stanshall was less disciplined than Peter Cook.

• 38:46Speaker 01

  Well, Peter was brilliant. He was a genius. And he could improvise at Cambridge, an entire cabaret. And that's not what Viv was. Viv was a lead singer. And he could do a brilliant Elvis and he could sing the lead brilliantly, but it was more situationist comedy. He did song comedy. And Peter was always, you know, the, when I got to Cambridge, it was five years after Cook and they were still doing Peter Cook voices, you know.

• 39:15Adam Buxton?

  What, the kind of ELWISD voice?

• 39:17Speaker 01

  I could have been a miner, but I never had the Latin. You know, they'd all do that sort of voice and the EL, that was ELWISD, wasn't it?

• 39:23Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 39:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, and he was always extraordinary. He was very, very funny. And right to the end of his life, he was funny as can be. We went up the Nile with him and he was hilarious. I did a movie with him in Mexico.

• 39:36Adam Buxton?

  Yellow beard.

• 39:37Speaker 01

  And he was so much fun.

• 39:39Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 39:39Speaker 01

  We'd sit in the pool.

• 39:41Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Bouncing up and down. He said, I know the speed of light, but what is the speed of darkness?

• 39:49Speaker 01

  Which I asked Brian Cox, it made him think for a while, Professor, and he said it's the same.

• 39:55Speaker 01

  So I think it's a bit of a cheat, don't you? But he was remarkable, really.

• 40:00Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Did you ever watch Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, Get the Horn? I think when they were in a studio and.

• 40:06Speaker 01

  Derek and Clive.

• 40:07Adam Buxton?

  Oh, it was a Derek and Clive thing, yeah.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:09Adam Buxton?

  And.

• 40:10Speaker 01

  I never saw the film, but I always heard the tapes.

• 40:12Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:14Adam Buxton?

  It's quite sort of, I think it was towards the end of their working relationship. Yeah, really rude.

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Stoned and pissed and.

• 40:21Adam Buxton?

  It's quite uncomfortable, some of it, like the atmosphere between them because there was a sort of status imbalance at that point.

• 40:26Speaker 01

  It's a change, it's swapped over.

• 40:29Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Speaker 01

  But then a lot of not only but also, which is their series, got wiped by the BBC. And some of their monologues were so funny, you know, and that was before Derek and Clive. But I think, you know, it was odd for Peter to find himself that Dudley was a film star. You know, he was himself, he was always, you know, he ran Private Eye and he opened the, um, Establishment Club. And the first person he put on was Lenny Bruce.

• 40:57Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  You know, that was extraordinary.

• 40:59Adam Buxton?

  Did you ever have status angst within the Pythons?

• 41:02Speaker 01

  Status angst?

• 41:04Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I'm thinking about when you sort of paused around Rutland's time. Yeah. When everyone else was off doing their own projects, like, well, there was Faulty Towers and then there was.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  Ripping Yarns. Michael did Ripping Yarns with Terry for a bit. It was very funny.

• 41:20Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  Tompkins and School Days, it's hilarious.

• 41:23Adam Buxton?

  Right, Tompkins and School Days. Anyway, were you, did you sort of ever feel like, oh, what am I gonna do? Did you ever feel like a bit worried about keeping up?

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Because I got Rutland pretty early.

• 41:34Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  I got Rutland Weekend Television, but I rather stupidly went for the honesty of having no money. I did it, we did it on the fourth floor studio at the BBC next to the weather forecast. Because it was about the tiniest TV station in England. And in fact, the Conservatives had got rid of Rutland. They'd taken it out of existence after a thousand years and made it part of Leicestershire.

• 41:56Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  You know, it seemed rather gross. So that was the concept. A fictitious television station allows you to parody everything.

• 42:03Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  And in my show, actually, I do a few clips from Rutland Weekend Television, because nobody's ever seen it. Like, sometimes you can see it on YouTube, but, you know, very, very little.

• 42:14Adam Buxton?

  How is your show gonna work, by the way? This is the live show you're gonna be doing later this year. What's the general format?

• 42:19Speaker 01

  It's like a one-man musical.

• 42:21Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 42:21Speaker 01

  But it's got, you know, I've got songs, and I've got clips, and things that I've chosen, I love, that people won't know. They don't know them very well. And there's a, there's a new eight-minute clip of the Rutles, done by Peter Jackson. Uh, no, uh, and, and, because I did a second one called, that first one was called All You Need Is Cash. And I did another one called Can't Buy Me Lunch, and it was about the effects of the Rutles on the world today. And I interviewed all these famous people. Salman Rushdie's talking about the Rutles, and Bowie's talking about the Rutles. And Tom Hanks is talking about the Rutles. Tom Hanks cries. He did the fictitious crying when they broke up.

• 43:04Adam Buxton?

  When did you film that stuff?

• 43:06Speaker 01

  I was about, I did that one about two thousand and one, I think. And it, uh, because Neil had made another album. And so I thought, well, I'll use those songs, but I'll have to come in from a different point of view, and I can't make a big film. So I found some old footage, we found some old original footage, like of Bill Murray, the K, in a, in a warehouse in New Jersey. And so we put some of that in, but it was mainly me going around interviewing people on the effects of the Rutles.

• 43:33Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  And the world, you know, and, you know.

• 43:36Adam Buxton?

  The cultural legacy.

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, and so you see Bonnie Raitt saying, oh, they definitely changed the world, and they're these wonderful people. James Taylor, oh yeah, the Rutles changed the world. I mean, it's really, it's just lying again, but it's quite fun.

• 43:49Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 43:49Speaker 01

  So we, we've got a new eight-minute cut of that. And then, you know, I sing songs, I tell stories, and I have a virtual band on a screen behind me.

• 43:58Adam Buxton?

  Oh, cool.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:00Adam Buxton?

  The connection between rock and roll and comedy.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 44:05Adam Buxton?

  I suppose in my mind, the dawn of that whole association was Python and and all the stars you came up with of music.

• 44:12Speaker 01

  We were the same generation.

• 44:14Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 44:14Speaker 01

  Most of the groups came out of art school and they sort of made rock and roll interesting and and different.

• 44:21Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  In in England, in the UK. And of course, they're the same generation. So when you meet up, you came from nineteen forty three, nineteen forty two. So it was natural to be friends, easy, you know. And even in show business, you know, the comedians have always been close to the band and vice versa.

• 44:38Adam Buxton?

  Why is that, do you think?

• 44:39Speaker 01

  Well, because I think that comedians think they can play music and the band think they're funny.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  But what happened in the, this is my theory, is mock and roll. I I talk about it. I said, because in the fifties, the comedians were on the stage and the band were firmly in the pit. But once television arrived, the comedians plugged in, got electric, put on makeup, tight trousers and was chased around the world. So I said, but Python is the first mock and roll group because, you know, the Beatles ended up at the Hollywood Bowl. And so did we. We went on the road and we ended up at the Hollywood Bowl. And the second mock and roll group is Saturday Night Live, because they brought in, my first show I did as host. Joe Cocker came on and Belushi parodied him face to face. They both sang a song together, which is kind of remarkable.

• 45:30Speaker 01

  So I think they were the second mock and roll group. You know, now it's quite common for comedians to play stadiums, which is unheard of, really. So I I think they're close.

• 45:41Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  And I said, as a thought experiment, if you were to tell me, who was the first person who made you laugh? And who were the first people who made you happy singing? I'll tell you exactly where you'll come from and when you were born, because I think that's our DNA. Those are the things that formed us. We had Elvis and we had the Goons. And then I think it changes as you get old and the different people can take over. But those are the things that mean the most to you. Elvis saved our lives in boarding school.

• 46:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 46:12Speaker 01

  You know, so a viable thesis.

• 46:14Adam Buxton?

  Absolutely. I think mine might be Paul Hogan and the Thompson Twins.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  Oh, sweet. No, but I mean, it's very interesting because I think it changes all the time.

• 46:25Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, sure. Were any of the other pythons as excited as you were to meet rock stars and hang out with musicians?

• 46:33Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I mean, I I don't think people went and hang out with John, you know, he's a bit formidable. But I think because I played guitar.

• 46:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 46:43Speaker 01

  I could hang out and play.

• 46:45Adam Buxton?

  And you were into the stuff, right? You were a music fan?

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. I think there were two. I mean, everybody liked the Beatles, but not everybody could play along. And, you know, I've sat and played with Keith, Ronnie Wood and Mika and all those people I played with, you know, it's fun.

• 47:00Adam Buxton?

  What would you sit around and play, like their songs or?

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Pretty much, I think so, yeah. Or blues songs or.

• 47:07Adam Buxton?

  Would you sing as well?

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, pretty much so, yeah. Everybody sings.

• 47:11Adam Buxton?

  And what kind of voice would you sing in though? Would you?

• 47:13Speaker 01

  Well, I don't know. My voice, whatever that is.

• 47:16Adam Buxton?

  Okay, but not an imitation of like, would you be doing characters?

• 47:20Speaker 01

  We do Elvis songs, you know, we still do Elvis songs.

• 47:23Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 47:23Speaker 01

  It's good fun to do that. And we do Elvis, Everly's, you know, that's the same influences, you know, because we came from the same. We were the same generation. So they love the Everlys and Buddy Holly. Buddy Holly, when he died, it was the biggest shock of our lives. You know, that and Manchester United crashing.

• 47:41Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Where the two big, suddenly death comes into your world.

• 47:45Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah. But I mean, the sixties was intense. I had Paul McCartney on the podcast a few years ago. And it was towards the end of twenty twenty, which was such a turbulent year anyway, in so many ways. And things haven't really calmed down or that much since. And I was saying to him, like, did it feel apocalyptic to you when you were in the sixties? When so many seismic things were kicking off, the world was on the brink of nuclear war. And there were race riots and there were these terrible wars happening in Vietnam and assassinations of Martin Luther King and the Kennedys. Did it feel like the world was coming to an end?

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, definitely the Kennedy time, very much so, but, you know, and then we would protest at Cambridge because they were of the Cuban Missile Crisis. We were not at all in favour of being exterminated because they were putting missiles in Cuba. But, you know, back then, we were a bit radical. I mean, I was on the Audemarsen March in fifty-eight, I think. Quite by chance, I was in Berlin and saw him give the Ishben Iron Berlin speech. I'd have no idea where we're hitchhiking.

• 48:52Adam Buxton?

  JFK?

• 48:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I saw him that year, and he was killed at the end of that year, I think, at my second term in Cambridge. And that was very shocking. And I think that swung things around a bit.

• 49:04Adam Buxton?

  But you weren't one of those people who felt like all hope is lost, kind of thing?

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Well, I think you can't do much about it, you know what I mean? So, and I think there was less news, and certainly less internet opinion going on, and people, you know, so, and there was satire. That was a saviour, really. The satire boom is, first of all, my life was changed by Beyond the Fringe. And then David Frost came along, and every week was, that was the week that was. We loved that. We watched that at college. And so when Python came along, it was at the end of the satire boom, and it's all been done. So we didn't do any satire, which is why it survived, because it has no topical references at all. It was more like categories of humour, or, you know, upper-class twits, or, but

• 49:52Speaker 01

  not specific. So I think even Saturday Night Live, you see it earlier now, and you think, oh, yeah, Gerald Ford fell downstairs. But it's not, you have to remember that to make you laugh. But Python has nothing that ties itself to any particular time. So it can last a little longer.

• 50:44Adam Buxton?

  A big part of your life was meeting George Harrison.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:50Adam Buxton?

  Which happened sort of mid seventies when you'd just done-

• 50:52Speaker 01

  Fifty years ago in ten days.

• 50:54Adam Buxton?

  Fifty years ago.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. I was gonna go play football for my village.

• 50:59Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 50:59Speaker 01

  At the Sixer Side.

• 51:00Adam Buxton?

  In France.

• 51:01Speaker 01

  In France. And I was training up with the team and then there was a, they said, oh, would you go to LA? We were having a screening of The Holy Grail. There's gonna be a big screening at the Directors Guild. And I tossed up, you know, would more people laugh at me playing football or on screen? So I thought, well, I better do my bit. And I went with Gilliam to LA. And there was a big screening at the Directors Guild and I was watching at the back and it went really well. And then there was a tap on my shoulder. I turned around and it was George Harrison. He said, I've been looking for you. He said, no, we can't talk here. Let's go up to the projection room and smoke a reefer. I thought, okay. So up we went. And then they threw us out and we went for dinner.

• 51:44Speaker 01

  And then there was Olivia, there's a picture of us that night, Olivia and Terry Gilliam. And they were tired. And George said, do you wanna come back to hear some of my music I'm recording? I said, yeah, sure. Lovely. So we went to A and M and he played me some of extra texture. And then we went to, um, back to the hotel and we played guitar and we just talked all night. It was like, we just bonded.

• 52:08Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. What did you talk about?

• 52:09Speaker 01

  I think we talked about what it was like being in a group. Cause I think we had similar roles in our group. So there were two big blocks. He had Dan and McCartney. And we had John and Graham wrote together and Mike and Terry wrote together. So I was also, you know, in the middle of it. And it's a sort of strange role because you're being outvoted by more powerful people. So that was interesting. And we talked, we talked about everything really. But once when we were filming Brian, he came to the set and he said, how's it going? I said, well, it's okay. It's not easy to get on camera, you know, with John and Mike. He said, imagine how hard it was getting into the studio with John and Paul. So I said, fair enough. Say no more. That's it. You got it.

• 52:54Adam Buxton?

  And he, of course, funded completely.

• 52:57Speaker 01

  And completely funded. He mortgaged his house and his business to raise the cash and put it all on the life of Brian.

• 53:05Adam Buxton?

  Amazing.

• 53:06Speaker 01

  Insane.

• 53:07Adam Buxton?

  Because your backers had pulled out at the last minute.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Lou Grade had read the script, unfortunately. Some younger people at EMA had bought it and loved it. And Lou Grade finally read it and said, no, we kind of have nothing to do with this. And we started building sets in Tunisia on our own money. So we had to sue him. But worse, we had to go and find the money and it was really impossible. I went to New York with John Goldstone, the producer, and, you know, it was like selling springtime for Hitler.

• 53:37Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  They did not want to know. And then we went to LA and they were, even War didn't want to know. And then finally George Carlin said, I've got the money. I've got it. You're on. You know, so it was extraordinary.

• 53:50Adam Buxton?

  With no strings attached or?

• 53:52Speaker 01

  No.

• 53:53Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  And I said, why did you do that? He said, I want to see the movie. So, you know, I mean, it's fairly incredible.

• 54:00Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  When you think about it. He mortgaged all of Friar Park and everything he had.

• 54:05Adam Buxton?

  Friar Park was his house.

• 54:06Speaker 01

  His house in Henley.

• 54:07Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  You know, if you can imagine, you go to the wife and say, what did you do today? Oh, I put all our money on a Python film about Christ, you know. Oh, good luck. Thanks a lot.

• 54:17Adam Buxton?

  Was that Olivia he was with at that point?

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:19Adam Buxton?

  And how did she feel about it?

• 54:20Speaker 01

  I don't know. I've got to ask her.

• 54:23Adam Buxton?

  Because, yeah, that would have been a weird conversation.

• 54:25Speaker 01

  Really? Is that, are you sure?

• 54:27Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Because it was an extraordinary thing to do.

• 54:31Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 54:32Speaker 01

  I mean, four and a half million dollars in those days is still a lot of money, you know, a huge amount of money.

• 54:37Adam Buxton?

  I mean, he probably had a lot, right?

• 54:39Speaker 01

  No, no, I mean, I think that was it.

• 54:41Adam Buxton?

  Oh, okay.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  You know, if you mortgage your house and your business

• 54:44Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  to raise capital, that means you've got nothing in the bank. That's, that is your bank. But I think they might have been doing a Be All Stock and Bloom. I think they might have been doing the producer. I think it might have been a tax thing.

• 54:56Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Because when it started to make money, they had to change it round a bit, you know, put it overseas in Rotterdam.

• 55:02Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. And they set up handmade films.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  They set up handmade films to make it.

• 55:07Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, okay. Which ended up being kind of a brilliant outfit. They made some great films.

• 55:11Speaker 01

  They made some very good films. Gilliam's second one, I think it was Time Bandits, was a very good film.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  They made With Nail.

• 55:20Adam Buxton?

  They made With Nail.

• 55:21Speaker 01

  Bought With Nail.

• 55:22Adam Buxton?

  I mean, that is.

• 55:23Speaker 01

  And then I did the last one, Nuns on the Run with Robbie.

• 55:26Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay. They did a, they did a private function as well.

• 55:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:30Adam Buxton?

  And um, they did Privates on Parade, Scrubbers, that was a good one, Bullshot.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  That's Billy Connolly sang the song in that.

• 55:41Adam Buxton?

  And The Missionary, of course, as well.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 55:43Adam Buxton?

  And Mona Lisa.

• 55:44Speaker 01

  Mona Lisa was a good film.

• 55:45Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:46Adam Buxton?

  Private Function. Did you ever write music with George?

• 55:50Speaker 01

  Yes, it's in my show. The one thing we ever wrote together is in my show. It's from Rutland Weekend Television.

• 55:55Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  And it's a brilliant joke. I won't spoil it. It's a visual joke. But people haven't seen it. Uh, many people, most people haven't seen it. So it's a big shock to them.

• 56:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 56:05Speaker 01

  And it's a nice surprise. But we wrote it together and it's in his book of lyrics, Idol Harrison. I like, I like that.

• 56:13Adam Buxton?

  Very good. And one of the things that defined his life was a spiritual search.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:19Adam Buxton?

  That he was on.

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 56:21Adam Buxton?

  Did you get caught up in the spiritual quest along with George?

• 56:25Speaker 01

  The only thing we ever disagreed with was religion.

• 56:27Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  And we, you know, we'd talked and, I mean, even on his deathbed, he said to me, I'm okay, because I'm not going to have to go through rebirth. I said, oh, I'll give you anything to be reborn. But, you know, we, but we were all funny about it. It wasn't, it wasn't a problem because we were friends. We could talk about anything. And, but I'm not religious. I like science.

• 56:48Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  I think religion is a, an early attempt to describe the universe. You know, and you wonder what God was doing for the, the first five and a half billion years of life on this planet. Where was he? What was he doing?

• 57:00Adam Buxton?

  But there's a strand of philosophy, like a, an interest in philosophy that runs through a lot of the Python stuff and in your songs as well. That to me, that seems kind of inspired by some of the same yearning and the same questions about what's it all about and.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  I mean, George was a Catholic.

• 57:16Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  And he became a Hindu and um. So it's it's quite interesting. I mean, it was it's one belief for another belief. But I mean, it made him, if you see that film of them all in India, suddenly they're all happy again together. It's very sweet.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  I mean, because I think John goes there and he's strung out. And they're all kind of gumpy and mean. And then suddenly they're all kind of, you know, playing and it was sunsets and they're happy. It's very sweet. And I think that was a very powerful impression on them. And it kept them together for a little while, I think. And but George was always really generous and kind. Anybody came in, the weight or anything, he was always the same to everybody. Open and kind. You know, if he could help people or fund them or that's what he did.

• 58:05Adam Buxton?

  Do you think he changed your own perspective on things?

• 58:08Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. Not in necessarily in a religious way, but in being kind and, you know, sharing and being, you know, funnier and. I mean, I I was going through a divorce, so he cheered me up. I tell him I was gonna die. You know, so it's quite quite good, you know. But he also put things in perspective. He said, you know, you can have all the money in the world. You can be the most famous people in the world, but you're still gonna have to die. And that's a very good philosophy to have. It's a good reminder that every day can be your last. And I think I use that quite often in comedy. So, you know, just remind people this, you're alive this minute, this is it. And, you know, you're kind of lucky to be in such a nice place, usually.

• 58:51Speaker 01

  But, you know, he could be quite a naughty boy too. We had a lot of fun. And we had a lot of gigs and people played and stayed and. You know, listened to music and tracks he was trying to deal with. Did you like this one? Do you like that one? All that.

• 59:06Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, because i- in some ways it looked as though he was just seeking for strategies to prepare for death in some ways.

• 59:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely. No question. That's what particularly they learned. He learned from that. That it was gonna be all over. And what does that mean? And what does, how does that affect you? And what do you believe? And that particular religion is rebirth and all of that.

• 59:33Adam Buxton?

  And so to what extent did that all help him cope with the terrible attack that he suffered? How old was he when he was attacked? It was nineteen ninety nine, wasn't it?

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Just after, at the millennium, around the millennium. And I I I called him up and I said, do you want me to come? And he said, where are you? So we we went there, Tanya and I. And he was very disturbed. I have never ever seen him more disturbed. It was really shocking because they fought for twenty minutes.

• 59:59Adam Buxton?

  He'd been stabbed about forty times or something.

• 1:00:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, with a butcher's knife and bleeding to death.

• 1:00:05Adam Buxton?

  And this was just sort of a crazed intruder?

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  Crazed guy off his meds, and I think he'd been looking for Paul. We couldn't find Paul, so it's easier to find Henley. And he came over the wall smashed in the window. And George came out because George was the bold one who told the hell's angels to fuck off. He was always the one who came and said, no, you've got to fuck off out of here now, out of Abbey Road. But I think he did the same thing. I think he went at the top of the stage and told him to fuck off, you know? And then he went, yelled Harry Krishna, and the guy came at him up the stairs with a knife. It would have been wiser perhaps to lock the door and call the police, you know? So I think Liv had called the police, but it took them about twenty minutes to get there. And this all-out attack took place. And I think Liv at the end bashed him over the head with a Tiffany lamp.

• 1:00:54Speaker 01

  They were all passed out when the police arrived, and blood everywhere. It was like a scene from a horror film. It was it was just, and his son comes through the door and they had mum, mother-in-law, and it was just really horrendous. And afterwards, yeah, I know he was very shaken. They had a, I think it was called a pooja. We went round and went through the attack bit by bit up the stairs. There was still blood on the walls and things. It was like really awful and shocking.

• 1:01:20Adam Buxton?

  As a kind of therapeutic exercise?

• 1:01:21Speaker 01

  Yes, it was a religious thing. It was a, he says it was a ceremony. You went through and relived all this horrible experience. And we went through it with them and it was just really horrendous, really horrendous.

• 1:01:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  And I think he was still very disturbed. And I think at the end of that year, he started getting cancer. You know, it was beginning to kill him, because I think he died in two thousand one, two thousand, two thousand and one. And it, I'm sure that had an effect, because, you know, he's been stabbed so badly with a butcher's knife.

• 1:02:01Adam Buxton?

  Two thousand and one he died, yeah, November two thousand and one.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Right, and then the concerts, concerts in two thousand and two, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:02:12Adam Buxton?

  That's so shocking, isn't it?

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  They're really horrible.

• 1:02:15Adam Buxton?

  That must have shaken you as well to see that happen.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Well, I didn't realise how sick he was. I was on the phone to him in Switzerland. I said, what are you doing? He said, I'm writing the liner notes for my last album. And if I don't finish them, then you will. I'm like, maybe if you don't finish them, that's when I really realised it was very serious. He was in, I think in Switzerland, undergoing some kind of. So finally, I went back to L A and I then went to see him in the house and it was clear he wasn't going to live very long. You know, so we hung out and there was a lovely drummer, Keltner was there, you know, various people were there, came through. But it was, it was just deeply shocking. I mean, that, you know, he was gonna die and he died.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  And then I think a year later, we did that concert, which was also very moving at the Albert Hall. You know, it's really, really moving.

• 1:03:12Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  You know, people like Jeff Lynne and, you know, Friends and they all came and played. And Paul played and, you know, it was lovely. It was very moving. At the end, the most moving thing of all is Joe Brown playing the ukulele. I'll see you in my dreams. I'll see you in my dreams. And then all the roses fell from the ceiling. Because that was the end of Billy Cotton Band Show. They'd play that every week, I'll See You In My Dreams. It was one of his favourite songs.

• 1:04:00Adam Buxton?

  Soon I'll find repose. And in dreams, you're always near to me. I'll see you in my dreams. One of my formative experiences as a youngster was watching Life of Brian with my mum. And she was my comedy ally in my house. My dad was quite a bit older. He was like fifteen years older than her and he was very conservative and stuffy. And he didn't like any of the stuff I was into.

• 1:04:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:37Adam Buxton?

  But she loved it. And I must have been about ten or something. And it really made such a huge impression. I guess the thing that takes it to another level in my mind is the ending and the song.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:50Adam Buxton?

  And the fact that you're invested in this character, there's a kind of desperation about it because the world around him is so mad. They've mistaken him for someone else.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:02Adam Buxton?

  Everything he tries to do to explain to people goes nowhere. And then suddenly he's been crucified and he's on the cross. And it's this sort of unimaginably horrific thing that's happened. Meanwhile, you're still laughing, there's still jokes. But yeah, it's transformed by Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. And it becomes something that's manageable rather than just grim.

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  Yes, I mean, we were writing it and we didn't know how to end it because everybody's been crucified.

• 1:05:32Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  So what are you going to do? And I said, well, we should end with a song. And on the crosses, they said, yeah, on the crosses, we should sing. But it should be ridiculously cheery uppy. It should be like a Disney song, maybe with a whistle. Mr. But by looking on the bright side. So I went home and I wrote it very, very quickly in St John's Wood, you know, in half an hour, an hour. Because, you know, it's very obvious I used some Mickey Baker chords, you know, and got a little riff and a bit of whistle.

• 1:05:59Adam Buxton?

  Did you have a reference in your mind for what it should sound like?

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  No, but I would, I started off with, you know, I just went to the.

• 1:06:06Adam Buxton?

  Do you want to pick?

• 1:06:07Speaker 01

  Where's the, I went to, I like the Mickey Baker because it would teach you the jazz chords, it would.

• 1:06:21Speaker 01

  So that was like, always look on the bright side of life.

• 1:06:30Speaker 01

  And that was, that was so very simple. Now I thought, oh, that's good. And then I had to do a verse.

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  So that was also quite nice. And, you know, using what the Beatles called a sneaky chord, this one. The diminished. They'd call that sneaky chord.

• 1:06:51Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  And George would say, there, sneaky. So it was nice. And then I recorded it before we went to Tunisia. And when I got to the set, I played it for the crew and they liked it very much. But I sang it very straight, you know, it's always look on the bright side. And I suddenly realised it should be sung by Mr Cheeky as a character I was playing. And so we went into a bedroom, we put mattresses round the hotel and the sound recorder's and I'm on the floor with a bottle of Booker. And we, always look on the bright side of life, which gives it a much more different feel and a bounce.

• 1:07:31Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  You know, because Cheeky said, are you going to be rescued? He said, no, no, my brother usually rescues me, you know. So it's kind of very absurd, but it also has, you know, even when they play it on the mornings on the thing, you know, it, it's, it has a very nice feel to it. It has an up feel, even though they've been crucified. You know, it's a perfect end for a film. You pull back with this song.

• 1:07:56Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  And it worked very well for the film. And then it's just gone on and on. It has a big life of its own. Which is sort of unexpected. And now it is the number one funeral song in England for the last 20 years. So I like that. I love the fact that people choose it for their end. I think it's very nice. It's a very touching thing that it happened like that.

• 1:08:17Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Did the lyrics come quite quickly?

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  I mean, yeah, I think I'd even got all that, you know, life's a piece of shit when you look at it, you know. I mean, I think I even had that. So I think, you know, I think once you've got the shape, you know, it's, it's quite nice, you know, it's bouncy and I didn't take, it didn't take me very long and I recorded it. And I took it, you know, back to the next day and played it and it stopped. Oh great, that's the end. We're done. We can go up to the pub.

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  So I think it went very nicely.

• 1:08:48Adam Buxton?

  Is there another song that you're particularly fond of, one that you might be up for playing?

• 1:08:54Speaker 01

  I don't know, most of my songs are about death, you know.

• 1:08:57Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Um.

• 1:09:02Speaker 01

  I wrote this one for Graham. Life will get you in the end. On this one thing you can depend.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Life will get you in the end.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Rambling round the universe. As a human being, could be worse. Life's a gift, it's not a curse. So live, go, blimey. Life will get you in the end. And so farewell to you, my friend. One final thing to try is bend and kiss your arse goodbye. Cause life will get you in the end.

• 1:09:58Adam Buxton?

  Wait. This is an ad for Squarespace.

• 1:10:02Adam Buxton?

  Okay, we'll return to the AI apocalypse in just a wee wee moment, but first I wanted to talk about Squarespace. Do you know about Squarespace, Steve? Uh, yes, Monty. I think I might even be a little bit more tuned into modern tech, websites, et cetera, than you. I don't know, just guessing. Oh, Steve, I love this dynamic. I'm old and conservative and you're young and progressive and that's what makes the Newswind podcast such great listening. But yes, you're right. I must admit, I didn't know much about Squarespace. But because my new grumble book, Hell in a Handcart, is out this month. And I look forward to getting enraged by that. So I should hope. Em, em, em. Anyway, the publishers, Bluestar and Dogwhistle, made a beautiful website for the book using Squarespace. I know, I got the newsletter that you sent out using Squarespace and the website does look great. Videos of you airing your views, members' areas for your mad fans. You've even got a merch store, I see.

• 1:10:47Adam Buxton?

  That's right, a Union Jack top hat is a big seller, but they constructed it all so fast with Squarespace. They did most of it over one lunchtime, Steve. Well, you wouldn't want to spend much longer on it, would you? But here's the thing, anyone listening to this can start a free trial right now at Squarespace.com/Buxton and see how easy and versatile Squarespace is. And when they're ready to launch a new website or domain, they can save 10% off their first purchase by using the offer code BUCKSTON at checkout. Right, well, maybe I'll visit Squarespace.com/Buxton and start a new website just to refute all the nonsense in your new book. Oh, don't do that, Steve. I will. Oh, shut up, Steve. Uh, shut up. Now, back to more depressing matters on Newsweek.

• 1:11:26Adam Buxton?

  Continue. Say no more.

• 1:11:37Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was Eric Idle talking to me there. I really enjoyed meeting Eric. I wasn't sure what to expect. I'd read a couple of books of his, one about the whole process of putting Spamelot together, and also his autobiography, which is called Always Look on the Bright Side of Life: A Sort of Biography. And I'd really recommend it, actually. You know, there'll be familiar stories in there, but there's lots of really entertaining and interesting detail. But Eric was so warm and charming. It was great to meet him, and I'm very grateful to him and his team for sorting it out. I haven't

• 1:12:22Adam Buxton?

  yet been invited to a ding dong. I'll let you know if I get the call.

• 1:12:27Adam Buxton?

  Speaking of ding dongs, thanks a lot if you came to the show at Rough Trade East last week. That was kind of the album launch show for Buckle Up. It was good fun, very nice to meet lots of you, signing records afterwards. Seated tickets for the Adam Buxton Band's Norfolk Shows on the 13th and 14th in the Norwich Arts Centre are now sold out, I believe, but there's a few standing tickets, I think, still around.

• 1:13:02Adam Buxton?

  Description.

• 1:13:04Adam Buxton?

  Rosie's being very bouncy. Aren't you, Doglegs?

• 1:13:10Adam Buxton?

  Straining away. Well, listen. It's a weekend, there's no one else around.

• 1:13:16Adam Buxton?

  So I'm gonna let you off the lead for a little bit.

• 1:13:21Adam Buxton?

  Waddle, waddle gingerly like the wind.

• 1:13:26Adam Buxton?

  Oh.

• 1:13:30Adam Buxton?

  It's exciting this time of day, I guess, for Doglegs. Because there's lots of hidden partridges and pheasants. Even though it's not like she's chasing after them these days.

• 1:13:43Adam Buxton?

  But it's just nice to be in an exciting environment, isn't it, Rosie? It's a little bit like when I was walking down Brick Lane to go to the Rough Trade East show the other night. It's like, oh, yeah. This seems fun and vibrant. I feel too old to be part of it, but it's still nice to be around it. Actually, what am I saying? Of course I was part of it. I was at the centre of it. All the groovers coming along to see me play songs from Buckler. I got copies of the album and I went and positioned them over on the rack marked Rough Trade Essentials. It's probably been moved back now to the Modern and Alternative section. Alternative to what, you might ask? Proper music, some might say.

• 1:14:30Adam Buxton?

  No, come on, it's good stuff. Album of the week in The Times, apparently.

• 1:14:37Adam Buxton?

  I'm assuming that was double E K rather than E A K.

• 1:14:42Adam Buxton?

  Anyway, listen. Tonal handbrake into this next public service announcement. I got a message from a friend of the podcast, Jim. Down, he's a doctor consultant at University College London Hospitals, UCLH. He works at one of the largest NHS foundation trusts in England, which provides acute and specialist services. He's written a couple of very good books that I recommend, but anyway, he got in touch to say, "Hope all is well with you and the family." That was the main thing. I told him, "Yep, we're doing well, thanks, Jim." And then, after a few lines about some of the more alarming things happening in the world at the moment, he said, "In case you want to plug something unequivocally positive

• 1:15:27Adam Buxton?

  and altruistic, it's organ donation week next week, twenty-second of September to the twenty-eighth-ish." Jim says, "I've taken on a local lead role in our hospital, and here's some facts. Eight thousand people are on the waiting list for a transplant. Fifteen hundred will die waiting due to the lack of an appropriate organ. One donation can save or transform up to nine lives. The biggest hurdle is consent from relatives who are understandably very distressed at the time when their loved one has suffered something like a catastrophic head injury

• 1:16:09Adam Buxton?

  or a brain bleed, and the relatives aren't sure what their loved one would have wanted. They need to give permission, even with the opt-out system that currently operates for organ donations in this country. Being on the register makes it clear to the family what you'd want. Ninety percent of people say they'd like to donate, but only forty percent of people are on the register. Organs are in particularly short supply for black, Asian, and minority ethnic people who have high rates of kidney failure, for example, so are at particular need." And Jim says, "And we only take the organs when you're dead, promise."

• 1:16:50Adam Buxton?

  Brackets either brain-dead, on a ventilator, or when withdrawal of treatment occurs because it's futile and the heart stops. So please register your consent for organ Donation today and talk about your wishes to your loved ones. From Jim. Thanks Jim. This afternoon, I went to register my decision to donate organs to the NHS. There's a link in the description that will take you there as well. If you want to do the same. I appreciate there are all sorts of reasons. That make people uncomfortable with the idea of donating their organs. You know. But I've always been into the idea.

• 1:17:34Adam Buxton?

  As someone who would love a little slice of immortality cake. Okay, so it's not immortality, but you're maybe helping someone else live a little longer. Or at least have a better quality of life while they are alive. What a great thing that would be.

• 1:17:52Adam Buxton?

  Okay, that's it for this week's podcast. Thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell. For his always invaluable production support. And general great encouragement. Thanks, Seamus.

• 1:18:06Adam Buxton?

  Thanks to Helen Green. She does the artwork for the podcast. Thank you to everyone at Acast. Who work so hard liaising with my sponsors and thereby keeping the show on the road. But thanks most of all to you. Come on. You listened right the way, you even listened to the whole of the intro, didn't you? Oh, okay, well. Still, you made it this far and you listened to the organ donation thing. Because you're great. And I appreciate your loyalty. Which is why. On this beautiful but chilly evening. I'm proposing. A bit of a human warmth. With a creepy hug. Come here.

• 1:18:50Adam Buxton?

  Good to see you. Thank you. And until the next time, we share the same sonic space.

• 1:19:00Adam Buxton?

  Please go carefully. And if it's of any use whatsoever, please do bear in mind that I love you.

• 1:19:15Speaker 02

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• 1:19:59Speaker 02

  Gimme like a smile and a thumbs up, nice like a fan when me bums up.