EP.247 - TIM KEY AND TOM BASDEN

Adam talks with British writer/actor/comedians Tim Key and Tom Basden about their comedy film The Ballad Of Wallis Island, private comedy gigs, AI identity theft, and being told off on bikes. Plus, Tim introduces Adam and Tom to one of the all-time great accidental 'C' bombs. Conversation recorded face-to-face in London on 9th May, 2025 CONTAINS STRONG LANGUAGE! Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and additional conversation editing. Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ ORDER 'I LOVE YOU, BYEEE' HERE https://lnk.to/iloveyoubyeee_ EXCLUSIVE NORD VPN DEAL https://nordvpn.com/buxton Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! TICKETS FOR UNION CHAPE SHOW https://www.gigantic.com/hopefully-a-few-laughs-with-adam-buxton-and-john-robins-tickets/london-union-chapel/2025-07-21-18-30 - 21st July with Adam, John Robins, Aisling Bea, Mike Wozniak, Ria and more tbc - Monday 21st July, 2025 PICS, LINKS AND SIGN UP FOR NEWSLETTER ON ADAM'S WEBSITE https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/ 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 Buxton, 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 Buxton here, reporting to you from a Norfolk farm track on a balmy, not to say muggy, evening coming up to the end of May 2025. Just me today because my best dog friend, Rosie, was taken out for a walk by my son earlier today. Why the hell did you take Rosie out for a walk without checking with me first whether I had a podcast intro and outro to record? Don't you realise that she is an absolutely central part of the brand? What are you trying to do, destroy the foundations of Castle Buckles? That's what I was thinking.

• 1:14Adam Buxton?

  But instead I just said, oh, you've been out for a walk with Rosie. How about another walk then, Rosie? He used to like multiple walks in the olden days. Rosie gave me a pitying look as if to say, well, these are not the olden days, as you are well aware. So why don't you do one and I will stay here and relax on the sofa? So that's where she is. Anyway, she sends lots of love. She's doing well and I hope you're doing well. And I hope you're enjoying my book, which came out this week. I have quite a large stack of hardback copies which I need to sign. And send out to people.

• 1:57Adam Buxton?

  Apologies that I haven't been able to do that earlier if you've already ordered a signed copy from the Book Hive in Norwich. While you're waiting, why not pick up the audiobook? It's cheaper than the old hardback. It's got a lot of bonus stuff on there. Not that I'm discouraging you from reading with your eyes. My wife refuses to listen to the audiobook because she feels she has enough of my voice in her life as it is. But she's actually been reading the physical thing and being quite nice about it, which for me is the ultimate review, of course. Anyway, look, let me tell you a bit about podcast number 247, which features a rambling

• 2:41Adam Buxton?

  conversation with two of my favourite British writers, actors and comedians, Tim Key and Tom Basden. This is Tom's first time on the podcast. You may know him from the sitcoms Plebs and Here We Go, both of which he writes and stars in. Then there are the numerous performances in shows that include Ricky Gervais's comedy dramas Derek and Afterlife, as well as appearances in The Windsors, W1A, The Wrong Man's, Ghosts and Diane Morgan's show Mandy. Tom has also written on TV shows like Peep Show, Fresh Meat and Gap Year, and he is the author of several plays.

• 3:22Adam Buxton?

  And as if that wasn't enough, he's an extremely talented and accomplished musician. As for Tim Key, well, I think this is his third appearance on the podcast, and you might have seen him as sidekick Simon in various Alan Partridge TV shows. He also co-starred with Daisy May Cooper in the BBC sitcom The Witchfinder, and there's been countless appearances on other great comedy shows over the years. But Tim is also an author and poet. As you'll hear, his latest book of beautifully laid out poetry and dialogue vignettes, his fourth with designer Emily Juniper, is called L.A.

• 4:02Adam Buxton?

  Baby, and details his experience of working in Los Angeles in 2024 for the upcoming American sitcom The Paper. Set in the same universe as The American Office, the paper is a mockumentary about an ailing Ohio newspaper and stars Donal Gleason and Sabrina Impacchiatore, most famous for her role as the no-nonsense hotel manager during season two of HBO's The White Lotus. My favourite season, and she was amazing in it. Anyway, Tim is also in that show, which I think is due to be released in the States on NBC's Peacock channel in September or something like that.

• 4:45Adam Buxton?

  Tim and Tom's friendship began at university, where with Stefan Golosevsky—hope I'm pronouncing that right—and Lloyd Wolf, they formed the sketch group Cowards and have worked together on and off ever since. Some of my favourite stuff that Tim and Tom have done together is on Tim Key's late-night poetry programme, where they play exaggerated versions of themselves in a show that began airing on BBC Radio 4 in 2012 and has run for five series so far. And if you're familiar with that show, you'll know that Tim sometimes refers to Tom as "Lord", which he does in our conversation.

• 5:27Adam Buxton?

  To explain, according to Tim, the "Lord" nickname has two origins: one, "he used to be my landlord", which is neat, but it wasn't really the reason, and two, "he once claimed he had a lift in his family home", which is the reason, but which isn't very neat because it's confusing.

• 5:46Adam Buxton?

  The Norwich Speed Devils are out tonight. Tim and Tom's latest project together is a feature film on general release this week as I speak. It's called The Ballad of Wallace Island, in which Tim plays a lottery winner living on a remote island who offers a huge fee to his favourite folk duo Maguire Mortimer to reform and play a private gig just for him. In the film, Maguire Mortimer were once romantically as well as artistically involved, but though Mortimer, played by Carey Mulligan, has moved on and has an American husband, played by Famalam's Akemji DeFournian, Maguire, played by Tom, has found moving on more of a struggle.

• 6:30Adam Buxton?

  I got the opportunity to record with Tim and Tom face to face in London earlier this month. And as well as talking about some of the inspirations behind the film and the experience of working with one of the best and most successful actors around, Carey Mulligan that is, we also spoke about the remorseless march of AI. I blew Tim's mind with a couple of bits of AI-powered software that I've been using recently. And we talked about being told off while riding our bikes. And we concluded by having Tim introduce myself and Tom to one of the all-time great accidental broadcasting sea bombs that somehow we had managed to miss.

• 7:15Adam Buxton?

  Oh, it's the Canada geese massive. Goosey gang, goosey gang, goosey gang, goosey gang. Off they go. So yes, obviously, sea bomb warning, strong language ahoy. I'll be back at the end for a bit more waffle, including upcoming live show news and news about the release of my first single. What the? But right now with Tim Key and Tom Basden. Here we go.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Last time you interviewed me, I think that the setup was, well, look, let's put it this way, I could only see about a quarter of the top of your face.

• 8:35Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  Because it went me, then it went your laptop, then it went you on quite a low chair, and then just a little bit peeking out from above the laptop.

• 8:41Adam Buxton?

  Was that in that hotel in King's Cross? And I was in an alcove?

• 8:45Speaker 01

  You were in an alcove.

• 8:46Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  It's not a criticism, it's just nice to see the whole thing. Oh, that's relaxing. Yeah, I might do that.

• 8:53Adam Buxton?

  I just put my arm over the high back of the chair. In a way that's unnatural, but does actually feel good because it's it's stretching. Yeah, yeah.

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Are you not stretching?

• 9:04Speaker 02

  No, no need.

• 9:05Adam Buxton?

  And then the last time I saw you in the physical world was beginning of last year or something in Norwich, when we did a conversation about one of your book of poems.

• 9:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and yeah, did a conversation about chapters.

• 9:18Adam Buxton?

  That's right.

• 9:19Speaker 01

  Norwich Art Centre.

• 9:20Adam Buxton?

  Which I thought started very strong and then I I felt like I lost them and I felt responsible and I felt like I'd let you down if I want to be honest.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  No, well, you didn't let anybody down. You interviewed me. You're only as good as your interviewee, aren't you?

• 9:34Adam Buxton?

  Ah, not really. I don't believe that.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Do you not?

• 9:36Adam Buxton?

  No. I think it's on me.

• 9:39Speaker 01

  Do you?

• 9:40Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, a little bit, but that's my ego talking.

• 9:43Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 9:44Adam Buxton?

  Now, last night, I understand from your PR guy, Andy, you had a private screening of your film. Am I allowed to ask about this?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  You're completely allowed to ask.

• 9:57Adam Buxton?

  All right.

• 9:57Speaker 01

  We didn't really have the screening. Someone else had the screening on our behalf.

• 10:00Adam Buxton?

  Richard Curtis intervened.

• 10:02Speaker 01

  Richard Curtis stepped up to the plate.

• 10:04Adam Buxton?

  He'd already seen it and he was so knocked out by it. He's just like, I've got to show this to Paul Rudd and Nish Kumar.

• 10:10Speaker 02

  There you go. That's that's exactly what happened.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  It's been the reaction of a lot of people.

• 10:16Speaker 01

  How do we get this to Paul and Nish?

• 10:19Adam Buxton?

  And how did it go?

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Great. I think Paul and Nish really, really enjoyed it and the other people that were there did too.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Nish was a good settler, actually, in that room. There was a lot of, like, famous people who you don't know. So to have a sort of Nish Kumar on board, who you sort of know of old, it's sort of, yeah, a sort of a port in the storm. At the at the drink stew afterwards, you can't just be sort of stood there talking to Emily Maitlis.

• 10:45Adam Buxton?

  Was she there?

• 10:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, God, she was there. Yeah, she was there in force.

• 10:50Speaker 01

  You're suddenly thinking, oh, dear, here we go. I'm so glad Emily Maitlis.

• 10:56Adam Buxton?

  What did she make of it?

• 10:57Speaker 01

  She liked it.

• 10:58Speaker 02

  She was great. She, yeah, she was a lot friendlier to us than, say, Prince Andrew or something.

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, he enjoyed it, by the way.

• 11:12Adam Buxton?

  Did he start to sweat?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  It was a hot room.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and still yet, no, no, nothing from, nothing from Andrew.

• 11:19Adam Buxton?

  I watched the film three nights ago in the Castle Buckles screening area, which is the front room. But we've got a projection screen. You've been there, Tim.

• 11:30Speaker 01

  I'm old enough to remember watching the, um, the woman in black.

• 11:33Adam Buxton?

  The woman in black. You did a show in Norwich and then you came and stayed the night and we had some jazzy wine and a reefer.

• 11:43Speaker 02

  Did you?

• 11:44Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. And watched the woman in black.

• 11:46Speaker 01

  And we snorted some snow.

• 11:47Speaker 02

  Were you at night?

• 11:49Adam Buxton?

  Would you rather I didn't mention that we had a reefer?

• 11:52Speaker 01

  No, why not?

• 11:57Speaker 01

  We had a reefer in his, in, in Adam's farming complex.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  Is that what you farm?

• 12:05Speaker 01

  It's pigs and weed.

• 12:09Adam Buxton?

  Fuck all's weed. It's the finest in the land.

• 12:14Adam Buxton?

  On that screen, we watched the Ballad of Wallace Island. Once we'd spent half an hour negotiating the security protocols set up to prevent piracy of the film.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Well, nothing to do with us.

• 12:26Adam Buxton?

  You have to download the app. You have to, first of all, you have to log in, set up an account and then download an app to receive a security code.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 12:35Adam Buxton?

  Scan the code with a QR symbol. And anyway, half an hour later, the film is starting and I made a few notes.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  This is fantastic.

• 12:45Adam Buxton?

  Uh, I'll share some of the notes. Some of them are just random notes. Some of them are more conversational.

• 12:50Speaker 01

  And what do you see these notes as being? Are they jumping off points?

• 12:52Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 12:53Speaker 01

  Or do we just hear you out?

• 12:54Adam Buxton?

  Either way.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Cause the film is locked. We can't really change it now, depending what the notes are.

• 12:58Adam Buxton?

  It's not those kinds of notes.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Okay, good.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  No, it's not.

• 13:01Adam Buxton?

  It's more sort of responses. No, I haven't said, uh, you missed a trick here. I think you should go and do something different. I've written down things like corralled shipment and Condoleezza Rice, which is one of the lines from the film when you're making curry.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Making curry, yeah. Reference to Dr. Carl Shipman. Didn't go for much actually in the, in the States.

• 13:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was, it was thank God for Condoleezza Rice in the States. That brought him back.

• 13:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:29Adam Buxton?

  But yeah, it's quite a deep cut comedy wise, that one as a reference.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:34Adam Buxton?

  And I was wondering, what are the Americans gonna make of Carl's?

• 13:38Speaker 02

  Nothing, nothing at the end.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  He doesn't, yeah, he, he never could quite crack the States.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  It's hard, it's hard. The British accent.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  Travel.

• 13:49Adam Buxton?

  I enjoyed this film so much. I don't think I expected it to be quite like that. It's like, it's got so much heart. I'd seen the short film.

• 14:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:01Adam Buxton?

  That you made in two thousand and seven?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  Yep, yep.

• 14:04Adam Buxton?

  And how did you come to make that one in the first place? I'm, I remember being deeply envious and impressed by your ambition to go off and make a short film back in those days.

• 14:15Speaker 01

  Well, you fill this question, Lord. I lo-, I loved your answer to this.

• 14:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were talking about this earlier on and um, when we'd been talking to Americans about the film and where the idea came from, we couldn't remember, or we just said like, it was just one of lots of ideas we had. And then I remembered recently.

• 14:31Speaker 01

  Brilliant new answer.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  And I don't know if this is true because it's so long ago.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  I don't think it works with the timeline, but this is a brilliant.

• 14:36Speaker 02

  No, I think it does work with the timeline.

• 14:38Speaker 01

  Not far off, brilliant answer though.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  Okay, so you've overhyped it now, but just before this, we were asked to do a private gig by Rick Edwards off of Radio Five and Etal. For some very rich people, he tutored the kids of these rich people and they wanted a private comedy gig in their house and on their estate in, I think near Exeter.

• 14:58Speaker 01

  I think near Exeter and I think I want to throw in the word billionaires.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Okay, so it was, he then assembled the lineup and it was me and Tim and Alex Horn and Rick and Joe Wilkinson. And we went down there and they put us up in a sort of, a, a small house on the estate and we had a golf buggy to kind of like, just maraud around on. And then we did this gig for them after dinner and there must have been like eight of them, the couple and then some friends. And they were just sat there in their, in their dining room, just sort of on, you know.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Drawing room, I'd say.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, drawing room, uh, on their dining chairs, drawing chairs.

• 15:28Speaker 01

  I don't want drawing chairs.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  And then uh, we'd sort of do like 10 minutes each and after a while, just I think because they're just very rich and they'd probably never been to a comedy show before, they'd sort of start going, oh, no, not him, can you get the other guy back up?

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Keep asking for Joe Wilkinson again.

• 15:44Speaker 02

  Asking for Joe.

• 15:45Speaker 01

  Joe, can we get the tall chap back?

• 15:49Adam Buxton?

  He's got funny bones.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 15:52Adam Buxton?

  Your stuff's a little bit undergraduate esoteric.

• 15:56Speaker 01

  He didn't live the trap with the poems.

• 15:58Speaker 02

  It was a bit. Not another song, is it? That, that kind of thing. And, um.

• 16:03Adam Buxton?

  When was this again?

• 16:04Speaker 02

  Well, this must have been around 2007. I honestly think it was just before we made the short, I really do. And so I think that might have been in our heads because we just found it such a funny and humiliating experience. It probably made its way into becoming one of our ideas.

• 16:19Adam Buxton?

  But you didn't get half a million quid.

• 16:21Speaker 02

  We didn't. We got paid pretty well.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  We didn't do badly. And at the end of it, they tipped as well.

• 16:26Speaker 02

  Did they?

• 16:27Speaker 01

  I, I mean, these guys, they had, I mean, if you.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  It was bonkers.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  I'm trying to get the email, but if you can get a gig in this mansion.

• 16:34Adam Buxton?

  Did you stay overnight there?

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were drinking brown velvets.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Brown velvets, yeah. We managed to, um, I think we stopped off at an off licence and bought a load of, um, lagers and, and bitters and things. And then when we got there, it was very much a case of, well, obviously you're gonna have champagne and, you know, so oil wheels backstage.

• 16:52Adam Buxton?

  And they were fans of yours already, were they? Or had they asked someone else just to get a line up together?

• 16:57Speaker 02

  They, Rick had been tutoring their child.

• 16:59Speaker 01

  I think it was a case of summon some comedy.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  And they said, uh, yeah, send for the clowns.

• 17:04Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 17:05Speaker 02

  Honestly, that's what it was. They didn't know us from Adam.

• 17:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:08Adam Buxton?

  Oh my god. And did they share with you what their favourite kind of comedy was? Did they make any references? Were they sort of saying like, you know who I really am? Michael McIntyre. His observations are absolutely spot on, aren't they?

• 17:23Speaker 01

  I think it's more sort of Noel Coward would have been the.

• 17:25Adam Buxton?

  Okay, yeah. Right. So they were quite a lot older, were they?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  I don't remember. I think actually, important part of the story, I think they were a very nice one there as well.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  They, well, it depends what you mean. They were very nice, but they were also, they didn't really understand the kind of audience and like comic relationship. So they just sort of start talking to you in the middle of, of like a bit, but not even heckling.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is true, actually. It was.

• 17:48Speaker 02

  Oh, I for beer, yeah? Just like, hang on. They're just, you know what I mean? Like, it wasn't rude. It was just like, oh, this is, this is really odd.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like one, one person at a drinks do happened to be on a stage.

• 17:59Adam Buxton?

  And were they sort of landed gentry or were they like, um, succession type billionaires?

• 18:05Speaker 01

  I think LGS, weren't they?

• 18:06Speaker 02

  It was more Downton Abbey than succession.

• 18:08Adam Buxton?

  Okay. No baseball case.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  It didn't feel like that new money.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  No, more tweedy.

• 18:13Adam Buxton?

  Wow. And is that the quintessential example of the private gig for you guys? Have you had other ones?

• 18:19Speaker 01

  That's the only private gig I've ever done.

• 18:20Speaker 02

  I think same, yeah.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Have you ever done a private gig?

• 18:23Adam Buxton?

  Well, I sort of did one by default. I went, I was in New York.

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Sorry, ours was by default.

• 18:30Adam Buxton?

  I didn't get paid for my one though. I was in New York and I was trying to, I was doing some podcasts. I guess it was 2014 or thereabouts. And it was half an excuse just to go on holiday a little bit and half I thought, well, while I'm here, I'll do some podcasts. I recorded with John Ronson and a few other people who were out there. And then I thought, oh, I'll book myself a few stand-up shows, a few gigs, because I had some stuff back then, you know, I thought, and I had a little portable projector that I would take with me. I just thought, I'll do some small shows and show my videos and read out some YouTube comments and introduce myself to an American crowd.

• 19:06Speaker 01

  I'm guessing this went well.

• 19:08Adam Buxton?

  Well, there was a couple of shows that were okay, but one of them at a venue called The Creek and The Cave, uh, which was across the bridge over in Long Island City. And it was a nice little venue. And I turned up there and set up my projector, sound checked, everything good. It was only a small room, like 50 people, seats laid out. And then I went off to the bar and I got talking to a British guy who was there, a guy called Mike, and he was from Manchester and, and he said, yeah, I'll come to see you actually. And I was like, oh, right. Okay, cool. And, and we got on well and we had a nice chat.

• 19:48Adam Buxton?

  And then I looked at my watch. I was like, shit, I'm on in like two minutes. I better get down there. So, so he's like, all right, yeah, I'll come with you. We go in there, no one there. So I looked at Mike and I said, oh, well, this is awkward. I guess my profile is not as big as it could be in the US. I'd only tweeted about the show about eight hours before, you know what I mean? That was the extent of the publicity. And I said, uh, well, I guess I better give you your money back. And he said, oh, you could do the show.

• 20:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you gotta do the show.

• 20:20Adam Buxton?

  I did the show.

• 20:21Speaker 01

  Of course you did the show.

• 20:22Adam Buxton?

  I did an hour, but it was very weird.

• 20:28Adam Buxton?

  The, uh, the sound guy felt sorry for me, so he came and, and doubled the audience.

• 20:33Speaker 02

  Oh, wow.

• 20:35Adam Buxton?

  And sat around.

• 20:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, I once did a gig with Alex Horn where there was two people in the audience and then we needed two volunteers.

• 20:46Adam Buxton?

  Was it fun?

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, honestly, if, if you, if you'd watched that gig, well, you wouldn't, there was no one there, but, uh, you wouldn't have known there was no one in the audience.

• 20:55Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 20:55Speaker 01

  Horn just, absolute pro.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  Doing the bit with the volunteers just to an empty room?

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Right.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  We had that, we had the sound man, Aspects was in the box.

• 21:03Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 21:03Speaker 01

  Yep. So the sound man's there. So the, you know, if a tree falls in a forest, you're good still. But yeah, Horn just doing it with complete commitment.

• 21:13Adam Buxton?

  It's like an art piece.

• 21:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:17Adam Buxton?

  One-on-one gigs, intimate experiences, especially musical intimate experiences. I'm segueing to a scene in the film that I want to talk to you about. But may I say at this point, how much I loved it, I don't know if I've made that clear yet. I loved this film. I'm sure it was helped by the fact that I know you both a little bit and I'm well disposed to you, so I wanted it to be good. But I really loved it. There was also the anxiety that it might not be good and then how awkward that would be. But it was lovely and

• 21:48Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 21:48Adam Buxton?

  And funny and the right length, one hour, 40 minutes.

• 21:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:54Adam Buxton?

  You don't want to go anywhere over that, but

• 21:56Speaker 02

  But that was, that was basically our, not only, but I would say the biggest editorial note was like, don't go over a hundred minutes. And I'm actually very glad that we didn't fight that because I think there's a cut of it that's two hours, 45.

• 22:09Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  Which is insane when you think about the finished film that we could have eked it out to that. But, but that cut, I think you

• 22:16Adam Buxton?

  Oh, did we watch that?

• 22:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were watching it and like, well, that's got to stay, that bit's got to

• 22:20Adam Buxton?

  What have you got, have you got subplots in there that you cut out?

• 22:23Speaker 01

  We've got scenes.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, there are, there are whole scenes, yeah.

• 22:26Speaker 01

  Whole scenes.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Not many of them though. It's more like just riffs and nonsense.

• 22:30Adam Buxton?

  What happens to extras in the streaming era? Like in the old days, all that stuff would turn up on the DVD. I mean, you still do DVDs, I guess, but the market's way down. And when you stream a film, like, do you get extras?

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Um, I don't think you do. I think like, uh, you do get blooper reels of like TV shows, don't you? They love that.

• 22:53Adam Buxton?

  Are you gonna put a blooper reel on the um DVD?

• 22:57Speaker 01

  I don't think we're very blooper-y. I think if it goes wrong, I think there's some shows where everyone just like creases up. And I think if it goes wrong in our one, we're just like a bit annoyed that that's gone wrong.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And it's also, I think it's also like the, you know, Griff, the director, just forcing a smile and looking at his watch.

• 23:13Adam Buxton?

  Exactly. You've got your underpaid crew going.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Eighteen days it took and there's, yeah, so there's really, there's, there's some things where you go, yeah, this is a complicated scene. That's taken longer than we thought. But I mean, if it's a case of Bazmos wetting himself about, you know, something that, a slip of the tongue. That doesn't get us anywhere, does it?

• 23:31Adam Buxton?

  I watched Being There with Peter Sellers the other day.

• 23:33Speaker 02

  Great film.

• 23:34Adam Buxton?

  And it's got a blooper reel at the end.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  Has it?

• 23:36Adam Buxton?

  Yes, I forgot. There's a whole montage over the credits of Peter Sellers cracking up. Maybe. But what a weird film to have a blooper reel at the end of.

• 23:47Speaker 02

  Remember that, yeah.

• 23:48Adam Buxton?

  Anyway. Wallace Island though, oh, I mean, it's got special effects, my favourite kinds of special effects, which are emotional pyrotechnics.

• 23:59Speaker 02

  Okay, I like that.

• 24:00Adam Buxton?

  And you can put that on the poster.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:03Adam Buxton?

  There's a wonderful scene in which your character and Carey Mulligan's character, so Herb and Nell are actually having a moment of reminiscence and getting on a little bit better than they have been. The atmosphere has thawed and they're kind of rekindling their musical connection.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:25Adam Buxton?

  And Tim, your character Charles, is sat there watching and, you know, obviously he's looking forward to his private one-on-one gig with this reunited duo. But suddenly, from nowhere, he's got a private show in the dining room.

• 24:41Adam Buxton?

  They're getting on well, they're back together again, the old magic is still there, they start playing and harmonizing. And the emotional special effects, close up on Tim Key's face. For genuine, non-ironic emotion at being overwhelmed with sort of everything, all the emotions, it's a massive overload. Him watching these people that he's invested so much love and and you know, it's tied up with his relationship with his ex and everything, it's all there. And it's really resonant as well because I think most people have had moments like that when they do see music performed at close quarters.

• 25:21Adam Buxton?

  And it is such an incredible experience, like it's like nothing else. And then if it's two people and they're harmonizing. Like harmonizing is a special magic human thing, isn't it?

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Well, do you know, the thing that, the thing that is quite interesting about that scene when we shot it. Is that no one had heard me and Carey singing together before.

• 25:41Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  So we'd kind of like practiced a little bit, we didn't have very long as we've sort of touched on. And we didn't have Carey for very long. And so we'd rehearsed a little bit in makeup, like a little bit in the makeup truck. But in quite a loosey goosey kind of like, you know, keep it, keep it fun way. And then just kind of got to set and just sort of did it. It just sort of came together in a really, really lovely, you know, happy, accidental way. That I think the fact that we, that we hadn't played together very much fitted with what it was needed in that moment, which is two people kind of who hadn't played together for like 10 years, sort of rediscovering something.

• 26:16Adam Buxton?

  Were you in the zone or were you nervous? Were you breaking it because you felt like you weren't sure it was gonna work?

• 26:22Speaker 02

  I mean, I think for the whole shoot, it was a combination of those two things. I think I'm obviously much more comfortable doing stuff with Tim, that's like comic stuff with Tim than say dramatic stuff with Carey Mulligan.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Wildly out of my comfort zone.

• 26:41Adam Buxton?

  How did she come to be involved? Was she someone you had worked with already?

• 26:45Speaker 02

  No, she, Tim, Tim got in touch with her.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  It was just a huge hail Mary where we wrote that character and then made a hit list of who we wanted to do it. She was at the top and I reached out to her and luckily she knew who we were and she said, I'd love to read it. And so she was on board pretty much immediately. We got, we got very lucky with her.

• 27:08Adam Buxton?

  And you knew she could sing?

• 27:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  From things like, um, Inside Lew and Davis and she, you know, she's singing in that.

• 27:14Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 27:15Speaker 02

  I, I felt confident she could do it. And, you know, she's sort of, I think because she's married to Marcus Mumford, she doesn't really see herself as that musical.

• 27:22Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 27:22Speaker 02

  But she's really good. Like she picked up all the tunes very quickly and sort of understood how the songs are put together. And if she hadn't been, then it would have been difficult, given the timeframe. But that scene you're talking about, we probably only had about three complete takes.

• 27:36Speaker 01

  And it was kind of a, uh, the, in terms of my, um, fantastic performance in it. It was all kind of, uh, quite real. It wasn't too much of a stretch. And actually the whole room was kind of like that because Griff hadn't, you know, seen them.

• 27:49Adam Buxton?

  Your director?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, the director. And then there's crew in there just sort of, you know, on chairs and things, holding booms and sort of round monitors. And so I think it was, uh, yeah, it's a scene that we've, we've talked about a lot in, in other interviews because I think it does sort of pop out as being quite emotional and it sort of was the, in some way, sort of the epicenter of the whole shoot, wasn't it? Like Tom says, that we didn't take ages doing that scene, but it's kind of, yeah, it's kind of, it's quite good value.

• 28:17Adam Buxton?

  Very good value. Your, your end reveal, which I won't spoil, but you've got a nice little narrative wrap up thing. It's very satisfying and I got quite emotional.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  Good.

• 28:28Adam Buxton?

  And, uh.

• 28:29Speaker 02

  Do you get emotional a lot?

• 28:31Adam Buxton?

  I mean, I do.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Do you?

• 28:32Adam Buxton?

  But.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  I've got to say, it was a right state watching Woman in Black.

• 28:35Speaker 02

  Was it?

• 28:39Speaker 01

  I think it's because his friend was in it.

• 28:44Adam Buxton?

  I do, I mean, I can get emotional. I'm, I, it's not that I'm totally unselective, but no, I did get emotional. And um, I just felt like, hooray, I wanna watch a film that's got some heart and that's actually about relationships. And also that it's about music as well. And also that it was very funny. Did you do a lot of improvising? Or are you sticking fairly close to your script?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Um, it's a bit of a mixture of the two. I think what we tend to do is write it, try and get it really funny in the writing.

• 29:15Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 29:15Speaker 01

  And then film that. And then after that, get to be a bit looser and do some takes where it's kind of goes a bit crazy. And, and also sometimes at the end of a scene, just carry on for a bit. And so the director wouldn't always say cut. I mean, sort of after about four or five days, actually, he was sort of saying cut a bit quicker, I guess.

• 29:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Are there any, are there any moments in the final cut that are moments that arose spontaneously?

• 29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, there's improv throughout the film, but there's a few, a couple of scenes which are like largely just stuff we were trying out there and then like, like things like, like looking at the boat timetable and things like that. Just this, you know, you can probably tell it's the stuff where it's just dialogue. It's just the kind of like, you know, there's a sort of, you could leave the camera running and we could try different things indefinitely. Those are the scenes where you get the sort of freest swing of the improv. But when it's like jokes around tennis serves, you can't really improv very much in that environment.

• 30:12Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. I felt like Carey Mulligan did a spontaneous laugh at one point.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  I, I think that sort of makes the film that stuff. When she arrives and then when their relationship starts to just warm up again.

• 30:24Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 01

  And there's suddenly a kind of a little gang of the three of us. And yeah, I'm being like a plonker and they're both kind of loving it. And then she's laughing uh, and, and you talked about this the other day where it, it sort of unlocks in Herb that he can sort of, he sort of notices that I'm harmless enough and quite fun. And so you do, and I think all of that comes from Carey's laughing and Carey's just sort of being, you know, so natural in the scenes.

• 30:52Speaker 02

  It's probably, I mean, she's such a good actor. It probably could well be acting.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  I wouldn't be able to call it.

• 30:58Speaker 02

  Rather than a real laugh.

• 31:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. We won't know.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:03Adam Buxton?

  It's all fake. Did you feel though, were you aware that you're acting, and this is not to disrespect both of your extraordinary and established acting talent?

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Well, do you know what? Just to take the pressure off you, so you don't feel bad, I'll ask him the question.

• 31:18Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 31:19Speaker 01

  Did, did you feel like it was a scandal that you were able to be on the screen with Carey Mulligan?

• 31:23Speaker 02

  It's an outrage. It shouldn't have happened. I don't know, I don't know why she hadn't noticed.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  I think right at the start, when we were like, when we had our hit list and we aimed high, and then it started to look like we might get Carey Mulligan. We knew if we didn't sort of up our game and try and act really, really well, we would look like an absolute disgrace. So it kind of just lifted the bar slightly.

• 31:49Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Like bringing in a very expensive new signing at a football club where the other people have to sort of fight for their place. Not that she was ever going to take one of our parts, but.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  She's Bruno Guimaraes and we had lots of Sean Longstaff.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's been said before and it'll be said again, Carey Mulligan is Bruno Guimaraes.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  Is it Sean Longstaff that I'm thinking of, is that his name?

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Uh, it's Matt Longstaff. There's brothers. I think Sean Longstaff is the guy who's still sort of, well, Adam will be able to tell us. What is the, what's the makeup of the Newcastle squad these days?

• 32:17Adam Buxton?

  All of the stuff you've just been saying for the last couple of minutes is literally like.

• 32:22Adam Buxton?

  Do you pick up any leading man tips from Carey?

• 32:24Speaker 01

  Brilliant.

• 32:24Adam Buxton?

  Like any kind of acting insights? You're thinking, oh, this is Hollywood game insights.

• 32:29Speaker 02

  See, no, uh, not, no. I mean, I, I think like, the really disarming thing about Carey is that she's really lovely and chatty and just kind of easy to work with. And then she'll just slip into being really amazing in a way that you go, oh, but my preparation is exactly the same. But I don't know if I back myself to be able to just sort of slip into it in that, in that way. Um, you know, she's not the kind of actor where you've got to call her Nell the whole time. Or, you know, she'll only sort of eat whatever the character eats, whatever, that sort of nonsense.

• 33:01Speaker 01

  Well, what I have heard is that, um, David Suchet dresses as Poirot to do his ADR.

• 33:06Adam Buxton?

  Really?

• 33:07Speaker 02

  Well, I told you that.

• 33:08Speaker 01

  That's, well, then I've, so I've still heard it. Have I not heard that?

• 33:11Speaker 02

  It's my anecdote.

• 33:12Speaker 01

  Well, I've, I've heard it and I'm just telling Adam that I've heard it. And actually, the dignified thing to do there would have been to say either nothing or wow.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  Okay, wow, like I haven't heard it before.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  It would have been helpful.

• 33:24Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 33:25Speaker 01

  Bearing in mind the amount of people who listen to this.

• 33:27Speaker 02

  Okay, I'll help you out. What's ADR?

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Oh, additional dialogue replacement.

• 33:31Speaker 02

  Recording.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Recording.

• 33:33Speaker 02

  Recording. Works both ways. Yeah.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. What would you replace additional dialogue?

• 33:39Speaker 02

  There'll be people who don't know what you mean.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Okay, right. Well, let's start again.

• 33:42Adam Buxton?

  Not listening to this podcast at all, especially now in, we're in a post, the rest is entertainment universe. Every corner of the entertainment industry is now intimately

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:52Adam Buxton?

  occupied by the average person.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  Absolutely. They've glued it all together, haven't they? They've sewn it up, if you like.

• 33:58Adam Buxton?

  There's no such thing as backstage anymore.

• 34:00Speaker 01

  Which podcast do you listen to?

• 34:02Adam Buxton?

  Well, I listen to that one.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:04Adam Buxton?

  And

• 34:05Speaker 01

  Got to keep on top of that one.

• 34:06Adam Buxton?

  What tends to happen is that depending on my guest, I will explore a lot of podcasts that they've been on and that will introduce me to other ones. Like I was listening to one made by a guy who calls himself Rick Roll. And

• 34:21Speaker 01

  Rick Roll? That's like that thing with Rick Astley, isn't it?

• 34:23Adam Buxton?

  Yes, exactly. I think maybe that's the point. Rick Roll Podcast. Or maybe he's Rich Roll. Yeah, he's not Rick Roll. That's what he's relying on the mistake to be made. Rich delves into all things wellness with some of the brightest and most forward-thinking paradigm-busting minds in health and fitness. You love paradigm busting, don't you?

• 34:45Speaker 01

  Oh, God, I'd love to go on that and promote the movie.

• 34:48Adam Buxton?

  I listen to him.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Do you know much about wellness?

• 34:50Speaker 02

  No, very little.

• 34:51Speaker 01

  Do you not? Well, look at the state of me.

• 34:52Adam Buxton?

  I mean,

• 34:53Speaker 01

  That is, well, that's a bit of a humble brag. Look at, look at, look at the state of him.

• 34:57Adam Buxton?

  My wife, in fact, said,

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, here we go.

• 35:00Adam Buxton?

  He's very handsome.

• 35:01Speaker 02

  There we are. Did she?

• 35:02Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 35:04Speaker 01

  There we are.

• 35:04Speaker 02

  This is great.

• 35:05Adam Buxton?

  What she didn't say, but I know she was thinking was like, he's not losing his hair at all.

• 35:10Speaker 01

  Oh, good. Let's see. Do you ever take that thing off?

• 35:12Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it's, it's just getting thin. It's not too bad. There's, there's some still there.

• 35:16Speaker 01

  There's some bits and bobs.

• 35:17Adam Buxton?

  There's that happening though.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, God.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Well, if it makes you feel better, there was a review of the film where someone said the way that, the way that they'd, they'd started thinning Herb's hair was a really effective way of showing he was sort of past his prime. Which is obviously a kick in the nuts because that happened.

• 35:37Adam Buxton?

  Fair enough. But anyway, I recommend Rich Roll. I enjoyed his conversation with Yuval Noah Harari. Do you know who I mean by?

• 35:44Speaker 02

  Love old Yuval.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  This man bought me Sapiens.

• 35:47Adam Buxton?

  Yes, pretty good.

• 35:49Speaker 01

  I've not read it. Not yet, no.

• 35:51Adam Buxton?

  Oh, it's good.

• 35:52Speaker 02

  Gotta read it.

• 35:52Speaker 01

  Not yet.

• 35:52Adam Buxton?

  It's a banger.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, not yet. But it's on my shelf. It's sort of, you know, loaded up. The shelf is like in order.

• 35:59Speaker 02

  You've got to get through the sports.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  Shut up. All I have just got, we've got through one.

• 36:04Speaker 02

  Have you?

• 36:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I just got through Pocket Money.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  Who's that?

• 36:07Speaker 01

  That's about snooker. And then I've also just got through a Brian Clough one.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, you've got to make space for Yuval Noah Harari. It's more important than a sports.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  Is it? What does he talk about in Sapiens?

• 36:16Speaker 02

  I mean, like, humans.

• 36:18Adam Buxton?

  His history of humanity.

• 36:19Speaker 02

  Where we come from, where we're going.

• 36:21Adam Buxton?

  Ah, it's big, big picture. Do you audiobook stuff, Tim?

• 36:26Speaker 01

  I've only audiobooked twice.

• 36:28Adam Buxton?

  Oh, really?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  Yep. I audiobooked Bob Mortimer.

• 36:31Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 36:32Speaker 01

  That's a decent one to audiobook.

• 36:33Adam Buxton?

  Definitely.

• 36:34Speaker 02

  Does he read it?

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:35Speaker 02

  Oh, that's nice.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, who do you think's reading it? Vic?

• 36:37Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 36:38Speaker 01

  And then I've audiobooked, you know, the actor. Pacino.

• 36:44Adam Buxton?

  Pacino, is that good?

• 36:45Speaker 02

  What is it? Cozy crime?

• 36:46Speaker 01

  It's not a cozy crime. It's autobiography, memoir.

• 36:48Speaker 02

  Oh, right.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And why don't you ask if he reads it?

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Does he read it?

• 36:52Adam Buxton?

  And he's not too.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  Of course he reads it. Well, you think Bob's reading that one?

• 36:57Adam Buxton?

  He's not too doddery, is he?

• 36:59Speaker 01

  No, he's not.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  He's just had a child. I saw an article about Pacino just becoming a father again, that's something like eighty-two.

• 37:07Speaker 01

  He's got Des O'Connor on.

• 37:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, and going, it's great. You know, I see the kid on Zoom sometimes. Don't say that, Al.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Well, hang on, why? Is he still working as well?

• 37:17Speaker 02

  I don't know what he's doing.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  I don't, I think eighty-two and a child and still working is the triple crown, isn't it?

• 37:22Speaker 02

  Wow. I mean, is he working? I don't know. I haven't seen him in.

• 37:25Adam Buxton?

  Plus, he's read his own audiobook.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  You, you read your own audiobook?

• 37:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I just finished it yesterday.

• 37:30Speaker 01

  Reading it out?

• 37:31Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  Oh, fantastic. Maybe I'll read that one.

• 37:34Adam Buxton?

  On audio?

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Because I think I read the other one. Yeah.

• 37:36Adam Buxton?

  This one's got music clips in it.

• 37:38Speaker 02

  Oh, you should listen to that.

• 37:39Speaker 01

  Oh, I'll listen to the clippies.

• 37:40Adam Buxton?

  But Yuval Noah Harari, though, I was listening to him talking about AI, which his new book is all about. And I generally avoid people talking about how doomed we all are because of AI.

• 37:55Adam Buxton?

  But he talks about it in a very interesting way. And in the course of listening to this podcast, I was alerted to a bit of software that I'd never heard of before, and it's a website called, or I don't know what it is, online tool called Notebook LM. And you can upload a piece of text or a PDF of a book, if you have one, and Notebook LM will munch it in five seconds. And then if you want, it'll spit out a podcast, an AI-generated podcast with two people talking about the book, as if it was a podcast.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Why have you invited us on?

• 38:33Adam Buxton?

  Well, exactly.

• 38:34Speaker 01

  Are you joking?

• 38:34Adam Buxton?

  No.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  And have you, have you, did you spit yours in?

• 38:37Adam Buxton?

  No, I spat yours in. You've got a new book.

• 38:42Speaker 01

  Did you spit mine in?

• 38:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  It would have been nice to be asked. It's nice to be asked before you spit me in.

• 38:50Adam Buxton?

  I checked, it says it makes a big play of saying, we don't share the data and we don't, and we don't teach the AI.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  I don't mind you spitting it in. And did it spit the podcast out?

• 39:00Adam Buxton?

  Uh, yep.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 39:02Adam Buxton?

  But can you, can you set up the book first?

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah, my book is called, uh, L A Baby.

• 39:07Adam Buxton?

  Right, which it didn't quite understand from the PDF.

• 39:10Speaker 01

  Didn't it say La Baby?

• 39:11Adam Buxton?

  It called it Leaving London or something like that.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, the first poem is called So Long London.

• 39:17Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. I'll tell you, that's because, if you really wanna know, that's because Emily Juniper, who designs the book, she has two files and the cover of the book is on a separate file. So what your idiot has done is, uh, is added two and two and made five, I'm afraid, and called the book the name of the first poem, So Long London. Anyway, my book is about me going to live in LA.

• 39:41Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 39:42Speaker 01

  For, uh, three months at the end of last year. And it's me kind of, um, out there, just sort of a fish out of water tale, I suppose, yeah, like a, a alien in LA.

• 39:53Adam Buxton?

  And you're working on a production that is undisclosed in the book, but are you allowed to say what it is now?

• 39:57Speaker 01

  It's disclosed in real life, yeah. It's, it's, it's called The Paper and it's like a, uh, a sitcom by the chaps who made, you know, The Office?

• 40:05Adam Buxton?

  Uh-huh.

• 40:08Adam Buxton?

  The American office. It's not Gervais in LA.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  I don't think it's Gervais in LA. I think Gervais is much more Hampstead, isn't it? Um, so yeah, it's, it's, but you don't really see much about that, that, the, me, well, it's sort of an irrelevance. That's in the background. It's me just sort of plodding around and trying to work out how to live in LA.

• 40:26Speaker 02

  What the AIs.

• 40:28Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, good point. Yeah. I've done enough there.

• 40:30Adam Buxton?

  Here's the podcast. Uh, here's how it starts.

• 40:36Speaker 03

  Now you sent us Tim Key's book, So Long London, and we're diving straight into his experiences, uh, as an Englishman, working on a show out in Los Angeles.

• 40:44Speaker 04

  Yeah. And what's great is the way he shares it, isn't it? It's not just prose.

• 40:47Speaker 03

  No, exactly. It's like through these quick little anecdotes, bits of poetry, even lists and like overheard chats.

• 40:54Adam Buxton?

  This was generated in 10 seconds, about five seconds after it had ingested the PDF.

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Oh, we're doomed. We're done for.

• 41:00Adam Buxton?

  Well, I don't know if we're doomed because it's not an interesting.

• 41:03Speaker 02

  It's just punditry though, isn't it?

• 41:05Adam Buxton?

  It's a boring podcast and it's doesn't really, it doesn't pick up on what's good about the book or your work.

• 41:11Speaker 01

  I'm sure it's, I'm sure.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  Or does it pick up what's bad about the book?

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Pardon me? There's nothing bad about the book.

• 41:16Adam Buxton?

  Now, I wonder if it makes sense for you to read out the poem and then hear what they have to say about it.

• 41:21Speaker 01

  I'd love to do that. Have you got the book? Oh, I think I might. I have the book with me.

• 41:26Adam Buxton?

  It is called.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Oh, is it a poem?

• 41:30Adam Buxton?

  No, it's just a sort of encounter.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Let's find this.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  But that's the problem, isn't it? It's taking you longer to find it than it's the AI.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 41:39Adam Buxton?

  Everyone's an actor. Page 91.

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Love that. Got it. Okay. The barmaid asked me what I was writing. Poems. She immediately looked bored as fuck, like a light had gone out, started fussing over some other barfly. Sometime later she reappeared, asked if it wanted more Pilsner. Screenplay, I said. I meant screenplay. And she stopped in her tracks, hovered. She had on denim shorts with what looked like rivets drilled into the pockets. We stared at one another for 45 seconds before she began to move away once more. You can be in it, I said, and she sat herself down on the stool next to me immediately. What's the role anyway? Oh, you'll be the lead. I covered my insipid poetry up with the nearest charcuterie board.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  She smiled. I must say, facially, she didn't look a million miles away from our own Melinda Messenger. Clever boy writing a screenplay like that, she said, removing her baseball cap and signaling for another barmaid to fix her a Jim Beam neat.

• 42:41Adam Buxton?

  This is what the AI podcast says about that section. It's around here.

• 42:48Speaker 03

  Then the barmaid encounter, his slightly desperate plore, claiming he's writing a screenplay.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  You can be in it. You be the lead.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  Tim, it's awkward, but kind of charming, isn't it? A classic move.

• 43:00Speaker 04

  Hilarious, though. Shows that performative thing again, especially in a city where screenplay is like a magic word. Her whole attitude changes.

• 43:07Speaker 03

  Speaks volumes about the, you know, perceived glamour of the industry.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  Definitely, and reinforces that recurring idea.

• 43:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:15Speaker 04

  Everyone's an actor. Even the sound guy has an American accent.

• 43:18Speaker 03

  It just feels like acting or the pursuit of it is woven into the fabric of LA life.

• 43:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, that.

• 43:24Adam Buxton?

  I mean, it's not deep stuff.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  But it's crazy stuff.

• 43:27Adam Buxton?

  I get it.

• 43:27Speaker 01

  What is happening?

• 43:28Adam Buxton?

  But it makes sense. It has the form. That's what AI is very, very good at and getting better at every day. At approximating and recreating the form of something really beautifully, like the rhythm of it, even there's even a laugh in there. The kind of voices.

• 43:45Speaker 02

  Fascinating because they obviously they've identified which bits like, you know, where where it's trying to be funny.

• 43:52Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 43:52Speaker 02

  Which is amazing.

• 43:53Speaker 01

  I can't handle it. I I'm shaken.

• 43:55Adam Buxton?

  But it's boring bollocks, like.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  Well, no, that that's your words. They enjoyed the book.

• 44:07Adam Buxton?

  But they, you know.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Do you think they listen to? Do you think they've listened to this podcast? You know, when they use their 10 seconds? Are they going throughout the whole of the internet and getting all of the podcasts that have ever been po- podcasted?

• 44:19Adam Buxton?

  I would imagine so. Yeah, yeah.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  They're thorough.

• 44:22Adam Buxton?

  They are munching.

• 44:23Speaker 01

  I don't know what is happening.

• 44:25Adam Buxton?

  But you know what? They don't. But they don't have. There's no jingles. There's no dog walks in the countryside. There's none of.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  No, no, there's no, there's no humanity.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  I would have thought jingles, they'll soon be able to corner the market on that.

• 44:37Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, I'm sure. No, definitely. I'm not saying they couldn't do it.

• 44:40Speaker 01

  I think if you were to prompt these units to say, okay, make a podcast in the style of Adam Buxton. And he's interviewing David Tennant, they would say, well, here you go, mate. And then even if you did have to say, come on, let's have some jingles in there. I think you'd you'd have the podcast, wouldn't you?

• 44:58Adam Buxton?

  Yes, but I hope people would notice that it was slightly worse. I think some people wouldn't. Some people would be fine like.

• 45:07Speaker 01

  Are you crying?

• 45:07Adam Buxton?

  A bit. I'm getting emotional again.

• 45:13Speaker 01

  Well, have you had Tennant on?

• 45:14Adam Buxton?

  It would be a totally possible.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  I'd get Tennant in now just to sort of get him done.

• 45:17Adam Buxton?

  But I had another taste of this the other day when my editor book editor said, look, there's another autobiography by you on Amazon. In fact, there's two. They look as if they've been generated by AI. Or at least someone has asked AI to generate one.

• 45:33Speaker 02

  The Battle of Wallace Island on Amazon, actually.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  Are there?

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, like AI, AI books.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Are you joking?

• 45:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I saw that, yeah.

• 45:39Adam Buxton?

  And they're just pamphlets. All it does is it takes anything that, I guess they look at the numbers of the podcast or whatever and they go, oh yeah, some morons might buy this. And it's a sort of 20 page pamphlet with an AI generated picture of someone that is supposed to look like me on the front. Yeah, I did buy it.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Have you got it here?

• 45:57Adam Buxton?

  Uh, the green thing? Yeah.

• 46:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 46:01Speaker 01

  Oh my God. Oh, I'll tell you what, you'd bite their hand off to have that photo, wouldn't you?

• 46:05Adam Buxton?

  Well, exactly. I look like the AI has made me look like Bradley Cooper.

• 46:09Speaker 02

  It really has.

• 46:10Speaker 01

  Hang on, how much are you paying this AI?

• 46:14Adam Buxton?

  And it's, well, that's the thing is that it's all superficially because AI, unless you ask it to be mean, defaults to positivity and politeness. And so as far as I can tell in there, what you've got is just a mulch of bits of interviews I've done and things that I've written or whatever. And so it's got a few accurate facts, but it's also got a lot of quotes and almost all the quotes are made up. Like I definitely didn't say them, but they are certainly the kind of things that I might say. But the way it does them, it's, it sounds like someone taking the piss out of me. It sounds like it's been written by someone that hates me.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  Is it worth me just reading?

• 46:57Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, have a go.

• 46:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay. Daily routines and quirky family moments. This'll be the reefer, won't it? Okay, let's see. Life, life, life at the Buxton household revolves around simple pleasures. School runs, meal prep and endless dog walks. Rosie, the family dog, is practically a fourth child and according to Adam, the only one who truly appreciates his jokes. Rosie's my biggest fan, he says. She doesn't roll her eyes when I do my posh man ordering a kebab bit for the hundredth time.

• 47:25Adam Buxton?

  Where's that from? I've never done posh man ordering a kebab.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  We'll do it now.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, let's hear it.

• 47:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, um, could I have a, like, I had a very spicy thing when I was in Morocco. I was wondering if you could do that or if like, um, you know, the special kind of herbs. I don't want to say the name of the herbs because I might get the pronunciation wrong and I don't want to be offensive.

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Be the Turkish shirkabab.

• 47:54Speaker 02

  You'll have to get AI to do that.

• 47:56Adam Buxton?

  So that's my kebab, man. That's posh man ordering a kebab.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Okay. Family routines are peppered with Buxton-style quirks. Weekend mornings might involve pancake-making disasters.

• 48:05Adam Buxton?

  I mean.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Impropiety karaoke sessions or debates about which Star Wars character would make the best babysitter.

• 48:10Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 48:11Speaker 01

  It's obviously Chewbacca, Adam insists.

• 48:13Adam Buxton?

  Oh my god.

• 48:14Speaker 02

  Is that, have you insisted?

• 48:15Adam Buxton?

  No, no, no debates about Star Wars characters.

• 48:19Speaker 02

  I can imagine it.

• 48:20Adam Buxton?

  But you can imagine it and I have written similar sorts of things.

• 48:24Speaker 02

  So how does this work? Like, could you sue them? Could you say that's?

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Who are you suing? You're suing, you're suing what? You're suing, you're suing?

• 48:30Adam Buxton?

  No, because there is a human intelligence attached to it somewhere along the line.

• 48:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, but, but, well, someone's making money. If they're selling it, the money's not going to a computer to do nothing with it.

• 48:39Adam Buxton?

  I don't think so.

• 48:40Speaker 01

  It's what it says. It's by John Lucas Whitehead.

• 48:42Adam Buxton?

  Yes, who has written other titles as well, because I had about six hours of being consumed by paranoia that it wasn't AI, that it was actually a kind of series of books of takedowns, because there's another one about Miranda Hart and, um.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  By this same person?

• 49:01Adam Buxton?

  By the same person. I suddenly thought, maybe this is someone who is writing kind of spoof profiles, a little bit like Craig Brown does in Private Eye. Writes them in the voice of someone, but actually they're parodies. It's like, this is the kind of shit that Adam Buxton would say.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  It's actually called dropping out of Warwick.

• 49:19Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, which I did.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, but what is in the book?

• 49:23Adam Buxton?

  I know. It was so weird. I had to, we have, um.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Why do you drop out of Warwick? Actually, don't worry about that. I'll read this.

• 49:35Adam Buxton?

  I had to ring up my agent, who is also your agent, Tim.

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:38Adam Buxton?

  Ah, just to remind you.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  Your old Chig.

• 49:40Adam Buxton?

  And I said, look, I've got this book, it's slightly freaking me out. At first I thought it was AI, but now I'm thinking that it's someone that hates me and they're writing a parody of me and all the stupid things I say. Is there anything we can do about it? And she said, oh, you've gone mad.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  Well, you haven't gone that mad because the book exists.

• 49:58Adam Buxton?

  The book exists, I'm not fussed though, it's not the, the fact that it exists. It's like if someone wants to waste their time doing that, then good luck to them, you know what I mean?

• 50:05Speaker 01

  They've wasted five seconds.

• 50:06Speaker 02

  I do know what you mean, but I sort of feel like that, that I guess the way that, you know, the fight back is that people is, people say that AI can't have access to the stuff that

• 50:16Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 50:16Speaker 02

  I've written or recorded because no one's asked me or, or paid me anything.

• 50:21Adam Buxton?

  Absolutely. Well, that horse has bolted. I mean, the stuff.

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Is that, is that all over?

• 50:24Adam Buxton?

  Well, all the old stuff, I don't think you can retrospectively take all that stuff down and remove it from the algorithms or whatever, but now like my new book, there's a whole thing that says none of this can be used to train AI and all that sort of stuff. So, so going forward, you can do.

• 50:40Speaker 01

  Should I have put that in my thing?

• 50:41Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, it should be in there.

• 50:43Speaker 01

  It's not too late, this goes to print next Wednesday.

• 50:45Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, you should, uh, make sure that's.

• 50:47Speaker 02

  Just a stamp.

• 50:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:48Adam Buxton?

  Part of the contract.

• 50:49Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, I'll look into that.

• 50:51Adam Buxton?

  And it's within the last year, that particular skill that the AI has to recreate voices and stuff has got amazingly good. Like way, way better. This time last year, like I'll give you, um, this

• 51:07Adam Buxton?

  site, and I won't say what the name of the site is, but there's lots of celebrity AI generating

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Oh, are there?

• 51:14Adam Buxton?

  Sites around and you.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  Oh, well, you're not going to give us the name just because you don't want to give them the, um, oxygen of publicity?

• 51:20Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 51:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Arseholes.

• 51:22Adam Buxton?

  But.

• 51:24Speaker 01

  Do you not think?

• 51:25Speaker 02

  What, the nerds?

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, bloody nerds. I knew they'd win in the end. They played the long game, didn't they, the nerds?

• 51:33Speaker 01

  Nerds didn't stand a chance in the time of Cadenant, did they?

• 51:37Speaker 02

  No. I don't think you heard much of them then.

• 51:40Speaker 01

  No, they wouldn't have been nerds.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  The hunters and the gatherers, it wasn't really the nerds.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Evolution has brought us nerds. You're sort of, you're not million miles away from being a nerd, are you, Adam?

• 51:48Adam Buxton?

  Me, massive nerd.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 51:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:50Adam Buxton?

  I mean, I do feel partly responsible for all this. I kind of embrace, I embrace all this stuff. I love technology, you know, and I am sort of fascinated by the possibilities of it.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  I bet this has been recorded, has it?

• 52:05Adam Buxton?

  Uh, okay, generating, you have to see if you can spot who this is chatting about, you guys.

• 52:12Speaker 01

  Chatting about us? This is amazing. What's he, what has this nerd come up with here?

• 52:18Speaker 05

  It's excited to see the Ballad of Wallace Island. Love Tom Basden. Very funny, handsome man. Tim Key, he's a crazy guy. I love those poems. Smart guy. Not a dummy.

• 52:34Adam Buxton?

  Not bad.

• 52:35Speaker 02

  It's not bad at all. It's not bad at all.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Can you make him say some more?

• 52:39Adam Buxton?

  Sure, what do you want him to say?

• 52:40Speaker 01

  Anything, just, you know, go a bit deeper. That is incredible.

• 52:43Speaker 02

  What about you?

• 52:44Speaker 01

  About us both.

• 52:45Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 52:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. That's why, what did you type in?

• 52:49Adam Buxton?

  Typed in that.

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Oh, you typed in?

• 52:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:51Speaker 02

  Get Trump to have a go.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Oh, you had to type in the words.

• 52:53Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, I typed in the words.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Oh, I thought that was his thought.

• 52:56Adam Buxton?

  No, that was, I didn't just say.

• 52:57Speaker 02

  You typed in those exact words.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  I typed in those.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  Oh, that's less fun.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  It was well scripted, it was good.

• 53:02Adam Buxton?

  Thank you very much.

• 53:02Speaker 02

  He pronounced my name right, which most Americans don't manage.

• 53:05Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. Good on him.

• 53:08Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 53:09Speaker 01

  But you could use those same words and make a different person say it.

• 53:11Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 53:12Speaker 01

  Uh, okay, who do we want?

• 53:15Speaker 02

  Um, I, I think, why don't you go, why don't you go more niche and see if he's, I don't know who it is, like.

• 53:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, like, um.

• 53:22Speaker 02

  Well, don't tell you who, but like, you know.

• 53:24Speaker 01

  Oh, right, we're gonna ask him to go niche.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, go niche.

• 53:27Speaker 01

  I want him to do Peggy from Heidi I.

• 53:28Adam Buxton?

  Okay, well, these are the same words, these are the same words but different guy. And it's interesting, the selection of people.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Oh, there's a dropdown menu?

• 53:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, and, and all the people on the menu are. Internet, they're they're sort of massive personalities, particularly on the internet. And a lot of them are, I would say, relatively controversial, or at least have a controversial aspect to them. So here's another one, saying the same thing.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 53:54Speaker 06

  I'm excited to see the Ballad of Wallace Island. Love Tom Basden, very funny handsome man.

• 53:59Speaker 02

  This is Jordan B Peterson.

• 54:00Speaker 06

  Tim Key, he's a crazy guy. I love those poems. Smart guy, not a dummy.

• 54:07Adam Buxton?

  Funnily enough, the same words sound quite appropriate for.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  They really do. Go on the drop down one more time.

• 54:13Adam Buxton?

  All right, one more.

• 54:15Speaker 02

  So you want like sort of Reg Holsworth from Coronation Street, don't you?

• 54:18Adam Buxton?

  They don't have Reg Holsworth.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  You want Laura Batty, that's what you want.

• 54:22Adam Buxton?

  Uh, they don't even have Melinda Messenger.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 54:24Speaker 01

  No.

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Well, they've got a lot of catching up to do.

• 54:26Adam Buxton?

  One more.

• 54:28Speaker 05

  I'm excited to see the Ballad of Wallace Island. Love Tom Basden.

• 54:31Speaker 02

  Ah.

• 54:32Speaker 05

  Very funny, handsome man. Tim Key, he's a crazy guy. I love those poems. Smart guy, not a dummy.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  Um, I don't know who that is.

• 54:42Adam Buxton?

  Rogan.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Oh, that's Rogues.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Ah, you see, I've never listened to that.

• 54:46Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 54:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it's big, isn't it? I gather.

• 54:48Adam Buxton?

  It's the biggest.

• 54:49Speaker 02

  It's it. Yeah, that's calling for you.

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is crazy.

• 54:53Adam Buxton?

  I mean, it's nuts, isn't it? Speaking of Trump, did you guys watch the Zelensky conference?

• 55:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was tough.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:02Speaker 01

  That was really hard to watch.

• 55:03Adam Buxton?

  Did you have any kind of comedic response to that? Did you sort of think like?

• 55:08Speaker 01

  I I just, it's just so crazy to watch it, just like they had a stooge in there, just pointing at Zelensky and saying, where's your suit? And it's like such a mad thing to stage manage that we'll we'll soften him up with this guy talking about his suit.

• 55:25Speaker 02

  I guess the thing is though, because Trump's sort of from the world of business, a certain kind of business, he's basically thought this is like when you give an employee a dressing down for not respecting the boss enough, or sort of wearing trainers to the office when they should be wearing their smart shoes. And so he's just thought, well, that's what this meeting is, and we're going to do one of them. But obviously, most people watching it don't think it's that kind of meeting at all.

• 55:48Adam Buxton?

  Yes, and it was. It was like a scene from The Apprentice.

• 55:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:53Adam Buxton?

  And that's how he thinks about it because it was so extended. Normally those things are so cursory and it's just like smile for the cameras. Then you go and you have the actual chat behind the scenes.

• 56:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:03Adam Buxton?

  But yes.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  It's also just quite extraordinary to see like a grown up telling off another grown up, like in any, in any capacity.

• 56:09Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  You just don't really see that.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  You really don't.

• 56:12Speaker 02

  No.

• 56:13Speaker 01

  When was the last time you got told off?

• 56:15Adam Buxton?

  Good question.

• 56:16Speaker 01

  That's decent, isn't it?

• 56:17Adam Buxton?

  That's one of my, that's on my list of emergency questions.

• 56:20Speaker 02

  Is it?

• 56:20Speaker 01

  Is it really?

• 56:20Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  When was the last time you got told off?

• 56:22Adam Buxton?

  Yep.

• 56:23Speaker 02

  I think I got told off for cycling on the heath on a path that isn't a designated cycling path. Does that count?

• 56:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course it does.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:31Speaker 01

  Because it's still being told off as an adult.

• 56:33Adam Buxton?

  What was your response?

• 56:34Speaker 01

  Um, sorry, sorry.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, sorry, sorry. And then carrying on as soon as.

• 56:38Adam Buxton?

  Not fuck you.

• 56:39Speaker 02

  I, that's, I did try that once and then I felt awful and it obviously escalated it.

• 56:44Adam Buxton?

  You always feel awful after a fuck.

• 56:45Speaker 02

  I don't, I, yeah, I, you have to be a certain kind of personality to pull that off.

• 56:49Adam Buxton?

  How would you describe that personality?

• 56:50Speaker 01

  It's, it's not far off.

• 56:54Speaker 02

  I think in a car, I've sort of, I've got it in me in a car.

• 56:57Adam Buxton?

  Here we go.

• 56:57Speaker 01

  A lot of people. Well, that's different. Everyone's got it in them in a car.

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, why is it different though?

• 57:01Speaker 01

  I don't know. I guess because they've got their shell.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 57:05Speaker 01

  Pussy. You're a pussy maybe.

• 57:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, what do you think?

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Well, possibly. I don't know. You tell me.

• 57:10Adam Buxton?

  How about you, Tim? When was the last time you were told off?

• 57:12Speaker 01

  Told off. Oh God. I think I got told off by a taxi driver when I was riding my Lime bike erratically. And, and actually he then, he started a bit of a kind of, you know, I think he made it his business to sort of track me for a bit.

• 57:27Adam Buxton?

  Did he?

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:28Adam Buxton?

  Why? Because you were cheeky with him?

• 57:31Speaker 01

  I hate to say it, but I think I smiled.

• 57:36Speaker 01

  I didn't wink, but I did, I did, I think.

• 57:37Speaker 02

  But you smiled in a, in a kind of like fuck you way?

• 57:40Speaker 01

  In a kind of like.

• 57:41Adam Buxton?

  I don't care.

• 57:42Speaker 01

  Whatever.

• 57:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 57:43Speaker 01

  I don't think I did anything. The thing was, it started and I, I think I don't, I didn't do anything wrong. After that, some of the stuff I, I did, I think was slightly wrong.

• 57:53Speaker 01

  When was the last time you got, um?

• 57:54Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, this morning.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  Was it?

• 57:56Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, on the bike.

• 57:58Speaker 01

  Really?

• 57:58Adam Buxton?

  I think it happens so often because there's such a lot of animosity.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  We were all on our bikes.

• 58:03Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 58:03Speaker 01

  We were all on our bikes in our stories.

• 58:05Adam Buxton?

  Because there's a load of terrible cyclists, it should be said, that are very dangerous and don't respect other road users. And that is stressful if you're in a car and you nearly kill a cyclist. I, I get that. But also, sometimes you get people in cars who see someone like me, it's like a sort of silly middle-aged bloke with a beard and a high vis on, and they think, oh, this guy's not gonna kill me if I just lean out the window and yell abuse at him for getting too close to my car. So that's what happened this morning.

• 58:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:33Adam Buxton?

  This person who just sort of was just randomly yelling something I couldn't quite understand, and then pulled up next to them at the lights, I was like, what? What's your problem? And they were like, you're getting too close to my car! Too close to my car! I could have killed you! And I was like, ah.

• 58:47Speaker 01

  At least, at least it wasn't about the podcast.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  You didn't grow Ruth Jones enough!

• 58:58Adam Buxton?

  Ruth Jones?

• 59:02Adam Buxton?

  When are you gonna get Ruth Jones on?

• 59:07Speaker 01

  Mackenzie! Mackenzie Grant, when are you getting him?

• 59:13Adam Buxton?

  The Detectress is amazing!

• 59:15Speaker 01

  Get her from the office!

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Have you had, have you had Mackenzie?

• 59:21Adam Buxton?

  No.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  He'd be fantastic.

• 59:23Adam Buxton?

  He would be good.

• 59:23Speaker 01

  Oh, brilliant.

• 59:24Adam Buxton?

  Well, if he's listening, you're welcome.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, please, please come on, Mackenzie.

• 59:28Adam Buxton?

  I tell you one thing I want to know about you guys is, will there be more Tim Key's Late Night Poetry Programme?

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, there will.

• 59:37Adam Buxton?

  Will there?

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, there's been some movement in that direction.

• 59:40Adam Buxton?

  Good.

• 59:41Speaker 01

  Maybe like next, start of next year?

• 59:44Adam Buxton?

  Really?

• 59:44Speaker 01

  I need to write it.

• 59:45Adam Buxton?

  Have you not written any of it?

• 59:46Speaker 01

  This could be a real case of, um, comeback AI always forgiven.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  I mean, you know, I don't have a bad word to say about it.

• 59:55Adam Buxton?

  And that would be for Radio Four again, would it?

• 59:57Speaker 01

  That would be for Radio Four, and I believe that would be for Radio Four, uh, in, late at night. Because the last series, we had, we did it at tea time.

• 1:00:04Adam Buxton?

  Did you?

• 1:00:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were keen to do it at tea time and, um, but I quite like it when it's sort of, you know, shuffled away into the, yeah, naughty.

• 1:00:11Adam Buxton?

  Would you swear?

• 1:00:13Speaker 02

  They don't love that on Radio Four.

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  But they don't mind a bit of shit bags or something like that. They're okay with that.

• 1:00:18Speaker 02

  Quite cute swearing.

• 1:00:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, they don't mind a bit of that, but they don't, they don't really like the old C-bomb, ideally.

• 1:00:25Speaker 01

  Well, James Nocti did it, didn't he?

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, he did, he did.

• 1:00:30Adam Buxton?

  I've had some very happy times listening to those compilations of broadcasters accidentally saying the C-word.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  What's your favourite one? Victoria Derbyshire's is pretty extraordinary.

• 1:00:38Adam Buxton?

  Victoria Derbyshire.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Which one's that?

• 1:00:39Adam Buxton?

  That's the best one. Let's see if we can find that.

• 1:00:43Speaker 02

  Did she, someone says it twice, don't they?

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  Uh, I think Nicky Campbell has a couple of goes at it.

• 1:00:49Speaker 05

  You say that, that the man that you're backing, Jeremy Cunt, I'm so sorry, Jeremy Hunt. I've never said that before in my life. It's usually men who say that, so I really, really want to apologize. I'm sorry.

• 1:01:00Adam Buxton?

  She really dwells on it.

• 1:01:01Speaker 02

  I know. By the time you get to it, it's usually men who say it. It's like, no, no, no, just say sorry, just say sorry and move on. Don't do punditry on, on what just just happened.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  Oh dear. But your career flashes before your eyes, I guess, if you're a newsreader and that happens.

• 1:01:19Speaker 01

  I'm surprised it doesn't happen more often. I mean, John Inverdale's is really good. Have you heard his one?

• 1:01:23Adam Buxton?

  I don't know.

• 1:01:24Speaker 01

  John Inverdale's is absolutely fantastic.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know that one.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  You do know that one.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  Do I?

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is world class. It's gonna all come flooding back.

• 1:01:32Speaker 05

  You know, you get wet and you muck it out and it's hard work, but through all of that, you know, it, it's a, it's a way of life that most of them wouldn't swap. A lot of people go off and do other things, they don't come back to it. Okay, this is looking at it through rose cunted, uh, rose, rose tinted glasses from the past.

• 1:01:49Speaker 01

  Apologise there for a slip of the tongue.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  That's extraordinary.

• 1:01:55Speaker 02

  Oh dear.

• 1:01:56Speaker 01

  You must have heard that one.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  I haven't, I haven't. That's fantastic.

• 1:02:00Adam Buxton?

  How's he got there?

• 1:02:01Speaker 01

  Because he's looking at a guy and thinking, this guy's a cunt.

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  What is this cunt talking about? Shut up, you stupid cunt.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  How's he got there? It's pretty basic stuff.

• 1:02:32Adam Buxton?

  I'd never heard that one before.

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:38Adam Buxton?

  That's amazing.

• 1:02:45Speaker 05

  Wait. This is an ad for Squarespace.

• 1:02:49Speaker 05

  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. 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.

• 1:03:34Speaker 05

  That's right, the 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? Shut up, Steve. But here's the thing, anyone listening to this can start a free trial right now at Squarespace.com/boxton 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 BOXTON at checkout. Right, well, maybe I'll visit Squarespace.com/boxton 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.

• 1:04:09Speaker 04

  Back to more depressing matters on Newsweek.

• 1:04:13Adam Buxton?

  Continue.

• 1:04:14Speaker 03

  So for you, our listener, thinking about Key's experience, what does it ultimately say about chasing creative dreams in a place like Hollywood?

• 1:04:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, does that whole idea of meritocracy, the cream rising, really hold up there? Shh, shut up.

• 1:04:40Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcasts. Tim Key and Tom Basden there with a bit of John Invadale. Beautiful. I've put a link to that clip in the description of today's podcast, where you will find lots of other useful links, link to my book, I Love You Biden, if you know, I put a book out. It's a hilarious and heartwarming memoir. There's also a link to the original short film that Tim and Tom made back in 2007. The one and only Herb Maguire plays Wallace Island, if you want to check out where it all came from. No Carey Mulligan in that one, though. The film, The Ballad of Wallace Island, is out this week

• 1:05:23Adam Buxton?

  as I speak, on the 30th of May, 2025. See it at the movies. You've also got links to Tim's books, the new one, L.A. Baby, which is out in July. He's going to be on tour, doing a few book-related shows where he goes on stage and chats to people, kind of the way he did with me last year. Haven't been invited this time round. Well, I don't think he's playing in Norwich. But anyway, you can see details of where he is playing by clicking the link in the description, which will take you to my website. And there you will also find an excellent episode of Tim Key's Late Night Poetry Program, Science,

• 1:06:05Adam Buxton?

  it was called, from 2014, also featuring Diane Morgan. And there's other interesting bits and pieces there to peruse. Thank you so much to Tim and Tom for making the time. It was lovely to see them both. Thanks also to everyone who came along to the Intelligence Squared event at the Union Chapel last week. It was great, lovely and full.

• 1:06:30Adam Buxton?

  Catlin Moran was a wonderful host. We had a really good talk. I was expecting to show some videos that night and I'd spent a few days putting stuff together, only to arrive at the venue and discover that I'd got the wrong end of the stick and actually there was no screen. Entirely my fault, but actually in the end it didn't matter. Catlin and I had a really good talk, went to some stupid places, some more serious places, and then I got to meet some of you afterwards at the book signing, which I really enjoyed. Thank you very much to everyone who came along that night, asked questions, bought books and said kind things.

• 1:07:11Adam Buxton?

  Much appreciated. I was very nervous about that evening. It was the first big live thing that I'd done related to the book, but I really enjoyed it. Got another talk coming up this week in fact, with friend of the podcast Samira Ahmed, on Tuesday the 27th, at the Hay Festival in Hay-on-Y. So, I don't know, if you're over that way, do come along. Our session is at 4pm and I guess it'll last about an hour or something. I hope to see some of you there. But there'll be other book-related shows this year, I'll let you know about them as they come along. But I'm also on a comedy

• 1:07:53Adam Buxton?

  bill back at the Union Chapel on Monday, I think it is, July the 21st. And that's a good bill. John Robins is emceeing, Ashling B is going to be there, Rialena, Mike Wozniak, and I think more people to be confirmed. Anyway, I'm part of that line-up, possibly even headlining. Link in the description for tickets. Lots of activity, I apologize if I'm overloading you. If you wish to be kept abreast of some of these things, then occasionally I'll send out a newsletter which you can sign up for by clicking on the link in the description and going to my website. And if you scroll down on the homepage, you

• 1:08:37Adam Buxton?

  can sign up for the newsletter. I just sent one out last week about the book. Uh, before that, I think I hadn't sent one out since twenty twenty three. So I don't really inundate people with newsletters. But I guess this year is unusually busy for me. I also have my album coming out. Buckle up. It's gonna be released on September the twelfth, twenty twenty five. And the first single from the album, Pizza Time, is coming out this week, I think. Unless I've got the wrong end of the stick entirely, which isn't totally impossible.

• 1:09:16Adam Buxton?

  But I think it's gonna be played, my first single, on Craig Charles's Six Music Show, maybe even on Tuesday. If you've got my book, you will know that I write about making the album and particularly about how Pizza Time came together. And you will read about how Johnny Greenwood played a crucial role in the creation of Pizza Time. You get to hear clips of the demo version and a little bit of the actual single version in the audiobook. It feels quite strange to think of it being played in the outside world, i.e. outside the universe of this podcast. But let's see how it goes. Number one with a bullet.

• 1:10:00Adam Buxton?

  How do people even buy singles anymore? I think the last single I bought was, now that's a good question. What was it? Was it Gangnam Style? No, I think it was before Gangnam Style. Anyway, I'll probably send out a newsletter in the next week or so with a bit more info about the album. So if you'd like to receive that and, uh, infrequent blasts thereafter, sign up for the newsletter on my website. All right, that's enough plug-in. Thank you very much indeed, once again, to Tim and Tom. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support and additional conversation editing on this episode. Thanks, Seamus.

• 1:10:46Adam Buxton?

  Thanks to Helen Green so much for her beautiful artwork, and she has been helping me with the artwork for the album too, along with the brilliant artist Bryony Jackson. In fact, you might see a picture of that if you sign up for the newsletter. Thanks to everyone at Acast for all their hard work liaising with my sponsors, but thanks most of all to you. I'm very grateful that you keep coming back and listening to the podcast, and I wonder if there's any chance of a hug, like just a quick hug. Is that okay? Hey, come here. Good to see you.

• 1:11:22Adam Buxton?

  And until the next time, please go carefully out there. It's all like terrible cyclists, chippy middle-aged men, AI impersonators. But if it makes any difference at all, I love you. Bye!