EP.250 - JONNY SWEET

Adam talks with British writer, actor and comedian Jonny Sweet about class, shame, not feeling at home in your own skin and other themes in his debut novel The Kellerby Code https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=32145706878&dest=gbr&ref_=ps_ggl_2039220669&cm_mmc=ggl-_-UK_Shopp_Tradestandard-_-product_id=UK9780571379873USED-_-keyword=&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=2039220669&gbraid=0AAAAAD3Y6gvz7VjHxU7YRz0fXINMzTOkn&gclid=CjwKCAjwx8nCBhAwEiwA_z__077YV8aYGiYyH3UizprBH3UNw5eeK9NjDm9wqGaHnuriFjJHbf-_XRoChokQAvD_BwE, as well as how promoting a book encourages authors to make up a load of bullshit about the themes in their books. Adam and Jonny also swap news of ailments and an unsettling Shiatsu experience, and in the outro, Adam talks in a queasily sincere way about what the late Beach Boys mastermind Brian Wilson meant to him. Conversations recorded in London on 12th November, 2024 and 29th April, 2025 Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and additional conversation editing. Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ PICS AND RELATED LINKS ON ADAM'S WEBSITE https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/podcasts/82dyw29p3may2fa-dwb79-eycgn 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, podcast? It's Adam Buckston here, reporting to you from a hot farm track in East Anglia, UK. I'm here with my dog friend, Rose. How are you doing, Rose? The summer is a bummer. That's the spirit.

• 0:52Adam Buxton?

  Rosie is strongly unimpressed by the change of temperature. And she much prefers to be lying in the shade or on a hot patio stone. But not really wandering around the fields at the moment, I don't think. Is that right, Rosie? Are we going back yet? Don't worry, we'll be going back soon. It is hot. It's just past the middle of June 2025. And the last few days have suddenly got really boiling. All right, let me tell you a bit about podcast number 250. I suppose that's sort of a milestone, isn't it? I'm not really a numbers guy. The important thing is that this episode contains some enjoyable rambly waffle

• 1:37Adam Buxton?

  with English writer, actor, comedian, Jonny Sweet. Here's a few sweet facts for you. Born in Nottingham in 1985, Jonny attended the local independent Nottingham High School before earning a place at Cambridge University to read English at Pembroke College. While studying at Cambridge, Jonny met Joe Thomas and Simon Bird, with whom he performed in the famous Footlights Theatre Club. After graduating, the three shared a flat together, performing in a sketch group that they called The House of Windsor. Jonny also performed stand-up solo after university. And in 2009, he won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Newcomer.

• 2:22Adam Buxton?

  That was the same year that Tim Key won the Edinburgh Award for Best New Show. Johnny, Joe and Simon continued to work together, co-writing and starring in the 2013 sitcom Chickens, set in a sleepy English village during the First World War, where three young men have managed to avoid serving in the war and consequently have become social outcasts. In 2015, Johnny wrote and starred in the BBC sitcom Together, a romantic comedy about a young couple embarking upon a new relationship. That was based on a Radio 4 series Johnny had written in 2011. And I really recommend tracking that one down too. I think you can see it on Amazon Prime if you have access to that.

• 3:08Adam Buxton?

  Also starring British comedy luminaries Vicky Pepperdean, not dime, come on, Katie Wicks, Nick Mohammed, Liam Williams and the aforementioned Tim Key. In addition to numerous acting roles in TV shows like the Channel 4 comedy dramas Babylon in 2014 and Loaded in 2017, Johnny has appeared in films including Greed from 2019, directed by Michael Winterbottom, and 2024's Wicked Little Letters, directed by Thea Sharrock. That film was also written by Johnny.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Hello, fact-checking Santa here. The name of the director of Wicked Little Letters is actually pronounced Thea Sharrock, not Taya Sharrock. Only an idiot would pronounce it like that.

• 3:58Adam Buxton?

  2024 also saw the publication of Johnny's first novel, The Kellerby Code, K E L L E R B Y. Says the blurb, Edward Jevons is living in a world he can't afford and to which he doesn't belong. To camouflage himself, he has catered to his friends' needs, fetching dry cleaning, sorting flowers for premieres. It's a noble effort, really. Anything to keep his best pals, Robert and Stanza, happy. To paraphrase Sam Leath's review in The Guardian, "It's a lurid black comedy come thriller about social climbing and murder in which brideshead revisited and P G Woodhouse are

• 4:40Adam Buxton?

  referenced, and further back in the mix are the great Gatsby, a dab of Patricia Highsmith, and a lick of Martin Amis." I listened to The Kelly Be Code on audiobook before speaking to Jonny, as you will hear, and loved it. Really recommend it. This podcast contains not one but two conversations with Jonny. Our first took place face to face in London towards the middle of November 2024, less than a week after Donald Trump was elected for his second term. And as well as talking about Jonny's early days in comedy, we spoke about class, shame, not feeling at home in your own skin, and other themes in The Kelly Be Code.

• 5:23Adam Buxton?

  The second part of our conversation was recorded earlier this year in April 2025, when we reconvened to compare notes on the challenges of book promotion and ailments. And I regaled Jonny with a story about an unsettling shiatsu experience. By the way, I've since looked up the actual definition of shiatsu. It's a Japanese bodywork therapy that involves applying pressure to specific points on the body, similar to acupuncture, but without needles. It's based on the concept of restoring balance and energy flow within the body to promote overall health and wellbeing. But before all that, let's travel back to November 2024, with me claiming that I knew

• 6:07Adam Buxton?

  Donald Trump was going to get back in a year earlier, when his mugshot was published following his arrest in the state of Georgia in August 2023 on charges of having plotted to overturn the state's 2020 election results. In case you're interested how that went, as of June 2025, no trial has begun and no trial date is set. Back at the end for some bonus music waffle from me about the place that the late Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys held in my heart. But right now, with Jonny Sweet, here we go.

• 7:25Adam Buxton?

  I called Trump's victory last year, twenty twenty-three, when the mugshot came out.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, you thought that appealed.

• 7:33Adam Buxton?

  And I thought, look at him in that mugshot. He looks brilliant.

• 7:36Speaker 02

  Handsome.

• 7:37Adam Buxton?

  He's gonna get in.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:38Adam Buxton?

  He just looked, do you remember he had the kind of, he was glowering.

• 7:42Speaker 02

  He was glowering. He had a certain charisma, let's be honest.

• 7:44Adam Buxton?

  He really did. And I thought, oh, no, that certain charisma. I hoped he'd lost that.

• 7:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So you're reeling.

• 7:53Adam Buxton?

  I'm reeling a little bit. I feel as though

• 7:57Adam Buxton?

  I agonized the week that he got in when the podcast was due to go out. I felt like it was one of those times I felt like I had to acknowledge what was going on in the world. Do you know what I mean? Which normally I wouldn't.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:12Adam Buxton?

  Normally, I feel like you don't know when people are gonna listen to the episode. It might be a few weeks from now. It might be years from now.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:20Adam Buxton?

  So it doesn't necessarily have to be topical. Also, it's not about the news, the podcast.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  It's got a deep political undercurrent, but it's not, it's not explicit.

• 8:29Adam Buxton?

  It comes off. I don't wanna like block out the outside world, but that one just felt like,

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:35Adam Buxton?

  Oh, I think that's gonna be on everyone's mind.

• 8:37Speaker 02

  It just hangs in the air a bit, doesn't it?

• 8:39Adam Buxton?

  But then I thought, well, how do I acknowledge it? And in the end, I did a short impression. Of Anthony Scaramucci. On the, uh, the rest is politics.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Yes, now I'm aware. He's got a great, I wouldn't mind hearing that, actually.

• 8:53Adam Buxton?

  Well, I thought, as I was doing the impression, it felt good, but then when I listened to it back, I thought that doesn't sound like Anthony Scaramucci at all.

• 9:02Speaker 02

  I once did a, um, I remember doing a, an audition to play an Irish person during the troubles. It was a very dramatic role that I'd been put up for, sort of, I think purely, probably by accident by my agent. And I spent a week nailing the, the accent on, on YouTube, doing it every single day. And then I got into the audition and sort of heard it for the first time. And I started to kind of corpse, to sort of giggle essentially. And the auditioner started to giggle and it was a really sort of sweet moment where we both kind of giggled together. And then she sort of pressed stop on the record and said, well, you know, bye then. And then afterwards I thought, oh, that's absolutely terrible. So I can feel your pain, basically.

• 9:45Speaker 02

  I, I now when I have auditions, people say, could you try that in a slightly more, could you do it sort of Newcastle?

• 9:50Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  And I'll just have to go, that, that'll be a no, I'm afraid. Can't do it. So, yeah.

• 9:54Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Do you want to try that again, but better?

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:56Adam Buxton?

  How, I want to hear the accent now, though.

• 9:59Speaker 02

  I don't think I can do it without offend, you know, offending a, a large number of, yeah, the whole of Ireland and not a particular place in Ireland.

• 10:05Adam Buxton?

  My producer, Seamus Murphy Mitchell, is Irish.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  Yes, I know.

• 10:09Adam Buxton?

  And, um, I think that he would really love to hear the accent.

• 10:13Speaker 02

  I, I don't, I don't actually think I can do it. I honestly don't think I can. I think it would be a really bad move for me.

• 10:20Adam Buxton?

  I like the beginning of it.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  That's good because it's, it's, it's sort of generic enough that I think.

• 10:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. How are you doing though? How's life like? How was it this year? Having your first novel being put out into the world. Are you someone that?

• 10:40Adam Buxton?

  Um. Follows the responses to the things that you make once they're in the world?

• 10:44Speaker 02

  I'm fairly, I, I try to not follow anything.

• 10:48Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 10:49Speaker 02

  I try to bury my head in the sand. Sometimes my parents will kind of call me and they'll say they read something and I'll say, well, just remember that I, I don't read anything and I try to keep it out. And they'll say, well, I think they're really unfair to you to be honest. Like, okay, no, but I, yeah, I keep my head down. I basically avoid everything as much as possible and um avoid sales. I, I still like my first reviews when I was doing Edinburgh.

• 11:13Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Still stick in my head. When I was eighteen, I got one saying that I was a, a Michael Portillo lookalike. And with a stupid grin plastered across my face. And that sort of stayed with me sufficiently that I've tried to avoid, tried to avoid it ever since.

• 11:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. So you don't read, like, did you read? I'm not gonna start quoting all your reviews at you.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Don't read the bad.

• 11:36Adam Buxton?

  But did you read Brian Logan's review of Together when it came out? In The Guardian?

• 11:43Speaker 02

  I think I probably would have.

• 11:45Adam Buxton?

  Very positive.

• 11:46Speaker 02

  Was it? No, I didn't remember that then. That's good.

• 11:49Adam Buxton?

  Very positive.

• 11:49Speaker 02

  Good on him.

• 11:50Adam Buxton?

  Says Brian, I would add only as an observation, not as a criticism. Which is something you don't get in many reviews.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  That's fairly soft pedaling from Brian.

• 11:59Adam Buxton?

  That it's not a role, i.e. your role in Together, or a show that trades on the type of comedy suite used to perform live. He's toned down the campness, the slyness and the oddity of his stage persona. This is a trad rom com that requires him to be more or less normal, an everyday feckless man child, baby stepping towards love and adulthood.

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's a fairly interesting analysis of my transition from stage to screen. No, it's true. I mean, I remember doing, when I did stuff live and I loved it, the thing I struggled with was a limitation in my performance persona.

• 12:40Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 12:40Speaker 02

  Weirdly, I could only be an extremely camp, I mean, I love that he picked out camp, extremely camp, extreme anarchic person. And I would write stuff that I would want to perform and think the only problem with this bit of writing is the performer who's meant to be doing it because he just can't, like the Irish accent, just can't get there. So I always wanted to write different sorts of stories, but after Together, I think I again found some issues with the lead actor and started to kind of split what I wrote and what I performed. And so I would write stuff for different people to act who were better at it and, you know, keep everything else sort of separate. But it was weird that time because I remember I,

• 13:21Speaker 02

  I got to a point with live comedy where I just stopped wanting to do it and found that it wasn't everything I wanted to do, but I do miss it. And that kind of review does make me think, does make me remember that it was, it was such weird fun stuff when I was at an age where everything was kind of exciting and new and the people I was performing with were kind of my good friends.

• 13:44Adam Buxton?

  Why did it suddenly become less appealing?

• 13:47Speaker 02

  I think because I, I felt like ultimately, I think I wanted to write and tell stories and I felt like I didn't quite have that need. Like friends of mine who do live comedy, still like Tim Key and Nick Mohammed, who were really close friends, I really feel in them that they absolutely just love, just love, it's how they kind of refuel, it's performing live and you can feel that when you watch them. But I was more of a sort of person who would be vomit, you know, vomit, very much vomiting beforehand, sort of, and sort of wondering why I was doing this. And, and then when I got a show right, I would love it. And that was the best bit. Doing a sort of Soho theatre run after an Edinburgh,

• 14:30Speaker 02

  when everything was kind of sorted out was good. But the sort of fifteen months before that, where I'd go to the British Library and sort of stare at my kind of dim reflection in the laptop, wasn't worth it.

• 14:42Adam Buxton?

  That, that's when you're writing. You're not just sitting there, not doing anything, but staring at your reflection.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  What I was doing, what I was doing was sitting there not doing, but I was, yeah, I was trying to write and sort of.

• 14:50Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay.

• 14:50Speaker 02

  I mean, I love, I, I actually feel as though I have a kind of affinity with comedians and I love comedians. I think I am, I think I am basically a comedian, but I felt that live comedy wasn't ultimately my kind of bag. But then after that, when I stopped doing that, it then did take me a while to start writing the sort of thing that I wanted to write and felt like kind of interested me. Like I wrote a film that was out this year too, and.

• 15:17Adam Buxton?

  Wicked Little Letters.

• 15:18Speaker 02

  Yes. And the book, kind of, were sort of things that I. Could try to be sort of funny and also compelling and and interesting at the same time. But I do miss, when I watch live comedy, I part of me is fairly kind of je- a little bit jealous.

• 15:34Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 02

  And quite sort of, and probably also a bit competitive, like I would quite like to go in. But I, it was just, it was just one of those things where I felt that when I went to bed at night, I wasn't desperately wanting to kind of work out how to do my next set. I was trying to think of

• 15:49Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 15:49Speaker 02

  other stuff.

• 15:50Adam Buxton?

  The hunger had gone.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  The hunger, the hunger. Yeah, and it was almost like a dog. I mean, when I was at school, I was, I wasn't desperately into comedy there. And then at university, I just got fully deep into it and got obsessed with it. And now I think I try and do a bit of, bit of both.

• 16:06Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. So what were you like when you were young? Where do you come from? You're

• 16:10Speaker 02

  Nottingham.

• 16:10Adam Buxton?

  Nottingham.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:11Adam Buxton?

  My son is at Nottingham University.

• 16:12Speaker 02

  No way. That's good.

• 16:13Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:14Speaker 02

  Good, great university.

• 16:15Adam Buxton?

  Part of town.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  It's supposed to be.

• 16:19Adam Buxton?

  Two universities.

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Two universities, great, yeah. And when I was growing up, it used to be, you'd go out, there'd always be a couple of fights in the streets when you came out of the bars. It's like a fun, I mean, I'm not saying your son's in physical danger. But yeah.

• 16:33Adam Buxton?

  Just saying, he should try it.

• 16:34Speaker 02

  You just do it once.

• 16:35Adam Buxton?

  Try a punch up, it's acceptable.

• 16:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:37Adam Buxton?

  And what, what did your parents do? Are they still with us?

• 16:40Speaker 02

  They are still with us, yeah. They're plugging on. So they were, my dad was a solicitor, my mum was a chemistry teacher in a sixth form college.

• 16:48Adam Buxton?

  Academic types.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Fairly academic, definitely academic minded for me. They were definitely sort of, make sure you do well at school. And, but home life was very, I think it was very sort of stable. And I almost don't think I had, sometimes I think I don't think I had an emotion till I was about twenty eight or something. Like, I was quite sort of repressed. Not for any particular reason, but it was a very stable existence. I was a scholarship boy at a private school, which is very similar to the Calabacode. And so, yeah, to some degree, I was in a school where other people came from maybe a slightly different financial background to me.

• 17:30Adam Buxton?

  Was that a full scholarship you'd got or something?

• 17:32Speaker 02

  No, it wasn't. It was a part scholarship.

• 17:34Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  I was on and my parents were very left wing. I remember my parents saying that when they decided to send my brother and I to that school, they had friends who said, I hope your children grow up to hate you because because of that decision to kind of

• 17:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 17:52Speaker 02

  betray their left wing roots.

• 17:55Adam Buxton?

  Did you ever talk to them about that after the fact?

• 17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think we've talked about it a lot, actually, because I think, you know, it's something you don't choose. You don't choose where you go to school. And I really liked the stuff I studied. I got really into English. I loved it. I wanted to sort of be an academic. So I felt that they had tried to give me that opportunity and that was quite positive. But I think the thing about those schools is often they have these odd kind of ideologies attached to them, which aren't to do with getting a good education.

• 18:26Adam Buxton?

  But what do you mean by that? You mean more about a kind of way that a person should be in the world, like toughening people up and

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:33Adam Buxton?

  all that sort of thing?

• 18:34Speaker 02

  Yes, or a value system, how you value someone's kind of worth or dignity, what you encourage them to do in their life that's worthwhile for them or for society.

• 18:45Adam Buxton?

  What constitutes a worthwhile life?

• 18:47Speaker 02

  That's you asking me that?

• 18:48Adam Buxton?

  No, I'm just saying that the kind that's the kind of thing that

• 18:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 18:52Adam Buxton?

  was being shaped.

• 18:54Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah. But I had loads of great friends who were not like that.

• 18:57Adam Buxton?

  But also, I mean, if you want to tell me what constitutes a worthwhile life, I'd love to know.

• 19:02Adam Buxton?

  Has it got anything to do with podcasting?

• 19:03Speaker 02

  It's it's A, it's podcasts.

• 19:05Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 19:06Speaker 02

  Uh, B, um.

• 19:07Adam Buxton?

  Scaramouchi impressions.

• 19:08Speaker 02

  Scaramouchi, get your Irish accent right.

• 19:11Adam Buxton?

  And that's

• 19:11Speaker 02

  And then call it quits.

• 19:12Adam Buxton?

  Job done.

• 19:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, power down.

• 19:14Adam Buxton?

  Good.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  But actually, I wasn't really aware of that stuff massively when I was there. It was a very, I would think I had a very lucky childhood.

• 19:21Adam Buxton?

  And did people say, um, why aren't you speaking with the proper accent, sweet, you absolute oik?

• 19:29Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 19:31Adam Buxton?

  Forcing you to cultivate more upper class tones.

• 19:34Speaker 02

  No, I think I did that at university because I'm just a people pleaser and I think I just mostly unconsciously, but probably, you know, you're never completely unconscious of these sorts of changes. It got a bit posher and then, and then in my early twenties after university, I was really like, what have you done? That's a bad, you've got a bad voice for like the whole of the rest of society. Everyone hates this kind of voice and then, but then it was sort of stuck and I, I don't really care now, but, but definitely there was a sort of series of small identity crises that I was, because I was so emotionally repressed, I wasn't really aware I was having it till later.

• 20:09Adam Buxton?

  So that was Cambridge that you went to?

• 20:11Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah.

• 20:12Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. And what did you get into study there?

• 20:15Speaker 02

  English.

• 20:16Adam Buxton?

  And you met Simon Bird?

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:18Adam Buxton?

  And Joe?

• 20:19Speaker 02

  I met Joe Thomas on my first night there and I did sort of almost immediately fall in love with him and think, I'll have, I'll try and have you.

• 20:26Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. He's got a nice vibe.

• 20:29Speaker 02

  He's just got such a great vibe. Yeah. And then, yeah, then I met Simon not long after that. And then we were all kind of friends and competitors.

• 20:38Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Nick Mohammed as well was doing a PhD. Yeah.

• 20:41Adam Buxton?

  Wow.

• 20:41Speaker 02

  He was a bit older, but he, I remember him sitting on the stairs for a Fulter's audition and him showing me this script for something and I remember thinking, that's fine. And then I saw him on stage and it was very fun to meet those people who were all kind of, we were all just doing lots of Ricky Gervais impressions.

• 21:01Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, okay.

• 21:01Speaker 02

  Masquerading as our sort of new original voices. And then, yeah, and then going straight to Edinburgh with Joe and Simon was almost like you were just on this kind of exciting track. But I think I sort of fell into it as well. And when I was doing it, I, I would often be thinking, I don't feel exactly like the real kind of comedians, but now I feel like there's a bit of a balance and, um, yeah, it was very exciting.

• 21:26Adam Buxton?

  And did you feel like, because there's a kind of rhythm and a delivery that I associate with you and Tom Bastin and Tim Key. And, you know, I love it. It's very appealing. The timing of it, it's a weird combination of, um, slightly Jeeves and Wustri-ish, PG Woodhouse-y.

• 21:46Adam Buxton?

  Stuff plus ordinary, everyday lingo, kind of slightly twatish bants that you would do in in the office or whatever.

• 21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:56Adam Buxton?

  I don't mean the TV show, but just at work, you know.

• 21:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. No, totally. Yeah. I mean, I think that started with Cowards, that sketch group.

• 22:04Adam Buxton?

  Who was in Cowards?

• 22:06Speaker 02

  So that was Bostin, Tim Key, Stefan Goloshevsky and Lloyd Wolf.

• 22:11Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  They were doing stuff. Just when I got to university, they'd just left university. So they were kind of here. I mean, I was freely hero worshiping them. And when I used to bump into them, I would find it difficult to kind of string a sentence together. And then I think, oddly, I think the P G Woodhouse stuff, I remember I went to India with Tim for about a month. And we were reading P G Woodhouse and there was a lot of sort of, you know how he kind of says he ruffled the bee. There's a lot of that. That kind of crept in quite a lot.

• 22:41Adam Buxton?

  What's ruffling the bee?

• 22:43Speaker 02

  Well, like ruffling the brow, would you say ruffle the brow? The bee is also the bean, which is the brain. So there's all these, there were all these kind of abbreviations that kind of fell in. And I think.

• 22:53Adam Buxton?

  The Woodhouse Argot, which I don't really, I'm not that familiar with. Like, I know it superficially, but.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:59Adam Buxton?

  Not much.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  I got into it late. I got into it in my mid twenties and I got out of it quite quickly as well, but I did, it is fun. It is, it is just very silly.

• 23:07Adam Buxton?

  Did you all happen to be on the same page as far as the Woodhouse stuff? There wasn't one person who was like, right, I demand you all read P G Woodhouse.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  No, and also we're all really doing separate stuff.

• 23:18Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 23:19Speaker 02

  It was just, I think Tim got me into it. Um.

• 23:22Adam Buxton?

  Because superficially, I suppose it is, it's an unfashionable thing to be into because it is so bound up with the British upper classes.

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:30Adam Buxton?

  And so for people who don't know much about what's actually in those books, you sort of think, well, why would I care about butlers and posh people and aristocrats?

• 23:40Speaker 02

  No, that's how I felt actually, was that he was, it's kind of unfortunate because I think he's an amazing writer, but with the Calaby Code, the part of where the Calaby Code came from was I was reading The Code of the Wusters and finding myself. Just wondering why I had this image of sort of Jeeves getting into bed at night and just imagining bludgeoning Bertie to death with his soul hammer or something. Yeah. And at the time I was tutoring for really rich kids in Chelsea and some of them were great and they're lots of nice kids, but some of them were just complete pricks. And Edward, the protagonist in The Kelly B. Code is also a tutor. Yeah, yeah, that was definitely autobiographical and I did meet a lot of difficult.

• 24:23Speaker 02

  You, I was treated basically like a butler. I was often sort of being given jobs that were not tutoring, just like hanging pictures and stuff. They were just, can you like do this? There's just a bloke in the house. Yeah. May as well make yourself useful. So there's this one family who, they were very unusual and obviously like they lived in this absolute mansion on the King's Road. And I went in and she had, the house was covered in portraits of her, the mum, that she had commissioned of herself in different sorts of tones, like a big Andy Warhol type one of her. And one of her, because she self-made country albums, so she did some with her with her like foot on a hay bale and stuff. And it was really weird. And her son, who was about nine when I went to teach him, he

• 25:08Speaker 02

  turned around to me and said, just say no, if I don't like you, I'll have you sacked. And it was shocking because I immediately then did sort of just do what he told me, even though I was sort of fifteen years older than him. So then I was reading Coe and the Worcester's and I did feel that, really I felt that it was so funny, but it's a shame because I find all that world really icky. And what would it be like to write a story like that when we kind of include the feelings we have about those power structures now? And I did think, is there a kind of version of a comedy woodhouse novel that's funny and sort of silly in the way it is, but also incorporates that darkness and that anger too?

• 25:53Adam Buxton?

  It was really good. I really enjoyed the book. I listened to the audiobook.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  Yes, it's it's good, isn't it?

• 25:57Adam Buxton?

  Read by Jack Davenport.

• 25:58Speaker 02

  Isn't he good?

• 25:59Adam Buxton?

  He's very good.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  I auditioned for that audiobook, by the way.

• 26:02Adam Buxton?

  Did you?

• 26:04Adam Buxton?

  And you didn't get it?

• 26:04Speaker 02

  No, no. And I was in the and I was I was fairly like, I I see.

• 26:10Adam Buxton?

  Couldn't you not insist that you read your own audiobook?

• 26:12Speaker 02

  But that's not in my kind of wheelhouse. But and then and then when I read, when I heard it, I was like, oh, thank God for that, because he is so good.

• 26:18Adam Buxton?

  He is very good. Yeah, yeah. There were so many things that I enjoyed and were funny and also unsettling and challenged some of my thoughts and ideas. It was like the perfect reading experience in that way.

• 26:35Speaker 02

  No, that's very kind. Thanks. Thank you.

• 26:36Adam Buxton?

  Honestly, it was great. And how did you tackle it, though? Like, I'm interested in the actual nuts and bolts of writing a novel like that.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  You know what? I when people ask about it, I often say what I said to you earlier, which is that I I was reading The Code of the Wustas and then I had this image of Jeeves bludgeoning Bertie, which was true, but that wasn't the genesis of the book. Really, with the book, I started writing some scenes.

• 27:05Adam Buxton?

  And just to be so sorry, I feel like I've got to pick up for people who are not familiar with Woodhouse. Jeeves is Bertie's butler.

• 27:11Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, I should have said that.

• 27:12Adam Buxton?

  And Bertie's a kind of amiable goof.

• 27:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 27:16Adam Buxton?

  Right? He's he's like a decent guy.

• 27:18Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, he's amiable. Yeah, he is amiable. He's a nice fellow and Jeeves clears up all his messes for him.

• 27:25Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 27:25Speaker 02

  And he's a kind of fairly large man whose face doesn't move much and just deals with everything.

• 27:33Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. And they don't explore any of the kind of dark underside of the master-servant dynamic in the Woodhouse books, really, do they?

• 27:40Speaker 02

  Exactly. And that was very much what I thought it would be funny and fun and interesting to do. So it took a while, but it was very enjoyable. And normally when I'm writing something, there are moments of kind of deep existential crisis and self-loathing. And with this, there wasn't really. And you know, it's a funny book to talk about because it's easy to find yourself, especially in interview situations, trying to make a case for it like it's a Guardian column, or politically, or in a nutshell. But really, it is about itself. It's about that character. And there's a kind of atmosphere of shame around him that I wanted to kind of work out. And I just wanted it to be entertaining and compelling and for it to be a character

• 28:25Speaker 02

  people kind of felt for, felt the pain of. But through doing that, it does kind of ricochet off political arguments that persist. And I also think Saltburn really affected it as well, because when it was published, that was the kind of topic of conversation. So.

• 28:43Adam Buxton?

  So it didn't affect the writing of it because you'd finished writing by the time Saltburn came out?

• 28:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, in fact, I, Emma Fennell, who made Saltburn, is a friend. And she was in Chickens, which was a sitcom I did with Simon and Joe, the aforementioned Simon and Joe. So we went for lunch, and she was just getting her film together. And she'd just cast Barry Coon. Um, and I asked what her film.

• 29:07Adam Buxton?

  How'd you pronounce it?

• 29:07Speaker 02

  That's why I don't know. That's why I grimaced.

• 29:09Adam Buxton?

  Oh, I was thinking like, I didn't realise it was a grimace. I thought it was a look of triumphalism, like, I can pronounce his name. I bet you're gonna go for Keogan or something.

• 29:19Speaker 02

  No, I was apologising to you, but so the listeners wouldn't know.

• 29:22Adam Buxton?

  Keon.

• 29:23Speaker 02

  I think it's, someone's told me.

• 29:25Adam Buxton?

  This is what Google's here for.

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Keon.

• 29:29Adam Buxton?

  Pronunciation. So you're going for Keon?

• 29:33Speaker 02

  Keon.

• 29:34Adam Buxton?

  Keon. I mean, originally.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  Doesn't matter what I said originally.

• 29:38Adam Buxton?

  You sort of made a snore.

• 29:40Speaker 02

  At least I flinched afterwards.

• 29:41Adam Buxton?

  I would go for Keogan. Um, just, I wouldn't even, yeah, because I wouldn't even bother.

• 29:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 29:46Adam Buxton?

  You know, it'd be like, well, I'm sorry, I'm English, I'm gonna go for Keogan. Here's the pronunciation.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  Keogan.

• 29:53Adam Buxton?

  Oh, you're joking.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  That's horrible for me to hear.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  Barry Keogan.

• 29:57Adam Buxton?

  Keon.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  So it's Keogan?

• 30:00Adam Buxton?

  When you say.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  My version was saliva rich.

• 30:07Adam Buxton?

  No, it's more breathy, your one. It's just like a breath.

• 30:10Speaker 02

  Can you do something musically with my Keon in the interstitial? Put it on a beat for crying out loud.

• 30:18Adam Buxton?

  Anyway, so she had just cast Mr Kyogan.

• 30:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I said, you know, what's it about? And she basically pitched my book back at me and I I was really disappointed because her film was coming out way before my book. I hadn't got a publisher at that point and I just felt that it would have more profile anyway. But in fact, I think it was quite useful for the book. I think it was quite useful in publishing, but but it I.

• 30:45Adam Buxton?

  Did your heart drop though, when she said like?

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, I was absolutely devastated. I was annoyed with her.

• 30:50Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  And then I said, but then we swapped. I gave her the Calaby Code and she gave me the script. And they were sufficiently different in my I didn't have to worry.

• 31:00Adam Buxton?

  I didn't think about Saltburn once when I was reading the Calaby Code.

• 31:02Speaker 02

  No, that that.

• 31:03Adam Buxton?

  And I had seen it by that.

• 31:04Speaker 02

  You had seen it, yeah, that that makes sense. But in kind of the most basic facts, you could see why a kind of two sentence synopsis might be.

• 31:11Adam Buxton?

  Sure.

• 31:12Speaker 02

  Might be troubling, but I do think it meant that when it came out, a lot of the press I did, I found myself talking a lot about politics of class, which obviously the book does touch upon, and I sort of use P G Wodehouse in that way.

• 31:26Adam Buxton?

  The obvious thing to ask, of course, is to what extent it's autobiographical. I mean, there are obviously certain elements that are autobiographical, as you've already said. So I had a list of like some of the particular themes.

• 31:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I've got some specifics. Yeah, I'd love to hear the list.

• 31:44Adam Buxton?

  Okay, well, sort of general areas that the book touches upon, which I was wondering like, how much of this stuff were you writing and sort of weeping at the memory of the feelings you have on these subjects? The obvious one being class. When did you start to become most aware of that and feel uncomfortable about it or did you ever?

• 32:04Speaker 02

  No, I think weirdly, the way I describe it is it was a sort of jokey satire of myself in a weird way. It wasn't deeply traumatic. Something I think was closer to home was kind of social anxiety, people pleasing, a sense of, I think is very common when you start to talk to people about it. A sense of kind of not feeling at home in your own skin. So all of that, I felt that especially, I think, in my, I think it's very common in your twenties. And I started writing it probably at the start of my thirties. So the book certainly felt like it was about that in some way. And the idea of um, Kellyby House and that kind of whole fantasy

• 32:46Speaker 02

  was partly a class thing and it was partly just the idea of a fantasy of somewhere where you feel at home.

• 32:54Adam Buxton?

  And Kellyby House is the stately home that's like the focus of everybody's ambitions in this book.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:01Adam Buxton?

  And um, that's where Stanser is gonna end up, right? That's, that's her family pile.

• 33:09Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 33:10Adam Buxton?

  And there are little Seinfeld references scattered throughout the book.

• 33:15Speaker 02

  Are there?

• 33:15Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I think so. Edward does a commentary about Seinfeld for Stanser quite near the beginning of the book.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:21Adam Buxton?

  Uh, Stanser is this, is the object of Edward's affections, unrequited love. And he is, I think, getting on well with her at one point and they have a convo about Seinfeld. And then it occurred to me, maybe she's called Stanser after George Costanza.

• 33:39Speaker 02

  That's a great, I love it. I absolutely love it. No, I wish that were the East Egg.

• 33:43Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 33:44Speaker 02

  No, in fact, she was called Helen. And um, I didn't ever feel like that was a good enough name. And then I just went for dinner and there was someone called Stanser there.

• 33:54Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 33:55Speaker 02

  And I just liked the name and took it.

• 33:57Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, it's a cool name.

• 33:58Speaker 02

  But um, George Costanza is a big part of my kind of um, emotional universe.

• 34:03Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 34:06Adam Buxton?

  Would it be weird to ask you to read a little bit, a passage?

• 34:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. Bearing in mind, I didn't get the audition to do the audiobook.

• 34:15Adam Buxton?

  It was just a bit that I was on a plane and I was listening to it. And this bit came along. I thought, wow, that is a great piece of writing and he's really put his finger on something very minute that I feel as though I have felt in various ways.

• 34:33Speaker 02

  That's very kind.

• 34:34Adam Buxton?

  That is the passage highlighted there.

• 34:38Adam Buxton?

  Do you remember the bit?

• 34:39Speaker 02

  I think this is when they're, um, they've gone to the seaside.

• 34:42Adam Buxton?

  This is Edward and?

• 34:43Speaker 02

  And Madge.

• 34:44Adam Buxton?

  Madge, who is the, she ends up being his girlfriend.

• 34:47Speaker 02

  Yes, and she kind of offers a version of the world and himself, which is kind of palatable. And in a way, he likes her because she skewers him and kind of sees him for the kind of doormat he is and makes fun of him. And she's had a hard time. They've gone to the seaside. And also, G. was often called away from a seaside holiday to go and sort out Bertie's messes. So I'll read it. Um, I haven't practised this, obviously. He looked off at a distant tanker and felt cavernously empty. The summer had been too long. The rage came and went. Sometimes he thought it emerged merely because of hunger or tiredness, but really it derived from unknowable energies within him.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Thick reservoirs of hatred, of himself presumably, of the nation, the impossibility of living here today without by definition being in the wrong, and this wrongness being no less meaningful because of that. A hatred of his friends, his friends' enemies, of the things they all said in person, on Twitter, everywhere. Yet Madge smelt so beautifully of rose and oud that even as he bristled at the general falling short, the insufficiency that carpeted the world, he was compelled to grasp at this fugitive moment of simple, unwilldued pleasure. Thank you for choosing that bit. That, that, that was a bit that I kind of did feel, actually, when I wrote it.

• 36:03Adam Buxton?

  And what was the feeling, though?

• 36:05Speaker 02

  Um, it was that. I mean, it was a sort of um uselessness, a feeling of uselessness and um.

• 36:12Adam Buxton?

  Uselessness as a part of society?

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 36:15Adam Buxton?

  Or just?

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Perhaps more widely than that, but a kind of difficulty in connecting to society and finding a worthwhile route through it. And also a sense of kind of being in a, in a, a world of, of opinions and feeling that all of it's bullshit. And that all of it is true as well, or there's, there's truth in it, but that the way that it's expressed leaves you feeling dissatisfied and, and I think that sense of things falling short, that the, you know, just the word insufficiency, I think was, was something I was trying to get to the heart of. But I stumbled on the bit that you put in Bold and Red.

• 36:56Adam Buxton?

  Oh, sorry. Yes. The bit I put in Bold and Red was the, the line, the impossibility of living here today without by definition being in the wrong, and this wrongness being no less meaningful because of that. And I suppose what that meant to me was whoever you are, wherever you are, one way or the other, you are in the wrong, as far as a large part of the world is concerned.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:20Adam Buxton?

  You're not doing the right thing with your life. You don't have the right opinions.

• 37:23Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 37:23Adam Buxton?

  You haven't been honest with yourself in the right way.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. And if you continue to function within a society that is already unjust, and you have to function in that society because otherwise you're going to go and live under a sort of tree somewhere.

• 37:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  So you have to by definition be complicit in it.

• 37:38Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Other thing, uh, how many of Edward's internal struggles have you experienced is my heading for this little list about class, about the torture of unrequited love? Did you have to mine some personal experiences for that?

• 37:51Speaker 02

  Probably, but no, that wasn't mine. No, that was more part of, I think, the unrequited something else.

• 37:58Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 37:58Speaker 02

  And not to say I've had a sort of a hundred percent record.

• 38:02Adam Buxton?

  Haven't smashed it every single time.

• 38:03Speaker 02

  Every good time.

• 38:45Adam Buxton?

  I'd never seen Together before.

• 38:47Speaker 02

  Right, right.

• 38:48Adam Buxton?

  Until a few days ago.

• 38:50Speaker 02

  No way, oh my god.

• 38:51Adam Buxton?

  I really loved it.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Did you actually?

• 38:52Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, it was really funny.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  Together, I think, is a, is contributed to my, to my period of sort of existential crisis because I really didn't enjoy the process of making it.

• 39:03Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh. Alex McQueen plays your dad in the show.

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Yes, very close to the real Mr Paul Sweet.

• 39:12Adam Buxton?

  Oh, well, I was going to ask, really, is it? At one point, the phone is ringing, he's lying down on the couch, and he doesn't want to get the phone, he's waiting for someone else in the house to answer it. And he just shouts, "Telephonic-o!"

• 39:26Speaker 02

  That's very much verbatim, very much verbatim.

• 39:30Adam Buxton?

  Where's telephonic-o from?

• 39:32Speaker 02

  There are loads of things that I grew up with, thinking were kind of fairly, not fairly, normal. Telephonic-o, yeah, I had a friend who met my dad and he said, "Now I understand why you say chow chow." That's what I used to say, chow chow, thinking it was just like an ordinary sign-off. My dad would also ask me to put his yogurt in the microwave for seven seconds on low, to take the chill off. That's in there, that's astonishing. So, yeah, it was about my parents, that show, really. It was mainly about what sort of unbelievably sweet and odd people they are.

• 40:05Adam Buxton?

  Um, so why, though, was it a frustrating process? Do you, are you reluctant to rake over it, or?

• 40:12Speaker 02

  No, what I would say is that I don't think I was quite on top of it. It felt like it was slipping away from me and being eroded. And maybe I needed some one, some writing help, or it's a lot to write. And I spoke to you during that, actually, after a gig. And I was saying, I remember saying to you, "Oh, it's a nightmare." And you said, "I've got one piece of advice, just try and enjoy it."

• 40:38Adam Buxton?

  My god, that is the stupidest thing I've ever heard.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  It was good because I was like, I should try and enjoy it. And then after I finished, I was like, I failed to enjoy it.

• 40:48Adam Buxton?

  Try and enjoy it. Was that at the pub we met with Tim King?

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, but it was very nice, actually, the way you said it. It was sweet, but I don't think I succeeded in meeting that. And I, I just think maybe I should have gotten more people to help write it, just to get it going.

• 41:04Adam Buxton?

  I think I've got a photograph of that evening.

• 41:06Speaker 02

  Have you?

• 41:06Adam Buxton?

  Maybe I'll put it on the blog.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  That would be lovely. That would be lovely.

• 41:10Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 41:11Speaker 02

  And afterwards, I just thought, you know, there's something about something being filmed and edited.

• 41:15Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 41:16Speaker 02

  And finished and it not being quite right, which is fairly painful.

• 41:20Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah. Were you able to enjoy any aspect of it?

• 41:24Speaker 02

  Absolutely not.

• 41:27Speaker 02

  Actually, no, I got so, I honestly, I got so stressed out about it.

• 41:30Adam Buxton?

  Oh, no.

• 41:31Speaker 02

  And then I got this, got this weird ulcer at the back of my throat that was so big. The doctor thought it was cancer. And then I had to get it a biopsy on, on my ulcer in my throat. And I remember this moment where the specialist said, how's everything in the moment? Is work okay? And I remember being like, feeling almost too embarrassed to say, it's just because of a sitcom, which is a bit so pathetic. But yeah.

• 41:57Adam Buxton?

  I'm doing a fun sitcom.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  It's so silly as well. I mean, that's what's so funny is it's a really silly sitcom. But that was actually a moment where I was like, I'm not gonna get like that about, you know, work again. There were some bits I do look back on and they were great fun. But I think I, I think I was at that period and now, now when something isn't perfect, especially when it's something that you film, because there's so much contingency when you film something and so much can happen that you're not in control of. Then now I really make it about how, about enjoying it, the process. And trying to have an atmosphere of kind of, this is great that we're doing this. And, and that's how I feel. And when things aren't quite perfect. I genuinely am quite philosophical about it. And I think I had to, in fact, I have a very,

• 42:44Speaker 02

  another piece of advice I got during that period was with Vicky Pepperdine.

• 42:48Adam Buxton?

  Did you say Dine or Dean?

• 42:49Speaker 02

  I say Dean, but you'll probably Google it and say Dine in a minute.

• 42:52Adam Buxton?

  Oh, I think you're right on that one.

• 42:53Speaker 02

  Vicky Pepperdine, um, who I had done some takes and I was stressing out and I was just saying to, oh, I just think I fucked it and I was getting really overwrought. And she said, you know, I think sometimes you need to get, you need, to a certain extent, you need to, you need to get over yourself. And it was great because it was good advice.

• 43:16Adam Buxton?

  It really is good advice, but it's so hard. It's like me glibly saying, oh, try and enjoy it. It's one of those bits of advice that is true. Try and enjoy it. Get over yourself. Just relax. All those things. Yeah, that's all good stuff. Be yourself is the other one. And it's like, I don't know if you've noticed, but I am being myself. Myself is the problem.

• 43:39Speaker 02

  Yes, sadly that's, yeah.

• 44:41Adam Buxton?

  Suddenly, you find us, what is it, four, five months later?

• 44:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's about that.

• 44:47Adam Buxton?

  It's five months later.

• 44:49Speaker 02

  I'm probably wearing the same thing.

• 44:51Adam Buxton?

  And wow, things have changed.

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Oh, my God.

• 44:54Adam Buxton?

  The first part of our conversation was recorded in mid-November 2024. Donald Trump had just been elected president for the second time.

• 45:04Speaker 02

  That's right. Did we even mention that? No, we were trying not to mention it.

• 45:07Adam Buxton?

  We started off by me saying that I'd done an Anthony Scaramucci impression by way of addressing the fact he'd been re-elected.

• 45:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 45:17Adam Buxton?

  And then we talked about your book and all sorts of other stuff. But on that day, I think afterwards, we both felt that we were sort of discombobulated.

• 45:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:30Adam Buxton?

  Is that fair?

• 45:31Speaker 02

  That is fair. I think what you were saying before we recorded was it just sort of, it started fine, but sort of ended poorly, with us feeling a little bit boring and edgy.

• 45:41Adam Buxton?

  The bit that listeners have just heard was the good bit from the beginning. And that was all fine.

• 45:48Speaker 02

  That's good, because there were bits in that where I, I mean, I have this with every interview I ever have.

• 45:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 45:52Speaker 02

  And especially if in general, I felt as it could have been better. There were bits where I feel like in retrospect, I was saying almost anything that came into my head and stuff that I didn't even really think.

• 46:04Adam Buxton?

  That's, that's just an interview, though, isn't it?

• 46:06Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 46:07Adam Buxton?

  That's a normal interview.

• 46:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. But it's very hard, like you, again, you were just saying before we recorded. When you have a book and then you find yourself justifying it or making arguments for it. And you're kind of, I mean, often you're just lying, because really why you wrote it was you felt it would be nice to write it, or it's enjoyable. Whereas often I find that I'm sort of accidentally painting myself into a corner where I'm a kind of class warrior, railing against.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Lots of power structures. I find myself using the term power structures quite a lot, which is just never really enters my vocabulary. Otherwise. So yeah, so maybe I had a little bit of that, a little bit of sort of feeling like I'd been probably out of social awkwardness, being disingenuous as well.

• 46:51Adam Buxton?

  Oh, it didn't come across that way.

• 46:53Speaker 02

  Good. That's good.

• 46:54Adam Buxton?

  But you'd also had a stressful time around then anyway. I think we were both stressed out, right?

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, we were both going through, um, I, I had some fairly stressful family stuff, which I needn't go into, but I was not sleeping. And it's funny how when you're stressed, especially as a parent, when you're stressed, you sort of just keep plugging away. And it, it may take a podcast to alert you to the fact that you need to kind of get some sleep and sort stuff out at home. So maybe that was, that was certainly playing into it. And you were too.

• 47:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, well, while I was talking to you, I mean, I was stressed anyway because I was trying to finish my book.

• 47:33Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:34Adam Buxton?

  So that was the main thing that was happening. This is a book that had taken so long to write. I'd missed so many deadlines. And the latest one at that point was September last year. So missed that one as well. And that was supposed to be the absolute final deadline from the publishers. They were saying, if you miss that one, well, it's going to be sort of difficult for us to make it fit with everything else, i.e. we may just not publish it. That's what they said to me at one point.

• 48:01Speaker 02

  Really?

• 48:01Adam Buxton?

  So I was really stressed. And then I started getting a bit run down.

• 48:08Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 48:09Adam Buxton?

  And while I was talking to you during that conversation, which was a really fun conversation, by the way, and you wouldn't know it to listen back.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  That's good.

• 48:17Adam Buxton?

  I hope listeners will agree. But while I was talking to you towards the end, maybe the bit where it started going off the rails that people haven't heard. My face started going weird.

• 48:28Speaker 02

  That is bad. You don't want that.

• 48:29Adam Buxton?

  No. You know, I mean, it is a little weird anyway.

• 48:33Speaker 02

  I was gonna say, yeah, no, look, yeah, it's good.

• 48:34Adam Buxton?

  It's aging.

• 48:35Speaker 02

  It's a good face.

• 48:36Adam Buxton?

  And also, nobody's face is fully symmetrical.

• 48:39Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 48:40Adam Buxton?

  But my face started going fully asymmetrical. And I started feeling like I couldn't properly close my right eye. And it, it felt like I had a bit of a twitch or a bit of a weakness in my right side. So I was thinking, oh, I'm gonna have a stroke.

• 48:58Speaker 02

  It's such a good interview.

• 48:59Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 49:01Speaker 02

  That I'm stroking.

• 49:02Adam Buxton?

  Jonny Sweet has given me a stroke with his all good writing and insights about class. And now I'm having a stroke.

• 49:12Speaker 02

  Wow, that is scary. That's really scary. Cause you told me that afterwards. I think you'd felt it coming on.

• 49:18Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 02

  And you and I, again, I had not guessed that you were stroking in the interview, but that is awful. That is terrifying.

• 49:25Adam Buxton?

  Well, it wasn't a stroke, I'm happy to say. But afterwards, maybe I'll post the picture of us that we took on the day. Because you can actually see in my face, it's a little on the wonk.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  Really?

• 49:38Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 49:38Speaker 02

  Really?

• 49:39Adam Buxton?

  And it wasn't massive at all. But anyway, I went to the doc after, after you'd left. And she said, pretty quickly, oh, I think it's Bell's palsy. And she said, I don't think it's a stroke and I don't think it's anything more sinister than that.

• 49:56Speaker 02

  That is still very, that's still quite hard.

• 49:58Adam Buxton?

  Well, I was happy with Bell's palsy.

• 49:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:00Adam Buxton?

  I was like, eh, as, you know, any, yeah, because I'd heard of it before.

• 50:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 50:06Adam Buxton?

  And actually I had heard of it with people who got it quite severely and never quite got over it. Cause it can be very severe.

• 50:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 50:13Adam Buxton?

  Like your face can go completely asymmetrical. It just sort of relaxes completely on one side and you can't really control it.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  I'm examining you at the moment and it seems, that's lovely. Yeah, Adam's smiling.

• 50:25Adam Buxton?

  I'm doing a range of expressions.

• 50:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, it's gorgeous.

• 50:29Adam Buxton?

  But there were a few that I couldn't even do for a while after I got it. And I mean, Bell's palsy, I looked up the definition just to incorporate some actual facts into the podcast. This is a condition, listeners, if you're not familiar, that causes temporary weakness or paralysis on one side of the face, usually due to a problem with the facial nerve. The exact cause is unknown, but viral infections or autoimmune disorders may play a role. Symptoms typically appear suddenly and include facial dropping. Could happen during a podcast, maybe after the conversation has peaked.

• 51:09Adam Buxton?

  And it might be an indication that a second podcast session is required four or five months later, it says here. Difficulty closing eye on the affected side, potentially problems with speech and taste. I noticed that I was making some pretty off colour.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  It was offend, yeah, it was offensive.

• 51:25Adam Buxton?

  Gags towards the end, which I've had to cut out.

• 51:29Speaker 02

  I've got my health thing, I haven't mentioned this to you, but I was almost going to have to ask you if I could do this interview from a reclining position.

• 51:36Adam Buxton?

  Oh, no.

• 51:36Speaker 02

  Because I've got a, well, I think I have a leaking spine.

• 51:41Adam Buxton?

  Whoa.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Which is, which is actually, I feel like that's a similar sort of genre to Bell's palsy for some reason. And it sort of cures itself, apparently. Apparently it's quite common. But the treatment is that you have to lie completely flat and drink as much coffee and take as many caffeine tablets as you can, which sends you absolutely mental because you're, you can't really move, but your head is sort of wired. And they also say you've got to, to get out of bed. I think to maintain a lateral position, you're supposed to log roll out of bed, which I found too difficult because it's too far. And you're also meant to, if you're going to cough, you have to cough with as wide a mouth as possible, which my wife obviously finds really sort of repulsive.

• 52:23Adam Buxton?

  So is not to put pressure on the spine?

• 52:25Speaker 02

  I think so. I think to you don't sort of jilt. I didn't really do those things because they felt too sort of ridiculous.

• 52:30Adam Buxton?

  And, and sneezing is a no-no.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  Sneezing, wide open mouth.

• 52:34Adam Buxton?

  Wide open.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  I think you can, I assumed when I read it that you also couldn't cover your mouth. I think you probably can cover your mouth, but I just imagined people in lifts kind of coughing with a wide open mouth at people.

• 52:44Adam Buxton?

  And the caffeine is to encourage the blood flow, is it?

• 52:47Speaker 02

  Or? Yeah, so I think it stimulates growth of some, of the fluid or something.

• 52:53Adam Buxton?

  And the economy as well.

• 52:54Speaker 02

  It does, it's good. Yeah, it's really good.

• 52:56Adam Buxton?

  It speeds everything up generally.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  It's like a Wishi Sunak scheme.

• 52:58Adam Buxton?

  Exactly. It encourages writing.

• 53:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it certainly does. Yeah, it gives you a buzz.

• 53:03Adam Buxton?

  So you're writing a new book?

• 53:05Speaker 02

  I'm writing a new book. You've finished your book.

• 53:07Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 53:07Speaker 02

  In the intervening months.

• 53:09Adam Buxton?

  Never going to write another one. That's it. No more books.

• 53:11Speaker 02

  You forget how painful it is, though. I think that's, it's like having children. You forget how difficult it is.

• 53:17Adam Buxton?

  Well, women are always going on about how painful it is to have a child.

• 53:20Speaker 02

  They do, actually. I forget.

• 53:21Adam Buxton?

  And those are the ones that have never written a book.

• 53:26Speaker 02

  That's your Bell's palsy coming back.

• 53:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. It's affected my taste.

• 53:32Speaker 02

  I have not finished my book. I am still often in bed, highly caffeinated and slightly jittery, wondering if I will finish it. I actually enjoy it. I'm plugging away. I'm just kind of taking ages. So I'm in the thick of it. You know what it's like. I can't wait to feel like you feel.

• 53:48Adam Buxton?

  It's great, let me tell you.

• 53:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 53:50Adam Buxton?

  The sun is out. I mean, it's a beautiful summery day.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  Not for me. For me, it's snowdrifts.

• 53:56Adam Buxton?

  I feel so light. I'm so happy. I'm not that badly affected by the news.

• 54:03Adam Buxton?

  Every single thing doesn't bring me down.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  You're warming to Trump. You're coming round to his new way of doing stuff.

• 54:09Adam Buxton?

  He's shaking things up.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's fun.

• 54:10Adam Buxton?

  Things needed a shake up.

• 54:12Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 54:13Adam Buxton?

  He's not so bad. No, I sympathize so badly. Writing is terrible and it's physically bad for you. It gives you all sorts of, as we have seen, it gives you all sorts of leaky spine, Bell's palsy.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:25Adam Buxton?

  Don't write.

• 54:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I enjoy, I do enjoy it. Did you enjoy the process when it felt like you were writing something and thinking, yeah, that was a good bit or?

• 54:36Adam Buxton?

  Occasionally.

• 54:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:37Adam Buxton?

  Because the attraction of the whole thing is to be able to make sense of the world in some way.

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 54:43Adam Buxton?

  To be able to set down your thoughts and organise them the way that you would like them to be shared with the world, rather than what normally happens, which is you go on an interview and you just blither.

• 54:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, but this is going to be your life in a heroic arc.

• 54:57Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 54:57Speaker 02

  Kind of, yeah. And it's escapism. I find it escapist to be writing about something else that isn't real life. But I guess yours is a memoir, so you are reflecting. You're trapped in your own.

• 55:09Adam Buxton?

  Dreary reality of my life. What's the new book about? Can you say?

• 55:14Speaker 02

  If it's published, it will be about a string quartet and kind of those sorts of people who commit every gram of their energy into art and aspiring for an unrealisable perfection at the cost of much else. And kind of ambition, competitiveness and how toxic creativity can be. So it's quite pertinent to this discussion. To how we feel, so it's.

• 55:42Adam Buxton?

  How did you arrive at that subject then? Did you meet some people in string quartets? Have you ever been in one?

• 55:48Speaker 02

  No, I've never been, but I was, I'm quite, I think I was attracted to it really because it sort of felt as though it was a good area where you can kind of penetrate really dramatic, beautiful ideas. But also it's a bit of an outsider zone. You know, a quartet would be named for one person often, and then the other three were kind of in and out and nobody cared, but increasingly kind of mirroring democracy over the 20th century. It became more democratic and everyone would have an equal say. But even then, it's clearly not the case. There are louder voices and some people just go with the flow.

• 56:29Adam Buxton?

  Well, that's the dynamic in rock bands as well, even though a lot of the time, you know, the bands aren't operating at the same level of technical virtuosity. Some of them are.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  But sometimes, yeah.

• 56:41Adam Buxton?

  I watched the Led Zeppelin documentary the other day.

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Great.

• 56:44Adam Buxton?

  And I'm not a big Led Zeppelin fan, I have to be honest. But there are definitely moments, some incredible archive clips there where they are locked into each other. They are so in the zone and they're able to just go wherever they want. The combination of that drumming and John Paul Jones on bass and Jimmy Page's incredible guitar. And then suddenly you've got Robert Plant, who can do all that stuff with his voice. And it's like, whoa, they are firing on all cylinders and they, you can see that they love journeying with each other and they're all staring at each other on these tiny micro cues that they're giving each other. And that's why it's so seductive for so many music fans, because they see that and they think,

• 57:29Adam Buxton?

  imagine having that in your life, imagine being able to go to those places.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:33Adam Buxton?

  With other human beings.

• 57:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. It's a rarefied mental state. I've certainly never, I don't think my concert band at school.

• 57:44Speaker 02

  When I was playing the flute. Ever hugely felt like that.

• 57:49Adam Buxton?

  But comedy can feel like that sometimes.

• 57:50Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 57:51Adam Buxton?

  I did Kyle Smith Bino's improv.

• 57:54Speaker 02

  Did you?

• 57:54Adam Buxton?

  Night the other night.

• 57:55Speaker 02

  Oh, great.

• 57:56Adam Buxton?

  I wasn't improvising. I was just being the emcee.

• 57:59Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 57:59Adam Buxton?

  But watching them and his team on stage improvising, they were brilliant.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  It's an amazing thing to watch when people really improvise and you feel their joy at doing it. Yeah, I was reading someone the other day talking about drawing, saying the thing people don't talk about enough about drawing, like pencil drawing, is that the line is guiding you as much as your brain is, something like. I love that idea. And I think that's the same with playing, that sounds like with playing and with improvisation, you're kind of all locked into something that you're not entirely, no single person is entirely in control of it.

• 58:33Adam Buxton?

  That's the dream, especially for me as an over thinker.

• 58:36Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 58:36Adam Buxton?

  Because for me, the line never gets to dictate where it's going because my brain gets in the way.

• 58:44Speaker 02

  Well, there are different sorts of writers as well. I mean, I was listening to an interview with somebody who was saying, you know, some writers say, I just listen to my characters. I can't control everything that happens. And I think most people do a bit of both, but they quoted Nabokov saying that he's in such control that the characters quiver when he approaches the typewriter. And he said, whole forests of trees shed their leaves in fear when I approach, which I love that idea.

• 59:12Adam Buxton?

  That's confidence.

• 59:17Speaker 02

  I am, I am the opposite. I am shaking.

• 59:20Adam Buxton?

  Whole forests sit down and have a ciggy when Buckles approaches.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  Put their feet up and roll their eyes. Good luck. With his secretaries.

• 59:31Adam Buxton?

  We're all gonna die because this guy wants to tell people about the arguments he's had with his wife.

• 1:00:16Speaker 02

  Attention.

• 1:00:17Adam Buxton?

  As part of my attempt to improve my mental and physical lot towards the beginning of this year, I went and saw a shiatsu guy.

• 1:00:26Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 1:00:28Adam Buxton?

  Hmm, I was hoping you would tell me. I mean, it was, he, he's just sort of doing physical manipulation.

• 1:00:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:34Adam Buxton?

  So it's like, um, intense massage with a kind of slightly possibly therapeutic, mentally therapeutic angle to it, maybe?

• 1:00:45Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:00:46Adam Buxton?

  And this guy was a monk, ex monk.

• 1:00:48Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:00:49Adam Buxton?

  So he was the real deal. And some of my friends had seen him. And they'd said, you've got to see this guy, you know, so one of my friends had an injury. Um, and her arm was knackered. She'd fallen down and, and really hurt her arm badly a few months before she saw the guy. He manipulated her for a, an hour or something.

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:11Adam Buxton?

  And the pain literally went. She's like, I swear to you, I'm not a woo woo person, but it was literally miraculous.

• 1:01:19Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:01:20Adam Buxton?

  And I, I think it's at least worth a go. Anyway, so I go along. And I'm thinking, here we go. Cause I've had some sciatica.

• 1:01:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:01:28Adam Buxton?

  To add to my list of, uh,

• 1:01:31Adam Buxton?

  physical problems. No, sciatica, not too bad. Down the left side though. So I was thinking, oh, well, see the guy, maybe let's start with the sciatica, see if he can do anything about that. Surely that'd be like a walk in the park for this guy.

• 1:01:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:44Adam Buxton?

  Anyway, he starts talking to me about my life. Also, his English wasn't great. So there was a bit of a barrier of understanding between us a little bit. And for him, it was good because it contributed to a sort of gnomic persona. Ex monk, doesn't say much.

• 1:02:02Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 1:02:03Adam Buxton?

  Deep insights.

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:02:04Adam Buxton?

  Speaks in kind of aphoristic, mysterious sentences, short sentences.

• 1:02:12Adam Buxton?

  And but I immediately was nervous. I immediately felt like I was being assessed.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:02:19Adam Buxton?

  He was asking me questions about what do you do? I said, I'm I'm writing at the moment. What kind of what sort of thing do you write? He said journalists dealing with the truth often require extra deeper levels of physiotherapy.

• 1:02:32Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:02:33Adam Buxton?

  And I said, yes, well, I'm writing a memoir. And there's a lot of truth in this mother. He said, hmm, yes, interesting, interesting. Lie down, please. And then he starts manipulating my legs and kind of rolling them around a bit. And he's saying, just relax, just relax. He kept on saying, just relax. I was like, okay, I'll just relax. Okay, I'm doing my best to relax. I'm trying to relax.

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  It's impossible when someone says to do it, yeah.

• 1:02:57Adam Buxton?

  But I was really trying to relax. It's like, okay, okay. Let go, just relax, relax, relax. Anyway, long story short, at the end of about fifty minutes of manipulation of my head, my legs, everything in my body. He sort of gave a deep sigh, folded his arms and said, how do you feel? I was like, yeah, it was a little painful towards the end. He's like, yeah, it was, wasn't it?

• 1:03:20Speaker 02

  You are joking.

• 1:03:21Adam Buxton?

  And I was like, huh? And he's like, that's because you didn't relax. That's because you didn't let go. You can't let go. You're like this, he said. And he showed me balled up fists.

• 1:03:32Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 1:03:33Adam Buxton?

  And then he said something about, this was where the language barrier got in the way. Because I think what he meant was, if you carry on like that, you'll run into more problems physically and probably mentally too. But what he actually said was, you will carry on like this. It will always be like this, closed, can't let go. And then there is a storm coming.

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  You are joking.

• 1:04:01Adam Buxton?

  No.

• 1:04:02Speaker 02

  So he became more of a fortune teller vibe at the end and not with great, not with good news?

• 1:04:07Adam Buxton?

  No.

• 1:04:08Speaker 02

  And that made you instantly relax. The idea of this storm, this coming.

• 1:04:13Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, then I was fine. Skipped out, sciatica cleared up, positive mental attitude, finished the book. All good. No, I was, I was really polaxed by it.

• 1:04:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's horrific.

• 1:04:23Adam Buxton?

  I mean, the thing is that it was all, it was mainly my hangups that I was bringing to the table that I was using to translate what he was telling me. I think basically it was just like, just chill, have a chill pill.

• 1:04:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:04:36Adam Buxton?

  But what I was hearing was you will never allow that line to draw itself.

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're a flawed person.

• 1:04:42Adam Buxton?

  You'll get in the way.

• 1:04:44Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:04:44Adam Buxton?

  You're terrible. You're why Donald Trump got in again. And why Western civilization is crumbling now. Fuck off.

• 1:04:53Speaker 02

  Fuck off out of here.

• 1:04:54Adam Buxton?

  And by the way, that's a hundred and fifty pounds, please.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  And can you relax?

• 1:04:59Adam Buxton?

  Oh, I had a dream I was back at school, putting on a play with my friends. It was the opening night, but I did not know my lines. We had spent months and months painting sets and making costumes and posters for the play. But we had not rehearsed the play. I didn't know what I was supposed to say. And yet the rest of the cast knew all of their words and their moves and the songs in the play.

• 1:05:38Adam Buxton?

  And they were shaking their heads as the curtain went up and I was still asking what I should say. And suddenly I knew what to do.

• 1:05:51Adam Buxton?

  I sat on stage and did April.

• 1:05:56Adam Buxton?

  So the reason we're having this kind of recap a little bit is because we both came away from our first meeting feeling slightly like, oh, we didn't wrap things up as neatly as we could have done. And I'm not guaranteeing that it's going to happen this time. But I really relate to that feeling, especially now that I'm doing bits of press for my book. And suddenly going on more podcasts than I normally would and doing interviews and being asked like big questions. It's like I'm never prepared for the big questions. I should just sit down and think about them properly, write some sort of book or other. But like yesterday, I did a podcast with Nihal, Arthur Naik, who's really nice, thoughtful guy.

• 1:06:38Adam Buxton?

  But he goes deep quite fast with his interviews. He'll ask, he'll just say, what was the biggest thing this or what was the most important time that? He said, in what ways are you a successful father? Things like that. Yeah. And I'm like, oh, I don't think I am a successful father.

• 1:06:56Speaker 02

  Inspirational.

• 1:06:57Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, but I don't want to go into all my hangups about why I don't think I'm a good dad. So I'm just going to try and roll with this question and be positive and think about the ways that I'm a good dad, but I don't really have any. So you're just freestyling.

• 1:07:12Speaker 02

  That is exactly how I feel. Yeah. Cause, cause what you really want is a kind of politician's script that you accept is completely meaningless and you just trot it out every, I mean, I'm sorry to tell people this, but this is, I do think it's the only way to kind of stay sane, but also not end up talking for an hour about, you know, cause that I felt that with the book, I feel like I'm always trying to justify why I did it. Um, in fact, the first ever Q and A I did, the first question was, so why did you write the book? And it's such an obvious, simple, nice question to begin with, but it completely flummoxes me because there is no answer to that question.

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  And really, you don't really decide in a logical fashion, I must tackle the issue of country houses or, or, you know, it doesn't, it doesn't really work like that. You just get a kind of inclination that you're going to do it. But also people need to have a reason to put you in a newspaper. And so often with the Academy, it's political, it's class and, or, you know, I suppose inherited wealth, those sorts of things, which is definitely part of the book. But also I do feel sometimes I end up being a bit disingenuous out of the sort of people, pleasey horseshit that the book is, you know, examining. And so I remember in our, cause you were, you were really so nice about the book and you had a bit that I read out.

• 1:08:32Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:34Speaker 02

  And I can't actually remember exactly what I said, but I do remember thinking as I was saying it, you don't think any of this really deep down.

• 1:08:44Speaker 02

  And thinking that actually that's just a character thinking that or that's I'm just imagining what the character sort of thinks. But sometimes

• 1:08:52Adam Buxton?

  Insufficiency was the word.

• 1:08:54Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 1:08:54Adam Buxton?

  It was a passage in which the main character's having a sort of meltdown and just a ecstasy of disconnection from society and frustration with his own shortcomings and

• 1:09:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:08Adam Buxton?

  the way that the world works.

• 1:09:09Speaker 02

  No, it's beginning to ring a bell. Yeah. Maybe it is. But but yeah, that's right. And actually, I do remember writing that bit and thinking, yeah, I've got some off my chest. But I guess the difference I'm saying is it's not like I needed to say that about life definitively. It's more that I it's just something you've written down.

• 1:09:27Adam Buxton?

  That's right. But then you get into a situation like this, like you're on a podcast or you're doing an interview. Suddenly, someone looks at you and says, so what's it all about? What does it all mean? What's your philosophy? You're like, oh, my philosophy?

• 1:09:41Speaker 02

  I know. There's a Heaven's Gate type feeling sometimes where you're like, account for your life.

• 1:09:45Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:46Speaker 02

  That's how you sort of feel.

• 1:09:47Adam Buxton?

  That's right.

• 1:09:48Speaker 02

  And really, and I feel that especially when anything goes out or is published where you're like, you suddenly find that you have to stand by it as though it's your manifesto or your philosophy for all of existence. Whereas actually, it's okay to just say, and I think you kind of, I think lots of people do do this when there may be a few books in or whatever. It's, I don't know, really, just plugging away, doing my best. And normally, I mean, I wouldn't really normally mind that. But I remember thinking after that, that you you also don't, I mean, frankly, you also don't want to sound too grand, because you don't feel like that when you're writing. You feel like you're in your little laptop. You're just doing your best. So that was probably niggling away for that reason.

• 1:10:34Adam Buxton?

  People want answers, though. People want insights and answers. That's what all the podcast universe is predicated on. That's why Joe Rogan does so well, because he's got all these blokes coming in, telling you how to do it and how to work things out. They've got their strong opinions. And everyone's like, oh, yeah, great, a strong opinion.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  That'll work. I'll do that.

• 1:10:53Adam Buxton?

  Right. Yeah. And and I find that so difficult personally.

• 1:10:59Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:10:59Adam Buxton?

  The only chance that I have is to write stuff down beforehand and then read it out verbatim, if I've been given the questions beforehand. Then great.

• 1:11:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I I was, the publisher said, they, I think they kind of intuited that whenever I spoke about the book, I started to blush and sort of stutter. They said, do you want to have media training? And I was, I was mortally offended. And then I did the media training and it was actually transformative. I mean, obviously it didn't work, the fact that I was niggling myself over this, but, but it is good. And it's actually quite, it's almost therapeutic, I found it, because you start to see it as a product, completely distinctly from the process of writing it and from yourself. So I actually helped me kind of flip into a salesman. So I'd say to people, yeah, I'm just trying to fucking take down the poshos.

• 1:11:52Speaker 02

  And it just, I didn't exactly say that, but it, it sort of alleviated all of that angst about authenticity. Because you can't give in an interview, an entirely thorough and comprehensively authentic, global account of who you are. You just have to kind of say something for a couple of minutes.

• 1:12:10Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm. Give me the potted version of the media training, so I don't have to do it.

• 1:12:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, it's basically write down a few punchy sentences about it that you can learn.

• 1:12:21Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 1:12:21Speaker 02

  It sounds like you've done that.

• 1:12:22Adam Buxton?

  And then you do them every single time?

• 1:12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I've actually.

• 1:12:26Adam Buxton?

  And you don't feel self-conscious about the fact that, because the thing in my head, I'm always haunted by the specter of the person who goes and tracks what you do and then just go, ah, he, he repeats this in every single interview he does.

• 1:12:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know, but I, and I had that. And I think there will be, you have to gauge the fact that there will be a certain degree of self-consciousness in any scenario.

• 1:12:46Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:47Speaker 02

  But that I've seen other authors do that and no one, I don't think anyone cares.

• 1:12:52Adam Buxton?

  No, at the end of the day, it's not that important.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  No, exactly.

• 1:12:57Adam Buxton?

  Especially the level I'm operating at, really.

• 1:13:00Speaker 02

  What does that mean?

• 1:13:02Adam Buxton?

  Well, the kind of things in my book, I mean, it's not world-changing material.

• 1:13:07Speaker 02

  I can't wait to read the book.

• 1:13:08Adam Buxton?

  It's pretty good.

• 1:13:09Speaker 02

  When can we?

• 1:13:10Adam Buxton?

  It's incredible.

• 1:13:11Speaker 02

  This is better, this is.

• 1:13:12Adam Buxton?

  It's very good. It's, it's very funny. It's hilarious.

• 1:13:17Adam Buxton?

  People keep putting the word hilarious into bits of blurb. I'm like, I wouldn't describe it as hilarious, but I mean, I think it's funny. It's hilarious.

• 1:13:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:13:26Adam Buxton?

  And it's also very poignant.

• 1:13:29Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:13:29Adam Buxton?

  At times.

• 1:13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:13:31Adam Buxton?

  And vulnerable.

• 1:13:32Speaker 02

  Hmm. That's great.

• 1:13:33Adam Buxton?

  It deals with the dynamics of friendship and ambition. It deals with grief. It deals with grief over the passing of time. Grief in all its forms. How about that?

• 1:13:45Speaker 02

  That's great.

• 1:13:47Adam Buxton?

  And the main message of the book is just relax.

• 1:13:53Speaker 02

  That's fantastic.

• 1:13:54Adam Buxton?

  Comes with a free chill pill.

• 1:14:03Adam Buxton?

  Wait. This is an ad for Squarespace. 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

• 1:14:46Adam Buxton?

  does look great. Videos of you airing your views, members areas for your mad fans. You've even got a merch store, I see. 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 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.

• 1:15:31Adam Buxton?

  Continue.

• 1:15:42Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcasts. That was Johnny Sweet. Very grateful to Johnny for making the time to come and waffle with me. You'll find a link to his book, The Kellaby Code, which I really recommend. I enjoyed it very much. In the description of the podcast. And along with that link, you'll find the picture of Johnny and Tim Key back in 2015 at the pub in King's Cross. When Johnny was in the thick of filming together and I was advising him to try and enjoy it. There's also a picture of myself and Johnny after our first podcast waffle session in November 2024,

• 1:16:28Adam Buxton?

  where you can see that my face looks a little wonky, which I later discovered was due to Bell's palsy. That's what the doc said. And she prescribed steroids, 10 days worth. And that seemed to clear it up. It turned out to be a fairly minor case of Bell's palsy, if that's what it was. I know some people can be quite badly affected by it. And now my face looks more or less normal for a middle aged guy. A little bit wonky, but then it always was.

• 1:17:03Adam Buxton?

  Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys died last week as I speak on the 11th of June 2025. He was 82 years old.

• 1:17:14Adam Buxton?

  I loved a lot of his music. It had been a big part of my life since my late teens. When I was little, I always liked. Hearing Beach Boys songs whenever they popped up on the radio or on T V. Fun, fun, fun. It's called fun, fun, fun. I mean, what's not to like? Round, round, get around, I get around. Help me render, help, help me render. It was always uplifting, fun, summery pop. Although, when I became a music fan in my teens, you know, I was much more into David Bowie and art pop. And it never really occurred to me to go out and actually buy a Beach Boys album. Then, when I was a D J at the Rock Island Diner in Piccadilly Circus,

• 1:18:00Adam Buxton?

  playing a lot of fifties and sixties music at the beginning of the nineties. I played a lot of Beach Boys songs as part of my job there. I would stand in a D J booth looking out over the restaurant, wearing a baseball cap with a record attached to the top, which I would wobble around as I pretended to be surfing, to songs like Catch a Wave, All Summer Long, and Surfing. Bow, bow, di, di, di, di, di, bow, bow, di, di, di. Surfing is the only life, the only way for me now, so. Sounds like an anthem for robots who love to surf, that one. Anyway, I knew from reading music magazines around that time

• 1:18:42Adam Buxton?

  that the Beach Boys nineteen sixty six album Pet Sounds was supposed to be their best and one of the best albums ever made, apparently. And eventually, I bought it on C D when I finally got a C D player in the early nineties. But it took me a while to get into Pet Sounds because it was a lot more grown up, I suppose, and sophisticated than a lot of stuff that I was used to listening to. I think initially it was just the strings and the arrangements and all those kind of lush Radio Two afternoon harmonies that made me just think, oh, I don't know if I like this. It's a bit stuffy.

• 1:19:22Adam Buxton?

  I preferred fast songs with synthesizers and twangy guitars. But Pet Sounds was one of those albums that I kept on coming back to. And songs like Caroline Know, God Only Knows, of course. And Don't Talk, Put Your Head On My Shoulder. Sounded the way that I felt about love and heartbreak around that time. They captured the same kind of feelings of emotion that I had around those areas. Feelings of emotion. And I guess I would have been the same age when I was first listening to those songs that Brian Wilson would have been when he wrote them. Which is a weird thing to consider, in his early twenties.

• 1:20:07Adam Buxton?

  Some of them he wrote with Tony Asher. And I think one of those songs was I Just Wasn't Made For These Times, which I really loved. And that one captured a feeling that I sometimes had of being disconnected from people around me, like Joe and Louis. You know, it seemed to me that they knew exactly what they were gonna do with their lives. In a way that I just didn't at all at that time. In that song, I Just Wasn't Made For These Times, Brian Wilson, as far as I can tell, is essentially singing about feeling isolated by his genius. He's too far ahead of his contemporaries. I felt that I had the opposite problem. But the upshot was the same.

• 1:20:48Adam Buxton?

  And the touchingly basic lyrics of the chorus, sometimes I feel very sad. Cut through everything. I listened to that one a lot when I was feeling self-indulgently blue. And then, when I was at art school in nineteen ninety-three, I got the Beach Boys box set. Good Vibrations, thirty years of the Beach Boys. And that turned me into a Brian Wilson obsessive for a while.

• 1:21:17Adam Buxton?

  Mainly because of the music on the second disc. Many of which were previously unreleased pieces that had been recorded during the nineteen sixty-six to sixty- Seven sessions for the follow up to Pet Sounds, which was called Smile. An album so ambitious and experimental that it was eventually abandoned. And for many years was just this legendary lost album. Some said it was because Beach Boys lead singer Mike Love thought the music was too weird and felt frustrated by Brian Wilson's collaboration with esoteric musician and lyricist Van Dyke Parks.

• 1:21:59Adam Buxton?

  But Brian's fragile mental state was clearly a factor too. He was eventually diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder. A condition that can cause hallucinations, depression, paranoia and mania. All of which may well have been intensified by Brian's abusive relationship with his father. And increasingly frequent substance abuse in the late sixties and early seventies. I've watched documentaries where people around him, including Van Dyke Parks. Say that too much is made of his drug use around that time. But even by his own admission, he he did seem to be caning it fairly hard, which probably

• 1:22:41Adam Buxton?

  doesn't improve serious mental issues. In the sleeve notes for the Beach Boys Good Vibrations box set. David Leaf encourages listeners to imagine what the finished version of Smile might have sounded like and rearrange the fragments of tracks on that box set into their own version. And that was something that I did a lot, and so did lots of other people. In the early two thousands, a band formed by LA musicians, also obsessed with the unfinished fragments of Smile, convinced Brian and Van Dyke Parks to organize the music into a

• 1:23:23Adam Buxton?

  final sequence that they would re-record for an album that came out called Brian Wilson Presents Smile. I went to see Brian with this fantastically proficient backing band at the Royal Festival Hall on February the twenty fourth, two thousand and four. They sounded amazing.

• 1:23:46Adam Buxton?

  I've included a link to a live performance from the same year in Los Angeles, which gives you an idea of how good that band was and also how extraordinary a lot of the music on Smile was.

• 1:24:00Adam Buxton?

  There have been loads of documentaries about the Beach Boys over the years, which include bits of Smile footage. I always liked one from 1985, which was called "The Beach Boys: An American Band", directed by Malcolm Leo, as well as great footage of early TV appearances and some sad stuff in the final section about Brian's brother Dennis, who drowned aged 39 in 1983 after years of alcohol problems. There's a good section in the middle of this documentary about the band working on Smile. You can see Brian Wilson wearing a fireman's helmet in the studio while they were recording an instrumental section called "Fire",

• 1:24:45Adam Buxton?

  which became a focus for Brian Wilson's anxieties around the album. He ended up becoming convinced that there was something evil about the song itself. Anyway, I've put a link to that documentary in the description of today's podcast. For the moment, you can still see it on YouTube. "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" is also good, documentary directed by Don Was, that came out in 1995.

• 1:25:14Adam Buxton?

  I'd strongly recommend the 2014 biopic "Love and Mercy", directed by Bill Pollard, starring Paul Dano. He's particularly good as the younger Brian Wilson.

• 1:25:27Adam Buxton?

  Last week, I watched for the first time "Long Promised Road", directed by Brent Wilson, no relation, which came out in 2021. And what makes that documentary worth seeing, I think, is the GoPro footage of Brian in his late 70s, being driven around Los Angeles, where he lived and worked his whole life, by a journalist from Rolling Stone magazine called Jim Fine. And he'd become friendly with Brian, earned his trust, and was able to ask questions about Brian's life in a way that was gentle and respectful of his delicate mental state, even though there's still moments where you do feel a little bit voyeuristic.

• 1:26:15Adam Buxton?

  And unsure of how good an idea it is to be kind of prodding him for reminiscences at that point in his life.

• 1:26:25Adam Buxton?

  I don't know. Brian Wilson wrote so many songs that I love. I've put most of them on a Spotify playlist for you in case you're interested. Link in the description. I was talking to my sons about favourite songs.

• 1:26:39Adam Buxton?

  Nat said that his favourite was "Don't Talk, Put Your Head on My Shoulder". It's so strange and kind of soporific and almost psychedelic from Pet Sounds.

• 1:26:54Adam Buxton?

  But I always loved "Till I Die" from the album Surf's Up from 1971. I think that was written at a particularly dark and fearful time for Brian Wilson. And the lyrics, "I'm a cork on the ocean, rolling over the raging sea, how deep is the ocean?" They sound to me as though they're trying to evoke the feeling of being an insignificant speck in a pitiless universe. But actually, to me, that song always made me feel a little bit more at peace with insignificance and the temporary nature of existence, but I don't know. Maybe that's because I'm a cork on a not particularly deep ocean. Anyway, thanks for the music.

• 1:27:39Adam Buxton?

  Brian Wilson.

• 1:27:43Adam Buxton?

  Okay, that's it for this week.

• 1:27:46Adam Buxton?

  Thank you very much once again to Jonny Sweet for his time. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support and additional conversation editing on this episode.

• 1:28:01Adam Buxton?

  Thanks to Helen Green for her beautiful artwork. Thanks to everyone at Acast for all their support. But thanks, most of all, to you. You listened right to the end. Come here, summery hug. Eee. Good to see you.

• 1:28:18Adam Buxton?

  Until next time, please go carefully. And for what it's worth, I love you. Bye!