EP.246 - JO BRAND

Adam talks with British stand-up comedian Jo Brand about collective lockdown trauma, Mums, dealing with violent hecklers at comedy clubs and wee-based restaurant revenge stories. Conversation recorded face-to-face in London, 1st May 2025. Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and additional conversation editing. Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ NORD VPN EXCLUSIVE NordVPN Deal https://nordvpn.com/buxton Try it risk-free now with a 30-day money-back guarantee! ADAM AND CAITLIN MORAN LIVE @ UNION CHAPEL https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/an-evening-with-adam-buxton-and-caitlin-moran-tickets-1284351502919?aff=oddtdtcreator - 19th May, 2025 PRE-ORDER SIGNED COPIES OF ADAM'S NEW BOOK https://www.waterstones.com/book/i-love-you-byeee/adam-buxton/9780008715427 from Waterstones ADAM BUXTON ON THE FAILING WRITERS PODCAST https://www.failingwriterspodcast.com/ - 2025 (FAILING WRITERS PODCAST WEBSITE) PICS AND LINKS ON ADAM'S WEBSITE https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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

• 0:31Adam Buxton?

  Hey, how are you doing, podcats? Adam Buckston here, reporting to you from a crunchy farm track in Norfolk, UK. Middle of May, 2025. It's a beautiful breezy sunny afternoon. I'm here with my best dog friend Rosie, who's looking beautiful and perky today. How are you doing, Rosie?

• 0:58Speaker 02

  I've recently done a poo and now I am sniffing the hedgerows. Later, I'm gonna find a hot flagstone on the terrace and stretch out on it on my side.

• 1:09Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah. Winning, as Charlie Sheen used to say, remember Charlie Sheen? Rebecca Black, good old days. How are you doing, podcats? I hope things are okay with you. Thanks for coming back. I'm hoping to see some of you on Monday as I speak, Monday, the 19th of May. I'll be doing a live event at the Union Chapel in Islington. I'll be onstage talking with Caitlin Moran about my book, showing a few clips from the olden times, Adam and Joe stuff, maybe some Radiohead bits. And signing books afterwards.

• 1:51Adam Buxton?

  I hope some of you might be able to come along, there are still tickets left. There's a link in the description of today's podcast. But let me tell you a bit about that podcast, it's number 246 and it features a rambling conversation with British stand-up comedian, writer and actor, Joe Brand.

• 2:13Adam Buxton?

  Oh, look at that. Dog legs right up ahead of us. Hovering in the low air. It is the techno bird. Good to see the techno bird back again, isn't it, Rose? Anyway, I got some Joe Brand facts for you. Here they come. Brand facts. Josephine Grace Brand was born in nineteen fifty-seven in South London and grew up in Hastings on England's southeast coast. She studied nursing and later social work and worked for ten years as a psychiatric nurse, including a seven-year stint at South London's Maudsley Hospital,

• 2:57Adam Buxton?

  before changing course completely when she began performing stand-up in the nineteen eighties. In those early stand-up days, she chose the stage name The Sea Monster in response to frequent heckling about her appearance. She quickly became a key figure in the UK alternative comedy scene, known for her dry, self-deprecating humour, super-deadpan delivery and feminist themes. Her TV break came with appearances on stand-up showcases, Saturday Live on Channel Four and Friday Night Live on ITV. In nineteen ninety-three, she landed her own Channel Four TV series, Through the Cake Hole, a mix of frequently surreal sketches and stand-up

• 3:42Adam Buxton?

  in front of a studio audience that ran for two series until nineteen ninety-six. Some of Joe's acting jobs over the years have included the darkly satirical BBC Four sitcom Getting On, which first aired in two thousand and nine. That show was set on the geriatric ward of a beleaguered NHS hospital and was directed by Peter Capaldi and co-starred Vicky Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlon. And Vicky and Joanna also wrote the show, along with Joe. Joe also starred in and co-wrote, along with writer, actor and comedian Morwenna Banks, the sitcom Damned, about council employees in a children's services department, which ran for two series from twenty sixteen on Channel Four.

• 4:27Adam Buxton?

  As well as hosting the Great British Bake Off An Extra Slice since 2014, Jo has appeared regularly on panel shows like QI, Have I Got News For You? And Would I Lie To You? And of course, she appeared on Taskmaster in 2019. My conversation with Jo was recorded face to face on a hot day in London earlier this month, May 2025, and we talked about what the passing years have taught her, how she feels the Covid lockdowns affected her children and their generation, how her own mum dealt with Jo's more wayward behaviour when she was young, how her experiences as a psychiatric nurse prepared her for sometimes violent confrontations

• 5:12Adam Buxton?

  with drunken audience members in comedy clubs. And towards the end, we swapped restaurant tales that, be warned, were heavily PP-centric. It was very nice to get the chance to sit down and talk properly with Jo. I've met her a couple of times. We were on Eight Out Of Ten Cats Does Countdown one time, I remember. And it was one of my more difficult recordings, I think, for that show. And it was lovely to have Jo there, being very kind and supportive. She liked a video that I'd done where I'd put subtitles on the theme from The Bridge, the Scandi crime drama.

• 5:56Adam Buxton?

  That was a long time ago, and I wanted her to come on the podcast then. So I'm glad it's finally worked out. I'll be back at the end for a bit more Waffle, but right now with Jo Brand. Here we go.

• 6:48Adam Buxton?

  I was supposed to see you at Latitude last year.

• 6:51Speaker 03

  You were.

• 6:52Adam Buxton?

  And what happened? Did you get ill?

• 6:54Speaker 03

  Yes, I did.

• 6:55Adam Buxton?

  Oh, are you okay?

• 6:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm fine. I mean, how old am I now? I'm 67 now. And so life is starting to hand me all the little genetic messages from my parents. Um, gradually kind of flying in. So, you know, I feel envious of much older people. Although they're probably all putting it on as well, who are out and about, looking cheerful, looking fit, looking like life's wonderful. I mean, maybe that really is true for them, and I hope it is. But for me, it's more a wake up and ask myself, what's hurting today?

• 7:33Speaker 03

  You know, and how many things I'll have to have hurting to take, to take painkillers. Shocking sort of person, really. So, yeah, I actually think, don't pretend your life's great when you're older. Cause for an awful lot of people, it's not, you know.

• 7:47Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  It's grim.

• 7:48Adam Buxton?

  Sure. But what are the upsides to getting old? If you had to find some, because this is what I'm thinking now that I'm in my mid 50s and I'm beginning to confront the realities of aging a little bit. And getting some previews of how things might go. And also seeing my parents die and all that kind of thing, thinking about it a lot more. I'm really, I feel like, okay, I'm gonna tool up with some wisdom. So that I can face the last section, fully armed. Do you think that's possible?

• 8:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, I do, but my initial advice would be lower your expectations. And I don't mean that in a bad way, but that's that's how I've kind of lived my career, really. Because I think the lower your expectations are, the happier you are with the vast percentage of outcomes. So what I've learned is that I'm much better at saying no than I used to be. I used to just agree to every single benefit going because I felt obliged to kind of give something back. Because having been a nurse and earned a pittance comparatively, I suppose I felt guilty about it. So um I've learned to not do three benefits a night anymore.

• 9:04Adam Buxton?

  Have you got a new special technique for saying no?

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Well, the main advice that I've taken on board is don't feel you've got to give a really intricate reason. Because that's how I always used to feel. Because it was almost as though at the other end of the email, people sort of knew that I could do it really. And I felt guilty about it, you know. So I now I just say, I'm really sorry, I can't do it. Or no, I'm sorry. Whereas I used to sort of try and do this like massive long sort of string of excuses, you know. Like I would have done it if this and this and this hadn't happened. Or I think um I you're blah blah blah blah blah blah on ad infinitum.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  And the fact is, they don't know, you could be working somewhere else, your leg could have fallen off. So I think just be concise.

• 9:57Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, they just want a yes or no, don't they?

• 9:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, they absolutely do.

• 10:00Adam Buxton?

  And I know I've done the same thing. It's like, the thing is that I've done a lot of that material quite recently. And um I don't really have any new stuff. And I'm just so worried that if there's people out there who are going to blog about it or something like that, then they'll feel shortchanged and.

• 10:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, all those, all those and more. I know, it's it's terrible, but you're right, they just want to know yes or no, and then they move on, you know.

• 10:27Adam Buxton?

  I'm reading your book at the moment, Born Lippy.

• 10:29Speaker 03

  Oh, yes, that one.

• 10:30Adam Buxton?

  That's your most recent one, isn't it?

• 10:32Speaker 03

  It is. Yeah, that's right.

• 10:33Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, twenty eighteen. That seems like another age now.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  I know. It's a long time ago, isn't it? We're talking seven years ago. That's my most recent one.

• 10:41Adam Buxton?

  Even though Trump was in office, so a lot of the seeds of our current reality were already in bloom.

• 10:50Speaker 03

  Being malevolently so.

• 10:52Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:53Adam Buxton?

  But it does seem like a simpler time. I guess because it's pre-COVID and pre-second Trump term.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. I think so. I mean, I don't know how COVID was for you, but it was fairly appalling for me. Not from my own point of view. I mean, I did have COVID, but it wasn't dreadful. But, you know, like my mum, my mum died during COVID and I couldn't go and see her. So I think it's things like that that have just made people depressed on a more permanent level. And so frustrated when you look back at decisions that were made about it at the time.

• 11:33Adam Buxton?

  When did she die, if you don't mind me asking?

• 11:35Speaker 03

  No, I don't mind at all. She died in, towards the end of it, so twenty twenty one? Does that sound right?

• 11:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  I've got a terrible memory, by the way. So all the way through this, I'm going to be saying, what's the name of that guy who, you know, the one that was in that film? Oh, what was that film called? Yeah, and they were in it as well. Oh, what, you know, so apologies in advance if I do that.

• 11:58Adam Buxton?

  That's okay. I've got Google here. That's my whole life. I'm just attached to Google. Everything gets fact checked.

• 12:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I wonder if that's a mistake, though, because it shuts down bits of your brain that would be thinking about it and trying to ramp up your memory.

• 12:13Adam Buxton?

  That's what Frank Skinner says. I remember him talking about it, and he was adamant that it was a mistake to Google things for that reason. And I do worry about, but sometimes, you know, you're sat there and you're doing your breathing exercises and thinking, it'll come, it'll come, just relax. Think about something else that'll pop into your head, and it doesn't. You just think, no, that's been erased from the memory banks and I need to Google the name of the. Particularly, you know, it's like the new wave of actors and singers and performers and, you know, all the people that I grew up with, I can remember all that stuff, fine.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  I do, yeah, absolutely.

• 12:47Adam Buxton?

  But, you know, the guy, the one that looks a little bit like the other guy with the cheeks and the spiky hair, you know. So it's all that.

• 12:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:57Adam Buxton?

  My mum died in May of twenty twenty, so quite soon after the first lockdown. And it was around the time of the Dominic Cummings thing.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:08Adam Buxton?

  And she was insisting that she was fine when I was phoning her. And I knew she was already going downhill a bit, but I didn't realise how much. And every time I called her, she was down in Reading, I was in Norwich. She would say, I'm fine, I'm fine, you're worrying too much. And I was thinking, I should pick her up. But then all over the news is like Dominic Cummings is the world's biggest wanker for setting these rules and then breaking them himself.

• 13:35Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 13:35Adam Buxton?

  And everyone else is respecting them because you're told like only in emergencies should you break them. And and my mum was like, this is not an emergency, but it was.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  That's a very mum thing to do, though.

• 13:47Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 13:48Speaker 03

  It's it. I mean, I think people gradually as we go on, they get more honest, but not all of us. And they withhold things that they think are going to worry their family. You know, it reminds me of like, um, you know, that Monty Python sketch where the Black Knight, as it gets his arms and legs chopped off.

• 14:09Adam Buxton?

  It's just, it's just a scratch.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's how I think of mums. And, you know, grandmas before that even more so. So it's very difficult to pin them down.

• 14:20Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, but that was a surreal and nightmarish time in so many ways. And especially if you were one of those people who had lost someone, it felt extra crazy, didn't you find?

• 14:33Speaker 03

  I did, but I mean, I had like so many losses, um, like, I don't know, for the last eight or nine years, uh, my mum, my dad, both my brothers. And I had three really good friends from university, my best friends really. And and lost two of them as well. And it just felt like, why am I, why am I going around smiling? I should just be staying in and swigging a bottle of gin and abusing everyone. But I just did because I couldn't think of anything else to do, really. So, yeah. Uh, it's a very dark time for a lot of people, I think. And those awful kind of.

• 15:14Speaker 03

  Pictures of people like waving through windows at their relative and trapped in some residential home for the elderly and all that. Oh God, it was just awful, I think. And I think that's really changed people a lot myself. I really do.

• 15:31Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, a kind of collective trauma of that period. How old were your, because you've got two kids, right?

• 15:38Speaker 03

  I have, yeah.

• 15:39Adam Buxton?

  How old were they during Covid?

• 15:41Speaker 03

  Um, they were, hang on, when did Covid start? It was sort of twenty.

• 15:47Adam Buxton?

  Early twenty twenty.

• 15:48Speaker 03

  That's right. So one was nineteen and one was seventeen.

• 15:53Adam Buxton?

  Right. So they were, yeah, in the thick of it, the same sort of ages by boys, a little older. And um, how do you think it affected them?

• 16:05Speaker 03

  Well, I think um, the the youngest one was doing A levels at the time.

• 16:10Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  So not great because there is no similarity in my mind between going to school and doing exams and being with other people and just sitting at home on a Zoom or whatever it was. I think it was impossible and it's really, I do think, and this is such a cliche, but it's damaged that generation a lot.

• 16:36Adam Buxton?

  In what way though?

• 16:38Speaker 03

  Social skills, too much time on social media on their own, in their rooms. And I think the fallout of that in some ways is that some, I don't like to call them kids because that sounds patronizing, but but a lot of them just carried that on because that's what they were used to. And they can't now get off that track. So I I feel in those ways, you know, huge explosion in poor mental health amongst that generation as well. Um, just very difficult all round.

• 17:11Adam Buxton?

  It doesn't help that so much of social media is about reminding you what everyone else is doing. And so you've literally got uh, an app like Find My Friends or whatever it's called. Where you can see where everyone is. Talk about tweaking your FOMO.

• 17:29Speaker 03

  I tell you, the thing that pisses me off the most is not not being able to track your children without them knowing.

• 17:36Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  I'm sure if someone was able to do that. I know ultimately it's fair not to be able to do that, but it would have been so useful. I mean, it also made me feel really ashamed of the way that I treated my parents when when I was that age.

• 17:55Adam Buxton?

  In what way?

• 17:57Speaker 03

  Well, because I was I lied to them ninety seven percent of the time. Um, and they never had any idea where I was. I was pretty hopeless at covering stuff up. So I got into trouble a lot. You know, I used to get out of our, we lived in Hastings at the time, and I used to get out of our kind of garage window and go clubbing or whatever when everyone was asleep. And then, of course, I'd do things like come back in pissed and fall out the window onto the roof of my dad's car and dent it. So it was impossible to cover up. Lots of things like that.

• 18:37Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 18:38Speaker 03

  Left my left my purse in a pub once and thought, oh, this, you know, that that's a grim old pub, it'll never come back. And then Hell's Angel turns up at the door with my purse and my mum answers the door. So he said I was in the, it was a pub called The Anchor in Hastings. So not only has a Hell's Angel turned up, but he's told my mum where I was as well, you know, and that kept happening to me. Well, a friend and I, um, we found out that if you, I don't think that exists anymore. You used to be able to get, get this, by the way, cigarettes for asthmatics.

• 19:17Adam Buxton?

  How did that work?

• 19:18Speaker 03

  Well, they had Benzadrin in them.

• 19:21Adam Buxton?

  Whoa.

• 19:22Speaker 03

  So, um, someone told us that if you make tea out of it, you know, it's amazing. So of course we did. And I was fine and I went home and the friend went absolutely, you know, off the planet and tried to jump out of a second floor window and her mum just managed to stop her. And of course, in order to sort of um defend herself and also to put the blame elsewhere. She said it was all my fault and I'd bought them and I'd told her what was in them and what would happen. And so, of course, then her mum phones my mum and grasses me up.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  And in fact, it was a joint venture completely. I understand why she did it, but I would have been a hopeless criminal, put it like that.

• 20:11Adam Buxton?

  What does Benzedrine do then?

• 20:13Speaker 03

  Well, it's speedy, you know, so it's like speed. But also it seemed for her to be slightly hallucinatory as well.

• 20:22Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 20:23Speaker 03

  And she's normally like a really quiet, kind of quite bookish sort of girl. And she just transformed into this kind of raging monster. It was, it's so weird. Yeah, it was a bit scary, actually.

• 20:36Adam Buxton?

  I'm sure. Were you ever a, a big drug fiend?

• 20:39Speaker 03

  Not really. I mean, I, we were the generation that didn't have many exciting drugs, if that's how you want to categorise them. So I never had access to anything much more than um mild cannabis-y, grassy type things. And the occasional LSD tablet. But the worst times for me were I had my drink spiked twice.

• 21:06Adam Buxton?

  Oh, no.

• 21:07Speaker 03

  Uh, in a pub and uh that was grim.

• 21:10Adam Buxton?

  Spiked with what?

• 21:11Speaker 03

  With LSD.

• 21:12Adam Buxton?

  Oh, my god.

• 21:13Speaker 03

  I know.

• 21:14Adam Buxton?

  When was that?

• 21:15Speaker 03

  I was about seventeen at the time, so that would have been about seventy-five, seventy-four.

• 21:21Adam Buxton?

  Holy shit. But that's so shocking that someone would do that to you. I ju- I just can't believe that. People, people do that and they're so cavalier with this thing that is so potentially dangerous.

• 21:35Speaker 03

  Well, absolutely. I mean, if you combine it with someone's pathology, if you like. You, you haven't got no idea what's going to happen.

• 21:44Adam Buxton?

  Exactly. I've seen, yeah, I've had friends who've come completely off the rails just after one experience.

• 21:52Speaker 03

  Well, as, as a mental health nurse, I worked on the drug unit for a bit. Um, yeah, saw that quite a lot.

• 21:58Adam Buxton?

  Well, in fact, a friend of mine went, ended up at the Maudsley. Which is where you worked, right?

• 22:03Speaker 03

  That's right, yeah, yeah.

• 22:05Adam Buxton?

  My friend was in his late teens when, when he had a bad experience and, I mean, who knows what else was contributing to it. But he ended up being sectioned for a while.

• 22:16Speaker 03

  With what they would call at the time, I don't know what they call it now, but a drug induced psychosis, which is kind of not dissimilar to a paranoid psychosis like schizophrenia or um.

• 22:29Adam Buxton?

  Is that like bipolar? Is that the same sort of thing?

• 22:32Speaker 03

  No, bipolar is, I think bipolar is really interesting because quite a lot of people say they're bipolar, but actually I don't think they are. They've got something that's called a cyclothymic personality, which means that they've got slightly narrower edges to their experience. So someone with, with bipolar disorder, which used to be called manic depressive psychosis, because, you know, like psychosis is losing touch with reality. And you really did lose touch with reality. You had massive highs.

• 23:03Adam Buxton?

  That's the manic episodes.

• 23:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, and appalling lows as well. And sometimes, and I realise what I'm saying here is probably not very acceptable, but some things that people did when they were very high, I think sounded amazing.

• 23:18Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 23:19Speaker 03

  Do you know what I mean? I mean, we have, we had one person that we saw who was brought in by the police and he'd gone to a multi storey car park and he jumped from roof to roof of all the cars on one floor and just dented them completely, the whole lot. I don't know, like forty, fifty cars and he had a whale of a time, you know. And you might think, what are you talking about? But those things like that can be, I think, can be great when you're in them. But the damage that you cause is kind of appalling. I don't mean physical damage. I mean, you know.

• 23:54Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  Worrying your family beyond belief, um, all those sorts of things. So, yeah, it was difficult really.

• 24:01Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, and there's, there's so many people that you come across now who it's like they've slipped through the cracks a little bit. So people who are functional, you know, they're not violent or anything like that, but they're people that you come across socially or in the street or whatever, who are obviously in trouble and probably off their meds or whatever. But they're not so bad that they need to be taken into care, but they're just living in the middle somewhere.

• 24:29Speaker 03

  I know, and this sort of no man's land, it's terrible. I do have friends who still work in the area, but um, obviously I'm not in touch with it every day. But certainly to me, at the time when I was nursing, one of the huge problems was taking the drugs that you were prescribed for something like schizophrenia over a long time. And it completely changing you into someone who was bland and unemotional and

• 25:00Adam Buxton?

  Everything just flattened out.

• 25:01Speaker 03

  Put on loads of weight and just, yeah, absolutely flat. And it was, you kind of thought almost, is that worse? But, I mean, I don't know. I used to think about things like that all the time.

• 25:13Adam Buxton?

  But the drugs have got so much better now, is what I hear.

• 25:15Speaker 03

  They have, they have.

• 25:17Adam Buxton?

  Like they're tuning things.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're fine tuning everything all the time. And if you think when I was doing that, that was in nineteen seventy eight, and that is such a long time ago.

• 25:26Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 25:27Speaker 03

  Well, quite as bad as one flow of the cuckoo's nose.

• 25:31Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah. Now, I remember the, the drug that my friend was given was Largactol.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that, that's, that's the standard that we used to give at the time. And I don't know, they must still give it because, I don't know, when was your friend ill?

• 25:47Adam Buxton?

  Uh, late eighties.

• 25:48Speaker 03

  Oh, right. So it would have been, it would have been, do you know why it's called Largactol?

• 25:52Adam Buxton?

  No.

• 25:53Speaker 03

  Because it has a large action.

• 25:56Adam Buxton?

  No way.

• 25:57Speaker 03

  Means that it acts on so many parts of your, your nervous system or whatever it is. And that that's one of the problems with it, because you get terrible side effects from Largactol, which are nothing to do with making you better.

• 26:12Adam Buxton?

  My friend said the nickname that the nurses used for the drug was the liquid cosh.

• 26:16Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah, I know, that's unfortunate, isn't it?

• 26:21Adam Buxton?

  Do you, um, has anyone ever suggested to you that you come back in some sort of role and and get involved with improving mental health services and things like that because you know, you obviously you've had so much experience and also you would think that you have kind of an interesting perspective on it. Given who you are and what your personality is and your sense of humour and all those things I would think would be really valuable qualities to have in that kind of environment.

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I've been asked asked in a sort of tangential way. I mean, not to um sort of go back and work within it. But to spread awareness, if you like, or to support charities which, you know, are trying to improve things for people. And I think everything's changed beyond recognition, really. And there's a very new approach, which I think has come in in the last five or so years to particularly psychosis and not labelling people. Because I don't think that's very helpful in a way.

• 27:28Adam Buxton?

  To label people.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, because everyone's different. You know, we had a set kind of list of symptoms and if you ticked three boxes, you were that illness and there's so much subtle interaction between what's going on in your head and who you are as a person, that that's quite too broad brush, really.

• 27:50Adam Buxton?

  Sure, but it does seem like people are keener than ever to label themselves or to get some sort of diagnosis, you know, I I um I know so many people who have said, I finally got my ADHD diagnosis and this is explained so much, or autism. You know, I finally got a a diagnosis that included me being on the autism spectrum. And most of the people I know who've said that are relieved, it's like.

• 28:22Adam Buxton?

  It's like they've got an explanation for how their personality works. Do you know what I mean?

• 28:27Speaker 03

  I do know what you mean, but um I think people sort of forget in a way that it's a spectrum. So they forget there are going to be people on the very edge of it. Who have, let's say, a mild version, for for want of a better phrase. Who function pretty normally, you know, without having to have medication. And it's also sort of dribbled over into sort of common parlance, you know. I mean, like when people say, oh, I'm so OCD.

• 28:59Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 28:59Speaker 03

  Uh that that sort of thing, I don't think is at all helpful, because what it means that people that have serious issues with OCD are kind of lumped in. And so the first reaction of other people to go, oh, did you arrange all your books in colour or alphabetical order, you know?

• 29:18Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 29:18Speaker 03

  And it's about so much more than that up at the other end. So it's difficult, really. I I find that difficult because it's expanded outwards. And it seems to be expanding to the extent that we'll all have something soon.

• 29:29Adam Buxton?

  Sure. Have you ever thought of yourself in those terms? Have you ever thought like, here's what I've got, I need to tackle this?

• 29:37Speaker 03

  Well, I found it sort of hard to ignore in the sense that I recognize in my dad that he was probably, you know, he suffered from depression. But I think he was probably on the autistic spectrum.

• 29:51Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay.

• 29:52Speaker 03

  Um, and that part of him was to do with him.

• 29:59Speaker 03

  I say that, I mean, I'm quite similar to him anyway. Saying the most appalling truthful things without any filter to people. And so I do recognize that, but I think you can't just say that that's what someone's done and therefore they must be, you know. I think, again, it's a very, very, very long spectrum and he was on it somewhere. But I wouldn't like to sort of, with hindsight, try and work out what that was.

• 30:26Adam Buxton?

  The difference is, do you make a career out of it? If you can find a way of monetizing saying the worst things you can to people.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  Well, you're looking at me. I'm kind of in a way, I have.

• 30:39Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, of course.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  Um, but.

• 30:41Adam Buxton?

  But that's what I mean. Like, I wonder if a lot of people's kind of psychological kinks and hangups and peculiarities.

• 30:50Adam Buxton?

  Sometimes, obviously, if it's very extreme, that's a different thing. But if it's the kind of thing that we're talking about the way that most people are, most people are pretty weird and.

• 30:58Speaker 03

  They absolutely are. Yes, you're right.

• 31:01Adam Buxton?

  Everyone's got strange kinks and curiosities about themselves that they've accumulated over the years. And often it's a question of reframing them somehow. And if you are able to reframe them and find a good use for them, then often that's job done, really. I mean, if you look at a lot of the so-called geniuses of the world.

• 31:20Speaker 03

  Indeed.

• 31:21Adam Buxton?

  They're clearly people who.

• 31:23Speaker 03

  Absolutely.

• 31:24Adam Buxton?

  Dealing with a lot of.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:26Adam Buxton?

  Strange things.

• 31:27Speaker 03

  And have very different social skills from the rest of us. I mean, I, I always think with me, and I don't know what you're like when you're performing, but I'm not really like I am performing in real life.

• 31:41Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 03

  Such a well-worn tedious phrase, but it's kind of a bit of me that does that. I can say things on stage I wouldn't dream of saying to people, you know, when I'm not on stage. But that's very useful because I think when I started, people were sort of doing that, I can't believe she just said that. And I was kind of doing it as well, thinking, oh, God, did I just say that? But, and I wouldn't dream of saying that sort of thing normally. But I suppose in some ways, you know, when I started, I kind of thought there are so few women. I have kind of not to care about how I come across, you know, and I wasn't. Well, I never have been like traditionally a looker, shall we say?

• 32:26Speaker 03

  So that was the initial thing that people picked up on because when you walk on the stage as a comic, all they've got to go with before you open your mouth is how you look. And so you would immediately get either some abusive comment or a sort of appreciative one from men in the audience, however drunk or not that they were. And so I felt, I mean, a lot of people that I worked with at the beginning would just kind of try to ignore it or do some sort of rather sweet put down, which might not work a lot of the time. And I thought, I'm going straight for the eyes. You know, I'm going to get them and I'm going to show them. I don't give a shit.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  And it kind of really worked at the beginning because the Comedy Store Late Show, if you're on last there. You go on at twenty past two in the morning. And on a Friday night, they're either unconscious or they're sort of a bit homicidal. So you you know, you have to be prepared for that. And I. I just thought I'm gonna say what I like and sort the damage out later.

• 33:32Adam Buxton?

  But you used to drink a lot more in those days, right?

• 33:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, I did. But um I mean, I don't really drink at all now. Um, and my attitude towards drink is what's the point unless you get absolutely smashed and behave really badly? Now, obviously, at the age of sixty seven, that's a little bit more difficult. So I really enjoyed the years from kind of eighteen to sort of twenty five, thirty. When I was younger and everyone was doing it, you know.

• 34:01Adam Buxton?

  When you were out on stage, I mean, you were slightly anesthetized by alcohol. But you were still affected by criticism, right? You it it's not like you didn't think about it at all. I mean, you you did notice when. People were cruel or said unkind things and it did hurt to a degree, right?

• 34:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it was just like, you know, all the blokes that's that have ever shouted at you out of a van. Just all concertinaed into one night, really. And I I what I used to do, I used to try and preempt it. By having a sort of spectrum of put downs. And I would start with kind of like quite nice and whimsical, you know. And then I would go through to nuclear if I had to, with about five stops in between. And that really helped me because it was kind of a bit like having armour. And different layers of armour so that you knew if you got to layer seven.

• 35:02Speaker 03

  Then you might just as well go home because you haven't got anything else apart from physically assaulting them.

• 35:10Speaker 03

  I'm just trying to remember, no, I don't think I ever did that. I had that done to me on a couple of occasions, but you know, drunk people are just so unpredictable.

• 35:18Adam Buxton?

  You had, you were assaulted yourself.

• 35:20Speaker 03

  I was, yes.

• 35:21Adam Buxton?

  By members of an audience?

• 35:23Speaker 03

  Yes, I had, well, I had one where someone walked up on stage and grabbed my collar and then put their fist back as if they were gonna punch me.

• 35:33Adam Buxton?

  Holy shit, what had you said?

• 35:35Speaker 03

  Well, it was all so quick and someone that was with them just grabbed their fist before they managed to gather any strength behind it. I think also when I was a nurse, because of the area that I worked in, I did, I got attacked a few times. And so nothing in comedy was ever as bad as the sort of assaults that you might get as a nurse, because I think being really psychologically disturbed is actually far more deep and kind of potentially damaging than being drunk in some ways.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  So I always thought, well, I can just run away if I want, you know, but sometimes I just wanted to stay and wind them up. And that's terrible, really, but I enjoyed it, you know.

• 36:26Adam Buxton?

  I heard you say, though, that you would kind of bluff confidence in order to deal with some of those confrontational situations when you were a nurse. So if someone came at you with a machete, as they did once.

• 36:38Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 36:39Adam Buxton?

  Then rather than show any fear, you'd kind of try and go the other way and be super calm.

• 36:47Speaker 03

  Yes, I mean, when, when I was a nurse, my boss for a long time was an absolutely brilliant guy and he went on to become a psychotherapist. He's a lovely Welsh guy and he always used to say, and I remember this really, really well. He said that if someone comes at you and they're very angry. What you have to do is you have to lower your status in relation to them immediately. Because if you try and up your status and face off to them. That's just gonna make things worse for them because they'll see it as having to best you, if you like. And so I just used to treat people respectfully and calmly.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  And on the whole, that helps.

• 37:34Adam Buxton?

  That diffuses the confrontation.

• 37:37Speaker 03

  And I've seen nurses do the opposite of that. And that really doesn't help if you do that.

• 37:44Adam Buxton?

  As in, they just get very loud and upset?

• 37:49Speaker 03

  Well, there there was one nurse who, someone came in and said, I must be seen now. And she said, sit down and wait your turn. And I'm afraid got her face punched.

• 38:02Adam Buxton?

  Oh, no, yeah.

• 38:04Speaker 03

  You know, and I'm not saying it's her fault.

• 38:06Adam Buxton?

  Sure, sure.

• 38:07Speaker 03

  But it's a risk you take if you start playing the kind of authority card.

• 38:12Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  You know, and I never did that, so, yeah.

• 38:17Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, because now I'm sort of imagining the scene in the comedy club that you just described. If it had been filmed for social media now, which it almost certainly would be. The outcome that everybody would be wanting is for the comic to go absolutely ballistic. And get exact some kind of revenge or or give a speech about like, how dare you and. You know what I mean? To give some satisfactory conclusion to the confrontation. But the reality is, and correct me if I'm wrong. That actually those confrontations are never satisfying. As you say, you just have to kind of allow them to defuse.

• 38:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think, you know, the major factor in a lot of these confrontations is always alcohol.

• 39:01Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  And the problem with that is that shifts you into a different universe, if you like. You cannot talk to someone who's really, really, really pissed. And expect to get a kind of reasonable response. So there's absolutely no point, depending on just how drunk they are.

• 39:22Speaker 03

  In sort of upping the confrontation. Because you know, there are certain, that's a certain level of being drunk that you reach where you actually really don't care what you do. And that was, that's always a fear, I think, because you don't know someone gonna pull a knife out, are they, you know, they're gonna headbutt me, what are they gonna do? So, I mean, in a way, my nurse training was really useful for me because I could judge those confrontations. With a lot of sort of experience and knowledge behind me, I suppose. Didn't always get it right, but, you know.

• 39:56Adam Buxton?

  I mean, do you remember how you felt after you were attacked on stage that time?

• 40:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, I always do this thing of minimizing everything, you know, so. I kind of felt shaken up for, I don't know, half a minute. And then I just, oh, well, moving on. Yeah, I know, I always do that. It's very annoying for everyone that knows me. Um, yeah. But then again, that's my, uh, that was my mum's fault, to be honest. It's not a fault, it's very useful.

• 40:28Adam Buxton?

  That was her technique?

• 40:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, her, her technique was, I, I think she came from a family that suppressed everything. So we didn't really know anything about her background when we were kids. And she would, she would let things out in dribs and drabs until finally. Only a couple of years before she died, I said to her. Wh- what actually, what did go on? And she couldn't tell me, but she just wrote it down for me, wrote about her early childhood and. Sent me a few pages and that kind of filled in the gaps a bit.

• 41:04Adam Buxton?

  What was that like, reading that? Did it answer a lot of questions?

• 41:08Speaker 03

  Um, I'd like it to have been a bit more comprehensive. But it was about her early childhood and being taken back to Ireland. Uh, after her parents had split up and her mum went back to Ireland and took her and her brother. So then her father came over to Ireland and sort of kidnapped her back. But left her brother there.

• 41:33Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 41:34Speaker 03

  So it was all very strange, really, and um. I think that from that point onwards, she just suppressed everything, or she learnt how to. Because she couldn't deal with it, you know, as a kind of very young child, really.

• 41:49Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Wow, that's amazing that you were able to have that conversation with her and that she was able to write that stuff down.

• 41:57Speaker 03

  I. It was. I was amazed when she agreed to it.

• 42:01Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that's so, that's great that you did that. That's a regret that I have about my mum. I, I've said before, I tried to sit down with my mum and, and have a similar conversation and ask her all the questions I'd always had. Cause I, she sounds a lot like yours in some way. Didn't know much about her background and definitely had that, uh, best not talk about it philosophy.

• 42:23Speaker 03

  Ah, sorry.

• 42:23Adam Buxton?

  Oh, that's alright.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  That was my watch. I touched it and it said something. I don't know what it was.

• 42:28Adam Buxton?

  It's the oversharing alarm.

• 42:29Speaker 03

  Sorry.

• 42:32Adam Buxton?

  No, um.

• 42:32Speaker 03

  But what happened then? And what was your mum's response?

• 42:37Adam Buxton?

  I think she was a bit baffled by me wanting to know. She, so she brushed off a lot of it. But when I did sit down and, and have the conversation with her, it was when I was writing my first memoir. And so I was fact checking a lot of stuff about my dad who had died a few years before. So I didn't really, I wasn't focusing that much on her own life. It was more about her marriage with my dad. And actually, what I really regret was that I never sat down with her and said, like, tell me all about your parents and where you grew up and what was your family like and where do you think, you know, your personality, how did it develop in certain ways and how does it

• 43:19Adam Buxton?

  inform the way you are now and the way you brought us up and all those things. I mean, I don't know if she would have had satisfactory answers for those questions. I think a lot of those questions, she would slightly roll her eyes and go like.

• 43:33Speaker 03

  Yes, I'm well acquainted with the eye rolling thing with my mum again, you know. And I think the thing is, you have to question whether that's the way that's easier for her.

• 43:44Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 43:44Speaker 03

  How she would have felt if she had told you all the things you'd asked and if she would have felt um, panicky or, you know, why did I do that when she was so used to? Because people hid things from their children like that. I mean, these days, it's the opposite, isn't it? I mean, you can get books that children can give you and that, that it's like a diary, but it asks you specific questions about your life and you sort of fill it in. So that they've got it, then they've answered that, all, all these questions that my mum would never have answered in a million years, you know.

• 44:21Adam Buxton?

  Exactly right. Yeah, my mum would have gone through that book and just put N slash A or no comment or whatever. For every answer. But I do think it's a good idea in principle. And I do often say to people like, if you are able to, then do sit down with your parents and have that conversation if you can. And I do think that they will probably, especially if they're from a certain generation, they will probably roll their eyes a little bit and go, well, why? Why do you need to know? Or they'll resist. But if you can, if you can have it even a little bit, you won't regret it. I don't think, unless some incredibly dark secret pops out. But then, I mean, that's,

• 45:03Adam Buxton?

  that's a wider philosophical question. Is it better to know all this stuff? Or is it better just to keep pushing on? That's what my mum probably would have thought. Like, everyone's trying to figure out some system. And why is burying your head in the sand and just plowing on until the bitter end? That much worse than finding everything out and getting all the answers and all the truth?

• 45:32Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And I, I mean, I'm, I'm fairly firmly on the side of burying your head in the sand myself. Still, you know, I think it's difficult to be truthful. And everyone draws the line in a different place, don't they? Like, I'm sure some parents would be telling their kids how many sexual partners they'd had or whatever, which I couldn't even have dared to ask my mum, to be honest, when I was younger. So times are changing. And I think with social media, for example, people's expectations just rise all the time about, you know, I always think one day someone's going to actually have to physically turn themselves inside out to show people

• 46:17Speaker 03

  everything about them.

• 46:19Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 46:20Speaker 03

  Because there are tiny steps then huge leaps in the direction of revealing everything about yourself. And I, I personally don't think that that's very wise, but you know, I'm not that generation, so.

• 46:35Adam Buxton?

  Yes, I know. Well, obviously I'm caught somewhere in between because so much of my career has been me talking to other people and talking about myself and revealing details of my life and being quite open as far as possible, like keeping some things back when it's, you know, like I don't give out my PIN numbers. But but where possible, I want to be open. It feels like that's part of the effort to connect with people and communicate with people. But obviously, you can go too far. It must be weird sometimes, I think, for my children, because they will be overwhelmed by a wealth of information about me. Uh, you know, they'll be able to.

• 47:19Speaker 03

  So there might be a reversal.

• 47:20Adam Buxton?

  Exactly.

• 47:21Speaker 03

  I wish he hadn't said so much.

• 47:23Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Oh, I just think that they won't be aware of it. That's what I'm thinking. I just think there's so much of it. They can't possibly keep up with all the things I've said.

• 47:31Speaker 03

  How old are your children?

• 47:33Adam Buxton?

  Um, my daughter is sixteen, the boys are twenty and twenty-two at the moment.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  So do they listen to your stuff?

• 47:39Adam Buxton?

  Sometimes my eldest son does, which slightly unsettles me. And I don't know if he's listening to it currently, but there was a time when he would say, oh, yeah, and he'd refer to a recent episode. And then I was like, whoa, I don't know if that's good.

• 47:54Speaker 03

  Yeah. No, I I feel the same, you know, and I'm glad to say that I don't, they've never said it outright, but I think that, that generationally speaking, they don't really like my comedy. And I kind of don't blame them because comedy is so different these days. They're hardly gonna say, oh, my favorite comics, my mum. Do you know what I mean? It's like, you know, it's embarrassing.

• 48:18Adam Buxton?

  But you must, uh, do you make them laugh at home then?

• 48:22Speaker 03

  I, yeah, I I would say I don't. I mean, they make me laugh as well, but it's not in the way that I would make an audience laugh, because my comedy's always been kind of limiting in some ways, because I'm very much a one liner merchant and I say stuff succinctly. And I know, you know, I'm a man hater. Uh, that's the sort of shorthand for what I am. And um.

• 48:45Adam Buxton?

  On stage.

• 48:46Speaker 03

  Yes, well, absolutely. And in real life, don't tell anyone. Anyway, um, yeah, but uh, not in real life. But you know, there are, it's all to do with the, the sort of zeitgeist, isn't it? It's not acceptable for me to go on stage now and say, God, I hate men. Or, you know, a comedy version of it. Because that's not fair, and it probably isn't fair. But it certainly seemed to have an impact for me, if you like. And as a comic, you want to have impact as much as you want to get laughs. And because we were so few and far between, us women comics.

• 49:28Speaker 03

  I didn't care whether men liked it or not. I just wanted to give women a laugh about something that they would recognise. Because male comedy in those days, I'm not saying it wasn't great, because there were some brilliant comics, you know. But in those days, you had sort of one line of merchants, you had surreal comics, th- these were all men. But women comics weren't anything. They, they were just women, you know.

• 49:52Adam Buxton?

  That was their.

• 49:53Speaker 03

  That was their style.

• 49:54Adam Buxton?

  Their act.

• 49:54Speaker 03

  Absolutely. And so that's changed beyond recognition, which I'm, I think is great.

• 50:01Adam Buxton?

  No, definitely.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  I, I, I, I kind of also think, you know, from those days, but. I always tried to make it funny before it was a point, if you know what I mean. Because I think you, you make a point first and then you try and be funny with it. You're just doing a political speech. You're not doing comedy. So if I wanted to say something, but I couldn't make it funny, I just wouldn't bother to say it, really.

• 50:25Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 50:26Speaker 03

  Can I ask you a question?

• 50:28Adam Buxton?

  Sure.

• 50:28Speaker 03

  You don't have to answer. Um, do you, do you like my act?

• 50:33Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 50:34Speaker 03

  You don't have to say yes, because I, I, I mean, I, I, I feel like I said to you earlier, um. It's, it's aimed much more specifically at, at women.

• 50:44Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. Why do you ask that question?

• 50:46Speaker 03

  I'm just interested.

• 50:47Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  I don't think you don't like it. I've, I've got, kind of got no idea, but I'm just interested.

• 50:53Adam Buxton?

  I remember watching through the cake hole and really laughing. But also getting vibes like, yeah, I don't think she would like me.

• 51:05Speaker 03

  Well, you're wrong there because I do, I really like you and I mean, no, I'm so that sounds weird now, doesn't it? Yeah, isn't it, isn't it strange?

• 51:13Adam Buxton?

  You asked a direct question, whoa.

• 51:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, I know, I'm sorry about that.

• 51:17Adam Buxton?

  I know, but it's the question that no one ever asks. Do you actually like my stuff?

• 51:22Speaker 03

  I know, but it's hard, isn't it?

• 51:23Adam Buxton?

  It is because you sort of think like, well, I want to give a honest answer here, but.

• 51:27Speaker 03

  And I honestly, I honestly really would much more, you know, I'm not saying you haven't made an honest answer, but it's very hard and I don't, it's so odd when you talk to other comics, isn't it? Because there are comics that I really like, comics that I love, comics that I don't like so much. And if they ask me that question, I wouldn't know what to say because I think everyone has their own style of comedy they like. I don't know, was it Paddy Considine you were talking to? Or someone who, it might not even have been you to be honest, I'm sorry about my memory, but they were saying they like comedians like Jack and Bromesh because they're so grumpy. Um, which is also kind of what I like as well, really.

• 52:11Speaker 03

  But I also loved, um, John Hegley, Johnny Immaterial, you know?

• 52:16Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 52:17Speaker 03

  John Cooper Clarke, all those people, Hattie Hayridge, I don't know if you know her?

• 52:20Adam Buxton?

  Sure, yeah.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, um, so it's weird, you know, that you just kind of have your preferences and it's not anything about the person, is it? Because I don't think my act really represents me a hundred percent at all. But because I kind of curated it so carefully in a way to be appealing to a certain sort of woman.

• 52:44Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:45Speaker 03

  Because I'm a certain sort of woman and I'm a sort of woman who can't be arsed with clothes, with makeup, with fillers, with, you know, I hate fashion and I just want to just be free to just slob around and not bother, quite honestly.

• 53:03Adam Buxton?

  I mean, you say that, you, you, I think you look good though, you've got a good look. You've always had that and that combined with the confidence and the funniness adds up to an attractive person. That's all, that's all an attractive person is, isn't it? I remember really liking, well, I like people who put themselves down to a degree. Like, the thing is, you can go too far with that, so that you feel sorry for the person because you think like, oh, they're struggling, or they feel that they have to say that in order to deflect criticism. But I did like it. I thought it was funny when you would

• 53:44Adam Buxton?

  put yourself down. I wrote down a line from Through the Cake Hole, because I was watching that the other day. It was a sketch about doing DIY.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 53:54Adam Buxton?

  And you say, it's important when you're doing DIY that you wear something old that can get dirty, or perhaps you might prefer, like me, to just look like a pile of cack all the time.

• 54:08Speaker 03

  The thing about Through the Cake Hole was, it was like the first series I'd done, and it was like such good fun. And I think we got away with a lot, quite honestly. But it is one of my happiest memories. And it was, well, you do this sometimes, you just think, pinch yourself, woman. Five years ago, you were a nurse. And look, what's going on? It was so weird. But, and when people kind of agree to do things, or you ask them to be in things, I'm still kind of, this sounds like false modesty now, so I won't go on about it. But I'm surprised when people say yes. I know, I know, it's weird. Low self-esteem.

• 54:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that's the thing, is it? I mean, I definitely have a problem with that myself as well. Maybe that's what I respond to, to a certain degree in your stuff, but it's very appealing because if that's part of what you're dealing with, then you you deal with it in a very different way than I ever would be able to. So your thing was always to go out and look as if you couldn't give a fuck. And so, and I think probably that's what would antagonize and threaten a lot of audience members, right? Especially if they were a bit pissed.

• 55:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, big time.

• 55:22Adam Buxton?

  And so they would have a strong reaction against you if they weren't on board with you. Rather than, I mean, generally the the spectrum of responses is much milder with my kind of stuff. So.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  Well, that's because you you come across as a lovely person and I I don't think I do when I'm doing comedy. And you know, you you just experiment with things and I do remember the Tunnel Club.

• 55:47Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 55:47Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, that was hideous because audiences would randomly decide who to hate. It had nothing to do with how good or bad the person was. And I remember going on there one night and just getting a wall of abuse from these very kind of pissed middle aged blokes about my appearance. And just standing there and facing off to them without saying a word. And it was like a game of, what do you call it?

• 56:13Adam Buxton?

  Chicken.

• 56:13Speaker 03

  Yes, that's right. Just stood there and looked at them. Who's going to get bored first?

• 56:18Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, like a Wild West standoff.

• 56:21Speaker 03

  It was, and they got bored first and quietened down. And I really felt, God, that was a good win, you know, because totally unexpected.

• 56:30Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I don't think I would be able to do that. I think I would run away and I would buckle.

• 56:36Speaker 03

  But that's because you're a nice person.

• 56:38Adam Buxton?

  Well, there's a thin line between being nice and being just sort of ingratiating for the sake of peace. Do you know what I mean? That's like.

• 56:44Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, yeah, I do in a way, but yeah, it's again, it's that sort of subtle sort of shades of it, isn't it?

• 56:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 56:52Speaker 03

  I don't think you've ever been ingratiating in your life.

• 56:55Adam Buxton?

  Thank you so much, Joe.

• 56:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:58Speaker 03

  And that was very, that was very Dickensian.

• 58:02Adam Buxton?

  Now, the first job I ever got was when I was eighteen, I'd just left school and I went and worked as a busboy in the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory in Hanover Square, central London. And one of the waitresses, or servers if you prefer, was called Julia.

• 58:21Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 58:21Adam Buxton?

  She was very glamorous, I thought she was super cool. And she was always talking about her friend who was a comedian. And she said, yeah, she calls herself the sea monster.

• 58:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:34Adam Buxton?

  And she's amazing, she was always going on about that. Is she, she was your pal, right?

• 58:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, we were at school together.

• 58:40Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  At Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Girls. Uh, so I've known her since I was like thirteen, twelve or thirteen. And um, she's absolutely great, you know, and I think like, she's an example of women all being tarred with the same brush in the old days, you know. She's unique, she's incredibly bright, really, really funny. I think when you're a stand-up comic, you look around and you realise that most people are funnier than you are. But it's just translating it onto the stage that a lot of people just can't face doing, and I don't blame them really. But yeah, I mean, I'm still in touch with her.

• 59:24Adam Buxton?

  Are you?

• 59:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 59:25Adam Buxton?

  Oh, well, give her my best.

• 59:27Speaker 03

  Of course I will, yeah.

• 59:28Adam Buxton?

  I really liked her so much and she was good fun and she, yeah, she was very funny. I remember she came in one day and she, her eye, one of her eyes was all half closed up and all red. They're like, whoa, what happened to you? And she basically said that, she's like, oh yeah, it was my boyfriend. And she'd, they'd had a, it was a sex accident.

• 59:53Adam Buxton?

  It was some misdirected facial action. And so she explained this to me, but I didn't really understand what she meant. At that point, I had no clue that that was on the table as a option for intimacy. And so I just couldn't get my head around. I was like, and you let him?

• 1:00:14Adam Buxton?

  But yeah, she was great. Yeah, I have such fond memories of her. That was a really formative time in my life, working in that restaurant. But you worked in a restaurant as well, though, right?

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  Yes, I've done a few places, yeah, worked in a few restaurants.

• 1:00:29Adam Buxton?

  Rather than military service, people should have to work in a restaurant for a few years in their youth. I think it's the best thing I ever did. And it's so valuable to, just as far as getting on with people.

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 1:00:43Adam Buxton?

  So many different people that you're working with on the staff, so many different people as customers, so many different kind of points of conflict and tension that you deal with every day.

• 1:00:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, customers can be absolutely appalling, can't they? And obviously, my instinct would have been to give as good as I got. But obviously, you're immediately prevented from doing that because of your relationship with the customer, who's always right, or some version of that. I found that pretty hard, really.

• 1:01:13Adam Buxton?

  Did you ever do anything extreme to get your revenge on a customer?

• 1:01:17Speaker 03

  Did I put anything in anyone's food? I don't think I did. I've heard stories about people that did, that someone working in the kitchen of a restaurant, I'm not going to say where it is because I'll get in trouble, but they pissed in their soup. I know. And there's, I don't know, there's a story in Trainspotting, the book, which wasn't included in the film, bizarrely. Well, I can imagine why it wasn't really. Even in that really weird, violent film, it wasn't acceptable, which was that a woman took out her tampons and wiped it on someone's food before she sent it off to their table. And, uh, no, I don't think, I never did anything like that, no.

• 1:02:02Adam Buxton?

  I worked with people who did things like that. I do remember a guy, at least claiming to have weed in someone's champagne.

• 1:02:11Adam Buxton?

  A very obnoxious suit who came in and was kind of barking demands. He was like, fill up my glass, top it up. You've only given me half a glass here. And so he said, all right then, and popped into the storeroom, weed in it, came out, handed it to the guy, took a sip, and the guy went, this is too warm. Don't you know anything about champagne?

• 1:02:39Speaker 03

  I don't think customers realise quite what a risk they take when they're rude to the staff.

• 1:02:46Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:46Speaker 03

  Because the staff have so much opportunity to include something unpleasant in their next course, don't they?

• 1:02:55Adam Buxton?

  I mean, we can probably wrap up now that we've wandered into the pee pee zone.

• 1:03:00Speaker 03

  Sorry, and I even hit the period.

• 1:03:02Adam Buxton?

  Oh, no, that's.

• 1:03:03Speaker 03

  Zone, which again, I think is something that was never mentioned in the late seventies by anybody. But I, I realise I've managed to crowbar some stuff about periods in when I've had reviews in the passing. All she does is talk about periods. Oh yeah, I think Jeremy Clarkson said that to me once, but yeah, there we go. So sorry about that.

• 1:03:26Adam Buxton?

  Well, he'll be happy. Jeremy's, he listens regularly. I wouldn't want to disappoint him.

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  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. No, 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.

• 1:04:14Speaker 02

  Anyway, the publishers, Bluestar and Dogwhistle, made a beautiful website for the book using Squarespace. I know, I got the newsletter that you. Sent out using Squarespace and the website does look great. Videos of you airing your views, members areas for your mad fans. You've even got a merch store, I see. That's right, the Union Jack top hat is a big seller. But they constructed it all so fast with Squarespace. They did most of it over one lunchtime, Steve. Well, you wouldn't want to spend much longer on it, would you? Shut up, Steve. But here's the thing, anyone listening to this can start a free trial right now at Squarespace.com/boxton and see how easy and versatile Squarespace is. And when they're ready to launch a new website or domain, they can save 10% off their first purchase by using the offer code BOXTON at checkout. Right, well, maybe I'll visit Squarespace.com/boxton and start a new website just to refute all the nonsense in your new book.

• 1:04:58Speaker 02

  Oh, don't do that, Steve. I will. Oh, shut up, Steve. Uh. Shut up. Now, back to more depressing matters on Newsweek.

• 1:05:07Adam Buxton?

  Continue.

• 1:05:18Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was Jo Brand talking to me there. I was really grateful to Jo for making the time to come along and waffle with me. It was very nice to have the opportunity to do so. And I really recommend her books, which are really funny, but also filled with good wisdom and practical advice for navigating life. Not going to waffle too much today. I've got to get back and carry on my prep for Monday's live event with Caitlin Moran at the Union Chapel. I hope some of you can make it. I'm going to try and dig out one or two clips, maybe some behind the scenes nuggets from

• 1:06:01Adam Buxton?

  Adam and Joe Show days. My book comes out this week. Thank you very much if you have pre-ordered it because it makes me look important and powerful. And at the end of the day, what's more important than that, eh, Doglegs?

• 1:06:16Speaker 02

  Lying on the sofa, I think.

• 1:06:18Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, I forgot.

• 1:06:21Adam Buxton?

  But I've been enjoying appearing on other people's podcasts recently. Some of them are out already. I think the episode of David O'Docherty and Max Rushton's What Did You Do Yesterday podcast is out. And I'm also going to be appearing on Russell Howard's Five Brilliant Things. Recorded that this week, that was fun. And Harry Hill's Are We There Yet? Which I'm sure many of you know already, but you should check out definitely if you're a comedy fan. I love Harry Hill. I also recorded a conversation for Catherine Ryan's show, What's My Age Again? Podcast show, but they filmed that one.

• 1:07:01Adam Buxton?

  And I was on QI elf Dan Schreiber's podcast, We Can Be Weirdos. Talking about, well, we started off talking quite a bit about Zayvin. I don't know if that'll make the edit, though. We were comparing notes on the considerable emotional impact of Blackstar. What it meant to us. And I immediately got emotional, you know, right at the top. But we also talked about strange phenomena. Psychedelic entities. I did some massively ill-informed waffling, trying to recall half-remembered facts

• 1:07:45Adam Buxton?

  about things I'd once sort of misunderstood when I was 14. I think they're going to need quite a few elves to fact-check that one. But I also talked about the process of writing in a bit more depth and detail with John Rand and Tom Turner. They're the hosts of the Failing Writers podcast. They describe themselves as success-starved word wranglers stumbling towards their shared ambition to become proper writers. And so the podcast they do is all about writing.

• 1:08:21Adam Buxton?

  And that's what I talked to them about, but it was a good fun conversation with them both. Very nice guys, good people, nice people. I've put a link to their podcast in amongst the other links in today's episode. Down in the description, you'll find a link that takes you to my website where you'll find a picture of myself and Joe Brand and other related odds and sods, as well as related links for all my previous podcast episodes and guest photos on a lot of those, etc. It's a great time on the Adam Buxton website. Okay, that's pretty much it for today. Thank you once again to Joe Brand.

• 1:09:02Adam Buxton?

  Thank you to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support and additional conversation editing on this episode. Thanks, Seamus. Thanks to Helen Green, she does the artwork for the podcast. Thanks to everyone at Acast who works so hard liaising with the sponsors for my podcast. Much appreciated. But thanks most of all to you. I just think you're a bit, well, you're just a bit better than the average podcast listener. I wonder how you'd feel about a hug. Come here, hey. Good to see you. Okay. Let's head back, Doglegs.

• 1:09:47Adam Buxton?

  And until next time, you and I share the same outer space. Please go carefully. It's very unpredictable out there. And for what it's worth, I love you. Bye.