EP.252 - GUZ KHAN (LIVE)

Adam talks with British comedian, actor, and writer Guz Khan about parenthood, accents, languages, chatting shit and getting banged, how older Asian men respond when a prankster moans in their ears, and Guz demonstrates a dramatic strategy for getting Adam on Taskmaster. CONTAINS VERY STRONG LANGUAGE Conversation recorded live at Manchester's Albert Hall on 7th June, 2024 Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell and Becca Bryers for additional editing. Thanks to our crew in Manchester, especially Dan, Liam and Katie, Ben and Richard. Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ Order Adam's book 'I Love You Byeee' https://lnk.to/iloveyoubyeee_ PICS AND RELATED LINKS https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/podcasts/82dyw29p3may2fa-dwb79-eycgn-fahgj-8yxba (ON ADAM'S WEBSITE) 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.

• 0:20Adam Buxton?

  My name is Adam Buckston, I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

• 0:31Adam Buxton?

  Hey, how are you doing, podcats? It's Adam Buckston here. Thank you so much for joining me once again out here on a Norfolk farm track at the end of June 2025. I'm here with Rosie, she's my best dog friend.

• 0:49Adam Buxton?

  She came out fairly happily today, didn't you, Doglegs? Define happily? Well, I mean without a great deal of resistance. Come on, you love being out here.

• 1:02Adam Buxton?

  At least it's not quite so hot today. Yesterday it was blazing squad. Today it's mo cloudy. Earlier today it was a little bit damp and there was a sudden plague of little insects. I'm not sure exactly what they were. Midges maybe, but they weren't biting. And there was just clouds of them all around the castle. One moment there's just a few gangs goofing around in the garden. The next moment, the air was thick with them. I made some tea and walked across to my nutty room. And by the time I'd got to the door, I was covered in the things. There was about eight of them in my tea. The spider's webs all around the barns

• 1:48Adam Buxton?

  were thick with them, like trawler's nets. The spiders are going to be feasting for weeks. Anyway, let me tell you a bit about this podcast. It's number two hundred and fifty two, which features a rambling conversation with friend of the podcast, Guz Khan. This will be his third appearance on the podcast. Some brief Guz facts for you, just to remind you. Born in nineteen eighty six, Guz and his siblings were brought up in Coventry by their Pakistani immigrant mother, following the death of her husband when Guz was just three. Guz attended Coventry University, where he studied criminology, then spent a

• 2:29Adam Buxton?

  few years working as a teacher, before making a series of viral videos that brought him to the attention of the BBC. In twenty seventeen, he made the first series of his sitcom, Man Like Mobeen, the show that would catapult him into the centre stage of TV, film, and stand-up comedy, all of which he has pursued in various forms since. Series five of Man Like Mobeen landed earlier this year, twenty twenty five, and Guz has intimated that it will be the last, although he has intimated that with previous series, as I recall. Now, we're going this way, Rosie. Dog legs.

• 3:13Speaker 01

  I don't really wanna go that way. I would prefer to go the way that goes back to the sofa.

• 3:19Adam Buxton?

  They're not gonna be long, don't worry. I'm just gonna do this intro and then the outro, and then we'll go back.

• 3:27Adam Buxton?

  The conversation you're about to hear with Guz was recorded on my fifty-fifth birthday, on the seventh of June, twenty twenty four, in front of a thousand-strong live audience at Manchester's Albert Hall. That was part of the podcast tour that I did last year. And we spoke about home life in the Khan household. Guz filled me in on how his kids were doing, including the struggles he and his wife Dino have been having with one child, who was determined not to go to school. Incidentally, the phrase I was reaching for but didn't recall on stage was "school refusal". In other words, something that goes beyond just

• 4:08Adam Buxton?

  not liking school and playing truant, but is more like acute anxiety that leaves a child very upset when it's time to go to school. And there could be a variety of reasons for that. There's a link to a bit of an info blog. I don't know how useful it is, but just in case that's something you're dealing with, with your children. Link in the description. I mean, if it's a big problem, you probably would have Googled it yourself, wouldn't you? But, you know, it's trying to be helpful. As well as parenthood chat, Guz told me about how excited he is to be installing Dorma windows. That's a window that projects vertically from a sloping roof. I suppose I know them by the brand name Velux.

• 4:53Adam Buxton?

  Anyway, we didn't talk too long about Dorma windows. We moved on to dealing with conflict online and in the real world. With brief reference to Guz's adversarial interactions with far-right anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson. And I told Guz about what were then my dreams of being on the Great British Bake Off. And I played him a song that I'd made to woo the Bake Off producers. It was accompanied by some AI-generated images of me baking pies for various celebrities. You'll find a link to the video in the description of today's podcast. Anyway, as you may know, I did make it on to Bake Off earlier this year for Stand Up to Cancer.

• 5:36Adam Buxton?

  But Guz also presented me on stage with a strategy that, as you will hear, might well have brought me one step closer to my other TV dream of appearing on Taskmaster. It was a strategy that I wasn't a hundred percent comfortable with, but it was funny. And if anyone can take the discomfort out of a situation, it's Guz Khan. I'll be back at the end to say goodbye, but after the ramble chat jingle, we will travel back to Friday night in Manchester, June 7th, 2024, with me in front of a sold-out crowd who had just enjoyed 10 minutes of very funny and probably now totally redundant material about AI that I had showed them.

• 6:20Adam Buxton?

  And they were just about to find out who my guest for that night was going to be, because they didn't know and they bought their tickets. Little did they know what was in store for them. As they discovered, part of that involved strong accents and very strong language throughout the evening, so be warned. Here we go.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Ramble chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's chew the fat and have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and hide your talking hat.

• 7:21Adam Buxton?

  Please welcome the creator of Man Like Moby, actor, stand-up comedian, Ez Gulam Dostagir Guz Khan.

• 7:53Speaker 03

  You lot are noisy innit, my god.

• 7:56Adam Buxton?

  Did I do the pronunciation right? I chickened out on Gulam. What was it again? It was...

• 8:01Speaker 03

  No, I felt you shooting yourself a little bit when you're doing it. Because remember what I told you backstage? I said, "Put as much sauce on it as you can." And you were a bit, remember, in the last podcast as well, you were a little bit worried about putting sauce on certain words.

• 8:15Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, it's not cool. It's generally considered for white guys to put sauce on words and names. It's gone out of fashion recently.

• 8:25Adam Buxton?

  No one's more upset about it than I am because I love accents, but Gulam.

• 8:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, so like, the thing is, just as a little caveat, bro, if you were to meet an uncle in the street, right? And for some reason, you had his driving licence in your hand, okay?

• 8:43Adam Buxton?

  Yep.

• 8:44Speaker 03

  If you did his name and said his name to him without the sauce on it, he'd be more offended than you putting all the sauce on it.

• 8:53Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  So if you said, "Oh, Bhagwant Singh",

• 8:57Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 8:57Speaker 03

  He'd be like, "Why the fuck are you saying my name like this? I don't understand." If you read his name and said, "Bhagwant Singh", he would say, "I like you, white man. I like you."

• 9:08Speaker 03

  Sauce always.

• 9:09Adam Buxton?

  Bhagwan Singh?

• 9:10Speaker 03

  See? Yes.

• 9:12Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, okay. But it's getting the right sauce though, isn't it? I might just sort of go...

• 9:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you start throwing in some bud bud ding ding after the sauce, don't do that.

• 9:21Adam Buxton?

  I wouldn't go...

• 9:22Speaker 03

  Don't bud the fuck out of it.

• 9:23Adam Buxton?

  I wouldn't do that.

• 9:29Adam Buxton?

  Gulam.

• 9:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's good.

• 9:31Adam Buxton?

  Gulam.

• 9:32Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:32Adam Buxton?

  An Arabic word which means young and handsome servant in paradise.

• 9:39Speaker 03

  Is that what that means?

• 9:40Adam Buxton?

  Apparently.

• 9:43Adam Buxton?

  Apparently that's what that means. I don't know. Just Googled it.

• 9:45Speaker 03

  It's a weird name on reflection.

• 9:49Adam Buxton?

  Do you miss it though? I mean, do you feel obliged to use Gus just because it's less of a mouthful or...

• 9:54Speaker 03

  Well, I'll be honest with you. Only ever like heads of year, when I was at school, used the name. And then the police, that's it.

• 10:07Speaker 03

  Not one house. Not even my mother. That's not even my name in the house. I've got a whole different name in the house.

• 10:12Adam Buxton?

  And what's your name in the house?

• 10:13Speaker 03

  Uh, Jav.

• 10:14Adam Buxton?

  Jav?

• 10:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:15Adam Buxton?

  Where'd you get that one?

• 10:16Speaker 03

  Who fucking knows?

• 10:21Speaker 03

  We don't know. We don't ask these questions.

• 10:24Adam Buxton?

  What's that got to do with anything? Did you ever show prowess for the javelin at some stage?

• 10:31Speaker 03

  No, my fat ass never showed no prowess for none of these sports. But, I don't know, like Gus was always like, that's the West Midlands name.

• 10:37Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 03

  That was in primary school what they shortened Gulam from too. And even my teacher used to say, Gus, come here, you prick.

• 10:46Adam Buxton?

  How's the family?

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Really good, really good. Have some news for you.

• 10:50Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  Um, we are welcoming baby number five.

• 10:54Adam Buxton?

  No way!

• 10:57Speaker 03

  Wow, wow, wow, wow. Wow. Nobody expected this child, nobody wanted this child. This is the point I want to say.

• 11:09Speaker 03

  Brother Box, I'm in a really weird zone as well because when it gets to that level of children, that number of kids, people are thinking like, "Oh, is this like some kind of faith-based thing?"

• 11:21Speaker 03

  Because more than four kids is like faith-based numbers.

• 11:25Speaker 03

  And I'm like, "Nah, it's just accidents, bro. It's just one pump, one pump more than should have been pumped and then that's..."

• 11:34Speaker 03

  I'm fucked, man.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  Sounds like you're not the only one.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  It's too much kids, man.

• 11:45Adam Buxton?

  So this means you are, whether you like it or not, locked into the showbiz life for the foreseeable future?

• 11:52Speaker 03

  That or just back into the drugs. Like, it's still... It's possible, but it's really a lot of kids.

• 12:01Adam Buxton?

  I mean, two is fine. After we had two, I was like, "That's fine. That's enough."

• 12:06Speaker 03

  You know what my uncle said? The news broke, the news broke. He let everyone else leave the room and just very quietly, he looked at me and said, "You like sex, innit?"

• 12:19Adam Buxton?

  Well, listen, it's still happy news. I can't think of a nicer family to grow up in than that of yourself and your wife, Dino.

• 12:27Speaker 03

  Oh, my god.

• 12:28Adam Buxton?

  I mean, you're nice parents, right?

• 12:31Speaker 03

  Like...

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Like, we're way more encouraging than it was for us lot growing up.

• 12:41Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 12:42Speaker 03

  Yeah? And I mean, everybody. I think I'm speaking on behalf of maybe all first-generation immigrants, yeah? In the majority. It wasn't like, "Oh, you've got a dream. Go and follow your dream." It was more like, "You're a dickhead."

• 13:00Speaker 03

  "Don't be a dickhead." It's a very different... So I think we're better at telling the kids to be like, "Yo, do what you wanna do." But like, when Dino has to step in and pattern the kids, they get patterned. Do you know what that...

• 13:13Adam Buxton?

  No, what's that?

• 13:15Speaker 03

  Like, if they're basically, if they're fucking about, their mum will step in and say, "Boy, stop fucking about." And I quite like it when she does that because I don't really see that side of her too much. That's why I'm on kid number five. I'm attracted to weird stuff.

• 13:29Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, it's hot.

• 13:32Adam Buxton?

  But do you curse in front of the children?

• 13:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'll be cursing all the time.

• 13:38Adam Buxton?

  Do you?

• 13:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, fuck this, fuck that, fuck him.

• 13:44Speaker 03

  Tommy Robinson could suck my dick. I say all kinds of stuff.

• 13:50Speaker 03

  Important message. But yeah, do you know what it is? Because, here's something that used to happen to us, yeah? Our parents would swear profusely in Punjabi and Urdu. But the moment we said like an English swear word, it was like, don't do this. This is very bad. And the English swear word would be like, oh shit. Which is just like shit, isn't it?

• 14:14Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 03

  But in Punjabi and Urdu, the levels of swears, the eloquence and filth of them is way above and beyond anything English has to offer.

• 14:27Speaker 03

  Which is like, you know, deri maadi putteedich me talmaa. Which means I'll jump in your mum's fanny with both feet.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  So shit didn't seem that bad, really.

• 14:51Adam Buxton?

  I haven't said that in front of the kids yet.

• 14:57Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, shit doesn't seem nearly so bad.

• 14:59Speaker 03

  No.

• 15:01Adam Buxton?

  And what about, I'm interested to know about the intellectual environment in the Khan household. Are you speaking more than one language?

• 15:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, we are. So they hear Punjabi Urdu. Dino's family speaks a dialect which is called Mirpuri, which is again very different. So there's like three straight off the bat there.

• 15:24Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 15:24Speaker 03

  But now my kids understand, but they don't speak shit really. Which is quite disappointing to me as a father.

• 15:32Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 15:33Speaker 03

  Them as their mother. They get the piss taken out of them a lot. But I've got two white Irish aunties who were born in Kilkenny and they married both my uncles, Pakistani uncles. And these white Irish aunties have a better command of Punjabi and Urdu than my kids. Which honestly is embarrassing for me and makes me say I wanna jump in your mum's funny with both feet.

• 16:00Adam Buxton?

  Are they difficult languages, do you think?

• 16:03Speaker 03

  I don't, I don't know. I don't think so.

• 16:06Adam Buxton?

  Have you ever tried to learn another European language?

• 16:09Speaker 03

  No, never interested me, never interested me. Like, I think the, it's, Punjabi is considered like a more, and I feel bad saying it because Punjabi is my first language, but for example, if you're an Urdu speaker or a Hindi speaker, they reference Punjabi as quite a rough language. Um, I don't know if there's anybody in here who speaks Punjabi Urdu.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  But ju- one.

• 16:34Adam Buxton?

  Someone laughing, someone laughing at the very idea.

• 16:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, but you know, yeah, so it's, it's just considered a little bit rougher. But I think that's just because Punjabi people, people from Punjab are a little bit more hot. And people who speak Urdu a little bit. But what I'm saying is, like, people who speak Punjabi are like Labour supporters and Urdu speakers are fucking Tories, just Tories.

• 17:04Speaker 03

  It's what I'm trying to get to.

• 17:05Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay. Have you seen, there's a clip that my son showed me the other day from TikTok. Speaking of languages, this is a dad practising Arabic with his three-year-old in the back of the car. Has anyone seen this one? Ah, there's a couple of you who have. So he's encouraging his three-year-old to, to do Arabic.

• 17:24Speaker 03

  Adi?

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Yeah?

• 17:26Speaker 03

  هل تتحدث العربية?

• 17:34Adam Buxton?

  It's just sort of guttural noises.

• 17:39Speaker 03

  Adi?

• 17:40Speaker 04

  Yeah?

• 17:41Speaker 03

  هل تتحدث العربية?

• 17:43Speaker 04

  I'm a...

• 17:50Adam Buxton?

  It sort of reminds you, it kind of strips language back to its very essence. Because it used to be like, when I remember being pretty young, and you do sort of impressions of the way foreign languages sound.

• 18:03Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 18:04Adam Buxton?

  You know, like, French is just...

• 18:10Adam Buxton?

  And what would English be like? Like, what do you think people outside the UK who don't speak English think English people sound like if they do a crude impression of the sound of it?

• 18:21Speaker 03

  Fuck you, yeah, fuck you, yeah.

• 18:32Adam Buxton?

  Exactly.

• 18:37Adam Buxton?

  But you've got to get those kids speaking the Punjabi and the Urdu. That is a superpower. A foreign language is a superpower. My mum was Chilean, so when she...

• 18:49Speaker 03

  Say again, brother, what you mo... say, what it was?

• 18:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. She was from Chile, so we grew up...

• 18:57Adam Buxton?

  What did you think I said?

• 18:59Speaker 03

  Why are you leaving Auntie out in the cold? What the fuck's going on? Chile?

• 19:05Adam Buxton?

  She was chilling. She, uh, she stopped speaking Spanish to us when we were little, her kids, because when she, after she moved to the UK, like, English people that she met said, "Oh, you shouldn't speak in two languages to your kids, it'll confuse them."

• 19:22Speaker 03

  What?

• 19:23Adam Buxton?

  And she thought, "Oh, okay, I better not then. I better just carry on speaking English."

• 19:27Speaker 03

  Now, England was like that.

• 19:29Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. It's such a shame.

• 19:31Speaker 03

  So, bro, are you, you know your mum? Of course you know your mum.

• 19:34Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 19:36Adam Buxton?

  I remember her.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, she's from Chile, so your mum was, she's like, she had some sauce?

• 19:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, well, my dad used to use the phrase "a touch of the tar brush."

• 19:52Adam Buxton?

  Another phrase that have-

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Hey, fuck you, it's how it gets. Okay, they were in a loving relationship. So, that's my, I never knew that, but you are a little bit. Like Greek Cypriot, you got energy.

• 20:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, it's the, um, yeah, slight swarthiness. Is that an acceptable word still? No, it's not really.

• 20:16Adam Buxton?

  It's all, it's all, what's the word on social media? It would be, uh, well, just yikes, I suppose, as soon as you, yeah, as soon as you get into that area, it's all problematic. But, yeah, he used to, my dad used to love the idea that my mum was exotic. If you ever met my mum, she looked like, I don't know if you ever saw a show called The Good Life, but she was very much like Penelope Keith in The Good Life. And she ended up just the most posh white woman that you ever met in your life, from England. You would never have known that she was from Chile.

• 20:51Speaker 03

  Wow.

• 20:52Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. She assimilated hard.

• 20:54Speaker 03

  Shit. Shit.

• 20:57Adam Buxton?

  But yeah, carry on with that language, that is a superpower. Do your kids get on?

• 21:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, like, so the hierarchy is Sophia, who's my daughter, my firstborn, the greatest thing that ever happened to me, she is, she's like, because she's 13 and the boys are all still, like, boys, innit?

• 21:18Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  But they're quite, they're quite, um, they interact with each other like quite violently sometimes.

• 21:24Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:25Speaker 03

  But because she's now a 13-year-old young woman, like, she's got to the stage where all her body kicks, like, incapacitate them. So there's nothing, they can't wrestle back, they can't do anything back. So she's, we're going through that transition where she, what I'm saying, she's beating the fuck out of everybody right now in, in the house, and it's changed the dynamic of the house because now them man don't even be, they don't be trying shit no more. They used to chat, the boys used to chat a lot of shit like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, dickhead, ugh", yeah? Now when she comes in the room, it's like, "Yeah, dick, dickhead",

• 21:59Speaker 03

  because they know the head kicks.

• 22:04Speaker 03

  He hit different now, you know what I mean?

• 22:06Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 22:06Speaker 03

  But I think they're very defensive of each other.

• 22:09Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  So Wiggy and Yay, who are the two oldest boys. Wiggy, I don't even know, he's the more gentle soul. Yeah, he's got ringworm.

• 22:23Adam Buxton?

  My lady. Are the two linked?

• 22:28Speaker 03

  He was fucking around in the garden with mud, so he's like a gentle guy.

• 22:33Adam Buxton?

  He's got ringworm.

• 22:34Speaker 03

  And Yay's like, Yay takes like jabs and hooks and like all that kind of stuff really seriously. He thinks he's really rizzy. And something happened at school just a few weeks ago. And even though them two hadn't really, they weren't like getting on on in the house. Wiggy came back and he said, "Oh dad, Yay sorted out all the kids in my year for me." And I was like, "Yeah, that's, that's good." "Ringworm, you're a lucky boy. Ringworm, you're a lucky boy." So I like the fact that with outside of our supervision, they're all looking out for each other. That's important to me. I'd rather they kick the shit out of each other in front of us and then out in the world, Autobots unite or whatever it is, you know what I mean?

• 23:16Adam Buxton?

  How old are they now? Like, what's the age spread?

• 23:19Speaker 03

  Suff is 13, Yay is 11, Wiggy is 9, and that crazy little one is 3. He's a, can I just say, I don't know if it's politically correct, I'd say he's a pussy.

• 23:36Adam Buxton?

  Why?

• 23:37Speaker 03

  Like, you know, he's getting dropped off to nursery at the moment, yeah? And all the kids are like, "I want to stay at home because home's fun." And we feel like, that's sick as a parent, like, "Oh yeah, you do so, right? If a kid wants to stay at home, be chilling with you." But he's like wailing and screaming and holding on to door handles at the moment. And you know what he said to his mum? "If you make me go today, you're gonna hurt my heart forever."

• 24:01Adam Buxton?

  Oh.

• 24:07Adam Buxton?

  Mate.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  And to my wife, I'm like, you've done the right thing, we have to let him go. When he comes home from school, I'm like, your mum's a dickhead, bro, like that. I would have never done you like that.

• 24:19Speaker 03

  So he's really, he's really put his stick in it on us right now. And I don't really know how to cope with this, because I'm the kind of dad where if I had to witness that three days on the bounce, I would cancel his schooling forever.

• 24:31Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, it's a thing, um, that, oh, there's a phrase for it. Does anyone know what the phrase is? It's something like school reluctance. I mean, it is something that you sort of think, well, yeah, I think I had that. I didn't want to go to school. But for some people, it's a real problem and they hate the idea, it's traumatic for them. And actually, for some of those people, they're best off not going, you know? There's other options. I was talking to Catlin Moran the other day, the journalist. She didn't get on with school. So she did three weeks and then, from then on, it was just being educated by her parents, even though she admits that they didn't really do too much educating. Mainly, they just sort of watched movies and a lot of TV. And she went to the library, that was her thing, she liked to read.

• 25:16Adam Buxton?

  So she picked up a lot of what she needed to do herself. But for some people, school is not, doesn't work, you know?

• 25:23Speaker 03

  Did you like school?

• 25:24Adam Buxton?

  No, not really. But I didn't mind it, I like the social aspect of it. But whenever I started a new school, for the first year or so, it was horrible. And boarding school especially, that was properly traumatic.

• 25:37Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:38Adam Buxton?

  And it was sprung on me, like, after Christmas, you're gonna start at a boarding school. I was like, well, why do you hate me? I thought we were all getting on. And now you're gonna fucking dump me in a boarding school. I mean, they may as well have just said, after Christmas, we're going to shoot you in the back of the head.

• 26:00Adam Buxton?

  And it'll be fun, it'll be, you'll like it. It was, and it was fun, but only because the trauma was so extreme of being dropped off at this place. And it wasn't even like... A terrible school, really. Some people have really awful, awful times, whether they're a boarding school or not. You know, I'm not suggesting that it's just those kinds of schools where people have a terrible time. How about you? How did you get on?

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, good. I had, um.

• 26:29Speaker 03

  No, it was good. It was, it was, it was sick and progressively as we got older, it got even sicker because it's like, we had a year group where, especially when we got to year seven, by year nine, everybody in the school was like, fuck it, they're feral this lot. So there was like a different set of rules, nobody cared. When I was in primary school, just because I could see that was a little bit traumatic for you after Christmas when they told you fuck off, yeah?

• 26:53Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 26:54Speaker 03

  Like, that, that, in primary school, I used to get a lot of stuff pinned on me. And the punishment in primary school was that you'd have to go into, is it called a foyer?

• 27:08Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 27:09Speaker 03

  And there was a clock on the wall, massive clock, and if you're naughty, you had to stand facing the wall under the clock. And kids used to get sent there, there was nothing unfair about that. But I remember when I would get in trouble, sometimes I'd get kicked out of my class in the first lesson and I would be stood facing the clock at home time.

• 27:30Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 27:30Speaker 03

  So they'd leave me there for the whole day.

• 27:33Adam Buxton?

  Whoa.

• 27:34Speaker 03

  And if it wasn't for my boys and hobba baba at break time,

• 27:39Speaker 03

  and sneaking me all kinds of pork scratches that I shouldn't have been eating, all kinds of shit.

• 27:45Speaker 03

  Then, then I wouldn't have even had lunch. But I remember, that's, that's a very vivid memory for me.

• 27:50Adam Buxton?

  Wow.

• 27:51Speaker 03

  So that was shit.

• 27:52Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 27:52Speaker 03

  That was shit.

• 27:53Adam Buxton?

  That's medieval.

• 27:53Speaker 03

  But then I did, in the end of year six, I did break the main culprit's car window, so I thought that's all right.

• 28:00Adam Buxton?

  Why did you break the window?

• 28:01Speaker 03

  Because she kept fucking standing me out there, the dickhead.

• 28:05Speaker 03

  Broke her car window.

• 28:07Adam Buxton?

  Oh man, didn't you worry that that would escalate?

• 28:10Speaker 03

  No, no, not at all, not at all. Where, where, where we grew up, things like that are like, that's character building.

• 28:19Speaker 03

  If you've got a bottle to break a teacher's window in year six, you're going places. Like, it was, it's a, it's a good thing.

• 28:24Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 28:39Adam Buxton?

  When you were on the podcast, the first time you and I talked about parenthood, and I think you were surprised by how kind of stressed by it I seemed. Your philosophy was like, if they're still alive at the end of the day, jobs are good.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  I think fundamentally, yeah.

• 28:55Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. And then you have to worry about what kind of people they turn into, and you have to worry about the extent to which you are responsible for the kind of people they turn into. Do you think that you and your wife will be fairly hands-off about that and just let them turn into the people they want to be? Or are you going to be laying down the law? And if so, what will that be like, considering your waywardness in your own youth?

• 29:18Speaker 03

  No, because being a hypocrite is a really good thing as a parent, I think.

• 29:23Speaker 03

  You have to do it, sometimes you have to do it, do you know what I mean? Obviously, I'm traversing this thing where, obviously like, you know, they're not mates, but like old acquaintances will just ball in when we're having a haircut or whatever, and then they'll get into conversation about what it used to be like back in the day. And I'm like, yeah, yeah, is it? Okay, yeah, man, that's, that's good, trying to cut the conversation off. And they'll talk about specifics, and then yay, in particular, if he's getting told off, will be the first one to bring about, oh, remember what Urfan said in The Barbers? And I'm like, it's not important what Urfan says in The Barbers. Urfan's been to prison for a long time. And then, and then you know, what, he's clever, he's clever, because then it'll be like, yeah, yeah, and Urfan was talking about, oh, what was her name?

• 30:08Speaker 03

  Shanice? And then he'll walk out, and then he'll leave me with his mom, and his mom's like, yeah, yeah, I remember Shanice, motherfucker, I remember Shanice. So, he's smart, he's smart with it. I like the fact that, you know, he knows how to play the game a little bit.

• 30:22Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 30:22Speaker 03

  As long as they're like, sound. Do you know what I mean when I say that?

• 30:27Adam Buxton?

  Mm-hmm.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  If they're sound.

• 30:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, decent.

• 30:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, if they're sound.

• 30:30Adam Buxton?

  They're not like, they're not like, uh, they don't enjoy hurting people.

• 30:35Speaker 03

  Yes. Somebody, and you know, people will be doing that, you know? In lots of different ways. If they're sound, then fuck it, just have a good one. But if you're not sound, I think their mum can get quite hitty. That's what happened to us. We didn't really get like smacked when we were kids. But as soon as like, "Oh, motherfucker, you've got hair on your chest", then aunties and uncles will be swinging haymakers like left and right, bang, bang, bang. So you never know.

• 31:01Adam Buxton?

  Not actual haymakers, I hope.

• 31:02Speaker 03

  Couple.

• 31:03Adam Buxton?

  Oh, my god.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  And you know, you underestimate the short aunties thinking it's gonna be okay. Couple of my cousins woke up and it was the next day and they'd been fucked up. So, yeah, it's, it's part of life.

• 31:15Adam Buxton?

  That's bleak. And what are you and your wife like at home, if I may inquire?

• 31:21Speaker 03

  What do you, what do you mean?

• 31:22Adam Buxton?

  Well, are you, are things harmonious? Are you a good unit? You know, sometimes if there is someone who does a job like yours, for example, that's very irregular, you might be away for long periods of time. How does your wife deal with that?

• 31:37Speaker 03

  She's like, in that sense, she, she probably would wish that I did things a little bit differently.

• 31:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I mean, is she mainly, uh, working at home and looking after the kids? Or has she got another job as well?

• 31:50Speaker 03

  She, she has. She, she's got that, that mass responsibility.

• 31:55Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 31:55Speaker 03

  But I'm probably around more than she really wants at any given time. Um, you'll be like, "Oh, isn't it nice that you got home to your family?" I think my family would prefer if I went missing for... Not ever, but you know, six months or whatever, like, "Oh, where, I don't know where he is." Get the flyers up, let's start a Facebook group. They'd prefer if I wasn't around as much as I was.

• 32:19Adam Buxton?

  What is most likely to cause a row in the Khan household?

• 32:23Speaker 03

  V5s.

• 32:25Adam Buxton?

  What's that?

• 32:26Speaker 03

  You know, when you get a car?

• 32:27Adam Buxton?

  Mm-hmm.

• 32:29Speaker 03

  And the DVLA send you, uh...

• 32:34Speaker 03

  A legal piece of paper. And it's got number plate on it. And it's got your name on it, Ordino's name on it, yeah? I have lost 100% of all V5s that have ever come to the house. So I'll be like, from another part of the house, "Ordino, have you seen that V5?" And just muffled in the distance, she'll be like, "Pussy, I told you to put the V5 somewhere, ah!" She hates, and that's caused huge arguments in our house. "What the fuck is wrong with you? Why are you losing these V5s on purpose? I should have never married you, you fat cunt. What's wrong with you? Just get out of hand."

• 33:10Speaker 03

  I hate them. V5s should be electronic. What's the need? Eh? For fucking paper V5s? Now I have to face the wrath of Dino? Because I used the V5 to roll it up and smoke some weed? It's just fucking a lot of headache.

• 33:25Speaker 03

  And what are you supposed to say to that box? "I lost it again." And she's like, "You're a fucking idiot."

• 33:30Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that's no good. You need to take better care of it. That's like listening to my wife and our middle son. He is unable to hold on to any things. And to keep track of anything at all. And yet, he's totally indignant. If you ever try and cross-examine him and suggest that he changes his ways, he gets very upset because he thinks he's got everything sorted.

• 33:51Speaker 03

  What kind of shit he'll be losing?

• 33:52Adam Buxton?

  Oh, man, everything. Everything. Like, every device that he's ever had, every... Any bit of possession, like, to the extent that recently I got him a phone, like, a pretty cheap phone, to replace the one that he'd lost a few months earlier for his birthday. And he genuinely didn't want it. Because he just said, "We both know what's gonna happen to you."

• 34:18Adam Buxton?

  You know, he was sort of being nice. He was just like, "I don't wanna, I don't wanna go through all this again."

• 34:24Adam Buxton?

  It's just a sort of pathological thing, like, he cannot control... He doesn't, he's not connected to physical things, which in a way is quite nice. I quite like that about him, that he's not materialist in that way, but it would be good if he was a bit more materialist.

• 34:42Adam Buxton?

  That he could just hang on to some of this stuff. How about their devices and their time on the internet? Is there any attempt to control that, or how do you manage that?

• 34:54Speaker 03

  Like, you can, on the main electric board, you can just turn it all off.

• 35:03Speaker 03

  I've done that three times so far. Because I'm like, yo, that's these YouTube shorts gonna fuck you up. It's a plan from the government. They're trying to fry your bread. You can't even concentrate. You're not even listening now. I only started talking five seconds ago. You're not watching YouTube shorts no more. And then, 1am. Yeah, there's three channels over there. Boom, open door. Fuck's going on in here? No, nothing, dad, I was talking in my sleep. Give me the iPad. Look on the iPad. You can see the screen is still lit from YouTube shorts. And I'm saying. So I went out to the main electric box and I turned it off. And I said, no more electricity.

• 35:41Speaker 03

  And then he said, well, you're staying up till late. What are you gonna do? So I went back and turned it back on. But the point is.

• 35:50Speaker 03

  You have to, sometimes you have to cut it off at the source.

• 35:53Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 35:54Speaker 03

  Like, we are, we are nothing compared to our parents. But I only imagine if we had this device access YouTube shorts when we were a kid. Our, our parents wouldn't have turned the electricity off. They would have ripped the box out the wall. And shoved it in my ass. That's what they would have done. I would have never watched YouTube shorts again.

• 36:15Adam Buxton?

  I know, I have a, um, when we moved into our house, like, we had all the electrics redone. And I asked them to put master switches in some of the rooms for that reason. So that if things reached crunch point, I could just go in and hit, and they're big red switches. And I just hit the red switch and everything dies. It's a pretty good feeling.

• 36:42Speaker 03

  Okay, but are, are we being stupid? Is it just normal for them to?

• 36:50Speaker 03

  Because it's not even good content, is it? It's just somebody like restoring a Lego, like, fuck, I know, like a Matchbox car, yeah? And you know already they've stuck that Matchbox car in the mud themselves six months ago. So he gets fucked up to make 15 seconds of content for them. And they're like, what's even your problem, man? Like, I'm just watching this car getting restored, but it's.

• 37:12Adam Buxton?

  If they're watching Matchbox cars being restored, then everything's fine.

• 37:19Adam Buxton?

  It's the other stuff I'm worried about.

• 37:22Speaker 03

  Now, Pornhub doesn't have shorts, does it?

• 37:27Adam Buxton?

  I don't know. I would imagine it does. I mean, surely, everything's got everything. Any terrible thing you can imagine, they've probably seen. I remember when my son got his first device, like an iPod Touch kind of thing, and it had internet connectivity or something, which was a stupid thing for me to have done. And I gave it to him way too early. But, you know, you want to endear yourself to these people. That's the...

• 37:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, that's what it is.

• 37:58Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. You want them to love you. And so I tried to buy his love with Apple gear. And the concession that I made to being a somewhat responsible parent was at least, you know, his account is linked to my account, he can't do it. There are parental, I thought there were parental controls on there. Evidently, there weren't. Because I started getting alerts about sites that he was visiting. He'd obviously just realised, oh, I can go on the internet and I can look at stuff. And he'd been hanging out with a mate of his, he must have been about six or something, pretty young. And we're in a car journey, and suddenly I start getting alerts on my phone telling me what he's been looking at.

• 38:39Adam Buxton?

  And the thread was, the first search was Sylvester Stallone's penis.

• 38:56Adam Buxton?

  Because they'd seen Rocky. They were like, look at this guy. And then, of course, the next thing is, imagine

• 39:07Adam Buxton?

  what kind of equipment this guy has. Let's, let's find out. And then, you know, you can imagine, three clicks later, they're in the belly of hell.

• 39:21Adam Buxton?

  And they're, they're looking at some terrible, terrible stuff. And so then I, you know, I went and confronted him about it and I was like, what are you looking at? And he just, he just immediately burst into tears.

• 39:33Speaker 03

  Oh, shit.

• 39:35Adam Buxton?

  Because he knew that he had gone to a terrible place. And you could see that the search had ended in literally three clicks. It was just like, ah, ah, ah!

• 39:45Adam Buxton?

  The sites that it had taken him to. And they'd obviously just closed it and gone, nah.

• 39:51Speaker 03

  But can you remember what the last search before Sylvester Stallone's penis was? What was the last search before that? Can you remember?

• 40:03Adam Buxton?

  No, I think this was their inaugural...

• 40:05Speaker 03

  That's their first search!

• 40:07Adam Buxton?

  This was "Welcome to the Internet. Where would you like to go?"

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Rocky's dick was his first search!

• 40:16Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's wild, man!

• 40:19Speaker 03

  Fuck!

• 40:20Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I felt pretty bad about it, but it was a chastening experience and we did actually... It's like a fun family story that I wheel out more than I should.

• 40:36Adam Buxton?

  Never in public before.

• 40:39Adam Buxton?

  But I did mention the possibility that it might happen to him the other day and he was okay with it.

• 40:45Speaker 03

  He was alright with it?

• 40:45Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, he was like, "Okay, whatever."

• 40:49Adam Buxton?

  He was fine.

• 40:49Speaker 03

  You know what Dino did get angry with me about?

• 40:52Adam Buxton?

  Oh yeah.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  There's a YouTuber called Salim the Dream.

• 40:56Adam Buxton?

  Salim the Dream?

• 40:58Speaker 03

  And Salim the Dream does this prank where he, I don't know if anyone's seen it, he moans in people's ears at like supermarkets and stuff.

• 41:07Adam Buxton?

  What? He moans? Like in what way?

• 41:09Speaker 03

  So you're there in B&Q now, yeah?

• 41:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 41:12Speaker 03

  Looking for whatever you're looking for. And he'll just casually come behind you and he'll go, "Hiya."

• 41:24Speaker 03

  It's a bit like, it's a bit dodge, yeah? It's a bit dodge, but there's a particular set of his videos where he'd been doing this for quite a while, but the whole video was dedicated to him doing that to Asian uncles.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  And the Asian uncle's reactions compared to everyone else was very different.

• 41:48Adam Buxton?

  Is Celine the dreamer Asian himself?

• 41:51Speaker 03

  No, no, I think he's Ethiopian, maybe Somali, right? So they'd pull up, he'd pull up behind an Indian or Pakistani uncle and they'd be browsing light bulbs or whatever the fuck it is. And Celine would go, "Hoi ya!"

• 42:08Speaker 03

  And the Indian uncles would spin round in panic. And what I love about Asian uncles when they're panicked is they don't be speaking English properly. So he'd go, "Hoi ya!", and the uncle would spin around and say, "Who is this?"

• 42:27Speaker 03

  One uncle, one uncle was reading something for the shelf and Celine the Dream came behind him and said, "Hoi ya daddy", and the uncle spun round and said, "Why you fuck me?"

• 42:48Speaker 03

  And me and the kids found this hilarious together.

• 42:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 42:52Speaker 03

  And the mum wasn't very impressed with it.

• 43:27Adam Buxton?

  Right, now look, what have we got here? I think that I, earlier on, was looking at your YouTube channel. How often do you go on there and maintain that? Are you like very proactive with your socials?

• 43:41Speaker 03

  I forgot a password for this for like, for quite some, for quite some time. Yeah, what were you doing on there?

• 43:48Adam Buxton?

  I was just sort of looking through various bits and pieces. I wanted to see what you'd been up to. It suddenly occurred to me like, I don't know what you're actually doing these days. What are you doing at the moment?

• 43:57Speaker 03

  Well, like this week?

• 43:58Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, like in your, in your career.

• 44:01Speaker 03

  Oh, career?

• 44:02Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 44:04Speaker 03

  Like, that's alright, but the thing that's really exciting for us at the moment, we're having a dorma done in the loft. Oh, yo, listen, fuck comedy. This dorma is the shit. I wish you could all see it. It's the shit, bro, okay? And I managed to source like these windows called facro windows instead of velux because velux is very expensive.

• 44:27Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  And so this brother was like, "Facro is very good. Have the facro." And I went online, the facro is much cheaper and it feels nice in the hand. What I'm saying is, that's what I'm spending my time doing, fucking dorma windows. It's very exciting to me. Career's alright, yeah, but the dorma's gonna be sick.

• 44:42Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. And how much time do you spend on social media and doing all that? Because I mean, I, I do know that about you, that you're not someone who is overly focused on growing the brand, smashing the stats, increasing the reach, all those sorts of things, which is quite unusual for a, a modern personality. You're told generally, "Oh, you have to be on Twitter. If you're not on Twitter, you're nobody."

• 45:09Speaker 03

  No, I, I do be on the internet, like, talking shit to people. Like, I like, this is one thing I didn't wanna lose. I didn't wanna lose the ability to just be like, "Bow, have that motherfucker." Like, I didn't wanna lose that because I used to love having that throughout my whole life. So I was going back and forth with Tommy Robinson last night.

• 45:27Adam Buxton?

  On Instagram or Twitter or something?

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Twitter, Twitter. He's active on Twitter, yeah. Like, you can catch him. Sometimes you can see when he's online and I go immediately, "Bow."

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Boom, straight in then. No, I don't wanna say this. I wanna say this, okay, about him. That definitely, that, you know, like, the attraction dynamic between us, it's, it's heavily on my side.

• 45:50Adam Buxton?

  And you're stalking him?

• 45:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm, for sure I'm stalking him. I wanna know about his house in Benidorm and all that kinda shit. I know, I know more about Tommy Robinson than I know about Dino, to be honest with you. There's a lot. There's a lot I know. So, so yeah, I be, I be on the internet talking shit.

• 46:04Adam Buxton?

  What kind of interactions do you have? Are you trolling him or are you trying to actually have meaningful intellectual discussions with him?

• 46:14Speaker 03

  Well, I don't know how much you know about Tommy Robinson, but...

• 46:22Adam Buxton?

  But is it primarily performative? Or are you trying to genuinely school him, as it were?

• 46:28Speaker 03

  No, no, no. Sometimes I just be sitting there and I be like, oh, Tommy Robinson posted 33 seconds ago. And I'm like, bow. What's life like down there, you tiny motherfucker? Like, just things like that. And then it gets him really riled up. Because I shouldn't be here, in this country, of course.

• 46:45Adam Buxton?

  Yes. Does he respond to you?

• 46:47Speaker 03

  Sometimes he responds to me. But it's sometimes I can't tell whether it's him. I can't tell whether it's him or press team, whoever handles the social media. But when it's him, you can tell it's him. Because he types like he talks, which I find very entertaining sometimes.

• 47:02Adam Buxton?

  How is that?

• 47:02Speaker 03

  Basically, I think I love Tommy Robinson a little bit, is what I'm trying to say.

• 47:07Adam Buxton?

  Is there any part of you that would ever want to get into politics? Because, you know, you'd be a very charismatic candidate that I feel like a lot of people could probably get behind. There you go.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  Nah, but there's not any money in it, is there? They're doing alright.

• 47:26Adam Buxton?

  If you get to be Prime Minister, then you just bugger off and you are coining it on the talk circuit.

• 47:32Speaker 03

  I would just like to go into, um, remember like when the Ali G character? When went in there and he was just like smashing everybody?

• 47:41Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  And he was like, that would be fun for a day. Because sometimes those conversations would be going on and on and on. And they're all like, oh, you see someone with a strong, shut the fuck up! To move the conversation on. I would like to do that one day.

• 47:55Adam Buxton?

  In a political context?

• 47:57Speaker 03

  In a political context, when they're all sat there, shut the fuck up, dickhead. Who said that?

• 48:03Adam Buxton?

  In the House of Commons?

• 48:05Speaker 03

  In the House of Commons, yeah. Fuck your mum. Who said that?

• 48:10Adam Buxton?

  I predict that in our lifetime, that will happen.

• 48:13Speaker 03

  I hope. The thing about all their money is, bro, it's like, there's a lot of people that like you, Box. Yeah? So in passing, a lot of people are like, oh, guys, hi. And I'm like, yeah? Like, I tell you what, those conversations you have with Adam Buxton, really, really good.

• 48:29Adam Buxton?

  And it's usually...

• 48:30Speaker 03

  And they just walk away. They're not my usual interactions and I'm like, oh, somebody's on a box thing. But it's like, you know, if Pretty Patel came up to you and said, "I really like your podcast," yeah?

• 48:42Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 48:43Speaker 03

  You'd have to kind of firms pretty, innit? You know what I mean? No, your followers, the internet, if they saw you fist bumping Pretty Patel, you'd be finished, bro, fucking dead in the ground.

• 48:55Speaker 03

  But if you explain to me the context-

• 48:57Adam Buxton?

  Yes, yes.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  I'm not gonna kill you for that.

• 48:59Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, okay, I see what you mean. Have you ever been in that position where you, where someone was charming to you? What if Tommy Robinson comes up and he's all charming with you? He helps you with your shopping.

• 49:12Adam Buxton?

  He does your wife a favor. He shows you his-

• 49:15Speaker 03

  He does Dino a favor!

• 49:21Speaker 03

  You know what kind of fucking favors you're talking about, Adam Buxton?

• 49:25Adam Buxton?

  Not those ones, but he shows you his, he shows you his human side.

• 49:33Speaker 03

  Nah, because look, there's people here.

• 49:36Speaker 03

  If it was just me and you backstage, I'd be like...

• 49:40Speaker 03

  But it's the world, innit? You know what I mean?

• 49:42Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. I mean, I, I agree with you as far as like, it should be the most important thing, like how people treat each other one-on-one. Yet, we know that there's more to it than that. That's the weird thing about social media though, isn't it, is that people are liberated to have these clashes of principle.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 50:03Adam Buxton?

  And fundamentally, it is one of the frustrating things about so many of the conflicts that you see in the world, whether they're small or catastrophically large, that you just think, fuck, I wish you were in front of each other in real life. I wish you were able to find a point of common humanity. You know what I mean, like?

• 50:24Speaker 03

  That's the truthful, nice version of it. I don't know if you've ever heard of this term, chat shit get banged. Have you ever heard of that?

• 50:35Speaker 03

  Because

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Because in real life, all these Twitter fingers, hot, pion, pion, pion, bully, bully, bully, bully, bully.

• 50:46Adam Buxton?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:46Speaker 03

  In the real life, brother, it's a very real saying that everybody should be aware, that's how life works. Be chatting too much shit, you're gonna get banged.

• 50:56Adam Buxton?

  Uh-huh. What do you like with conflict in general, like real world, physical, in the room conflict?

• 51:06Speaker 03

  But give me some context.

• 51:08Adam Buxton?

  Well, what about on set? When you were on the podcast, we talked about people, like toxic sets.

• 51:15Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:16Adam Buxton?

  And people losing their temper.

• 51:19Speaker 03

  What I never like, yeah, I never like it when I'm, me and you talk to each other, and then I leave and I'm like, "Box is a good guy, you know?" And then people always wait till Box has gone to his car, and he's on the way home, and then three people are like, "He's a fucking cunt."

• 51:37Speaker 03

  But then now I'm confused, because I'm like, yo, you're, not that I'm saying this, I'm just using this example, but like, now I'm confused, because I'm like, oh, was all that nice interaction that I had with Box real? Or is he a dickhead? Or are these three chatting shit, and do I need to bang them right now? It's a, it's a real moral quandary. I've not, I've seen a couple of people do things that I don't like, but I've always like, checked them on it, and they've always done that. You know actors, I'm not an actor like that, I don't regard myself as an actor, but you know actors, when you catch them doing something, and they know it's wrong, and you check them on it, they all go, "Oh."

• 52:15Speaker 03

  Three times it's happened, they've all gone, "Oh."

• 52:18Adam Buxton?

  The thinker pose.

• 52:19Speaker 03

  I know they're acting to me as well.

• 52:20Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  And so we're in, but they're like, "It's been a really hard day, and I've got this going on, and my mum died in August." And like, but I'm like, okay, there's a lot of shit going on, but you didn't have to be a dickhead to this person over here, right? But I'll never, I'll never, that does get you sacked from jobs. I have been sacked from, from jobs before, because there's an expectation in our industry to just, is it toe the line? Is that the right?

• 52:42Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 52:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, just toe the line, but life's short, ain't it? You wouldn't get sacked off a job, but you help stand up for somebody over here who's getting treated like shit. That's always stuff I saw my mum doing. My mum would never, it didn't matter how big the guy was or how dangerous they were. If she saw somebody mugging somebody else off, Zainab Khan would always step in and say, fuck you.

• 53:05Adam Buxton?

  Oh, good for your mum. Yeah, but I mean, that's, it's, it's a hard thing to do. I certainly like to think I would do that in that sort of situation. But then I think about some of the situations where maybe it hasn't been a total meltdown, but someone's been really yelling on a set or whatever. And my, my initial reaction is to just to giggle nervously. Because you just think, this is ridiculous. Why are tempers getting so heated about a fucking TV show? This is mad. So you sort of can't really believe it's happening. And then too late, you think, oh, actually, that must have been humiliating for the person who was being yelled at.

• 53:43Speaker 03

  But then also, bro, it's this specific industry that we've spoken about before, which is if my man had started that and he was like assistant manager in Lidl.

• 53:56Speaker 03

  Somebody would have headbutted him and he would have been fucking asleep and he would have never done it again. Because this is this like, it's not real life, it's pretend bullshit.

• 54:05Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  And I suppose that's the thing.

• 54:07Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, exactly. Because you're trying to create something from nothing. You're kind of trying to catch lightning in a bottle when you're, especially making a film, which is a very difficult thing to do. And so the madness just gets hold of people, I suppose. I mean, one day there will be footage of me absolutely losing my shit somewhere. Probably on the platform of Cambridge Station.

• 54:32Adam Buxton?

  At some hapless rail employee.

• 54:35Speaker 03

  But, but remember, earlier on with the parenting and the hypocrisy stuff, yeah?

• 54:39Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 54:39Speaker 03

  If that footage does come out, I'll still be like.

• 54:42Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  Box my boy though, that's my boy, do you know what I mean?

• 54:47Adam Buxton?

  Um, so look, I wanted to ask you about, I've got a fantasy that I'm going to, I'm trying to get myself onto the Bake Off.

• 54:57Speaker 03

  Say again?

• 54:58Adam Buxton?

  You know, the Great British Bake Off?

• 55:00Speaker 03

  That's your fantasy to go on there?

• 55:01Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 55:03Adam Buxton?

  Well, the celebrity one, you know what I mean?

• 55:06Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, okay, yeah.

• 55:07Adam Buxton?

  Would you ever go on a show like that?

• 55:08Speaker 03

  Fuck, no.

• 55:11Adam Buxton?

  Why not?

• 55:13Speaker 03

  Like, people going on TV, and the whole show is about making, like, cakes and cookies.

• 55:20Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 55:21Speaker 03

  You can do that in your house, bro.

• 55:25Speaker 03

  I wouldn't go, nah.

• 55:26Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, but you're being judged by Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood with his amazing blue eyes. You might get the handshake from Paul Hollywood if you do a good bit of baking.

• 55:36Speaker 03

  Is that, is that what?

• 55:37Adam Buxton?

  That's what happens, yeah.

• 55:38Speaker 03

  He gives you a handshake?

• 55:38Adam Buxton?

  You get, you get a handshake, and it's the highest accolade known to man.

• 55:45Speaker 03

  I don't know who am I to judge. If, in your house, if you won this, would your family be like, "Yeah, dad, you're sick"?

• 55:50Adam Buxton?

  Yes, I think so.

• 55:52Speaker 03

  Then that's fine.

• 55:52Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 55:53Speaker 03

  Then you have to do what you have to do.

• 55:56Adam Buxton?

  What about, have you been on any of those kinds of shows?

• 55:59Speaker 03

  What, Bake Offs?

• 56:00Adam Buxton?

  Well, you know, like a sort of reality, well, you've been on Taskmaster, I guess that's different.

• 56:04Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, that's different, though, man.

• 56:06Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 56:06Speaker 03

  That's different. They want you to, like, bake a cake, and then if you have, if you wanna shit in the cake, you can shit in the cake. It's a whole different thing. It's a wonderful thing.

• 56:16Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 56:19Speaker 03

  You can't really do that. You know, you know, I...

• 56:24Speaker 03

  Have you done it yet?

• 56:25Adam Buxton?

  What, taken a shit in a cake?

• 56:30Speaker 03

  No, have you done Taskmaster yet?

• 56:32Adam Buxton?

  Oh, Taskmaster. No, that's a sore point.

• 56:35Speaker 03

  What are, why?

• 56:37Adam Buxton?

  Because, you know, I...

• 56:38Speaker 03

  Now, say why, say why it is.

• 56:40Adam Buxton?

  Because I think I would do a good job on Taskmaster.

• 56:48Speaker 03

  Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on. So, let me get this right. Fuck Bake Off, leave it where it is, okay? You would actually like to do Taskmaster, and no one's bailed you, given you the call for it? Is that what you're saying?

• 57:04Adam Buxton?

  I'm saying, yeah, that is what I'm saying. I've had Alex on the podcast, and he said, "Oh, you're on the long list." But it's a very long... It's a very long list.

• 57:14Speaker 03

  Have you got his number?

• 57:15Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 57:16Speaker 03

  Let's call him now. Call him, call him, call him, call him. Call him, call him, bro, call him, call him, call him. Because... Listen.

• 57:26Speaker 03

  Here's the thing, yeah? You're a lovely guy, he's a lovely guy. There's no need for this long list thing here going on. Please bail him, please bail him now, and we're gonna fix this thing right now.

• 57:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, do it, bro, do it. Do it, man.

• 57:47Speaker 03

  This is not good.

• 57:48Adam Buxton?

  I think it might jeopardize my friendship with Alex Horn if I ring and say...

• 57:51Speaker 03

  No!

• 57:53Adam Buxton?

  "Hey, Alex, I'm doing a show in Manchester, and there's a crowd of a thousand people here who want to know why I haven't been on Taskmaster." He's gonna be like...

• 58:01Speaker 03

  Not ordinarily, but if you do say, if you do say one more bit of information, Guz made me make the phone call, he's gonna go, I promise you it's gonna be alright.

• 58:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah?

• 58:12Speaker 03

  Because he wanted to, I think, I think he wanted to kick me off the show like six times.

• 58:17Adam Buxton?

  Why did he wanna kick you off?

• 58:18Speaker 03

  Because I threatened to throw a iron through the stained glass window in that house.

• 58:22Adam Buxton?

  Why?

• 58:23Speaker 03

  Just, he said you can do what you want, I said anything. I said anything, he said, "Anything you want, Guz", and I said, "I'm gonna throw this iron through that stained glass window." And he said, "You're not allowed to do that." I said, "Motherfucker, you told me I could do what I want."

• 58:36Speaker 03

  Call him, we're gonna fix this now. Come on. Come on, bro.

• 58:43Adam Buxton?

  Alright.

• 58:46Adam Buxton?

  This feels like a mistake.

• 58:50Speaker 03

  Now, this, this, this, you don't think this is good, this is good!

• 59:00Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 59:01Adam Buxton?

  Alex, it's Adam Buxton, I'm onstage, just so you know.

• 59:09Speaker 03

  Alex!

• 59:10Speaker 04

  Which, which stage, Adam?

• 59:13Adam Buxton?

  I'm onstage in Manchester,

• 59:18Adam Buxton?

  at the Albert Hall, and I'm here, I'm here with Guz Khan.

• 59:23Speaker 03

  Alex?

• 59:24Speaker 04

  Ah.

• 59:24Speaker 03

  Alex!

• 59:25Speaker 04

  I'm not interested, whatever you're selling.

• 59:28Speaker 03

  Alex, how are you, my bro?

• 59:30Speaker 04

  Guz Khan, I'm pretty good, my bro.

• 59:32Speaker 03

  Alex, listen. Brother, forget, just forget all the people out here, imagine they're not even here, yeah? This is me, you, and Box. We're in a Dixie Chicken, 2am in the morning.

• 59:44Speaker 04

  Yes, yes, I think so.

• 59:45Speaker 03

  Strawberry, strawberry mirandas, the conversation's going wild. Now, Box looks at me, and I look at you, and Box says, "You know what, brother? I would actually legit love to be on Taskmaster." And then I look at him... Alright, wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on.

• 1:00:06Speaker 03

  But just to confirm this, Alex, I have to say to him, say "wallahi", you wanna be on the show, say "wallahi".

• 1:00:10Adam Buxton?

  Wallahi.

• 1:00:11Speaker 03

  He say "wallahi".

• 1:00:13Speaker 04

  Wallahi, yes.

• 1:00:15Speaker 03

  And I say, "You're a beautiful guy", 'cause you are. Adam Buxton is a beautiful guy, your energies are unmatched. I'm your brown boy from the Midlands. Please,

• 1:00:24Speaker 04

  Yes, you are.

• 1:00:24Speaker 03

  can you just do the ting, and make sure Box is on your show, 'cause I think you'd be a beautiful combination. I fucking love both of you. Don't make this long, cuz chat shit get banged. Can we do this, please?

• 1:00:37Speaker 03

  Please!

• 1:00:42Speaker 04

  Wallahi?

• 1:00:43Speaker 03

  Yes!

• 1:00:46Adam Buxton?

  Alex.

• 1:00:47Speaker 04

  Yes, Adam.

• 1:00:48Adam Buxton?

  Alex, I'm aware that...

• 1:00:49Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:00:49Adam Buxton?

  I'm aware that this is probably...

• 1:00:57Adam Buxton?

  Alex, I'm, I'm aware that this is most likely the end of our friendship.

• 1:01:02Speaker 04

  Well, it was also the beginning when you called me, it's the first ever time.

• 1:01:11Adam Buxton?

  I was made to do this by Guz Khan, who was trying to make my dreams come true. We were chatting, I was chatting to him about Taskmaster and my love for Taskmaster, and that's how it happened.

• 1:01:26Speaker 04

  Well, it would genuinely make my dreams come true. So let's sort this out, once and for all.

• 1:01:39Adam Buxton?

  Alex, thank you so much for taking this call. I will check in with you later to make a fulsome apology. But this is the sound of Manchester, saying, "Thank you, Alex Horne."

• 1:01:56Speaker 04

  I'm hanging up now.

• 1:02:00Adam Buxton?

  I mean, I think that couldn't really have gone better.

• 1:02:06Adam Buxton?

  On the other hand, he's probably now deleting my number and blocking me from every avenue of approach.

• 1:02:14Speaker 03

  Happy birthday! Happy birthday!

• 1:02:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, bro, that's a no-brainer. That's just some bullshit, where you think he's cool, he thinks you're really cool, and he's like, "Would he do it?" He just needed one prick to be like, "Do the tinkers", and that's it, you know what I mean? So I'm happy, bro, you're gonna be sick on that show, we're gonna love watching it. Fuckin' less of it!

• 1:02:39Adam Buxton?

  Thank you very much.

• 1:02:44Adam Buxton?

  I know this isn't a good reference, but it did feel like being on Jim'll Fix It.

• 1:02:52Adam Buxton?

  Don't take that the wrong way.

• 1:02:53Speaker 03

  Thanks, thanks.

• 1:02:57Adam Buxton?

  But... Bake Off, now what can you do? What can you do for me there? Do you have the producer's number?

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  No, is that brother still on Bake Off?

• 1:03:10Adam Buxton?

  Which one, Paul Hollywood?

• 1:03:12Speaker 03

  Not Paul Hollywood.

• 1:03:13Adam Buxton?

  There's no Fielding? Yes.

• 1:03:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, call him.

• 1:03:22Speaker 03

  Call him with his way.

• 1:03:25Adam Buxton?

  I don't think I have Noel's number. But this is what I would do though. If I went on that show, I've got it all worked out. I've got a song about baking that I think is gonna seal the deal. And this is something that I used AI for, and it's a song about baking pies. The only thing is that I did have fun with this one, trying to get the AI to use some bad language. Because when you use AI music generating software, the platforms I've been using, they don't like you to swear. If you put in swear-y lyrics, it says, "Does not compute. Try again." They don't like hate speech and swearing. So you have to find ways round it. Not the hate speech, I haven't put any hate speech in.

• 1:04:13Adam Buxton?

  I don't think that's gonna get me on Bake Off. But I did try to do some with a bit of fruity language, and this was the result.

• 1:04:21Speaker 05

  I baked you a pie. I baked you a pie. I baked you a fucking pie. I baked you a pie. I baked you a pie. I baked you a fucking pie. I made it sweet as a fucking tree. I know you like sweet pie. There's sugar and shit all over it. I baked you a fucking pie.

• 1:04:59Speaker 05

  I baked you a pie. I baked you a pie. I baked you a fucking pie. I baked you a pie. I baked you a pie. I baked you a fucking pie. Fucking honey, that shit's so runny. I baked you a fucking pie. Sweet, sweet, yeah, my fa-faca. I baked you a fucking pie.

• 1:05:41Speaker 05

  I baked you a fucking pie.

• 1:05:48Adam Buxton?

  There you go.

• 1:05:55Adam Buxton?

  So that's my plan. This time next year, I hope to be able to say that I have been on either Taskmaster or Bake Off.

• 1:06:05Adam Buxton?

  It's my dream.

• 1:06:07Speaker 03

  Or both?

• 1:06:07Adam Buxton?

  Or both.

• 1:06:08Speaker 03

  Or both.

• 1:06:09Adam Buxton?

  One more time before we go, can we just get a "Happy Birthday to you"? Happy Birthday to you. Happy Birthday dear Malus. Happy Birthday to you. Hey, thanks, this is the best birthday I've had.

• 1:06:32Adam Buxton?

  For a long time, thank you very much.

• 1:06:40Adam Buxton?

  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.

• 1:07:14Adam Buxton?

  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, a Union Jack top hat is a big seller. But they constructed it all so fast with Squarespace. They did most of it over one lunchtime, Steve. Well, you wouldn't want to spend much longer on it, would you? 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.

• 1:07:59Adam Buxton?

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

• 1:08:07Adam Buxton?

  Continue.

• 1:08:18Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcasts. That was Guz Khan and the wonderful audience at the Albert Hall in Manchester last year, June 2024. And I was very grateful to them all for showing me a wonderful night. What an amazing birthday that was. Of course, the question is, when will you be seeing me on Taskmaster? Well, as I speak, there hasn't yet been a follow-up call, but, I mean, it was a promising first step, wasn't it? Anyway, thank you so much to Guz and to everyone there that night, especially Seamus Murphy Mitchell and everyone from the Albert Hall who made us feel

• 1:09:03Adam Buxton?

  very welcome. Thanks to the Cross Town Promotions crew, Dan, Liam, Katie, Ben and Richard. If you go into the description of today's podcast, you will find a link that will take you to my website where you'll find a photograph of me and Guz with Seamus in the background just before we went on stage that night. I've also put a link to a compilation of Saleem the Dream going up and moaning in people's ears in hardware stores in America. I mean, it looks really

• 1:09:38Adam Buxton?

  ill-advised to me. People are genuinely angry, freaked out, upset to have him go up and moan in a sexual way into their ear. They don't know how to respond. They're freaked out because Saleem just looks completely gormless when they turn around, so they're not sure what the deal is. They don't know if he's being threatening or coming on to them or taking their piss or what the deal is. It does tweak my anti-prank nipples, but there's no denying that it's fairly compelling viewing. Anyway, that's there, as well as the video for my AI baking song, I Baked

• 1:10:23Adam Buxton?

  You a Pie. And to be clear, the music was generated by AI, but the words were my own.

• 1:10:32Adam Buxton?

  Since then, everything's changed in the world of AI. And you can swear it up. The platform that I was using then now no longer has a problem with swearing. As for any other kind of inflammatory language, I'm not sure. I haven't tested it. When I did that one, I baked you a pie. It took me so long to find spellings that would fool it into saying the F-word and the other swear-y words. Time well spent, though, I'm sure you'll agree. Last weekend, I was in Sheffield with Joe Cornish at the Sheffield Doc Fest.

• 1:11:13Adam Buxton?

  And we did an event in which we were introduced onstage by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato from World of Wonder Productions, who produced the Adam and Joe Show back in the day. And they had been curating various events at the Doc Fest, of which we were one. So Joe and I spent just over an hour doing yet more reminiscing. And looking back through lots of videos, I had trawled through the archives and put together a few bits and pieces from the Adam and Joe Show, as well as some bits of home video and a few examples of some of the things that we used to like to watch in those days.

• 1:11:59Adam Buxton?

  It was good fun, actually, and we had a really good audience. I signed some books afterwards. So thanks very much if you came along. And I hope that we might get to do something similar again. Maybe later in the year, maybe next year. Next year's going to be the 30th anniversary of the first Adam and Joe Show that we did. I'll let you know if anything materializes. But yeah, thanks if you came. If you'd like to join me for more chat around my book, I love you, bye. Which I hope you own a copy of. Don't forget to pick up that audiobook as well.

• 1:12:38Adam Buxton?

  With all that bonus content, including a whole hour, brand new podcast with me and Joe. Waffling about it and other things. Come along to the Mannington Book Bash. It's a very nice boutique. Is it a boutique? I don't know. What makes a boutique a boutique? Just that it's small. If that's the case, then it is a boutique literary festival that takes place in the grounds of a beautiful moted medieval country house, Mannington Hall in Norfolk. It takes place between the 25th and the 28th of September this year.

• 1:13:18Adam Buxton?

  It's organised by the independent Norwich bookshop, The Book Hive. And I will be doing two events there. On Saturday, the 27th of September, the first one is 4pm with me waffling about the book with another human, TBC. And I will be signing some books, either immediately after that event or the next event, which is going to be at 6pm, I think, on the Saturday. And that will be me interviewing a comedy hero of mine, Nigel Plainer, aka Neil of The Young Ones and star of so many of those brilliant comic strip films back in the day,

• 1:14:04Adam Buxton?

  as well as sitcoms thereafter. He is also the author of fiction books, as well as now a memoir called Young Ones about those days with the comic strip. Comes out later this year. Very much looking forward to meeting Nigel. I hope you can make it along. There's a link to buy tickets and find out more in the description. Okay, that's it for this week. Thank you so much. Once again to Seamus Murphy Mitchell and to Becca Bryers. Thanks to Helen Green, she does the artwork for this podcast. Thank you to everyone at Acast for all their help liaising with my sponsors. But thank you especially to all of you. Would you care for a hot creepy hug?

• 1:14:47Adam Buxton?

  Of course you would. I don't smell too bad today. And, um.

• 1:14:53Adam Buxton?

  I've brushed off most of the insects from my toweling top. So come here. Hey, good to see you.

• 1:15:01Adam Buxton?

  Alright. Please go carefully.

• 1:15:05Adam Buxton?

  And for what it's worth, I love you. Bye!