EP.249 - PAULINE BLACK

Adam talks with English author, actor and frontperson of seminal ska band The Selecter, Pauline Black about the early days of Two Tone, her experiences growing up feeling out of place as part of an adoptive family in Essex and how she came to be reunited with her biological mother. Conversation recorded face-to-face in Coventry on 8th May, 2025 Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and additional conversation editing. Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ WATCH PAULINE BLACK: A 2-TONE STORY https://www.sky.com/watch/programme/47cad282-57d4-4bae-a5c0-813e642793e2 - 2025 (SKY ARTS) PICS AND RELATED LINKS https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/podcasts/82dyw29p3may2fa-dwb79 (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.

• 0:00Speaker 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? It's Adam Buckston here, reporting to you from a Norfolk farm track, early June 2025. I'm here with my dog friend Rosie. She's a whippet poodle cross. She's not that excited to be out for a walk, but she's trotting along beside me. And like a brand of shampoo I once favoured, she is panten, panting, panting, pant.

• 1:07Adam Buxton?

  That's dog legs panting. How are you doing though, podcats? I hope you're doing okay, wherever you are. Me, oh, I'm fine, thanks, can't complain.

• 1:18Adam Buxton?

  Hello, techno bird.

• 1:28Adam Buxton?

  Hovering above the field. How high do you think that is, dog legs?

• 1:32Speaker 02

  I strongly don't care, I want to go back to the sofa.

• 1:36Adam Buxton?

  I'd say that's about a hundred feet up.

• 1:41Adam Buxton?

  Very good hovering, plus techno.

• 1:45Adam Buxton?

  Ah, look, there's a few of them.

• 1:48Adam Buxton?

  Anyway, look, let me tell you a little bit about podcast number 249 with my guest, the English singer, actor and author Pauline Black. Pauline Blackfax. Born Belinda Magnus in 1953 to a white Anglo-Jewish mother and a Nigerian father, Pauline was adopted by a family from Essex who gave her the name Pauline Vickers. She studied science at Lancaster Polytechnic, now Coventry University, before training as a radiographer. And she worked for the NHS for five years before she entered the music industry. When The Specials, then known as The Special aka, released their 1979 single Gangsters

• 2:32Adam Buxton?

  on the Two Tone label, the B-side was an atmospheric instrumental by Neil Davis and John Bradbury called The Selector. Following the success of the single, Neil Davis put together a seven-piece band made up of Coventry musicians that included Arthur Gaps Hendrickson and on vocals was Pauline, who took the stage name Pauline Black. Singles like Three Minute Hero, Missing Words, and the evergreen On My Radio made The Selector one of the most successful ska bands of the Two Tone era alongside The Specials, Madness, Bad Manners, The Beat, and The Body Snatchers.

• 3:12Adam Buxton?

  But despite their popularity, internal tensions, financial disputes, and the pressure of the music industry led to The Selector parting ways in 1981, after which Pauline embarked on a career as an occasional TV presenter and as an actor on TV and in the theatre. Pauline reformed The Selector in 1991, and the band have toured intermittently with a variety of line-ups ever since. In her memoir, Black by Design: A Two Tone Story, published to great critical acclaim in 2011, Pauline writes about the challenges of growing up as one of the few black children in a predominantly white part of Essex, dealing with racism and with a sense of not

• 3:57Adam Buxton?

  fully belonging. She also writes about her time at the forefront of the Two Tone movement and about reconnecting with her biological mother, and how doing so helped her to come to terms with an often painful childhood. That memoir formed the basis for a documentary released earlier this year, Pauline Black: A Two Tone Story, directed by photographer and filmmaker Jane Mingay. In 2022, Pauline was awarded an OBE for services to entertainment, the same year she was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant of the West Midlands. As you'll hear... My determination to get Pauline on the podcast was sparked a few years ago

• 4:40Adam Buxton?

  when I saw a half hour BBC documentary from 1980 called Rudy's Comeback: The Rise and Rise of Two Tone. I'm sure I mentioned it at the time on the podcast and I've probably mentioned it a few times since. It's a peach. There's a link to the doc on the BBC iPlayer, which you'll find in the description of today's episode. And that doc features some wonderful footage of the Selector at the very beginning of their career alongside scenes of the specials on stage and clowning around in the Coventry Flat slash base of operations for Two Tone, owned by label mastermind Gerry Dammers.

• 5:25Adam Buxton?

  It was watching that doc that made me buy Pauline's book. And I was delighted when she agreed to meet for an interview, as long as I was able to get myself to Coventry, where she still lives. So, last month, May 2025, I drove to Coventry to meet Pauline in a small studio that I had booked to record the session. And we had a very nice chat. However, the next day, when the studio sent through the files, they apologised for the fact that Pauline's mic had not recorded. And she could only be heard coming through faintly in the background on my microphone. Disappointed! Addendum.

• 6:10Adam Buxton?

  Since I originally uploaded this episode, I have been able to improve the very roomy audio that I was left with. Thanks to a couple of listeners, Terry Lee and Joe Simmons. They're not a team. They're a couple of people who work with audio. They got in touch separately to point me in the direction of a bit of AI-powered software.

• 6:33Adam Buxton?

  That gave me better results than the audio tools I was using. The thing they recommended was Adobe Enhance. I'm not sponsored by Adobe, but it did do a really good job on this bit of audio. So I thought it was worth calling out in case anyone else is out there in podcast world in a similar position. It really improved things. Anyway, thanks very much, Terry and Joe. And I was delighted because I really enjoyed meeting Pauline. And I'm glad to be able to present our conversation about the early days of Two Tone, her experiences growing up, feeling out of place in Essex, and how she came to be reunited with her biological mother

• 7:15Adam Buxton?

  in a much more listenable state than was originally the case. I'll be back at the end to say goodbye, but right now with Pauline Black, here we go.

• 8:08Adam Buxton?

  During the lockdown, I discovered that documentary Rudy Come Back, which was an arena programme shown in 1980, I think, wasn't it? Half an hour thing. Have you seen it recently?

• 8:23Speaker 03

  I've seen bits of it recently, yeah, Adrian Thrills.

• 8:26Adam Buxton?

  Adrian Thrills, a cub.

• 8:27Speaker 03

  Awful little Mac. Everyone had an awful little Mac there that they tied too tight at the waist.

• 8:33Adam Buxton?

  I've got my awful little MacBook Pro.

• 8:37Adam Buxton?

  That's my version of the awful.

• 8:42Speaker 03

  Pros are too big.

• 8:43Adam Buxton?

  I absolutely love this documentary. It's so evocative and exciting. And as a little snapshot of a nascent scene.

• 8:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 8:52Adam Buxton?

  Pretty hard to beat, beautifully shot, that kind of attention to quality that the BBC had in those days. You know, like the photographers and sound people at the very top of their game. The way they filmed all the concert stuff and the way they filmed you guys in the studio.

• 9:07Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 9:08Adam Buxton?

  At the Horizon Studio.

• 9:09Speaker 03

  Horizon Studios, which is no more.

• 9:11Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 9:11Speaker 03

  The late lamented. There was some old converted stables that used to back on to the railway station. It's Canyon, you know, those awful centres now, you know, where you find TK Maxx and.

• 9:26Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 9:26Speaker 03

  Kind of business. But it was very sad when that, the demise of that.

• 9:31Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, it looked like a cool place. And you and the selector recorded a lot of stuff there, right?

• 9:35Speaker 03

  Uh, we, the original band, recorded Too Much Pressure and Celebrate the Bullet there, yeah.

• 9:40Adam Buxton?

  Okay, first two albums. Do you remember that day when Arena came to film? And you were playing, well, they acted as if you were recording.

• 9:48Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 9:49Adam Buxton?

  Three Minute Hero.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  But we were miming.

• 9:52Adam Buxton?

  Right, you were sort of recreating the recording experience.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, we weren't actually recording.

• 9:56Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, I can remember it. I mean, everything was new then. That's what you have to remember. And we were, we probably, I don't know how many shows we'd done by then. I mean, we got together in the May of nineteen seventy nine. And by the early autumn, well, it was end of August, early September, I think, when that was going on, when we were recording that album. You know, that was the first time really anyone had kind of taken an interest in this. I think Melody Maker had been up and done our first interview. Um. So it was new to everyone. We've just been doing shows, a lot of them sporting specials.

• 10:38Speaker 03

  Um. There's a lot of little clubs like the F Club in Leeds and, you know, Sheffield Lunatic Club, which are all tiny. And we would do uh matinees at that time. Because there were young kids who'd bunk off school or, you know, out of the orphanage and stuff like that and then decide to follow us and all of those things. And so we were kind of building up that following because, you know, there were six black artists and one white guy kind of thing. And it was just so different. We weren't like the specials. We certainly weren't like madness, you know, some white guys and kids, black kids at that time, found that interesting. This was a different take on things and something different was going on here. The music is infectious.

• 11:23Speaker 03

  So you can't do anything other than dance to it. So it was like hang on, it was like being in a youth club, to be perfectly honest.

• 11:33Adam Buxton?

  I mean.

• 11:33Speaker 03

  You know, the whole kind of way of the band, that that's how it had originated to a certain extent with Hard Top Twenty Two, where a lot of the members had come from.

• 11:42Adam Buxton?

  That was another local band?

• 11:44Speaker 03

  That was, yeah. And the Hollyhead Youth Centre here was in the basement. They were allowed to um rehearse. I didn't know them at that time, much to everyone's derision back then. I mean, I came from folk, which isn't exactly true. I came from the back room of a pub, which was the old Dyer's Arms in Coventry. And it was just a place where you could go and there would be folk people. There would be some other people who did a bit of kind of alternative-y stuff, somebody banged out. I don't know, Richie Haven stuff, you know, and.

• 12:16Adam Buxton?

  You were playing a bit of Dylan and things like that?

• 12:18Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and occasionally a couple of mine that I rudimentarily written. The first one being about the Leeds serial killer.

• 12:28Adam Buxton?

  Oh, um.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  His name has gone AWOL at the moment.

• 12:31Adam Buxton?

  I'm not good on my serial killers. One of the big serial killers.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, one of the big serial killers. Called Bradford City and lamenting the fact of this poor young woman who'd ended up sort of, you know, be becoming a prostitute.

• 12:45Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 12:45Speaker 03

  And was prey too, and she'd ended up dead at the hands of the serial killer. Not exactly the fodder that you would think that somebody might fetch up with.

• 12:56Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, did you, what were the other subjects on the shortlist? Or did you immediately go for that one?

• 13:02Speaker 03

  I, it's, the strange thing is that after making that film, Pauline Black, A Two-Turn Story. Don Letts very nicely came along and did an interview. And he just absolutely nailed it because he said what the select was about was social reportage. And that's exactly what we were about. And that's exactly what I was doing then. And that's exactly what Hard Top Twenty Two did. I mean, that's what we kind of did.

• 13:28Adam Buxton?

  Talked about what the environment was like.

• 13:31Speaker 03

  Exactly. I mean, the things that were around us and our attitude towards it. Because we felt that it was important, I suppose, as, you know, British blacks, growing up here, being born here or whatever, telling our side of the story. And I've always thought that hybrid musics, not completely, you know, I'll take a bit of that and I'll take a bit of that and that kind of way of thinking. But something that is fully formed butts up against something else. And something wonderful happens and they kind of melt into each other. And work, but that takes work to make that thing happen.

• 14:11Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, because the word that would crop up when you're blending genres for some people is appropriation or cultural appropriation. And where do you see the line between kind of exploitative, bad, quotes, cultural appropriation and something more positive of blending genres and making something more interesting?

• 14:30Speaker 03

  Cultural appropriation.

• 14:32Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 14:32Speaker 03

  Myself, by the very definition of the fact that I exist, you know, a black person from Nigeria came along and liked a white person from this country, who happened to be Jewish as well. And I, my mum, I think, was seventeen when she was pregnant with me. And it sparked off each other.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  And here I am. Well, you can't get much more cultural appropriation rather than a bit of miscegenation, can you? I'm fully in favour of miscegenation. Cultural appropriation, no, that's just Bo Derek the cornrer, as you know.

• 15:09Adam Buxton?

  What's the definition of miscegenation?

• 15:11Speaker 03

  Miscegenation? Oh, well, I mean, you know, having sex across the racial barriers.

• 15:15Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 15:16Speaker 03

  If you want to see them as barriers. I consider that the, you know, the white women here in this country at that time were pioneers. As far as women are concerned, you're left holding the baby, rather literally.

• 15:26Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 15:27Speaker 03

  And at that time, if you'd got, you know, a brown baby, then you'd got a problem because there weren't very many people in this country who were accepting of the fact that, you know, you were kind of mixing things up a bit.

• 15:42Adam Buxton?

  Yes. Why is it then, thinking about your adoptive mother, who was in some ways, I don't know about politically, but in other ways quite conservative, I suppose, a working class white family from Romford, Essex, with, they already had a couple of boys, did they?

• 15:59Speaker 03

  They had four.

• 16:00Adam Buxton?

  Four, four sons, right. Why were they adopting another girl?

• 16:04Speaker 03

  Because she'd always wanted a girl.

• 16:07Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 16:07Speaker 03

  And she'd had a hysterectomy, so she couldn't have one. They were older, they were in their mid forties by that time. And because she knew a woman who lived around the corner, as everyone knows a woman who lived around the corner, who was in some sort of church association thing. And a lot of babies were adopted through church associations or something to do with the church, because it was like saving these kind of, you know, little colonial creatures that sort of cropped up that nobody wanted. So you either ended up in Barnard's, which there was one, and that was in Dagnem in Essex, or you ended up in a home. And I consider

• 16:49Speaker 03

  myself lucky in some ways, being adopted, being given the chances that I was, because otherwise I would have ended up in Barnard's in Dagnem. But the problem was, I didn't know any other black people. I didn't know any other black kids. My mother knew a couple of people who had adopted, but they were always young Nigerian kids and their parents were students over here and they would go back. And they could be sort of plucked out of the home at a moment's notice and off they would go. So, I mean, there was nothing to make friends with. I was the only black kid in both, you know, sort of junior school and senior school.

• 17:26Adam Buxton?

  Do you think, though, that your mum was on a sort of um Christian mission to do the right thing with a mixed-race baby?

• 17:33Speaker 03

  The opportunity had uh come about where there were Nigerian students or Ghanaian students coming here. Who were studying, like my dad was, you know, children would appear. For whatever reason, young people, they like to buck. So, I mean, you know, you're gonna get a few accidents, as it were. And we always got left with the mums, who were invariably white. So those girls were then left with a child that'd been secreted away in a mother and baby home. So nobody actually knew they were pregnant. And usually those places farm those babies out to people, either to foster initially, which I was fostered initially.

• 18:16Speaker 03

  And with a view, as they always used to say, to adoption at some later stage. And sometimes the girls stayed in contact with the children and other times maybe they didn't, depending on what their family's situation was like. And paid some money towards the child uh while they were being fostered. So that's how it was for me.

• 18:37Adam Buxton?

  And when did you first start thinking about being different and feeling that you were different?

• 18:44Speaker 03

  Me I was adopted, because she had to tell me when I was about four years old, just before I started school.

• 18:49Adam Buxton?

  And do you have a clear memory of that?

• 18:50Speaker 03

  Oh, God, yes.

• 18:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 18:51Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, I I puked all over her. She was doing the ironing and I puked all over her lovely ironing.

• 18:58Adam Buxton?

  Pauline.

• 18:59Speaker 03

  I know, Jackson parked her sheets.

• 19:02Adam Buxton?

  What did it mean to you? Do you remember?

• 19:04Speaker 03

  Yes, I, well, it was a bit of a s- it was. I I I always equate these things to like being smacked. Um. She was a bit handy with her hands, if you know what I mean. A good smack in those days was considered sort of, you know, good medicine for that behaviour, uh, i.e. any inquiring behaviour, basically. And and I remember her telling me, sort of saying, you know, when you go to school, some people may say things and call you names and all this, which never really occurred to me at all. And then she told me about that, you know, my father had come from Nigeria, my mother was English, and they couldn't stay together and they'd had me and they couldn't look after me, so she had me.

• 19:47Speaker 03

  And they'd adopted me. And so these were all new concepts kind of coming at you. Well, I mean, my guts didn't take it very well, put it like that. So that was a lot of thinking to be done, but that was the time when I started thinking, well, um, you're not like anyone round here. But it hadn't really come up until then. But after that, once I knew, I was kind of sensitized to the thought that um being black didn't sound as though it was a really groovy thing to be. Uh, if you lived in Romford and around, you know, where we were, in Essex, I should say. Um, I'm sure that's not true now. Um, it's not even true of the street that I live in, because I went back there to do some filming.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  And and I'm pleased to say that miscegenation has gone very well in Romford.

• 20:37Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  Half the street that I used to live in, which was wholly white, apart from me, is, uh, yeah, healthily kind of brown and black.

• 20:46Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 20:47Speaker 03

  Job done.

• 20:48Adam Buxton?

  Did you think about your biological parents a lot?

• 20:52Speaker 03

  I thought about my mother a lot, less so about my father, because that didn't seem tangible to ever be able to find him, because nobody would give you any information other than he was Nigerian. My mother, there was a little bit more information about her, which I'd snooped by looking through my mother's chest of drawers and then, you know, they always have things, don't they, in chest of drawers?

• 21:19Adam Buxton?

  Sure.

• 21:19Speaker 03

  Either secreted in there or some older handbag at the top of her. And I was a nosy kid, uh, on a need to know basis. And and I had found in one of these drawers some documents, and they were adoption papers. I didn't necessarily know that they were adoption papers as such, but I was savvy enough to look at the birth date of this person called Belinda Magnus and think, oh, I think that's me. And I wasn't wrong. And there were some court papers there. So, and that actually said Belinda Magnus changed into Pauline Gina and Vickers, as I was known then.

• 22:02Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 22:03Speaker 03

  So I put those two things together. And there was a registered envelope, which my mother used to send money to my mother. This is my birth mother I'm talking about, to my adopted mother. And that had an address on it, thirty two Review Road, and that was in Dagenham. And I had that until I was forty two and I never acted off it.

• 22:26Adam Buxton?

  What made you act when you did?

• 22:28Speaker 03

  Age, really. You know, you're doing the reckoning in your head. And you think, well, if she was young, I'd always known she was seventeen. My mother had been very specific about it. You know, she was seventeen, poor girl, and all this kind of thing, being taken advantage of by black men. And all this, which to a certain extent couldn't have been further from the truth. I think it was my mother taking advantage, well, than anything else. So, at forty two, you're thinking, well, you know, for a woman that's moving closer and closer towards sixty now. The bosom, but I mean, you know, my maths has never been great. But, and I thought, well, she might not be alive.

• 23:09Speaker 03

  So I thought, well, she's gonna be something like that kind of age. Maybe I should get off my arse and do something.

• 23:16Adam Buxton?

  And you found her in Australia?

• 23:18Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah, yeah. By virtue of the fact that one of my brothers went round to that address. Nobody lived there anymore of that name. But the person who did live there, he said, oh, I'm sure three sisters used to live here. He said, I think I've got the deeds somewhere and I'll be trundled. And he came back and said, oh, yes, their name was Magnus. And he said, I think they live in Surrey. So that was how I found them.

• 23:46Adam Buxton?

  And how was it meeting her for the first time? Because I mean, you know, families are weird anyway. Whatever your arrangement, whether you're adopted or not, there's no guarantee that you're going to feel a close bond with other members of your family just because you're related by genes and chemicals. But how was it to meet this person?

• 24:06Speaker 03

  Well, the strange thing was, was that because she was in Australia, I didn't meet her straight away. My first meeting was over the phone. And I'd written her a very, very long letter because again, you don't know how this letter's going to land. You don't know whether they're married, whether the husband knows any of those things, you know. And I was black. I thought, well, you don't know how that's going to go. I mean, Australia is known for its welcoming carpet, is it? For, well, certainly back then.

• 24:38Adam Buxton?

  Back then.

• 24:39Speaker 03

  Or so now.

• 24:39Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 24:40Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? So I thought, well, I'll write a very discreet letter. So you don't have to talk to anyone else. You don't have to tell anyone else about me. Just talk to me if you can, expecting a letter back. But I told her all my details. And then, oh, because of the time difference, at some ungodly hour in the morning, the phone started ringing. And this was a week later, because that's how long it took a letter to get there. And my husband got up and answered the phone. And he said he thought it was Dame Edinburgh average on the other end. And because she was going, I want to talk to my Belinda. Because then she called me that for the first 10 years that we knew each other. And she just couldn't get her head around that I was poorly.

• 25:26Speaker 03

  And had never equated me with, with that. But anyway. So that was a very rude awakening to my mother.

• 25:34Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 25:34Speaker 03

  Um, and within, I think about a month or so, we were out there. And spent a month with them.

• 25:42Adam Buxton?

  The thing I suppose that every child is hoping for at some point in their life is for some answers for why they are the way they are. And sometimes I regret personally not finding out more about my mother before she died. And I do feel slightly as if I missed an opportunity to put a few of the pieces of the puzzle into place as to why I am the way I am, why I think the way I do, those kinds of things. Were you interested in any of that? And if so, did you get any answers?

• 26:12Speaker 03

  Absolutely, absolutely. I I mean, it's um it's a kind of a strange thing because I'd always been very much of that idea that it's nurture. It's nothing to do with genes.

• 26:25Adam Buxton?

  Right, okay.

• 26:26Speaker 03

  Because in the racist soup that we live in, you kind of have to believe that maybe that's true to a certain extent. And you don't really want to go down that whole kind of eugenics road. So I'd always steered away from that kind of idea. And then I met my mother, who um she had so many quirks and they were all mine.

• 26:52Adam Buxton?

  Pauline quirks?

• 26:52Speaker 03

  Yeah, and we'd never met. We'd never met, you know, if she's relaxed and standing, she stands in sort of, you know, third position ballet.

• 27:01Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 27:02Speaker 03

  And I hear myself sometimes laughing and it's her laugh, it's nothing to do with me. Or you look down at your legs and you think, oh, my mum's legs, kind of. It it's like that. And if she went to a restaurant and something wasn't quite right on the plate, she'd have to rearrange it. Well, I'd do the same thing. But then you would never met each other. And that's scary. It's kind of scary, you know?

• 27:29Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 27:29Speaker 03

  So it was all a bit like that. So we were just finding out about each other. And she was quite mercurial because obviously they weren't practicing Jews, but I think that, you know, the Jewish heritage was considered something. Certainly, they got very worried during the war when it looked like, you know, we were going to be invaded by Hitler. So, you know, they were Jewish as far as that was concerned. But she had married an Irishman. In a Roman Catholic church in Clonakilty in southern Ireland. And she'd then gone to Australia and fallen in with the Jehovah's Witnesses. It wasn't like she just tried anything.

• 28:09Adam Buxton?

  Sure, give it a go.

• 28:10Speaker 03

  And I thought, well, that's just so like me, you know what I mean? And I will go to the hospital, but I think, well, I'll do that, or I won't do that. And I end up in a band, you know? It was, um, so she was always kind of questing in that way.

• 28:25Adam Buxton?

  She's on an adventure.

• 28:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, she was on an adventure and, and obviously my father uh was like probably the biggest adventure of her life because eventually I plucked up courage to say, uh, by the way, don't happen to know my dad's name, do you? Oh, yeah, what you mean Gordon? And out it all sp- you know, fell.

• 28:44Adam Buxton?

  And was Gordon still around at that point?

• 28:46Speaker 03

  No, he died the year.

• 28:47Adam Buxton?

  Oh, really?

• 28:48Speaker 03

  Which I didn't know about then. Uh, she wanted to know whether I had found him or not.

• 28:53Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 28:54Speaker 03

  From that piece of information, I found one of his wives. He had eight.

• 29:01Adam Buxton?

  He was a high status Nigerian.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, he was a prince. I mean, there's a lot of princes, it's a bit of a joke Nigerian princes. But he actually was, and my grandfather was um the Ober, which is like a king in a small kind of, you know, little kind of principality of the thing, I suppose. And that was passed around between five families. And it was his turn and he died on my birthday.

• 29:26Adam Buxton?

  Oh.

• 29:27Speaker 03

  In nineteen seventy six. And had been a schoolteacher for a lot of his years. And ran the local grammar school and was a piano player. And I played piano quite unconsciously from that. So there were a lot of overlaps. And out of that, I found like lots of mixed race people who looked like me, who suddenly became my half brothers and half sisters.

• 29:53Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  I prolific, my dad.

• 29:55Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 29:55Speaker 03

  I was prolific because my grandfather had over a hundred trillion, two hundred and twenty wives.

• 30:00Adam Buxton?

  Oh, man.

• 30:02Speaker 03

  Pre Viagra days too.

• 30:06Adam Buxton?

  That is.

• 30:07Speaker 03

  Bad daddy.

• 30:09Adam Buxton?

  I mean, that's a world of stress that's looming there. I mean, you know, most people, they're doing well if they can pin down one relationship.

• 30:18Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:19Adam Buxton?

  Let alone that many. But I suppose they just had a different attitude towards those things. I guess they were not getting too bogged down with anything. Which in itself is kind of an admirable quality. Was your mum, though, upbeat? Did your mum seem kind of tortured by the fact that she'd had to give you away back in the day?

• 30:41Speaker 03

  She had been tortured. Um, uh, two years after, which would have been, I mean, I was adopted at eighteen months old, so a little while after that. I think that she had a nervous breakdown and told me that she had a nervous breakdown. She couldn't do anything. And then she'd met her present husband, an Irish labourer.

• 31:01Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Who was in Dagnam. I think he came to live there at the house or something like that. And they got together. A very handsome man. I mean, he was great. And he knew about me. All of that generation knew about me, but they'd never told their children who were my peers, sort of thing. They always said, I mean, after I went there, they always said, we knew there was something a bit strange about Eileen, because every time she saw a black man, she'd run up to them, cut their face in her hands and go, you're so beautiful. I thought, I thought that sounds like my mother. You do not impick my, I don't know, I don't know. But this is what they told me. So they were unsurprised when I appeared.

• 31:44Speaker 03

  And so everybody kind of knew. So it was quite.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  It must have been traumatic for her, but she had more front than walls. I mean, she just fronted it out. This is my daughter. So I mean, that was the sort of person she was. She was just going to brazen that one out.

• 31:59Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 32:00Speaker 03

  Shut me down if you care.

• 32:02Adam Buxton?

  Who was the singer then? Was it her or Gordon?

• 32:05Speaker 03

  She sang.

• 32:06Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 32:06Speaker 03

  She sang. She had a really good voice as well.

• 32:09Adam Buxton?

  Did you arrive at your selector vocal style, or was that the way you always sang?

• 32:15Speaker 03

  No, it wasn't the way I always sang it. Well, I have a very sweet voice. That was my kind of folk singer-y voice, you know what I mean? I mean, Joni Mitchell-y kind of, you know, Joan Armitre-y kind of voice. Two were popular at that time, so I used to listen to an awful lot of them. I had that voice, but it was wholly unsuitable for that kind of band, but I was desperate to be in a reggae band, right? So, um, it was a little bit like, well, you can't really use that voice. Then it kind of went through Romford a bit, and then it went through the Caribbean a bit. And then I was just doing that, just mixing up all, like I said, you know, that kind of slipping accents to just find this

• 33:01Speaker 03

  relatively strident in the early days, uh, young woman in a comfortable way to be on stage and didn't really look back much after that.

• 33:10Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. It's such a great style, kind of declamatory, almost wide-eyed, the way you are doing Three Minute Hero in that arena dog.

• 33:19Speaker 03

  It was bizarre. It was bizarre to me, but it was, it felt completely natural. I mean, look at Hazel O'Connor. I mean, there's no way that Hazel O'Connor sounds, I mean, I know the woman, uh, and there's no way she sounded like Eighth Day. You know, it was very declamatory as well.

• 33:34Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:35Speaker 03

  There was a lot of declamatory stuff going on then. I mean, Lena Lovitch was quite declamatory.

• 33:39Adam Buxton?

  That's right.

• 33:40Speaker 03

  So all of that had seeped in there somewhere and got repackaged deep in my, uh, grey matter. And, uh, just popped out and that was Pauline Black. It got renamed. I mean, Pauline Vickers became Pauline Black. And it was just like someone who'd always been there, just saying, well, here I am. And this is me and this is not fully done, but we're gonna go with this. We're gonna run with this bit. And that's what we ran with.

• 34:09Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that was a good scene. I love that kind of music around that time. That was when I was growing up in my adolescence and now. There's a lot of good musicians around and really talented women especially. But it's funny how on the whole, the current crop of really talented female musicians. It's much more about being breathy and quiet. My theory is that it's because a lot of them. Came up through D I Y music and they're in their rooms making music on their laptops. Like Billie Eilish and people like that. And so they sing very close on the mic and they're very breathy and. But I do like the louder, more kind of strident, almost yelpy style.

• 34:50Speaker 03

  Well, they were different, different times. They were different times then because, you know, all the desks were analog. As a vocalist, you were invariably in some awful small club with your feet stuck to the floor. With possibly somebody on guitar who was a complete egomaniac and thought they were Clapton or, you know. The Who guy. And so that would be terrifically loud, just screaming out over the the fold back is absolutely useless. So you've got to get over that.

• 35:21Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  None of this in ears stuff back then. I mean, you know, you were flying by the seat of your pants and that's if the fold back worked. And anyone cared enough to put you in it.

• 35:35Adam Buxton?

  The fold back being the monitors front of stage, so you can hear what the band actually sounds like. Right.

• 35:40Speaker 03

  Right, and yourself. So they've got amplified instruments to begin with, right? Their egos are fully amplified, so they're gonna be at eleven, not ten even. And all you've got is these monitors at the front, which has them in as well, and you.

• 36:02Speaker 03

  Trying to find yourself in there, in very small venues where people are very loud and dancing. So that's quite a loud thing too. So you find a way to work with that. And we came up through that. We didn't come up through recording studios. Recording came much later, after A and A, our people in London actually got off their arses to find out what the provinces were.

• 36:31Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 36:31Speaker 03

  And maybe sign here. Sorry if I sound cynical, but I am about the music industry.

• 36:36Adam Buxton?

  Oh, I think that's.

• 36:37Speaker 03

  I think everybody is probably.

• 36:39Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 36:39Speaker 03

  Maybe less so now, I don't know. Because there were so many other ways to sort of, you know, come up through TikTok, all those kinds of things, you know. We didn't have any of that. We were reliant on somebody getting their Gucci loafers on a train and up here.

• 36:54Adam Buxton?

  As Adrian Thrill said, it's happening in Coventry of all places.

• 36:59Speaker 03

  I know, of all places. What a thing to say, you know, like, let's set this up. Of all places.

• 37:06Adam Buxton?

  Were you munching huge quantities of drugs in those days?

• 37:09Speaker 03

  Um, I was never very good with drugs. I did acid one time. That was complete and utter disaster. And mostly people were sort of feeding orange juice into me to make me come down.

• 37:20Adam Buxton?

  Because you were having a bad trip.

• 37:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had a bad trip, yeah. I used to smoke some marijuana and things, but.

• 37:26Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 37:26Speaker 03

  Nothing. It made me paranoid, particularly after the trip.

• 37:30Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  Uh, that didn't go well. So I was never deeply, deeply into drugs, but I liked what it did. And I would love to play the piano if I was high. That was just a glory to me. I could spend hours doing that.

• 37:43Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, listening to music when you're a bit stoned.

• 37:46Speaker 03

  Yes, it's good, but I like mine.

• 37:49Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 37:50Speaker 03

  It was that in those days, you got to remember what music was. So that was like oodles of Grateful Dead and stuff like that, you know.

• 37:58Adam Buxton?

  You've got to be high to listen to that.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  For the heart of the sun.

• 38:01Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 38:03Adam Buxton?

  It only makes sense when you're stoned. It's funny though, how drugs play such a central part in a scene. Maybe you disagree, but looking at the arena doc again, and lots of footage from around that time, especially at two-tone gigs. Well, it's the two-tone dance and, and watching the specials on stage and Linville Golding jumping around, that energy. I don't know if it's just excitement and adrenaline, probably a large part of that. But also you would think there's probably some speed flying around and things like that. Blues, what's blues?

• 38:37Speaker 03

  Blues, just a form of amphetamine sulfate, you know. Yeah, I mean, you would find certainly skinheads back in those days, you know, the bag full.

• 38:46Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 38:47Speaker 03

  In the same way as your generation did ease, probably.

• 38:50Adam Buxton?

  Well, they used to give speed to the soldiers. My dad was in the Second World War and they were given speed. And it's very fighty.

• 38:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 38:57Adam Buxton?

  So.

• 38:58Speaker 03

  If you're asking someone to sort of charge at somebody with a bayonet.

• 39:01Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 39:01Speaker 03

  Or whatever, uh, you know, is your weapon of choice. You're gonna need a bit of an incentive, aren't you? And it probably does give a huge incentive. And hence you could wade into whole layers of skinheads, seek hiling at you and.

• 39:15Adam Buxton?

  Right, right. Was it?

• 39:17Speaker 03

  Think you were invincible.

• 39:18Adam Buxton?

  And did it, I mean, it it feels like it probably did kick off quite a bit around that time in in those, yeah. And how were you with that environment? I mean, I'm a physical coward, so I would have been cowering in the back room and.

• 39:31Speaker 03

  I think I always went on the fact that um it takes a lot for a man to hit a woman in public.

• 39:37Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 39:38Speaker 03

  So I always rested on that kind of side of things. I was unlikely to get mulled. But it was, you know, collateral damage around me in the band. That was another thing. It was obvious to me, I guess, that you you've got to remember the time that it was. I mean, rock against racism was going on.

• 39:58Adam Buxton?

  Late seventies, yeah.

• 39:59Speaker 03

  Seen what happened at Victoria Park. It was the first time that racism was being openly discussed. It was the first time that people were actually actively talking about the Suss Laws. Films were coming out like Babylon and so there was this youth culture, but it was a different youth culture to what it had been. It had moved and it wasn't even. Necessarily punk, but there were a lot of tribes within it, you know, punks, ru-bys, a whole business kind of thing, skinheads. All there for maybe lots of varying reasons, but brought together by the music. That was the unifying thing.

• 40:38Speaker 03

  How they felt in that space against, you know, some poor mod who was there in his Italian finery. That was something else. They might not be quite so forgiving. It's not like now. People wear clothes, don't they, to kind of identify themselves in some posery way. Back then, you were wearing those clothes because it was a way of life. And you were in that space as a way of life, using your youthful energy to. If you saw someone with an inch longer hair than you, then they had to belong to that tribe and not that tribe. So it was very much like that. But everybody knew what a racist was, and a lot of them came with, you know.

• 41:20Speaker 03

  Dart martins and short hair, not a lot of them, some of them, right? And those would invariably be down the front, Zeke Heiling, particularly at us. Because there were a lot of black people. I mean, there's no point in Zeke Heiling at Madness, is there? I mean, what's that going to get you?

• 41:35Adam Buxton?

  And that was a generation that had grown up in a newly multicultural Britain.

• 41:40Speaker 03

  Oh, no one called it multicultural then. I mean, that was a.

• 41:44Adam Buxton?

  Sure, that's a retrospective term.

• 41:46Speaker 03

  Much later.

• 41:47Adam Buxton?

  But it was a country where the demography had been transformed by immigration. And they were, correct me if I'm wrong about this, is how I interpret it. There was sort of a young generation of people who had grown up and they were pushing back against it. Why? Because they're.

• 42:03Speaker 03

  Kind of. I mean, there were pockets of black people around the country, you know, like in Bradford. There would be maybe a concentration of people, you know, Kenyan Asians, Ugandan Asians at that time. Who had come in, who'd settled there. So that was something, right? There'd be some pools in Bristol. With a whole tradition of black people growing up there. There'd be Tiger Bay in Cardiff. And in London, obviously, there was Brixton. In Birmingham, there was Hansworth. But I mean, if you went to rural Moorage. You'd be bloody hard pushed to find anyone who was black, any of the rural places.

• 42:46Speaker 03

  So this whole concept that Enoch Powell was trying to run with, that we were overrun with these, you know, people of a different colour and different culture and all the rest of it, couldn't have been further from the truth. There were some, but even then it was too many. So nobody was calling it multicultural. We weren't even calling it multicultural. It was just like, well, what's your problem? We grew up here the same as you. We've listened to all this crap sort of seventies pop music, the same as you. We've danced to all that, you know, we've done the same things as you. And here we are, we've now found a form of music.

• 43:26Speaker 03

  Sort of marrying up that whole kind of reggae thing with, you know, some of the rock, some of the punk and all this. In melding it into something completely new, which you love, but you stand there and seek highlights.

• 43:40Adam Buxton?

  But did you ever have anyone kind of articulate?

• 43:42Speaker 03

  No.

• 43:43Adam Buxton?

  Their racism? No, okay.

• 43:45Speaker 03

  Nobody could articulate it. The person who was, and really, nobody really articulates racism now, if you think about it. They don't. They find a leader. That was Enoch Powell then. It is Nigel Farage now, or Trump or.

• 44:00Adam Buxton?

  Tommy Robinson or whoever, yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 03

  Tommy Robinson, exactly. So they find a leader. And and say, well, yeah, I agree with him. But it's all sort of, you know, sort of, and kind of down the pub and yeah. You know, I mean, they come over here and they do this, they do that. And I'd heard that litany all the time I'd been growing up from my own family. So I was very, very familiar with what white people thought about black people or anyone. Who didn't look like them, basically, you know, I mean, it could be Jewish people, it could be Chinese people. My family would never go to a Chinese, I mean, we had one Chinese restaurant in Romford. Never went near there, we're not meeting, you know, I mean, my, in my family, that would be, we're not eating that foreign muck. That was what they said, quite audibly.

• 44:46Adam Buxton?

  I still don't understand why, why your parents thought it was a good idea to adopt a mixed-race girl if that's how they felt about the world.

• 44:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, I don't know.

• 44:57Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 44:57Speaker 03

  People are complicated. It's not just that linear thing of, oh, well, you do that, so you're a racist. You, it doesn't work like that. They didn't like black people, but they loved me. Now, I can't figure that out. You'd have to ask them, and they're not here to ask.

• 45:14Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 45:15Speaker 03

  But isn't that very much kind of the, the nature of Britain? It's, um, well, I've got a black friend and he's great. He's, as you know, I go to reggae concerts with him. He's really nice.

• 45:27Adam Buxton?

  But in the abstract, it's a different thing.

• 45:29Speaker 03

  Abstract of, uh, if, I know they found themselves in a shabin or something down Notting Hill back in the day. They'd be horrified or whatever, you know, that wouldn't be quite so friendly.

• 45:43Adam Buxton?

  Did you have happy times though with your adoptive parents? Yeah. You write about your dad certainly quite affectionately.

• 45:51Speaker 03

  My dad was great, you know, and I don't believe that he, I can't honestly say that he was ever racist. I ever heard him use any pejorative term at all. I heard my brothers, who were a bit older than me, but obviously much younger than my parents. Um, I heard them use pejorative terms and aunts and uncles that kind of, you know, surrounded for whatever reason. Uh, but one uncle in particular who thought, definitely thought that, you know, pal

• 46:23Speaker 03

  had the right idea and was always talking about it, but, but he fancied himself as a trade unionist of all things.

• 46:30Adam Buxton?

  Mm hmm.

• 46:31Speaker 03

  And was a signalman at Schoenfield, the station there. So.

• 46:38Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that's families though, isn't it? Everyone's got one of those. Yeah.

• 46:42Speaker 03

  Everyone's got an uncle will.

• 46:44Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 46:44Speaker 03

  That was, um, my particular, but I used to argue with him when I was about eleven, I think.

• 46:50Adam Buxton?

  Right. What would you say?

• 46:52Speaker 03

  Well, we would argue about, um, because I was aware at that time that, um. There was a Conservative Party and the Labour Party, and Conservative parties seemed to service rich people and working class people were serviced by Labour. I'd worked that much out, but not really very much else. So I used to argue to him about those sorts of things. But being a trade unionist, I said, well, don't you think that you ought to think the Labour Party's better, not Enoch Powell? I knew that much, but not really very much else. But I'm, I'm good at, you know, elasticating an argument.

• 47:32Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 47:33Speaker 03

  And trying to hold my own. So if I can do that, I owe it to Uncle Will.

• 47:39Adam Buxton?

  Would you have political discussions with the band, with the selector?

• 47:42Speaker 03

  Oh, the original band, you didn't have to. I mean, we were all on the same page.

• 47:46Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 47:47Speaker 03

  We were all on the same page. I mean, there's absolutely no doubt about that.

• 47:50Adam Buxton?

  And were any members of the band, or for that matter, other people in other bands, who you were aware of them getting a bit frustrated, like, can't we just play music? Why does it always have to be political? Or was everyone on the?

• 48:02Speaker 03

  No, not everyone was. I mean, I, I think people have this very, very rosy idea of the two-tow movement as this sort of embracing umbrella of all these bands. And I don't believe that anyone who was to do with it at the time, nineteen seventy-nine, I can only speak for them, was racist. Obviously not. But in terms of talking about political things, certainly, you know, bands like Bad Manners or Madness just thought we should all bloody well shut up. And it would be much better if we did about those sorts of things, that this was good time music and, you know, everybody wanted to dance and have a good time. Why are you banging on about this? I mean, that was basically the

• 48:47Speaker 03

  kind of thinking that there was. But it was a movement and I really bought into that movement. I really believed it. I still do.

• 48:56Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 48:56Speaker 03

  Um, as, as, you know, it's like, kind of the idea of Camelot, you know, for one shining moment.

• 49:05Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:06Speaker 03

  And that sends shivers up my spine, thinking for that one moment, that it looked as though all the crap that has happened since.

• 49:16Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 49:16Speaker 03

  Was never gonna happen. But here we are.

• 49:19Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah. No, I agree with you. It's so utopian and exciting and everything about it, the look of it, the black and white check motif, everything made sense. It was a totally integrated, in every single sense of the word, idea, music, people. It's so exciting.

• 49:47Speaker 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. 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. Um. Um. Um. Um. 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

• 50:29Speaker 02

  does look great. Videos of you airing your views, members' areas for your ad 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. Oh, don't do that, Steve. I will. Oh, shut up, Steve. Uh. Shut up. Now, back to more depressing matters on Newswind.

• 51:14Adam Buxton?

  Continue.

• 51:25Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcast. That was Pauline Black. And look, now I've come across my son Frank walking the other way across this farm track. We both set out for a walk at the same time. Frank would usually take Rosie for a walk in an afternoon, but today I said, no, I'm going to take Rosie because I'm doing my podcast intro and outro. How are you Frank?

• 51:47Speaker 04

  I'm okay. Yes, we've crossed paths. I'm sorry. You'd rather me not come along?

• 51:53Adam Buxton?

  No, that's not true. I'm very happy to cross paths with you as you are my son. What are you listening to?

• 51:59Speaker 04

  I am listening to Chico Barque, who is the Brazilian guy. He's on the playlist that I gave you a while back, giving him a deeper dive.

• 52:10Adam Buxton?

  Oh.

• 52:11Speaker 04

  Than I gave him last time.

• 52:12Adam Buxton?

  Deep dive on Chico Barque?

• 52:14Speaker 04

  Is it Barque?

• 52:15Adam Buxton?

  I've no idea. What did you say? Barque?

• 52:17Speaker 04

  Barque, but maybe it's Barque.

• 52:19Adam Buxton?

  How are you spelling it?

• 52:20Speaker 04

  B U A R Q U E.

• 52:24Adam Buxton?

  B U A R Q U E. Barque.

• 52:27Speaker 04

  Barque.

• 52:28Adam Buxton?

  I would go for Barque.

• 52:29Speaker 04

  Okay.

• 52:29Adam Buxton?

  Let's Google it.

• 52:32Adam Buxton?

  Um, oh, that's my brother calling now. It's all happening at the same time.

• 52:38Speaker 04

  Just decline the call.

• 52:39Adam Buxton?

  How do you decline the call?

• 52:40Speaker 04

  Just click the red one.

• 52:42Adam Buxton?

  Okay, it's stopped. Sorry, Uncle Dave. I'll call you right back. Um, what are we typing in?

• 52:48Speaker 04

  Barque.

• 52:49Adam Buxton?

  Chico.

• 52:49Speaker 04

  Chico Barque.

• 52:51Adam Buxton?

  Just regular Chico. B U A R. This is good stuff, isn't it, podcast? Q U E. Barque, I'm saying, Barque.

• 53:03Adam Buxton?

  We were right. You were right.

• 53:04Speaker 04

  I was more right than you were.

• 53:05Adam Buxton?

  You were more right than I was. Yeah, all right. Don't gloat.

• 53:09Speaker 04

  Cool. Well, that's good to know.

• 53:12Adam Buxton?

  Just calm down. Don't say it again.

• 53:16Adam Buxton?

  I can't make it stop.

• 53:19Speaker 04

  All right.

• 53:19Adam Buxton?

  There we go. We've both grown a little bit. See you back at the ranch.

• 53:23Speaker 04

  See ya.

• 53:25Adam Buxton?

  I'll tell you what, I'll include a link to Frank's Spotify playlist that he was referring to.

• 53:33Adam Buxton?

  In which he collected a lot of great Brazilian music, I think it was all Brazilian. Chico Boa Que, oh god.

• 53:42Adam Buxton?

  It went off in my pocket, just stop.

• 53:46Adam Buxton?

  Chico Boa Que. Stop saying it. Anyway, yeah, I'll put that in the links today. And you will find in the description of the podcast, one link that says pics and related links or something like that, and that'll take you to my website, adam-buxton.co.uk. And there you will find other links to all sorts of stuff. You can sign up for the newsletter. And you can navigate to my single Pizza Time. I got a notification from Apple Music the other day. Now Rosie is looking very nervous about the cannon that's up ahead, but Rosie, I don't think it's activated at the moment. I really hope it's not.

• 54:31Adam Buxton?

  We're passing a sonic cannon, a gas-powered big gun that scares birds over this field. Let's run, Rosie, run, run, run. Run, I really hope it doesn't go off because Rosie hates it and so on. Go on, it's called a scatterbird or something like that. But I haven't heard it go off recently.

• 54:55Adam Buxton?

  And so I'm hoping it's not going to go off today.

• 54:59Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 55:01Adam Buxton?

  I think we're okay. That is well stressful. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, I got a notification from Apple Music because I registered myself as a artist on Apple Music and Spotify and all these kind of platforms. Before the release of my single, and I got this notification saying, artist Adam Buxton, you have received sixty-one thousand plays this week or something like that, a big number. Or big for me, anyway. And I was thinking, oh, that's good numbers for Pizza Time. And then I realised that Apple Music has included all the listens for Tippy Toes.

• 55:44Adam Buxton?

  Which is the uh song from Sing Two that has my character Klaus Kick and Clobber on it. Saying tippy toes, tippy toes, I can't see your tippy toes. What do you mean you haven't heard Tippy Toes? It's an absolute banger. I should have mentioned it to Loyal Kana last week.

• 56:05Adam Buxton?

  I mean, it makes Baby Shark look like a pathetic failure. But it's got several million views on uh YouTube and does quite well on the streaming platforms. A little better than Pizza Time anyway. So uh yeah, go and listen to Pizza Time and discover lots of other great things via my website and the link in the description, which will also take you to a post for this week's podcast. You can see a picture of me and Pauline and you will also get a link to the BBC iPlayer where you can watch the fantastic Rudy's Comeback documentary. Alright, that's pretty much it for this week, I think. Got to get back.

• 56:49Adam Buxton?

  Get this uploaded. Later in the week, I'm off to Salford to record my appearances on Richard Osman's House of Games. Quite a few friends and family members asking me to bring them home. House of Games merch, Salt and Pepper Shaker. Just any merch really they'd be happy with. And I've been saying, yeah, I'll do my best. You never know, if you're on with some brainiac, then that's you toasted. Then your only hope is to endear yourself to the brainiac and hope that they donate some of their merch out of pity.

• 57:29Adam Buxton?

  But yeah, I've been studying maps, finding out where places are. Timbuktu, I know where that is now. Had no idea before. Do you know where Timbuktu is, Doglegs? Just before Timbuktu Three. The future's so bright, I'm gonna wear shades. Deep Cut? Well, it's in Mali.

• 57:55Adam Buxton?

  West Africa.

• 58:02Adam Buxton?

  So fingers crossed that comes up, although I'm putting out this podcast before I do the recording, so there's a chance, I suppose, that someone might hear it and ensure that there is no Timbuktu-related question.

• 58:17Adam Buxton?

  Okay, shush. Thank you so much to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support and additional editing on this technically challenging episode. Thank you so much to Helen Green for her beautiful artwork. Thanks to everyone at Acast for all their hard work, liaising with my sponsors, but thanks most especially to you. I appreciate you coming back. May I lean in for a creepy hug? Come here, hey. How's it going?

• 58:54Adam Buxton?

  Good to see you. Until next time, please go carefully and, for what it's worth, I love you. Bye!