Pod Insights THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST EP.246 - JO BRAND About this episode Adam talks with British stand-up comedian Jo Brand about collective lockdown trauma, Mums, dealing with violent hecklers at comedy clubs and wee-based restaurant revenge stories.
Conversation recorded face-to-face in London, 1st May 2025.
Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and additional conversation editing.
Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/
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Transcript 11,405 words · 4 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Speaker 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.
0:31 Adam Buxton? Hey, how are you doing, podcats? Adam Buckston here, reporting to you from a crunchy farm track in Norfolk, UK. Middle of May, 2025. It's a beautiful breezy sunny afternoon. I'm here with my best dog friend Rosie, who's looking beautiful and perky today. How are you doing, Rosie?
0:58 Speaker 02 I've recently done a poo and now I am sniffing the hedgerows. Later, I'm gonna find a hot flagstone on the terrace and stretch out on it on my side.
1:09 Adam Buxton? Oh, yeah. Winning, as Charlie Sheen used to say, remember Charlie Sheen? Rebecca Black, good old days. How are you doing, podcats? I hope things are okay with you. Thanks for coming back. I'm hoping to see some of you on Monday as I speak, Monday, the 19th of May. I'll be doing a live event at the Union Chapel in Islington. I'll be onstage talking with Caitlin Moran about my book, showing a few clips from the olden times, Adam and Joe stuff, maybe some Radiohead bits. And signing books afterwards.
1:51 Adam Buxton? I hope some of you might be able to come along, there are still tickets left. There's a link in the description of today's podcast. But let me tell you a bit about that podcast, it's number 246 and it features a rambling conversation with British stand-up comedian, writer and actor, Joe Brand.
2:13 Adam Buxton? Oh, look at that. Dog legs right up ahead of us. Hovering in the low air. It is the techno bird. Good to see the techno bird back again, isn't it, Rose? Anyway, I got some Joe Brand facts for you. Here they come. Brand facts. Josephine Grace Brand was born in nineteen fifty-seven in South London and grew up in Hastings on England's southeast coast. She studied nursing and later social work and worked for ten years as a psychiatric nurse, including a seven-year stint at South London's Maudsley Hospital,
2:57 Adam Buxton? before changing course completely when she began performing stand-up in the nineteen eighties. In those early stand-up days, she chose the stage name The Sea Monster in response to frequent heckling about her appearance. She quickly became a key figure in the UK alternative comedy scene, known for her dry, self-deprecating humour, super-deadpan delivery and feminist themes. Her TV break came with appearances on stand-up showcases, Saturday Live on Channel Four and Friday Night Live on ITV. In nineteen ninety-three, she landed her own Channel Four TV series, Through the Cake Hole, a mix of frequently surreal sketches and stand-up
3:42 Adam Buxton? in front of a studio audience that ran for two series until nineteen ninety-six. Some of Joe's acting jobs over the years have included the darkly satirical BBC Four sitcom Getting On, which first aired in two thousand and nine. That show was set on the geriatric ward of a beleaguered NHS hospital and was directed by Peter Capaldi and co-starred Vicky Pepperdine and Joanna Scanlon. And Vicky and Joanna also wrote the show, along with Joe. Joe also starred in and co-wrote, along with writer, actor and comedian Morwenna Banks, the sitcom Damned, about council employees in a children's services department, which ran for two series from twenty sixteen on Channel Four.
4:27 Adam Buxton? As well as hosting the Great British Bake Off An Extra Slice since 2014, Jo has appeared regularly on panel shows like QI, Have I Got News For You? And Would I Lie To You? And of course, she appeared on Taskmaster in 2019. My conversation with Jo was recorded face to face on a hot day in London earlier this month, May 2025, and we talked about what the passing years have taught her, how she feels the Covid lockdowns affected her children and their generation, how her own mum dealt with Jo's more wayward behaviour when she was young, how her experiences as a psychiatric nurse prepared her for sometimes violent confrontations
5:12 Adam Buxton? with drunken audience members in comedy clubs. And towards the end, we swapped restaurant tales that, be warned, were heavily PP-centric. It was very nice to get the chance to sit down and talk properly with Jo. I've met her a couple of times. We were on Eight Out Of Ten Cats Does Countdown one time, I remember. And it was one of my more difficult recordings, I think, for that show. And it was lovely to have Jo there, being very kind and supportive. She liked a video that I'd done where I'd put subtitles on the theme from The Bridge, the Scandi crime drama.
5:56 Adam Buxton? That was a long time ago, and I wanted her to come on the podcast then. So I'm glad it's finally worked out. I'll be back at the end for a bit more Waffle, but right now with Jo Brand. Here we go.
6:48 Adam Buxton? I was supposed to see you at Latitude last year.
6:51 Speaker 03 You were.
6:52 Adam Buxton? And what happened? Did you get ill?
6:54 Speaker 03 Yes, I did.
6:55 Adam Buxton? Oh, are you okay?
6:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'm fine. I mean, how old am I now? I'm 67 now. And so life is starting to hand me all the little genetic messages from my parents. Um, gradually kind of flying in. So, you know, I feel envious of much older people. Although they're probably all putting it on as well, who are out and about, looking cheerful, looking fit, looking like life's wonderful. I mean, maybe that really is true for them, and I hope it is. But for me, it's more a wake up and ask myself, what's hurting today?
7:33 Speaker 03 You know, and how many things I'll have to have hurting to take, to take painkillers. Shocking sort of person, really. So, yeah, I actually think, don't pretend your life's great when you're older. Cause for an awful lot of people, it's not, you know.
7:47 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
7:47 Speaker 03 It's grim.
7:48 Adam Buxton? Sure. But what are the upsides to getting old? If you had to find some, because this is what I'm thinking now that I'm in my mid 50s and I'm beginning to confront the realities of aging a little bit. And getting some previews of how things might go. And also seeing my parents die and all that kind of thing, thinking about it a lot more. I'm really, I feel like, okay, I'm gonna tool up with some wisdom. So that I can face the last section, fully armed. Do you think that's possible?
8:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, I do, but my initial advice would be lower your expectations. And I don't mean that in a bad way, but that's that's how I've kind of lived my career, really. Because I think the lower your expectations are, the happier you are with the vast percentage of outcomes. So what I've learned is that I'm much better at saying no than I used to be. I used to just agree to every single benefit going because I felt obliged to kind of give something back. Because having been a nurse and earned a pittance comparatively, I suppose I felt guilty about it. So um I've learned to not do three benefits a night anymore.
9:04 Adam Buxton? Have you got a new special technique for saying no?
9:08 Speaker 03 Well, the main advice that I've taken on board is don't feel you've got to give a really intricate reason. Because that's how I always used to feel. Because it was almost as though at the other end of the email, people sort of knew that I could do it really. And I felt guilty about it, you know. So I now I just say, I'm really sorry, I can't do it. Or no, I'm sorry. Whereas I used to sort of try and do this like massive long sort of string of excuses, you know. Like I would have done it if this and this and this hadn't happened. Or I think um I you're blah blah blah blah blah blah on ad infinitum.
9:49 Speaker 03 And the fact is, they don't know, you could be working somewhere else, your leg could have fallen off. So I think just be concise.
9:57 Adam Buxton? Yeah, they just want a yes or no, don't they?
9:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, they absolutely do.
10:00 Adam Buxton? And I know I've done the same thing. It's like, the thing is that I've done a lot of that material quite recently. And um I don't really have any new stuff. And I'm just so worried that if there's people out there who are going to blog about it or something like that, then they'll feel shortchanged and.
10:17 Speaker 03 Yeah, all those, all those and more. I know, it's it's terrible, but you're right, they just want to know yes or no, and then they move on, you know.
10:27 Adam Buxton? I'm reading your book at the moment, Born Lippy.
10:29 Speaker 03 Oh, yes, that one.
10:30 Adam Buxton? That's your most recent one, isn't it?
10:32 Speaker 03 It is. Yeah, that's right.
10:33 Adam Buxton? Yeah, twenty eighteen. That seems like another age now.
10:37 Speaker 03 I know. It's a long time ago, isn't it? We're talking seven years ago. That's my most recent one.
10:41 Adam Buxton? Even though Trump was in office, so a lot of the seeds of our current reality were already in bloom.
10:50 Speaker 03 Being malevolently so.
10:52 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
10:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:53 Adam Buxton? But it does seem like a simpler time. I guess because it's pre-COVID and pre-second Trump term.
11:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, absolutely. I think so. I mean, I don't know how COVID was for you, but it was fairly appalling for me. Not from my own point of view. I mean, I did have COVID, but it wasn't dreadful. But, you know, like my mum, my mum died during COVID and I couldn't go and see her. So I think it's things like that that have just made people depressed on a more permanent level. And so frustrated when you look back at decisions that were made about it at the time.
11:33 Adam Buxton? When did she die, if you don't mind me asking?
11:35 Speaker 03 No, I don't mind at all. She died in, towards the end of it, so twenty twenty one? Does that sound right?
11:43 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
11:43 Speaker 03 I've got a terrible memory, by the way. So all the way through this, I'm going to be saying, what's the name of that guy who, you know, the one that was in that film? Oh, what was that film called? Yeah, and they were in it as well. Oh, what, you know, so apologies in advance if I do that.
11:58 Adam Buxton? That's okay. I've got Google here. That's my whole life. I'm just attached to Google. Everything gets fact checked.
12:03 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I wonder if that's a mistake, though, because it shuts down bits of your brain that would be thinking about it and trying to ramp up your memory.
12:13 Adam Buxton? That's what Frank Skinner says. I remember him talking about it, and he was adamant that it was a mistake to Google things for that reason. And I do worry about, but sometimes, you know, you're sat there and you're doing your breathing exercises and thinking, it'll come, it'll come, just relax. Think about something else that'll pop into your head, and it doesn't. You just think, no, that's been erased from the memory banks and I need to Google the name of the. Particularly, you know, it's like the new wave of actors and singers and performers and, you know, all the people that I grew up with, I can remember all that stuff, fine.
12:45 Speaker 03 I do, yeah, absolutely.
12:47 Adam Buxton? But, you know, the guy, the one that looks a little bit like the other guy with the cheeks and the spiky hair, you know. So it's all that.
12:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:57 Adam Buxton? My mum died in May of twenty twenty, so quite soon after the first lockdown. And it was around the time of the Dominic Cummings thing.
13:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:08 Adam Buxton? And she was insisting that she was fine when I was phoning her. And I knew she was already going downhill a bit, but I didn't realise how much. And every time I called her, she was down in Reading, I was in Norwich. She would say, I'm fine, I'm fine, you're worrying too much. And I was thinking, I should pick her up. But then all over the news is like Dominic Cummings is the world's biggest wanker for setting these rules and then breaking them himself.
13:35 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
13:35 Adam Buxton? And everyone else is respecting them because you're told like only in emergencies should you break them. And and my mum was like, this is not an emergency, but it was.
13:45 Speaker 03 That's a very mum thing to do, though.
13:47 Adam Buxton? Right.
13:48 Speaker 03 It's it. I mean, I think people gradually as we go on, they get more honest, but not all of us. And they withhold things that they think are going to worry their family. You know, it reminds me of like, um, you know, that Monty Python sketch where the Black Knight, as it gets his arms and legs chopped off.
14:09 Adam Buxton? It's just, it's just a scratch.
14:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's how I think of mums. And, you know, grandmas before that even more so. So it's very difficult to pin them down.
14:20 Adam Buxton? Yeah, but that was a surreal and nightmarish time in so many ways. And especially if you were one of those people who had lost someone, it felt extra crazy, didn't you find?
14:33 Speaker 03 I did, but I mean, I had like so many losses, um, like, I don't know, for the last eight or nine years, uh, my mum, my dad, both my brothers. And I had three really good friends from university, my best friends really. And and lost two of them as well. And it just felt like, why am I, why am I going around smiling? I should just be staying in and swigging a bottle of gin and abusing everyone. But I just did because I couldn't think of anything else to do, really. So, yeah. Uh, it's a very dark time for a lot of people, I think. And those awful kind of.
15:14 Speaker 03 Pictures of people like waving through windows at their relative and trapped in some residential home for the elderly and all that. Oh God, it was just awful, I think. And I think that's really changed people a lot myself. I really do.
15:31 Adam Buxton? Yeah, a kind of collective trauma of that period. How old were your, because you've got two kids, right?
15:38 Speaker 03 I have, yeah.
15:39 Adam Buxton? How old were they during Covid?
15:41 Speaker 03 Um, they were, hang on, when did Covid start? It was sort of twenty.
15:47 Adam Buxton? Early twenty twenty.
15:48 Speaker 03 That's right. So one was nineteen and one was seventeen.
15:53 Adam Buxton? Right. So they were, yeah, in the thick of it, the same sort of ages by boys, a little older. And um, how do you think it affected them?
16:05 Speaker 03 Well, I think um, the the youngest one was doing A levels at the time.
16:10 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
16:11 Speaker 03 So not great because there is no similarity in my mind between going to school and doing exams and being with other people and just sitting at home on a Zoom or whatever it was. I think it was impossible and it's really, I do think, and this is such a cliche, but it's damaged that generation a lot.
16:36 Adam Buxton? In what way though?
16:38 Speaker 03 Social skills, too much time on social media on their own, in their rooms. And I think the fallout of that in some ways is that some, I don't like to call them kids because that sounds patronizing, but but a lot of them just carried that on because that's what they were used to. And they can't now get off that track. So I I feel in those ways, you know, huge explosion in poor mental health amongst that generation as well. Um, just very difficult all round.
17:11 Adam Buxton? It doesn't help that so much of social media is about reminding you what everyone else is doing. And so you've literally got uh, an app like Find My Friends or whatever it's called. Where you can see where everyone is. Talk about tweaking your FOMO.
17:29 Speaker 03 I tell you, the thing that pisses me off the most is not not being able to track your children without them knowing.
17:36 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
17:38 Speaker 03 I'm sure if someone was able to do that. I know ultimately it's fair not to be able to do that, but it would have been so useful. I mean, it also made me feel really ashamed of the way that I treated my parents when when I was that age.
17:55 Adam Buxton? In what way?
17:57 Speaker 03 Well, because I was I lied to them ninety seven percent of the time. Um, and they never had any idea where I was. I was pretty hopeless at covering stuff up. So I got into trouble a lot. You know, I used to get out of our, we lived in Hastings at the time, and I used to get out of our kind of garage window and go clubbing or whatever when everyone was asleep. And then, of course, I'd do things like come back in pissed and fall out the window onto the roof of my dad's car and dent it. So it was impossible to cover up. Lots of things like that.
18:37 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
18:38 Speaker 03 Left my left my purse in a pub once and thought, oh, this, you know, that that's a grim old pub, it'll never come back. And then Hell's Angel turns up at the door with my purse and my mum answers the door. So he said I was in the, it was a pub called The Anchor in Hastings. So not only has a Hell's Angel turned up, but he's told my mum where I was as well, you know, and that kept happening to me. Well, a friend and I, um, we found out that if you, I don't think that exists anymore. You used to be able to get, get this, by the way, cigarettes for asthmatics.
19:17 Adam Buxton? How did that work?
19:18 Speaker 03 Well, they had Benzadrin in them.
19:21 Adam Buxton? Whoa.
19:22 Speaker 03 So, um, someone told us that if you make tea out of it, you know, it's amazing. So of course we did. And I was fine and I went home and the friend went absolutely, you know, off the planet and tried to jump out of a second floor window and her mum just managed to stop her. And of course, in order to sort of um defend herself and also to put the blame elsewhere. She said it was all my fault and I'd bought them and I'd told her what was in them and what would happen. And so, of course, then her mum phones my mum and grasses me up.
20:03 Speaker 03 And in fact, it was a joint venture completely. I understand why she did it, but I would have been a hopeless criminal, put it like that.
20:11 Adam Buxton? What does Benzedrine do then?
20:13 Speaker 03 Well, it's speedy, you know, so it's like speed. But also it seemed for her to be slightly hallucinatory as well.
20:22 Adam Buxton? Right.
20:23 Speaker 03 And she's normally like a really quiet, kind of quite bookish sort of girl. And she just transformed into this kind of raging monster. It was, it's so weird. Yeah, it was a bit scary, actually.
20:36 Adam Buxton? I'm sure. Were you ever a, a big drug fiend?
20:39 Speaker 03 Not really. I mean, I, we were the generation that didn't have many exciting drugs, if that's how you want to categorise them. So I never had access to anything much more than um mild cannabis-y, grassy type things. And the occasional LSD tablet. But the worst times for me were I had my drink spiked twice.
21:06 Adam Buxton? Oh, no.
21:07 Speaker 03 Uh, in a pub and uh that was grim.
21:10 Adam Buxton? Spiked with what?
21:11 Speaker 03 With LSD.
21:12 Adam Buxton? Oh, my god.
21:13 Speaker 03 I know.
21:14 Adam Buxton? When was that?
21:15 Speaker 03 I was about seventeen at the time, so that would have been about seventy-five, seventy-four.
21:21 Adam Buxton? Holy shit. But that's so shocking that someone would do that to you. I ju- I just can't believe that. People, people do that and they're so cavalier with this thing that is so potentially dangerous.
21:35 Speaker 03 Well, absolutely. I mean, if you combine it with someone's pathology, if you like. You, you haven't got no idea what's going to happen.
21:44 Adam Buxton? Exactly. I've seen, yeah, I've had friends who've come completely off the rails just after one experience.
21:52 Speaker 03 Well, as, as a mental health nurse, I worked on the drug unit for a bit. Um, yeah, saw that quite a lot.
21:58 Adam Buxton? Well, in fact, a friend of mine went, ended up at the Maudsley. Which is where you worked, right?
22:03 Speaker 03 That's right, yeah, yeah.
22:05 Adam Buxton? My friend was in his late teens when, when he had a bad experience and, I mean, who knows what else was contributing to it. But he ended up being sectioned for a while.
22:16 Speaker 03 With what they would call at the time, I don't know what they call it now, but a drug induced psychosis, which is kind of not dissimilar to a paranoid psychosis like schizophrenia or um.
22:29 Adam Buxton? Is that like bipolar? Is that the same sort of thing?
22:32 Speaker 03 No, bipolar is, I think bipolar is really interesting because quite a lot of people say they're bipolar, but actually I don't think they are. They've got something that's called a cyclothymic personality, which means that they've got slightly narrower edges to their experience. So someone with, with bipolar disorder, which used to be called manic depressive psychosis, because, you know, like psychosis is losing touch with reality. And you really did lose touch with reality. You had massive highs.
23:03 Adam Buxton? That's the manic episodes.
23:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, and appalling lows as well. And sometimes, and I realise what I'm saying here is probably not very acceptable, but some things that people did when they were very high, I think sounded amazing.
23:18 Adam Buxton? Mm hmm.
23:19 Speaker 03 Do you know what I mean? I mean, we have, we had one person that we saw who was brought in by the police and he'd gone to a multi storey car park and he jumped from roof to roof of all the cars on one floor and just dented them completely, the whole lot. I don't know, like forty, fifty cars and he had a whale of a time, you know. And you might think, what are you talking about? But those things like that can be, I think, can be great when you're in them. But the damage that you cause is kind of appalling. I don't mean physical damage. I mean, you know.
23:54 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
23:55 Speaker 03 Worrying your family beyond belief, um, all those sorts of things. So, yeah, it was difficult really.
24:01 Adam Buxton? Yeah, and there's, there's so many people that you come across now who it's like they've slipped through the cracks a little bit. So people who are functional, you know, they're not violent or anything like that, but they're people that you come across socially or in the street or whatever, who are obviously in trouble and probably off their meds or whatever. But they're not so bad that they need to be taken into care, but they're just living in the middle somewhere.
24:29 Speaker 03 I know, and this sort of no man's land, it's terrible. I do have friends who still work in the area, but um, obviously I'm not in touch with it every day. But certainly to me, at the time when I was nursing, one of the huge problems was taking the drugs that you were prescribed for something like schizophrenia over a long time. And it completely changing you into someone who was bland and unemotional and
25:00 Adam Buxton? Everything just flattened out.
25:01 Speaker 03 Put on loads of weight and just, yeah, absolutely flat. And it was, you kind of thought almost, is that worse? But, I mean, I don't know. I used to think about things like that all the time.
25:13 Adam Buxton? But the drugs have got so much better now, is what I hear.
25:15 Speaker 03 They have, they have.
25:17 Adam Buxton? Like they're tuning things.
25:19 Speaker 03 Yeah, they're fine tuning everything all the time. And if you think when I was doing that, that was in nineteen seventy eight, and that is such a long time ago.
25:26 Adam Buxton? Mm hmm.
25:27 Speaker 03 Well, quite as bad as one flow of the cuckoo's nose.
25:31 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah. Now, I remember the, the drug that my friend was given was Largactol.
25:36 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, that, that's, that's the standard that we used to give at the time. And I don't know, they must still give it because, I don't know, when was your friend ill?
25:47 Adam Buxton? Uh, late eighties.
25:48 Speaker 03 Oh, right. So it would have been, it would have been, do you know why it's called Largactol?
25:52 Adam Buxton? No.
25:53 Speaker 03 Because it has a large action.
25:56 Adam Buxton? No way.
25:57 Speaker 03 Means that it acts on so many parts of your, your nervous system or whatever it is. And that that's one of the problems with it, because you get terrible side effects from Largactol, which are nothing to do with making you better.
26:12 Adam Buxton? My friend said the nickname that the nurses used for the drug was the liquid cosh.
26:16 Speaker 03 Yeah. Yeah, I know, that's unfortunate, isn't it?
26:21 Adam Buxton? Do you, um, has anyone ever suggested to you that you come back in some sort of role and and get involved with improving mental health services and things like that because you know, you obviously you've had so much experience and also you would think that you have kind of an interesting perspective on it. Given who you are and what your personality is and your sense of humour and all those things I would think would be really valuable qualities to have in that kind of environment.
26:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, I've been asked asked in a sort of tangential way. I mean, not to um sort of go back and work within it. But to spread awareness, if you like, or to support charities which, you know, are trying to improve things for people. And I think everything's changed beyond recognition, really. And there's a very new approach, which I think has come in in the last five or so years to particularly psychosis and not labelling people. Because I don't think that's very helpful in a way.
27:28 Adam Buxton? To label people.
27:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, because everyone's different. You know, we had a set kind of list of symptoms and if you ticked three boxes, you were that illness and there's so much subtle interaction between what's going on in your head and who you are as a person, that that's quite too broad brush, really.
27:50 Adam Buxton? Sure, but it does seem like people are keener than ever to label themselves or to get some sort of diagnosis, you know, I I um I know so many people who have said, I finally got my ADHD diagnosis and this is explained so much, or autism. You know, I finally got a a diagnosis that included me being on the autism spectrum. And most of the people I know who've said that are relieved, it's like.
28:22 Adam Buxton? It's like they've got an explanation for how their personality works. Do you know what I mean?
28:27 Speaker 03 I do know what you mean, but um I think people sort of forget in a way that it's a spectrum. So they forget there are going to be people on the very edge of it. Who have, let's say, a mild version, for for want of a better phrase. Who function pretty normally, you know, without having to have medication. And it's also sort of dribbled over into sort of common parlance, you know. I mean, like when people say, oh, I'm so OCD.
28:59 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
28:59 Speaker 03 Uh that that sort of thing, I don't think is at all helpful, because what it means that people that have serious issues with OCD are kind of lumped in. And so the first reaction of other people to go, oh, did you arrange all your books in colour or alphabetical order, you know?
29:18 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
29:18 Speaker 03 And it's about so much more than that up at the other end. So it's difficult, really. I I find that difficult because it's expanded outwards. And it seems to be expanding to the extent that we'll all have something soon.
29:29 Adam Buxton? Sure. Have you ever thought of yourself in those terms? Have you ever thought like, here's what I've got, I need to tackle this?
29:37 Speaker 03 Well, I found it sort of hard to ignore in the sense that I recognize in my dad that he was probably, you know, he suffered from depression. But I think he was probably on the autistic spectrum.
29:51 Adam Buxton? Right, okay.
29:52 Speaker 03 Um, and that part of him was to do with him.
29:59 Speaker 03 I say that, I mean, I'm quite similar to him anyway. Saying the most appalling truthful things without any filter to people. And so I do recognize that, but I think you can't just say that that's what someone's done and therefore they must be, you know. I think, again, it's a very, very, very long spectrum and he was on it somewhere. But I wouldn't like to sort of, with hindsight, try and work out what that was.
30:26 Adam Buxton? The difference is, do you make a career out of it? If you can find a way of monetizing saying the worst things you can to people.
30:35 Speaker 03 Well, you're looking at me. I'm kind of in a way, I have.
30:39 Adam Buxton? Yeah, of course.
30:39 Speaker 03 Um, but.
30:41 Adam Buxton? But that's what I mean. Like, I wonder if a lot of people's kind of psychological kinks and hangups and peculiarities.
30:50 Adam Buxton? Sometimes, obviously, if it's very extreme, that's a different thing. But if it's the kind of thing that we're talking about the way that most people are, most people are pretty weird and.
30:58 Speaker 03 They absolutely are. Yes, you're right.
31:01 Adam Buxton? Everyone's got strange kinks and curiosities about themselves that they've accumulated over the years. And often it's a question of reframing them somehow. And if you are able to reframe them and find a good use for them, then often that's job done, really. I mean, if you look at a lot of the so-called geniuses of the world.
31:20 Speaker 03 Indeed.
31:21 Adam Buxton? They're clearly people who.
31:23 Speaker 03 Absolutely.
31:24 Adam Buxton? Dealing with a lot of.
31:25 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:26 Adam Buxton? Strange things.
31:27 Speaker 03 And have very different social skills from the rest of us. I mean, I, I always think with me, and I don't know what you're like when you're performing, but I'm not really like I am performing in real life.
31:41 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
31:41 Speaker 03 Such a well-worn tedious phrase, but it's kind of a bit of me that does that. I can say things on stage I wouldn't dream of saying to people, you know, when I'm not on stage. But that's very useful because I think when I started, people were sort of doing that, I can't believe she just said that. And I was kind of doing it as well, thinking, oh, God, did I just say that? But, and I wouldn't dream of saying that sort of thing normally. But I suppose in some ways, you know, when I started, I kind of thought there are so few women. I have kind of not to care about how I come across, you know, and I wasn't. Well, I never have been like traditionally a looker, shall we say?
32:26 Speaker 03 So that was the initial thing that people picked up on because when you walk on the stage as a comic, all they've got to go with before you open your mouth is how you look. And so you would immediately get either some abusive comment or a sort of appreciative one from men in the audience, however drunk or not that they were. And so I felt, I mean, a lot of people that I worked with at the beginning would just kind of try to ignore it or do some sort of rather sweet put down, which might not work a lot of the time. And I thought, I'm going straight for the eyes. You know, I'm going to get them and I'm going to show them. I don't give a shit.
33:07 Speaker 03 And it kind of really worked at the beginning because the Comedy Store Late Show, if you're on last there. You go on at twenty past two in the morning. And on a Friday night, they're either unconscious or they're sort of a bit homicidal. So you you know, you have to be prepared for that. And I. I just thought I'm gonna say what I like and sort the damage out later.
33:32 Adam Buxton? But you used to drink a lot more in those days, right?
33:35 Speaker 03 Yeah, I did. But um I mean, I don't really drink at all now. Um, and my attitude towards drink is what's the point unless you get absolutely smashed and behave really badly? Now, obviously, at the age of sixty seven, that's a little bit more difficult. So I really enjoyed the years from kind of eighteen to sort of twenty five, thirty. When I was younger and everyone was doing it, you know.
34:01 Adam Buxton? When you were out on stage, I mean, you were slightly anesthetized by alcohol. But you were still affected by criticism, right? You it it's not like you didn't think about it at all. I mean, you you did notice when. People were cruel or said unkind things and it did hurt to a degree, right?
34:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, I mean, it was just like, you know, all the blokes that's that have ever shouted at you out of a van. Just all concertinaed into one night, really. And I I what I used to do, I used to try and preempt it. By having a sort of spectrum of put downs. And I would start with kind of like quite nice and whimsical, you know. And then I would go through to nuclear if I had to, with about five stops in between. And that really helped me because it was kind of a bit like having armour. And different layers of armour so that you knew if you got to layer seven.
35:02 Speaker 03 Then you might just as well go home because you haven't got anything else apart from physically assaulting them.
35:10 Speaker 03 I'm just trying to remember, no, I don't think I ever did that. I had that done to me on a couple of occasions, but you know, drunk people are just so unpredictable.
35:18 Adam Buxton? You had, you were assaulted yourself.
35:20 Speaker 03 I was, yes.
35:21 Adam Buxton? By members of an audience?
35:23 Speaker 03 Yes, I had, well, I had one where someone walked up on stage and grabbed my collar and then put their fist back as if they were gonna punch me.
35:33 Adam Buxton? Holy shit, what had you said?
35:35 Speaker 03 Well, it was all so quick and someone that was with them just grabbed their fist before they managed to gather any strength behind it. I think also when I was a nurse, because of the area that I worked in, I did, I got attacked a few times. And so nothing in comedy was ever as bad as the sort of assaults that you might get as a nurse, because I think being really psychologically disturbed is actually far more deep and kind of potentially damaging than being drunk in some ways.
36:13 Speaker 03 So I always thought, well, I can just run away if I want, you know, but sometimes I just wanted to stay and wind them up. And that's terrible, really, but I enjoyed it, you know.
36:26 Adam Buxton? I heard you say, though, that you would kind of bluff confidence in order to deal with some of those confrontational situations when you were a nurse. So if someone came at you with a machete, as they did once.
36:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
36:39 Adam Buxton? Then rather than show any fear, you'd kind of try and go the other way and be super calm.
36:47 Speaker 03 Yes, I mean, when, when I was a nurse, my boss for a long time was an absolutely brilliant guy and he went on to become a psychotherapist. He's a lovely Welsh guy and he always used to say, and I remember this really, really well. He said that if someone comes at you and they're very angry. What you have to do is you have to lower your status in relation to them immediately. Because if you try and up your status and face off to them. That's just gonna make things worse for them because they'll see it as having to best you, if you like. And so I just used to treat people respectfully and calmly.
37:31 Speaker 03 And on the whole, that helps.
37:34 Adam Buxton? That diffuses the confrontation.
37:37 Speaker 03 And I've seen nurses do the opposite of that. And that really doesn't help if you do that.
37:44 Adam Buxton? As in, they just get very loud and upset?
37:49 Speaker 03 Well, there there was one nurse who, someone came in and said, I must be seen now. And she said, sit down and wait your turn. And I'm afraid got her face punched.
38:02 Adam Buxton? Oh, no, yeah.
38:04 Speaker 03 You know, and I'm not saying it's her fault.
38:06 Adam Buxton? Sure, sure.
38:07 Speaker 03 But it's a risk you take if you start playing the kind of authority card.
38:12 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
38:13 Speaker 03 You know, and I never did that, so, yeah.
38:17 Adam Buxton? Yeah, because now I'm sort of imagining the scene in the comedy club that you just described. If it had been filmed for social media now, which it almost certainly would be. The outcome that everybody would be wanting is for the comic to go absolutely ballistic. And get exact some kind of revenge or or give a speech about like, how dare you and. You know what I mean? To give some satisfactory conclusion to the confrontation. But the reality is, and correct me if I'm wrong. That actually those confrontations are never satisfying. As you say, you just have to kind of allow them to defuse.
38:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think, you know, the major factor in a lot of these confrontations is always alcohol.
39:01 Adam Buxton? Right.
39:01 Speaker 03 And the problem with that is that shifts you into a different universe, if you like. You cannot talk to someone who's really, really, really pissed. And expect to get a kind of reasonable response. So there's absolutely no point, depending on just how drunk they are.
39:22 Speaker 03 In sort of upping the confrontation. Because you know, there are certain, that's a certain level of being drunk that you reach where you actually really don't care what you do. And that was, that's always a fear, I think, because you don't know someone gonna pull a knife out, are they, you know, they're gonna headbutt me, what are they gonna do? So, I mean, in a way, my nurse training was really useful for me because I could judge those confrontations. With a lot of sort of experience and knowledge behind me, I suppose. Didn't always get it right, but, you know.
39:56 Adam Buxton? I mean, do you remember how you felt after you were attacked on stage that time?
40:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, I always do this thing of minimizing everything, you know, so. I kind of felt shaken up for, I don't know, half a minute. And then I just, oh, well, moving on. Yeah, I know, I always do that. It's very annoying for everyone that knows me. Um, yeah. But then again, that's my, uh, that was my mum's fault, to be honest. It's not a fault, it's very useful.
40:28 Adam Buxton? That was her technique?
40:30 Speaker 03 Yeah, her, her technique was, I, I think she came from a family that suppressed everything. So we didn't really know anything about her background when we were kids. And she would, she would let things out in dribs and drabs until finally. Only a couple of years before she died, I said to her. Wh- what actually, what did go on? And she couldn't tell me, but she just wrote it down for me, wrote about her early childhood and. Sent me a few pages and that kind of filled in the gaps a bit.
41:04 Adam Buxton? What was that like, reading that? Did it answer a lot of questions?
41:08 Speaker 03 Um, I'd like it to have been a bit more comprehensive. But it was about her early childhood and being taken back to Ireland. Uh, after her parents had split up and her mum went back to Ireland and took her and her brother. So then her father came over to Ireland and sort of kidnapped her back. But left her brother there.
41:33 Adam Buxton? Hmm.
41:34 Speaker 03 So it was all very strange, really, and um. I think that from that point onwards, she just suppressed everything, or she learnt how to. Because she couldn't deal with it, you know, as a kind of very young child, really.
41:49 Adam Buxton? Yeah. Wow, that's amazing that you were able to have that conversation with her and that she was able to write that stuff down.
41:57 Speaker 03 I. It was. I was amazed when she agreed to it.
42:01 Adam Buxton? Yeah, that's so, that's great that you did that. That's a regret that I have about my mum. I, I've said before, I tried to sit down with my mum and, and have a similar conversation and ask her all the questions I'd always had. Cause I, she sounds a lot like yours in some way. Didn't know much about her background and definitely had that, uh, best not talk about it philosophy.
42:23 Speaker 03 Ah, sorry.
42:23 Adam Buxton? Oh, that's alright.
42:24 Speaker 03 That was my watch. I touched it and it said something. I don't know what it was.
42:28 Adam Buxton? It's the oversharing alarm.
42:29 Speaker 03 Sorry.
42:32 Adam Buxton? No, um.
42:32 Speaker 03 But what happened then? And what was your mum's response?
42:37 Adam Buxton? I think she was a bit baffled by me wanting to know. She, so she brushed off a lot of it. But when I did sit down and, and have the conversation with her, it was when I was writing my first memoir. And so I was fact checking a lot of stuff about my dad who had died a few years before. So I didn't really, I wasn't focusing that much on her own life. It was more about her marriage with my dad. And actually, what I really regret was that I never sat down with her and said, like, tell me all about your parents and where you grew up and what was your family like and where do you think, you know, your personality, how did it develop in certain ways and how does it
43:19 Adam Buxton? inform the way you are now and the way you brought us up and all those things. I mean, I don't know if she would have had satisfactory answers for those questions. I think a lot of those questions, she would slightly roll her eyes and go like.
43:33 Speaker 03 Yes, I'm well acquainted with the eye rolling thing with my mum again, you know. And I think the thing is, you have to question whether that's the way that's easier for her.
43:44 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
43:44 Speaker 03 How she would have felt if she had told you all the things you'd asked and if she would have felt um, panicky or, you know, why did I do that when she was so used to? Because people hid things from their children like that. I mean, these days, it's the opposite, isn't it? I mean, you can get books that children can give you and that, that it's like a diary, but it asks you specific questions about your life and you sort of fill it in. So that they've got it, then they've answered that, all, all these questions that my mum would never have answered in a million years, you know.
44:21 Adam Buxton? Exactly right. Yeah, my mum would have gone through that book and just put N slash A or no comment or whatever. For every answer. But I do think it's a good idea in principle. And I do often say to people like, if you are able to, then do sit down with your parents and have that conversation if you can. And I do think that they will probably, especially if they're from a certain generation, they will probably roll their eyes a little bit and go, well, why? Why do you need to know? Or they'll resist. But if you can, if you can have it even a little bit, you won't regret it. I don't think, unless some incredibly dark secret pops out. But then, I mean, that's,
45:03 Adam Buxton? that's a wider philosophical question. Is it better to know all this stuff? Or is it better just to keep pushing on? That's what my mum probably would have thought. Like, everyone's trying to figure out some system. And why is burying your head in the sand and just plowing on until the bitter end? That much worse than finding everything out and getting all the answers and all the truth?
45:32 Speaker 03 Absolutely. And I, I mean, I'm, I'm fairly firmly on the side of burying your head in the sand myself. Still, you know, I think it's difficult to be truthful. And everyone draws the line in a different place, don't they? Like, I'm sure some parents would be telling their kids how many sexual partners they'd had or whatever, which I couldn't even have dared to ask my mum, to be honest, when I was younger. So times are changing. And I think with social media, for example, people's expectations just rise all the time about, you know, I always think one day someone's going to actually have to physically turn themselves inside out to show people
46:17 Speaker 03 everything about them.
46:19 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
46:20 Speaker 03 Because there are tiny steps then huge leaps in the direction of revealing everything about yourself. And I, I personally don't think that that's very wise, but you know, I'm not that generation, so.
46:35 Adam Buxton? Yes, I know. Well, obviously I'm caught somewhere in between because so much of my career has been me talking to other people and talking about myself and revealing details of my life and being quite open as far as possible, like keeping some things back when it's, you know, like I don't give out my PIN numbers. But but where possible, I want to be open. It feels like that's part of the effort to connect with people and communicate with people. But obviously, you can go too far. It must be weird sometimes, I think, for my children, because they will be overwhelmed by a wealth of information about me. Uh, you know, they'll be able to.
47:19 Speaker 03 So there might be a reversal.
47:20 Adam Buxton? Exactly.
47:21 Speaker 03 I wish he hadn't said so much.
47:23 Adam Buxton? Yeah. Oh, I just think that they won't be aware of it. That's what I'm thinking. I just think there's so much of it. They can't possibly keep up with all the things I've said.
47:31 Speaker 03 How old are your children?
47:33 Adam Buxton? Um, my daughter is sixteen, the boys are twenty and twenty-two at the moment.
47:36 Speaker 03 So do they listen to your stuff?
47:39 Adam Buxton? Sometimes my eldest son does, which slightly unsettles me. And I don't know if he's listening to it currently, but there was a time when he would say, oh, yeah, and he'd refer to a recent episode. And then I was like, whoa, I don't know if that's good.
47:54 Speaker 03 Yeah. No, I I feel the same, you know, and I'm glad to say that I don't, they've never said it outright, but I think that, that generationally speaking, they don't really like my comedy. And I kind of don't blame them because comedy is so different these days. They're hardly gonna say, oh, my favorite comics, my mum. Do you know what I mean? It's like, you know, it's embarrassing.
48:18 Adam Buxton? But you must, uh, do you make them laugh at home then?
48:22 Speaker 03 I, yeah, I I would say I don't. I mean, they make me laugh as well, but it's not in the way that I would make an audience laugh, because my comedy's always been kind of limiting in some ways, because I'm very much a one liner merchant and I say stuff succinctly. And I know, you know, I'm a man hater. Uh, that's the sort of shorthand for what I am. And um.
48:45 Adam Buxton? On stage.
48:46 Speaker 03 Yes, well, absolutely. And in real life, don't tell anyone. Anyway, um, yeah, but uh, not in real life. But you know, there are, it's all to do with the, the sort of zeitgeist, isn't it? It's not acceptable for me to go on stage now and say, God, I hate men. Or, you know, a comedy version of it. Because that's not fair, and it probably isn't fair. But it certainly seemed to have an impact for me, if you like. And as a comic, you want to have impact as much as you want to get laughs. And because we were so few and far between, us women comics.
49:28 Speaker 03 I didn't care whether men liked it or not. I just wanted to give women a laugh about something that they would recognise. Because male comedy in those days, I'm not saying it wasn't great, because there were some brilliant comics, you know. But in those days, you had sort of one line of merchants, you had surreal comics, th- these were all men. But women comics weren't anything. They, they were just women, you know.
49:52 Adam Buxton? That was their.
49:53 Speaker 03 That was their style.
49:54 Adam Buxton? Their act.
49:54 Speaker 03 Absolutely. And so that's changed beyond recognition, which I'm, I think is great.
50:01 Adam Buxton? No, definitely.
50:02 Speaker 03 I, I, I, I kind of also think, you know, from those days, but. I always tried to make it funny before it was a point, if you know what I mean. Because I think you, you make a point first and then you try and be funny with it. You're just doing a political speech. You're not doing comedy. So if I wanted to say something, but I couldn't make it funny, I just wouldn't bother to say it, really.
50:25 Adam Buxton? Yes.
50:26 Speaker 03 Can I ask you a question?
50:28 Adam Buxton? Sure.
50:28 Speaker 03 You don't have to answer. Um, do you, do you like my act?
50:33 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
50:34 Speaker 03 You don't have to say yes, because I, I, I mean, I, I, I feel like I said to you earlier, um. It's, it's aimed much more specifically at, at women.
50:44 Adam Buxton? Yeah. Why do you ask that question?
50:46 Speaker 03 I'm just interested.
50:47 Adam Buxton? Oh, yeah.
50:48 Speaker 03 I don't think you don't like it. I've, I've got, kind of got no idea, but I'm just interested.
50:53 Adam Buxton? I remember watching through the cake hole and really laughing. But also getting vibes like, yeah, I don't think she would like me.
51:05 Speaker 03 Well, you're wrong there because I do, I really like you and I mean, no, I'm so that sounds weird now, doesn't it? Yeah, isn't it, isn't it strange?
51:13 Adam Buxton? You asked a direct question, whoa.
51:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, I know, I'm sorry about that.
51:17 Adam Buxton? I know, but it's the question that no one ever asks. Do you actually like my stuff?
51:22 Speaker 03 I know, but it's hard, isn't it?
51:23 Adam Buxton? It is because you sort of think like, well, I want to give a honest answer here, but.
51:27 Speaker 03 And I honestly, I honestly really would much more, you know, I'm not saying you haven't made an honest answer, but it's very hard and I don't, it's so odd when you talk to other comics, isn't it? Because there are comics that I really like, comics that I love, comics that I don't like so much. And if they ask me that question, I wouldn't know what to say because I think everyone has their own style of comedy they like. I don't know, was it Paddy Considine you were talking to? Or someone who, it might not even have been you to be honest, I'm sorry about my memory, but they were saying they like comedians like Jack and Bromesh because they're so grumpy. Um, which is also kind of what I like as well, really.
52:11 Speaker 03 But I also loved, um, John Hegley, Johnny Immaterial, you know?
52:16 Adam Buxton? Yes.
52:17 Speaker 03 John Cooper Clarke, all those people, Hattie Hayridge, I don't know if you know her?
52:20 Adam Buxton? Sure, yeah.
52:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, um, so it's weird, you know, that you just kind of have your preferences and it's not anything about the person, is it? Because I don't think my act really represents me a hundred percent at all. But because I kind of curated it so carefully in a way to be appealing to a certain sort of woman.
52:44 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
52:45 Speaker 03 Because I'm a certain sort of woman and I'm a sort of woman who can't be arsed with clothes, with makeup, with fillers, with, you know, I hate fashion and I just want to just be free to just slob around and not bother, quite honestly.
53:03 Adam Buxton? I mean, you say that, you, you, I think you look good though, you've got a good look. You've always had that and that combined with the confidence and the funniness adds up to an attractive person. That's all, that's all an attractive person is, isn't it? I remember really liking, well, I like people who put themselves down to a degree. Like, the thing is, you can go too far with that, so that you feel sorry for the person because you think like, oh, they're struggling, or they feel that they have to say that in order to deflect criticism. But I did like it. I thought it was funny when you would
53:44 Adam Buxton? put yourself down. I wrote down a line from Through the Cake Hole, because I was watching that the other day. It was a sketch about doing DIY.
53:53 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
53:54 Adam Buxton? And you say, it's important when you're doing DIY that you wear something old that can get dirty, or perhaps you might prefer, like me, to just look like a pile of cack all the time.
54:08 Speaker 03 The thing about Through the Cake Hole was, it was like the first series I'd done, and it was like such good fun. And I think we got away with a lot, quite honestly. But it is one of my happiest memories. And it was, well, you do this sometimes, you just think, pinch yourself, woman. Five years ago, you were a nurse. And look, what's going on? It was so weird. But, and when people kind of agree to do things, or you ask them to be in things, I'm still kind of, this sounds like false modesty now, so I won't go on about it. But I'm surprised when people say yes. I know, I know, it's weird. Low self-esteem.
54:51 Adam Buxton? Yeah, that's the thing, is it? I mean, I definitely have a problem with that myself as well. Maybe that's what I respond to, to a certain degree in your stuff, but it's very appealing because if that's part of what you're dealing with, then you you deal with it in a very different way than I ever would be able to. So your thing was always to go out and look as if you couldn't give a fuck. And so, and I think probably that's what would antagonize and threaten a lot of audience members, right? Especially if they were a bit pissed.
55:20 Speaker 03 Yeah, big time.
55:22 Adam Buxton? And so they would have a strong reaction against you if they weren't on board with you. Rather than, I mean, generally the the spectrum of responses is much milder with my kind of stuff. So.
55:36 Speaker 03 Well, that's because you you come across as a lovely person and I I don't think I do when I'm doing comedy. And you know, you you just experiment with things and I do remember the Tunnel Club.
55:47 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
55:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, that was hideous because audiences would randomly decide who to hate. It had nothing to do with how good or bad the person was. And I remember going on there one night and just getting a wall of abuse from these very kind of pissed middle aged blokes about my appearance. And just standing there and facing off to them without saying a word. And it was like a game of, what do you call it?
56:13 Adam Buxton? Chicken.
56:13 Speaker 03 Yes, that's right. Just stood there and looked at them. Who's going to get bored first?
56:18 Adam Buxton? Yeah, like a Wild West standoff.
56:21 Speaker 03 It was, and they got bored first and quietened down. And I really felt, God, that was a good win, you know, because totally unexpected.
56:30 Adam Buxton? Yeah, I don't think I would be able to do that. I think I would run away and I would buckle.
56:36 Speaker 03 But that's because you're a nice person.
56:38 Adam Buxton? Well, there's a thin line between being nice and being just sort of ingratiating for the sake of peace. Do you know what I mean? That's like.
56:44 Speaker 03 Well, yeah, yeah, I do in a way, but yeah, it's again, it's that sort of subtle sort of shades of it, isn't it?
56:51 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
56:52 Speaker 03 I don't think you've ever been ingratiating in your life.
56:55 Adam Buxton? Thank you so much, Joe.
56:56 Speaker 03 Yeah.
56:58 Speaker 03 And that was very, that was very Dickensian.
58:02 Adam Buxton? Now, the first job I ever got was when I was eighteen, I'd just left school and I went and worked as a busboy in the Chicago Pizza Pie Factory in Hanover Square, central London. And one of the waitresses, or servers if you prefer, was called Julia.
58:21 Speaker 03 Wow.
58:21 Adam Buxton? She was very glamorous, I thought she was super cool. And she was always talking about her friend who was a comedian. And she said, yeah, she calls herself the sea monster.
58:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
58:34 Adam Buxton? And she's amazing, she was always going on about that. Is she, she was your pal, right?
58:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, we were at school together.
58:40 Adam Buxton? Oh, yeah.
58:41 Speaker 03 At Tunbridge Wells Grammar School for Girls. Uh, so I've known her since I was like thirteen, twelve or thirteen. And um, she's absolutely great, you know, and I think like, she's an example of women all being tarred with the same brush in the old days, you know. She's unique, she's incredibly bright, really, really funny. I think when you're a stand-up comic, you look around and you realise that most people are funnier than you are. But it's just translating it onto the stage that a lot of people just can't face doing, and I don't blame them really. But yeah, I mean, I'm still in touch with her.
59:24 Adam Buxton? Are you?
59:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
59:25 Adam Buxton? Oh, well, give her my best.
59:27 Speaker 03 Of course I will, yeah.
59:28 Adam Buxton? I really liked her so much and she was good fun and she, yeah, she was very funny. I remember she came in one day and she, her eye, one of her eyes was all half closed up and all red. They're like, whoa, what happened to you? And she basically said that, she's like, oh yeah, it was my boyfriend. And she'd, they'd had a, it was a sex accident.
59:53 Adam Buxton? It was some misdirected facial action. And so she explained this to me, but I didn't really understand what she meant. At that point, I had no clue that that was on the table as a option for intimacy. And so I just couldn't get my head around. I was like, and you let him?
1:00:14 Adam Buxton? But yeah, she was great. Yeah, I have such fond memories of her. That was a really formative time in my life, working in that restaurant. But you worked in a restaurant as well, though, right?
1:00:24 Speaker 03 Yes, I've done a few places, yeah, worked in a few restaurants.
1:00:29 Adam Buxton? Rather than military service, people should have to work in a restaurant for a few years in their youth. I think it's the best thing I ever did. And it's so valuable to, just as far as getting on with people.
1:00:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, absolutely.
1:00:43 Adam Buxton? So many different people that you're working with on the staff, so many different people as customers, so many different kind of points of conflict and tension that you deal with every day.
1:00:53 Speaker 03 Yeah, customers can be absolutely appalling, can't they? And obviously, my instinct would have been to give as good as I got. But obviously, you're immediately prevented from doing that because of your relationship with the customer, who's always right, or some version of that. I found that pretty hard, really.
1:01:13 Adam Buxton? Did you ever do anything extreme to get your revenge on a customer?
1:01:17 Speaker 03 Did I put anything in anyone's food? I don't think I did. I've heard stories about people that did, that someone working in the kitchen of a restaurant, I'm not going to say where it is because I'll get in trouble, but they pissed in their soup. I know. And there's, I don't know, there's a story in Trainspotting, the book, which wasn't included in the film, bizarrely. Well, I can imagine why it wasn't really. Even in that really weird, violent film, it wasn't acceptable, which was that a woman took out her tampons and wiped it on someone's food before she sent it off to their table. And, uh, no, I don't think, I never did anything like that, no.
1:02:02 Adam Buxton? I worked with people who did things like that. I do remember a guy, at least claiming to have weed in someone's champagne.
1:02:11 Adam Buxton? A very obnoxious suit who came in and was kind of barking demands. He was like, fill up my glass, top it up. You've only given me half a glass here. And so he said, all right then, and popped into the storeroom, weed in it, came out, handed it to the guy, took a sip, and the guy went, this is too warm. Don't you know anything about champagne?
1:02:39 Speaker 03 I don't think customers realise quite what a risk they take when they're rude to the staff.
1:02:46 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:02:46 Speaker 03 Because the staff have so much opportunity to include something unpleasant in their next course, don't they?
1:02:55 Adam Buxton? I mean, we can probably wrap up now that we've wandered into the pee pee zone.
1:03:00 Speaker 03 Sorry, and I even hit the period.
1:03:02 Adam Buxton? Oh, no, that's.
1:03:03 Speaker 03 Zone, which again, I think is something that was never mentioned in the late seventies by anybody. But I, I realise I've managed to crowbar some stuff about periods in when I've had reviews in the passing. All she does is talk about periods. Oh yeah, I think Jeremy Clarkson said that to me once, but yeah, there we go. So sorry about that.
1:03:26 Adam Buxton? Well, he'll be happy. Jeremy's, he listens regularly. I wouldn't want to disappoint him.
1:03:39 Speaker 02 Wait, this is an ad for Squarespace. Okay, we'll return to the AI apocalypse in just a wee wee moment, but first I wanted to talk about Squarespace. Do you know about Squarespace, Steve? Uh, yes, Monty. I think I might even be a little bit more tuned into modern tech, websites, et cetera, than you. I don't know, just guessing. No, Steve, I love this dynamic. I'm old and conservative and you're young and progressive and that's what makes the Newswind podcast such great listening. But yes, you're right. I must admit, I didn't know much about Squarespace, but because my new grumble book, Hell in a Handcart, is out this month. And I look forward to getting enraged by that. So I should hope.
1:04:14 Speaker 02 Anyway, the publishers, Bluestar and Dogwhistle, made a beautiful website for the book using Squarespace. I know, I got the newsletter that you. Sent out using Squarespace and the website does look great. Videos of you airing your views, members areas for your mad fans. You've even got a merch store, I see. That's right, the Union Jack top hat is a big seller. But they constructed it all so fast with Squarespace. They did most of it over one lunchtime, Steve. Well, you wouldn't want to spend much longer on it, would you? Shut up, Steve. But here's the thing, anyone listening to this can start a free trial right now at Squarespace.com/boxton and see how easy and versatile Squarespace is. And when they're ready to launch a new website or domain, they can save 10% off their first purchase by using the offer code BOXTON at checkout. Right, well, maybe I'll visit Squarespace.com/boxton and start a new website just to refute all the nonsense in your new book.
1:04:58 Speaker 02 Oh, don't do that, Steve. I will. Oh, shut up, Steve. Uh. Shut up. Now, back to more depressing matters on Newsweek.
1:05:07 Adam Buxton? Continue.
1:05:18 Adam Buxton? Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was Jo Brand talking to me there. I was really grateful to Jo for making the time to come along and waffle with me. It was very nice to have the opportunity to do so. And I really recommend her books, which are really funny, but also filled with good wisdom and practical advice for navigating life. Not going to waffle too much today. I've got to get back and carry on my prep for Monday's live event with Caitlin Moran at the Union Chapel. I hope some of you can make it. I'm going to try and dig out one or two clips, maybe some behind the scenes nuggets from
1:06:01 Adam Buxton? Adam and Joe Show days. My book comes out this week. Thank you very much if you have pre-ordered it because it makes me look important and powerful. And at the end of the day, what's more important than that, eh, Doglegs?
1:06:16 Speaker 02 Lying on the sofa, I think.
1:06:18 Adam Buxton? Oh, yeah, I forgot.
1:06:21 Adam Buxton? But I've been enjoying appearing on other people's podcasts recently. Some of them are out already. I think the episode of David O'Docherty and Max Rushton's What Did You Do Yesterday podcast is out. And I'm also going to be appearing on Russell Howard's Five Brilliant Things. Recorded that this week, that was fun. And Harry Hill's Are We There Yet? Which I'm sure many of you know already, but you should check out definitely if you're a comedy fan. I love Harry Hill. I also recorded a conversation for Catherine Ryan's show, What's My Age Again? Podcast show, but they filmed that one.
1:07:01 Adam Buxton? And I was on QI elf Dan Schreiber's podcast, We Can Be Weirdos. Talking about, well, we started off talking quite a bit about Zayvin. I don't know if that'll make the edit, though. We were comparing notes on the considerable emotional impact of Blackstar. What it meant to us. And I immediately got emotional, you know, right at the top. But we also talked about strange phenomena. Psychedelic entities. I did some massively ill-informed waffling, trying to recall half-remembered facts
1:07:45 Adam Buxton? about things I'd once sort of misunderstood when I was 14. I think they're going to need quite a few elves to fact-check that one. But I also talked about the process of writing in a bit more depth and detail with John Rand and Tom Turner. They're the hosts of the Failing Writers podcast. They describe themselves as success-starved word wranglers stumbling towards their shared ambition to become proper writers. And so the podcast they do is all about writing.
1:08:21 Adam Buxton? And that's what I talked to them about, but it was a good fun conversation with them both. Very nice guys, good people, nice people. I've put a link to their podcast in amongst the other links in today's episode. Down in the description, you'll find a link that takes you to my website where you'll find a picture of myself and Joe Brand and other related odds and sods, as well as related links for all my previous podcast episodes and guest photos on a lot of those, etc. It's a great time on the Adam Buxton website. Okay, that's pretty much it for today. Thank you once again to Joe Brand.
1:09:02 Adam Buxton? Thank you to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support and additional conversation editing on this episode. Thanks, Seamus. Thanks to Helen Green, she does the artwork for the podcast. Thanks to everyone at Acast who works so hard liaising with the sponsors for my podcast. Much appreciated. But thanks most of all to you. I just think you're a bit, well, you're just a bit better than the average podcast listener. I wonder how you'd feel about a hug. Come here, hey. Good to see you. Okay. Let's head back, Doglegs.
1:09:47 Adam Buxton? And until next time, you and I share the same outer space. Please go carefully. It's very unpredictable out there. And for what it's worth, I love you. Bye.
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