Pod Insights THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST EP.258 - EMMA SIDI About this episode Adam talks with British comedian, writer and actor, Emma Sidi about why Adam loves Matthew McConaughey and why Emma isn't sure, sensitive Caesareans, Emma's social media parenting strategies, the ethics of character comedy, and life on the road with Alan Partridge.
Conversation recorded face-to-face in London on 3 September, 2025
Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for additional editing
Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/
Listen to Adam's album 'Buckle Up' https://adambuxton.lnk.to/BuckleUp
Order Adam's book 'I Love You Byeee' https://lnk.to/iloveyoubyeee_
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Transcript 13,933 words · 7 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? It's Adam Buckston here. It's a windy day out here in Norfolk. Grey clouds are scudding. A few drops of rain coming down on me and my dog friend Rosie, who is here. Present, correct. Oh, some hooting over from the fields. What do you think about that, Rosie? It's a hoot-a-nanny. She's pulled over to the side of the road. She didn't like the hooting. She wants to go back. No, Rosie, come on, sweetie. It's fine, the hoot is fine. I'm here, I'll look after you. Blimey, I'm more worried about the wind.
1:13 Adam Buxton? I think this is building up to be an actual storm, according to the news. This morning was beautiful, now it's gone all inclement. How are you doing, anyway, podcats? Not too bad, I hope. Thanks for joining me for some more top-quality inconsequential waffle with my great guest, who I will tell you about shortly. First of all, I just want to say a very quick thank you to everyone who bought my album, Buckle Up. I think all those pre-orders helped propel it into the higher reaches of the album charts. Someone told me it made number 16, but they did say it's likely to drop out again immediately. But thank you so much if you have bought a copy of the album,
1:58 Adam Buxton? or even if you've just listened to it on a streaming platform. I appreciate it. I did send out one of my very infrequent newsletters, which you can sign up for by going to my website, adam-buxton.co.uk. There's a link in the description. If you scroll down to the bottom of the front page, you'll find somewhere you can sign up for the old newsletter. Blimey, we're gonna get blown away here. Whoa, kay, doggy. We're intrepid, Rosie.
2:29 Speaker 02 I don't want to be intrepid. I want to go back to the kitchen sofa.
2:34 Adam Buxton? Kitchen sofa, yes, yes, I know. Well, we will.
2:43 Adam Buxton? Right, it's a couple of minutes later now and haven't really found anywhere more sheltered to record this, so I think we might head back.
2:57 Adam Buxton? We're back in Rosie's favourite place. The kitchen. It's gonna fill up your water bottle, doglegs.
3:16 Adam Buxton? There you go, mate.
3:25 Adam Buxton? Mmm, that was delicious. Do you want some too, Rosie?
3:30 Adam Buxton? Well, look, let's go and sit on the sofa.
3:37 Adam Buxton? Oh, yeah, this is way better than being out there. I don't know what I was thinking. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, the newsletter. I'm sure you were all riveted. I was saying that I sent out a newsletter on Friday, on the day of the album drop, just to let you all know and give you some great fun links to click and that kind of thing. But I noticed, because you can check how many people have actually opened the newsletter. And I couldn't help noticing that quite a few people had not opened the newsletter. Now, that may be for all sorts of reasons, but there is a possibility, an understandable one perhaps, that it was filed as spam or junk, if you prefer.
4:22 Adam Buxton? So if you had signed up for it and you didn't receive it, then take a look in the old junk box. But right now, from the piece, the beautiful piece of the Buckles Kitchen. Uh, let me tell you about my guest for podcast number two hundred and fifty-eight, the British comedian, writer and actor, Emma Siddey. Siddey facts. Emma was born in nineteen ninety-one to English parents who were living in the United States at the time. But she was brought up and educated near Woking in the English county of Surrey. She studied French and Spanish at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where she developed her talent for character comedy as part of the famous Footlights sketch troupe.
5:04 Adam Buxton? Edinburgh shows and short films followed after leaving college. And by the late twenty teens, Emma was landing character roles on TV shows like W one A, Staff Let's Flats and Liam Williams' twenty seventeen spoof of YouTube celebrity culture, Please Like, which is really great. If you haven't seen it, I think it's still on YouTube, P L S, Like, in which Emma played a Zoella-style social media influencer called Millipede. Tim Key is in that show as well, and Jamie Demetri, lots of funny people pop up in that show. In twenty twenty, drawing on her experiences studying Spanish for seven months in Mexico, Emma wrote and starred in La Princesa de Woking,
5:49 Adam Buxton? a parody of a nineteen eighties Spanish-language telenovela, like a soap, set in contemporary small-town England, which the whole cast performed entirely in Spanish. There's a link in the description. You can see it on YouTube still. It's only short. Since then, Emma has popped up in comedy series like Ghosts, Black Ops and King Gary, as well as playing a central character in the TV comedy drama Starstruck, co-written by and starring her old flatmate and former guest on this podcast, Rose Matafeo. Rose's co-writer on Starstruck was fellow Kiwi Alice Sneddon. Emma played Kate, the best friend of Rose's character Jessie. In Starstruck, Kate ends up marrying Ian,
6:34 Adam Buxton? played by another Stafflet's Flats alumnus Al Roberts, to whom Emma Siddey is married in real life and with whom, as of this year, she has a human child. In 2024, following the correct path for most successful comedians in the UK, Emma was a contestant in the 18th series of Taskmaster. That same year, she toured her show Emma Siddey is Sue Gray, which had begun life a few years before, when special investigator and former civil servant Sue Gray was in the news as the investigator of the Boris Johnson administration's Partygate scandal. Emma's portrayal of Gray was intentionally thoroughly inaccurate.
7:18 Adam Buxton? My conversation with Emma was recorded earlier this month, September 2025. We met at Rose Matafeo's house in North East London, which was a quiet place to record, near where Emma and Al live with their baby son. And as well as talking about Emma's experience of giving birth by cesarean section and her parenting strategies as they currently stand, we talked about the ethics of character comedy and Life on the Road with Alan Partridge. By the way, the new Partridge show that Emma mentioned having seen is called How Are You? It's Alan (Partridge), which is out in October on BBC One. We also talked quite a lot about Matthew McConaughey.
8:03 Adam Buxton? But after some chat about Emma having stayed up all night with the baby, we began by establishing whether we'd actually met before. I'll be back at the end, probably still from the kitchen, with a bit more waffle, but right now with Emma Siddey. Here we go.
8:58 Adam Buxton? You're looking very fresh, may I say. This is the first time we've met.
9:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, ah, we've met very briefly before.
9:04 Adam Buxton? Where did we meet before?
9:05 Speaker 03 Ah, this is one of those. It was so brief.
9:08 Adam Buxton? Oh, yeah.
9:09 Speaker 03 It, um, it's a big name drop, this.
9:11 Adam Buxton? Do it.
9:12 Speaker 03 Jonathan Ross's Halloween Party.
9:14 Adam Buxton? Oh.
9:14 Speaker 03 Isn't that such an iconic event? I can't even believe it's coming out of my mouth.
9:17 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
9:18 Speaker 03 So.
9:19 Adam Buxton? I haven't been invited for a few years, so that was, that was back in the day.
9:22 Speaker 03 Actually, I was even a plus one. I wasn't even invited then.
9:25 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
9:26 Speaker 03 So, very briefly then, I think I was with Rose or something.
9:30 Adam Buxton? Rose Matterfeo.
9:31 Speaker 03 Rose Matterfeo. But we've never met properly, properly at all, so.
9:36 Adam Buxton? What were you wearing at Jonathan and Jane's Halloween party?
9:39 Speaker 03 Oh, god, what's thingy called in, um, Wendy? I was dressed as Wendy from The Shining.
9:44 Adam Buxton? Oh, in, right, not from Peter Pan.
9:47 Speaker 03 Not from Peter Pan. I had a bat and the fringe, a fake fringe.
9:51 Adam Buxton? That's a good costume.
9:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's actually really good, because I didn't have to buy anything for it. Even the fringe I owned.
9:58 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
9:58 Speaker 03 Um, what were you dressed as? Well, actually, you don't remember, so.
10:02 Adam Buxton? I think, was that the one where Sarah Pascoe and Ashling B and Roisin Connery were dressed as people from The Handmaid's Tale?
10:12 Speaker 03 Yes.
10:14 Adam Buxton? They were dressed as handmaidens.
10:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, it was that one. And was Alan Carr dressed as a gingerbread man or something?
10:20 Adam Buxton? It's entirely possible.
10:22 Speaker 03 God, it's electric even saying these sentences.
10:24 Adam Buxton? And Frank Skinner.
10:25 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:26 Adam Buxton? Was dressed as.
10:29 Adam Buxton? Who does Adam Driver play in the Star Wars films?
10:32 Speaker 03 Well, that's a really difficult question, isn't it?
10:35 Adam Buxton? Is it someone called Lilo?
10:38 Speaker 03 Rex? No, Reno? Rido?
10:41 Adam Buxton? Roly, Rolo? Anyway, I think it.
10:44 Speaker 03 Kylo Ren!
10:46 Adam Buxton? Kylo Ren?
10:47 Speaker 03 Yeah.
10:48 Adam Buxton? Anyway, remembering the name is important because Frank's costume was him holding a big, black Lilo.
10:55 Speaker 03 What?
10:56 Adam Buxton? Because he was Lilo Ren.
11:00 Adam Buxton? So it was a mashup of.
11:01 Speaker 03 Got it.
11:02 Adam Buxton? I'm probably not doing justice to.
11:03 Speaker 03 Did he have any Ren elements?
11:05 Adam Buxton? Yeah, there were some, I think he had some superficial elements of the Star Wars character, plus the Lilo.
11:11 Speaker 03 You could have a bird, the Ren.
11:13 Adam Buxton? Right, there you go.
11:14 Speaker 03 Whatever.
11:14 Adam Buxton? But he, I think, spent his whole evening explaining his costume.
11:17 Speaker 03 Sure. I guess that's the point of Halloween in a way.
11:20 Adam Buxton? I think I was dressed as a kind of generic alien. I had a cardboard head, like a giant brain, that I'd strapped to myself, and there was little fairy lights on it.
11:33 Speaker 03 You actually looked really plain.
11:35 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
11:35 Speaker 03 I thi- I think that could have been a different year. Like, that costume sounds amazing, but when I met you.
11:41 Adam Buxton? I'd probably taken it off by that point.
11:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't keep the cardboard head on the whole time.
11:46 Adam Buxton? It was a very impractical costume.
11:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, and I'm sorry, I'm just meeting again properly now. I shouldn't say you looked plain.
11:51 Adam Buxton? No, that's okay. You thought I was a disgrace. But I mean, I think that's why I don't go to those parties, or maybe why I don't get invited very often, because I don't actually like dressing up for a party.
12:04 Speaker 03 I absolutely hate it. And I think Halloween is one of the worst nights of the year, because when you're on the tube, just everyone looks awful. Everyone looks beaten up.
12:14 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
12:15 Speaker 03 Dripping with blood and bruised, just makes me feel a bit sick and actually very sad for, I don't know. Violence.
12:23 Adam Buxton? It's a tasteless celebration of violence.
12:26 Speaker 03 I think it, I honestly think it is.
12:29 Adam Buxton? Which is a real problem in society.
12:31 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:31 Adam Buxton? And where do you draw the line? Like, you know, there's people genuinely being injured in horrific ways.
12:36 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:36 Adam Buxton? And suddenly it's okay just to go around and pretend that you've been horrifically injured? I don't think so.
12:42 Speaker 03 Well, I think.
12:43 Adam Buxton? This is where the pushback starts.
12:45 Speaker 03 For me, you know, I don't wanna be too judgmental because people can have a bit of like carnivalesque fun.
12:50 Adam Buxton? Do it.
12:51 Speaker 03 What I don't like is that they actually look rank. Like, you wouldn't normally leave the house like that. Like, if you're dripping with blood, you just kind of.
12:58 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
12:59 Speaker 03 Wipe it away and go, God, I need to sort myself out before going out today.
13:03 Adam Buxton? Yeah, those are always the lamest costumes when they just squirt some.
13:07 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:08 Adam Buxton? Blood on and they look all grimy. Would you go to the Met Gala?
13:13 Speaker 03 Um, well, I'd love to go to the Met Gala.
13:16 Adam Buxton? I can arrange for you to go.
13:17 Speaker 03 It would be very difficult to say no, wouldn't it?
13:19 Adam Buxton? I think it would be.
13:20 Speaker 03 God, I've gotta turn up.
13:21 Adam Buxton? I mean, that, to me, that's my worst nightmare. I wouldn't like to go.
13:24 Speaker 03 I was once on an EasyJet flight, sitting next to an act, oh no, now I've forgotten her name.
13:31 Adam Buxton? Hmm.
13:31 Speaker 03 Who's Miss Money Penny?
13:32 Adam Buxton? Oh, Judy Stench?
13:34 Speaker 03 No, she's, um, Naomi Harris.
13:36 Adam Buxton? Naomi Harris.
13:37 Speaker 03 Okay, so I was once on an EasyJet flight, sitting next to who I thought was Naomi Harris.
13:43 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
13:44 Speaker 03 And I looked across and on her iPad, she wrote something along the lines of, I'm not wearing that to the Met Gala. And that's how I knew, oh, it is Naomi Harris. Who is writing that on their iPad?
13:54 Adam Buxton? Wow.
13:55 Speaker 03 And then I said to her, you know, actually, this is mad of me, but I was like, you Naomi Harris.
13:59 Adam Buxton? Did you?
14:01 Speaker 03 Well, it's because the air stewardess said to her, hey, you're on our in-flight video. You're on the training video. And she said, no, I'm so sorry, I'm not. And I go, well, we think you are. We all recognise you. It's from the in-flight video. She said, I'm so sorry, I'm not. And they go, well, you've got a doppelganger going around. And they left her alone. But clearly, they just recognised her from being Miss Money Penny.
14:22 Adam Buxton? Oh.
14:23 Speaker 03 And I said, look, I actually recognise you. I think you're great. And then we had a great chat. She was lovely.
14:28 Adam Buxton? Good one.
14:28 Speaker 03 But she gave me some advice. This was about thirteen years ago. And she said, my advice is, you just need a big break.
14:37 Adam Buxton? I mean, that is good advice.
14:39 Speaker 03 Thanks.
14:40 Adam Buxton? It is a form of the ultimate true advice, which is you just need a bit of luck.
14:45 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:45 Adam Buxton? But the the rest of that advice in a wider focus is that's why you have to stick with it.
14:52 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:53 Adam Buxton? You know what I mean? Because you have to increase your chances of getting the luck.
14:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, I suppose that's right. I felt because she went on to say, and for for me, my big break was Danny Boyle. And I was like, this is great advice, but how do I wait? Okay, now hear me.
15:09 Speaker 03 How do I get Danny Boyle?
15:10 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
15:11 Speaker 03 But you're so right. That's the more insightful. It's the wider thing of going.
15:15 Adam Buxton? I think so. That's how.
15:16 Speaker 03 Keep trucking.
15:16 Adam Buxton? That's your only hope of applying that kind of advice.
15:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:20 Adam Buxton? Because otherwise, yeah, it's just like, my advice is be incredibly beautiful.
15:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's exactly it.
15:26 Adam Buxton? And meet lots of amazing people.
15:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:28 Adam Buxton? And be very talented.
15:29 Speaker 03 Totally.
15:30 Adam Buxton? Well, I just finished reading Matthew McConaughey's book.
15:33 Speaker 03 Mm.
15:34 Adam Buxton? Green Lights.
15:35 Speaker 03 Right.
15:36 Adam Buxton? You read Green Lights?
15:37 Speaker 03 No, I have a bit of a.
15:39 Adam Buxton? Aversion?
15:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
15:41 Adam Buxton? Why? Explain.
15:42 Speaker 03 To Matthew McConaughey?
15:42 Adam Buxton? Sure, I think maybe a lot of people do, but.
15:45 Speaker 03 This is awful. I hope he never hears me say this. I just don't. There's something about it. I don't know. Two on the front foot.
15:51 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
15:52 Speaker 03 Just like, what do you want from me? Do you know what I mean? I can't. What? What is it? How can I say this in a way that is okay?
15:59 Adam Buxton? Is there a an incident or a image you have of him that encapsulates your?
16:05 Speaker 03 Um.
16:06 Adam Buxton? Antipathy?
16:06 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, all those rom coms.
16:09 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
16:09 Speaker 03 I didn't get it. For me, I was like, why is this guy everywhere? And then I in Wolf of Wall Street, when he's just, you know, it's so celebrated, that scene.
16:20 Adam Buxton? Pounding on his chest.
16:21 Speaker 03 Yeah.
16:22 Adam Buxton? Leo DiCaprio.
16:23 Speaker 03 I just know he's loving it. But look, if I met him, I'm sure we'd have a great time and go, oh, look, I love him now.
16:30 Adam Buxton? His chest pounding was something he did before a tape.
16:33 Speaker 03 Yes, yes, I know. We all know that. That's it. That, okay, that is what sums it up. That that pinnicling, that we've all improved, mate. It's it's fine.
16:45 Adam Buxton? It was Leo who suggested he do it in the scene.
16:48 Speaker 03 Okay.
16:49 Adam Buxton? I think you need to read Green Lights.
16:51 Speaker 03 No, I can't do that.
16:52 Adam Buxton? It's really amazing.
16:54 Speaker 03 Are you reading it or listening to the audiobook?
16:55 Adam Buxton? Of course I'm listening to the audiobook.
16:57 Speaker 03 Fine, so you like him then, so could you like to hear him saying all of it?
17:01 Adam Buxton? I love his voice.
17:02 Speaker 03 Oh my god.
17:02 Adam Buxton? Green lights.
17:03 Speaker 03 What's he, what's he?
17:05 Adam Buxton? Because it's all about his philosophy, it's like jam packed with all his kind of hokey philosophy. Which, and I thought of it because talking of, um, you know, people with incredible genes like Naomi Harris.
17:17 Speaker 03 Mm.
17:18 Adam Buxton? He is this, you know, exceptionally beautiful man.
17:22 Speaker 03 I, alright.
17:23 Adam Buxton? Oh, really?
17:24 Speaker 03 Fair enough, no, no. No, I don't, honestly.
17:27 Adam Buxton? Alright, but he, you know, a lot of this book is him talking about how he has bent good fortune to his will and how he has nailed all these breaks. And the subtext right the way through as a listener is, yeah, but that's because you look like Matthew McConaughey.
17:43 Speaker 03 Exactly.
17:44 Adam Buxton? He was brought up by, he doesn't talk about where they were politically, but they sound like fairly conservative parents, certainly religious and.
17:54 Speaker 03 Whereabouts?
17:55 Adam Buxton? In Texas.
17:56 Speaker 03 Mm-hmm.
17:57 Adam Buxton? And there was a lot of kind of physical abuse is what you've got to call it.
18:01 Speaker 03 Oh, right.
18:01 Adam Buxton? But he insists that it wasn't, he doesn't see it that way. He feels like I was brought up the way that I should have been brought up and, you know, it was tough love kind of thing. And he still loves his parents.
18:13 Speaker 03 Hmm.
18:13 Adam Buxton? But there's hair raising descriptions of some mad, mad stuff.
18:17 Speaker 03 Wow.
18:18 Adam Buxton? Like at the beginning of the book, he's talking about his dad getting back from work and his mum is making dinner and his dad, the big guy, huge guy, and sits down and he's like, where's my dinner? And classic kind of confrontation ensues with the mum saying, there it is, you fat pig.
18:41 Speaker 03 I can tell you're listening to the audiobook, it's great.
18:44 Adam Buxton? And then it kicks off. So they have a physical tussle. And this is Matthew and his brother, as as young, like around about ten years old, are in the room. Watching all this happen, according to him.
18:56 Speaker 03 Oh god.
18:57 Adam Buxton? And but he says, this is just, you know, this is not unusual. This is the kind of thing that used to happen a lot. So they're having a tussle and then at one point mum grabs a kitchen knife.
19:10 Speaker 03 Right.
19:10 Adam Buxton? But she's going over to the phone to call the cops because it's already got physical. And then she grabs a kitchen knife and she is brandishing it. And the dad, to diffuse the situation, grabs a bottle of ketchup and starts squirting it at her. And like sort of slashing her with this ketchup in the air.
19:30 Speaker 03 Wow, I'm trying to think, is that, is that funny or violent? Is it just violent?
19:35 Adam Buxton? It's kind of nightmarish. Like if you saw it in a film, it would just be like, it's almost Lynchian.
19:41 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, you go, who, who wrote this?
19:43 Adam Buxton? Yeah, because it's sort of funny, but it's, but the subtext is so upsetting. But that diffuses the, the situation.
19:50 Speaker 03 Oh god, actually, I genuinely got chills thinking of the knife, it's like.
19:54 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so, it's a really scary image. And then they start snogging, all covered in ketchup.
20:02 Speaker 03 Oh, this is awful, isn't it?
20:04 Adam Buxton? So violent and turned on, that they grab each other and they, and they fall, collapse to the ground and then they have a shag.
20:11 Speaker 03 Shut up. This is it. No, this, right. No, no.
20:16 Adam Buxton? The sofa.
20:16 Speaker 03 No.
20:18 Adam Buxton? And he's like, that's what it was like, around at my house. And it's not described as like, poor me, imagine me witnessing this kind of horror. It's like, well, that's what mum and dad were like.
20:29 Speaker 03 Oh god, this, ah, this is why this man drives me mad. Do, do you really?
20:37 Speaker 03 Do you think that happened?
20:39 Adam Buxton? I don't know. If I ever met him, I would ask him. He, there was a possibility that he was gonna be on the podcast, which is why I listened to the book. And then that um possibility evaporated.
20:50 Speaker 03 Why did it evaporate?
20:51 Adam Buxton? Well, it was just a a scheduling conflict.
20:54 Speaker 03 Fine, fine.
20:55 Adam Buxton? But I, to to be honest with you, I wrote to him, which I very seldom do.
20:59 Speaker 03 Wow.
21:00 Adam Buxton? After reading the book, because I just thought I really, really want to ask him about a lot of the stuff in this book.
21:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
21:05 Adam Buxton? And and it's not all so shocking, right? It's all, a lot of it is is much more wholesome and just straightforwardly entertaining.
21:13 Speaker 03 Okay.
21:14 Adam Buxton? Plus, I really genuinely love a couple of his films, like they mean a lot to me. Contact and Interstellar.
21:20 Speaker 03 Right. I I haven't seen those ones. Are they both about aliens?
21:26 Adam Buxton? Um.
21:27 Speaker 03 Or the stars?
21:28 Adam Buxton? They are about the stars, yeah. It's definitely, Jodie Foster is in Contact, she's amazing.
21:34 Speaker 03 Right.
21:34 Adam Buxton? And he is a a a kind of um supporting character, but but but he's good.
21:40 Speaker 03 See, I'm more, this says a lot, actually. I'm more Magic Mike.
21:43 Adam Buxton? Yeah, okay.
21:44 Speaker 03 And um uh How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days.
21:47 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
21:47 Speaker 03 That's what I'd write to him about.
21:48 Adam Buxton? Yeah, okay.
21:49 Speaker 03 And go, sorry, I don't love you, but those films were good.
21:52 Adam Buxton? Well, look, if he ever gets back to me, because it was a very crawly letter that I wrote.
21:56 Speaker 03 Hmm.
21:57 Adam Buxton? Then come along and.
21:59 Speaker 03 We'll read it together.
22:00 Adam Buxton? Sit down with me and Matthew and you can see if you come out of it feeling differently about it.
22:05 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
22:07 Adam Buxton? I just thought, here is a guy who is a genuine movie star, like one of the last of the real movie stars, along with someone like Scarlett Johansson or someone like that.
22:15 Speaker 03 Billboard.
22:16 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
22:17 Speaker 03 Flagship, yeah.
22:18 Adam Buxton? He's larger than life, he's this kind of mad, crazy, alright, I'm right on my, you know, it's like almost bigger in real life than he is on screen.
22:27 Speaker 03 Yeah.
22:28 Adam Buxton? And um I just thought it would be amazing to meet him and kind of.
22:32 Speaker 03 Yeah, and to be fair, he's putting it all out there, isn't he?
22:35 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
22:35 Speaker 03 Saying something like that in your book. God, I hate you for this. I think I'm gonna read it.
22:40 Adam Buxton? I, it really is pretty entertaining. But right the way through, his part of his philosophy is trying to turn adversity
22:48 Speaker 03 Hmm.
22:48 Adam Buxton? into a learning experience. He doesn't put it in that way. He he says it's a green light.
22:53 Speaker 03 Right, okay, okay.
22:53 Adam Buxton? You might think it's a red light, but then when you look back on it, green light.
22:58 Speaker 03 Right.
22:59 Adam Buxton? And then every now and again, he'll do a bit of poetry. Sorry, I'm not gonna just talk about Matthew.
23:03 Speaker 03 No, no, it's great, it's great.
23:06 Adam Buxton? Like, one of the stories is, and this is, I'm not making light of the McConaughey family.
23:10 Speaker 03 No, no, of course not, and I'm not.
23:12 Adam Buxton? The.
23:12 Speaker 03 Sorry, that sounds like I was. I'm not either.
23:13 Adam Buxton? Sure, yeah, right, you know, um, his dad died, how do you think his dad died?
23:20 Speaker 03 Okay, how old was he?
23:21 Adam Buxton? I'm not sure exactly, but I would say late sixties, early seventies.
23:26 Speaker 03 I'm gonna say trespassing.
23:30 Adam Buxton? Why trespassing?
23:31 Speaker 03 I can just see, you know, Texas, I can see something weird going on in the tracks in Texas, do you know what I mean? Some train story that, we, they were looking for the tracks, you know, I can just see that.
23:42 Adam Buxton? Stealing lead pipe.
23:44 Speaker 03 Yes, stealing copper, oh, sell it, anyway, but I'm wrong, am I?
23:49 Adam Buxton? Uh, yes, he died climaxing while making love to his wife.
23:53 Speaker 03 Matthew's mum or different wife?
23:56 Adam Buxton? No, no, Matthew's mum.
23:58 Speaker 03 How do we, really?
24:00 Adam Buxton? Yes.
24:01 Speaker 03 Shut up!
24:02 Adam Buxton? He was probably watching.
24:04 Speaker 03 Shut up, man, yeah, watching again, how, so they know that just because his mum was like, oh, I'll tell you the moment?
24:10 Adam Buxton? I think so, yeah, yeah.
24:12 Speaker 03 What happened, his head blew off or something?
24:14 Adam Buxton? No, he just, he had a cardiac arrest.
24:16 Speaker 03 Oh, I'm sorry.
24:17 Adam Buxton? That's okay. I mean, Matthew McConaughey's not gonna come on this podcast.
24:24 Adam Buxton? I think that's the end of that.
24:48 Speaker 04 Green light. I believe that everything we do in life is part of a plan. Green light. Sometimes the plan goes as intended and sometimes it doesn't. That's part of the plan. Green light.
25:04 Adam Buxton? I apologize for only just meeting you and just downloading all my thoughts on Matthew McConaughey.
25:11 Speaker 03 No, I really liked it because it did, as you can tell, you know, it touched a nerve for me.
25:15 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
25:16 Speaker 03 So it felt kind of personalised.
25:18 Adam Buxton? Good. Green light.
25:20 Speaker 03 Oh my god, I can't do it. Can't do it.
25:24 Adam Buxton? How are you doing at the moment? How is life for you?
25:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, life's good. Life's good. I have a baby.
25:30 Adam Buxton? Yes.
25:30 Speaker 03 So I think that really dominates life, doesn't it? Because when you have a baby, it is really within the year, like it won't be a baby for forever. And the year of being a baby is actually pretty nuts. So I suppose at the time of speaking, my baby is six months old.
25:46 Adam Buxton? Yeah, we're speaking in September twenty twenty five.
25:48 Speaker 03 September twenty twenty five. And yeah, so that feels like that is obviously major, major tenet.
25:55 Adam Buxton? This is your first?
25:55 Speaker 03 This is my first. And I have gone back to work as well. I'm sort of doing like a version of part-time work, I guess, or do, you know, saying no to some stuff, able to do some other things. Auditioning and not getting the roles, you know, when you're like, you're being more discerning. So it hurts even more when you don't get something. You're like, what?
26:17 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
26:17 Speaker 03 I thought my discernment meant.
26:19 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
26:20 Speaker 03 Well.
26:20 Adam Buxton? I've got a baby I could be bringing up.
26:22 Speaker 03 Exactly.
26:23 Adam Buxton? Give me that part, you shitbag.
26:25 Speaker 03 That's exactly it. So it doesn't make any sense. But yeah, that's been interesting. But yeah, so that's cool. And it's a little baby boy. I didn't know what I was having, a boy or a girl.
26:36 Adam Buxton? Yeah, it's nice to have a surprise.
26:37 Speaker 03 It's amazing. It's free. It means, I think, during those first months, you're coming to terms with even that. And actually, I'd watched, I wasn't, I had quite a complicated birth in the end. It was one of those lots of labour, C-section at the end. And it took me a while to kind of get over it, I suppose. Not get over it, I'm still, you know, processing it. But it was, I couldn't really look at the photos and the videos at the time. Because if you have a C-section, they can take lots of photos and that kind of thing.
27:04 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
27:04 Speaker 03 The other day. I was like, you know what, I'm really ready to look at that stuff and I think it's gonna really help me and.
27:11 Adam Buxton? Have you all opened up?
27:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, of me opened up, of the baby coming out, of all that kind of thing.
27:16 Adam Buxton? Like a scene from The Thing.
27:17 Speaker 03 From.
27:18 Adam Buxton? You probably haven't seen.
27:19 Speaker 03 I haven't seen The Thing, no.
27:23 Adam Buxton? It's a lot of kind of C-section stuff.
27:25 Speaker 03 Oh, I'll check it out. I'll be able to deal with it now. Um, and there was this video that I I hadn't seen at all and. Oh, it's so beautiful, but but obviously flipping intense. So I was gonna say fucking, obviously that's fine as well to say that. It doesn't matter. Fucking intense. This baby is halfway out of me. So they they even said to me, do you want the screen lifted? Down a bit.
27:49 Adam Buxton? So you can see.
27:50 Speaker 03 So you can see and I'll be honest.
27:51 Adam Buxton? Partner in the room?
27:52 Speaker 03 My partner's in the room, my husband Al is in the room and um. I was like, yeah, yeah, put the screen down. If I'm totally honest, I was out of it. I'd had a long labour, gas and air, all that, you know.
28:03 Adam Buxton? So you're totally pissed up.
28:05 Speaker 03 I'm pissed up, exactly, is the best way of saying it. The screen comes down and so you can see this. I guess envelope hole in my stomach, but it doesn't look like my stu-, you know, it looks so disconnected from, I don't know. And this baby is halfway out and his his eyes are sort of half open. And he's he's got these little arms that are like zombie arms. And he's halfway out and they say, now, we know you don't know the sex of the baby and we want you guys to find out first. So all of us, the surgeons and ethisters, everybody, we're all gonna close our eyes in the operating theatre. As we lift this baby out of you. And you see all these medical professionals, you know.
28:48 Speaker 03 Pretty impressive people go, right, we can close our eyes for a minute. Oh, God, I'm getting chills talking about it. And so they all close their eyes and lift out this thing, because he is a thing. I mean, you said the thing, but it is.
29:01 Adam Buxton? Well, it's more like Alien, actually.
29:02 Speaker 03 Oh, God. Yes, I've heard of some of that happens in Alien.
29:05 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
29:06 Speaker 03 Lift him up and then those little D and balls are there. And, yeah, my my husband goes, it's a boy. And I go, my beautiful boy. Again, I don't remember, I don't really remember. Realising it was boy for a few minutes later. But yeah, isn't that cool? That thing of going, we're all gonna close our eyes, so you get to be the first people to see this.
29:28 Adam Buxton? If that's protocol now, maybe someone got angry with them and said like, how dare you find out the sex of my child before I do? I'm suing you.
29:39 Speaker 03 We would never have thought, imagine demanding that of your surgeon.
29:43 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
29:43 Speaker 03 Excuse me, while I'm open, could you just shut your eyes for a minute? Um, but yeah, I think they're called gentle Caesarians and UCLH does a version of the gentle Caesarian, which is where they close their eyes and gently show you your baby.
29:59 Adam Buxton? Gently cut you open.
30:00 Speaker 03 So pretty cool, really.
30:02 Adam Buxton? That's amazing.
30:02 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's amazing. So feeling all good. And the little baby is just so fricking cute.
30:08 Adam Buxton? Oh, good. I'm glad.
30:09 Speaker 03 Yeah, but it's a lot, obviously. That goes without saying.
30:13 Adam Buxton? It's a sort of fun madness that time, isn't it?
30:16 Speaker 03 Yes, exactly. My dad said this, it was really helpful. He was like, oh, you're going into the most exciting time of your life.
30:24 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
30:24 Speaker 03 And I hadn't thought of that. You kind of think of uni or something being like that.
30:27 Adam Buxton? Right.
30:28 Speaker 03 And I think there's a lot in that.
30:29 Adam Buxton? Cause it's very different to everything else. I mean, obviously it's only fun if if you're lucky and everything's gone relatively well.
30:36 Speaker 03 For sure.
30:37 Adam Buxton? But um, you're so physically altered by the lack of sleep and all that sort of stuff that your brain works in a different way. And also, you know, you just are reeling from the weirdness of having created this thing.
30:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'll never understand that.
30:54 Adam Buxton? And it loves you.
30:56 Speaker 03 Also, this this shouldn't be TMI, because humans are humans. We conceived in our house.
31:03 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
31:03 Speaker 03 Fine, in our bed. Oh, God, that does feel like TMI.
31:07 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
31:07 Speaker 03 God. Anyway, now that baby, you know, hangs out in the bed.
31:11 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
31:12 Speaker 03 So often I just look at him in that bed going, Jesus Christ, do you know what I mean? You just think, that's, that's too much. I wish it had been on holiday. It would give me some kind of separation of, wow, that magical place where you can do that. Just did it in, I won't say the borough, a borough in London. Oh, gives me the ick, not the ick, the creeps.
31:32 Adam Buxton? Well, at least there wasn't like a video or anything.
31:35 Speaker 03 How do you, how do you know that? No, there isn't a video.
31:38 Adam Buxton? McConaughey's probably got a video.
31:40 Speaker 03 Yeah, he will do.
31:42 Adam Buxton? Of his, um, but, oh, good. Well, I'm glad it's sort of gone.
31:46 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:47 Adam Buxton? Relatively well.
31:48 Speaker 03 It has, it definitely has. Yeah.
31:50 Adam Buxton? Yeah, good. And has it given you lots of great ideas for shows?
31:56 Speaker 03 Great question. And my answer to that is no.
31:59 Adam Buxton? Because I don't think anyone's done one.
32:01 Speaker 03 About, you're so right. It's such a, such a gap in the market.
32:07 Adam Buxton? Funny material there.
32:08 Speaker 03 Actually, there's this amazing thing that the Royal Court have set up called First Words, which is like a sort of N C T group, but for writers. So it's for anyone who's got a baby under the age of one who calls or thinks of themselves as a writer in some way. It's a really refreshing group as well because like there was the other day, there was this woman who's like a herbologist who was like, I just love herbs. Don't really know about kids, but anyway, I'm getting on with it. And you're like, wow, that is so. It was so nice to have a herbologist just be like, I don't really know what I'm doing. Do you know what I mean?
32:43 Adam Buxton? I love herbs. I don't really like kids, but talk to me about herbs.
32:47 Speaker 03 Yeah. And she was like, obviously I love this baby.
32:50 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
32:51 Speaker 03 But god damn, I love herbs.
32:52 Adam Buxton? Is the baby's name?
32:55 Speaker 03 Basil?
32:56 Adam Buxton? Or.
32:57 Speaker 03 Dargan.
32:59 Adam Buxton? I was just thinking Herbie.
33:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, Herbie.
33:05 Speaker 03 I should have, I should have asked that, put my hand up and said, I've got a question. It's your baby called Herbie.
33:12 Adam Buxton? And is it only people who are having a nice experience of parenthood that go to that sort of thing?
33:18 Speaker 03 Well, this is what I'm saying. I found the writers one. So a lot of these N C T groups, you know, it's. It's a lot of full mat leave stuff where, I mean, people are amazing, but there's a lot of focus on the babies. Of course there is. And the writers one was a bit more of a focus on maybe the existentialism of it all and the sort of. Artie jobs that you feel like you could be doing at the same time, but you've kind of left behind. Then there were some writers for like Sky News. You know, they're loving it because they feel traumatized by the news.
33:51 Adam Buxton? Oh, yeah, that's interesting.
33:52 Speaker 03 Mixed with. Uh they also seemed quite frustrated to not be, you know, news reading or whatever.
33:59 Speaker 05 Yeah, yeah.
34:00 Speaker 03 Don't want to speak for these people as well, but this was just my kind of perception of it. Then there was someone else who'd done a short film recently and said that when it wrapped, she experienced extreme grief. Which I really understand. I thought it was really honest, you know, she's there with this baby in a carrier. Going, oh god, now I've got to get fully back to just baby.
34:23 Speaker 05 Right, okay, yeah, yeah.
34:24 Speaker 03 While this film is done. So it's funny to call it extreme grief, but you know, I really appreciated her saying that and I think it's kind of good to be honest about how it makes you feel. I think, and you know, I'll be there ranting and raving as well about.
34:38 Speaker 05 That's the way I used to feel when my wife would ask me to help out around the house.
34:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, extreme grief.
34:48 Speaker 03 I think there's a few things with uh.
34:50 Speaker 05 I'm doing comedy. Do you know how hard that is? I have to pace around in my room for hours on end uninterrupted, otherwise no comedy will come out.
35:02 Speaker 03 But that's sort of, to have an N C T group that allows you to say crazy.
35:08 Speaker 05 Yeah.
35:09 Speaker 03 Not really okay, stuff like that is really, really healthy. I think it's a really great place.
35:14 Speaker 05 That's good. Yeah, as long as people don't judge you, I guess.
35:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, I know. And it sounds like now that I'm judging the other people, but I want to make it clear that I was also there. Sort of almost crying, talking about doing a sitcom script.
35:27 Speaker 05 Yeah.
35:27 Speaker 03 Um but yeah, sorry, I think what I was saying with that was that they, at some point, because there's a sort of playwright who leads it, um and yeah, she's amazing and does such a great job of kind of getting everyone to like talk about stuff and, you know, focus it as well. But she was asking, you know, how this might affect work or the work you make and does it affect you being a mother that you kind of want to write about that sort of stuff? And I realised listening to it that I don't feel like that at all. But I think that's because I'm like so new to the job, like it almost hasn't settled in. It's almost like I've just become a gymnast.
36:01 Speaker 05 Mm hmm.
36:02 Speaker 03 And people are like, what's it like on the beam? And I'm like, oh, fuck, I haven't even done that bit yet. I don't know. I just do pommel holes. I don't know. I'm just just trying to think of.
36:11 Adam Buxton? Yeah, it's only been six months.
36:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, and and it's so.
36:14 Adam Buxton? You're still the person that you were before, kind of.
36:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, totally.
36:18 Adam Buxton? What sort of environment did you grow up in? If you don't mind me asking, are you still friends with your parents? Are they still around?
36:25 Speaker 03 Yeah, I am. It's funny having a baby that makes you think relentlessly about your relationship with your parents and your own childhood, doesn't it? Um, yeah, they're great. They're great to be fair. They drive me crazy as well as they're totally great. I had a wonderful childhood. I also had quite an extreme thing happened when I was nine and they dealt so well with that, which was my dad had an extreme head injury.
36:47 Adam Buxton? Oh, no.
36:48 Speaker 03 And went to rehab for two years and then actually came out basically fine, just.
36:54 Adam Buxton? He was in an accident.
36:55 Speaker 03 He was in a big kind of beating you up in London accident.
36:58 Adam Buxton? No way.
37:00 Speaker 03 And that's why I know they did such an amazing job, because that time for my mum must have been, I mean, obviously. Brutal for my dad, but for my mum, just keeping that all afloat. I think that must have been really, really hard and I don't look at that time as being traumatic.
37:17 Adam Buxton? How old were you?
37:18 Speaker 03 I was nine and I had two years, a seven year old brother and a four year old brother. So, yeah, mad, awful.
37:26 Adam Buxton? Were you very frightened? Did you understand what had happened?
37:28 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think I initially found it really funny in that same way that. When I I was also nine, I think, when the Twin Towers collapsed.
37:37 Adam Buxton? Were you laughing it up?
37:38 Speaker 03 I found that hilarious. I think some of those things, you know, when you're told about them.
37:43 Adam Buxton? It's too mad to get your head around.
37:44 Speaker 03 Been in a major head trauma related accident. You go, oh, classic, me old dad anyway. You know, Simpsons on kind of thing. So, yeah, I found it really, really funny. And then as time went on. I think it was, it was really weird, because when we'd visit him in rehab, he was like a different person, at least for that first year. And stuff like, you have to do stuff in rehab, like. Painting cartoon characters to kind of get your motor skills back.
38:11 Adam Buxton? So he was there full time?
38:13 Speaker 03 He was, I think, I can't remember how long the full time was. But I'd say a year and then kind of living there for the second year, but would come home a lot.
38:20 Adam Buxton? Was his speech badly affected as well?
38:22 Speaker 03 Initially, and then then was actually fine, just slower to remember stuff. But it was like, it was like a personality change initially. And again, you know, it's gone back to, you know, pretty much normal.
38:34 Adam Buxton? Really?
38:34 Speaker 03 Think, yeah, by the grace of God.
38:36 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
38:37 Speaker 03 The thing I really remember was him doing a painting of Dumbo the elephant. And it was, to be fair to him, really high quality. It was just fantastic.
38:46 Adam Buxton? You're smashing it, Dad.
38:47 Speaker 03 Smashing it, but, you know, what the hell? And he shows it to you, he goes, look what I've done, kids. And we were like, wow, Daddy, that's amazing. And you're like, ugh.
38:59 Adam Buxton? This is the wrong way.
39:00 Speaker 03 This is the wrong way round. It's weird. But obviously that was great that he was getting those motor skills back. But kind of like I said, that's like a weird memory as opposed to a trauma memory. And I think that's got to be, thanks to my parents.
39:16 Adam Buxton? Yeah, so you obviously weren't a kind of anxious warrior. Otherwise, that kind of experience would have really thrown you for a loop.
39:23 Speaker 03 I think so. I don't think I'm very neurotic and that is, yeah. But I did realise quite early was going out with my current boyfriend, um, current boyfriend, current husband. I realised quite early on that if he wouldn't text me back at midnight, I'd sort of be like, oh, no, he's had a head injury. That became quite a quick assumption. But again, just being like, well, I'll find out in the morning and then we'll just do two years of rehab and work it out. So, yeah, not too bad.
39:50 Adam Buxton? Yeah, he'll do some drawings of Disney characters, maybe I can encourage him to do some abstract expressionism.
39:57 Speaker 03 Totally. I'll help him outline Pinocchio and fill in the, you know.
40:02 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
40:02 Speaker 03 Fill in the colours. So, yeah, so overall, very, very good suburbia, Woking. So, yeah, I had a, I had a really nice time growing up.
40:11 Adam Buxton? Born in the United States.
40:13 Speaker 03 I was born in the United States.
40:15 Adam Buxton? Whereabouts?
40:16 Speaker 03 New York City.
40:17 Adam Buxton? Oh, yeah.
40:18 Speaker 03 Manhattan.
40:18 Adam Buxton? Wow.
40:19 Speaker 03 And then I went to Germany from the ages of three to five. That was also because of that. And then Woking. New York, Dusseldorf, Woking.
40:27 Adam Buxton? Nice.
40:27 Speaker 03 Need it on a T-shirt.
40:29 Adam Buxton? Do you have any memories of those places?
40:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, lots of memories of Dusseldorf. And I could speak German, so I have memories of having these conversations in German. So that's weird, but then I didn't stay fluent, but I learnt it again later.
40:44 Adam Buxton? Do some German, go on, do it now.
40:45 Speaker 03 Also, kann ein bisschen Deutsch. Aber ich habe so viel vergessen. It's quite good, actually, that, isn't it? It's nice. It's like German newsreader tone, I think is so nice.
40:56 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
40:57 Speaker 03 Heute gibt es viele Probleme und, you know, you're like, oh, that's actually lovely, I think.
41:03 Adam Buxton? Well, it is.
41:04 Speaker 03 It's not so harsh.
41:05 Adam Buxton? Yeah, because obviously a lot of people's associations with the German language are not positive. Certainly for my parents' generation.
41:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's it, isn't it?
41:15 Adam Buxton? And they always used to go on about, oh, it's such an ugly language, it's so guttural. But actually, the way you you were doing it was good.
41:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, thank you very much.
41:23 Adam Buxton? And also I do like, you know, I love bands like Kraftwerk.
41:27 Speaker 03 Yes.
41:28 Adam Buxton? I love a lot of those, Can and Noy and.
41:30 Speaker 03 I got, I was really into German Skar as a teenager.
41:33 Adam Buxton? Really?
41:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's quite beautiful. Yeah, it's a lot, a lot of quite existential themes in German Skar.
41:40 Adam Buxton? Skar.
41:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
41:42 Adam Buxton? But you also speak good Spanish. Did you study Spanish?
41:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, so I think actually Dusseldorf is the reason behind this. I was always into languages, so then I went to uni and studied languages, French and Spanish. Spanish from scratch and I realised amongst my year of doing languages, almost everybody was either born bilingual. You know, had a bilingual parent or had a weird stint living in a different country. And I think that is the sort of unfairness of it, that if you get that time in a different country, your brain as a little child is just alter, it is just spongier to absorbing languages, I think. It became such an obvious thing that everyone had in common.
42:27 Speaker 03 And so, yeah, so I did French and German throughout school and then I dropped German and took up Spanish.
42:33 Adam Buxton? Is that something that you and Al will do, do you think? Move to a different country for a while while your child is young?
42:39 Speaker 03 Well, I think we're too selfish. I don't know, like, we're in London. I can't. I don't know what I'd do in a different country. Do you know what I mean? But maybe we should.
42:48 Adam Buxton? I think you should. Green light. That would be. Imagine all the experiences you'd have.
42:54 Speaker 03 Wow.
42:55 Adam Buxton? Saying that about children being able to absorb languages much easier when they're young is so true. And that is a superpower to have another language in your locker.
43:04 Speaker 03 God, but where the hell do we go? You really think we should go to?
43:07 Adam Buxton? But you can speak Spanish. Why don't you do a Susie Izzard and go and perform comedy in Europe? And and do, like you did a whole special in Spanish.
43:19 Speaker 03 I can't be bothered. I feel it is such effort doing that. It is such effort. Cause on my year abroad, I was in Mexico and I did a flipping hour of comedy monologues and it was excruciating. I just can't go back there, Adam. I can't do it. I I hear you, but I don't think I've got the energy.
43:40 Adam Buxton? What about just talking to the child in Spanish?
43:43 Speaker 03 Yes, I do do a bit of that anyway.
43:45 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
43:45 Speaker 03 Cause it's funny. Cause I've realised now he's six months, I can get him out of a tantrum by putting on a headscarf and speaking in a different language. Like it like I sort of kind of pretend to be like a babushka.
44:01 Adam Buxton? Sure.
44:02 Speaker 03 Basically. And we'll say in Spanish or something like he shouldn't cry.
44:06 Adam Buxton? Can you give me some babushka?
44:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. Well, first I might be like, I do start in English to not freak him out to.
44:12 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
44:12 Speaker 03 Hello, little baby. It's not good. Hello, little baby. But I'm wearing this headscarf. Por favor, no llores, bebesito, por favor. Like that.
44:22 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
44:23 Speaker 03 And it literally snaps him out. And then and then at the end I go bong, bong, bong, and he laughs.
44:29 Adam Buxton? What's the bong, bong, bong?
44:30 Speaker 03 It's ju- it's just like a punchline and he can feel it's a punchline as well.
44:33 Adam Buxton? It's classic stuff.
44:34 Speaker 03 It gets him every time. And I also sometimes wave this, um, there's these classes called baby sensory and you pay them loads of money and they just wave uh, fabric in their face, basically.
44:44 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
44:45 Speaker 03 So I often go, welcome to baby sensory. This is five pounds fifty. Bong, bong, bong. And he always laughs. So so that's that's been great. And it's a good way of bringing in language to
44:57 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
44:57 Speaker 03 to a baby's life, I suppose.
44:59 Adam Buxton? Uh, that was quite spooky because my mum was Chilean. So
45:02 Speaker 03 Oh, wow.
45:03 Adam Buxton? I had my youngest memories are of her talking to me in Spanish, but then she stopped when she moved to the UK.
45:09 Speaker 03 Well, when did she move to the UK then?
45:11 Adam Buxton? Um, well, actually, she she had moved to the UK and and started speaking Spanish to us. But then, I've told this story so many times, but then, but then. Was told by all the friends of her and my dad that, oh, no, you're gonna confuse them.
45:28 Speaker 03 Well, you know what? This is, you you probably know this, but this is the thing about bilingual kids, that if you raise a child totally bilingual. Their development is slower.
45:38 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
45:38 Speaker 03 Until the age of about seven, and then they suddenly shoot up past every other kid.
45:44 Adam Buxton? Right.
45:44 Speaker 03 And they're the genius kids. But you do have to, as the parent, I think this is really genuinely very difficult. Put up for four, five, six, these ages of the kid being like, wait, what? Literally talking in the wrong language all the time and being really slow at learning spelling and grammar and just. Actually been totally out of kilter because they've got too much going on.
46:04 Adam Buxton? Yes.
46:05 Speaker 03 Then they get to seven, you've got yourself a flipping kid and a half.
46:09 Adam Buxton? It's all, it's all a series of gambles bringing up children, isn't it? Because it's like. You're taking the gamble that they won't be residually screwed up by the experience of being. Slower than their classmates and things like that, and that they won't absorb some sense of insecurity or. Insufficiency, and you're hoping that it'll all be resolved a bit later on. I mean. I'd say take the gamble. Children are fairly resilient.
46:36 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think take the gamble, but the problem is I'm not actually native. I'm not a native speaker. So I think I'd rather just interest him. I'd rather get him curious in. Other sounds, other cultures, other ways of saying things.
46:50 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
46:50 Speaker 03 Rather than necessarily being like. Hello, I'm your mom and we're randomly gonna speak Spanish for the next eighteen bloody years. I just think that would affect me, that would affect my mental health in drastic ways.
47:03 Adam Buxton? Or just do the accent.
47:06 Speaker 03 No, when he was big with me, we'd be like this, okay.
47:11 Adam Buxton? That would be quite funny if he grew up just with an accent.
47:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, whatever he speaks.
47:16 Adam Buxton? He can't actually speak Spanish.
47:17 Speaker 03 He's, hi dad, hey mom, how the hell you doing, you good, you okay? No, it wouldn't work. Would you, did your mom call you, you know, Adam Bookston?
47:26 Adam Buxton? Adamcito.
47:27 Speaker 03 Adamcito, Bookstoncito.
47:29 Adam Buxton? And there was little bits of vocab, like I had a blanket that I used to kind of sniff every night.
47:37 Speaker 03 Yes.
47:37 Adam Buxton? And that was mi almohada.
47:39 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
47:40 Adam Buxton? And so there was things like that, you know.
47:43 Speaker 03 It's actually gorgeous Chilean Spanish.
47:45 Adam Buxton? Hmm.
47:45 Speaker 03 It's really like, sorry, sorry to any Chileans listening, but it's got this like rinky dinkness to it. Do you know what I mean? Like, I went on my honeymoon in Chile and in the pharmacy, it's like, like it's got this, this sort of smallness to it. Do you know what I mean?
48:02 Adam Buxton? I think I do, a kind of musical.
48:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. So it'd be like, por favor, um, quiero para setemor, ah, para setemorcito.
48:09 Adam Buxton? Yes.
48:10 Speaker 03 Yeah, do you know what I mean?
48:11 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you did it very well then. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
48:14 Speaker 03 Oh, I love it. I love it, love it, love it.
48:16 Adam Buxton? Like robot language.
48:17 Speaker 03 Yeah.
48:20 Speaker 03 Yeah.
48:20 Adam Buxton? Yeah, that's true.
48:21 Speaker 03 Do you speak Spanish?
48:22 Adam Buxton? No, not really. I mean, I do think that, you know, I can get by.
48:26 Speaker 03 Yeah, well, that's great.
48:27 Adam Buxton? In a conversation, but I would love to live in Spain or somewhere like that.
48:31 Speaker 03 The horrible thing about languages, the horrible unbearable truth is that if you speak another language and not completely natively, you're just good at it or you're almost fluent or whatever, you live eternally with guilt that it's not as good as it can be. It's like having been a bodybuilder as a teenager and your muscles are always wasting away. And you just feel all the time embarrassed about the level you're at. But it's so sad because you should feel good about it.
49:01 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
49:01 Speaker 03 But I'm pretty sure this is a thing, it just.
49:04 Adam Buxton? I think I could get over that.
49:05 Speaker 03 Colombian neighbours and the guilt I feel every day.
49:08 Adam Buxton? Oh, really? Why? Because you think they're judging you?
49:10 Speaker 03 I just feel so embarrassed when, because they always speak to me in Spanish and say, how's Thomas doing? And I'll basically say the equivalent of Thomas is pretty good. Wow, crazy, day day, bye. You know, you're like, oh, God, oh, God. That was awful. That was awful.
49:25 Adam Buxton? Because that's not the way anyone thinks. Like, if a foreign person is speaking to you and they're trying to do English, even if the English is like pretty ropey.
49:34 Speaker 03 Yeah.
49:34 Adam Buxton? You're just impressed. You're like, yeah, go for it, you know.
49:36 Speaker 03 That's probably true. Is that completely true?
49:40 Adam Buxton? Not everyone is as great as I am.
49:41 Speaker 03 Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
49:43 Adam Buxton? Some people can be intolerant and go, you know, like, you can't speak English properly, but but they're dicks. And the thing is that like someone making an effort to speak another language, you're just, as far as I can tell, and I think most people.
49:56 Speaker 03 True, yeah.
49:57 Adam Buxton? You give them a break. You're not like, your English is crap.
50:00 Speaker 03 Yeah, exactly, yeah.
50:02 Adam Buxton? You know, you're like, yeah, I know what you mean.
50:04 Speaker 03 Especially when they're doing a pretty good job.
50:06 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
50:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
50:07 Adam Buxton? And especially if you wouldn't even be able to say a single word in their language.
50:12 Speaker 03 Totally, totally. No, you're right. You're right. Just got to give ourselves a break and be like, you know, keep trucking.
50:18 Adam Buxton? What are you gonna do about social media?
50:19 Speaker 03 What do you mean?
50:20 Adam Buxton? With your kids.
50:21 Speaker 03 Oh, actually, I have a really clear answer.
50:23 Adam Buxton? Oh, yeah.
50:24 Speaker 03 I actually spoke to my husband. I sort of woke up, you know, almost like woke up like someone coming out of their coffin from the dead going, Christ, we need to talk about social media and the baby. Right, this is what I'm thinking, okay? Firstly, we're not allowed to go on social media in front of the baby.
50:40 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
50:40 Speaker 03 We can go on WhatsApp, can go on text, that's just part of life, not sure what to do about that. But not making something like Instagram look normal. That's us. Right, the second thing is, he will not be allowed to go on social media till he's sixteen. Then, when he's sixteen, he can opt in. Those are just the rules, and I'm not gonna bend on it. The second thing is, I have already bought a desktop computer. There will be no laptops in the house for this baby, no iPads. If you want to go on the internet, that is completely fine. It's in the living room and it's on a desk.
51:18 Adam Buxton? And there's CCTV recording everything you're doing.
51:21 Speaker 03 There's no CCTV.
51:24 Speaker 03 But if you disobey me, I will come down on you like a ton of bricks. So look, I'm obviously sounding too harsh. I was, that's something I should have mentioned about my childhood. My dad was actually pretty strict. He would often say, I'm gonna come down on you like a ton of bricks.
51:38 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
51:38 Speaker 03 Mean it, really. So, yeah, uh, look, we'll see. This might not all work out at all. But I want to be quite strict about it, actually. I think it's a serious, huge, massive problem. I, I think I wanna find the balance between keeping him safe and him being too much like Marcus from About a Boy. You know, like, I'm already dressing him in a way that I don't think is fair on him. So I've just gotta, yeah, try and balance it, but I really, I actually do mean it when I say I think I'm gonna try and be pretty strict. Do you think? Were you strict?
52:13 Adam Buxton? No.
52:14 Speaker 03 Oh, god.
52:15 Adam Buxton? I wasn't.
52:15 Speaker 03 I shouldn't be strict, should I?
52:16 Adam Buxton? Of cour-, I think you should be strict. I think your parents, from my reading, were possibly a little bit like mine in that they were fairly conservative.
52:25 Speaker 03 Yes, yeah.
52:27 Adam Buxton? My parents were superficially strict, but they just didn't have the will to stick with it, really. So we ended up getting away with murder.
52:35 Speaker 03 Well, kind of me-, you know, it made me quite a good liar, so that is the problem as well. It doesn't actually sort it out. They were saying the other day, god, you were so great as a teenager. You just weren't no issues at all. And I remember being like, god, I'm so great at lying. You know, not to be like I was this bad kid, but I had some pretty fun times.
52:55 Adam Buxton? Right.
52:55 Speaker 03 Yeah.
52:57 Adam Buxton? I think I was the same. It wasn't lying, so like, I wouldn't lie, I don't think.
53:00 Speaker 03 No.
53:01 Adam Buxton? But I was, well, once I was described in a school report as sly and underhand.
53:06 Speaker 03 Yes.
53:08 Speaker 03 That's great. Your teacher saw that.
53:10 Adam Buxton? And I was like, oh, yeah, that's true, isn't it?
53:12 Speaker 03 Yeah.
53:13 Adam Buxton? I had that skill.
53:14 Speaker 03 Yeah.
53:14 Adam Buxton? Of just being able to keep things from my parents.
53:17 Speaker 03 I've forgotten how this was put, but my German teacher once sort of accused me in quite an emotional way of taking the piss.
53:23 Adam Buxton? Right.
53:24 Speaker 03 You know, and that was fair enough. I feel really bad about that, actually. But, yeah, and, and when I was a teenager, there's only so many times you're sleeping over at Charlotte's house. Do you know what I mean? It's just a lot of using those excuses to get away with the stuff. But at least that stuff was in person, not on, I don't know, Instagram.
53:44 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
53:45 Speaker 03 Meeting up with, I don't, I don't even know what I'm talking about. I wish all the kids luck.
53:50 Adam Buxton? Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think the answer is just to keep chatting, have those family suppers.
53:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, are your kids okay? Do they seem all right?
53:58 Adam Buxton? Think so, but I mean, I don't know.
54:01 Speaker 03 Yeah.
54:01 Adam Buxton? Because they're probably very sly and underhand.
54:03 Speaker 03 Yes, yeah, and good for them, you know?
54:06 Adam Buxton? They are, they're great. I mean, we didn't send them away to a boarding school, which is one big difference.
54:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, you idiots, you should have.
54:13 Adam Buxton? Um, yeah, we would have had way more free time, but um.
54:17 Speaker 03 I can't, that is just.
54:19 Adam Buxton? So I do think that the relationship we have with them is perhaps a little closer. It's quite different to the one I had with my parents.
54:26 Speaker 03 Oh, you went to a boarding school?
54:27 Adam Buxton? Yeah, I did.
54:28 Speaker 03 Right, right, right, yeah, yeah.
54:29 Adam Buxton? Uh, there was some good things about it, but I do think my relationship with my parents suffered.
54:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, I bet.
54:34 Adam Buxton? And it was never, I feel like I have a closer relationship with my children. I saw an interview that you did with The Telegraph.
55:18 Speaker 03 Yes, I shouldn't speak to The Telegraph, should I?
55:21 Adam Buxton? I mean, the thing is about The Telegraph, I think they take comedy quite seriously, like they're quite good at.
55:27 Speaker 03 True, yeah.
55:28 Adam Buxton? They write about it quite well.
55:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, completely.
55:30 Adam Buxton? In your interview, they obviously, you know, Telegraph, Times, et cetera. They love any kind of woke, uh, identity politics, they're, they're so. They know their readers are so wound up by all that stuff, so they really love to chat about it.
55:48 Speaker 03 Moth to a flame, that's an idiom I do know.
55:50 Adam Buxton? Okay, I mean, you know, hold my hand up.
55:54 Speaker 03 Mm hmm.
55:54 Adam Buxton? I'm kind of the same sometimes as well. I find all that culture war stuff sort of interesting, but. You were saying, they were asking you like, well, what's the deal with doing character based comedy? Is that okay? Just appropriating characters?
56:10 Speaker 03 Yeah.
56:10 Adam Buxton? Do you get into trouble with that? And I was like, oh, I've never heard anyone being worried about that before.
56:15 Speaker 03 God, yeah.
56:16 Adam Buxton? Is that a thing to be worried about?
56:17 Speaker 03 You know what? My honest answer to that, I think it is a very legitimate thing to be worried about. I think eh the more this conversation on identity and eh, you know, as an actor, what you can portray and what you can't, according to who you are, or your experience, or your ethnicity or something. I I think there is definitely something in the conversation. It is a really important thing to think about and maybe important to worry about. I'm not actually sure what I said in that interview, but my view on it is you just have to be, you have to be thoughtful. And that actually should apply to comedy full stop, shouldn't it? Like, you know, if you're writing,
56:59 Speaker 03 let's say a new show and you've got a joke that you know is cheap or off colour, that's gonna go out. And actually, character just needs to be the same. And I think you need to consider where you're coming from and what the joke of the character actually is. Basically, if you're punching down, really.
57:16 Adam Buxton? Hmm.
57:16 Speaker 03 And I think if you are punching down, which there was comedy that was punching down.
57:21 Adam Buxton? I've always had a problem with the punching down system though.
57:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, right.
57:25 Adam Buxton? Because there's so many ways that it cannot, there's so many different forms of power dynamics that exist, right?
57:31 Speaker 03 Yeah, totally.
57:32 Adam Buxton? Not just about identity, but can also be about so many different forms of status.
57:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
57:39 Adam Buxton? Um.
57:39 Speaker 03 And and that's actually what I mean as well. I think it would be lazy to even see, well, when I say punching down, I mean just between the classes. Or man to woman or something like that. It's it's, ah, there's just so many subtleties in it, I think. And you can see when you watch any character comedy that you think is any good. It's it's because the person has thought about it. They've constructed something that feels truly three D, that feels very real, that is made with love, that has all the grey shades and doesn't have a kind of black and white thing that could get you in a place of either in trouble or feeling like you're in trouble, that you shouldn't really be doing this. So I don't know if that is an answer to it, but basically I think it's a, I think it is a real issue to think about.
58:25 Speaker 03 Mixed with it can be done.
58:26 Adam Buxton? I mean, I basically just in a more circuitous way, asked you exactly the same question that the Telegraph did. While blaming them for asking you a cheap question like that.
58:36 Speaker 03 No, I it's it's good. I think also though, because my husband is also a comedian and also kind of is more a comedy actor. We talk about this stuff all the time. It's kind of really on the forefront of our our minds, just kind of. But you know, you wanna make sure you're doing an ethical job, I think.
58:58 Adam Buxton? Because with my Telegraph hat on, do you like my Telegraph hat?
59:01 Speaker 03 It's lovely.
59:01 Adam Buxton? Thank you. I guess you sort of think, well, that's a dead end then for any kind of acting, like what accents can you do the accent of someone from a different class?
59:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
59:13 Adam Buxton? Can you, if it's all gonna boil down to sort of power relations.
59:17 Speaker 03 Yeah.
59:18 Adam Buxton? And be measured in that way.
59:19 Speaker 03 Sure.
59:20 Adam Buxton? Then there's not that much you can really do. I I think fundamentally it's got to come from somewhere that isn't just a a place of contempt, I suppose.
59:32 Speaker 03 That's it, that's it, exactly. It's got to come from truth and love and studying something, not just pulling it out of your ass. And
59:43 Adam Buxton? Although.
59:43 Speaker 03 Although, how about this?
59:48 Adam Buxton? Been pulled out of someone's ass.
59:50 Speaker 03 I guess you you can pull it out of your ass. What am I trying to say? I think I think understanding why it's funny. It is also subtle though, isn't it? Like I saw the new Alan Partridge show yesterday at the screening and there's so many moments that you'd say, oh, well, that's really edgy. But it, they've thought about it. They've picked the right stuff. They've. It's like a comedy sieve and you've got to push all your stuff through the sieve. And and refine it and and no, I I had wrote this joke recently about periods and when I I sort of realised, oh my god, that's like. I've actually written a really misogynistic joke there. And you just you either take it out or you refine it or you put it in a different way and you go, ah, this is what I wanna say.
1:00:36 Speaker 03 It's kind of about. I don't wanna say it's about being clever, but it is a bit, isn't it? It's about kind of focusing.
1:00:42 Adam Buxton? Thinking a little bit further.
1:00:43 Speaker 03 Yeah, thinking about detail, thinking about what stuff means, what, you know, what are the implications of what you're saying? And if you're thinking about the implications, both for the laugh and what it means about the person you're portraying. Then I think it's gonna be okay.
1:00:56 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:00:57 Speaker 03 And also we can make mistakes, maybe.
1:00:59 Adam Buxton? Sure, yes, that's the thing. I think I think it's like. I wish people would think the best of other people rather than immediately assuming like you. Fucking bigot, you know what I mean? You're like, well, what else have they done? And what con- is this part of a pattern of? Bigoted stuff that they're doing, or is this they've just slipped up?
1:01:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, and you know what? It's actually making me think, because also some people can be offended by stuff and that is. Uh, you know, they're entitled to feel offended, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't be doing the thing full stop. Had quite an interesting experience years ago now. I had this thing in my show, I think this was twenty sixteen. And I think it could be said that I might not do this anymore, but it was a character who was talking about her. You know, like drug addiction, basically. But then she just goes through cowpaw, paracetamol, whatever. It's a right kind of a cheap little bit like that. And this woman spoke to me afterwards and was like, that was really, really disgusting.
1:01:58 Adam Buxton? Oh, why?
1:01:59 Speaker 03 And because, you know, it was making light of drug addiction.
1:02:03 Adam Buxton? Okay.
1:02:03 Speaker 03 Um. Uh, you know, I think it was a really, my stupid joke. I it was in like a character as well, but it's like. It goes from cowpaw to like Vicks Vapourer and I maybe go through forty different things like that.
1:02:16 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:02:17 Speaker 03 So it's really silly and whatever. But when she spoke to me at the end, I was like, well, to be fair. She's got a point and also what, you know, who knows what her experience is with the whole thing? Am I gonna keep doing that bit? Yeah, to be honest.
1:02:32 Adam Buxton? I mean, the thing is. How many other people, you know, that's sad that she felt that. And that she was worried by that. But at the same time, how many other people are gonna watch that bit? And think that you are genuinely making some commentary on what it's really like to be addicted to.
1:02:51 Speaker 03 Do you know what I mean? Calpol, come on. So, yeah, I do, I do feel like I lis-, I heard her out as well and was like, oh, well, thank you for speaking to me. I'm definitely gonna think about it. And I think I did think about it and I came to the conclusion that I was gonna continue.
1:03:07 Adam Buxton? Yes.
1:03:08 Speaker 03 Um, but like I said, who, who knows, maybe I, I wouldn't do a. It, I don't know. I think it's just always got to be a moving, comedy's got to be a moving thing.
1:03:16 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah.
1:03:17 Speaker 03 But, um, yeah, I just don't want us to be too scared by it.
1:03:20 Adam Buxton? Are you, have you done stuff in America?
1:03:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, I have actually.
1:03:24 Adam Buxton? Have you, have you been doing things recently?
1:03:26 Speaker 03 I think I last performed on stage in America two years ago or something. Um, yeah, I've done the kind of, I'd almost say the equivalent kind of places that I gig at in London in America.
1:03:39 Adam Buxton? Are you someone who considers success in America to be the kind of pinnacle of entertainment business success?
1:03:47 Speaker 03 Hmm, that, my answer to that question is twofold. Yes, in terms of, I think, I would describe other people's success like that. Like, it's almost like Olivia Colman's, you can say she's so successful now because she's known in America or she won an Oscar. I think in terms of myself, that country terrifies me. And I love living in North London. And I slightly feel like I've got, oh, no, I hate to say, I hate to say this because it's, it will sound fake. But I do slightly secretly feel like I've got everything I've ever wanted.
1:04:25 Adam Buxton? Fake.
1:04:26 Speaker 03 Fake.
1:04:27 Adam Buxton? Bullshit.
1:04:28 Speaker 03 Bullshit, nasty little.
1:04:30 Adam Buxton? Lucky you.
1:04:31 Speaker 03 Bitch. Phony bitch.
1:04:34 Adam Buxton? Social media, that's my social media voice in my head always.
1:04:37 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:04:38 Adam Buxton? Responding to things like that.
1:04:39 Speaker 03 I think.
1:04:39 Adam Buxton? No, that's nice. That's nice to feel like you can appreciate that.
1:04:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, I just, I really like my job. I love my job. And I think, uh, the tricky thing is when you're not working, you always want the next opportunity. So of course that could be anything, you know, if, if it was an American opportunity, it wouldn't be like. Oh, but I don't need that, you know, I want to work, I want to keep on working and making stuff and whatever. But, uh.
1:05:02 Adam Buxton? If they did like an American version of Stafflet's Flats.
1:05:06 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:05:07 Adam Buxton? That was obviously gonna be a pile of shit.
1:05:09 Speaker 03 Yeah.
1:05:10 Adam Buxton? Would you just go along and do it anyway?
1:05:11 Speaker 03 Gleam rents apartments.
1:05:13 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:05:13 Speaker 03 Would I go and do it?
1:05:14 Adam Buxton? Yeah, just because it's like a job in America.
1:05:17 Speaker 03 Oh god, that's a great question. It depen- yeah, I suppose it would depend, it would depend what my bank account looks like, I suppose. And so in thi- yeah. Yeah.
1:05:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's a really hard one though. I don't know, depends on the thing, but yeah, probably, why not? I think I'm really up for experiences. I love um doing stuff for the, to see what it's like.
1:05:41 Adam Buxton? Hmm.
1:05:41 Speaker 03 Like when I went on tour with Alan Partridge, when I went on the Alan Partridge Stadium Tour, I super did that on purpose.
1:05:50 Adam Buxton? When was it that you did that?
1:05:51 Speaker 03 That was three years ago now, I think. So what's that, twenty twenty two? I completely did that because I was like, what, I'm gonna be on a tour bus with Coogan, some dancers, and be performing at like the Newcastle Arena.
1:06:07 Adam Buxton? And then you found out that Steve only travels in a private Rolls Royce.
1:06:10 Speaker 03 No, but.
1:06:10 Adam Buxton? Behind the bus.
1:06:11 Speaker 03 He often was in the bus. It was so funny. It honestly, it was hilarious. He was in the bus thirty percent of the time.
1:06:19 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:06:20 Speaker 03 I couldn't believe it. It was ridiculous.
1:06:22 Adam Buxton? Being funny?
1:06:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'd say showboating.
1:06:25 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:06:26 Speaker 03 With, you know, showboating and sometimes being very funny, but you can wind him up as well, you know, you can sort of, like, it was a lot of winding up Steve in a bus.
1:06:35 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:06:35 Speaker 03 And then, you know, yeah, him complaining about like Jackie Chan's earnings.
1:06:42 Adam Buxton? Okay.
1:06:44 Speaker 03 Yeah, it was great. I can't even remember, like two random ass characters. Some woman that he interviews in the first half, then a kind of drunken member of the audience in the second half. I really loved it, but I think there was some, we ran out of time, I think, with some of the, what those characters were doing, basically is what I'm saying. But as an experience, it was exactly what I'd hoped it would be, which was nuts.
1:07:08 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:07:08 Speaker 03 It was great. And, and those, I think when you get to do a job that's weird, surely just that thing of going, okay, what will this be like to experience as opposed to where will this get me?
1:07:20 Adam Buxton? Yeah. What are your memories then of that tour?
1:07:23 Speaker 03 One of my favourite moments was in the bottom was, so the bus was a tour bus like Spice World, right? Oh yeah. So literally a fricking tour bus. So you've got all these bunk beds up top with this um kind of movie theatre in it. Wow. Yeah, and we've got eight, eight or nine dancers. And then me, the kind of assistant producer, the tour manager and Steve sometimes. And downstairs, you've got these little booths on the tour bus and this kind of kitchen area. The kitchen is like stocked with all different, you know, whatever, drink and non-alcoholic booze, loads of proper booze, whatever. And so um we're on one of these journeys. What you'd do as well, you'd finish at a stadium. So let's say Glasgow.
1:08:08 Speaker 03 You rap at Glasgow and then for some reason, I think this is how all tours work, but it's bizarre. So once you rap in Glasgow, you know, Steve takes off, Alan Partridge, you all get in your normal clothes. You jump on the bus and you drive all night to Bournemouth. Isn't that a weird way of doing stuff? And I think it's to just save money on hotels. So you just drive for twelve hours. And there was this one night where Steve was like really sitting in the downstairs kind of area. And the assistant producer was talking about how he used to be a bodybuilder. And was something like the most successful teenage bodybuilder on the Isle of Sheppes. Uh huh. Like twenty years ago. Yeah.
1:08:51 Speaker 03 And Steve starts scrolling his phone like mental. And he's, he's literally going crazy on his phone. I was like, Steve, what are you doing? And he goes, I've got to find something more masculine than that. What? And he takes ages, he takes ten minutes. And eventually Steve showed me a video of himself jumping off a cliff.
1:09:12 Speaker 03 Into the sea. He goes, how about that? I was like, I think the teenage bodybuilder in the Isle of Sheppes is like a lot better than that. And he stormed off. Oh my god, I loved it. Um, and then a a moment I loved also from the tour, so the dancers who were wicked, actually, I've never really, have you worked with dancers before?
1:09:32 Adam Buxton? No.
1:09:32 Speaker 03 Their thing is they absorb choreography like they are genies in bottles. They're just unbelievable. It's incredible to watch. But they're not super invested in comedy, so they kind of thought that Alan Partridge was Steve.
1:09:46 Adam Buxton? Right.
1:09:46 Speaker 03 They couldn't, you know.
1:09:48 Adam Buxton? Well, that's an easy mistake to make.
1:09:49 Speaker 03 It is an easy, yeah, and they they the whole time were just like, this show kind of sucks ass. It doesn't make any sense. And then we did our first night in Belfast to like, I think it was eight thousand people and they all laughed when they should laugh. And the dancers were freaked out by it because they actually had never realised they were in a comedy show.
1:10:07 Adam Buxton? They thought he was a real third rate washed up TV presenter.
1:10:10 Speaker 03 And they were like, this guy sucks, bless him. Obviously, if he's got money to book dancers, we'll do it. But really, we feel sorry for the bloke. It's miserable. Then when he's wearing the wig and the dress, they're like, okay. And I think I was still trying, I was like, trying to explain to them like, it's like this comedy character he does. But again, it's just different worlds. It's like them saying to me, oh, we're about to do a flip and a chasse. And I'm like, I don't know what you mean. So anyway, so Belfast freaks them out. And then they're like, wait, what is going on here? And that's when I was like, I've been trying to tell you, he's like a comedian. This isn't like a real thing. And we went into the movie theatre bit of the sort of upper deck of the tour bus. And Alpha Papa was on one of the like Netflix things.
1:10:55 Adam Buxton? My wife's favourite film.
1:10:56 Speaker 03 Right. It's brilliant, hilarious movie. And we turn it on and it was, it was just like they were kind of freaked out by it, like almost it gave them the ick and they had to turn it off after ten minutes.
1:11:10 Adam Buxton? For those unfamiliar, this is the Alan Partridge movie.
1:11:13 Speaker 03 The Alan Partridge movie. And then suddenly this guy that they're doing the show, he's suddenly this character in the movie.
1:11:20 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:11:21 Speaker 03 And they they really just, they were like, we can't even stomach that. What the hell is going on? And now we're stuck on this bus, driving from Glasgow to Bournemouth. How do we escape this fucking shit? And they they turned on Fifty Shades of Grey and kind of never talked about it again.
1:11:45 Speaker 05 This is an ad for Squarespace. Okay, we'll return to the AI apocalypse in just a wee wee moment, but first I wanted to talk about Squarespace. Do you know about Squarespace, Steve? Uh, yes, Monty. I think I might even be a little bit more tuned into modern tech, websites, et cetera, than you. I don't know, just guessing. Oh, Steve, I love this dynamic. I'm old and conservative and you're young and progressive and that's what makes the Newswind podcast such great listening. But yes, you're right. I must admit, I didn't know much about Squarespace. But because my new grumble book, Hell in a Handcart, is out this month. And I look forward to getting enraged by that. So I should hope.
1:12:20 Speaker 05 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/buxton 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 BUXTON at checkout. Right, well, maybe I'll visit squarespace.com/buxton and start a new website just to refute all the nonsense in your new book. Oh, don't do that, Steve.
1:13:05 Speaker 05 I will. Oh, shut up, Steve. Uh, shut up. Now, back to more depressing matters on Newswind.
1:13:13 Speaker 04 Continue.
1:13:24 Adam Buxton? Hey, welcome back, podcast. That was Emma Sidde talking to me there. It was really good to meet Emma. I really enjoyed talking to her and I'm very grateful to her for giving up her time and also to Rose Matafeo for providing a venue for our chat. Thank you, Rose. I didn't actually see her that day. But I really liked your house. It was just right. Thank you. Well, I'm not going to wang on too much today, but I did just want to mention that I've put up some jingles from the podcast on my website, adam-buxton.co.uk.
1:13:57 Adam Buxton? And what you do is you go up to the top and I think one of the headings is podcast and there's a dropdown menu and it says jingles and you go there and you will find a selection of some of my favourite jingles from this podcast from over the years. The podcast is 10 years old now, do you realise? I'm not big into anniversaries. Just ask my wife. Um, so I'm not going on about the milestone, but um, people every now and again say, oh, I wish I could find some of your jingles and just listen to them individually. So I hope you will find some of your favourite jingles have now been archived on my blog
1:14:41 Adam Buxton? for your listening pleasure. All right, that's it for this week. Thanks again for checking out the album if you have. Don't forget to look at some of those live dates coming up. There's the Mannington Book Bash where I'm going to be talking about my own book and interviewing Nigel Planer. And then there's those dates in October, Wimbledon Literature Festival with Samira Ahmed, the Adam Buxton Band playing at the Art Centre in Norwich for a couple of nights and also a big show at the Royal Festival Hall towards the end of October. You'll find details on my website in the events section. Thanks very much once again to Emma City. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for all his invaluable production
1:15:26 Adam Buxton? support. Thanks to everyone at Acast for liaising with my sponsors. Thanks to Helen Green. She does the artwork for the podcast. But thanks most of all to you for coming back. How about a creepy sofa hug? Come here, hee hee. Good to see you. Hope you enjoyed hanging out in the kitchen for a change.
1:15:47 Speaker 02 I certainly did.
1:15:49 Adam Buxton? Until the next time we meet, please go carefully and for what it's worth, I love you. Now, are we going to go for the full shout in the house? There's only the boys here today, so let's do it.
1:16:13 Speaker 06 My god, scared the shit out of me.
1:16:15 Adam Buxton? Sorry, I was doing the bye for the podcast.
1:16:18 Speaker 06 Yeah. Oh, I thought we were robbed.
1:16:21 Adam Buxton? I'm very sorry that I scared you, Natty.
1:16:24 Speaker 06 That's fine, it was just a shock.
1:16:26 Adam Buxton? By the way, this is Nat, who is the star of Pizza Time.
1:16:31 Speaker 06 Hello.
1:16:31 Adam Buxton? Is that appropriate to say, the star? Well, it was written about you. How do you feel about that invasion of your privacy? Humiliating, something that you feel has created a wedge between us?
1:16:43 Speaker 06 No, I think it's, I think it's completely untrue.
1:16:46 Adam Buxton? Untrue?
1:16:47 Speaker 06 Well, exaggerated, over exaggerated.
1:16:49 Adam Buxton? What, that you only ate pizza for a long period of your teenage years?
1:16:54 Speaker 06 I mean, every teenager has his pizza. I had, I had the teenager amount of pizza.
1:16:59 Adam Buxton? No.
1:16:59 Speaker 06 And I never took beer that was not mine.
1:17:02 Adam Buxton? Yes, you did, you did.
1:17:04 Speaker 06 Communal beer, maybe, but.
1:17:05 Adam Buxton? Communal beer. Who else drank beer at that point? It was just me.
1:17:10 Speaker 06 Maybe you then, that's the problem. Maybe it's you drinking that beer and then you're just forgetting that you drank it.
1:17:14 Adam Buxton? The point was, as the lyric states, it was my beer. You're stealing all my beer. It was my, mine, me, mine, mine, mine, mine. And it was like, you were too young to be having all the beer anyway.
1:17:28 Speaker 06 How old was I?
1:17:29 Adam Buxton? I don't know.
1:17:30 Speaker 06 Eighteen?
1:17:32 Adam Buxton? Were you eighteen, maybe?
1:17:33 Speaker 06 Yeah, drinking age, yeah.
1:17:35 Adam Buxton? Wow, it was mine.
1:17:37 Speaker 06 Yeah, well, I, I apologize.
1:17:39 Adam Buxton? No, that's okay. You don't need to apologize. I got a song out of it.
1:17:42 Speaker 06 Yeah, that's pretty good. And I don't do it anymore, so you got a song and I no longer do it, so.
1:17:47 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
1:17:47 Speaker 06 Pretty good.
1:17:48 Adam Buxton? And it's a classic song.
1:17:49 Speaker 06 Right, charts.
1:17:51 Adam Buxton? I mean, maybe not charts, although the album has been in the charts, so.
1:17:55 Speaker 06 Times, yeah.
1:17:56 Adam Buxton? Technically, it's a, a chart hit.
1:17:58 Speaker 06 Yeah.
1:17:59 Adam Buxton? Anyway, thank you.
1:18:01 Speaker 06 That's okay, anytime.
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