Pod Insights THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST EP.272 - BRIDGET CHRISTIE & ALICE BOYD LIVE @ BRISTOL - BEACON THEATRE, 2024 About this episode Adam talks with comedian, actor and writer Bridget Christie in front of a live audience at the Bristol Beacon about the joys of jogging, enlightenment in middle age, why Ken Dodd is not creepy, the rewards of being single, and what happens when teenagers start leaving home. Plus live music from UK-based sound artist, composer and field recordist Alice Boyd.
Thanks to Crosstown promotions and the live podcast crew especially Richard Walsh, Mike Thompson, Ben Saunders, Analisa Lembo, Séamus Murphy Mitchell and Frank Buxton.
Conversation and music recorded on 24 May, 2024
Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/
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THE ADAM BUXTON BAND MAY 2026 TOUR https://linktr.ee/theadambuxtonband
BUG BOWIE SPECIAL @ THE LIGHTROOM https://lightroom.uk/whats-on/bowie-nights-adam-buxton-presents-bug-bowie-special/ 17 June, 2-4 July, 2026
ADAM BUXTON PODCAST LIVE WITH MAWAAN RIZWAAN https://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/adam-buxton-podcast-cf/ @ The Roundhouse, 5 April, 2026
RETURN OF THE WHITE TAILED EAGLE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1_nHOmci3o by Alice Boyd - 2025 (YouTube)
ALICE BOYD - SHIFTING SOUNDSCAPES https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0020xm2 - 2024 (BBC Sounds)
ALICE BOYD LIVE IN WARSAW https://www.aliceboyd.info/projects/shifting-soundscapes-live - 2026 (YouTube)
KEN DODD AND BESSIE BRADDOCK STATUE https://www.flickr.com/photos/71592768@N08/9496156547 photo by David Rostance (flickr)
A LOOK INSIDE BOWIE - YOU ARE NOT ALONE https://www.instagram.com/reels/DXgw8MBjixB/ @ The Lightroom (Instagram)
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Adam Buxton? I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk. Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke. My name is Adam Buckston. I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this. That's the plan. Hey, how are you doing, podcast? It's Adam Buckston here on a beautiful morning. Maybe it's even a bit summery.
0:41 Adam Buxton? I mean, I appreciate that by five o'clock it might be snowing, but it's nice right now. I'm wearing shorts and I'm here with my best dog friend, Rosie. How are you doing, Rosie? Don't patronise me, please. Sorry. Hey, thanks to everyone who came out to the Brighton and Margate shows and indeed, by the time you hear this, the Buckston Show. That's where I'm heading tonight. After I record this, I'm going to cycle to the station, get on the train and head up to Buckston. And then we're in Manchester and Leicester on Monday and Tuesday night. And then that's it for our band commitments for a little while.
1:25 Adam Buxton? We play another couple of shows towards the end of June in London at the Hoxton Hall. But it's continued to be great fun. Thanks as well to everyone who came to the chat with Miranda Sawyer at the Charleston Festival in Sussex. Great to meet more of you after all those shows. But right now, let me tell you a bit about podcast number 272. This one features some rambling in front of a live audience with British comedian and friend of the podcast, Bridget Christie, writer and performer of something like 14 solo live shows over the years, panel show stalwart, taskmaster genius, creator of the brilliant radio series.
2:10 Adam Buxton? Mortal, which I really recommend, and the brilliant TV comedy drama The Change, in which Bridget plays a woman going through a midlife crisis. And Bridget was one of the people kind enough to join me back in twenty twenty four when I was doing live podcasts. And she was my guest at Bristol's Beacon Theatre. But that was two years ago. Why has it taken you so long to put this episode out? Well, Rosie, that's because it was a little complicated to edit. We also had some beautiful live music that night, which I wanted to include from musician, composer and sound artist Alice Boyd. She played a couple of songs with her band.
2:49 Adam Buxton? And I wanted to, you know, get them all nicely mixed and sounding as nice as possible, as nice as they did on the night. But it was quite fiddly, lots of different tracks. I met Alice a while back when she was working on a project I did some voiceovers for. And she sent me some of her music, which I loved. A lot of her work is inspired by ecology, landscapes, wildlife and our relationship with the environment. And she blends electronics with analog instruments. And field recordings and various lovely folky vocals. Very vocals. Yeah. And I was so pleased that she was able to come along and be part of one of the live podcasts that we did in twenty twenty four.
3:32 Adam Buxton? So now you're blaming Alice for putting this episode out two years after it was recorded? No, I'm not Alice blaming. I'm just saying it needed a little more time than a normal episode would because of all the tracks and mixing. I'm badly organised, okay, Rosie? Is that what you wanna hear? Yes, thank you. The other factor with the recordings of the live podcast shows, as you probably will have heard me saying before, if you're a regular listener, was that there was a lot of visual stuff on those nights on a big screen. And I had a theme for that tour of kind of crap A I generated visuals that would pop up now and then.
4:09 Speaker 01 Oh, you and your A I slop.
4:11 Adam Buxton? Yeah, okay, I probably wouldn't do it now, but back then in the old days, it was still funny to see the wonky images that young A I would generate. And I got it to generate some very odd images of my guests at pivotal moments in their career and their lives, and I would show them throughout the show as kind of jumping off points for bits of chat.
4:32 Speaker 01 I never found any of that funny.
4:34 Adam Buxton? No, of course not, no one did. Anyway, I showed a few of them to Bridget that night in Bristol, so when necessary, I'll pop back in voiceover form during the conversation to explain what's on the screen.
4:46 Speaker 01 Wow, this is really cutting edge podcasting, putting out live episodes two years after you recorded them and then having to explain what the audience was looking at because you refused to join the modern age and film your podcasts like literally everyone else these days.
5:01 Adam Buxton? Oh, thanks, Rosie. I'm glad you appreciate the way I do things. I haven't watched it back yet, but I was on an episode of Ramesh Ranganathan's podcast, which is filmed, and I think that's out now. And I seem to recall spending quite a long time complaining about being filmed on that as well. It's not very good, is it? Get invited on someone's podcast and then just moan about being filmed.
5:24 Speaker 01 That's only what I'd expect from you.
5:26 Adam Buxton? I'll be back at the end with a bit more waffle, possibly from another location entirely. But right now, with Bridget Christie and music from Alice Boyd in front of a live Bristol audience in May twenty twenty four, here we go.
6:28 Speaker 02 I've got a present for you.
6:29 Adam Buxton? Oh?
6:30 Speaker 02 Do you remember, we talked about...
6:32 Adam Buxton? We talked about scents.
6:34 Speaker 02 And so you can, you can, you know, that's for you, unless you don't want it.
6:37 Adam Buxton? Oh, it's called lust.
6:41 Adam Buxton? By lush. Let me have a smell. Did you smell that I put on some perfume for you?
6:46 Speaker 02 No, did you?
6:47 Adam Buxton? Yeah, have a little smell.
6:48 Speaker 02 I don't want to.
6:53 Adam Buxton? Oh, that does smell nice.
6:53 Speaker 02 Do you like it, though?
6:54 Adam Buxton? I love it.
6:55 Speaker 02 Because everyone...
6:56 Adam Buxton? Is that what you were wearing when I last saw you?
6:57 Speaker 02 Yes, I wear it every day. Everyone who smells me says, "What's that?"
7:05 Adam Buxton? Do they recoil when they say it?
7:07 Speaker 02 No, they like it.
7:10 Speaker 02 Well, you, um, I don't think you were excited enough or grateful enough.
7:15 Adam Buxton? I love it, Bridget. Lust, you have given me the gift of lust. And I'm feeling it for you now.
7:25 Speaker 02 Oh.
7:25 Adam Buxton? Have I gone too far?
7:27 Speaker 02 It's 2024, Adam.
7:29 Adam Buxton? Is it? Well, no, it's not anymore. It's 2026 now, and I'm in a hotel room in Manchester. And tonight, the Adam Buxton Band are playing a show here at Stoller Hall. Anyway, I wanted to come back and tell you what we were looking at on the screen that night during this next bit of chat. It was an AI-generated image of Bridget jogging through Gloucestershire fields in the early morning sunshine and looking very free. Although the primitive AI had made her features look unearthly and bizarre, but she still looked very happy.
8:05 Speaker 02 Oh, yes, I love that one.
8:07 Adam Buxton? That's you out jogging, which you love to do.
8:09 Speaker 02 I jog every day. I think we talked about that before, didn't we?
8:12 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's how, that's kind of how I imagined you running, just with the sun behind you, out.
8:19 Speaker 02 I do laugh as well, I laugh.
8:21 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
8:22 Speaker 02 It's a high.
8:23 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
8:24 Speaker 02 It doesn't matter what the weather is either. I don't know what's happened to me. No, in a really positive way, I feel like I've had some kind of enlightenment experience.
8:35 Adam Buxton? Is that the other side of the menopause?
8:37 Speaker 02 It could be, I don't know. But I feel like, someone said something to me the other day, and this sounds like boasting, but I promise you it isn't, but it's the most recent example that I can think of. So, this does sound awful. So I was up for a BAFTA, and I didn't get it. And I kind of knew deep down that I wouldn't, and that was, it didn't matter to me at all. And someone said, are you, I hope you're not too upset. And the idea that I would be felt so alien to me. It felt so unlike me to be.
9:13 Adam Buxton? To be worried about something.
9:14 Speaker 02 Or worried about something, but, yeah.
9:17 Adam Buxton? And that was for The Change, your sitcom, yes?
9:20 Speaker 02 Yes, it was, yes.
9:21 Adam Buxton? Beautiful.
9:22 Speaker 02 Oh, oh, thank you.
9:25 Adam Buxton? And you've had a second series commission, congratulations.
9:28 Speaker 02 Thank God, thank you, thank you so much, Brazil.
9:31 Adam Buxton? By Channel 4.
9:32 Speaker 02 But also, it was my first TV commission, was at 50. I just, I really feel like, because I had a few journalists when I was doing press for it, they were saying, does it make you angry that you kind of, 10, 11 years ago, you won the Perrier, and yet you, nothing happened for you in 10 years? But nowadays, someone would have probably been given a commission by now, especially if they were a guy. I just think that things happen to you when they're supposed to happen to you. Does that sound really like a cop-out?
10:05 Adam Buxton? No, I love it.
10:06 Speaker 02 I think, I think it does, and I think that we get so het up. I think that in life, like, people and jobs and... Situations like present themselves to you at the exact right time. So I don't think you should be regretful or this doesn't happen or that doesn't happen. You know, I think when you're our age, it's like, I'm just grateful to be here, man. Do you know what I mean? People die very young, people get sick. I'm just so grateful every day. And that happened in lockdown, actually.
10:39 Adam Buxton? You died and got sick?
10:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, I just became really aware of nature and being alive and being well and being grateful and having a positive outlook on things. Not in an unrealistic way, because we've all had terrible things happen to us. We've all got pain and grief and trauma and it's not plain sailing for anybody. This is what... I love coming on shows like this as well because I think sometimes people can think that people in the public aisle might be seen to be doing well, that our lives were easy and things like just fell into our laps or their life looks great. It really...
11:23 Adam Buxton? I mean, mindset it did, really.
11:25 Speaker 02 But it isn't the reality, though. We all have stuff that we're dealing with and have dealt with and doing, but it's just making the best of everything, I think is...
11:35 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
11:36 Speaker 02 And I think you can kind of...
11:39 Adam Buxton? We're not in America.
11:42 Adam Buxton? You do it. Yeah, go on, clap away. Have your inspirational clap fun.
11:52 Speaker 02 There's that saying as well, it works both ways. There's a saying, I can't remember exactly what it is because menopause, but there's like you, you think something enough and it will, you will start to believe it. And it's like, we spend so many years disliking something about us, what we look like, something to do with our personality, regretting things. And you do start to believe that after a while. What if you just flipped it, you know? Not in an arrogant way, like I'm amazing sort of thing, but what if you thought, you know something, I try really hard to do the right thing and I'm trying really hard to be like within my parameters as best as I can be. And I try and think about things that I do. If you do that...
12:36 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
12:36 Speaker 02 You will feel better about yourself.
12:38 Adam Buxton? You will find success.
12:43 Adam Buxton? If you change the story about your life, you too
12:47 Speaker 02 Push a funny button.
12:48 Adam Buxton? Will find success.
12:49 Speaker 02 Do a button.
12:49 Adam Buxton? I haven't got a button for that guy.
12:51 Speaker 02 Oh, you haven't got a funny button?
12:52 Adam Buxton? I've got a Hans Zimmer button for when something really exciting and inspirational and emotional happens. You know Hans Zimmer? He does the music for like Dune and things like that.
13:02 Speaker 02 Yeah.
13:13 Adam Buxton? That's what I play when anything big happens in my life.
13:18 Speaker 02 It's epic.
13:19 Adam Buxton? Epic is the thing, exactly. Make your life epic. And I love your inspirational words and I think that's the ideal image that we've got there on the
13:26 Speaker 02 Hey, you know something? Think epic and sound epic.
13:30 Adam Buxton? I love it. That's the formula for success.
13:35 Adam Buxton? Bridget, you yourself are a successful woman. And yet, you are single. Currently.
13:44 Speaker 02 Adam Buckstein.
13:46 Adam Buxton? Have I phrased it wrong?
13:49 Speaker 02 That is the most unacceptable and cowardly way of dumping me I have ever heard.
14:01 Speaker 02 I am, yes.
14:03 Adam Buxton? I'm just going to have a blast of lust.
14:07 Adam Buxton? Right in my face.
14:08 Speaker 02 He sprayed it in your
14:11 Adam Buxton? Oh, that's nice, actually. Oh, that is good. Now I've got, I'm just, my whole face is full of the smell of you.
14:21 Speaker 02 Do you know?
14:21 Adam Buxton? That's good lyrics. Ed Sheeran could do a song with that.
14:27 Speaker 02 I am single, yes.
14:28 Adam Buxton? Yes. You were married?
14:31 Speaker 02 Yes.
14:31 Adam Buxton? To Ken Dodd and
14:34 Speaker 02 I think I, am I not a bit like Ken Dodd, do you think?
14:39 Speaker 02 I think I am.
14:40 Adam Buxton? You could be a Diddy woman.
14:41 Speaker 02 If you... I think I could be like a female version of Ken Dodd. Looks-wise. When I was little, I really felt an affinity with him.
14:54 Adam Buxton? Mm-hmm. What did you relate to about Dodd?
14:58 Speaker 02 I loved him. I loved his hair, I loved his teeth, I loved his eyes. I loved his...
15:04 Adam Buxton? Tickling stick.
15:05 Speaker 02 Energy and spirit.
15:06 Adam Buxton? Tickling stick.
15:07 Speaker 02 I didn't like the tickling stick.
15:08 Adam Buxton? Why? What's your problem with the tickling stick?
15:10 Speaker 02 I was suspicious of it.
15:12 Adam Buxton? How did you feel about the Diddy men then, if you didn't like the tickling stick?
15:16 Speaker 02 They were away from me.
15:17 Adam Buxton? Mm-hmm.
15:18 Speaker 02 Because he reminded me of Alastair Sim, who I had adored when I was little. I loved Alastair. Ken Dodd is like a mad drawing of Alastair Sim and Alec Guinness. If Alec Guinness and Alastair Sim were walking along the South Bank and one of those cartoon artists...
15:37 Adam Buxton? Caricaturists.
15:38 Speaker 02 Said, "Yeah, I'll draw both of you combined."
15:41 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
15:42 Speaker 02 You'd probably look like Ken Dodd.
15:44 Adam Buxton? And I'll just give one of you a tickling stick. I was in Liverpool the other day, and there is a statue of Dodd with his tickling stick bringing joy to a woman. There's just a sort of... I mean, that don't...
15:57 Speaker 02 What do you mean?
15:58 Adam Buxton? It's not like that. It's a sort of statue of Dodd, and then opposite him is a middle-aged lady with a headscarf. I think I'm remembering this right. And she's just laughing, and it's just...
16:11 Speaker 02 Oh, I thought you meant a real woman.
16:14 Adam Buxton? No, no, no. It's a statue.
16:15 Speaker 02 Was using the statue?
16:17 Adam Buxton? I think... I don't think the statue... No.
16:20 Speaker 02 Did you? You thought that, didn't you?
16:22 Adam Buxton? You thought a woman was pleasuring herself on Dodd's statue?
16:25 Speaker 02 Yes.
16:27 Adam Buxton? No. In Liverpool Lime Street Station.
16:31 Speaker 02 Well, I don't know. It's Liverpool, isn't it? I don't, that is a joke. I love Liverpool.
16:38 Adam Buxton? But no, it's, it was an indication, because I don't think the statue lady opposite the statue of Dodd is herself famous. It's just supposed to illustrate the effect that Dodd would have on people.
16:51 Speaker 02 Not on a, not on a man? Why was it a lady, do you think?
16:54 Adam Buxton? I don't know.
16:56 Speaker 02 I think that needs to be unpicked, that, that, well, did she look like?
17:00 Adam Buxton? Uh, yeah, middle-aged, headscarf, glasses. She looked, uh...
17:04 Speaker 02 From the 50s?
17:05 Adam Buxton? Maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah.
17:06 Speaker 02 So why, when was the statue made?
17:10 Adam Buxton? It looks recent. Hello, it's me again from the future, as it was then. It turns out the statue I was looking at in Liverpool Lime Street Station is called Chance Meeting. It was created in 2009 by Tom Murphy. The woman depicted in the statue is the councillor and later MP, battling Bessie Braddock. She died in 1970 and was an ardent socialist and fiery campaigner, particularly in the fields of maternity, child welfare, and youth crime. Tom Murphy's life-sized bronze statue shows her holding a handbag in one hand, and in the other, an egg. As she was the politician responsible for getting the lion quality
17:52 Adam Buxton? mark of food safety and traceability put on British eggs. Ah, so much great info. Thanks, Buckles. You're welcome. Right now, we'll head back to the past, where, very shortly, I will be slightly disparaging about Ken Dodd's teeth in a way that I genuinely regret, and I would like to apologize to the members of the prominent tooth community. Also, a heads up for the men with weird hair community.
18:22 Adam Buxton? Things are about to get rough. And I was impressed because I had it in my mind, I don't know much about him. And I thought, surely he's cancelled.
18:32 Speaker 02 No, Dodgy isn't cancelled.
18:33 Adam Buxton? But he's never done anything wrong, except brought joy.
18:36 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:36 Adam Buxton? But that's the thing, with the poisoned modern mind that I have, I just assume anyone with those teeth and a tickling stick has done some terrible, terrible things. But he hasn't.
18:47 Speaker 02 The teeth, it's not the teeth. I think there is a correlation between men with weird hair and bad things. Fred West, Jimmy Savile. Well, I'm sure there's more than two.
19:03 Adam Buxton? Men with weird hair.
19:05 Speaker 02 Gary Glitter. Boris Johnson. Hope we can't have him.
19:09 Adam Buxton? Yeah, definitely Boris Johnson.
19:13 Speaker 02 Trump. Is there someone with a mullet? They're back in now, aren't they, mullets? I'm gonna get one.
19:18 Adam Buxton? Pat Sharp.
19:19 Speaker 02 Oh, yeah.
19:20 Adam Buxton? The Darth Vader of the Master Vader. There's nothing wrong with Sharp. But is part of your appreciation of life perhaps to do with your status as a single woman? Are you getting to appreciate things out of a relationship? And what are the things about a relationship that you don't miss?
19:40 Speaker 02 Wow.
19:43 Adam Buxton? Sorry.
19:46 Speaker 02 I think it's this. It's not so much about being in a relationship or not being in a relationship. I think that it is reaching a point in your life. I think it may be possibly an age thing. Because lots of people do need to be in a relationship to function, for validation, all sorts of different reasons, because they're lonely, blah, blah, blah. I never was like that. I don't think it's because I grew up in a big family, but I never felt lonely. I'm not like a lonely person. I've spent a lot of time by myself. I think it's to do with age possibly, and just becoming really comfortable with yourself. And that could have happened within a relationship.
20:31 Speaker 02 But I think sometimes, when you are in a, like, you get married and you have kids, you, I think, if you don't keep an eye on it, I was lucky because I have a job that I love, so a lot of my identity is tied up in that. But when that doesn't happen, I think you can lose yourself a little, to the point where you can be unrecognisable. As I say, that didn't happen to me, but it does happen a lot to men and women. And I think it's just, yeah. It's not that I'm focused on myself now. I feel, because I don't feel like I am. I think it's just I'm unencumbered.
21:09 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
21:10 Speaker 02 But that's nothing to do with my previous relationships. That's more to do with, I am unencumbered. I'm completely alone. And I may die alone, and I'd be very happy with that.
21:22 Adam Buxton? I'm sure you'll be cumbered one more time.
21:25 Speaker 02 You're sure of be what?
21:26 Adam Buxton? Cumbered.
21:27 Speaker 02 And, is it cumbered?
21:29 Adam Buxton? I don't know.
21:30 Speaker 02 Or is it encumbered?
21:31 Adam Buxton? I think I've broken the microphone.
21:33 Speaker 02 Oh, yes. You sound really strange. Is there, is there another one?
21:39 Adam Buxton? There is. Back in the room.
21:43 Speaker 02 Hooray. Was it because you dropped it?
21:45 Adam Buxton? Yep.
21:45 Speaker 02 Did you drop?
21:48 Speaker 02 Did you drop it on purpose, like doing a mic drop?
21:50 Adam Buxton? I dropped it to do a funny mic drop joke. And I broke their microphone. And that'll come out of my feet tonight.
21:59 Speaker 02 And that'll be coming off your...
22:00 Adam Buxton? Yes.
22:01 Speaker 02 But don't you think that's right, though? I think when you're in something, you, uh... You have to think, so, you know, you have to, there's a lot of thinking, like, um... Oh, yeah, what were you gonna say?
22:18 Adam Buxton? I was gonna say, now that you're kids, you have two kids, yes?
22:22 Speaker 02 Yeah.
22:23 Adam Buxton? And now perhaps your life is less governed by the drudgery of the domestic routine. Would that be fair?
22:29 Speaker 02 Very much so, yes. They do their bit. One will be flying the nest quite soon, I would imagine.
22:37 Adam Buxton? How's that gonna feel?
22:38 Speaker 02 Seventeen.
22:41 Speaker 02 I'm in two minds about it.
22:43 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
22:44 Speaker 02 It's many, many years if that's what you know. And, you know, when you have kids, you think, what was my life like before? My mum always used to say, and like I say, she had nine children. My mum always used to say, you don't own your children, you just borrow them for a bit and then they're gone. And it's like, God, yeah, you're so right. And it's so fast, isn't it? It goes so quickly.
23:07 Adam Buxton? Yeah, it's nuts.
23:08 Speaker 02 You don't think it will ever come to an end, like, it doesn't come to an end. But that part of it being, doing everything.
23:17 Adam Buxton? Did you feel that way all the time? Or did you sometimes have little moments where you could feel them changing? Where you could feel the experience of being a parent of younger children pulling away from you?
23:30 Speaker 02 I miss them as babies, because I love babies so much. I would have had like ten babies if I'd started early enough. I think I had my first at thirty-six and my second at forty. But I would have had, I mean, babies are so funny and cute and great and like hard work. But, I don't know, I miss them as babies. I miss like holding them and, you know, chucking them around and...
23:58 Speaker 02 You know, them falling asleep on you and all that kind of thing. It's, I think teens is a difficult age, like, it's not huggy, like, you know. I'm quite a tactile person, and so I'm quite huggy and that's not...
24:14 Adam Buxton? No, they don't like it, the teens.
24:16 Speaker 02 No.
24:16 Adam Buxton? They're anti all that.
24:42 Adam Buxton? Right now, I would like to reintroduce our musical friends tonight. Please, folks, make Alice Boyd feel very welcome when she comes back with Daisy and Jacob.
25:04 Adam Buxton? So Alice, you were gonna play us some recordings, is that right? Because you do a lot of sound recording as part of your job, yes?
25:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, I do a lot of field recording, so I get weird microphones. And the recordings I'm gonna share today are from underneath the surface of a pond. So I used a hydrophone, which is an underwater microphone, to get these different sounds. And the first time I heard it, it completely blew my mind, because they're very weird sounds, and you wouldn't expect that to be under a serene pond.
25:33 Adam Buxton? And it's not the sound of the mic breaking? I know about mics breaking and...
25:37 Speaker 03 Oh, no, no, no, I haven't done that one yet. But maybe, maybe next time I go recording. Jacob, would you like to play some guitar? So the first sound I'm gonna play is the sound of insects stridulating. So these are water pocong.
26:09 Adam Buxton? That's the sound of the little skiddy guys.
26:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, that's the water pocong. And next up, this is the sound of aquatic plants photosynthesizing.
26:30 Speaker 03 Which I think sounds like a weird synthesizer, almost.
26:36 Adam Buxton? Why do they make that sound when they're photosynthesising?
26:39 Speaker 03 It's the tiny bubbles of air leaving the stomata, which is the holes in the leaves of the plants. And so they're going very quickly and releasing these sounds.
26:49 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
26:50 Speaker 03 And then the next sound is a tadpole munching on the microphone.
27:02 Speaker 03 And I couldn't believe it, because when I looked down at the hydrophone, I could just see it nibbling away. And the final sound I'm going to share with you are some toads in a pond in Kent. And it's during mating season.
27:25 Adam Buxton? It sounds like my stomach.
27:34 Speaker 03 I don't know what that is.
27:36 Adam Buxton? I've got an idea.
27:41 Speaker 03 Anyway, those are my sounds.
27:43 Adam Buxton? Very nice, thank you, Alice.
27:48 Adam Buxton? That was like...
27:51 Adam Buxton? And I mean this in the absolute best possible way. That was like a kind of kids' show from the early 70s. With Jacob playing some beautiful pastoral guitar as well. I loved it. Are you going to sing us a song, though, Alice, to take us into the interval?
28:06 Speaker 03 Yes, this is Life in Cities.
28:23 Speaker 03 Life in cities now
28:29 Speaker 03 Sleep no more
28:35 Speaker 03 Stare out my window till the break of dawn
28:48 Speaker 03 Seeing for two of us
28:54 Speaker 03 Breathe no more
29:00 Speaker 03 Far into darkness I sit and wait
29:12 Speaker 03 Sundays come slow
29:18 Speaker 03 Yearning for someone
29:24 Speaker 03 Someday I know, I'll know
29:37 Speaker 03 Life beyond the breeze Choked by air Sweat on my forehead, I pray for you
30:02 Speaker 03 Speak in whispers now Drown the noise Trace round the silence The sirens cry, ooh
30:28 Speaker 03 The morning's slow,
30:33 Speaker 03 stretching before me.
30:40 Speaker 03 Someday I know, I'll know.
31:17 Speaker 03 Life without the stars can't be good.
31:29 Speaker 03 My piece of sky will pretend for you.
31:42 Speaker 03 Clouds draw softly in, slowly through,
31:54 Speaker 03 back to the moods of my small room.
32:09 Adam Buxton? Alice Boyd, that's called "Life in Cities." Thank you, Jacob. Thank you, Daisy.
32:18 Adam Buxton? I love that. Thank you so much.
32:24 Adam Buxton? Before we bring Bridget back, I'm going to reintroduce you to Frank, my son.
32:36 Adam Buxton? Here we go.
32:45 Adam Buxton? This is a new arrangement of halfway through the podcast.
32:52 Adam Buxton? We're halfway through the podcast, I think it's going really great.
33:00 Adam Buxton? The conversation's flowing like it would between a geezer and his mate. All right, mate. Hello, geezer. I'm pleased to see you. There's so much chemistry, it's like a science lab of talking.
33:16 Adam Buxton? There's front chat and there's deep chat, it's like Chris Evans is meeting Stephen Hawking. Put it to bed.
33:32 Adam Buxton? Yay, lovely work, Frankie. Thank you so much.
33:38 Adam Buxton? And let's get Bridget back. Now, look, before we go any further, we've got some audience questions coming our way in this section. Amy Beardmore says, "I'm a university lecturer and we are currently tying ourselves up in knots about AI, completely devaluing academia. What are your thoughts on the AI beast? Can she be tamed? She's gendered the beast." "Or should we all just give up and go home?" Have you spent any time being anxious about AI, Bridget?
34:11 Speaker 02 I haven't, because I think that, and this is kind of part of my enlightenment, was that I realised that it's much easier to be happy if you don't think about anything.
34:35 Speaker 02 I've like, I've like, I've zoned out, ma'am. Like, I don't know anything about, I'm like, "Yeah, it's probably be all right."
34:45 Speaker 02 I used to be so angry about stuff. Even just 10 years ago, I'd be like, "Oh my god, this is so bad for this and that and this and that." And I totally reject it and I'm gonna do a show about it and I'm gonna campaign and I know this is wrong and wrong. And I'm like, "Ah, probably be alright." Anyway, what are we having for supper?
35:03 Adam Buxton? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess you go through phases, don't you, of moving in and out of a certain kind of engagement with the rest of the world.
35:12 Speaker 02 Yes.
35:12 Adam Buxton? But non-stop engagement is unsustainable.
35:17 Speaker 02 It's unsustainable.
35:19 Adam Buxton? Especially these days, you know what I mean? You have to have a bit of a break. Take like 3 months off or whatever.
35:25 Speaker 02 Well, it's rolling news. Apparently lockdown, so apparently our brains are not evolving at the same time as technology. And they're not, so we're actually, we can't process the amount of stuff that we're being given to process, so we don't process it properly. Like, we don't read, we don't read in the same way. We like skim, like even our hands, aren't our hands changing? Our thumbs are changing?
35:52 Adam Buxton? The thing I always remember is, when it comes to technology, when the BlackBerry was a big thing.
35:57 Speaker 02 Yeah.
35:58 Adam Buxton? Do you remember, people used to get their fingers surgically whittled? So that they would be better at using the small keys on the BlackBerry.
36:07 Speaker 02 No.
36:08 Adam Buxton? This is true, this is true.
36:09 Speaker 02 Is it really?
36:10 Adam Buxton? Yep.
36:11 Speaker 02 No.
36:11 Adam Buxton? Yeah, because people absolutely loved the BlackBerry. Back in those days, it's hard to remember, but this was pre the global dominance of Apple. But BlackBerry was the piece of technology for everyone to have before the iPhone became the thing. And they had all those tiny little keys, so if you were...
36:30 Speaker 02 They were so small!
36:32 Adam Buxton? They were so small. So people got their thumbs whittled. Because, you know, the thumb is ungainly and imprecise.
36:41 Adam Buxton? And then, as soon as they healed over from being whittled, Steve Jobs comes out and waves the iPhone at everyone and they're like, "Ah, shit! Whittled my thumbs!" But that's still useful, though, whittled thumbs. Alright, here's a big question for you from Rob Brier. B R Y H E R, would you say Brier?
37:06 Speaker 02 B R Y H E R?
37:08 Adam Buxton? Brier.
37:09 Speaker 02 Brier.
37:10 Adam Buxton? Brier.
37:11 Speaker 02 You wouldn't say the H probably.
37:13 Adam Buxton? Rob, is it Brier?
37:15 Speaker 02 Yes, Brier.
37:16 Adam Buxton? Yes, Brier. Yeah. It's fucking Brier.
37:21 Speaker 02 Do you think he's been asked that before?
37:22 Adam Buxton? Yeah. He sounded just then the same way that Paul Weller sounded when I asked him if anyone had ever said to him, "Does anyone ever say, 'Paul Weller, Weller, Weller, oh, tell me more, tell me more'?"
37:38 Speaker 02 Was it face to face?
37:40 Adam Buxton? Face to face on Radio 2. Live with Lisa Tarbuck over in the other corner of the studio going...
37:56 Adam Buxton? Sorry. I pressed both the Zimmer buttons.
38:04 Speaker 02 Is that what Lisa Tarbuck did, that?
38:06 Adam Buxton? She went like, she didn't press the Hans Zimmer button. But she may as well have done because she was just like, "Oh, God." Anyway, listen, Rob's question, Rob Brier's question.
38:16 Speaker 02 Oh, yes.
38:18 Adam Buxton? This is a big question too. What will be the first line of your obituary? But then, but then he puts "wrong answers only."
38:29 Adam Buxton? Rob?
38:31 Speaker 02 Of yours?
38:33 Adam Buxton? Well, either one of us. I'm interested in yours. Uh, I guess mine'll, I mean, depending on when I exit the party, uh, you know, if it was sometime in the next few years, it's probably gonna be "Podcaster Adam Buxton," at best.
38:50 Speaker 02 This is that someone else writes, yeah?
38:52 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
38:54 Speaker 02 "Adam Buxton guest, Bridget Christie."
38:59 Adam Buxton? That's so nice of you. This is from Steve, from Bristol, Telford and Norwich.
39:08 Adam Buxton? Steve says, "I've just had a baby." I bet it wasn't you, was it, Steve?
39:14 Adam Buxton? "So can I get your best nugget of parenting advice?" Good one.
39:19 Speaker 02 My god, I love questions like this. You do yours first.
39:21 Adam Buxton? Oh, jeez. Best nugget? I mean, you're asking the wrong guy.
39:26 Speaker 02 Why?
39:26 Adam Buxton? Where's Frankie?
39:27 Speaker 02 Why is your...
39:29 Adam Buxton? I don't know, because it's a work in progress. You never know.
39:33 Speaker 02 That's the best answer, though.
39:34 Adam Buxton? It's never done, is it? That's the thing that I like about the film Parenthood with Steve Martin, is that it makes it clear that the race is never over. There's never a winning line. There's never a point at which you go, "Smashed it."
39:48 Speaker 02 It just changes.
39:49 Adam Buxton? It changes constantly and you adjust to it.
39:53 Speaker 02 Can I ask Frankie some questions? When you think about your childhood...
40:01 Adam Buxton? Does he have to pay for this?
40:02 Speaker 02 Do you need therapy? Or are you happy?
40:05 Speaker 04 I'm happy.
40:06 Speaker 02 Do you have little pockets of great memories?
40:09 Speaker 04 Yeah.
40:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's pretty good overall. Yeah, you've done well.
40:18 Adam Buxton? I mean, thanks, Frank.
40:22 Adam Buxton? He's privileged as fuck. I mean...
40:26 Adam Buxton? I would hope that there would be some happy moments, considering the investment that we've made.
40:36 Speaker 02 When you have a first baby especially, you're really worried about kind of dropping them or like breaking them or something like that. And I remember with my first, the health visitor or the midwife saying, because I was really scared I was gonna like knock its... They put a clip on the cord, you know, when they... And I was like, "Oh, what if I knock it and its guts come out?" And they were like, "That's not gonna happen. You could swing a baby round by the umbilical cord and it would be okay." And it was, but...
41:06 Speaker 02 But the thing is, is that babies are so like robust and solid. Like that one was flinging itself around.
41:14 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
41:14 Speaker 02 And I remember when my son was born, I went round to my friend's house and they had kids that were a little bit older. And the kids were like jumping off like wardrobes and I was shitting myself. But they were all fine. And my friends were just like watching them like that. And I was like, don't you care? But obviously they'd had, they knew that they would be fine. Actually, having said that, I was always in hospital with my kids. Because they were always hurting themselves. But don't worry about it. Like the babies are much more robust than we think they are. My sister, so you know I'm the youngest of nine?
41:50 Adam Buxton? Yes.
41:50 Speaker 02 My sister saw me from a kitchen window, I don't know how I did this, as a baby, fall out of my pram, onto my face, onto the concrete in the garden. And my nose, because you know it's just cut, there's no bone at that.
42:07 Adam Buxton? No cartilage, yeah.
42:08 Speaker 02 Went into my face. And then just popped out again. She was like, your nose just like disappeared and then came back out. Isn't that so weird? Isn't it though?
42:26 Adam Buxton? Yeah. Having said all this, you do have to be careful with babies. On the whole, you really should be very gentle with them.
42:34 Speaker 02 Yeah, be careful, like, don't swing it around or anything like that.
42:39 Adam Buxton? Bridget, one more question for you. Uh, this is from Dee from Newport. Bridget, I loved you on Ghosts as Annie and was very sad when you got sucked off. We all, what is that?
42:53 Speaker 02 Is that the question?
42:54 Adam Buxton? No, well, she says, we also loved you on Taskmaster. What's been your favourite project that you have been a guest on?
43:01 Speaker 02 Oh, a guest on?
43:02 Adam Buxton? Yeah.
43:04 Speaker 02 Adam Buxton's podcast. I thank you, the, well, Taskmaster is very different because obviously this is the best.
43:15 Adam Buxton? Sure.
43:16 Speaker 02 But you're allowed to be yourself on Taskmaster, as you are here as well. Obviously, everything is prefaced with that. And, once you know that, you can just kind of relax. So I think, I think Taskmaster is such an interesting show to do because they kind of say to you, "You've been booked because, because you're you, so we don't want you to be kind of something else."
43:41 Adam Buxton? Yeah, you don't have to be show busy.
43:42 Speaker 02 No, and that's kind of really freeing. And then, the way that you film it is, you do all your tasks with Alex first, and then, so it's like quite an intensive, often with filming or something, you just have a little bit of time, don't you, or if you're on a, like a panel show or something like that, or a guest in someone else's, it's, it's not like, really intensive quality time, but you do get that on Taskmaster. And then there's a massive gap, where they edit it all together, and then you're in the studio and you watch it back.
44:12 Adam Buxton? Oh, I see.
44:13 Speaker 02 Yeah, so that, that, so I think I did my tasks in like, May, and then we were in the studio in the autumn or something like that. So loads of time elapses between those two things, and you can't remember what you've done or anything about it. And so you're like, "Aye, what was that?"
44:30 Adam Buxton? How long do the tasks take to film?
44:34 Speaker 02 Well, it depends on the task.
44:39 Speaker 02 Some things took me ages, no. Like, I was there for days, no. Um, yeah, it just depends on the task, but the whole crew and the whole, have you not, you've done it?
44:48 Adam Buxton? No.
44:51 Adam Buxton? NFI.
44:54 Speaker 02 That's so strange.
44:55 Adam Buxton? Isn't it strange?
44:58 Speaker 02 We should text them now.
45:00 Adam Buxton? I've, I've, there's been texting, there's all sorts of text. Shall we have a little bit more music now? I would love to get Alice, and Jacob, and Daisy back on stage for one more bit of beautiful music on this Friday night, here in Bristol.
45:23 Adam Buxton? And what are you going to leave us with tonight?
45:27 Speaker 02 So this song is called "The Favourite", and I co-wrote and produced and co-released it with Jacob here. Jacob, do you have anything you want to say about the song? I just wanted to say, Bridget, you don't need to feel ashamed of your web toes.
45:44 Adam Buxton? Your web toes.
45:46 Speaker 02 My web toes.
45:47 Adam Buxton? Because Jacob's got some webbing going on as well.
45:49 Speaker 02 We've both got... There's a lot of... It's a silent crowd of web toes people. We've both got exactly the same web toes. You should be much more interested in that story. I reckon one person has web toes and they're just not... In here, I think there's more than one, don't you? I mean, what are the chances? There, look, loads of... Are you serious? At least two. Is it the second and third toes on the right foot? That's right. Oh my god! I told you. You're all related. It's always the same toes on the same foot!
46:26 Adam Buxton? Yep, um...
46:31 Speaker 02 Are either of you from Gloucester?
46:34 Speaker 02 No, okay.
46:37 Speaker 02 Alright. This song has nothing to do with web toes.
46:41 Adam Buxton? So this one's going out to the webbed community?
46:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
46:46 Speaker 02 This is "The Favourite".
47:48 Speaker 03 Oh, how it's hollowed, your gliss fantasy.
48:01 Speaker 03 Tale of tomorrow lands you can hardly see.
48:15 Speaker 03 On the surface hardly knew you. Lips like a heart but a heart so untrue. Made the biggest fool out of me.
48:40 Speaker 03 I wanna say. I wanna say. I wanna say. I wanna say sorry forever. Love is such a luminous waste.
49:07 Speaker 03 Oh, how it's hollowed, your gliss fantasy.
49:20 Speaker 03 Tale of tomorrow lands you can hardly see.
49:33 Speaker 03 No need to say.
49:41 Speaker 03 What could was do.
50:34 Speaker 03 Thank you. Alice Boyd.
50:38 Speaker 03 Thank you, Alice. Thank you, Jacob. Thank you, Daisy.
50:49 Adam Buxton? Wait. Continue.
51:01 Adam Buxton? Hey, welcome back, Podcats. That was Alice Boyd and her band there, playing us out back in May 2024. Thank you so much to Bridget Christie for being my guest that night. As you can hear, I have left my hotel room. I'm on my way to the Stoller Hall, Manchester, where tonight the Adam Buxton Band will play another show. Tracks from Buckle Up, couple of covers, some great bands, and then signing and creepy hugs afterwards. And then we're in Leicester tomorrow night. And then that's it for a while, but we have a couple of shows in London
51:46 Adam Buxton? towards the end of June 23rd and 24th at the Hoxton Hall. There's a link in the description. This also links to a few more bits and pieces by Alice Boyd. A beautiful song that she did for the RSPB about the return of the whitetail eagle. And there's a video of her playing live in Warsaw, supporting Jan Thiersen. She's working on her debut album at the moment, inspired by the BBC Radio 4 documentary that she made called Shifting Soundscapes. See if I can put a link to that in there as well. Now, I'm sitting just outside the Malmaison Hotel
52:31 Adam Buxton? in the centre of Manchester, just down the road from Piccadilly Station, opposite the Sainsbury's local. And if you've read my book, I Love You Bye, then you will know that this was the scene of not one, but two shameful, drug-related moments from my filthy past. I won't tell you the whole anecdote. Suffice to say that it ended with me passing out and coming round to find myself in the lap of Sean Locke.
53:13 Adam Buxton? He was looking down in a very kindly way, it must be said. And then he spent the next hour or so making sure I was okay. Anyway, that's what happened at the end. You'll have to read the book to find out the build-up. I've cleaned up my act since then. Now, also in the description today, there are links to various other bits and pieces. There's the live event with Ma Wan Rizwan. That doesn't happen until the 5th of August 2026. But get in there early. It's at the Roundhouse. I'll be doing a live podcast with Ma Wan.
53:56 Adam Buxton? Brilliant comedian, performer, after-award-winning sitcom creator. Also, don't forget the Bug Bowie special that I am going to be doing at the Lightroom in King's Cross.
54:12 Adam Buxton? The June date for that has sold out, but there's still tickets left for 2nd, 3rd and 4th of July this year, 2026. And I realise that I never told you how I got on at the opening night of the new Bowie film that's been made specially for the Lightroom, "You Are Not Alone". It's a critical and commercial smash. They're having to extend their evenings to accommodate all the people that want to go and see that. If you haven't been to the Lightroom before, I'll explain to you what it is. It uses state-of-the-art projection mapping to transform a huge cube-shaped auditorium space
54:54 Adam Buxton? into something a little like the holodeck on Star Trek: Next Generation, if you're a Trecker. So sometimes being in that space feels like you're in an immersive 360-degree cinema space, surround space. Then suddenly it'll transform into something that's more like the interior of a gallery or like a kind of moving museum. Or it can put you in the centre of a moonscape or a Jurassic forest. I mean, anywhere, obviously. Depending on what's being projected, but it's so brilliantly and cleverly done. All with amazing bone-shaking sound. And in the case of "You Are Not Alone",
55:38 Adam Buxton? you've got a voiceover from David, from hundreds of hours of interviews, talking about his approach to music and creativity throughout his career. In between moments of interviews, music videos, live performances, some of which have been re-edited, in the case of the Ziggy Stardust farewell show in Hammersmith. You know, Pennebaker's "Spiders from Mars" movie. There's bits of previously unseen concert footage from Earl's Court in 1978, the 1976 Isola tour, and it's really very overwhelming when you see them on these huge screens
56:19 Adam Buxton? with footage of the band and the crowd at those concerts surrounding you on all sides.
56:27 Adam Buxton? It's amazing. Sensory overload, in a great way. And the film itself is just over an hour long, but it plays on a loop like all the Lightroom shows. So you book a time slot and then you go in there and treat it kind of like a gallery. They've got places you can sit, you can sort of lounge around on the floor or stand or do what you like really in that space until the moment you came in comes back around again and then you can either bugger off or stay for a bit more. There's not really a beginning and an end, in other words, to the film. That's not how my Bug Bowie show will work, incidentally. I won't be standing there all day, repeating myself
57:12 Adam Buxton? on a loop. That's what I'm doing in real life. I'll be performing the show, which is more like two hours, I think, with an interval, just once on each of the days that I'm doing it. And it's going to be, if you've seen the Bug Bowie special before, this will be a, it'll be more or less what you have seen, but it'll be slightly enhanced with extra bits of animation. If you haven't seen the Bug Bowie show before, what the absolute F have you done with your life? Please come along, put that right. I'm fairly certain it'll be one of the greatest nights of your life, especially if you include all the nights
57:56 Adam Buxton? of your life in that list. Okay, that's it for this week. Got to go and sound check. I'm in a band. Thanks to everyone at the Beacon Theatre back in 2024 who made us feel so welcome that night. Thanks to Crosstown Promotions and the live podcast crew, especially Richard Walsh, Mike Thompson, Ben Saunders, Analisa Lembow, and Seamus Murphy Mitchell. Thanks to Helen Green, she does the artwork for this podcast. Thanks to all at Acast. But most of all, thanks very much to you. Sorry it's so noisy out here. Let's have a creepy hug anyway, yeah? Come here, hee.
58:38 Adam Buxton? How's it going? Good to see you. Alright, now I'm not gonna shout, cuz I'm too shy.
58:47 Adam Buxton? But until the next time, we share the same sonic space.
58:53 Adam Buxton? Will you please go carefully? And if it makes any difference, I do love you. Bye!
59:09 Adam Buxton? Like and subscribe, like and subscribe. Like and subscribe, please like and subscribe. Gimme like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice take a punch when me bums up. Gimme like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice take a punch when me bums up. Like and subscribe, like and subscribe. Like and subscribe, please like and subscribe. Gimme like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice take a punch when me bums up. Gimme like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice take a punch when me bums up. Like and subscribe, like and subscribe. Like and subscribe, please like and subscribe.
Previous EP.271 - JOSH JOHNSON Next EP.273 - PATRICK RADDEN KEEFE Page updated October 30, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated