EP.283 - RUSSELL T DAVIES

Adam talks with Welsh screenwriter and television producer, Russell T Davies about writing techniques, the genius of Charlie Brown, Why Don't You, Dr Who, facing criticism, why conversations online have become dangerously unhinged and what gives him hope. Conversation recorded face-to-face in London on 8 September, 2026 Thanks to Diggory Waite and Claire Broughton at Hattrick and Séamus Murphy Mitchell for production support. Podcast illustration by Helen Green https://helengreenillustration.com/ Visit the ADAM BUXTON PODCAST PATREON PAGE http://www.patreon.com/AdamBuxton for previously unheard interviews, Q&A episodes, Rosie pics and videos and other odd and sods. SEND IN PATREON JINGLES AND QUESTIONS mailto:[email protected] See pics, links, jingles, videos and more on ADAM'S WEBSITE https://www.adam-buxton.co.uk/ SUCCESSPOD https://www.audible.co.uk/search?keywords=successpod&k=successpod - 2026 (listen for free with a trial or subscription on Audible) RELATED LINKS THE QUEEREST OF FOLK https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-queerest-of-folk-a-life-in-television-russell-t-davies/a290496f474a1f8c by Russell T Davies - 2026 (Bookshop.org) RUSSELL T DAVIES CALLS X A 'HATE SITE' https://variety.com/2026/tv/global/doctor-who-russell-t-davies-hate-dangerously-assumed-fan-voice-1236699116/ - 2026 (Variety) WHY DON'T YOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRUhjFF5a6Y&t=168s Series 10, Show 4 - 1979 - (YouTube) WHY DON'T YOU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpRcvz1WyiU Two episodes from the Russell T Davies years - 1990 (YouTube) DARK SEASON FULL SEASON HIGHLIGHTS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbWRxkSXDLY&t=36s - (YouTube) RODD HULL AND EMU DR WHO SPOOF https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o7R_IIHb2mo&t=480s - 1975 (YouTube) YOFFY - FINGERBOBS CHARACTER INTROS https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sBCJ7KQ7I0- 1972 (YouTube) MARK GATISS ON WHY HE BELIEVES DR WHO SHOULD JUST STOP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jPpltwL7nXY - (YouTube) STAR TREK CONVENTION SKETCH https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rqb4V9GxaBo - Saturday Night Live - 1986 (YouTube) OUR MAN - RICHARD HOLBROOK AND THE END OF THE AMERICAN CENTURY https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=32528157585&dest=GBR&ref_=ps_ggl_2039220669&cm_mmc=ggl-_-UK_Shopp_Tradestandard-_-product_id=UK9781910702925USED-_-keyword=&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=2039220669&gbraid=0AAAAAD3Y6gvfSr_dEIIIOvKOqeHfLysZH&gclid=CjwKCAjw_9bWBhBGEiwAomyTIoyxjrHW_t3t2t5rvHjKlVdQ_WlNQIPYeDdF2kUG1tz4AhiCxqXX7hoCLPQQAvD_BwE by George Packer - 2019 (Abe Books) I SHOOT ROCK STARS https://tim-pope.stick.site/ by Tim Pope - 2026 (Stick site) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Adam Buxton?

  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. Em, um, um. Anyway, the publishers, Bluestar and Dogwhistle, made a beautiful website for the book using Squarespace. I know, I got the newsletter that you sent out using Squarespace, and the website

• 0:41Adam Buxton?

  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. I will. Oh, shut up, Steve. Uh. Shut up. Now, back to more depressing matters on Newswind.

• 1:26Adam 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 Buxton, I'm a man. I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

• 1:57Adam Buxton?

  Hey, how are you doing, podcats? This is Adam Buxton, trudging up a hill in Norfolk, UK. Trudging next to me is Doglegs, aka Rosie Buxton. She's a whippet poodle cross. How are you doing today, Rosie? I don't know about this weather. I know, it's quite windy, bits of rain all day. Can we call it squally? No, not calling it squally. All right, what do we want to call it? I think it's incipient Nino. Incipient Nino. I thought that wasn't going to hit till November. Incipient Nino. Okay. Now, look, before I tell you a little bit about this week's episode, I wanted

• 2:42Adam Buxton?

  to mention that a brand new, full-length Patreon ramble chat is going to be available from Wednesday this week. It's with my old friend, music video legend and director of the Sing films, amongst others, Garth Jennings, whose magnificent Pulp concert film slash documentary, What Do You Do for an Encore, is available to stream right now. It's a really nice blend of footage from Pulp's recent reunion tour, combined with four decades worth of wonderful archive clips. And I talk a little bit about that film with Garth in

• 3:23Adam Buxton?

  the Patreon chat. We also cover a lot of other ground. It was a good waffle. At times hilarious, hair-raising, profound, and emotional. And for the time being, you can only hear it for a very low subscription fee via the Patreon page, where you will also find other interviews, Q and A episodes, et cetera. There's a link in the description, a link in the description, la la la la. But right now, let me tell you a bit about podcast number 283. This one features a rambling chat with the Welsh screenwriter and television producer,

• 4:06Adam Buxton?

  Russell T Davies. T Davies facts. Russell was born in Swansea in 1963 to parents who were both teachers. He liked to draw, and he was good at it, but he loved watching TV. And when, in his early twenties, a friend suggested he pursue a career in the television industry, Russell decided to give it a try. After studying English at Oxford University and completing a theatre studies course in Cardiff, he joined BBC Wales in the mid 1980s as an assistant producer on the children's magazine show, Why Don't You, just switch off your television set and go out and do something less boring instead, to give it

• 4:51Adam Buxton?

  its full title. Before long, Russell was writing links for the young presenters on that show, and even spinning dramatic narratives within episodes. He was there for a few years, but the proper launch of his professional writing career came in 1991 with the children's sci-fi drama Dark Season, about a group of teenagers fighting to stop a sinister supercomputer hidden in the basement of a school from taking over the world. Russell subsequently moved to Granada Television, honing his plot craft on soaps like Families and Children's Ward, before writing two series of the period drama The Grand towards

• 5:34Adam Buxton?

  the end of the 90s. In 1999, Russell achieved household name status and critical acclaim with the Channel 4 drama Queer as Folk. Produced alongside Nicholas Schindler, who would become Russell's long-term collaborator, the series was a revolutionary, raw, and unapologetic depiction of gay life on Manchester's Canal Street. And it transformed the way gay people were portrayed on TV thereafter. Now it's raining. Oh.

• 6:08Adam Buxton?

  It's gone full Nino. Don't think this is full Nino. It has gone quite stormish, suddenly, from nowhere. Well, maybe from that giant black cloud that was covering the whole of the sky.

• 6:28Adam Buxton?

  Okay, the rain's easing up a little bit now. Where was I? All right, Russell had just done Queer as Folk. Russell followed up this breakthrough with projects that included the award-winning romantic comedy Bob and Rose in 2001, and 2003's provocative religious drama The Second Coming, which starred Christopher Eccleston as a video store employee who realises he is in fact the son of God. In 2005, Russell, a lifelong fan of the British sci-fi show Doctor Who, secured what he called his dream job, reviving the series for a

• 7:06Adam Buxton?

  new generation of TV viewers, initially up until 2010. Under his stewardship, New Who, New Who, transformed a show that had been considered clapped out by BBC bosses into a colossal cultural sensation, drawing over 10 million viewers and revitalising primetime family television. Alongside casting director Andy Prior, Russell cast Christopher Eccleston, and later David Tennant as the Doctor, pairing them with Billy Piper to craft stories rooted in a gritty, working-class reality. Russell then expanded the Who-universe by producing

• 7:47Adam Buxton?

  the more adult spin-off Torchwood, starring John Barrowman as Jack Harkness, and the children's series The Sarah Jane Adventures, starring Elizabeth Sladen. In 2009, Russell moved to Los Angeles with his long-term partner Andrew, a civil servant he'd met towards the end of the 90s. But when Andrew was diagnosed with an aggressive brain cancer in 2011 and given 18 months to live, Russell put his career on hold to become Andrew's full-time carer, relying on his savings to navigate the medical crisis. The couple got married in 2012, and Andrew outlived his prognosis. Russell returned to writing

• 8:30Adam Buxton?

  and exec producing for the 2015 dramas Cucumber and Banana, which explored the passions and pitfalls of 21st century gay life. And in 2018, an award-winning BBC adaptation of A Very English Scandal followed, starring Hugh Grant as Liberal MP Jeremy Thorpe, whose affair in the early 1960s with Norman Scott, played by Ben Whishaw, led to his political downfall. In 2018, during the production of Russell's dystopian drama Years and Years, Andrew died. And in the years that followed, Russell channeled his grief and decades of memories into the 2021 drama It's a Sin, which portrayed a group of people affected

• 9:15Adam Buxton?

  by the AIDS crisis in 1980s UK. It's a Sin was a phenomenal hit, driving a record surge in HIV testing and helping to bring a forgotten history to light. 2021 was also the year that Russell announced he was returning as showrunner to the world of Doctor Who, supersizing the series for a global streaming audience on Disney+. Russell tells stories about Doctor Who and the rest of his life and career thus far in his recently published memoir, The Queerest of Folk. My conversation with Russell was recorded face-to-face in London in early September of this year, 2026, and we talked about writing, Russell's routines, tips, tricks,

• 9:59Adam Buxton?

  and idiosyncrasies. We talked about his love of drawing cartoons and the genius of the Charlie Brown Peanuts cartoon strip. We talked a bit about Why Don't You, the prescient themes of evil tech and sentient computers in Dark Season, with Nerd Klaxon, a sidebar about one of my favourite sci-fi shows from the late 1970s, Blake 7. There was Doctor Who chat, of course, with Russell describing when and how he knew rebooting the show was a good idea. And we talked about his attitude to the increasingly passionate and sometimes unhinged climate of online discussion, not just around Doctor Who, but pretty much anything these days.

• 10:43Adam Buxton?

  But it's the real world consequences of online polarisation that form the basis of Russell's most recent Channel Four drama, The Gripping Tiptoe, starring Alan Cumming and David Morrissey, as Manchester neighbours fighting a culture war that gets horrifyingly out of hand. But we began with me asking Russell about the flight he was about to take to LA to promote Tiptoe's US screenings, and him impugning my butchness, though I'm happy to say I managed to stop myself flying into a violent rage when he did so. Back at the end to say goodbye, but right now, with Russell T Davies, here we go.

• 12:04Adam Buxton?

  You're going to LA?

• 12:06Speaker 01

  Yes, just to publicise Tiptoe.

• 12:08Adam Buxton?

  Oh.

• 12:09Speaker 01

  I'll tell you why, because, because who wants me? But those two lead actors are just so busy, Alan Cumming, David Morrissey, they're in plays, so they can't go, so Muggins here gets to go and do all the hard work.

• 12:19Adam Buxton?

  Nice.

• 12:19Speaker 01

  Well, nice, all that way, just to talk about a show, which you could Zoom, surely, but.

• 12:24Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, that is weird, especially with the old climate crisis.

• 12:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 12:28Adam Buxton?

  That people don't rely on a bit more of the.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  I don't think I'll bring down the world single-handedly.

• 12:33Adam Buxton?

  Remote technology.

• 12:33Speaker 01

  Imagine there was a tipping point, one flight was the tipping point, and society collapsed.

• 12:38Adam Buxton?

  Russell T Davies, not only, and also you're going to be up there in comfy class, I'm assuming.

• 12:44Speaker 01

  I'm passenger zero. I tipped the balance and the climate collapsed.

• 12:49Adam Buxton?

  But what about, do you actually, setting aside all the ethical implications and whatever else you can think of as regards flying, do you enjoy the experience of being on a plane?

• 12:59Speaker 01

  No, I don't enjoy, I don't, I hate turning up at the airport, I'm literally tense on it. Where do I go? What do I do? What's the boarding pass? Or what's in my bag? What do I, I hate, I take my shoes off, what do you mean? I hate it, just, once I'm there, I'm happy, but all of that travel, no.

• 13:13Adam Buxton?

  But you must travel quite a bit, right?

• 13:14Speaker 01

  No, I don't, actually, weirdly, do you know what? I went to New York in January, that was my first holiday in 14 years.

• 13:20Adam Buxton?

  First holiday?

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 13:22Adam Buxton?

  What did you do?

• 13:23Speaker 01

  I went to New York, uh, I've got a lovely boyfriend and Oliver, and he's.

• 13:26Adam Buxton?

  You got one in New York?

• 13:27Speaker 01

  No, I could have here, I took him to New York, and we had a New York time, we went to shows, we did all the.

• 13:33Adam Buxton?

  What did you see?

• 13:34Speaker 01

  Things, I saw Death Becomes Her.

• 13:36Adam Buxton?

  Aha.

• 13:36Speaker 01

  What a laugh, what a big fun, it was, the star of that is Meghan Hilty, and it was her last night in the show, and that was just, it could not be campa, nothing was campa, not even this, not even this was as camp as that.

• 13:50Adam Buxton?

  What, being on the Adam Buxton podcast?

• 13:51Speaker 01

  Yes, that's kind of camp, isn't it?

• 13:54Adam Buxton?

  I've never thought about that before.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  Let me say, it's not butch.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Let me define you by what you're not, Charlie, of course it's camp, we're sitting here with fluffy microphones, having a lovely time.

• 14:03Adam Buxton?

  And pink tape everywhere.

• 14:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, gorgeous.

• 14:07Adam Buxton?

  Okay, I'll take it. And one question I did want to ask was, what does the T stand for?

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Nothing, it's like, it's like, I should have said this in the book, I don't think I did, um.

• 14:17Adam Buxton?

  I don't think you did.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  No, um, there's another Russell Davies, you know that man who pops up on Radio Four? He's bearded and wise, he has a beard like yours, grey, iron grey, sexy, strong. And he just thinks like the brain of Britain and things like that, he also writes plays and things, I once got £250 for a play of his, and never paid it back, I just took it. So I had to, well, you don't, no one ever said you must change your name, but I kind of thought I've had to, he's been around for decades, a very fine distinguished broadcaster, I've never met him, it's weird. And so I thought I'd better invent something, and sat there, when my first writing credit came up, I sat there going, we need it now, we need it now, and I sat there going, Russell, Russell S Davies, Russell B Davies, Russell,

• 15:00Speaker 01

  and then I just went Russell T Davies, that'll do. And then the very next day, someone said, oh, like James T Kirk.

• 15:06Adam Buxton?

  Aha.

• 15:07Speaker 01

  I was like, fuck off. As a Doctor Who man, I saddled myself with a Star Trek moniker.

• 15:14Adam Buxton?

  Well, it could be Russell Tardis Davies.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Aha, or television.

• 15:17Adam Buxton?

  There you go.

• 15:17Speaker 01

  There we go. I like to think of Tupsackorian.

• 15:20Adam Buxton?

  It could be worse. So are you writing at the moment?

• 15:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yes, um, kind of, I'm thinking of new stuff, I've got like, I've kind of got three options at the moment, I won't describe any of them because it's like jinxing them, it's like they'll never happen.

• 15:32Adam Buxton?

  I'm interested in your writing routines, in just the actual nuts and bolts, and I'm always haunted by a moment I had with American comedian David Cross, and I had a meeting with him about possibly writing something with him, a TV show which ended up being called, uh, Todd Margaret, or the mysterious.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  Adventures of.

• 15:53Adam Buxton?

  Series of Unfortunate Adventures, or something like that, about Todd Margaret. Anyway, it didn't work out between myself and David, but in the meeting, well, that was the question I asked him was, how does it work when you're writing? Like, who does the pacing around and looking out of the window?

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:09Adam Buxton?

  And who types? And he said, that's your question? And he just thought that was the stupidest question ever.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  Oh, I'm with you.

• 16:15Adam Buxton?

  And I thought, no, that's important.

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:18Adam Buxton?

  But you generally write solo?

• 16:20Speaker 01

  Always.

• 16:21Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, always.

• 16:21Speaker 01

  Oh, really, always, yes, I've never, have I ever done anything with someone? I can't imagine doing it. And I wonder how they do it, who paces, who types? Your question was bang on.

• 16:29Adam Buxton?

  Thank you.

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:30Adam Buxton?

  And has that always been the case? Like, when you are writing, when you're, like the, the Doctor Who stuff, for example, is that you writing the whole season, or are there other people?

• 16:41Speaker 01

  No, there's lots of other, I get people like Stephen Moffat in, who's, who's a genius, so I just sit back for those episodes. And there was a fair bit of, I do a fair bit, on other writers, I do a fair bit of rewriting, just because it's a tough show to write, and I had a belief in myself that I knew how to do it, and so it's kind of, it's kind of publicly owned, Doctor Who, and I think it has to be as good as it can possibly be, so I would, I would, I arrogantly stepped in and rewrote other writers and pissed some of them off, and equally, some of them got like repeat fees for a lifetime because of the work that I did, so, um, I think it balanced out in the end.

• 17:12Adam Buxton?

  But how about a show like A Very English Scandal then, for example, is that just you?

• 17:16Speaker 01

  Oh, it's just me, everything else I've ever done, and I tend to do one-offs, I tend to, Doctor Who's the only long-running thing I've done.

• 17:22Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 01

  There are things like Years and Years, or It's a Sin.

• 17:25Adam Buxton?

  And Tiptoe.

• 17:25Speaker 01

  Or, and Tiptoe, and all the way back to Casanova I did, and, and even Queer as Folk, just, just one-offs really. Uh, so yeah, just me.

• 17:33Adam Buxton?

  And that is just you, and are you in the same room? Are you using the same equipment?

• 17:38Speaker 01

  I am, I'm literally still sitting in the same Manchester room that I wrote Queer as Folk in, and the computers changed, and I once had a, the cast of Queer as Folk, some of the actors of Queer as Folk once sent me a video message, they were on a location in a film, they were shooting some Arthurian adventure, so that was Aidan Gillan, sending me a video message, like with horses in the background, and, and chainmail, and lances, and, and damsels, and things like that. And there was this video message going, hi Russell, how are you? And I was very much aware that I was still sitting in the same chair, that I hadn't actually moved, that his life had gone to these extraordinary heights, I was, literally hadn't moved. So it is that, it's like, when I come to write a book about it,

• 18:19Speaker 01

  I kind of, how can I write a book about 40 years of typing? I just sit and type. It's a funny job now, though, it's funny, because I became a writer because I wanted to stay at home, and I wanted to spend 40 years typing, but the, you know, the job now is mad, isn't it? You, here I am, off to LA to go and publicise things, and I had to go to Cardiff all those years to make, um, Doctor Who, because the writer has to be on set now, and has to, is, is a showrunner, so you become part of the production.

• 18:43Adam Buxton?

  I mean, that was something that you and Nicholas Shindler sort of pioneered for the UK.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Absolutely, and I'm all for it, I completely believe in it.

• 18:50Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  But when you find yourself on the 57th train, I was so knackered in those Doctor Who years, I once arrived in Manchester, I was fast asleep on the train, the train emptied, they left me there, and the train began to fill up again for its journey back, I was still sitting there, I woke up just in time, and I turned around, my bag was gone, and I'm like, where's my bag? And the guard says, oh, we put that in lost property. And I'm sitting there going, you put my bag in lost property and left me there? I was sitting there asleep, and you left me there? And then I had to go to lost property, I had to pay for it. They were actually laughing behind the lost property desk, I was going, I was there, it's my bag, no, £10, sorry. Another time, I arrived, I was so knackered in those Doctor Who years, it was exhausting, I arrived at Paddington, they had a car to

• 19:35Speaker 01

  take me to the BBC, I got into the car, I fell asleep, and I, bang, in a second, I woke up 20 minutes later to find myself still sitting there because the taxi be clamped.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  And we hadn't moved. I was like, what the hell? Those are the days. Very happy days.

• 19:50Adam Buxton?

  And that was because you were just pulling all nighters and.

• 19:53Speaker 01

  It was the amount of work. It was like, I mean, the height of Doctor Who in that, in that first period. Um. We made Doctor Who, we made Tortured, we made the Sarah Jane Adventures, we made Doctor Who Confidential, we made Tortured Declassified, we made Totally Doctor Who for children's television. We made animated episodes. It was insane.

• 20:09Adam Buxton?

  That's too much Doctor Who.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Insane. The work. Yeah, I loved it. I, I'm not complaining because I created all those things.

• 20:16Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  I honestly believe in saying make hay while the sun shines. Well, you can, if you can make all those things, do make them.

• 20:21Adam Buxton?

  But so much hay.

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Well, but there's lots of times when that'll never happen.

• 20:25Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Speaker 01

  So, yeah, do it.

• 20:27Adam Buxton?

  And then to go back to my questions about the actual business of writing.

• 20:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that.

• 20:32Adam Buxton?

  What are you like when you're sat there? Like, how long will you write a day?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  Oh, no pattern. Absolutely no pattern. Um, I will, I will think a lot and, um. And I mean, a lot, all day, every day. And, and there were some things I've been thinking about for 10 years. When I came to write It's a Sin, I'd been thinking about that for 40 years. So the actual typing is kind of the last thing I'll do. It's a little bit like homework for me. I won't sit down if it's not ready. When it's ready, it's kind of, I can do an episode. I can kind of do an episode in two weeks, but it's kind of an episode a month. I can, that's kind of my workload. That is not reg, I don't sit down at nine o'clock regularly. You know, I always think, oh, if you're gonna write three or four pages a day, that's great. But what I'll tend to do is I'll write six pages one day.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  And then the next day, nothing. And I find myself sitting in front of The Chase and Countdown and all that. Or I'll go shopping and suddenly that last all day, just find yourself wandering.

• 21:23Adam Buxton?

  Do you get stressed though, if you don't write anything in a day?

• 21:25Speaker 01

  I, yes, that adds to the tension. But I think the tension then helps me the next day. I think, I think I created this system where I stress myself and get tense and believe it'll never work. And then.

• 21:35Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  It gets, and I'd spend the entire first two thirds of a script going, it's rubbish, it's rubbish, it's a disaster. My lovely husband Andrew used to go, you do this every time? And I go, yes, but one day it'll be true. I said, is this it? They go, I think, does I give up? Literally retire, stop now, you'll never be a writer. Then somehow in the last third, it all, I go, oh, right, I was right. That character does make sense. And now I'll make sense of it and.

• 22:00Adam Buxton?

  But is it, is it a genuine unpleasant fear that underlies some of those efforts that actually?

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Genuinely deep, real.

• 22:08Adam Buxton?

  You don't have what it takes and it will dry up?

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes. Which you have to balance with, when I finish a script, I'm the most arrogant fucker in the world. Yeah. Yeah, I've done it. But partly the joy of finishing it. So it actually exists as a concrete thing, which is a miracle. And normally, I'm lucky enough to be in a situation to go, people are actually gonna make this now, which is the start of a whole new set of problems. But lovely, what lovely problems. But yes, I've kind of, I really have fought my way to it. I do, I wouldn't hand it in if I didn't believe in it.

• 22:35Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 22:36Speaker 01

  I wouldn't hand it in if I hadn't thought I'd solved all the problems and, or tried to solve all the problems and. And anticipated notes and, and worked really, really hard. Every day I go back to page one. Every single day, if I've finished on page 17, I just go, right, back to page one. And do you know what I stick to like a bastard? Page count, duration. It's like a script should be, I mean, it varies, doesn't it? An hour long script could be, depends what channel you're on. It's for Channel Four. For me, for my speed of writing, a script should be between 52 and 55 pages. So that's what you'll get. There's no point in writing 60.

• 23:11Adam Buxton?

  And that's an hour, is it?

• 23:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's an hour. And a lot of people say, and this is good advice for some people, say, well, write 60 pages, write 70, hand it in, then you can see what stays and what doesn't. Bollocks. That's my job, is to work out what is working. And so every day I'm cutting it down, I'm cutting it down, cutting it down. I think sometimes to his detriment, sometimes I think my scripts are like telegrams. They go boom, boom, boom. They're like bullet points because I've edited down so much. And I watch them on transmission, go, relax, don't be so. Fast, don't be so desperate, don't be so, don't be so brisk. Equally, I like my style and I think it works. My career's good, so it's working. But handing in a script of the right length is of huge importance to me. And that's not just, it sounds like a technical thing, like this must be 55 pages.

• 23:53Speaker 01

  But what you're actually doing is working on what's important and what isn't. It's like in getting it down from 60 pages to 55. I'm sitting there going, is that character important? Am I going on too much on this page? Uh, are those jokes rubbish? Just cut them. And, and is this character repeating itself? Do you need that character? Does he need a mother? Cut the mother. So actually, they are crucial decisions about the piece of work in the end. They're not just page count things. So that's my greatest, every day, you'll find me in my kitchen. Or I'll be pottering about and it's just a page 35, page 35. I'm halfway through, that's too long. If you're halfway through and you're on page 35, then it's gonna be 70 pages long. That's wrong. That's wrong. Cut it down, cut it down, cut it down, cut it down. All day, every day.

• 24:32Adam Buxton?

  So you've sat down, you have all the thoughts you've had about the piece in your head.

• 24:37Speaker 01

  Yes, not written down anywhere.

• 24:38Adam Buxton?

  Not written down?

• 24:39Speaker 01

  No, no notes. Well, because the notes are in my head. Of course I have notes. I have a million notes and a million lines of dialogue already to say.

• 24:46Adam Buxton?

  But you're not, like, the room's not covered in Post-its?

• 24:48Speaker 01

  None of that. But my head is, I suppose.

• 24:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  Um, but do you do the Post-it thing? Do you do that?

• 24:54Adam Buxton?

  Oh, man. I mean, I'm, I've never really written that much. I've never written like a sort of, yeah, but, but always kind of sketchy stuff. Things where the structure is modular anyway.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Gotcha.

• 25:06Adam Buxton?

  It doesn't really matter. But, but as far as, you know, structure goes and all that and how to tell a story. I wouldn't have a clue how to do that really. I've always.

• 25:15Speaker 01

  I think you would because you can tell a story. It's beginning, middle and end.

• 25:18Adam Buxton?

  Not really. When I was, you know, reading to the children when they were little. And they would sometimes say, tell us, just make up a story. I'd be like, I'd be fucked.

• 25:28Speaker 01

  Really?

• 25:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, I'd be like, uh, I've said this before, but, but one of mine was. There was a farm boy on a planet. He had a couple of droid friends and. And that was my story, but.

• 25:44Speaker 01

  You thief.

• 25:45Adam Buxton?

  I know. It was, I couldn't, I just couldn't think of anything else. It was, I thought.

• 25:49Speaker 01

  That's fine. You're so creative. That's nuts.

• 25:52Adam Buxton?

  Maybe I just need to have more gummies or something and relax.

• 25:55Speaker 01

  Get the edibles and.

• 25:56Adam Buxton?

  Speaking of which, do you ever do that? Do you ever have a glass of wine or a little?

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I'm kind of, I did a bit too much booze and stuff when I was young and.

• 26:04Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Don't bother at all now.

• 26:06Adam Buxton?

  Really?

• 26:07Speaker 01

  I never have a drink at home, ever. I've got, and I've got a cupboard full of gin, vodka and wine. Don't touch it. Don't touch it. Uh, if someone comes round, I'll say, do you want a glass of wine? But even then, I'd rather have a cup of tea.

• 26:18Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd go out to drink. But then I rarely go out. I'm 63 now. I hardly bother.

• 26:22Adam Buxton?

  So, yeah, no edibles while you're, uh.

• 26:25Speaker 01

  I don't know how you can write properly and with anything. Is that old fashioned of me? Under the influence, I think my mind would just wander and go and.

• 26:32Adam Buxton?

  But are you not interested to see where it wanders?

• 26:35Speaker 01

  No, I think I'd just be vague. Have you ever listened to someone talk when they're on edibles?

• 26:41Speaker 01

  You don't have a mad urge to transcribe what they're saying, do you? No fear. Just rambling nonsense.

• 26:46Adam Buxton?

  But I did hear you say that you like listening to music when you're writing.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 26:51Adam Buxton?

  You see, I would find that hard to concentrate.

• 26:53Speaker 01

  Uh, well, it's funny. It's, it's, I find something and I repeat it and repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. So eventually I don't even hear it anymore.

• 26:59Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  It was very hard. When I did a very English scandal, I found this little piece of violin and piano music that was two and a half minutes long. This was in the days when my computer would automatically count how many times it played. So I wrote all three hours, just literally a piece of music that was two and a half minutes long. And I, by the end, it was like a hundred thousand times I'd listened to it just nonstop. What was it called? Horror Staccato or something? If I heard it now, I'd vob it. It's like, it was, it's, I'm repulsed by it now.

• 27:28Adam Buxton?

  Was the piece of music used in the show?

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Uh, no, but there is a scene where Jeremy Thorpe, Hugh Grant plays the violin and his mother plays the piano. That's why it fitted it. It, the man who.

• 27:38Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 27:38Speaker 01

  Plays the violin with his mother, that very much.

• 27:40Adam Buxton?

  Was that Hugh Grant playing the violin?

• 27:42Speaker 01

  It was. He learnt. He learnt for that one scene.

• 27:44Adam Buxton?

  It was really good.

• 27:46Speaker 01

  Really, honestly, the work, the work, the, the hard work of that man was astonishing. He was, I loved him. I loved that man. God, he was good.

• 27:53Adam Buxton?

  That's cool. Yeah, they were great in that.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  Patricia Hodge was the mother, playing the piano. And Ben Whishaw. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Gorgeous.

• 27:59Adam Buxton?

  Do you read books or listen to podcasts about writing? Are you interested in the craft?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  No, I've, I have read that Stephen King book on writing. I like that a lot. But, um. I find I'm averse to them. It's like, and I'll tell you why. I've got that Robert McKee book, one of my, my sister bought me that for Christmas, like 20 years ago or something. And I opened it up and I read it. There was a really fascinating, just random page that said, um, and it was just talking about Blade Runner. Of all things. And it said, the reason Blade Runner is a cult film and not a huge box office film. It was successful, but cult, uh, is because Rutger Hauer's character is more interesting than Harrison Ford's character. So. The focus goes on to the supporting character, not the lead. And I thought that was, I thought that was so interesting.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  That I put the book down and never went back to it. Because I literally thought with all my heart, I've got to discover that. That's the kind of, you shouldn't learn from this book. I should have watched Blade Runner and worked on that for myself. And that's what I'll do. Weird, isn't it? I just, from a family of teachers who all believe in. But as do I, believe in education and books. And yet I kind of was repulsed by something telling me how things worked. And I thought, I've just got to discover that for myself. And now there's a whole, as you, there's a whole. Craft of books where writing has been reduced to people describing the A plot, the B plot, the C plot, the inciting incident, the cliffhanger, you've got to have a page 20. The character reverse, you've got to have in episode two and stuff like that. I despise all that stuff. And it's, it's very, there's a man called John York who works for the BBC who very famously teaches all this stuff.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  And I know John, we're like old friends going back decades and I love him. And we argue about this constantly. I think he's corrupting the minds of the young. And he thinks he genuinely believes, and he's right, that he's creating jobs. That's it. That is how the industry works. And that is what script editors look for and what producers look for. They look for those mechanics. And so if you know the A plot, B plot, C plot, you can walk into a job, you can write casualty tomorrow. He's right. I still despise it.

• 29:55Adam Buxton?

  Well, I suppose the argument would be that it is a place to start. So like, if you, it's a bit like music theory. Once you've got the music theory in your pocket. Then you can corrupt it and play with it and.

• 30:06Speaker 01

  Yes, I sit there going, but I never had that. And I've kind of done all right. My producer, Nicola Schindler, who I've worked with for a million years, we did, first came together for Queer as Folk. In 1999, so we've been together forever. She argues with me about this. She says, you're just lucky because your brain does this automatically. She says, you've watched so much television. That your brain automatically goes, A story, B story, C story, inciting incident by page 20. And actually, it's kind of, you look at my scripts, you go, oh, yeah, actually, you've got a point. It's like, I just think, well, I'll make it exciting a third of the way. That, I'm thinking. I'll make it exciting a third of the way through. That'll hook people. And it turns out that's like, that's exactly the page 20.

• 30:43Adam Buxton?

  Your brain already works the same way that Robert McKee's does.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Well.

• 30:46Adam Buxton?

  So, seeing it on the page made you go, huh.

• 30:50Speaker 01

  I think so. I mean, he's really a film writer, I think.

• 30:52Adam Buxton?

  But that's so interesting. I mean, that is the way your brain works. Obviously, the fact that you don't. Make notes. You don't even make notes on your phone or anything like that?

• 31:01Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:01Adam Buxton?

  That, that's, I mean, I just can't get my head around that. If I didn't make notes, I wouldn't have anything.

• 31:06Speaker 01

  I mean, I think, I kind of think, well, if it's good, I'll never forget it. Of course, if I have forgotten it, then I wouldn't know. The gems that have been discarded. And like, once or twice, I've kind of like, I've been walking along and thought, oh, that's a good line. And I made a little voice note recording, but actually I never go back to my phone to play it back because I remember it.

• 31:23Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  It's, it's, it's just there. And there are, there are lines stored up in my head. Libraries of lines, waiting for the right script.

• 31:31Adam Buxton?

  Do you think you just always were like that? Or did, was that something you learned? No?

• 31:35Speaker 01

  No, uh, no, I was always like that. I was that little kid. I was in school, always. It's only in recent years, in my kind of late fifties and sixties, that I realised that it's always going on in my head and not everyone's like this. And there's a voice, there's a conversation, there's dialogue in my head, night and day. And when I was young, it used to be drawing. I used to draw like crazy, like crazy. I would never stop. And I met someone from school the other day. They said, oh yeah, you were that kid who just drew all the time. And I'd just draw, draw, draw asterisks type stuff, peanuts type stuff, uh, kind of comic book type stuff, but I was never going to be a comic book artist, unless you count kind of asterisks in that Bond, this, this, in a format. I love that. I think that there's always the greatest artist in the world. So I drew and drew and drew and drew

• 32:19Speaker 01

  and drew. But actually, I was writing. It took me a long time to realise that I was writing and there's kind of no industry in which you can become, get a living out of drawing cartoons like that. I mean, there's about ten cartoonists in the land who could actually make a living doing that. And I wasn't that good. I was good, but I wasn't that special. Copied a lot of stuff. It's my great regret in life that I don't draw anymore, because I'd loved doing that. And I think, I think my stuff is very cartoony. Even the serious stuff, I think, I can see four frame cartoons in them everywhere, like rhythm, rhythm, silence, punchline, like that all the time.

• 32:53Adam Buxton?

  And you don't doodle?

• 32:54Speaker 01

  I used to doodle so much that when I was a Grenada, my assistant Vanessa covered my desk in paper, huge sheet of paper, and I'd draw all day in it. And then every month she'd replace it. And she says she kept them. But then, and this just sounds mad and it sounds too neat and it's, and I don't believe it myself, and yet it happened. When I became a full-time writer, the doodling stopped. It was like one or the other. And I have to really make an effort to draw now. If it's someone's birthday, they had like a Christmas card or something, or, um, I'll draw cartoons of people then, kind of on demand, but very rarely for myself. I've got no reason to draw now. And I really feel like I've wasted it. I feel like I, I, I'm being modest about my cartoons, but I also think my cartoons are very good. And I wish I still did them. And I feel like my hand

• 33:36Speaker 01

  atrophied a bit. It literally feels like a skill in my hand that's faded.

• 33:42Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, but it would come back so quickly.

• 33:44Speaker 01

  I wonder. I, also, as you get older, your skills get, um, if you look at Charles M. Schultz's drawings, as he got older, his stuff got wobbly and vague. And later, Peanuts cartoon strips are not, Peanuts hit, hit its absolute gorgeous epic best in the eighties. The, the, you know, Peanuts and Charlie Brown, that like, like, I'm a huge fan of that cartoon.

• 34:04Adam Buxton?

  I really liked it too.

• 34:05Speaker 01

  It's, it's the darkest strip.

• 34:07Adam Buxton?

  I read a book recently about Richard Holbrook. He served under Clinton and

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:14Adam Buxton?

  Interesting guy. And the story of him is an interesting story about America's foreign relations between Vietnam and Afghanistan and, you know, the Baltics and all that stuff. Anyway, but I mention it because there's this motif, I think he was into Peanuts and there was a cartoon with Charlie Brown. They'd just been beaten at baseball and he comes off the field and he was saying, how could we have been beaten? We were so sincere.

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Isn't that brilliant?

• 34:45Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  And the amount of unrequited love in that strip. Everyone's in love with someone else and it never works, except for Snoopy. The only happy character in it is Snoopy, who doesn't even know Charlie Brown's name. He just calls him that round-headed kid.

• 34:57Adam Buxton?

  Yes.

• 34:58Speaker 01

  Love that.

• 34:59Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:59Speaker 01

  It's just brilliant.

• 35:00Adam Buxton?

  And Woodstock, I suppose, is pretty happy.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  Woodstock's happy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But we can't tell because you can't read what he says. He just talks in chirps.

• 35:07Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 35:08Speaker 01

  He talks in cuneiform, just little dashes of lines.

• 35:11Adam Buxton?

  Genius. What a great idea.

• 35:13Speaker 01

  So good.

• 35:14Adam Buxton?

  But yes, that, I guess that was the thing with the Richard Holbrook thing was like, it was an encapsulation of the way America thinks of itself.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 35:22Adam Buxton?

  You know, like, but we were so sincere.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 35:24Adam Buxton?

  How can, how can things go wrong?

• 35:26Speaker 01

  The very first cartoon, the very first episode drawing of Peanuts is Charlie Brown's walking along and I think it's Schroeder sitting on a step. It's only three panels, not four. And Schroeder's like, here comes Charlie Brown. Hey, good old Charlie Brown. Oh, that's Charlie Brown. Everybody likes Charlie Brown. And then Charlie Brown walks past and he goes, how I hate him.

• 35:45Speaker 01

  That's episode one of Peanuts, like, and it continued like that for 50 years. I love it. How I hate him.

• 36:26Adam Buxton?

  I guess around the time that I was enjoying Charlie Brown, uh, maybe it was my early teens then, I was also watching Why Don't You?

• 36:33Speaker 01

  Ah, were you happy days?

• 36:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. I mean, holidays would come around and then TV would transform. And that was one of the ways you knew it was holidays.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Holiday time.

• 36:43Adam Buxton?

  Suddenly it's a new schedule.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. In the mornings, in those days, there weren't programmes in the mornings.

• 36:48Adam Buxton?

  That's right.

• 36:49Speaker 01

  Except in holidays and Robertson Crusoe would be repeated.

• 36:51Adam Buxton?

  Robertson Crusoe, Banana Split.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 36:53Adam Buxton?

  The Monkees.

• 36:54Speaker 01

  I love the Banana.

• 36:55Adam Buxton?

  Flashing Blade.

• 36:56Speaker 01

  Banana Splits were insane.

• 36:57Adam Buxton?

  Why Don't You though? Oh, wow.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Happy. Are you sure? Because people are always very nice to me about Why Don't You, because I worked on it. As I remember it, when we were kids, we hated Why Don't You, because it was presented by kids. I loved working on it.

• 37:09Adam Buxton?

  I envied the kids. I remember that. Yeah. I remember thinking like, I wish I could be on that.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  We just took the piss out of them. Like those stupid kids.

• 37:16Adam Buxton?

  Well, I watched it the other day and it is very funny. Like a lot of the kids do look like, probably they are the progeny of the producers at the BBC.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  No, I deny this. Absolute, no, we went around school. Well, well, we went around schools and auditioned them. And like, honestly, well, it depends what years you were watching, because it ran for 18 years.

• 37:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 37:35Speaker 01

  So there's many eras. Why Don't You? I loved, I really loved it.

• 37:39Adam Buxton?

  I watched one where they were showing you how to make sort of little canapes that were squares of white bread with a bit of ham. And it was all very serious. And it's like, and now you put the cocktail stick through the top. And it was showing you every stage.

• 37:55Speaker 01

  Because it was all stuff that was sent in by letters from kids at home.

• 37:59Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 38:00Speaker 01

  Except when I came to work on it. And they were, we'd literally have vast mailbags, except every single letter said, melt some chocolate and put some Rice Krispies in it and that makes a cake. Every single letter was the Rice Krispie cake. So I had to make them up. And I, I used to go to W Smith and we had no budget. So I couldn't buy books, but I'd sit there and read books of games and puzzles and recipes and steal them. And then just, just, I wouldn't make notes, I'd just memorise them and, uh, go and put them on screen and then make them up. I used to say, that's from Wilma Watson in Banff. That was actually a credit I made up. Or was she real? Wilma Watson from Banff. Um, so the whole programme was kind of invented when it was not meant to be. It was meant to be readers' letters. I loved it. Working with kids was such a laugh. One of those kids

• 38:43Speaker 01

  was called Philip Noble, and he grew up to become a photographer. And he's the man who took that photo of Prince Andrew being arrested.

• 38:50Adam Buxton?

  Oh, right.

• 38:51Speaker 01

  In the back of the car. I was like, oh, I know him. I know. I was still in touch with him. And it's like, lovely, lovely man.

• 38:56Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 38:56Speaker 01

  And it's like, world famous? Suddenly became world famous for one photo.

• 38:59Adam Buxton?

  Wow. But then you started, and you write in the book about introducing these sort of narrative arcs into episodes.

• 39:05Speaker 01

  I said narrative arcs, didn't I? Did I? I bet I didn't say narrative arcs.

• 39:08Adam Buxton?

  You may not have said that.

• 39:09Speaker 01

  I said story.

• 39:09Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  I did. I go, I go, well, I just started to write it. And it was recipe followed by game, followed by puzzle, followed by hobby. And that bores me. So I just started, first of all, I started to put jokes in. And then you take it from readers' letters. So I started to invent like an anonymous like hate campaign being written in with letters being sent, but hold on, this joke, with letters being sent in by Sue Denim. I think so. And so then there became this great mystery about who is Sue Denim. And, and they had to track Sue Denim down. And they tracked her down to the Isle of Man. We went filming on the Isle of Man, where they turned out, Sue Denim turned out to be Highland dancers, who then Highland danced. It was the only way they could get Highland dancing onto the show was by a letter campaign. So I just started to write plots in, instead of saying, here's an interesting

• 39:56Speaker 01

  letter, let's go and look at the Highland dancing on the Isle of Man. Like with Matthew Kelly, he was appearing in the theatre and at the same time. So he appeared in this item. And then his agent absolutely bollocked us because we didn't ask permission to get Matthew Kelly in. He was just there. We said, come and join in. What a laugh. Oh my God. Furious. So it's just started to dramatise it. And then, and it ended up, after I'd done about three years. I ended up with this plot in which in order to sort through all the letters through the giant mail box, they invented a letter sorting computer that broke everything down into games and puzzles and recipes. But then the letter sorting computer became sentient and tried to take over the world and trapped all the kids in the den. I can't help it. This is what I do. It's literally how my brain thinks.

• 40:40Adam Buxton?

  So that was obviously a preoccupation of yours, because that's kind of the plot of Dark.

• 40:45Speaker 01

  Dark Season. Yes, it was. It was really a pre- and 27 Doctor Who's as well. And I was, I have to say, I had great producers who let me do all this. And I tell you, the significant thing is we tripled the viewing figures.

• 40:56Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  Tripled. It used to get 0.9 million viewers at 9:25 in the morning. By the time I'd finished with that master plan, we had 2.9 million viewers.

• 41:05Adam Buxton?

  And this is towards the end of the 80s?

• 41:06Speaker 01

  Moved to Manchester in 1987, so this was 87, 88, 89, 90. Yeah, so that probably finished on that show in 1990. So that was the big 2.9 million viewers.

• 41:15Adam Buxton?

  Wow.

• 41:15Speaker 01

  And then it got told off. I got told off by the London department saying, you don't do drama. That's a magazine show. Stop it. So we stopped it. I moved off the show and it went back to 0.9 million viewers. And you kind of thought, what's the point of that then? What's the point of that? And I genuinely, I get people who still remember those programmes. Oh, I loved all that. You think, yeah, well, it was taken off you.

• 41:32Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 41:33Speaker 01

  Still bitter.

• 41:33Adam Buxton?

  And they were worried that, they were just like, wow, this is too weird to be introducing these kind of-

• 41:40Speaker 01

  They were just rigid. It was like, literally, we make drama in London. It was, it was because we were the provinces. It was London being south, I thought, and possessive. And what's the harm? It's like, we weren't proper drama. We were like, I had seven kids running around from a cardboard supercomputer. It cost tuppence. And, and it was enormous fun as well. And the whole computer was destroyed by an electric lemon. It was just mad. You'd only make a battery out of a lemon.

• 42:06Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 42:06Speaker 01

  So we had took all the games and things and did that. So the games destroyed the computer in the end, blah, blah, blah. I loved it, but no, told off.

• 42:13Adam Buxton?

  So remind us what the plot of Dark Season was.

• 42:16Speaker 01

  Dark Season is a school where everyone's given a free computer. Bear in mind, this is 1991, before everyone had a computer, which turns out to be a plot to brainwash all children and take over the world by an evil man called Mr. Eldridge.

• 42:30Adam Buxton?

  Mr. Eldridge.

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Mr. Eldridge, good name.

• 42:32Adam Buxton?

  And he looks like a pop star. He's got a long, he, he looks very matrix-y. He's got his shades on. He's got sort of bleach white hair.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  Beautiful. He's now one of Britain's most powerful agents.

• 42:42Adam Buxton?

  Is he?

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Huge. Lovely man. But, but stopped acting and became an agent. He controls the entire industry just about. So he found his own power in the end. But lovely, gorgeous, sexy man.

• 42:52Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Dyed blonde hair. Like, he's kind of Max Headroom, isn't he?

• 42:55Adam Buxton?

  Aha, that's true.

• 42:56Speaker 01

  It's, it's the sunglasses, it's the blonde hair. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And literally in the final episodes, turns out to be the devil. Like you do.

• 43:05Speaker 01

  That's monstrous, isn't it? How did I get away with that? But it's kind of implied he's the devil, never actually says so.

• 43:10Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:11Adam Buxton?

  But it's very prescient, the whole thing, because the other part, well, it's sort of like two main plots.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Two stories, yeah.

• 43:19Adam Buxton?

  Two stories in the six-part series.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  Remember, did you watch it? Were you?

• 43:23Adam Buxton?

  I never did at the time. I've watched it since.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  Oh, wow.

• 43:26Adam Buxton?

  I don't think I, what was I doing? I think I was just being a-

• 43:30Speaker 01

  1991.

• 43:31Adam Buxton?

  I was in my early twenties and my-

• 43:33Speaker 01

  We're drunk.

• 43:34Adam Buxton?

  I was very drunk.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Lovely.

• 43:35Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. But, um, so I was never aware of it at the time.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Well, you wouldn't, don't show it on TV.

• 43:41Adam Buxton?

  And, and looking back though, it's like, wow, it's got these incredibly prescient themes. Home computers, people being brainwashed via the home computers.

• 43:51Speaker 01

  AI.

• 43:52Adam Buxton?

  Shady kind of-

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Tech barons.

• 43:54Adam Buxton?

  Tech barons. And then you've got an AI apocalyptic supercomputer buried underneath the school.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  It's an old secret from World War II, isn't it? But it's been, it's become sentient.

• 44:03Adam Buxton?

  The behemoth.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  But yes, behemoth. I was so behind with the scripts, I gave the scripts to my sister, lovely APA called Chris, to type up. And someone said to him, what's it about, that thing that Russell's writing? And he said, I think it's about a giant moth.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Which would have been good. I would have done that in Doctor Who. Bless him. But Kate Winslet was in that show.

• 44:24Adam Buxton?

  Kate Winslet, first major TV role.

• 44:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, she was 15 years old and, and still, still remembers it. Still speaks well about it. I've met her since. And, and she's got really happy memories of that, which is nice. You know, you kind of expect stars like that to move on and not remember what they did when they were a kid. And she says lovely, she came back and did a, an audio sequel to it for that big finish company about three years ago. She came back and did that.

• 44:44Adam Buxton?

  That's cool.

• 44:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Lovely. Really lovely.

• 44:46Adam Buxton?

  And Jacqueline Pearce, AKA Servalan from Blake 7.

• 44:52Speaker 01

  What is that? Like, the first, she must be the first star I ever met. She was an absolute blazing star to me. And she, I loved her. She was every bit as camp as you want and every bit as good as you want. What a great actor, actually. Hundred percent committed. I remember telling her, her character was a lesbian. She went, oh, marvellous. She embraced it. And the very first day, she came to rehearsal, it's a cast of kids, you know, it was three kids saving the world. And so they were sitting there, Kate Winslet and, and the other two. And, um, and in walked Jacqueline Pearce on like a Monday morning in a full kind of cape and, and turban, looking magnificent. She went, darling, I'm sorry I'm late. I was up all night fucking a Russian priest.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Everyone flinched and ran to cover the children's ears, but they were just laughing. She was gorgeous. She was properly, properly lovely. And I'm honoured to work with her. Loved her. Sadly, no longer with us.

• 45:42Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 45:43Speaker 01

  Wonderful.

• 45:44Adam Buxton?

  Oh, man. Blake 7, though. Wowee. They show some of those still every now and again.

• 45:49Speaker 01

  Do they?

• 45:49Adam Buxton?

  When I'm scrolling through on a late night when everyone's gone to bed.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh.

• 45:54Adam Buxton?

  And-

• 45:54Speaker 01

  I think I'm supposed to say nice things about it now and I can't.

• 45:56Adam Buxton?

  Suddenly there's Orak.

• 45:57Speaker 01

  Oh, my God.

• 46:00Speaker 01

  A little box, a little buzzing box.

• 46:01Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 46:02Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 46:02Adam Buxton?

  I used to really, I loved that show so much that when it ended, do you remember how it ended?

• 46:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:07Adam Buxton?

  So this was a show of, like I said, a group of, what were they? Outlaws?

• 46:12Speaker 01

  Kind of terrorists, really. They were blowing up government buildings. Yeah, but the government was corrupt, obviously.

• 46:17Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, they were renegades and we were on their side. And the, the good characters, though, like there was a sort of cowardly guy called Villa who was spineless. And then there was Avon who was-

• 46:30Speaker 01

  Arrogant.

• 46:31Adam Buxton?

  Anyway, at the end, spoiler, they all get executed really shockingly.

• 46:36Speaker 01

  That's amazing.

• 46:36Adam Buxton?

  By the evil empire.

• 46:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:39Adam Buxton?

  And the last thing is-

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Well, they get executed by Blake. Don't they? Oh, no, he gets shot.

• 46:43Adam Buxton?

  Avon shoots and kills Rog Blake at the end of Blake 7.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  That's it.

• 46:49Adam Buxton?

  And-

• 46:50Speaker 01

  Because he's betrayed them.

• 46:51Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 46:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:52Adam Buxton?

  He comes to, Avon comes to believe that Blake, this is good stuff. People are absolutely riveted by it. This is what the podcasts want. Avon comes to believe that Blake has betrayed their rebellion, acting out of paranoia and misunderstanding a conversation about a setup. Avon fatally shoots Blake. Federation troopers then storm the room and gun down the rest of the crew in a bleak conclusion. And they didn't even play like the theme music at the end. It was just the titles.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Slow motion deaths, isn't it?

• 47:18Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 47:18Speaker 01

  Everyone falling to the ground.

• 47:20Adam Buxton?

  And I was so, I guess I must have been 11 or something. And I was just like, fuck this.

• 47:26Speaker 01

  I see, I was 18. So I was just, I was more cynical about it. Although, it is a great episode. It's like, wow.

• 47:31Adam Buxton?

  And I wrote to the BBC.

• 47:33Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 47:34Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, and I said, I'm not having this. Like, what, I love Blake 7 and this is a needlessly bleak way to conclude.

• 47:42Speaker 01

  Did you get a reply?

• 47:43Adam Buxton?

  I did get a reply, but it, but it was very patronising. It was all about-

• 47:48Speaker 01

  These things happen.

• 47:49Adam Buxton?

  Blake may one day conquer the galaxy again. And when he does, he will be glad of plucky young recruits like you.

• 47:58Speaker 01

  That was just someone in an office, wasn't it?

• 48:00Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. And I just wanted to know, like, who the fuck decided to execute all my pals? Anyway, the thing is, Dark Season, you and computers. Why were they in your head to that degree? Like, how long had you been fascinated by tech in that way?

• 48:16Speaker 01

  Oh, no. Um, that's interesting. Um, I think I, I wasn't that interested. I'm still not. I'm not an expert in computers, um, at all, genuinely. If someone goes wrong on my computer, I'm stuck and I have to cry and get help. But in terms of science fiction plots, in terms of like, gonna be able to come as a Doctor Who lover. Um, it's, Doctor Who wasn't on then. If Doctor Who had been on then, it would be doing stories about evil computers. Actually, Doctor Who had always done stories about evil computers. It kind of did in 1966. It did a story about a computer called Wotan inside the post office tower. I mean, which was brand new then. That was such a great big science fiction building looming over London. And, and they went right there. And it was a computer linking up with all other computers worldwide.

• 48:59Adam Buxton?

  Hmm.

• 49:00Speaker 01

  It was the internet ahead of its time. They just didn't use that phrase, but that's what it was doing in order to take over the world. Amazing.

• 49:05Adam Buxton?

  And it was disseminating just vast amounts of porn.

• 49:10Speaker 01

  And it won.

• 49:11Adam Buxton?

  And it won.

• 49:12Speaker 01

  We live in Wotan's world now.

• 49:14Adam Buxton?

  The Wotan clan.

• 49:41Adam Buxton?

  Speaking of Doctor Who, were you just totally gung ho when you thought, okay, let's give this guy a reboot? And when did you start thinking about doing that?

• 49:51Speaker 01

  Oh, well, as a Doctor Who fan, I'd never not thought about it.

• 49:55Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 49:55Speaker 01

  Um, and yet, it's funny. And yet I could argue that I never really thought about it until it was real. I kind of invent stories in my head, not many of which ever made it onto the screen. All my life, I mean, literally when I was a little child, when I'd walk home from my little comprehensive school in Swansea, I would think of Doctor Who stories. I'd imagine the Daleks blowing up all the houses around me. And I loved that. And not just when I was 11. When I was doing that, when I was 18.

• 50:19Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 50:19Speaker 01

  I was still walking home, imagining a movie with Daleks blowing up everything.

• 50:23Adam Buxton?

  And were you thinking in terms of like, this is what I want to see, which I'm not seeing at the moment from Doctor Who?

• 50:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:29Adam Buxton?

  Like, what were the things you wanted to see that you didn't see?

• 50:31Speaker 01

  And also, it was at a time of great uprising of television fantasy in America. We had Buffy, we had Angel, we had all those charmed, we had all those associated shows. And as ever, I got tired of not seeing the British version of those things. So the same, it was the same was true of like the AIDS crisis, actually. I wrote It's a Sin, because I'd seen the American version told again and again and again. And I knew the British version had something else to say. It was important that it is said. So that's why when Doctor Who comes on, that's why it's full of Westminster Tower and red double decker buses and Westminster Bridge and Big Ben and Union Jacks. It's in Rose Tyler Goes Through the Hole of the Empty Child, wearing a Union Jack t-shirt. Because I really believed in making it British and selling that around the world. So yes, I suppose, yes, I did walk into it with,

• 51:15Speaker 01

  not with confidence, because you're always ready for things to fail. But I did kind of feel like I had, uh, 35 years of research that had gone into it, which is me watching Doctor Who. And I'm a proper fan. I knew every single story ever. There's too many of them now.

• 51:28Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  There's ones I've forgotten now. You don't remember them as an adult like you do when you're a kid. It's like you could point me at a story in the middle of Peter Capolli's here. I go, what's that? Then I remember. But it's like, it's funny. It's ingrained into you as a child in the way that it can't be as an adult. Yeah.

• 51:42Adam Buxton?

  It really is. Especially because it's bound up with all the fears that you had then. Did you used to get freaked out by the show when you were little?

• 51:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolute terror, absolute terror. I can remember William Hartnell regenerating into Patrick Traut. And I didn't know that was the word. The word regenerating didn't exist. I didn't know what was happening. But I remember being absolutely terrified. And that episode's no longer in the archives. I can literally remember. Except that for me, the most frightening thing wasn't the man falling to the floor. I don't actually remember him falling to the floor. What I do remember is all the switches on the TARDIS console were moving on their own. And for some reason, I found that absolutely terrifying. Why? Why? Why did that terrify me? But I think that's a big part of it. It's you are emotionally connected to that show.

• 52:23Adam Buxton?

  Were you excited about casting a new kind of Doctor and a new kind of assistant? Was that one of the things that animated your passion for rebooting the whole thing?

• 52:34Speaker 01

  I don't suppose I was thinking different. You're just thinking, what's going to fit 2005?

• 52:38Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  And Chris Exton surprised us all. I wouldn't have thought an actor of that stature would have been interested in doing it. And

• 52:44Adam Buxton?

  Who else did you see for that part?

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Oh, lots of people. And if I name them, you know what Doctor Who fans are like, they'll turn up at their house.

• 52:50Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  To morrow. You know, it's just, I've learnt not to. I once, I once said, oh, so that would make a great Doctor Who. They've been plagued by it for the rest of their lives.

• 52:59Adam Buxton?

  Okay.

• 52:59Speaker 01

  It's like, honestly, every interview, oh, what about you, me, Doctor Who? So I've learnt to shut up. But really good people, really gorgeous people. But then the fact that, you know, Chris Exton is one of Britain's greatest actors. I'd done the second coming with him. I'd done a drama about through ITV about the return to earth of the son of God. Sounds like a good joke. We describe a really serious, serious drama, which he really plays the son of God. So we'd done that together. So we knew each other. And so he contacted us. Is that right? Yes, he did. He was interested in it. And because my name was connected to it. And then instantly, the profile of the show changed overnight. Bear in mind, up until that point, when the papers said Doctor Who's coming back, they were suggesting Paul Daniels as the Doctor.

• 53:39Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 53:41Speaker 01

  That's how degraded it was.

• 53:42Adam Buxton?

  Were they seriously thinking in those terms?

• 53:44Speaker 01

  That's the Ken Dodd, Paul Daniels.

• 53:46Adam Buxton?

  I was wondering if Rod Hull and Emu ever got considered. I think they would have been good. They did like spoofs of Doctor Who.

• 53:53Speaker 01

  They did, uh, in the Pink Windmill show, they did a Doctor, I think it was Doctor Emu or something.

• 53:58Adam Buxton?

  Doctor Emu, yes. EBC one. It was very strange. And I also thought quite like, I thought seriously, I think he might have been quite good. Yoffy from Fingerbobs.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:11Adam Buxton?

  Do you remember him?

• 54:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 54:12Adam Buxton?

  Canadian actor.

• 54:14Speaker 01

  You're going to suggest Bodger and Badger next. That would, that would have been good.

• 54:18Adam Buxton?

  That would have been, they would have been good assistants.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  But that's how, um, and honestly, no offence to Paul Daniels, he's not an actor. That's how degraded the show was. That's how low it was in the tabloid opinion.

• 54:28Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  And so we really had a job of work on. I mean, Chris was phenomenal casting. To get Billy at the time was a phenomenal piece of casting. It was like, because she was

• 54:36Adam Buxton?

  Was she married to Chris Evans?

• 54:37Speaker 01

  She was.

• 54:38Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  And she, and then she kept on filming as she divorced him.

• 54:41Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  I can remember rehearsing episode two, The End of the World, it was called. And it felt like the end of the world because she was divorcing and, and in hell of a place in her mind. Tough stuff. And, and also living away from home. The hard thing about Doctor Who is saying to people, come and live in Cardiff for nine months of the year. Nothing wrong Cardiff, but it's not most people's home. You know, it's like come and be away from your support system and your family and your network and everything. Really tough. And that's what she had to do, divorcing in the middle of it all. And every day gave her the most shining performance. I mean, well, it was funny because we spent the whole shoot before it went on air with everyone, everyone kind of taking the piss. How's it going on Doctor Who? I literally had people saying to, in people in the industry, what are you doing that for? And we kind of knew, I was watching The Rushes every day and there was Chris and there was Billy. And

• 55:24Speaker 01

  we just knew, you can't know something's going to be a success, but I knew it was good. I absolutely knew it was good. Just watching those two. Watch it now. They're phenomenal.

• 55:32Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 55:32Speaker 01

  Absolutely brilliant.

• 55:33Adam Buxton?

  All of this totally passed me by, I have to say.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Did it?

• 55:36Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  Where were you?

• 55:38Adam Buxton?

  I was drunk.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:39Adam Buxton?

  I was mainly drunk. What was I doing? I was

• 55:42Speaker 01

  2005.

• 55:43Adam Buxton?

  Having children and they were too young to watch it. We were just watching Tractor Tom and all that stuff. So it just wasn't part of my world at the time.

• 55:55Speaker 01

  That's interesting because I would have thought you were that world. You like your

• 55:57Adam Buxton?

  Oh, yeah, nerdy.

• 55:58Speaker 01

  Old shows.

• 55:58Adam Buxton?

  Hi-fi, definitely.

• 56:00Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 56:00Adam Buxton?

  But no, it just didn't happen. And I was

• 56:02Speaker 01

  Did it feel too new? You're like, I like the old one.

• 56:04Adam Buxton?

  I was just disconnected from it. I think

• 56:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:06Adam Buxton?

  In my spare time, I was just, uh, listening to a lot of kind of indie music and just worrying about my career, basically. And

• 56:14Speaker 01

  We knew, you know, we'd have meetings going, how do we get Buxton?

• 56:17Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  How do we get Buxton? No one could crack it.

• 56:19Adam Buxton?

  Exactly.

• 56:19Speaker 01

  You were the great enigma.

• 56:20Adam Buxton?

  So reading now and investigating the world in advance of our conversation and going online.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 56:28Adam Buxton?

  Suddenly you're confronted by like, whoa, holy Moses, this is a very passionate online ecosystem.

• 56:37Speaker 01

  Do you think?

• 56:38Adam Buxton?

  And, uh,

• 56:39Speaker 01

  I hadn't noticed.

• 56:40Adam Buxton?

  And obviously, that must be your whole life. I mean, I, I can see just from reading a few articles and watching a few videos that that is a big part of what you have to do is, is navigate this world.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  Interesting, yes.

• 56:57Adam Buxton?

  And sort of deal with people's opinions about how it should work and what's gone wrong and what's gone right.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  I don't, because I'm not on X and I don't go to conventions either. I never do. I've never been to a convention ever. Partly because genuinely, I mean this, the job was seven days a week for many, many years. So if I get a free Saturday, I don't want to go sit in Liverpool at a convention. Genuinely, it's like, I actually give Doctor Who enough days. You're not getting my weekends. If they started to have a convention on Tuesdays, I might consider going. Also, I, I just don't, um, I don't like a world in which people have to pay £200 for an autograph and a photograph. I don't like that. And I think the whole world has changed. And I think the souring of everyone's online voice, which is, I wrote a drama called Tiptoe, which is entirely about

• 57:44Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 57:45Speaker 01

  how the online voice is corrupting, it's stepping into the real world and anger is taking all of us over. And I think that's happening with fandom. I think that's happening with Star Trek fandom. I think it's happening with Star Wars fandom. It's happening with The Pit. It's like

• 57:57Adam Buxton?

  Happens with everything. I mean, the, the thing this year was The Odyssey.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 58:00Adam Buxton?

  And that suddenly became a whole culture wars narrative.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  And you went and saw it. And I thought that was one of the greatest films I've ever seen in my life. Even then, the, the, the oldie just published an article with Bruce Beresford, saying what a terrible script it is. It's a fantastic script. It's absolute, the way it uses The Odyssey, that with Zeus's law, it criticizes the entire world. Every problem we have with immigration or others or foreigners, um, that we've lost Zeus's law. We've corrupted ourselves by not welcoming anyone into our house. It's an astonishing piece of work. A modern day blockbuster saying that. And that's literally criticizing the whole of America and the whole of Britain, all of us. It's amazing. I loved it. I mean, do you remember in the early days of this, do you remember the online reaction to casting Daniel Craig as James Bond?

• 58:43Adam Buxton?

  Uh huh.

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Absolute dismissal and hatred and mockery. One of the greatest performances you'll ever see on film. So it's all nonsense, but it's getting worse. And I think, I think it's getting more

• 58:53Adam Buxton?

  Well, I noticed

• 58:54Speaker 01

  I think it's getting more violent.

• 58:55Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, yeah. I guess I noticed it getting really nasty with the Star Wars films, like the later Star Wars films when they started. But do you spend any time at all trying to sort of understand where some of those frustrations and passions are coming from?

• 59:14Speaker 01

  No, because they're endless.

• 59:15Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  And also, I kind of get them. I am a fan and I can divide that part myself. If I've done something on screen that I like, but I'm absolutely capable of going, oh, well, lots of people. If I bring back an old monster, I absolutely know that some people will therefore go, oh, you can't bring back old monsters. Oh, you've ruined it. That's automatic. It's like, that is literally part of the experience, whatever I do, whatever I did. So I know that, but it's never ending. If you listen to that, I mean, there's not just one opinion out there, there's 5,000. So which one do you listen to? And that's always been the way, my entire career's kind of been based on that. It's like, I got that way back when I invented Queer as Folk. Oh, God, we once had a public meeting in Manchester. Queer as Folk was so controversial, it was a public meeting held by the RTS to discuss Queer as Folk that was a riot.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  It was fervent, it was fevered. And there were lesbians standing up furious, saying, this does not represent me. The lesbian, there's hardly any lesbian characters in it and those that are are terrible. And I'm sitting there on stage going, it doesn't represent you because it's not about you. It literally, literally doesn't represent you. You're right. And actually, I think it's more complicated than that. Go back and watch Queer as Folk now. And actually, the wisest people on screen are the lesbians who are way above all the gay men shit and just coolly commenting on it. So I couldn't say that at the time, but I thought, I should go and look at it with some distance and you'll see that. This meeting in Manchester was really, people were standing and shouting and then unfortunately, a lot of gay men started shouting at the women and they then didn't feel safe, so they left. They publicly exited, which is very unfortunate, that shouldn't have happened. And there were gay men having a go at me.

• 1:00:44Speaker 01

  There was one man sitting there going, I, you know, I don't recognize his life, shouting, people were shouting, I don't recognize his life, you know, I don't take drugs, I don't go out and have sex, I sit at home and read a book. And I wasn't helping because I was sitting on stage going, yeah, that'd be a great drama, wouldn't it? Man goes home and reads a book. I'm not going to do that. It's like, it was fierce. I loved it. I loved that meeting. And it was about 500 people, that was mad.

• 1:01:07Adam Buxton?

  But you understand why they were upset.

• 1:01:09Speaker 01

  Yes, I get that. I get that. I'm also the gay man who goes home and reads a book.

• 1:01:13Adam Buxton?

  Right.

• 1:01:14Speaker 01

  And I get that, absolutely. But you're bringing issues of representation onto drama in a way that straight people have never. No straight people came along and said, actually, Odysseus, go home to your wife. It's why wonderful, why go fighting in the Trojan War? Don't be so daft.

• 1:01:27Adam Buxton?

  But it was the fact that Queer as Folk was so visible and there were so few other shows that had any gay representation whatsoever.

• 1:01:35Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:01:36Adam Buxton?

  So suddenly everyone's like, well, like it or not, you're the show and everyone's watching this and it's going to inform the way that people think about queer culture.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  And again, part of the, part of the arguments, I had gay journalists literally furious with me for not putting a safer sex message across it. And this is 1999, when people are still dying of AIDS, been huge numbers, furious that I hadn't done that and I hadn't done that for a very good reason. I refused to let our lives be defined by a virus. And that every other drama was doing that. Every other week, someone would turn up in casualty with HIV and a lesson would be learnt. And so I didn't want to do that. So I kind of learnt to fake, I mean, the Queer as Folk press launch was fascinating, literally journalist after journalist after journalist having a go at us. And Nicola Schindler, the producer, was quite shocked, she's a straight woman. She was shocked, I wasn't because I thought I am that gay man and I can know what they

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  think and I knew by not putting a safe sex message into Queer as Folk, it would be criticised. I knew that. So when it comes, I'm not surprised. I'm like, yeah, yeah, fine, fine, fine, this is my reason, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I kind of, for some reason, I've always been in that world of contentious decisions, stuff that's argued about. And also, I am that viewer, I watch this stuff, so I know that's coming. I'm equally capable of sitting at home and when a gay man tips up on screen and I can hear a little voice, I may go, well, that's not representing me, is it? I'm not that camp. I have that camp. So I can hear that voice in me always and I have a little argument with myself and go, no, no, I don't do that.

• 1:03:05Adam Buxton?

  Were you chastened though by any of the specific criticisms and did you come out of it thinking differently in, in any ways?

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Uh, no, to be honest, no. I kept, look at me, I've kept going. And I think there's more to say and it's, I'm on my own journey. It's very interesting that they say all that to me, you got the whole HIV thing wrong. It takes me 20 years, then I go and write It's a Sin.

• 1:03:25Adam Buxton?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  But that's my own path, they didn't set me on that path. But I kind of knew that I would one day, I didn't think it would take that long, but I have the confidence in myself to know that these things are ticking away in me. Actually, there was a screening of Queer as Folk 2 in London for Pride and I sat next to a woman called Linda Bellows, who back then was, she's a lawyer, she's a very powerful black campaigner for women's rights and lesbian rights. And she walked out to the screening because she thought, there was a black guy on screen, she thought he was being used as this kind of sex toy. It was a threesome with two white guys and a black guy. And I followed her out and she was lovely, we had a proper conversation about it, she wouldn't shout at me or anything. And we had a proper conversation about it and actually, I think I've done better representations of race since then.

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  I did think, right, you've got to improve this, this is, yeah, yes. So you do listen, that was, that wasn't someone shouting and screaming online, that was a really impassioned, heartfelt argument delivered really kindly and sensibly and marvelously. And, and I so respected her, she was so honest about what she thought back then. So it can, it can, it can, it can. And I remember there was a screening of Queer as Folk in a gay nightclub in Birmingham, its first public, was it called Nightingales or something? Its very first screening, so we had a screening there and so we played that first episode, which is full of contentious sex and stories and lots of themes and then any Q and A. And the very first question, the Q and A was, where are the bisexual characters? Fuck off. And I can't win.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  But then, five years pass and I go and invent Captain Jack Harkness, the universe's most

• 1:05:01Adam Buxton?

  In Torchwood.

• 1:05:02Speaker 01

  In Torchwood, and who first of all, but the universe's most swaggering bisexual. So you kind of do listen.

• 1:05:08Adam Buxton?

  Yeah, sure.

• 1:05:09Speaker 01

  But you're not, you're not listening to what they think they're saying. You've got your own thoughts and you adapted to that.

• 1:05:14Adam Buxton?

  Yes. But what about when you were writing some of the Queer as Folk storylines, were you thinking, oh, I wonder how this is going to go down? Like, I suppose particularly Nathan and Stuart, the age difference there.

• 1:05:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:30Adam Buxton?

  He's 15, he's 29.

• 1:05:32Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:05:33Adam Buxton?

  That still looks shocking.

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely. It's kind of meant to be. It's like, but equally, and it's illegal. It's like Stuart's absolutely breaking the law, but that's, that's not how the world works. I would go to Canal Street and see that happening all the time and see it happening now. And, and I'd worry about those teenagers. It was kind of like the first generation of teenagers start coming out. And of course, Section 28 was in place, so actually, they had nothing and they had no one. And actually, I would say that Nathan's kind of lucky to come into Stuart's all because via that he meets Vince and via that meets Hazel, who's like the perfect mum and he ends up living with Hazel, who is better to him and more versed in the ways of the gay world than his own mum is, even though his own mum's actually very nice. So he does find a better world, he gets educated, he lives. And by the time the drama comes around, you have his 16th birthday. By the end of Queer as Folk 2, Stuart's cast out and the whole world belongs to Nathan.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  So it's, there's a nice coming of age story there. I knew that. I knew on the way, lots of people would shout at me for that. And look, what can I say, it clearly doesn't stop me, does it? It's like, I have to keep going because I believe in what I'm writing and I believe that I'm doing it for good reasons.

• 1:06:35Adam Buxton?

  Bex, your sponsors, didn't agree.

• 1:06:39Speaker 01

  They pulled out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:06:41Adam Buxton?

  Was it after that episode?

• 1:06:42Speaker 01

  Yes. Uh, I think it was episode three they pulled out. That was full of sex, episode three. What happened was that Bex is in Germany and the chairman's daughter came over to Britain and was in a hotel in London and switched on the television and saw Queer as Folk and phoned home to tell, why, why, what are you doing? We are sponsoring this. Can you imagine? I was never allowed to tell that story for like 10 years from Channel 4 and then they pulled out. And we all had to sit there in, in like press releases going, Bex has decided to reorganise their summer scheduling for their financial output.

• 1:07:12Adam Buxton?

  Bex no longer wished to be associated with rimming of underage boys.

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  Exactly. I love the daughter phoning dad though, that must have been the best phone call.

• 1:07:20Adam Buxton?

  And then, how did you approach Tiptoe then?

• 1:07:23Speaker 01

  Hmm, that's kind of in a way, everything I'm talking about, all those, all those things we've been talking about, all that hostility, all that, but sometimes there's counter arguments, they've all become more hostile over the years. In every area, gay politics, in science fiction fandom, everywhere, everything is heating up because of that online voice. It is because of that unregulated, unmoderated platform that allows people to say whatever they want with no consequences. And I spent a long time wondering, are people being made, are people's thoughts becoming more hostile because they're allowed to say, oh, did they always think like this? And they were just silent before, they couldn't be heard. But I, but I do think it's getting worse because now it's weaponised and monetised. Now, if you want to hate something, you can go on YouTube, form a channel and you get

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  paid, you get paid to hate things and that's.

• 1:08:09Adam Buxton?

  Yeah. I mean, my YouTube sidebar, I guess it's because I've clicked on a few of them, but it feeds me non-stop essays about how Shit things are.

• 1:08:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:20Adam Buxton?

  Like, here's why so and so is shit.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:22Adam Buxton?

  Here's when so and so lost it.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're making money at. That's the difference. I think that over the past few years, that's become the crucial difference. It's a money-making device now. Who doesn't want to make money? Good for you. But that is intensifying, intensifying. And now, I think the worst thing is you're starting to see that cross into the real world. When you see One Hundred Men in Dover yesterday, they all contact each other online. That's how they found each other. And when you see these acts of violence, I mean, everywhere. I mean, just the other day was a memorial in Manchester for those people shot at the synagogue, two men murdered. Two Jewish men murdered in 2025. We're in the modern world now. I shouldn't be able to say these words. And I don't think that would happen without them being online. So that's where Tiptoe comes from, is my absolute terror

• 1:09:07Speaker 01

  and fear and fascination with what's happening, is that it's all very well. Be as cross as you like online. I think it's stepping into the real world and there's nothing to stop it happening. Normally with these things, you can sit there and say, oh, it'll get better. 10 years' time, it'll all calm down. I can't see it calming down. That's my worry.

• 1:09:24Adam Buxton?

  How do you personally think about the way that attitudes towards the LGBT community have gone backwards in the last few years? What do you think is behind that?

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  It's like, there's a delight in ignorance. Everything's gone backwards. There are now growing numbers of flat-earthers. And that takes my breath away. That takes my breath away. Did you ever see that coming? Did you ever think civilization would head down that path? Never. Absolutely never. And really, we were much happier talking about Blake VII, really, because it's like, it's a pretty miserable pit to go down to, because I'm not hopeful. And I tried to write with a lot of hope. And actually, Tiptoe was interesting, because it's like, I'm trying to make the next thing I write have a wildly happy ending, because Tiptoe was so dark and so true, I think, and so real about what's happening.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  That it was kind of my first time of writing without hope. And it was a really bleak piece of work.

• 1:10:23Adam Buxton?

  What does give you hope these days, then? What sort of makes you? What do you go to that makes you feel like, oh, this is still working?

• 1:10:34Speaker 01

  Oh, there's still Android. I love that show. Have you seen that sitcom? Diane Morgan and Sue Johnson? I mean, there's always a great idea. I love television. I still am unmoved in my love of television. And something great comes along. You know, people go, there's nothing on TV. Yes, there is. There's a million things on TV. And actually, I love that show with a passion. I want to write an episode of that. I love it so much. And really, that last episode, I was going, run, Linda. And I was so excited by it, thrilled. I think it's a really joyous piece of work. And what it says about underneath the laughs, about loneliness and widowhood and old age is really clever. Really. I've never seen Sue Johnson so good. And she's always good. And Diane Morgan. I just love it. So, so I have hope

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  that great ideas come along like that. And that will run for 10 years. That is loved. Small profits, I love that. I think there's always a great drama. There's always a great show. There's Jesse Armstrong writing his stuff. Sally Wayne writes Riot Women. I loved Riot Women. So, as a TV is my thing, that's what I kind of see the world through. And I still think it's full of great ideas. So I can still honestly sit down, have a great night's TV. I love it.

• 1:11:49Adam Buxton?

  This is an ad for Squarespace.

• 1:11:52Adam Buxton?

  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.

• 1:12:23Adam Buxton?

  Anyway, the publishers, Bluestar and Dogwhistle, made a beautiful website for the book using Squarespace. I know. I got the newsletter that you sent out using Squarespace. And the website does look great. Videos of you airing your views, members' areas for your mad fans. You've even got a merch store, I see. That's right. The Union Jack top hat is a big seller. But they constructed it all so fast with Squarespace. They did most of it over one lunchtime, Steve. Well, you wouldn't want to spend much longer on it, would you? Shut up, Steve. But here's the thing. Anyone listening to this can start a free trial right now at Squarespace.com/boxton and see how easy and versatile Squarespace is. And when they're ready to launch a new website or domain, they can save 10% off their first purchase by using the offer code BOXTON at checkout. Right. Well, maybe I'll visit Squarespace.com/boxton and start a new website just to refute all the nonsense in your new book.

• 1:13:07Adam Buxton?

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

• 1:13:16Adam Buxton?

  Continue.

• 1:13:27Adam Buxton?

  Hey, welcome back, podcasts. I was talking to Russell, T Davis there, before the break. And I'm very grateful indeed to Russell for coming along and making the time to talk to me. It was good fun. And I recommend his book, The Queerest of Folk. There's a link in the description. And also down there with the links to various great bits and pieces. Have you heard of Success Pod? I did a show this week in Molden for a bookshop, talking about Ramblebook and I Love You Bye. But in the course of doing that and chatting with the audience, I said, how many of you have listened to Success Pod? It wasn't a

• 1:14:09Adam Buxton?

  huge venue. I think it was only about 130 or so people there. But out of them, I think maybe one person had listened to Success Pod. I mean, come on, guys, guys. A six-part, hilarious audio series with me and Rosie wandering through the ludicrousness of the podcasting world, with lots of friends of the podcast chatting with me. You would love it. Look, if you've made it this far, you're listening to this, and you haven't heard Success Pod, please, get it together. But also, down there in the links today, you

• 1:14:49Adam Buxton?

  will find links to episodes of Why Don't You, seeing as we were discussing it. There's the episode that I mentioned with the kids making kind of weird canapes. Well, they're like mini ham sandwiches. I watched it again just now. They're like mini ham sandwiches on cocktail sticks stuck into an orange. A little bit like a kind of Chris Tingle ceremony. And there's links to a few other things we discussed as well. Rod Holland Emu, Doctor Who spoof. And one of my favorite Saturday Night Live sketches, which we didn't discuss, but has a lot to say about the way things have evolved in the fan world. Back

• 1:15:33Adam Buxton?

  from 1986 with William Shatner berating a group of Star Trek obsessives at a fan convention. It's a very famous sketch. If you haven't seen it before, though, check it out. Okay, before I say goodbye today, I wanted to share with you a recommendation, like this is for you hardcore music video nerds out there. I know there are some of you out there like me that love that world and have very fond memories of watching music videos in the 80s and beyond in the glory years of the music video industry. A reminder again that

• 1:16:10Adam Buxton?

  friend of the podcast, Garth Jennings, is my Patreon guest this week. Go and check out the Patreon site if you haven't done already. But I just finished a book by another former podcast guest, Tim Pope. His book is called I Shoot Rock Stars. And Tim is perhaps most famous for his association with The Cure. He made pretty much all of their most well-known videos. And he's been making a documentary about the band. But this book, I Shoot Rock Stars, is good fun. Tim very vividly evokes life in London in the pre-digital

• 1:16:51Adam Buxton?

  age. Well, he talks about growing up in the late 60s and 70s, going to see a lot of bands that I would have liked to have seen as well, going to see Bowie, barging into Iggy Pop's dressing room as a young man with some friends. And then later becoming friends with Iggy Pop. He also became pals with David Bowie. And actually, he tells a few of the anecdotes that pop up in his book on episode 59 of this podcast, a conversation that we recorded just a few weeks after David Bowie died in early 2016. Also got a long collaborative friendship with Neil Young.

• 1:17:37Adam Buxton?

  And he writes about going and visiting Neil at his ranch, getting a demonstration of his amazing train set, getting completely baked with Neil and some great Bowie anecdotes as well, hanging out with Bowie in the years that I would not describe as Bowie's creative peak, i.e. late 80s, Glass Spider, Tin Machine, et cetera. But it's a really interesting side of Bowie that I hadn't really heard described before. A few little encounters that are very interesting to hear for a Bowie fan.

• 1:18:18Adam Buxton?

  I'm quoting from Tim's website right now, "Capturing the improvisational spirit of a time when directors worked guerrilla style, money flowed freely, and no idea was too wacky. I shoot rock stars," offers a fly-on-the-wall glimpse, "of an extraordinary cast. Above all, it's a hilarious and often moving story of a music-mad kid who ended up working with his heroes, chronicling both his own journey and an industry's creative triumphs and follies in riotous style." Tim also directed the film The Crow: City of Angels, an ill-fated project, not least because it was overseen by the Weinstein brothers.

• 1:19:02Adam Buxton?

  And Tim writes chillingly about the experience of working with them. This is not a paid sponsorship and Tim didn't ask me to give it a shout-out, but I'm a big fan of his. I really enjoyed that conversation we had way back in 2016 and I really enjoyed his book, so I'm recommending it to like-minded podcasts. Okay, that's it for this week. Thank you so much once again to Russell T Davies. Thanks to Diggory Waite and Claire Broughton from Hat Trick for their production support on this episode and also with the Patreon page. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his continued production support. Thanks to everybody at Acast for all their hard work liaising with my sponsors.

• 1:19:47Adam Buxton?

  Thanks to Helen Green for her beautiful artwork, but thank you most of all to you. I love doing this podcast and I would do it even if no one listened. Is that true? Maybe, but it actually makes it more fun that you do listen. Sort of makes it feel a bit more like there's a point to it. Well, that was one of the more pointless sentences I've ever shared with you and I apologise for that. How about a hug? Hey, come here. Good to see you. Oh, it's cold, isn't it? Oh, let's go back and get warm. Summer seems like a long time ago now. Incipient al nino.

• 1:20:30Adam Buxton?

  Until next time, we share the same sonic space. Please go carefully, for goodness sake. And for what it's worth, I love you. Bye!