‘It’s comforting to talk about difficult, frightening things’
Adam Buxton tells Tom Fordy about his memoir and making his podcast the day after his mother’s funeral
For almost an hour on the phone, my conversation with Adam Buxton appropriately rambles: through pop culture, lockdown life, grief and the perils of peering into one’s past. It’s almost 25 years since The Adam and Joe Show first broadcast on Channel 4. Now – by way of various radio, TV, film, funny videos, and live shows – Buxton is British podcasting’s favourite interviewer, and purveyor of the patented “ramble chat”.
The Adam Buxton Podcast debuted at number one in the British itunes chart five years ago and remains in the UK comedy top 10. Episodes are introduced with an actual ramble, as Buxton walks his dog – a poodlewhippet cross named Rosie – in the Norfolk countryside, where he lives with his wife and three children.
Interviewing friends, artists, comedians, and all-round impressive personalities, Buxton uncovers more about his guests with his rambling style than a generic traipse through their career histories would be likely to reveal. Hear Zadie Smith on how keeping busy holds off thoughts of her own mortality; Bob Mortimer confessing to his love of reality survival show Naked and Afraid; Jeff Goldblum on comparisons between raising kids and playing jazz piano.
As he meanders, Buxton reveals just as much about himself, picking through the foibles, anxieties, and occasional childishness of being a grown-up. There is joy in finding a relatable thread between us, the listener (collectively dubbed “pod-cats”), and Buxton, the most likeable chap in British comedy. It’s a rep deservedly earned from 25 years of sweet-natured, nerdfriendly comedy.
After working on Channel 4’s Takeover TV, Buxton and Joe Cornish
‘Joe and I felt guilty about our privilege and felt that people resented us all the time’
(also a lifelong friend and director of Attack the Block and The Kid Who Would Be King) began The Adam and Joe Show in December 1996 – a gleefully silly collection of home video-style skits, riffing on pop culture and general Nineties-ness. Along with Simon Pegg and the Spaced crew, Adam and Joe were part of a comedy generation that made geek culture cool. They went on to host longrunning radio shows on XFM and BBC 6 Music, and roles in sitcoms and film (most notably in Hot Fuzz) beckoned for Buxton.
Now, he has written Ramble Book, a memoir framed by the death of his father, Nigel Buxton, a former Sunday Telegraph travel editor who’s fondly remembered as Baaaddad, the youth correspondent for The Adam and Joe Show.
Ramble Book is about growing up in the Eighties and growing old(er) in the now, but making sense of it all by learning more about his father and their relationship. Buxton uncovers his father’s family history: how he was the son of a former butler and estate overseer for a wealthy family, and was, thanks to patronage from this family, able to attend a boarding school, where he was taunted for not being posh enough.
Buxton solves the mystery behind an always-locked suitcase and learns about his father’s debts, finding a letter that his father had written to his friend David Cornwell (better known as spy novelist John le Carré) asking to borrow £40,000. But the most revealing moments come after his father is diagnosed with cancer and comes to live with him, as Buxton tries to break down the formalities of their relationship and reach a cinematic closure that never quite happens.
Buxton recounts his own rites of passage moments though life-defining pop culture: Eighties music, The Breakfast Club, Alien, and Star Wars. He describes unpacking a Millennium Falcon toy as being “no less memorable and moving than the birth of at least two of my children”.
He tells me the writing process was a journey of clichés: an “emotional rollercoaster” and a “cathartic” experience. “At times, looking back was very chastening,” Buxton says. It’s perhaps best summed up in an observation his father made about getting old.
“He talked about the danger of looking back over your life,” says Buxton. “You’re poking around in the attic, never knowing if you’re going to come across the sweet smell of the pressed gardenias that you kept, or the smell of the dead rats – the mistakes and the things you’re ashamed of. And I don’t care who you are, your attic is going to be stuffed with both.”
Buxton looks back with some conflict over his private education – the experience of being sent away to boarding school and the sense of privilege. After boarding school,
Buxton attended Westminster School, where he met Cornish and Louis Theroux. He remembers the issue of privilege being a conversation even back in 1996, when they first made The Adam and Joe Show.
“We felt guilty and felt that people resented us at the time,” he says. “We felt like we’d really lucked out and thought, ‘I bet there are other people who are doing this stuff and haven’t been given a break.’”
Buxton recalls that Channel 4 wanted to position The Adam and Joe Show as a Brixton-made, DIY alternative to mainstream, Oxbridgeled television. A Channel 4 press officer even told them: “Don’t tell anyone you went to public school.”
“We weren’t setting ourselves up to be edgy or anti-establishment at all,” Buxton says. “But that’s the way Channel 4 wanted people to think of it.”
In his most recent podcast episode, with Zadie Smith, Buxton revealed that his children have been educated privately. The motivation, he said, was not about elitism but simply: “Where’s the best place for them to go around here?”
The podcast is at its most insightful when Buxton holds his own observations and insecurities up against his guest’s experience and perspective. “The thing that haunts me is I don’t want to be too self-indulgent,” he says. “You don’t want to wang on about your problems. On the other hand, I like talking about that stuff. I’ve always been curious and anxious about difficult and depressing and frightening things. I find it comforting to talk about those things – and interesting and occasionally funny.”
Sadly, Buxton’s mother, Valerie, died during lockdown. The day after her funeral, Buxton and Cornish reunited to record a podcast episode together, a brave and bracingly honest exploration of bereavement – further impacted by lockdown.
“I just wanted to be honest,” Buxton says. “I was going to keep putting out podcasts, but I knew I would be quite unhappy sometimes. Joe was good at dealing with me in that mode. It must be weird for some people if they grew up with us being these stupid guys talking about Star Wars. Suddenly they’re 51 and one of them is trying not to cry and the other one is farting.”
Ramble Book: Musings on Childhood, Friendship, Family and 80s Pop Culture is out on Thursday. For his podcast, go to adam-buxton.co.uk