The Good Listening To Show: Stories of Distinction & Genius

Adam Buxton: The Pioneer of British Podcasting & King of the Jingle! On Grief, Creativity, the Calm of Audio - and introducing 'Click Bait Wally'!

• Chris Grimes - Facilitator. Coach. Motivational Comedian

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The conversation opens with a tender contradiction: how do you keep the best of your childish self while learning to say goodbye to what no longer fits? Adam Buxton joins us to trace that thread from DIY TV to Decca, from late-night Channel 4 oddities to the calming crunch of Norfolk gravel under foot. We talk about his second memoir, I Love You Bye, the bomb-blast of losing parents, and the quieter grief of habits shed. He’s frank about the relief of leaving social media and the lingering “voice” it left behind, and he gives that voice a name you’ll remember: Clickbait Wally.

We get into why he fiercely protects audio-only conversations. Cameras change how people speak; microphones invite candour and curiosity. That belief shaped The Adam Buxton Podcast intros, the walks with Rosie, and a style of interview that feels like meeting someone at a party and gently falling in love with their mind. We map the influences—Mark Maron, Monty Python, Channel 4’s late-night culture buffet—and share why good documentaries (Turn Every Page, Thank You Very Much) can rewire the way you see power, craft, and comedy.

Then the craft reveals its joy. Adam lights up about jingles and the small alchemy of turning ads into songs, where silliness meets precision. Those sketches evolved into Buckle Up on Decca and a live show that lets him fire samples, sing about unabsorbent tea towels, and savour the old dream of being in a band. There’s practical wisdom too: patience is genius; a soft answer turneth away wrath; join a band even if it’s terrible; keep going. Legacy, for him, isn’t a monument. It’s a folder of favourite work, an honest archive his children can open when they need a reminder that curiosity and kindness still count.

If you enjoy smart, human conversations about creativity, loss, and the calm hidden in ordinary moments, press play and come walk with us. Subscribe, share with a friend who needs a gentler listen, and leave a review to help more people find the show.

Tune in next week for more stories of 'Distinction & Genius' from The Good Listening To Show 'Clearing'. If you would like to be my Guest too then you can find out HOW via the different 'series strands' at 'The Good Listening To Show' website.

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Thanks for listening!

Chris Grimes:

Boom, we're in a Hausian flag in the sand day in the Good Listening 2 show stories of distinction and genius. I am thrilled and pinching myself because I've got, well, a true original. He's the pioneer of British podcasting as we now know and enjoy it, because he got going with DIY TV, but DIY podcasting before everybody else joined the bandwagon, including me. This is the godfather of modern British podcasting, Mr. Adam Buxton, is in the clearing of the Good Listening to show. Welcome, Adam Buxton.

Adam Buxton:

Thank you very much, Chris. That's a very generous, I would say over-generous introduction, but I'll take it.

Chris Grimes:

I've looked at your website, and I'll encourage people to look at your website at the end too. And just to blow a bit of happy smoke at you, I think we all know who you are. Obviously, just check out who Adam Buxton and the Adam Buxton podcast is. You say of yourself, you identify as short and you live near Norwich with your wife, three children, and then really beautifully, the enigmatic hairy bullet, Rosie the Dog. And as we got here online, you've handbrake slid into position, flushed from being at the London International Book Festival last night.

Adam Buxton:

Yes, that's right. I was at the Royal Festival Hall, a huge, beautiful room, and I was talking with Miranda Sawyer about my second memoir, I Love You By. The first one was mainly kind of my adolescence and a lot of stuff about my dad. And the second book is a bit more about my mum and also a lot of stuff about working on TV, doing DIY TV with Joe Cornish in the 90s on the Adam and Joe show.

Chris Grimes:

Yes. And we have a little bit of history that I can't help but mention. We recorded a short film together 15 years ago called Little Face, and I actually voiced your imaginary friend. That's right. It was a sweet film. Now remind me of the director. Can you remember his name? I can. It was Matthew Walker who was the writer-director, and also a lovely chap who I'm still in touch with in Bristol called Jeremy Routledge, was the producer of it.

Adam Buxton:

Yes. And it was a really lovely little film about a a bloke in his sort of early 30s or late twenties or something. I think I was playing younger than I was at the time. And he's a little bit directionless, and he's gone and he's gone back to his childhood home or something, and he meets a childhood friend who turns up in physical form, or at least he thinks that he is seeing the actual physical version of his imaginary childhood friend in the real world. And you played the imaginary friend. It was really sweet. So it was like all about someone who just feels a bit lost in their life. Yes. Saying goodbye to an important part of their childhood. And coincidentally, great segue. That's sort of what my book was about as well. I Love You By. It's a lot about it's a kind of recurring theme, I think, in a lot of what I do is saying goodbye to childish parts of my life. I mean, I've kind of built a career on being childish. So there were various forms of grief in the last book. Grief for my mum who died in 2020, but also grief for my youth and my bad habits. And you know what I mean? Like not extreme grief, I wouldn't say. Yeah. Not too maudlin, I hope, but mild grief, that the kind of mild grief that everyone goes through when you just have to evolve as a human being, which I find quite difficult personally.

Chris Grimes:

I mean you're you're chronicling proper grown-up adulting without stabilizers. I know that the Ramble book, in terms of the Seven Ages of Man, partly chronicled the death and demise of your dad. Yeah. And then of course, subsequently, I Love You Bae. And I'm sorry that that's happened for you in five-year cycles, so just beware of your next book in five years' time.

Adam Buxton:

I know, I know. I'm like I'm I'm watching out for Rosie. I'm hoping that she uh never dies. But apparently she will, which is a terrible prospect. But you know, book three.

Chris Grimes:

Yes, and Rosie is so beautiful, and in fact, she's a fixed point, a beautiful fixture, a regular co-rambler when you're positioning and introducing your podcast, the Adam Buxton podcast. I I love the familiarity of the ramble with the crunch of the Norfolk gravel under your feet. And uh bit of extra happy smoke at you. I I found it really very, very therapeutic during the early pandemic as well to be listening to your podcast, which I know you got going with in 2015, and I think you can correct me on the math. You're probably 262 episodes in now, is that right? That sounds right, yeah.

Adam Buxton:

I think a lot of my listeners joined in the lockdown in 2020, and yeah, it makes total sense because yeah, the intro and outro to the podcast are recorded on walks with Rosie, my dog friend, half Whippet, half poodle. And we go out and walk around the fields near where we live in East Anglia, about 15 minutes outside Norwich. And so I suppose it must have been Yeah, nice for a lot of people who couldn't get out of the house, especially city dwellers, to listen to us out there in the open air. We had that incredible privilege of being able to wander around with no one else out there in those times. And that was a really valuable part of keeping me sane. And people have said since that yeah, they enjoyed listening to the shows and they came to the podcast in that time. Yeah, it is nice, isn't it, being able to listen to nature. I mean, it is very therapeutic. I do feel like very lucky to be able to go out and reset mentally every now and again whenever I need to.

Chris Grimes:

There's my favourite Nietzsche quote of the best ideas happen outdoors. And as I say, it was just it was a combination of your Adam Buxton podcast and grounded the Louis Thoreau one that started, or I that's when I tuned in to podcasting. And then when I did a coaching call on Zoom and it shut down and it gave me a sound file and a film file, I thought, oh, hang on a minute, there's an idea here. And then the good listening to show Stories of Distinction and Genius was born. I got back in touch with you about four years ago, and I know that we've been yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, but I'm so thrilled that of all the times to have come into the clearing, now is the perfect time. You know, what's meant for you won't pass you by is an adage I quite like. Because I'm just on the cusp of launching something else, which is about, you know, deaths of parents. Not so much about that, but it's called Legacy Life Reflections. And my own father, who died a year ago, in a sort of parallel universe of you chronicling the parental zone we have to get into when we're of a particular age.

Adam Buxton:

Yes, absolutely. Well, I'm sorry to hear about your dad. It is a big one, and it's like a bomb going off and you feel the reverberations for years after that. I mean, it never really goes away. You're always in a nice way and in an uncomfortable way, you're sort of haunted ever after by the people you lose, and certainly by your parents most of all. And your life after they've gone is at first a very urgent process of getting over them and leaving them behind, and then afterwards a more gentle process of kind of sorting through what they meant to you and and keeping them with you in all sorts of ways, and keeping the best of them with you, and trying to manage the worst of them, which you carry with you as well, and it never stops that process.

Chris Grimes:

Yes. So you're Master of the Ramble, King of the Jingle. What's so perfectly enigmatic and individual about your podcast is your your ability to jingle. And may I just commend you for you uh dancing to your own podcast theme, a YouTube film on your own website when you were dancing to the film. And and if you could indulge us in, you know, I added one more podcast. If you could just do a quick ditty of that, that's the beautiful introduction you always do.

Adam Buxton:

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin. Now you have plucked that podcast out. It used to be now you have plucked that mother out and started listening. And I don't I thought maybe I won't say mother, I'll just say podcast. I don't know why. I thought it'd be funny to say pluck that mother out. But anyway, that's how the um episodes start.

Chris Grimes:

And bless you for that. And uh please check out the dance that you did alongside that. Because it there's a lovely tree in the background, and part of my conceit is in a clearing is a tree, and you and me, and then off we go on the open road of the good listening to show. So, with your permission, may I now curate you through, and I'm really, really thrilled to have you here to do this for you. May I curate you through the structure of the Good Listening To show? Please do. So there's going to be a clearing, a tree, a lovely juicy storytelling exercise called 54321. There's going to be some alchemy, some gold, a couple of random squirrels, a cheeky bit of Shakespeare, a golden baton, and a cake. You're welcome. Thank you very much. I love cake. And the invitation and invocation is to go as deep as you like, when you like, how you like, wherever you like within this structure. You've had an extraordinary career and an extraordinary life, and I'm really, really looking forward to hearing how you will interpret the analogies and metaphors that I so enjoy bringing to the equation here. So it's enigmatically, first of all, set in a clearing or serious happy place of you, my guest, Adam Buxton's Choice. So what is where is, first of all, a clearing for you? Where do you go to get clutter-free, inspirational, and able to think?

Adam Buxton:

Well, I do enjoy being on the train. So I commute to London a fair I don't really commute, but I go to London a fair bit to record podcasts and to see friends and see things. And I really like being on that train when it's working, which is around 50% of the time that it is delayed. 50% happy and stress-free. But every now and again it does work, and I have a lovely, peaceful time. It's a good feeling being on the train, just feeling like you're going somewhere. And that's a nice feeling to just feel like, well, I'm doing something. I'm actually moving in the world from one place to another for a reason. So that kind of removes a certain amount of anxiety that is with a person like me most of the time, which is, what are you doing with your life? Why aren't you doing more? Why aren't you going somewhere? Why aren't you achieving something? And when you're on the train just moving along some tracks, it feels like, well, I've sorted that bit. I'm achieving something. I'm moving. And so that frees up time to just think about things. And I have a noise app that I put on. I put my headphones on, and I uh have this app called My Noise. Others are available, and it gives you a selection of noises that you can use to just cancel out outside interference. My favorite setting is Lancaster Bomber, which is just a rumble, a deep rumble of engines, and it also like you can mix it so you can take out all the various elements that they include in this sound. So I remove the sound of the pilot chatter, which I don't really need, and I just keep the propeller noise and the rumble of the engine, and that kind of focuses me. And that's a very happy place for me. And I get quite a lot of stuff written on the train. And of course, just being outdoors with Rosie and walking, that's been very valuable over the years. As you were saying, you know, your quote from who was it?

Chris Grimes:

Nietzsche. The best ideas happen outdoors.

Adam Buxton:

There you go. Well, I don't know. I mean, there's a lot of stuff I'm not so sure about when it comes to Nietzsche, but I think he's absolutely right on that score. And it's a thing called soft fascination, I think. Have you heard of that concept? No. Soft fascination. It's it's a form of attention, and it's a form of sort of gentle, effortless attention that uh allows the mind to rest and recover as opposed to hard fascination, which is when you're intensely focused on something. But when you're out in nature, you're engaged and you're interested, but you're not overwhelmed with stimuli. You're just taking in the complexity of nature and the prettiness of it or uh the strangeness of it sometimes, but it doesn't feel like work, but it's all going in and it's all feeding you, and it is nourishing. And so I think it's always a good place to go out and reset if you're feeling like, oh, I can't go, you know, I've got no ideas and I've hit a wall and whatever. It's always a good idea to go for a walk.

Chris Grimes:

It's also linked to um if in doubt, walk it out. It is the idea of the therapy, the therapeutic effect of going outdoors. And just name that attribute again. What type of listening is it called again? I think it's referred to as Soft Fascination. Soft Fascination.

Adam Buxton:

Which might be a good album title. I'm thinking if I do another album, it might might be called Soft Fascination.

Chris Grimes:

Uh yes, and talking of albums, we know Buckle Up. You've been in Bristol as well, and I missed that when you came with your band, the Adam Buxton band.

Adam Buxton:

Oh yeah, we played at the Cube. That was fun.

Chris Grimes:

Yes. So Buckle Up is i the the current album too.

Adam Buxton:

First solo album. I really we released an album, maybe even a couple of albums, me and Joe Cornish, Song Wars albums, when we were on Six Music, and we used to challenge each other to make songs every now and then on a given theme suggested by our listeners. And we did actually collect a few of those on two albums. I don't know if they still exist, but they uh they did come out. But this this is the first one. This one is on a major label buckle up. It's on Decca. And so it very definitely exists. I don't know for how long. I don't know what the deal is. Like, I suppose in the digital age, things don't really get deleted quite as quickly as they might have done once upon a time.

Chris Grimes:

That's a great clearing on a train with the sound of a Lancaster bomber. Nobody in my circa 200 No, I've done 175, I think, so I'm about a hundred behind. I'm not trying to catch up, but I'm I'm here for the long haul as well. So how lovely to be in a clearing that's on a train. Ironically, your train was late. You mentioned 50% of the time you're travelling over tracks, but you are enigmatically late today, shall we say, because of the trains.

Adam Buxton:

I'm afraid so. I apologise.

Chris Grimes:

Not at all. So now I'm going to arrive with a tree in your clearing, and this is a bit deliberately waiting for Goddo-esque, a bit Samuel Becket-y. That's because of my hecting background. And I'm going to shake your tree now to see which storytelling happels fall out. So this is where you've been kind enough, before we've spoken, Adam, to have considered four things that have shaped you, three things that inspire you, two things that never fail to grab your attention, and borrowed from the film Up, that's where the dog goes, Oh, squirrels, you know, we've all got monsters of distraction, things that never fail to distract us, irrespective of anything else that might be going on for us. And then the one is a quirky or unusual fact about you, Adam Buxton, we couldn't possibly know about you until you tell us. It's not a memory test, just to reassure you at this point. So just to go back a step, it's up to you now to shake the canopy of the tree as you see fit. Right, okay.

Adam Buxton:

I might be in trouble with um things that never fail to grab my attention, but we'll come to that. Things that have shaped me. I suppose my parents is is what springs to mind in a very obvious way. But for me it was the friction, I suppose, between the things I got from my mum and the outlook that I inherited from my dad. They were the same in a lot of ways, both quite conservative people in every sense of the word. My mum, though, was fifteen years younger than my dad when they were together. Well, in fact, right the way through their relationship, she was 15 years younger than him. But she was into uh pop culture in a way that he never really was. So, you know, she used to like the Beatles when she was growing up in Chile. She thought they were great, and my dad absolutely couldn't give a toss about the Beatles or anyone else really making pop music. He liked a bit of Wagner, maybe a bit of Glenn Miller, if he was really cutting loose. But really, he hated pop music, pop culture, TV, film, most of it, you know, certainly the stuff that I was into. He hated comedy. I always remember he used to say comedy. Like it was just all comedy was bad. The only comedy he thought was good was a guy called Victor Borger. Do you know him?

Chris Grimes:

Yes, I do. The piano player, a bit like an early Les Dawson from the point of view who could play the piano brilliantly badly.

Adam Buxton:

Exactly. Yes. He thought he was pretty funny, but apart from that, no, no thanks to comedy. So you didn't get your comedy DNA from your dad, shall we say? I don't think so. I don't think so. I I remember he would tell stories though every now and again, and one that I can remember him telling quite a bit at dinner parties when we would as kids be kind of wandering around and listening to our parents being unusually merry, and this I can smell the smoke, and everyone was having cognac or whatever they were having, an after eights. It would look like an after-aights advert, basically. And they were all chuckling away, and my dad would get voluble and start telling the same set of anecdotes, and one of them was about a guy who was it was some sort of posh party, and some guy was weing off the top of a balcony, and there was a bloke standing underneath, and they heard this voice coming up saying, I say, waggle it about a bit, coming from beneath. And my dad thought that was very funny, and I remember waggling about waggle it about a bit was often aired as a routine by my dad.

Chris Grimes:

And so reading between the lines, you know how we all go about us men in the world seeking validation from our father? It doesn't sound that there was a terrible amount coming at you from your dad.

Adam Buxton:

Not in that way, no. I mean, I wanted validation in other ways. I think I was a little bit crushed in various ways by the fact that he didn't really seem to get what I wanted to do or like to do. He wanted me to be a writer. And I guess I am a writer, but I'm not a writer in the way that he wanted me to be a writer.

Chris Grimes:

And what was your dad's profession? I forgot to ask you that.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, yeah, he was a he was a uh travel journalist. So he wrote about uh travel for the Sunday Telegraph newspaper for a long time. He was the travel editor there. But he also wrote about wine, he wrote about walking, those were his chief passions. But he wrote in a way that was very florid and like long sentences and And so he didn't really write in a kind of conversational style, which is, I suppose, what I do a bit more. Anyway, my mum was very much the opposite. So she was the person that I would watch TV with, and we'd watch Some Mothers Do Avum, and we'd watch The Two Ronnies, and we'd watch It Ain't Half Hot Mum and all these kind of 70s sitcoms that are more or less out of step with the times now. But we used to enjoy those, and we loved Monty Python as well. You know, we watched Life of Brian together, me and my mum, and that was a very memorable moment of really loving this film. And also it was quite an adult film, and it felt a bit edgy to be watching something like that with my mum and having her really laugh at it and hooting with laughter.

Chris Grimes:

And I know that you've interviewed two of the Pythons yourself, Eric Arle and Michael Palin. So you've been chipping away through the pythons that are left.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, that's right. And you've you've interviewed John Cleese, of course. Did you talk to him about uh Life of Brian?

Chris Grimes:

I certainly did, because that that similarly, in terms of where your sort of awareness of comedy comes from, it's my absolute favourite film of all time. And Michael Palin, ironically, was top of the tree when I first got going with the Good Listening to show story. I'm getting closer because I interviewed his best friend, a guy called John Altman, recently, who very wonderfully gifted me. Not that it was his to gift necessarily, but he allowed me to play out the episode with always look on the bright side of life, which is a fantastic moment. So hurrah.

Adam Buxton:

Amazing.

Chris Grimes:

So sorry, back to you. So parents shaping you in in very different juxtapositioning ways. Obvious choice, parents, yeah.

Adam Buxton:

But also TV, I guess another obvious choice, really. But I watched a lot of TV when I was growing up. And again, talking of my dad, you know, he really despaired of how much TV I watched. But because he was away a lot writing and travelling, he didn't really get the opportunity to police my TV watching as much as he probably would have liked. And, you know, when he was away, my mum was happy to watch lots of TV with me as well. And I think that made him ratty. And I know the feeling now. Sometimes when I get back and I've been away and I see things happening in the house that I think, why is that happening? I don't approve of that, but I don't really have a leg to stand on because it's like, well, you've been away, so get stuffed. You know, you can't just come back and start telling everyone off.

Chris Grimes:

And of course, your love of watching eclectic, you know, random as your dad would perceive it, bits of telly became your superpower because of the DIY of TV excellence you and Joe Cornish then stumbled upon as being the superpower.

Adam Buxton:

Thank you very much. Yeah, well, I suppose so. Yes, I was able to make a living out of it in the end, but again, not in a way that my dad necessarily understood or approved of. But yeah, a lot of TV, like good TV, bad TV, just having that relationship with TV where you're half the time letting it wash over you and just it's something to distract you, and then half the time engaging with it a lot more, finding it annoying, taking the mick out of it, talking about it with your friends afterwards, imitating it. So that ended up being the backbone of the Adam and Joe show, really, that relationship with it. And also discovering things, you know, finding out when I was a little older that there were these culture programs, late show, Channel Four used to show amazing stuff, foreign films and short films and art films, and things like that that you don't really see, they're not really part of terrestrial programming anymore. Yes. If you want to watch that stuff now, you really have to go and find it on the internet. But I I'm not aware of any channels. Like there's there's channels that show old movies and old sitcoms, and there's lots of stuff represented on weird channels like far down the um skybox or whatever. But I as far as I'm aware, there's no kind of weird art channel, is there?

Chris Grimes:

Uh I'm not sure there is. You've got to know where to look now, and of course, the currency for where to look is becoming rarer, shall we say? Yeah, yeah. I suppose it doesn't rate.

Adam Buxton:

So people are like, well, we're not gonna do that because only weirdos watch that. But for a long time, that's what Channel 4 was really committed to was showing that kind of stuff precisely because they felt it didn't get seen anywhere else. And it was that there was a feeling that, well, this is sort of good for you. Do you know what I mean? Like it feeds curiosity.

Chris Grimes:

Yes. And if there's a restricted choice, it galvanizes people's options of where to look to find stuff, whereas now we're all totally overwhelmed because there's everything to watch, everything and nothing, so no one commits to anything.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, yeah. So that was TV at its best for me, I think, which really fed my curiosity. Just discovering all these weird people and interesting things and music that I wouldn't otherwise listen to. So I loved all that, and I loved TV still in an odd way. And then the other thing I suppose that shaped me, but I would say mainly negatively, has been social media. And I appreciate that it's a very kind of middle-aged, boring guy thing to talk about and complain about. And it's got to the point now where people sort of switch off when people start blaming social media for society's ills because it's become such a massive cliche, and also because it's so hard to quantify how it's been changing society. And yes, there are some positive aspects to it, and people do get a lot out of it. And who am I to rein on their parade in that in those ways? But for someone like me who is already struggling with a certain amount of self-critical noise, the experience of being on social media, which I was for a while between about 2010 and well, I got off it in 2020 when the pandemic hit.

Chris Grimes:

And was that a great sort of blessed relief then because the pandemic gave you the sort of conduit to be able to sort of step away from it?

Adam Buxton:

Well, actually, the pandemic hadn't quite hit. I just made the decision at the beginning of that year. Quite, you know, nothing seismic happened. I just thought I've had enough.

Chris Grimes:

There was some trolling though, wasn't there? I mean, you have had you've dealt with your fair share of that.

Adam Buxton:

A little bit, but not nothing bad. Like nothing really bad. Just stuff that got under my skin, you know. Yeah. For me, it's always the little things, and it's criticism from people that seem to be reasonable and rational. Like the worst criticism is stuff that hits a nerve because it seems to be legitimate, you know what I mean? So there is criticism that I that made me think in a in a good way, and I don't mind that really, but then there's what I consider to be ungenerous, unkind assumptions about what you're doing and where you're coming from. And more and more I felt on social media that people were just assuming the worst of each other rather than giving each other the benefit of the doubt or saying, okay, well, look, this person said that. It doesn't look good, but let's think about why they might have said it. Maybe they were having a bad day, maybe they didn't express themselves too well, maybe we've misunderstood what they are trying to say. There's none of that. That is not the engine that powers social media. It's always like, take everything at face value, condemn that person for it, think the worst of each other, and it just feeds this exhausting atmosphere of everyone being ready to judge each other in the worst possible way. The trolling from sort of mad, what I would consider, quotes, mad people, i.e., just sort of people who are they're not even trying to engage rationally, you know, they're just sort of having a pop. I wasn't too bothered by that because you can kind of discount that. It's more the stuff from people who you think like, come on, we're on the same side, aren't we? Like, we see the world the same way.

Chris Grimes:

Why aren't you being a little more generous? I was gonna say, in the sea of noise, if there are it's a cork that pops up, the cork hasn't got the word kindness written on it. It's very much a sort of everyone for each for themselves and just weighed in and sort of try and put the world to rights in your pants at four o'clock in the morning in the sort of trolley universe that we all know.

Adam Buxton:

The thing that I'm left with though, even though I'm not on social media, is a kind of residual critical voice that I feel is like the social media voice of just seeing the worst interpretation of so many things that I do. You know what I mean? If I'm making something, if I'm writing something, whatever, I have to get beyond. Part of the process is getting beyond the social media voice, saying, here's why you shouldn't be doing this. Here's all the reasons why this is crap.

Chris Grimes:

So has it been a blessed relief to decide to step off it so you don't have to worry about that anymore?

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, it does. I mean, every now and again I I I imagine what's going on out there. And sometimes I do think that it's a bit lame, really, not to be able to engage because I like engaging with people and I like talking to people. And there were there were times towards the beginning of being on social media where it was sort of fun. And I was talking to Romesh Ranganathan on his podcast the other day. Oh, it's all just podcasts, isn't it? But we were talking a little bit about this, and he said he's got to the point now where he's happy to read anything anyone has to say and just not take it as a total condemnation. It doesn't paralyze him reading criticism or unkind comments or whatever. He just feels like, well, you know, I've moved beyond it and I'm stronger for that, which I really admire, but I I'm not able to do that currently.

Chris Grimes:

That's a lovely, profound shapage. And now, three things that inspire you, Adam Buxton.

Adam Buxton:

I guess music, that's a thing that really helps me get away from myself in a helpful way. You know, just to be able to have a little holiday from yourself every now and again is a nice thing. If you're someone who has a lot of chatter in your head, which I do, and you know, I just love music anyway, and I always have done. Always kind of fascinated by it and with it, and all in its different forms. I suppose my favourite kind of music is great music. No, it's sort of like art school pop, I suppose I would say. That's the stuff I responded to most when I was.

Chris Grimes:

I think we have Bowie in common, as in he would be one of your absolute legend heroes.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, definitely. So he's in my mind the king of that genre, I suppose. Arty pop. So I really love that. And and every now and again, if I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed, it'll occur to me like, oh, you know what, you haven't listened to music very much recently. Sometimes you go through a period, or I go through a period where I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks or a lot of podcasts, or but actually I've forgotten to listen to music in a way that when I was younger, that's all I did. You know, I walked around with a little cassette player and I just listened to music all the time whenever I was walking around London or doing anything really.

Chris Grimes:

I was always How do you feel about the sort of podcast revolution now where everybody, including me, is on the same bandwagon that you were actually one of the very, very first, as I just said at the beginning, within you know the UK as we experience it, you were one of the very first.

Adam Buxton:

I guess I don't feel like I was particularly early. Um, me and Joe, we did a podcast in 2006. Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant had the podcast that first alerted people to the idea of podcasts, I think. Yeah. And that was a couple of years before. But in the form that I do my podcast now, I didn't stop doing that until 2015, by which time a lot of people were already doing that, you know. And I I felt like I was following in the footsteps of people like Mark Marin doing the WTF podcast, people who were having long-form conversations with other people, yeah, but also talking about themselves. So not doing traditional interviews where you would just ask questions and then as the interviewer, you would stay silent while the person answered, and then you would ask another question. These were more like chats that were sometimes funny, sometimes more serious. So yeah, I felt like I was following in that um medium, really.

Chris Grimes:

And my experience of of you, if I may say, is that you you found a sort of tranquility, it would seem, in the in the sort of freneticness of your career and the the stuff you were doing with Joe. It was just really trailblazing, cutting edge, you know, DIY telly, lots and lots of different stimulus. And then there's a there's a sort of authentic calm to you now in doing the Adam Buxton podcast because it's just d delicious rambling of talking to people that you find interesting, and it's going in your head to places that are just stimulating.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, well, hopefully, that's nice of you to say. So, yeah, it's it it's really nice. But I mean, to answer your question though, about podcasting, I love the medium. I think it's great, and I love those long form conversations, which didn't really exist in that same way when I was growing up. There were some TV shows that were like that, actually. I didn't used to watch those in those days because I found them too boring. But they didn't have, there weren't radio programs like that really, or at least none that I was aware of. So, so yeah, it was all about music. And then I really do love the long-form conversation medium, but I do think it's sad that it's gone visual now. I think that um people filming their podcasts has really is changing them and turning them into something different, and so I'm quite annoyingly militant when I can be about saying I don't I don't want to do a video podcast, I don't want to do a visual thing. I just want to have an audio conversation that is listened to just by people listening in the audio realm.

Chris Grimes:

And and I that was a really interesting um sort of challenge that you lay down when we got in touch, and that was a happy surprise because you're going back to almost factory default settings of we need to keep this medium the same. Because that you were the first person in recent episodes that has said, no, no, this isn't video, it's just going to be sound. And I think that's a really wonderful thing to get it back to that setting.

Adam Buxton:

Well, it's a bit, it's a bit cranky, and I apologize for that. Because you can, you know, you sort of it doesn't stop people listening in audio only, you know, you don't have to watch the video. It's always an option to just listen to the audio if you don't want to sit there and watch the YouTube video or something like that. But just the fact that it is being recorded with cameras, I think changes the nature of the conversation. And I always, you know, the thing that was so great about being on the radio with Joe Cornish after years and years of being on TV was that it did for me remove a whole layer of self-consciousness that was very helpful, and it just enabled me to relax and rediscover what was fun about my friendship with Joe and just be silly in a way that was really much harder when we were on TV because you're constantly thinking about like how everything looks and how I look, and am I looking ugly today and what am I wearing and all this kind of thing. It's like, oh.

Chris Grimes:

And where did you meet Joe? I know you met Louis Thoreau at Westminster School when you're at boarding school.

Adam Buxton:

Yes.

Chris Grimes:

And I read something just yesterday where you hated boarding school until you met Louis Thoreau.

Adam Buxton:

Well, I would say that actually it was Joe that really changed it. I didn't become friendly with Louis until a few years after that. But um, yeah, Joe was at the same school at Westminster, and so we met when I would have been about 13, and uh we were in the same English class, and he read out a short story he'd written, and I thought it was very funny. And yeah, he I think he was the only person who was being funny in their in their work, and I just it it was surprising to me that you could actually just be silly in an English essay and even be rewarded for it, you know. Like he got a commendation for this essay that he read out, I think. So, yeah, we got friendly and he was into the same stuff that I was, same sort of music, pop music, the charts, the Thompson twins, Thomas Dolby, but we also liked other stuff, like he was into soul music, and he got me into Aretha Franklin and the Blues brothers and things like that. Whereas uh, but he also liked Bowie and Talking Heads, and we bonded on that, but we the main thing was movies. He always wanted to make films, and he knew a lot about them, and he would go and see like two or three films every weekend at least, and he always carried around a copy of a film mag, like a highbrow film mag like Caillet du cinéma, French film mag, uh, but also things like um Fangoria, which was all about the horror movie world, and had lots of uh incredibly gory, lurid pictures in it that we poured over.

Chris Grimes:

I wonder what he would reciprocate as a a very spontaneous monologue about what you have brought to his life, because that was such a good spontaneous monologue of I found my soulmate at 13 in the classroom of the English class.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah. Well, I hope he would say some of the same things. You know, I think we shared a sense of humour and we liked the same stuff, you know, the young ones and Monty Python and And we found the same things ridiculous and pretentious and but we're all we were also into that stuff as well. You know, we had that Bowie's good for that because Bowie is brilliant, but he's also quite ludicrous some of the time. And he went through so many iterations, and some of them worked, and some of them didn't really work. I mean, now there's a bit of weird revisionism, I think, sometimes about some of the things that he did, and now everyone went, oh yeah, he's a genius, and suddenly everything he did was amazing. But when we were growing up with it, especially in the 80s, it felt like, no, I don't know if this is amazing. We love the guy, but this is uh ridiculous.

Chris Grimes:

You're talking about let's dance now in that era, isn't it?

Adam Buxton:

Well, let's dance was pretty good and he looked amazing. I think it was more like when he started doing things like Labyrinth. I mean, loads of people grew up on Labyrinth and think it's absolutely amazing, but we we went to see Labyrinth and we thought it was daft.

Chris Grimes:

Did you ever manage to tell him that? I know he died in 2016 and you got going in 2015.

Adam Buxton:

I don't know if one of your first guests was oh, I'll grab David Bowie, but I would have loved to, but no, we we only we we met him glancingly backstage in Mayda Vale when he did a gig in twenty when was it? It was like twenty uh when did he die? He died in twenty fifteen, didn't he? So it would have been two thousand and two or something, I think we met him very briefly. Yeah. But Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant were at that same show, and Bowie was a fan of The Office at that point. Series one had just come out, and so he made a bee line for them.

Chris Grimes:

And what an episode that was of the of of Ricky's show with Bowie calling him. Yeah, that was pretty good.

Adam Buxton:

That was on extras, wasn't it? Yeah.

Chris Grimes:

Yes. Wonderful. So um I've disrupted the universe of shaking the tree in the in the what's inspiring you. So what else inspires you?

Adam Buxton:

I suppose well, I mean, this is a very woolly answer to the question of one of the things that inspires me. But interesting people seems pretty obvious. But again, the podcast medium is great for introducing you to people who you might not otherwise know about. And the one of the nicest compliments that people give me now and then is that they listen to all the episodes, even if they don't know who the person is. And case in point, as we speak in October 2025, I just put out an episode with a guy called John Fox, who was the founder member of a band called Ultravox. Yes. And is in many ways an electronic music pioneer, an artist. But he's, you know, he's 77. He's from a different generation. And most people, most younger people probably don't know who he is or they haven't come across him. But it's one of the favourite episodes that I've put out this year. I love it. It was my perfect kind of podcast. He's a lovely guy, lovely, softly spoken northerner, very articulate, open-minded, generous-spirited, curious. And we just had such a fun chat about it. It was my favorite kind of talk about art and creativity and music and lots of people that he had worked with that I'm in awe of, like um Brian Eno and this German producer called Connie Planck and Marky Smith of the Fall, that this guy John Fox was good friends with and used to go out drinking with. So I was in total heaven, but I appreciate that a lot of people will go, John Fox, never heard of him. And they'll skip that episode. But I'm thinking that I might just write a newsletter, which I don't send out newsletters very often, but I might do one.

Chris Grimes:

Subscribe to an occasional one, you say, on your website.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was thinking this might merit a newsletter of just letting people know look, I've done this episode. You may not know who this guy is, but trust me, this is a great conversation, and he is an amazing, wonderful, inspiring guy. So people like that. And I've been lucky enough to have a few of those meetings on the podcast with people like David Sederis, American comedy writer, and Zadie Smith, you know, people whose outlook on the world chimes with mine, but they're so much more articulate and they can describe things in a much more surprising and interesting way than I often do.

Chris Grimes:

And it's a perfect conceit now. You go where you want to ramble, and uh you're attracted, you know, what's meant for you won't pass you by to people that are attractive to speak to. And that's the perfect conceit of a podcast where you go to find out interesting stuff.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, yeah. Because it's like Louis, for example, Louis Thoreau, one of the things that he does differently on his podcast, I think, is that he has a much more journalistic sense of what would make a good guest. So it's much more like maybe someone who's been in the news or someone who is sensational in some way. So he'll also have people that he is a massive fan of that he just wants to meet and talk to. But that's not the main criterion for him. It's just, well, who is gonna be a spicy listen, you know? Yes. So he could end up talking to people who actually he doesn't have very much in common with and he doesn't necessarily admire what they do at all, but they've just led a an interesting life for one reason or another. Maybe they've been controversial or involved in some scandal. And he's good at talking to those people. But I that doesn't really interest me personally. I like listening to that. I like Louis's podcast a lot, but I I don't want to have those kinds of conversations myself. I would rather I would rather create like my idealized version of meeting someone at a party and just being delighted and sort of almost fall in love with that person.

Chris Grimes:

Similarly, I'm on a sort of not needing validation to do that same thing too, because my conceit is everyone has an interesting story to tell, provided you give them the courtesy of a damn good listening to. So that that was what got me going.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, there you go.

Chris Grimes:

And uh you're off social media, but I did read something that you'll enjoy about your back catalogue. It it said that your back catalogue of itself is becoming a national treasure.

Adam Buxton:

Oh, that's a lovely thing to say. Well, that's the other wonderful thing about podcasting, I feel like, is that it, you know, until the solar flare hits and all the uh hard drives get fritzed, it's just accumulating there. It's floating around. All this I used to feel like with comedy, especially all the TV stuff that we did. I mean, you can find a lot of it on YouTube, I suppose, but not all of it, and it's in terrible quality. I'm thinking of the TV stuff that I did with Joe. Yeah. It was so ephemeral, and comedy by by nature is kind of ephemeral, and but that's the way it's treated as well. It's never really accorded that much um, you know, pe people don't uh fuss over it and respect it in the same way that they do with Morse, sort of serious art, which is fine. But the nice thing about podcasts is that you can accumulate this archive of conversations that are just always going to be there for people to discover at various points and dip in and out of. Because the other thing I think is like you go through phases with podcasts that you you kind of go in and out of relationships with them, you know, you might really binge on them for a while, and then it's like, okay, I need a break. This guy, it's a bit too much, or maybe you get kind of annoyed with them, or they say something you don't like that strikes you wrong, and you're like, mm-hmm, okay, I'm gonna take a break from you for a while. But then hopefully you come back and rediscover them later on, and you're like, oh look, they've talked to that person. I mean, it's like a friendship with the real human being, isn't it? You go in and out of phases.

Chris Grimes:

It's a it's a box of chocolates. I'm aware you've spoken to Tom Hanks as well. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And we could still be on the third thing that inspires you before we then get into some squirrels, Adam. Sure.

Adam Buxton:

Well, third thing, again, another slightly banal response is documentaries. I do love documentaries. Like a good documentary really hits the spot. Like almost nothing else. An amazing film is great, but they don't come along that often. And it feels like there's more good documentaries floating around out there that you might not be aware of. And finding a good one of those is so life-affirming and inspiring. And where do you go to find those? Often people recommend them. And you know, I'll be talking to someone, and most of the good documentaries I've watched have been recommended by friends.

Chris Grimes:

So is that Louis recommending his own?

Adam Buxton:

Or well, yeah, I I I've always loved Louis's docks, and he's always good for recommendations, actually. He's given me loads of great recommendations over the years. Although this one that I'm gonna recommend now was uh recommended to me by a friend called Millie. We were talking at a party about an American writer, Robert Carrow, who has written several volumes of books about Lyndon Johnson, uh LBJ, the American president, which I'm kind of plowing through, but I'm doing it on audiobook, and each one is roughly 60 hours long or something like that. So it's a real you're committed for about five years if you want to go down the LBJ route. A rabbit hole of itself, fantastic. It really is a massive one, and people kind of go, why the hell would you like who cares that much about LBJ? But it's so beautifully written, and it turns out that it's a huge social history, really, not just about the man, but also what was going on in society around that time, and it goes off on amazing tangents. So it is brilliant stuff, but actually, there's a documentary about him and his relationship with his editor now, late editor, a guy called Robert Gottlieb, and it's called Turn Every Page. And so, even if you haven't read these books, just as a portrait of an incredibly thorough and committed writer, someone who spent years researching and writing each one of these volumes about Lyndon Johnson. And he's written a couple of other books as well, but it's mainly Lyndon Johnson. It's so wonderful, these old guys just from another age and guided by principles and methods of working that really most people don't have anymore because they they seem impractical because they're so exhaustive and exhausting. But oh, it's it's lovely, and it's a lovely portrait of a friendship as well and a creative friendship. So that was wonderful. Turn every page, and it's directed by the daughter of the editor Bob Gottlieb, Lizzie Gottlieb, and it came out in 2022. Robert Carro's books, he wrote another one about a guy called Robert Moses, who was responsible for building New York, really, a kind of city planner who created New York and its modern state from the early 20th century. All his books are about these hugely powerful men who are ostensibly men of principle and who created amazing things and made amazingly positive changes in the world. You know, LBJ was so instrumental in passing legislation that led to progress in civil rights that was long overdue and hadn't been made for years and years. Martin Luther King wept with joy at some of the things that LBJ was able to do. And at the same time, he was capable of shocking racism, and he was mean, he was cruel, power-hungry, corrupt, unprincipled. So it's all these weird dichotomies in these people, and and you're forced to kind of think, wow, it's there's so many positive things that they did at the and yet they were so flawed. So yeah, it's good stuff. Turn every page is that doc. And then the other one I saw recently is about Andy Kaufman. Do you like Andy Kaufman? Yes. Have you seen Thank You Very Much?

Chris Grimes:

I'll make a note of that. Yeah, that's a really good one. Sounds a bit like I Love You Bye, which is yours. It's in the similar canon sort of thing.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, that's right. Well, I think Thank You Very Much is his catchphrase as Latka in Taxi. Because Andy Kaufman, for those who don't know, is an American comedian who was how would you describe him?

Chris Grimes:

Very quirky, very idiosyncratic vocally. And it was Taxi was what I remember him for.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah. Well, there was a film made about his life called Man on the Moon, starring Jim Carey. And he was a guy who was really kind of an art prankster, really. And a lot of what he did wasn't so much comedy as almost performance art, trying to play with the expectations of an audience, lying to them really in the name of comedy, and being weird and misdirecting them in all sorts of different ways. And he ended up being in this show taxi playing an Eastern European guy who had a kind of um voice like this, and he was called Latka, and he was kind of just a sweet child man, really, who would be a little bit um, you know, sort of sweet and wide-eyed. And he would say, Thank you very much. And so that's where the that was a lovely title of the documentary comes from. But, you know, he was while he was doing this show Taxi, playing this cozy, sweet character that everyone loved, he made the decision to come in. He insisted to the producers that he wanted to play a different character who was like a monstrous nightclub, like a real boorish, sexist, racist nightclub act who would smoke a cigar and um he would come on set as this guy, and he would insist like one of the episodes of Taxi, you've got to write this character into it. I'm just gonna check on what was the name of the character. This is a great rabbit hole of itself, actually. This is wonderful. You probably had no idea you'd be talking about this at this point. No. Oh yeah. So the character that Andy Kaufman played, this monstrous boorish character, was called Tony Clifton. And yeah, domineering, foul-mouthed- Not Bernie Clifton, that was a man on an ostrich, wasn't it? That's right. No, he was much nicer, Bernie. Tony Clifton, Andy Kaufman's character, was like a a real nightmare, foul-mouthed, domineering lounge singer. And so Kaufman insisted that uh the producers of Taxi have an episode where Tony Clifton turns up, and they were obviously very reluctant to do that. But then Kaufman made the decision that he was going to come in as Tony Clifton onto the set, insist that they write him into the episode somehow. And production on that episode of Taxi kind of ground to a halt, and all the actors that he worked with were really upset, you know, and confused. And they knew it was Andy Kaufman, but Andy Kaufman was saying, No, Andy Kaufman, you know, he was he phoned up earlier on and said, I can't come in today, but Tony's coming in. Anyway, so he was that kind of bloke, you know what I mean? It was all his whole life seemed to be a weird prank. And I think I always found him a little bit annoying and not really funny enough whenever I would see Andy Kaufman's stuff. But this documentary really turned it around and made me think, oh, actually, there's way more to him than I than I thought.

Chris Grimes:

An unrecognized genius as you now reframe it, I suppose.

Adam Buxton:

I think so. There's an amazing bit, I won't go on about it too much, but there's an amazing bit of footage of him at a transcendental meditation conference as a young man, like he was into transcendental meditation, and he's there with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was the guy that the Beatles were very inspired by in the early 70s or late 60s, I guess they were hanging out with him. But Andy Kaufman is there at this conference and he starts asking the Maharishi about comedy, and he's asking these questions that that sound like wind-up questions, and the audience is laughing, like he asks, Well, Maharishi, you know, we're all trying to achieve inner peace here with transcendental meditation, but if we achieved inner peace, would that eliminate the need for entertainment and for entertainers? Because, you know, and though and the way I took that was, well, if you're doing entertainment and drama, so much of that is concerned with all the difficult and painful aspects of being alive. Yeah, the conflict or the subversiveness of it. Yeah. Yeah. That's what so much art is doing. Not all of it, but a lot of it. If everyone achieves enlightenment, then does that suddenly stop being necessary?

Chris Grimes:

Well, that's like is heaven boring, isn't it? That's if if we achieve heaven, is that just not going to be boring? So everyone's going to be so flipping perfect.

Adam Buxton:

Exactly. That's a much better and more succinct way of saying it. But he's saying he's asking the question to the Maharishi. And eventually, um, and the Maharishi at first is laughing, he doesn't really get it, he thinks he's this guy's just being weird. But then Andy Kaufman says, What if there was a comedian who specialized in insulting people and people laugh at the oddness of this guy? So he's more or less describing what he does, really. And um the Maharishi says, Well, oddness is a means to create contrast. And if you have a big contrast on both sides, then a deeper silence is experienced. That's what he says. I don't really know exactly what that means, but it was No, we're all having to go into thinking about that, and then uh do I understand that?

Chris Grimes:

Yes.

Adam Buxton:

To me, oddness and being weird and pranky the way that Andy Kaufman was a lot of the time. My prejudice is that that creates misunderstanding much easier than it creates interesting contrast. I mean, it definitely creates interesting contrast, but I think for a lot of people it creates confusion and misunderstanding and disconnection. And I don't think that's the path to enlightenment. But anyway, all of this stuff, like big themes, it's all swirling around in things.

Chris Grimes:

No, that's very profound. And this is a moment to say answers on a postcard, please, although we're not sure of the question. That was great. Yeah. Really good. Which is a great segue into squirrels now, because ironically, that was a bit of a sort of monster of distraction of itself. The two squirrels, borrow from the film Up, inspired by the film Up, where the dog goes, Oh, squirrels and is distracted. What would you say never fails to distract you? Sometimes called shiny object syndromes or your monsters of distraction. And you said at the beginning that you're not so sure about your squirrels, but what would you say your squirrels are?

Adam Buxton:

I go down negative rabbit holes on YouTube because of clickbait. And obviously that's the whole point of clickbait is to distract people, and I hate it for that reason, because it swallows up so much time. And clickbait works because it appeals to people's worst impulses, and I hate myself every time it works on me because I think I'm just like a jerk. I am just falling into this rabbit hole just because I've been tweaked by some Wally who does a big thumbnail clickbait headline that says something like, Why David Bowie was the worst artist in the world? You know what I mean? And you're like, oh? Oh, but I like David Bowie. He's nice. I think he was good. I don't think he's the worst artist in the world. What do you mean? And on some level, there's a part of me, even just a tiny part, that is thinking, maybe I'm wrong about David Bowie. Maybe he was the worst artist in the world. Oh, I better find out why. I'll click on this and then I'll find out. And then you watch the thing, and of course, it's not about that. It's usually somewhere You've got a great new character called Clickbait Wally there. That was a brilliant voice for clickbait wally. Well, that in my mind, that's the voice of the algorithm a little bit. Do you like? I notice you like David Bowie. Here's David Bowie, but also here's something that you don't like, which is being told David Bowie is not good, but you can't resist going towards that thing because it makes you insecure, and that's a big part of what makes you tick. So click on this and you'll find out if you're right or or why you're wrong. Anyway, so the but the thing to do is is to ignore it because it's obviously clickbait.

Chris Grimes:

But no one's ever said clickbait is their squirrel. I love that. So clickbait wally was great.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, yeah. Clickbait, I'm afraid, works on me every time. You know, you'll be amazed at blah blah blah, or uh words cannot describe the sadness of how this person, this formerly hot person, has aged. Things like that. You'll be left with no words when you see what this former hottie looks like now, because of the effects of time. What else always distracts me? Oh well, I guess what distracts me is just other other rabbit holes like the past, and because I archive everything, I just have a huge library of bits and pieces from my past in one form or another. Photographs, videos, diaries, journals, sketchbooks. So I'm surrounded by all this. And because I went to art school, that's what they teach you there. That's the first thing you learn at the art school that I went to is keep a sketchbook and write everything down, make a note of everything, do little sketches the whole time. You're constantly making notes because you never know when the right moment will come along to reinterpret that or figure out how it works or where it fits. You know, sometimes you'll write something down and it'll just be a half-formed idea, and maybe 10 years later you'll find it again and go, oh, I know what that means now, and I know what I can do with it. But the dangerous thing about that is that it's always beckoning to you and always saying, Maybe you want to have a look and go and comb through the past. Sometimes it's good because you you do find things that you'd forgotten and they they prove to be useful.

Chris Grimes:

But would it be safe to say your clutter is the fabric of your being? Because it's part of your own, your own mental clickbait that's this there in the archive of you being you.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, I suppose so. But it is a it's an impulse I have to resist sometimes. And I talked on my podcast a few times, I think, about an artist called Michael Landy, who made a piece called Breakdown, where he destroyed all of his physical possessions, like everything, including his passport, which I think might even be illegal. And he shredded them and put them through kind of industrial mincing machines and then bagged each one of them up and labelled them and and made a whole installation out of this factory of destruction. And it was a brilliant piece, but it really unsettled me. Just the idea of doing that and stripping your everything away in that way so that you're just left with you as a person.

Chris Grimes:

Was it called My Life is in shreds, or is that that too obvious? No breakdown, it was called.

Adam Buxton:

Breakdown. Yeah. Which is a brilliant thing because I think he he did have a breakdown afterwards. That's not brilliant. But the piece, the idea of it, what it signifies and all the uncomfortable questions it provokes, especially for someone like me who accumulates and has accumulated so much stuff. But yeah, that that stuff that distracts me.

Chris Grimes:

Stuff. And now, in the final piece of Shaking the Tree, the one represents a quirky or unusual fact about you, Adam Buxton, we couldn't possibly know until you tell us.

Adam Buxton:

What is your quirky fact? I struggled with this one.

Chris Grimes:

Well, my quirky fact is I once came up with a comedy character that resided in an extra large wheelie bin. And why he was in an extra large wheelie bin is he could have been a comedy contender, he could have wheelie bin somebody, and his character was Stan Trolley, which is out there on the internet somewhere, but that that would be one random fact. I had I I wasn't expecting that question, but that would be a quirky or unusual fact. Or it could be I'm a ping-pong samurai, you know, I'm really good at ping pong.

Adam Buxton:

I think the only thing that maybe I haven't talked about that much, I can't remember, is that I have transparent dreams, like ridiculously obvious dreams. And I do I remember most of my dreams, which my wife, for example, doesn't. And uh I think that that's an indication that she probably sleeps better than I do.

Chris Grimes:

And also That's a great answer. You don't you're sort of berating yourself for not having come up with it, but that's no one's ever said that before.

Adam Buxton:

Like, for example, I'll give you a couple of examples of my comically obvious dreams, which are it's embarrassing really because it does suggest that you're dealing with a more or less half-formed intellect.

Chris Grimes:

A man of simple pleasures, shall we?

Adam Buxton:

I have children, I have three children, and they uh one of them is a teenager, and the boys are in their early 20s. But I had a dream not so long ago that I was standing on a crumbling bridge holding onto my son's ankles as he tried to fly away. So what on earth could that mean? And then I had another dream, a very hard to interpret dream, about look when Joe Cornish's first film came out, Attack the Block, and I dreamt one night that I was working in a kind of crumbling building where all the walls were just rubble, and I was sitting there with an old typewriter, and all the keys were busted, and then Joe arrived, and he was wearing a dinner jacket and holding an Oscar.

Chris Grimes:

What on earth could that mean? I don't know. I think it's easy money for the psychoanalyst that's listening to this, thinking I must sign him up as a client because it's going to be easy money. Yeah, exactly. Sort you out in three minutes flat. That I commend you, sir, for your transparent dreams. Who's the band that dancing in electric dreams? Who's that one? Doo-doo. That was Phil Okey, wasn't it? Thank you, Phil Okey. That just went fired off in my head randomly there. Brilliant. We've shaken your tree. Hurrah! So now we stay in the clearing, which is in your soundscape on a train with your Lancaster bomber in your ears, on a train that may or may not be late 50% of the time. Next, we're going to talk about alchemy and gold now. When you're at purpose and in flow, Adam Buxton, what would you say you're absolutely happiest doing in what you're here to reveal to the world?

Adam Buxton:

I think I'm really happy when I'm making jingles and adverts for the podcast. Well, I'll qualify that by saying like when I'm making adverts that are working and I know what I'm doing, it's really fun. It's sometimes it's torture trying to think of a funny way to advertise a product that I have agreed to advertise. And sometimes I go back and forth with the client because they're not happy with how stupid the song I've made is, and they don't they don't feel it represents the product.

Chris Grimes:

This is why your archive is a national treasure, because there's all sorts of gold in there of random jingles.

Adam Buxton:

You know, because there's all sorts of ways of funding podcasts, and you can do the Patreon thing and ask listeners to contribute, and and that's uh one way to go. But I always felt like that was a bit that was hard work in itself, because then you're really beholden to your listeners and you have to supply them with bonus content and keep badgering them to keep supporting and all those things. And I felt like I would rather have just adverts, but rather than just reading stuff off a piece of paper, I thought it would be a good opportunity to do more jingles and more songs and hence Master of the Ramble, King of the Jingle, as I said about you at the beginning.

Chris Grimes:

Thanks very much.

Adam Buxton:

But yeah, no, I do really like doing those, and and uh sometimes they'll make me laugh, and it's good fun when they work. And that yeah, the jingles especially, I love doing that. And actually that's how most of my album came around, really, because a lot of the songs came out of jingles that didn't really fit in the podcast, or advertising jingles that were um not right for the actual product that uh that was sponsoring the podcast and ended up turning into slightly longer songs.

Chris Grimes:

Jingles of the Brain is another album title for you at some point, because they're all coming from your head, Jingles of Adam's Brain. There you go. I was gonna ask you about the whether you in Buckle Up, you know, in the albums that you have done, whether you're doing cover versions or it's all totally original stuff based on what's jingling in your head by the sound of it.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, no covers on the first album. Although when we play live, the Adam Buxton band, we've only played a handful of shows so far, about nine or ten maybe. We do a couple of covers in those shows.

Chris Grimes:

Are you playing guitar or something as well?

Adam Buxton:

Or are you I'm playing guitar on a couple of songs, but it's it's pretty basic guitar. Most of the m musical stuff is done by the band who are various members of the band Metronomy, and they are actual proper musicians, so that covers up for my musical shortcomings. Also, I fire off samples on a big keyboard. I've got a massive long keyboard loaded with bits of noise and sound effects and quotes, and and so I spread those throughout the performance. Wonderful. Yeah, so I really do love doing that. And actually, speaking of that, that would be my other happy place is uh is performing recently, like doing some of those songs. In fact, last night at the Royal Festival Hall, I was with uh one of the Adam Buxton band, Michael Love It, and he was playing guitar, and I was singing a song called Tea Towel about unabsorbent tea towels, which is on my album. And the audience was enjoying it. I felt like we were playing it pretty well, and I was in tune, I think. Like sometimes I can sing off key, but last night I don't think I was, and it was pure happiness. Like that was my dream since I was young to actually sing on stage and be in a band. And I never thought I would do it. And it's a comedy song, you know, it's not like I'm singing some sort of indie rock epic or anything, but it was really fun, and I just thought, oh yeah, this I wish I could live in this moment.

Chris Grimes:

It's very reminiscent of Bowie's song about non-absorbent uh tea towels as well, I remember.

Adam Buxton:

Of course, that was a lot of his early stuff was about various kitchen implements.

Chris Grimes:

Great, Arson. Thank you for naming a second clearing. That's a sort of bonus chase of no extra charge, you're welcome. That's lovely. And now I'm gonna award you with a cake, Adam Buxton. So do you like cake, first of all? Yeah, I love cake. And you get to put a cherry on the cake. So what what type of cake are we ordering, please? Oh, um I'll I'll tell you what, I'll have a Victoria sponge. Ooh. Okay. Do you know what? I bizarrely, I had a Victoria Sponge yesterday. It was my birthday. It's not a very happy birthday. Thanking you. A Victoria Sponge, and now it's the final of the storytelling suffused metaphors. You now get to put a cherry on the cake with stuff like what is a favourite inspirational quote, if you can possibly fix on one or two, that's always given you sucker and pulled you towards your future, Adam Buxton.

Adam Buxton:

Well, my dad was big on inspirational quotes. He always wanted to do a book called Words of Wisdom with some of his favourites. And I've never been I'm I find it hard to remember jokes and quotes, and I remember lines from songs, but that's about it, really. So I've never been a massive quote guy, although I really did love a lot of the ones that Dad loved in in his uh never published Words of Wisdom book. And one that I really liked was from a French man, Georges Louis Leclerc, uh the Comte de Buffon, an 18th century French naturalist, mathematician, and cosmologist. Comte de Buffon, that's lovely de Buffon. And he said, supposedly, I I think this quote is attributed to Georges Louis Leclerc, never think that God's delays are God's denials. Hold on, hold fast, hold out. Patience is genius. And I do think that I feel like my dad always used to go on about persistence and the value of persistence. And I do think, especially in the entertainment world, the best bit of advice you can give people is just carry on. Yes. It's not necessarily like specifically how to do what you're doing. It's just keep doing it. The longer you do it, the more your chances of actually succeeding in some way increase.

Chris Grimes:

That is great advice. The compte de Buffon. Compte de Buffon. And another cheeky chappy chaser in there, or that that's a great quote, and I'm happy with that. Uh is there anything else you're gagging to say, quote wise?

Adam Buxton:

Quote wise, well, I mean, the thing that my dad always used to say, which I think is uh a Bible quote, uh proverbs maybe, is a soft answer turneth away wrath. Nice. Which is, you know, that's a valuable quote for our modern divided conflict-ridden times, is and I suppose going back to what I was boring on about with social media, it's just like taking the temperature out of a situation out of a conversation sometimes is so valuable. And social media is constructed in a way that makes that almost impossible. But actually, almost always what you need to do in a conflict, one person needs to just calm everything right down and take the edge out of their voice. I mean, it's really hard to do, it's like good advice, but it is hard to do. But certainly in intense conversations I've had with the people I love and with my wife, you know, I said that as if I have people I love and then I have my wife. No, she is one of the people I love. But in intense conversations with her, the times when I have been able to remember that advice and just dial down the temperature of the conversation.

Chris Grimes:

I'll just say that quote one more time just to reincorporate it deliberately. A soft answer turneth away wrath. With the benefit of hindsight, what notes, help, or advice might you proffer to a younger version of Adam Buxton? And you can pick when you arrive and wrap a metaphorical parental arm around your own shoulder and say, you know what, dear. So what's your advice to self?

Adam Buxton:

I suppose it would be at the dawn of my self-conscious years. I mean, I was always quite self-conscious, but it really became it started to become a little bit debilitating when I got to be a teenager. Excuse me, as it does for many people. It's tough being a teenager, and it is that arrival of self-consciousness that really you can see teenagers almost like bent over with the burden of the self-consciousness. It's so painful to just think everyone's looking at you and judging you. But I wish I could have done something to yank my younger self out of that a little bit and communicate a bit more effectively that it doesn't matter and just carry on and and stop trying so hard to be someone that you're not, and uh and concentrate on doing the things you like as well as you possibly can and enjoying them.

Chris Grimes:

When I described about 20 minutes ago that you've found a real authentic self in what you're now doing, it feels like that's come full circle. So the Adam Buxton podcast allows you to do all of the stuff that's just it's gonna be okay, because it's and you get to do a lot of the stuff that you find really enjoyable.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, that's true. That is true. And that's the again, the nice thing I think about the podcast medium and the fact that it is audio only is that it it strips a lot of that away, and you can you don't have to try so hard. It's not as if I'm completely free of that impulse, but um it's a bit more manageable now, and also like specific advice go to art school earlier, join a band, even if it's terrible. Those are two things that I really, really wish I had done much earlier.

Chris Grimes:

Yes. Lovely. We're ramping up shortly to talk about Shakespeare's the final piece, to talk about legacy. But just before we get there, this is something called pass the golden baton, please. A bit like they don't like that by Mr. Mannering. But now you've experienced this from within. Who might you like to pass the golden baton along to in order to keep the golden thread of the storytelling going? Ah, now I have to confess that I forgot about this one. Um Well, it it's anybody that you feel may just really enjoy like benefit, or just, you know, think what a lovely, what a lovely conceit. I'd love to be able to do that.

Adam Buxton:

Does it have to be a well-known person?

Chris Grimes:

It can be whoever you want. It can be well-known, it doesn't have to be. Everybody answers this differently.

Adam Buxton:

The answer that springs to mind is my children. You know, they are the people I think about most and I care about most, I suppose, in a lot of ways. And I just hope they're going to be okay. I just really. The thing, you know, every parent knows it's a cliche. You're only ever as happy as your unhappiest child. And you want them so much to be happy and be able to be happy and not be too badly burdened with the things that um you've worried about in your own life, you know. And that's impossible, and that's the thing that tortures every parent. But if my you know, and you can see, you sort of think when you're a young parent, oh, this'll be fine. I'll just tell them all the mistakes I've made, and then they won't make them themselves. It'll be fine. But uh that's not exactly how it works out. Yes. And uh, you know, the the the bleakest version of it is the Philip Larkin adage that uh they fill you with the faults they had and add some extra just for you, which is it's sort of true. There's an artist as well who does um he's called Mr. Bingo, and Joe Lyset, the comedian, introduced me to his work, and I bought a piece of his which really made me laugh, which was a Venn diagram, two big circles that intersect, and one circle says the worst of mum, and the other circle says the worst of dad, and in the intersecting area it says me. And sometimes that's what you feel like as a parent, like, oh no, I'm just creating this new set of problems for a new human being.

Chris Grimes:

I love that. You're sort of threatening to unleash Chris Grimes's format on one of your children. Is that what you're saying you're willing and wanting to do? I'd be delighted and honoured if that's what happened.

Adam Buxton:

Sure. Any little shred, any little shred of enlightenment. Uh if I can pass something on to one of my children, they would be the people I would want to inherit it.

Chris Grimes:

Yes. And this is passing the golden bat and so one of them may want to volunteer, having listened to this, do I'll give it a go. I'll be given a good damn good listening to by Chris Grimes is the conceit. Sure. And now, borrowed from Shakespeare, all the world to stage, all the billy players, we'll finally, finally talk about legacy, uh, Adam Buxton. How, when all is said and done, would you most like to be a remembered?

Adam Buxton:

Isabel Allende, the Chilean writer, said to me, Legacy, that is a penis word, which by which I think she meant that's the kind of thing that m typically men worry about more than uh anyone else. But honestly, I don't think about it that much. I don't think I do. All I can think about is like, well, I have a file on my computer that says best things I've done that I always think um well, I have a a a little area of my computer that I would direct my family to navigate to when I die. And um there they will find various things like uh instructions for where I've hidden things and and tech. Technical bits and pieces and legal things like that, but also a few of the things that I'm happiest with, or that I did over the years. It's not a massive file at the moment. But some of the things in there are some of the silly sketches I did that I really quite liked. And I did a thing called You Say We Pay, where I re-edited a a quiz on this morning with Richard and Judy. Or maybe it wasn't this morning. But anyway, they used to do a quiz on one of their shows. Do you remember that? Uh no, I don't. They would they would do they would ring people up and the person on the phone would have to describe what was being displayed on the screen behind Richard and Judy. So Richard and Judy couldn't see it, but there would be a picture of, you know, um Sharon Stone or whatever, and the person on the phone would have to describe, without saying Sharon Stone, who that person was, and they would have to guess who it was.

Chris Grimes:

She's uncrossing her leg. She's uncrossing a leg, something like that.

Adam Buxton:

Exactly. So I did why I did a thing where I removed the voice of the caller and just did ludicrous comedic prompts for some of the images that were appearing behind Richard and Judy. And uh it was one of the first things that I posted on YouTube, and it was back in the days when you felt like you had a viral hit if more than a thousand people watched it, you know. Yeah. And uh I remember that being really fun, people responding to that and leaving some nice comments underneath. And I still see that every now and again. I can't I haven't watched it for a few years, so it might be that there's some stuff that is now no longer okay in the current social climate, but I thought that was pretty funny. You say we pay. I did another one where I re-voiced the funeral of Pope John Paul II in 2005 and reimagined it as a a scene from a sci-fi movie with a a commentary describing all these dignitaries from alien planets because they all looked so extraordinary in their costumes and their robes. And my dad did not like that. I did another one for the um Cenotaph ceremony of remembrance, and my dad really hated that.

Chris Grimes:

As someone who had fought in the war, he thought it was And this is your folder of enigmatic stuff you're proud of that you want to leave as your legacy. I love this. Yeah.

Adam Buxton:

Because I still, even though my dad hated that, which normally does colour my impressions of things I've done, yeah. I think it's funny. So I'm I'm proud of that. I'm also proud of a video that was animated by these folks called the Brothers McLeod, and it is a bit of audio of me looking through a book about Star Wars with my daughter when she was five, and she's discussing the fact that she really loved the outfit that Princess Leia was forced to wear by Jabba the Hutt in Return of the Jedi. And we were talking about like how whether it was okay for whether I was asking her whether she was worried about the fact that she had been forced to dress like a sexy slave. And my daughter was saying no, she didn't think that that was appropriate, but what she would do if she was Leia would be escape from Jabba but keep the outfit. But it's a very, it's a very sweet conversation, I think, even though a lot of the comments underneath it, some of them were for from people who were angry that I was indoctrinating my daughter with kind of quotes woke beater cuck dad behaviour. But regardless, I'm still very happy with that little moment.

Chris Grimes:

And did do the family, the squad know that the Buxton squad know where to go to click on that folder?

Adam Buxton:

I don't know. I'll have to um direct them to this podcast first, and then they'll find out about it.

Chris Grimes:

Then they'll need to find your password to get onto your computer, and then Fanny's your aunt, you're in. Basically. Lovely. There is a final, final question coming up in a second, but just as a lovely segue, when you were talking about all we all want is for our children to be happy and that lovely Venn diagram you decide, just to make an announcement about the new series strand that I'm up to with it's been in the mountainscape of the Goodlistening2 Show.com all along. It's called legacy lifereflections.com, and it's to record either your own story or the story of that precious someone to you for posterity, lest we forget before it's too late. So it's uh using this same storytelling structure to curate people through that journey scape of conserving their life story. So that's just something to look at. Where can we find out all about you? And we all know, but where would you like to point us to? For so, for example, if you want to find I Love You by your second book, you know, where do we go to find out all about you? Where would you like to point us?

Adam Buxton:

I think most things are on my website, which is adam-buxton.co.uk, and on the front page of that will be the latest podcast episode, and then elsewhere you've got sections about the books, and actually I've got to do one about the album. I haven't done that yet. But there's also a collection of some of my favourite videos from over the years. Those ones that I just mentioned are probably there in the about me section, I think.

Chris Grimes:

Just wanted to mention your dancing to the podcast theme in 2016 was my favorite quick cursory look through the website, and that film was beautiful.

Adam Buxton:

Yeah, that's on there. A lot of the jingles from the podcast are there. And yeah, quite a bit of stuff I've done. So that's really the place to go. The place. You can get a yeah, you can sign up for a newsletter, which I very seldom send out, by scrolling to the bottom of the front page of the website. And it uh usually says if there are any live events coming up. Currently there are none, but there will be at some point. Because you just missed the one last night for the London Literary Festival. Last one for this year, I think. But I'm sure the band will be playing a few more dates in the new year if you want to come along to those and let me know.

Chris Grimes:

Bristol Obs Obs Obs, that's where I'm still based.

Adam Buxton:

Yes.

Chris Grimes:

And as I started at the beginning, I did voice your imaginary friends, so now we've done a podcast together. Hopefully, the the voice of Chris Grimes is still going to keep ringing round your head and add to the random clutter that you have in there.

Adam Buxton:

Absolutely.

Chris Grimes:

No, it's nice to talk to you again, Chris. No, you too. So the final, final question. As this has been your moment in the sunshine in the Good Listening to show stories of distinction and genius, Adam Buxton, is there anything else you'd like to say?

Adam Buxton:

You know, I'm 56. In many ways, I'm happier than I've ever been, but I'm aware that because of the nature of time, that stupid old bastard, I am heading for some big challenges, and I have to keep telling myself it's okay to ask for help. That's something I struggle to do. You're stronger than you think, something my dad would always tell me. And also when disaster and tragedy strike, maybe I'll get another book or podcast out of it.

Chris Grimes:

So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much. I've been Chris Grimes, but most importantly, this has been the founding father of podcasts as I describe you as how we now experience them in the UK. Adam Buxton, thank you very much indeed. Thank you very much, Chris. Good night. You've been listening to the Good Listening to Show with me, Chris Grimes. If you'd like to be in the show too, or indeed gift an episode to capture the story of someone else with me as your host, then you can find out how care of the series strands at the Good Listening2Show.com website. If you'd like to connect with me on LinkedIn, please do so. And if you'd like to have some coaching with me, care of my personal impact game changer programme, then you can contact me and also about the show at Chris at secondcurve.uk. On X and Instagram, it's at thatChrisGrimes. Tune in next week for more stories from the clearing. And don't forget to subscribe and review wherever you get your podcasts.