In 2011, Adam Buxton had what he describes as a “mini crisis.” His old schoolfriend and collaborator Joe Cornish, with whom he hosted the cult 1990s comedy The Adam and Joe Show, and co-presented radio shows on XFM and 6Music, had released his first feature film, Attack the Block, and it was a roaring success. At the time Buxton felt his career was stalling, so seeing Cornish flying high sent him into a spiral of anxiousness and misery.
“You know those documentaries about the people who missed out on something big, like they were almost in the Beatles? I hated them because I always thought ‘That’s going to be me some day’,” he explains. “And then Joe’s film came out and I was, like, ‘Oh fuck. Here it is. It’s happened. Our paths have diverged, and he’s gone off and done the thing I always imagined we would do together.’ I thought to myself, ‘What have you actually got to offer without Joe?’. And the voice in my head that was saying ‘You’re not the funny one’ was so loud that I couldn’t conceive of what I would do next.”
For a while it looked as if Buxton might end up stuck in the comic purgatory that is TV panel shows. But then he had an idea. He had been listening to US podcasts including This American Life and WTF with Marc Maron. Listening to the latter made him realise the absence of longform interview shows in the UK. And so he launched The Adam Buxton Podcast, a series where, in between home-made jingles and voice notes recorded on walks with his dog, Rosie, he engages in “ramble chats” with a mix of friends, rising stars and celebrities.
Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish starred in ‘The Adam and Joe Show’ from 1996 to 2001 (Photo: BBC)For the first episode, his interviewee was another old school pal, Louis Theroux, “because I knew I could talk about serious and emotional things with him”. Subsequent guests have included Paul McCartney, Michaela Cole, Jarvis Cocker, Richard Ayoade and Greta Gerwig. Was it a relief to be working solo? “Oh completely. My initial policy was” – Buxton adopts a comically petulant voice – “‘Joe is never gonna come on, because this is my thing.’ Of course that didn’t last. He’s been on the show lots of times.”
Buxton and I meet at his publisher’s office in London where I initially fail to recognise him in his cyclist’s get-up of hi-vis jacket and helmet, a fold-up Brompton bike at his feet. We are here to talk about his new memoir I Love You, Byeee, a warm and wry sequel to his 2020 memoir, Ramble Book. Where the latter took readers through Buxton’s 80s childhood and his relationship with his late father Nigel (a writer who featured in The Adam and Joe Show’s BaaadDad sketches delivering cranky critiques of youth culture), the new book guides us through his early career and his relationship with his mother, Valerie, who died in 2020.
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Buxton, 55, says he never imagined doing a second book largely because “the process of doing the first one was so gruelling. Just going through your life, and feeling full of shame and regret, it’s not easy. So when my editor asked if I wanted to do another one, my immediate thought was, ‘I’ll have to think about it.’ But then my mum died, which happened quickly and was very distinct from the experience of my dad dying, and I thought it would provide the book with some emotional heft.”
Valerie, who was born and raised in Chile, had just moved into Buxton’s Norfolk home, which he shares with his wife, Sarah, and their three children, when she was taken ill. She died from a cardiac arrest as paramedics were moving her into an ambulance. Buxton notes that Valerie was a more private person than Nigel, which made writing about her harder. “My dad was a big personality and he was sort of a fun villain, and also he was a writer who talked about his own life. But Mum disapproved of that kind of oversharing. It was not how she did things, even though she was supportive of my work.”
Buxton writes movingly about sifting through his parents’ belongings after their deaths. Next to his home is an adjoining flat where Nigel lived in his last years, with Buxton caring for him, and where a lot of his parents’ furniture is still stored. For a time, he says, “I had my routine of wrapping up each day with a joint and, when everyone else had gone to bed, sitting in that room surrounded by all my parents’ things, and feeling quite calm and happy and comforted.”
Buxton’s new memoir ‘I Love You, Byeee’ guides you through his early career and his relationship with his mother, Valerie, who died in 2020 (Photo: Mudlark)Now Buxton worries about what to leave behind for his children after he dies. He is a compulsive keeper of things: books, music, letters, diaries, photographs, ephemera from his TV and radio projects. “I’m due another skip hire. I have clear-outs every five years or so. But what I’m also doing now is trying to explain why certain things are worth keeping by putting them in a box with a note.”
Diehard Adam and Joe fans – of which there are still many – will be delighted to find “deep level” reminiscences in the book about working with Cornish. After becoming friends as pupils in Westminster School in London, the pair initially went their separate ways, with Cornish going off to study film at university while Buxton went to art school (he later dropped out). But then, in his twenties, Buxton got a job at Takeover TV, a showcase for new talent on Channel 4, and where his homemade videos impressed producers enough to hire him first as a researcher and then presenter. The latter job allowed him to bring Cornish on board.
Buxton says they got lucky with The Adam and Joe Show, best known for the pair’s “toy movies” in which they recreated films such as Trainspotting and Titanic using toys from their childhoods. “We slid in just before the internet became a thing. People say that we prefigured YouTube so, if it had been a decade later, we would have been just as big there. But when I look at the stuff that people make on YouTube, it’s a different level of slickness and proficiency. We were rank amateurs in every conceivable way.”
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Buxton admits to being an overthinker; in his book, he describes himself as a “ball of self-conscious angst”. This contributed to tension and rivalry between him and Cornish that sometimes boiled over into confrontation. Nowadays they “get on fine” and have recorded a conversation about their professional partnership that will form part of I Love You, Byeee’s audiobook. “We’re beyond the point where we would be threatened by each other professionally or creatively,” he says. “It’s quite a relief to be able to put it all behind us and go, ‘Oh yeah, wow. That was quite stressful, wasn’t it?’”
Ten years into his podcast, which has reached a remarkable 106 million listens, Buxton says the end is in sight, mainly because of his dog, Rosie. “She is the reason the whole thing began, as that was when I started going for dog walks and doing voice notes which became part of the podcast. But she’s old now – she’s 13 – so I think when she dies, I will stop.”
For Buxton, the “What next?” question that triggered a crisis 15 years ago no longer fills him with anxiety. He is in a happier place now. He cheerfully tells me about “death maths”, a concept introduced to him by the journalist Miranda Sawyer where you look at your life expectancy and calculate how much time you have left to achieve the things you want before tiredness and infirmity start to kick in.
“So I’ve been thinking: how many realistically productive years do I have left? And I think rather than sitting at home trawling through the archives [of past projects], it’s time to go and do a couple more things. Different things. I can’t tell you what they will be yet, but I’m going to enjoy finding out.”
‘I Love You, Byeee’ by Adam Buxton is out now (Mudlark, £22)
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