S2 EP9: Adam Buxton on podcast rivalry, problematic musical heroes, and abandoning social media.

0:001, 2, 1, 2. Are we ready? You can use that bit if you want.

0:09Hi, Louis Theroux here, and welcome to another episode of my Spotify podcast. You know what it's called, I think. The Louis Theroux Podcast.

0:27Today we have a very special guest, not just a guest, but a close friend and humanitarian. legendarian, Adam Buxton, actor, writer, podcaster, comedian, half of the Adam and Joe partnership with Joe Cornish, one third of the Adam and Joe and Louie partnership. I don't think anyone's used that phrase and legendary podcast host. That's his main thing, isn't it? The Adam Buxton podcast is kind of the granddaddy of many of these sort of interview podcast formats. It now has 65 million all-time listens. That's quite a lot. I've never interviewed him before, but I've been a frequent guest on his podcast so much so that sometimes people say, like, I loved that podcast you did, implying I've hosted it, when in fact they're talking about me being on his podcast.

1:16And really, because he's been doing it so long, and I was on the first ever one that he did way back in whenever that was. One of the reasons I suppose I've been comfortable doing my own podcasters because of the feeling that I enjoyed being a guest on his shows. And even before the Adam Buxton podcast, let's not forget, because it comes up in the chat, he did the Adam and Joe podcast, if it was called that, which was based on his radio show that he did on Six Music. So he really is a podcasting OG. So we recorded this in person on a hot summer day. We jump in just as Adam comes into the studio.

1:54It's got a slightly different feel to some of the other chats. It's kind of our end of term show. So it's a bit more freewheeling, less journalistic, go with the flow, and hopefully fun. Also, a quick clarification, we speak a bit about January 6th in relation to Ariel Pink, the avant-garde musical artist. And just to be clear, we're talking about the Trump rally in Washington, as opposed to the storming of the Capitol that took place on the same day. That might be a legal disclaimer, I'm not sure. Just to warn you, there is the strongest of language used in the episode. Some adult themes, some insufferable podcast chat.

2:34There's a lot of silliness. I think the name of Elon Musk is taken in vain. Some jokes at his expense, which aren't to be taken too seriously. All of that and much, much more coming up.

3:05Here he is. How you doing, man? How you doing, man? Good to see you. Good to see you. Sweaty hug. Quite warm out there, isn't it? Yeah, brother. Do you need anything? I'm just going to change my shirt. Do whatever you need to do. I've got my retro 90s shirt. I like it. Fun-loving criminal shirt. Quite sort of smash mouth. The guy who died. Did you read about him? No. Oh, what did he die of? It was basically long-term liver damage due to alcohol. Oh, mate. Yeah, it was quite heavy. 56 years old. I read up on it. I find that interesting. People who are roughly our age and for whom the alcohol use is catching up with them.

3:44Right, okay. Should I close this? Well, yes. Yes, if you're ready to roll. Are you ready? Yeah, sure. Thank you for doing the podcast. Hey, thanks for having me. You took a break from podcasting, right? Yeah, for the first part of 2023, had a hiatus because... But then you broke the break. Break broke, broke broke break. You broke the break to do Tom Hanks. Yeah, so I broke the break. Then you broke back again. I broke the break to do Tom Hanks, and then I dropped a live episode that you and I did the year before to try and salve the wounds from the Tom Hanks episode. Are you happy to talk about that on air?

4:22I don't think that's recognized as a debacle. No, I'm joking. No disrespect, Tom. I know he listens. Tom Hanks, big fan of my podcast and yours. Every now and again, a name of that magnitude is dangled in front of a podcaster like myself. Yeah. Presumably because you... I don't know if we're talking about this. Because you know that we were offered him. Yes, I know you were offered him. And you told me in this incredibly mealy-mouthed way a while afterwards. When I was complaining about the encounter, I was saying, oh, it's difficult with Tom Hanks. And I could see you twitching away. I've never twitched in my life.

4:56Sure enough. After a couple of minutes. Yeah, we were offered him actually and turned him down. Oh, yeah. The thing was, when people do an impression of me, I always sound like a Muppet. Oh, I've got a voice up here. I'm spending time in the world of podcasters. That was K. Van Novak's one, wasn't it? Yeah. I listened to that one yesterday. Are you okay? He goes for the quiet one. I quite like that. the whispery louis are you okay i actually thought it was very good his but for listeners of the louis through podcast who haven't heard that episode of the adam buxton podcast it's very funny it's very funny and i thought i didn't listen for a long time because i thought it's going to be too painful hearing myself impersonated not just once but almost like it's a leitmotif through the show every without any forewarning he just drops into it are you okay I was with Adam Buxton finding out he seemed rather tense and I found out he hadn't ejaculated for more than two weeks.

5:54Are you okay? This is the world of meta-modern podcasting. Louis Theroux doing an impression of Kay Van Novak doing an impression of Louis Theroux. I was coming near the end of my time doing my impression of Kay Van Novak impersonating me. But I wondered if he'd really caught my essence. That's what it sounds. Does that sound like me? Yeah. No, that was a good impression. You are a good impressionist. I told you I was impressed by the voices you did on your audio book. You know, it lightened things when stories of domestic strife were getting a bit painful. You start with, I went to meet the Ku Klux Klan.

6:31What are you doing, Lewis? Shut up. Okay, these are my English piece. And you're like, that should be fine. And then you get a bit further in, like, and I rolled up and there he was the aging dj now then now then you're like okay i guess this is all right you keep going and then suddenly i'm doing stories in africa in a township yeah we want to burn him and then i'm like oh now i'm on the ice yeah how far can i well it's how can i go with the accents there was a surprising level of animosity surprising to me maybe unsurprising to others from some quarters really about the saying they were offensive really i think so what you just can't do accents.

7:07Is that the thing? Well, I don't know. Surprising in the sense that there was one comment I read. I mean, I understand the objections to the African one because that's like everyone got that memo. You can't do that. You can't do, I mean, it's basically, it's fairly crude, isn't it? But I can't go through having done everyone else and then suddenly I'm an African and the townshipman came up to me and said, we would like to burn him. Yeah. I'm afraid that's just what you have to do. I think if you're a sort of white bloke and you're doing a load of accents you can do other people from your cohort or australians yeah i think they're the only ones who don't take offense as far as i can tell i've never been criticized for doing a grotesque australian i have have you well i was doing a corporate once and i was saying like and then i met i can't remember what the context was and nick cave said to me it wasn't nick cave i'll make it nick cave because i interviewed him for the podcast all right mate can I tell you what it is yet?

8:02You know, can you tell? Maybe it was Rolf Harris. Let's make it Rolf Harris. That's better. Nick Cave or Rolf Harris. One of the two. They're entertaining. Oh, mate. I don't know, mate. I'm doing a terrible one right now. I think it was better at the time, but the guy in the audience was Australian and said, oh, thanks for your terrible Australian accent. That was pretty offensive. He sounds like he's from New Zealand, that guy. Yeah, maybe he was. That's exactly what he sounded like. We started with Kay Van Novak. Yeah. Well, I'll tell you where we got derailed. it was tom hanks is the thing you actually want to ask me about i was talking about because i feel like you're hosting now i'm gonna well it's bound to be that way but um then we spoke about t hanks thanks so you took a break from podcasting you came back because you were offered hanks i turned it down i'm trying not to be mealy-mouthed i said no when i was told i you only get an hour and I'm precious about it's really just thinking I don't think I can work my magic such as it is in an hour the whole notion for me of podcasting is the idea that you're not constrained and it's you get you know rambles as you know better than anyone are built into it and if you can't ramble if you can't have those weird little bits that you think he's never said before and it just made me nervous I thought that I'm being set up to fail and then my team I hope I can say this without dobbing them in but they were like you said what what like when they heard that I'd said no I don't think so the feeling in the room was you're a moron because because it's an open goal one of the biggest movie stars of all time and famously likable affable genial friendly good value a good talker a funny guy lots of anecdotes what's to say so I was thinking all those things i was thinking this is a massive open goal and then my brain started whirring like i think we're gonna get on pretty well i think he's gonna like me so offered being offered him you thought this is a no-brainer yeah this is didn't have a moment's hesitation i mean you know there's there's always a moment's hesitation obviously this is a dangerous conversation to have because it's gonna well maybe it'll incur fury from the tom hanks people and put other people off.

10:18But this is the reality that everyone doesn't really speak about. Of course, you kind of um and are about it. I don't think that sounds dismissive. You um and are because you want to bring your A game. Yeah, you want to do the best job. And you think normally I get... When we've spoken on your podcast, it's never been less than, well, the first time it was, but less than 90 minutes. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. We allow for that. It's going to be a couple of hours. Exactly. So your hesitation wouldn't be Hanks-based, right? They would be based on, am I going to have enough time? Am I going to have enough time?

10:50But also, is he just going to be in the right frame of mind, especially as it's a Zoom one? And in the end, you know, a lot of my anxieties came true. He was in kind of literary interview mode. He was promoting this book. He'd written a novel, no less. and I think maybe he hadn't really heard the podcast. I'm fairly sure he hadn't and thought that he was going to be interviewed by some kind of high-end Melvin Bragg type figure talking about his book, just asking him basic interview questions and then he would go off and monologue the answers. And after the first 10-minute monologue, I was thinking, uh-oh, how am I going to show him that I want it to be more conversational without kind of offending him?

11:39It was recorded remotely, which doesn't help. Because at the same time, I'm sort of starstruck as well. Of course. It's Tom Hanks. I absolutely love a lot of his films. Castaway is one of my favourite films. I recommend other people's podcasts where he talks about Castaway because he was such a big part of putting that together with Robert Zemeckis. And I effing love it. anyway so as he's sort of going on about writing in a way that is not especially conversational and also he's looking off camera on the zoom so that connection is you know which is so hard to establish remotely anyway is doubly hard when the person isn't looking at you so it was just kind of frustrating was it well received because sometimes you do those and then you put them out and then everyone's like oh that was great what are you talking about it was mixed with it with someone as well known as him you get an unusually high number of listeners so a good proportion of those were perfectly happy and i got lots of emails hey nice one wow you got tom hanks that kind of thing but then people came up to me and i did a thing at the podcast festival earlier this year in islington and a couple of people came up and they were like um what happened with tom hanks really yeah it wasn't that bad what is that what would be in their heads i wonder i think they they know me they know what i'm like they get in my head and they know i'm going to be overthinking it i'm going to be overly respectful i'm going to be nervous and they feel all that for me you know right and so then they it makes them squirm it's a little bit like my wife my wife sarah she doesn't like seeing any of my shows or listening to the podcast or anything like that because she knows me she lives in my head the one i felt for you i can't believe we're talking about your greatest missus the one i felt for you was the sarah silverman one oh yeah okay yeah because you were having technical it was purely technical difficulties the zoom was dropping out all kinds of stuff and you'd done some research and you had this concept I'd done loads.

13:53I'd done loads of research. I'd read every book. She's written several books. I'd read all the books. You were overprepared. Oh, man. And I could see you had your little trail of breadcrumbs you were trying to follow. And then other forces, force majeure got in the way. So you were doing your little intricate bit and then, sorry, what was that? And then you lost confidence in your premise. you've done it in the form of a q a or something oh i forgot about i blocked that out with the help of my therapist uh the reality is almost too awful to contemplate i will say for context i think this was 2021 or even maybe 2020 the world was a very different world was a different place and we were all traumatized also i was genuinely traumatized because my mom had died only a few months before and I was sort of mad I think I went through a long period where I just felt crazy and unhappy and that interview happened in that period and I think I'd got into the habit of drinking quite a lot of cognac around the time sure convinced myself that cognac was my new favorite thing I'm still in that phase it's not cognac but so I had a little shot of cognac before the uh interview with Sarah oh no I wouldn't do that that's how confident I was that it was going going to just be great what was your bit that you had what was the bit is there something she does it was a format that she uses and you thought oh yeah yeah well remembered she does a podcast where she plays messages from listeners and so i had put together a series of kind of fake listener messages that i delivered in different accents that were supposed to be kind of a parody i just thought this is win win win i'm doing funny character bits but it's also kind of a parody of the things that, you know, messages that listeners might send into a show like hers.

15:48But they're also actual questions that I want her to come back on. Oh, my God, maybe I'm too good at this. Maybe I should just stop doing this and give other people a chance because I am smashing it left, right and center here. And then I just massively lost my bottle immediately and couldn't do the accents. As soon as I started doing the first thing, it was just like, oh, this is obviously such a bad idea. I remember the premise seemed slightly complicated. So she's trying to, you know, boogie down with it. She was really generous with it. And at the point where it might have clicked, then you had technical problems and she couldn't hear you.

16:27Yes. And then it was like, oh, shit. And that's the stuff we kept in. Gee, so there was more of that. Oh, yeah. We kept... Seamus, my producer friend, is a genius at smoothing things out. And that was the smoothed version. Wow. Yeah. Do you think everyone knows who she is, don't they? American comedian. She was in the Larry Sanders show as a writer. She's one of the greatest woman American comedians of a certain generation. Came up with that Louis C.K. cohort of comics and very edgy. Edgy, political. yeah and was one of the kind of vanguard of foul-mouthed shocking woman comics who were talking about being a woman in in ways that people weren't really used to in the in the tradition of Joan Rivers but a much harder edged version so she's a fascinating person and I was really interested to talk to her about how in recent years she has as some people seen it drunk the woke kool-aid and gone quite a long way to sort of walking back some of her more extreme statements and qualifying some of her positions and saying no i wouldn't really say that stuff now while still living and being happy with a lot of the things she said i mean it's a very she exemplifies a kind of queasy line that a lot of us progressive liberal edgy edutarians Yeah, she was progressive edgy, pushing the boundaries, using language that was close to the line, whether it was sexual or racial.

18:00And then now what is she? Is she more careful about what she says? I think she is. Yeah, I think she is. okay the first thing that came to mind when you said that was thinking about the 90s and political comedy and the way in which it was almost like there was this sort of big tent progressivism embodied by people like sarah silverman and i suppose janine garofalo and vice magazine and how strange it is that you know it was about pushing buttons and pushing boundaries and things that now would be viewed as deeply offensive. It was the American version of that kind of 90s edgy British comedy, like Loaded, etc.

18:41Maybe Frankie Boyle? Yeah, maybe. And the sort of baseline assumption was, obviously, we all know sexism is bad, racism is bad. Obviously, we don't even need to say that anymore because we're all on the same page. So given that, here are some things that we know you oughtn't to say. Right, and we're parodying it, or it's ironic. And I find that whole Vice magazine culture incredibly interesting, how it spawned both the progressive, super sensitive, left wing, or however you characterize that progressive cultural approach, but then also birthed Gavin McInnes and the alt-right and the proud boys and the aggressive sort of trendy right.

19:24You know, and trendy in the sense of they kind of bizarrely have hipster signifiers, many of these alt-right guys. Yeah. A lot of them growing out from 4chan and 8chan and places like that. Yeah, troll culture. Super ironic troll culture. Yeah. And the fact that someone like the Eagles of Death Metal were or are Trump supporters. And there was a time when all those people... Ariel Pink as well. Ariel Pink. Wasn't he actually at Jan 6? I think he's suffering some consequences from it. This is a sort of indie American musician listeners, if you're not familiar. And about, I think in 2020, I was looking at stuff online about things that Ariel Pink had said and thought, oh, okay.

20:07he's kind of pissed a few people off saying some thoughtless things about women or whatever and has not enjoyed the backlash and rather than apologize or rethink he's kind of one of those people who's gone fuck it i'll just go even further he came to the uk did a show in london were you there no and outraged people because he went on stage and said i'm the rock jimmy savile right so maybe i'm giving him too much credit to uh think that he had any moment of pause about oh maybe i should apologize or maybe i should be a bit more thoughtful i think he was always one of those kind of people anyone who goes on stage and says i'm the rock jimmy savile they're just trying to push buttons yeah right that's right and that's what rock and roll used to be about right you used to be able to push buttons in a way that everyone was like oh That's rock and roll.

21:00And only the stuffy old conservatives and your parents would go, well, this is disgraceful. Yeah. And town... Sid Vicious going around with a swastika on, right? Uh-huh. Walking through Jewish areas, I think. Yeah. What about... I think Iggy Pop has been asked about lyrics that seemed to endorse sex with underage girls. Oh, yeah. Have you seen that? No. When was that? Maybe last year in the New York Times. but uh again you know he is from he's from like the 50s even not even the 60s that's what rock was like then you know you had these people like jerry lee lewis who were totally beyond the pale yeah and he was out and out racist as well and you know but everyone was focused on oh it's the rocker look he's playing the piano with his foot well i think he got called out even at the time like that was a scandal even then yeah whether um iggy pop caused waves then there's almost like a way off track here but we'll go with it okay there's a rippling like do we have a problem with bowie kind of conversation happening are you aware of that yeah yeah when he died i became aware of the story of him touring america with the spiders for aladdin sane so early 70s when Bowie would have been 27 thereabouts and well maybe a bit younger maybe he was like 24 and I think he spent a night with one of the GTOs the girls together outrageously who were a bunch of groupies and the whole culture was let's track down as many big rock stars as we can and bed them and then write about it often in Cream magazine but some of these girls were as young as 13 I think but you know i know a lot of other bowie fans who couldn't get beyond it really yeah when you listen to someone's music you're not endorsing their morals so i'm always surprised when people bail on artists in that way like i think michael jackson was a child molester and i've spoken about that repeatedly i still listen to his music and r kelly i still i still love r kelly's music i I suppose it depends on what kind of relationship you have with the artist, i.e.

23:16which part of them is important to you. And if it's just the music, I always think of Van Morrison as the example I always use to make the distinction. I couldn't give a fuck about Van Morrison as a person. I've only ever heard stories about him being a massive bellend. But that music is so important to me. And somehow it is possible for... Can I do a legal and other view? Van Morrison denies being a massive bellend. And I don't think that's legally actionable, but I do have a dream of having Van Morrison on the podcast. I'd love to interview Van Morrison. I'd love to. Van, if you're listening.

23:56Other views of Van Morrison are also available. Anyway, I love the guy, right? I would be so sad if Van Morrison didn't exist. But I'm not invested in him as a personality, as a person. I don't care what he's done in his personal life. With Bowie, it was different. There was always something I cared about with him as a person. He seemed like someone that I would get on with. I have no idea if I ever met him in a corridor once. But I just liked where he was coming from. Interview after interview made me think, yeah, I like you. Plus, I was beguiled by his personal charms. I loved the way he looked and sort of fancied him when I was getting into him and had the posters all over my walls.

24:40I was... Fancy to him. Am I going to just let that go, do you think? Well, I mean, didn't you ever fancy... I suppose I would have thought he was a beautiful man. Yeah. But not like you would have a Tommy Tank thinking about him. No, but that's only one way of fancying someone. Fancying someone doesn't always end with Tommy. Right, I guess we needed to clear that up. Right, fancy. But you said fancy and that's erotic. That's not aesthetic. Is it? I think so. Okay, fair enough. But would you... I loved him. Mind yourself thinking about his nipples and... No, no. And also, I didn't get turned on when I first saw the man who fell to earth and you see his dodger.

25:23His jolly roger. His lodger. David Bowie's lodger. His laughing gnome. I didn't like seeing his little fellow on... His wee chap. The man who fell to earth. You didn't like it. No, no, I wasn't. That wasn't what I was invested in. I liked his face. I imagined kissing his face. How about that? Did you? Yeah, I thought I could kiss that face. Could or would like to? Would like to, I think.

25:55All that goes. Last 25 minutes goes.

26:24Hi! Too loud? Hi. I'm Louis Theroux and you're listening to the Louis Theroux Podcast. And now, back to my conversation with Adam Buxton. Let's take a step back. Okay. It's a strange and amazing journey we've been on in many ways. And I was thinking about many things before approaching the interview. You know, for listeners who don't know, we were at school together. So we've known each other since we were both around 13 or 14 years old. And then we've been friends more or less ever since. And then, I mean, through the years of you doing your shows, like Takeover TV, the Adam and Joe show, and then doing radio, and then the podcast.

27:05obviously I've been there in the wings in different capacities and the first episode of your podcast I was on and I was listening to it on the way in this morning oh yeah how did it hold up well you're excellent in it I didn't enjoy hearing myself very much we were talking about buffet etiquette yeah it was September 2015 and it went out it went out we recorded it the year before in Los Angeles when I was visiting. And I thought nothing of it because you said, I'm doing some audio bits. I don't know what I'm going to do with them. So I guess my question is, you know, you're now a kind of nationally, internationally beloved podcaster.

27:44And would you say podcasting is what you do? Is that your job? Internationally beloved podcaster. Is that what you do? Is that what you do? Can you do it now? Why did you feel the need to go? That was me dropping into my impersonation myself yeah are you okay so you're transitioning from blowing smoke up my ass to doing impressions i kind of i thought my question was really awkward and i thought maybe it'll feel less awkward if i impersonate myself i'm delighted with that i'll take it and what was the question i guess it's just uh how did that come about oh okay it's it seemed like um 10 years ago you were a jobbing comedian tv presenter you weren't a podcaster now and when it started feel like oh this is something you're doing kind of on the side kind of well i was a podcaster of course because myself and joe cornish had started doing a podcast in 2006 early days the only people around at that point who were doing a podcast that anyone had heard about and most people were not familiar with the concept of podcasting was ricky gervais and steven merchant and they had started doing a podcast of their xfm show and when they went off to do the second series of the office me and joe adept for them on Saturday afternoons on XFM.

28:59And we talked to Carl Pilkington before we started doing the show. And Carl gave us some pointers. I think he was keen for the slot to be filled in a way that was not going to make them look bad. Well, they didn't want you to be too good or too bad? Too bad, I think. Right. But there's risks in both directions. Yes. But not for them. I suppose they were so successful with that, weren't they? People loved that. People loved it. And I think they already had really avid followers who were into certain aspects of the show so i think carl was just like here are some things i think you should probably avoid given the kind of people that will be listening right and when he heard my suggestions for all the uh bits that i was thinking of doing because i was wanting to pre-prepare a lot of stuff bring in pre-recorded segments have a lot of uh fairly high concept which is quite you in a way yeah yeah you started like sometimes over preparing yeah and that's because i'm just anxious about being myself i'm not confident enough to just talk in the way that ricky and stephen would for example you feel it's of course it's a reassuring it's a safety net yeah sense that well i've got all my ducks in a row this will be fine i got my bits and it's exactly the approach that i take when i'm on panel shows now which i don't do very often but if i go on eight out of ten cats does countdown i go in dictionary corner where you are allowed to prep your bits and in fact they encourage you to prep these little two three minute bits and i don't have to sit there on the panel being funny and trying to think of stuff off the top of my head which i'm not that good at i disagree i mean that's obviously not the case because you are very funny yeah but for whatever i heard you being funny 15, 20 minutes ago.

30:43No, but if, but I'm comfortable with you, if I'm live on air, or if I'm in front of TV cameras or whatever, then everything short circuits. So that confidence that a lot of good comedians have, I never really had. So I always wanted to bring in bits, have things prepared. And, you know, I enjoyed the process of preparing them as well. I felt like that's where my strengths lay. But Carl Pilkington said, no, don't do that. Don't do those pre-prepared bits because people can hear how much work you've put into it and they don't like it i think that's true isn't it don't you i do and i don't i do think like if a bit's good if you've prepped a funny sketch then that's fine that's that's golden that's true but i also appreciate where carl was coming from which is what we've just said really that you're the audience can hear you it's the texture compensated realness don't you think yeah yeah what you want is the the natural interplay and the banter but that's the other thing is that i wasn't confident that joe and me had that in that way our relationship was never that kind of bantery relationship we didn't tease each other like that did we joe did like joe is a natural tease yeah but maybe he just didn't like being teased himself maybe he didn't like it back but he definitely i see him as very much in that teasing yeah okay also i think there's a self-consciousness that i always had about being kind of too well-spoken to do that kind of thing it would feel a bit fraudulent it's like i'm an ex-public school boy and i think what happens is that my kind of conservative upbringing kicks in and i just think it's impolite to butt in really yeah to speak up to interrupt to you know say something loudly and confidently it feels to me on some level like something my parents would have disapproved of that's not how you should behave just shut up let the other person speak you know that kind of thing we should say by the way so xfm is a london radio station yeah playing alternative music started out being like the bastion of indie music stuff that wouldn't be played anywhere else a bit like six music is i guess yeah so carl says don't do that so then you did it and but my recollection is that you were a huge success and i remember hearing you and joe on the xfm and thinking wow like they've really found the most perfect medium for their gifts together even more than the adam and joe show which was you know for those who don't know homemade show that was on channel four in which you made amazing sketches but it had a sort of diy aesthetic yeah but it was so painstakingly teased together that it didn't actually allow you to unselfconsciously riff with each other no not really it was all heavily constructed very constructed so it was beautiful and the sketches were amazing but you didn't see the natural repartee that you were capable of whereas in the because the audio space is so unforced and you have the kind of the sense of the time and space to just sort of talk about random stuff and ephemera it felt to me as soon as i heard i thought this is this is perfect that's nice of you to say but i would guess that that was probably a bit later on when we first started on xfm it was often awkward and because i was so uncomfortable and i've spoken before about the time when we were um we had a big row because joe would man the computer and he would see all the messages coming in people would text the show and he would just read out all the really negative ones you and i spoke about this on the on the live podcast that we did go on you say it again though well the killer one was um why don't you two infantile cunts shut up and play some music

34:37which made us laugh before which always makes me laugh when i recall it because but it really stuck in my head and it just i'm just insecure enough that that that fells me rather than making me laugh in the moment it just got to me and i was like don't read that out why are you reading that out that's not gonna help the banter so i got in a real mood about it and then then we had a huge route and joe was like you know calm down and i was like you calm down why you always do it you know i took it personally and everything and we had a big old route and joe was like i think i'm going to leave and because he felt you'd overreacted yeah because i'd suddenly gone so massively ballistic about don't read out the infantile cunts text it wasn't like it was directed at you either it was at both of you right yeah yeah but then the thing that changed everything in my mind was the podcast and we were told after we'd been doing the show off and on for a couple of years like you know you can do a podcast version we're like what's that and they said well you can just chop up bits of the live show and put it out for people they can download it on their computer and listen to it like a little bonus radio show i sort of thought what the hell is the point of that no one's ever going to do that but then i thought actually that would be quite fun and that would give me another opportunity to kind of further manage your Your perfectionism could come into play.

36:12I could cut it up. Your hyper... Control freakery is really what it was. And I could cut the awful bits out of the live show and keep the funny bits. And even better, we could record bonus bits as well when we were off air and when I was much more relaxed. So we ended up putting out about 20 podcasts, I think, varying in length from about 10 minutes to about half an hour and put out a kind of best of... 2006, I think it was. The term podcast is a portmanteau of iPod and broadcast. There you go. With the earliest use, everyone, you could work that out, couldn't you? Doesn't take a genius. Baffled me.

36:51With the earliest use traced to journalist Ben Hammersley, who used it in a Guardian article in February 2004. So a scant two years before you took to the medium. Yes. You were a pioneer. You were out there like... Like Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant. Stanley and Livingston, I was going to say, exploring the African interior. That's an offensive colonialist reference. Yeah. Like Armstrong and Aldrin. And Miller. On the moon. Yes. And then were you conscious, did you cross paths with Ricky and Stephen? Not physically. I worked with Stephen around that time. Mentally? Mentally. I was envious.

37:32I liked their show. They used to play really good music as well. The cliche, the scuttlebutt, The rumor, the received wisdom at the time was, oh, my God, have you heard how much Ricky and Stephen are making on that podcast? Oh, yeah. They've charged one pound a download. That's right. And they've made 40 million pounds. Yeah. That's not the actual figure. But do you remember that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you think there's any truth in that? Yes, I don't think it was millions, but certainly they were the first people to charge for a podcast, as far as I'm aware. And, yeah, you were thinking, God, even if only a couple of thousand people download that.

38:08It's worth it. That's amazing. But I was always very keen that we wouldn't do that. Not that it was ever raised as a possibility. So did it feel like at that time, this is a great new way of working? This will be my main thing now? Or just did it feel like it's just another project? Well, I mean, it definitely felt like another project at the time, because it was at the end of a few years of me and Joe kind of being a bit directionless and not knowing what we were going to do after the adam and joe show and we did bits and pieces on tv on bbc3 and channel four but nothing really coherent and we were a bit rudderless but um the thing that happened after the xfm show was that we got a gig on bbc six music first of all filling in for sean keaveny when he was on holiday and then we ended up doing a saturday afternoon show there for about three or four years and that was kind of the most successful thing we ever did in terms of connecting with an audience and winning awards and all that shit so that happened at six music how did you get scooped up why did xfm not say okay stick with us and we'll give you more money and make it bigger yeah good question i have no idea but anyway the bbc came calling and it felt like said we've heard you on xfm and we we like the podcast the podcast was the thing that i think changed things and then we started doing the show on six music and i remember thinking well we'll definitely do a podcast of that and i think we did a few shows without a podcast when we started in 2000 at the end of 2007 but then as soon as we could in 2008 we started putting a podcast out of that and i think that was the thing that sort of connected with people in a way that uh we hadn't done before i think certainly i liked it like i liked the version of me and joe on there best of all i felt like this is us at our best a lot of the time yeah and it may be in hindsight i'm slightly eliding the xfm and the six music and the pod but i remember thinking i just loved it i loved that show and um it felt like people who might not have been aware of your work before might not have watched the adam and joe show uh suddenly everyone was dialed into that hmm good anyway after the six music show stopped i kind of took a bit of a hiatus and i think i felt like i couldn't carry on podcasting without joe because i just wouldn't be able to make it worthwhile and when i recorded with you in 2014 that was me kind of experimenting like well maybe i could talk to other friends or other people so joe sort of peeled off was there any talk of um he was doing his film he was doing attack the block if he wasn't doing that could you have continued or he wasn't so into it no i think he was into it but i think i think six music were into it right they would have liked you to continue yeah yeah definitely i think he just he was too busy attack the block came out in 2011 he was promoting it solidly for a year or so and then he kind of moved on to his next project fairly quickly and i felt for my own self-respect I had to kind of plow on alone, I think.