THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.111 - NICKY WIRE

Episode Date: November 26, 2019

Adam talks with Nicky Wire, lyricist and bass player of The Manic Street Preachers.WARNING: This podcast contains brief references to and a description of self harm.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and to Anneka Myson for additional editing.RELATED LINKSNICKY WIRE’S MOST MEMORABLE QUIPS (NME)MANIC STREET PREACHERS - MOTORCYCLE EMPTINESS (1992)MANIC STREET PREACHERS - THE MASSES AGAINST THE CLASSES (2000)MANIC STREET PREACHERS - TOP TRACKS ON SPOTIFYPOB SPITTING ON THE SCREENNEIL KINNOCK 1985 SPEECH (EDIT)'EVERYBODY IN THE PLACE' JEREMY DELLER RAVE DOCUMENTARY (2018)AN HOUR OR SO WITH SUE PERKINS PODCASTMAX AND IVAN - FUGITIVES Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, Adam Buxton here, reporting from the county of Norfolk, in the east of the United Kingdom. It's a grey afternoon in late November 2019.

Light grey, flat. Flat light. Very still. It's one of those days that feels a bit like you're on a soundstage. I don't know if you've ever been on a soundstage for a big feature film, but I have. So I've been in quite a few feature films. Big feature films.

And this is what it's like. Weird and still. Listen this is what it's like. Weird and still. Listen to how still it is. Not even any Tweety birds. It's quite post-apocalyptic. You can hear the cars roaring away in the background. My best dog friend Rosie is up ahead. But she doesn't make much noise, do you, Rose?

No, I don't really like noise, barking, that kind of thing. It's one of the reasons that we get on, I think. Obviously, I'm fine with barking in principle. I believe in free speech. But I don't like inside barking. You know what I mean? I know exactly what you mean. I don't really do barking unless I'm outside the house and everyone's forgotten. In which case I do a bark to indicate that I'd like to be let in. Totally fair enough.

And then sometimes you do mystery barks. I do, yes, I do those at ghosts and malevolent entities. Tentities, did you say? Entities. Right, sorry. Anyway, Rose, you go ahead. Have a good scamper. I'm going to tell the podcats about podcast 111, which features a rambly conversation with Nicky Wire, lyricist, bassist, and occasional

vocalist with the Welsh alternative rock band Manic Street Preachers. Nicky facts. Nicky went to school at Oakdale Comprehensive School in Caerphilly County, Wales, which was where he met his future bandmates, James Dean Bradfield, Sean Moore and Richie Edwards. The Manic Street Preachers formed in 1986

and by the time their first single, Suicide Alley, was released in 1988, their politically charged punk sound was already defiantly out of step with a musical landscape dominated by genres like Acid House, Shoegaze, Dream Pop, Grebo, Baggy, Wongol, Douchecore, Smellypop and Goink. I did make some of those up. The band quickly built up a fiercely loyal following, releasing three albums, Generation Terrorists, Gold Against the Soul and The Holy Bible,

before tragedy struck in 1995 when the band's main lyricist, Richie Edwards, disappeared following bouts of depression and self-harm. He was later legally presumed dead in 2008. The band made the decision to continue without Richie, with Nicky Wire now solely responsible for writing lyrics to accompany James Dean Bradfield's music, and they began their most commercially successful phase of their career with

1996's Everything Must Go and 1999's This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours both winning album of the year at the Brit Awards. It is hard to think of too many other bands who could put out a single like 2000's The Masses Against the Classes which opens with a sample of Noam Chomsky and ends with a quotation from Albert Camus, and then have it reach number one. It was the first new number one of the 2000s, incidentally. Throughout the rise of the Manic Street Preachers in the 90s, Nicky acquired a reputation for giving frank and sometimes controversial interviews and making outrageous statements, some of which Nicky has come to regret. I've posted a link to an NME compilation of some of his choicest pronouncements in the description of this podcast. And we discussed them a little bit as well in our conversation, which was recorded about this time last year,

actually, 2018, in a London hotel room. Nicky was in London performing promotional duties for the band's last album, Resistance is Futile. There was a bit of Bowie chat. We talked about good times and bad times in the Mannix. We talked about hotels. I wanged on a little bit about the difficulties of bringing up children. And it was altogether a very enjoyable encounter. So, with Nicky Wire, here we go. Ramble Chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that. Ramble Chat La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, ever bump into each other all i can think of is glastonbury or something like that right that wasn't the famous toilets year was it toilet year was 98 or 99 20 years ago toilet year yeah

toilet cake which i'm still really proud of which i never quite understood at the time like what what was it i was particularly i was in howard who's phase of my life, which still hovers around me, of germs and stuff. And I just, when we did the famous Build a Bypass over this shithole, Glastonbury, in 94. That was something that you said on stage. Yes. Just to be, kind of wind people up. Yeah.

And I actually thought about it a few days before as well and sort of got the okay from the rest of the band. Yeah. And we, at that point, it was the height of our Holy Bible, anti-everything, you know, and it was a pulverising gig of just nastiness. Channel 4 were doing it then, broadcasting it, and I think Mark Kermode was doing it.

And it was pure hate, you know. So then four years then on, and we were only on the second stage somewhere or something, I don't know, in the middle of nowhere. But then we headlined in, and we were only on the second stage somewhere or something, I don't know, in the middle of nowhere. But then we headlined in 98, because This Is My Truth had done so well. And I just wanted my own toilet,

because I didn't want to use other bands' toilets. Yeah. And Billy Bragg saw it, I think. And put a sign on, you know, that it's not very egalitarian or for the people and stuff like that. But, you know, I saw the funny side of that yeah oh i did say fuck off your big nose kent on stage but we met we've met loads of times since it was pre-banter yeah and even in the pre-social media days it got some traction it did yeah

because there was enemy journalists everywhere meldie make a journalist everywhere it's too delicious to pass up i think especially british people any whiff of what they consider to be hypocrisy yes they rub their hands well we had that we'd had a whole year of that you know the kind of becoming not champagne socialist but we had become the biggest band in britain that year really, from everything that's going on. This is my truth, from being, you know, some situationist socialist punks and the despair of work and boredom and all that. So I was completely aware of that anyway. And I kind of wanted to ram home the point as much as anything,

that we didn't care, that working-class people were never ashamed of actually making money, you know we're weak but it wasn't like there was nothing shameful about becoming massive because that's what we'd always wanted to do yeah and was it as straightforward in your mind as that or were you were there dark nights of the soul no there wasn't because we'd become you know that big with design for life and tolerate and tolerate was a four andand-a-half-minute song about the Spanish Civil War and homage to Catalonia, and Design for Life was a dissection of working-class Britain,

so we hadn't compromised lyrically at all at that point. It was a big mouthful. This Is My Truth, Tell Me Yours was a quote from Niren Bevan. Wait a minute. It comes with me. Oh, you've got your little statue wow that's commitment and to get that quote

it was an anniversary up in Tredegar where he used to do the speeches of these stones on a mountain in Tredegar which is bleak it's right up the valleys it was fucking freezing it was an anniversary and they were replaying his speeches with a bit of a really bad

light show and my brother took me up and he was these old speeches were bellowing out of a crap pa and this is my truth tell me yours came out which is one of the things he used to say quite a lot so you know the the kind of inception of our album was as working class as you could get really yeah on top of tradredegar Mountain. So I should explain further that Nicky has pointed to a small statue. It's about seven inches high of Nye Bevan. You got it from, like, a labour gift shop. Yeah, something like that, where they do the grogs.

Now, it's with an in-house studio. It comes on tour with us, and it's just a little nod. Sure. Were you there in 2000 at Glastonbury when Bowie was there? Oh, when you didn't do your interview with him. Yeah. Your big regrets. Right.

Yeah. Yeah, I read that. Which is a good regret to have that you didn't interview him. Yeah, I never really... I wasn't there, no. No. Did you ever meet Bowie? James met him. Yeah. James just wasn't there, no. No. Did you ever meet Bowie? James met him.

Yeah. James just said he was completely magnetic. Yeah. And, you know, there's not many people you really kind of, you are nervous around. James was really said, you know, could hardly speak. Yeah. And that was funny because that period,

it wasn't like, there wasn't quite as much awe for him around that time, was there? I think it was 95 when Bowie had just come back with that Eno collaboration, One Outside. Oh, yeah. The Nathan Adler Diaries, A Hypercycle. Part one of a promised series of concept albums about future art crime, which apparently, according to Enoo was one of their biggest regrets

that they never revisited they said oh that fell through the cracks a little bit that one we were always very fond of it i was like fucking hell it didn't fall far enough through the cracks far as i'm concerned but some people really love it no i love buddha of suburbia yeah there's great stuff on there i really did like that i mean mean, there's stuff to love on all of those records around there. But it was a struggle to really be committed to being a fan of him at that point. Yeah, yeah. And it just, it was, likewise, when we started off, you know, around 88, the Beatles weren't, the Beatles had lost their cachet at that point.

You know, it wasn't until the Anthology series and Britpop that all of a sudden the Beatles just came back massively as the biggest and greatest thing ever. And I'm hoping it happens to us. We're going through our middle period. We'll have a period where we're semi-forgotten and then be rediscovered. If you wait long enough, it all comes round.

Exactly. That's what I always say at award shows. That's right. Maybe we've been in the same room at sort of Q Awards or something like that. But you were someone who I thought I'd better keep out of his way because he might hurt me. People always thought, you know, particularly of me, I found it really quite embarrassing after a while for James and Sean, because we'd turn up at festivals

and you could tell there was real enmity towards me and when Richie was around Richie, because we just slagged everything off with so much venom and hatred. Yeah. Because I was tall and I had a bass guitar. The people did really, yeah, avoid me, big time. It still happens to this day. They don't quite, you you know even if you say

you really love something i don't think they quite believe that i do uh-huh but i'm much lovely now well you seem lovely yeah back then there was some you know i wonder how it would be amplified in today's yeah you know because it was me and richie were slightly unhinged, but everyone was against each other. Yeah, and then we got the Gallaghers doing the same sort of thing. And I've talked about this before, but that as well was a kind of pre-internet freedom that they had of just being able to sound off and say all sorts of... And occasionally the NME would pick up on stuff

that they thought was beyond the pale, if there was anything sort of homophobic that was said. Then there would be a scandal, and of course with Morrissey and all that sort of National Front disco type stuff. Madness gig. Remember the Union Jack? Yeah. So those stories were picked up on. Yeah. But even then they remained something that people who were just into music were concerned with well

if even when Richie disappeared when you think about it now you'd imagine there'd be a sky helicopter searching or something if you know what I mean it just wasn't that era it was you know it was a news story but it wasn't you wonder how all those things would be treated now I'm glad we grew up in the era we were at the NME Awards once and Liam just stands up and goes, come on, you cunts. You know, let's have it or something along those lines. And him and James are the back and forth. But it was just no one got offended by that at all.

I was genuine fun back then. Right, okay. It was, you know, total fun. I was never cut out for that kind of thing. Confrontation immediately makes my voice wobble. Yeah. So I couldn't have done that. So I'm always fascinated by people who can do that.

Yeah. I'm always like, wow, do you, is it really fun or are you secretly going back and. I look back at it now thinking we were really brave because I can't do it now at all. I would stay up all night panicking about it I really I just I don't have that inner strength or just careless nature that I did have then it just it didn't matter at all I don't think I ever had you know once you meet people there's never really any bad feeling well I never felt it anyway yeah I mean that's the thing isn't it when you're in front of someone it's a very very different thing to reading stuff they've said or having it quoted to you and i've never had a physical fight with

anyone have you not no well that's good james has oh yeah i never you know i never have and i never want to i was looking at some of your spicier quotes oh Oh, Lord. I mean, they're good value. Some of them are just too far. Especially, what would you say was the most beyond the pale one? I'd rather not bring it up, but... Probably John Lennon. Was pretty bad. Richie's Hitler slow dive one is pretty...

We'll always hate slow dive more than Hitler Which is so petty and tiny It's not like slow dive were that big at the time Slow dive How could you get so Well, there you have it How could we get so worked up about something so pointless We did buy into ourselves at that point that we, you know,

that James and Sean would take care of the music and we would take care... Of offending people. Yes. Yeah. And looking beautiful. Yeah. That was our role.

Which is, it was a nice division of labour. Sure. It was very Marxist. No, that's good. That's what you need. I mean, you had the whole package, didn't you? And then you had the attention to the artwork. Yeah.

It was so wonderful. And who's that presiding over that? Well, it was. That was me and Richie. It was more Richie at the start. But, you know, again, it was just, it was a perfect separation that we didn't have egos involved with. I mean, Richie would do the lyrics, you know, a lot of the photographs.

James and Sean were happy. They didn't really want to sit in front of a camera all day. But we did a famous cover with The Enemy with Kevin Cummins, which ended up just me and Richie on it. And they said it was the first ever cover that had a bass player and a guitarist who didn't play on it. It didn't have the front man, James. It just had me and Richie.

And we went out the night before and got love bites. Which, you know, was a bit of an effort. Where did you get love bites? Well, just... You didn't give them to each other? No, and it looked brilliant. It looked so cheap and nasty. Yeah.

It really did, and we had leopard print jackets on. Kevin Cummins absolutely loved it. But you could tell him sort of shuffling James and Sean out of the way after an hour or two. And weird culture sluts written all over us. And, you know, that was our first cover of the NME, lying together arm in arm on a gold army rug. You know, we were meeting lots of our heroes,

be it Penny Smith or Kevin Cummings. You know, we loved photography. We knew everything. People were really shocked that we knew everything about them, journalists and photographers, because we'd just grown up devouring all those things. Were you art school boys? Well, no, me and Richie, I did politics in university,

and Richie did history. Right, OK. And he was super bright. I was, you know, at his coattails. He could have gone to Cambridge, he had three A's in his A levels, but he couldn he was super bright. Yeah. I was, you know, at his coattails. He could have gone to Cambridge. He had three A's and his A levels, but he couldn't be arsed to go to Cambridge. I had two A's and a B, so I let the side down a bit.

And then we both ended up in Swansea University then. And is that where you met? No, we both went to the same school. All four of us went to the same school. Did you? Right. Yes. James and myself have been in the same school since we were four. Whoa.

And then Richie and Sean were a year above us. Yeah. There was always a desire to be heard, all four of us, definitely. Myself, Richie, in a lyrical sense, and James, because James picked up a guitar at 14 and literally learned Excel on Main Street in a week. Wow. And he'd never played guitar i'd been bashing away and sort of trying to play a little bit he got appetite for destruction he learned that the next week it was just you know he couldn't read music he was just listening to it it was just he was actually was it any good or was it just like

it was amazing it was amazing i'd never seen anything like it. Some people have just got it and it's waiting to be unlocked. Yes. Whereas other people, myself for example, are locked out. And there's no way it's ever going to happen. Well, I can't read music. I'm just not a musician. My instrument is my pen. Yeah. But Sean could read music. He was a brilliant trumpet player, Sean.

Yeah. So he was grade 8 trumpet and he did music A-level. But then he became a drummer. Does he never multitask when you're in the studio? Yeah, he has done some lovely trumpet solos, but he just doesn't want to do it. He's lost his lip, as trumpet players say. And what was Richie's upbringing like?

Was it as happy as yours? Yeah, I think all of us were pretty lucky in that respect. Strangely, we all gravitated towards Smiths, Bunnymen, early Simple Minds, then Guns and Roses came along, and a lot of C86 and indie stuff. And we just became obsessed with music very quickly, you know, devouring Beatles, Stones, James, at his lightbulb moment, were a public enemy. That really kind of transformed him in terms of the fierce rebellion, not silly rebellion, really kind of hard.

Yeah. You know, we mean it, man. Right, exactly. For real, to quote the famous arm slogan. Yes. If we can call it that. That was a good night. Yeah. Norwich Arts Centre was it really yeah but 52 people god so when you say that was a good night you're being ironic half and half

actually because it was you played a good show ish right we'd played it before to a sold out a really brilliant sold outout gig, I think, and I think the second time there just wasn't so many people. And Steve LeMac came down from the NME. And we knew that... Was it Steve LeMac? Yes, it was. And he just wasn't fussed. He wasn't fussed. He wasn't convinced.

I am not convinced. That's how I think of Steve LeMah. It was funny watching it because Ed Serres, the enemy photographer, you know, was kind of morally, which way do I go, do I take a picture of this, or am I stepping over the line? So this was after the show? Yes.

Right, and he was being interviewed and wound up, was he, by...? Yeah, it's just, whether he pre-planned it to this day, I really don't know, you know, or whether in that instant he just didn't think he could convince Steve LeMac that he really meant what he was saying. So he had a razor blade on him. Right. And was that something...

And he cut... For people who are too young to remember, he carved the words 4 real with the number four into his forearm with this razor blade, wounding himself horribly in the process. Yes. That was a moment, I think, that sort of went viral in the pre-internet world. Yeah. Because it was so shocking on so many levels, you know, and people obviously were upset for him but then kind of angry it was like wait this has gone too far you know you shouldn't be doing this in the name of music or anything you know i mean everyone had an opinion yeah and i think that's how deluded we

were at the time that four of us just weren't as shocked as we should have been. We weren't, honestly, no. It just seemed like Iggy or Sid Vicious, you know, taken to the next level. And Richie was very sanguine about it, you know, apart from the pain. Yeah, yeah. Because I went to the hospital with him that night. And we were very apologetic because it did feel like we were wasting NHS time with a self-inflicted gesture of realness. Yeah.

We just weren't big either. So it did show a hell of a lot of madness, strong commitment to the cause. Right, and it was very easy just to take it as a publicity stunt. Yeah, which, you know, they didn't even put it on the cover, which was disappointing. They must have talked about it, but I presume that they said, well, we can't, really.

They did. You know, there's like a famous conversation with Danny Kelly and James Brown, the journalist, and James Brown goes, has he written T-Rex? Instead of 4 Real. It's T-Rex. What's that mean? How old were you then? 21, was it? 22?

Fucking hell. So you feel indestructible yeah exactly yeah exactly you know and we were you know because we didn't have any we were completely untouchable at that point there was nothing like us you know it was the height of baggy or shoegaze you know and that nothing we didn't relate to anything or anyone even suede was a year or two later which was a little bit of a kinship with but um but there there it was a very different thing with them it was just sort of sleazy glamour yeah whereas you were sort of so angry yes so it was you know we did feel completely engulfed in our own little bit of myth making at that point we wrote the myth and then we started

to live it out in public, you know, which was kind of intoxicating for a couple of years. And was Richie's disappearance the moment that you realized and woke up or was it before then? The buildup to that year really had been, rather than myth making, it became self-fulfilling prophecy and, you know, just like an avalanche of despair and, you know, just like an avalanche of despair and, you know, making such a bleak record and then having to play it every night with the Holy Bible. And we still had moments of extreme levity

because that's the way the four of us were, you know. But it was getting hard work for everyone and people around us. I can't imagine it being much fun managing this at that point and were there people around you in management or in your friends and family who were counseling you at all and saying hey watch out gone too far well we were all very no everyone we still got the same managers now we're still on the same record label and this did we're still a lot of faith and concern everyone you know Richie had gone to the Priory. I don't know if that particularly helped, but, you know, he was there.

We did Redden as a three-piece to pay the bill. You know, we didn't really particularly want to do it, but that was a good gig. That was like a fucking badge of honour, just slaying the opposition. It was an amazing show. But then, you know, you get off stage and the reality comes back then. We went to Thailand that year, did a famous piece for the NME. And I was just, I never quite recovered from that because it just turned out that we were gigantic there without knowing it.

We turned out, there's like 2,000 people at the airport waiting for us. And we're looking behind us thinking, is there someone big coming behind us? Yeah. It's a huge... And they were just all... Just mobbed everywhere we went. We did a sign-in and it lasted, like, 14 hours.

And this intense heat. And we were really fading there. And the gigs were just... The security were military, police. Hitting everyone. It was just, that was a bad trip. Right, how long were you out there for?

I felt like fucking weeks. It was probably only five, six days. Really? Two gigs. Where was the video for Motorcycle Emptiness? That was done in Japan in 92. Okay, right. Which was a similar moment, but everything was brilliant.

Again, we went there and we were just gigantic without realising it. And we were mobbed everywhere. But that was just like the most beautiful, eye-opening moment of a different culture that you'd never experienced. We've still, to this day, that we've ever had. We've been to Japan probably 20 times since. But that first trip was just awesome in the genuine sense of the world

you know I can still smell it now those first gigs because people used to say oh they'll be very polite at the gigs but our gigs were just absolutely balmy you know just thousands of screaming young kids and all dressed up like us with spray-painted shirts. It's closest Beatlemania we've ever had. I did struggle with the food. You know, I'm not the world's greatest traveller. I did live on McDonald's apple pie, I think, for the first tour. Not of any kind of, I hate that,

but I was just pretty petrified. Again, my Howard Hughes-y. Apart from my mother's cooking, I didn't eat much at that point. Right, worried about the raw fish. Yeah, James and Sean and Richie absolutely loved it. And to this day, you know, it's their favourite. Well, it's all our favourite place on Earth

still. You know, we stayed in the Lost in Translation Hotel. Oh, okay. That's not the official name of it. It's not. The Sophia Coppola Hotel. Well, she definitely ripped off Motorcycle Endless video. Yeah, that's true, isn't it?

That's a good point. You know, when Richie's sat on there and the girl is looking out, it's just totally, totally nicked it. And that hotel is so frightening because the swimming pool is on the top floor, which must be two miles in the air. And, you know, I was swimming. I love swimming in hotel swimming pools.

And I was having a beautiful swim really late at night because it's open all night. And then it was a minor earthquake. And you're swimming, and all of a sudden, there's waves coming in the swimming pool. Right. Because our hotels, they're all built to sway. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know, and I felt really... And you thought, yay, wave machine! Yeah, we're in centre parks. Think about the person you last kissed. Right, that's enough. Now think about trees. Think about sausages. Think about trees. Think of alien vehicles moving out in space. Think about the wonder on the little baby's face. Now think of Stevie Wonder's face on the baby's face. Now stop thinking completely,

because you're ready for the next part of the podcast. Here it is. We are set. speaking of hotels, in your hotel room in London. And this is a hotel in the Marylebone area that you guys favour when you're in town. Yes. You haven't got anyone who you can just sleep on their couch? Well, I've had very little advice. I don't drive. I don't wear jewellery. I don't wear watches. I don't drive. I don't wear jewellery. I don't wear watches.

I don't drink anymore. But travel and hotels are my, it's where I like to spend a bit of money on. Yeah. This has got an amazing swimming pool, which is no chlorine, it's just done through electrolysis. Uh-huh.

So it's like swimming in a lovely river. It is a nice hotel, let me tell you, listeners. And it's got a good mini bar. I hate those TripAdvisor and you go on and they're like're like oh it's got a great lobby with good wi-fi who gives a i don't care if i have to spend eight pound on a toberone at four o'clock in the morning i want to i don't want to go downstairs and get wi-fi on the lobby what makes a good mini bar a good selection of drinks which this has yeah kit kats the japanese hotels have extraordinarily brilliant pocky sticks yeah pocky sticks really good fruit one of the worst things

that can ever happen to a person in life is to get to a hotel and find that there's not a fridge in it the curse is free view and lack of mini bars yeah um i i was going to talk to you about hotels because i like thinking about hotels but i wrote i wrote myself a note before we compare notes on hotels the twitter voice in my head would like me to reassure listeners that yes we know these are first world problems and we are the most loathsome, privileged white men cunts on the planet for talking about this stuff. There we go. We've got that out.

That's the disclaimer. That is a fair point. But then, like I said, I don't have many vices. Yeah. I still live in Newport in South Wales. You've got kids, right? Yeah, two. Yeah.

How old are yours? 16 and 12. Oh, okay. So you're entering that phase which is really are you think that that would make you give yourself more time but it just doesn't it doesn't does it i was talking about this last night and i used to go on about like um you're in the tunnel from when they're born to when they're about three or four i.e when they're old enough not to just immediately die if something happens you know because the first few years especially with the first one you're just

thinking don't die don't die don't die don't die it's some panic the whole time it's awful so that's why the first the first child is always totally screwed because you're just around them the whole time trying to stop them dying and then you think once that's okay once you don't have to watch them every second of the day, you sort of think, well, then I'll be able to go back to my normal life. No. When they get older than that and you feel like you can reason with them and make them understand complicated concepts

and explain the world from your point of view, no, that doesn't happen either. I think they make you more productive because you actually realize how precious time is yeah you know even though you're knackered doing it you do actually think any any kind of beautiful window of opportunity for me i know anyway that i just ram it home and try and get stuff done whether it's writing words or just doing some painting or anything writing lists just anything that it does kind of,

it makes you appreciate time then. Yes, and also the time you spend with them as well, I think, because it's crazy, I don't know about you a lot, but they give them so much homework and stuff. I know. It's mad. At the moment, my daughter's doing Sylvia Plath. Oh, really?

So that is, you know, manna from heaven for me. So is she the younger one? No, she's doing her A-level. Okay. She's 16, so, you know, manna from heaven for me. So is she the younger one? No, she's doing her A-level. OK. She's 16, so, you know. And she goes, Dad, they're just so miserable, they're so depressed. And I'm going, that's the glory of them. Poetry is only truly brilliant when it's either melancholic or severely depressing.

Yeah. There's no place for funny poetry in the world. Let me think about that. Pam Ayers. I actually like Pam Ayers as a poet is she's pretty good she's brilliant and she's still going but yeah i love her as a person as as a broadcaster but you don't sit there reading her poem no chuckling with a cup of tea the kind of the dense melancholia of larkin or Sylvia Plath or R.S. Thomas, you know, I get great comfort from it. I don't see it as a negative.

I think melancholia in particular can be a great boost to one's self-esteem. Do you remember Tom Pauling on the Late Show? Late Review or Late Show, whatever it was, yeah. I used to love Tom Pauling because he was so horrible on it. He was horrible. You never quite knew the way he was going to go. I used to love Tom Pauling because he was so horrible on it. He was horrible. And we never quite knew the way he was going to go. I always thought of it like Bod. Remember the show Bod?

Yes, I do. And at the end of Bod, you'd have to predict what flavour milkshake Alberto Frog was going to have. Ooh, this week I'm going to... I don't exactly remember the voice. I'm going to have... It was a bizarre voice. Yeah. Bod was a really weird programme. Very odd. There was lots of weird ones. Bod, and then there was a bizarre voice. Yeah. Bod was a really weird program. Very odd.

There was lots of weird ones. Bod, and then there was Pob. Do you remember Pob? I don't remember Pob. On Channel 4. Early days, I mean, no one remembers Pob. No. Early days of Channel 4, Pob, who was a sort of, a little weird puppet with big ears.

His head was just a round wooden ball with big ears and a big nose and he would come on and the beginning of the titles was pob gobbing on the screen like he would just spit go and the whole screen would fill up with pob's gob. And then he would write his name in the gob. Pob. P-O-B. Pob. You just thought, what?

What is anyone getting from that? What the shit is going on there? How did we go from Tom Paulin to Bod? Because of Bod. And with Tom Paulin on The Late Show, you never knew which way he was going to go. It would be like, well, I absolutely hated this. Or it would be, I found this actually very moving indeed.

And it was extraordinary, I thought. That's a really good impression. Thanks very much. That's one of my three decent impressions. But, you know, there's not much call for it these days. Do Tom Pauling! There's a band, though, called the Tom Paulings. It was, yes.

Do you remember? Yeah, there was. TV is such a huge part of my life. Have you ever heard of a book called Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman? No. I think it was written about mid 80s. So Reagan's in the White House. And it's really a big thesis about where we're headed as a culture, particularly in America, just saying, you know, that the dominance of the written word has now completely lost out to mass entertainment and particularly TV. And it sort of points the way quite chillingly to where we're at now.

And he's just saying that discourse has been irreparably debased. Well, it's amazing, though. In Orwell's political language essay I was reading the other week and his quote about political language has become so bad. There's better words than that. But it is just full of euphemism and vague promises, which couldn't be more prescient in terms of what political language has become. Right.

On the one hand, you've got everyone just sort of hedging their bets. And then on the other hand, you've got Donald Trump. Yeah. There's no precise detail anymore. Whether that ever worked, I don't know. But at least there were precise policies or precise detail. And everything has become a morass, really, of guesswork. Perhaps that's what it always was, but it feels like the facade has been lifted through digital anarchy, really. It certainly felt like there were proper goodies and baddies

when we were growing up. Yes, it did. And now it's just a lot of grey people. It's just pick and mix. Yeah. Politics overlap. Like you said, in our day, they just didn't overlap that much. You know, it was easier to pick a side which i'm so happy about yeah because i wouldn't like to be young in this age no trying to disseminate all that right well now hence the shift to identity politics i suppose people define themselves and and get worked up about how they identify before they get worked up about actually what's going on in the world yeah and i think causal not that they don't care about what's going on in the world. Yeah, and I think causal... Not that they don't care about what's going on.

Oh, no, not at all, but it becomes more about causes than perhaps the overall society, I guess. Yeah. But like I said, I don't blame people because I wouldn't know how to navigate, you know, and lucky enough, it was my main interest growing up. I used to bunk off school to watch the TUC Congress on BBC Two. Mate. You know, I used to love doing stuff like that.

I loved party conferences and I loved the Labour one. It was so mental. Yeah. Just people raging and shouting, you know, kicking off. It was like watching the darts. It was just mental. And I devoured it i just genuinely found it so interesting i haven't said that i would watch the darts as well because i was

obsessed with jockey wilson which is another story only there was political darts well eric brustow pig and shit but were you talking about politics with your dad is that where it all came from and your mum always in the house yeah always in the house not particularly of a of a particular point of view even just you know watching question time yeah yeah but it wasn't much to watch anyway was there but um i used to love stuff like that and now it is so choreographed now you know in terms of the party conference season all stuff like that but it was it was actually dangerous you know kinnick's speech when he sort of faced down militant you know that's kind of what we wanted to do with a gig because it was just such an intense atmosphere facing off kind of debating

each other like a rap face off yeah yeah but without any nasty repercussions or anything but kinnick mic drop. Yeah. Against Derek Hatton and stuff like that. It was just real hard stuff. Well, this documentary, Jeremy Deller, it's not really a documentary, but a film about the rave culture that I saw last night, he starts off with the miners' strike as being a kind of pivotal moment.

Which is a huge thing for him, isn't it? Because he re-enacted the Battle of Orgreave as well. It's really burned into Jeremy's consciousness, I think. Yeah. But holy shit, you're reminded of the level of violence then. It was just extraordinary. And you sort of think, well, OK, Britain used to be grim in the 70s and there was violence and riots and things then,

but actually there was pretty extreme stuff much more recently than that. Well, that was on our doorstep, I mean, literally, where we lived. You know, the minor strike was, and pickets and scabs and, you know, violence. Neil Kinnock's constituency house is three doors down from James's on the same street. And I can only describe it as heavy everything was heavy the coats were heavy the jackets were heavy donkey jackets the blokes were heavy they were hard blokes you know the police were heavy yeah the atmosphere was heavy it was just fucking heavy times you know and it was every day where we were in Blackwood

in the you know right in the heart of the South Wales valleys it was just where it was all going on our environment did form us a lot in that sense and were there were there people that you knew oh yeah you're right and and were there definite sort of lines drawn? I remember seeing some footage of some women sat round just hurling abuse at people who'd broken the picket lines when they were going home. Which was very rare. I think we were the last to go back, actually. The South Wales miners stayed out the longest

because they were extremely militant. But, yeah, if you were trying to cross the picket line and stuff like that, it was, you know... And it was a real sense of desperation mixed with a real sense of community and all those things. I remember thinking for the first time around that point that this is all just going to go. I remember it hitting me that, you know, they're not going to win

and there's just going to be loads of miners in job centres trying to use computers with really huge hands, you know, mottled hands and, you know, hard-working hands and all those sort of things. It took us a long time in those areas because the reason people were there was because they were mines. You know, the reason Ebervale or Tredegar, all the valleys, people went there because that's where the work was. So when it was gone, it was really going to be hard to replace any of the jobs.

And you could feel it at that point. There was another classic Ritchie quote from where we lived. He said, if Blackwood was a museum, it would be full of rubble and shit. That was nice, going home every week, seeing my mum and dad. Someone taps you on the shoulder in the street, and you're like, oh, God.

Yeah. But it was a good quote. Yeah. It was meant in good humour. Sure. People could take a joke then. But it was, you know, we'd be walking up and down the high street at that point,

sort of just post the minor strike and everything, you know, dressed up as the New York Dolls, wearing eyeliner. And we did seem like aliens at that point. Did you get a lot of grief for that? I tap-danced around it because, lucky enough, I was good at football and cricket. I was captain of the school football team, cricket and stuff. It was a weird dichotomy because everyone thought I was a girl.

My nickname was Shirley because my hair was like Shirley Temple. Uh-huh. But luckily I... Really? Like ringlets? It was. Kiss curls. Okay. That is ringlets. Is that what they're called? I don't know.

We did get away with it because it was a friendly antagonism, but I never really... Then again, we were bulletproof anyway, so it didn't really... I'm sure we could have been offended. Right, you just styled it out. Yeah, exactly. Plus you were not in the business of taking offence, you were in the business of giving it.

No, that's the best way of describing it. It just bounced off us at all those periods. But that did toughen us up for them when we came to meet journalists in London and stuff and we had a good grounding, journalists straight away they really didn't give a fuck about the music at all they just thought well this is going to be a good piece quote fodder yeah cover of the enemy we played to 16 people in coventry stoker the night before and we had five grand on us because we just signed with columbia at cbs that was or was it columbia anyway

because the clash had signed and we did a big fake clash photograph with the heads of columbia because the clash had done the same thing and we were in the same boardroom of the clash we thought everything oh this is just amazing then we go up to coventry and it's 16 people right and yeah and it's the first time we had money in our pockets, genuine cash. I had a manager who passed away. It was a beautiful man who we lived with in Shepherd's Bush in Askew Road. He withdrew five grand. We were all just, like, hugging it like that on the bus. I was in massive debt at that point from university

because I'd developed a really bad addiction to fruit machines. Seriously? You know, I was, like, three grand in debt, which doesn't sound much, but it was a lot then. university because I developed a really bad addiction to fruit machines seriously you know I was like three grand in debt which doesn't sound much but it was a lot then yeah yeah and I had a full grant and everything so it's not like it was there's no fees or anything then you know so great I can pay pay my debt off you love fruit machines oh absolutely the amount of time and money I wasted on fruit machines. What did you get out of it?

I just never understood. I mean, I sort of do. I played them. We had our honeymoon in Las Vegas. All right. The night before 9-11. So it was pretty surreal. We went to, you know, we spent the evening playing the slot machines,

just kind of robotically shoving money in and winning. Did you know what you were doing? No. What do you mean, do you know what you were doing? You put the money in and you pull the arm. It was a real art to it in the old days. It was. Really? How?

It just was. It didn't mean you won more, but there was an art to play in it. Shipley's had a cafe as well, which did Findus pancakes, chips and stuff so sometimes we would literally lose 60 70 quid but we would get a meal out of it with the tokens and we'd look at ourselves oh that's all right you know we've eaten out of this good days we've only lost 60 quid yeah but i did win the 200 pound jackpot on a ferry a dover Calais with a band. It was one of my finest moments because it went... Yeah.

And everyone started gathering around on the ferry. I bet they did. I was trying to gather up all these pound coins. Wow. It was magic. It is a good feeling when you win. I used to be big into betting as well. Really?

Sky bet. I used to love sky bet. But you managed to stop yourself before you got a serious addiction yeah yeah he says i had to redirect all my mail to james's house at one point because i didn't want my parents to know how much debt i was in oh okay oh man that was one of the vices that i was never really that excited by. And I am tempted still to bet, but then you could do it. It's another thing that changed with phones. You used to be able to do sky bets just through the TV remote. So it was brilliant for me.

But then you had to download an app and they stopped the system and you had to do it through a phone. And I haven't got an iPhone or anything, so I just stopped betting, really. Because betting shops are a bit iffy. I mean, the whole concept of betting responsibly is like... It does not exist. It's like smoking healthily. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, in Philip Glass's studio. Aha. Fantastic little place. Tony was amazing.

I ate so much out there and shopped so much, but he was such a chap. He was a brilliant bass player. I was quite happy if he would have played bass. I was that lazy at that point because he had his bass, which was on Bowie Records and stuff with him, which I used on a couple, and we did four or five tracks and had amazing food

but we it wasn't his fault we just didn't do enough we just didn't do enough work out there what was your favorite studio experience then you were at rockfield right rockfield loads of times yeah just fantastic rockfield is one of the it is the abbey road of residential studios you know every time you go in there we've actually got one of the rock It is the Abbey Road of residential studios. Uh-huh. You know, every time you go in there... We've actually got one of the Rockfield desks in our studio now, which Rush recorded Hemispheres on and Farewell to Kingston. We're huge Rush fans. Bunnymen recorded on it.

Everyone, you know, Queen, so... Yeah, that's where they recorded Bohemian Rhapsody. Yeah, and then we worked with Mike Hedges in his chateau in Normandy. I think it's Normandy. Don Front. That was amazing because that was the EMI desk that Pink Floyd recorded Dark Side of the Moon on. Okay. So flying faders and everything in this, not dilapidated, but sort of fade-in grandeur.

What does flying faders mean? Just huge knobs like the TARDIS. It's all stuff like that, which you just don't care anymore. Yeah. You know, and so all those desks at the time were considered so redundant that Abbey Road got rid of some, and they were actually in a skip.

Really? Outside. And Mike salvaged one. Was this pre-eBay or something? Yeah. Right. Maybe this is probably mid-'80s, I would guess, when everything was going digital.

Yeah, yeah. Mike was just such a... He's like 6'6", huge man, and he'd done so many records we loved. He did The Cure, Susie and the Banshees, Mighty War, The Lars. Amazing book. So that probably was the most happy

we've ever been recording. Yeah. And we knew we were onto something because we had these songs like Designed for Life in the bag, and we just thought, surely now. So you're going in there with all those written, are you? Yeah.

Right. Mike had come to this really kind of shoebox rehearsal studio in cardiff that we used to use to listen to the songs and james went out drinking with him after a brains essay which is skull attack as we call it which is a real dark like like a guinness kind of drink and they got really hammered and mike just said oh you've got some real, shows how old-fashioned it is, you've got some real jukebox hits, he said. Yeah. And we obviously had a loyal fan base anyway,

so with Designed for Life, we just thought, surely this cannot fail. We thought Motorcycle Emptiness would be the record that did that, but it is probably six minutes of too much existential angst to really, really cut through. It is probably our biggest song worldwide in a lot of ways, but Designed for Life was the one that, you know, lost out by 2,000 copies to Mark Morrison first week.

Oh, really? To what? Blue Tones? No, Mark Morrison, Return of the Mac. Mark Morris? Yeah. I was going to say. Return of the Mac. Return of the Mac. Mark Morris? Yeah. I was going to say. Return of the Mac. Return of the Mac.

Yeah. I think we did 92,000 and he did 94. Well, that was a good song. Yeah, it was a good song. Oh, my God. Return of the Mac. I grew up loving the Guinness Book of Hit singles and stuff like that. So I was such a stato of our own sales and hits and everything okay i think we

had 33 consecutive top 40 hits whoa that's very good it was amazing one of the best that was yeah i think pet shop boys might have beaten us wow that's amazing for a band like the manics isn't it you sort of think that you'd be too weird for that. But no, you've got all the big epics in there. And when you're in the studio doing a song like Design for Life, who is keeping an eye on, like, because presumably you can over-egg that pudding quite easily. We can, definitely. We are prone to it. Right.

But Mike helped reign us in, I think. It was Les Guitars. You know, it was quite a tame record for us in a lot of ways even though there's a lot on there, timpanis and strings but we sometimes we do go over the top it's just in our nature I think that life

performance sometimes trying to transfer it on record when we've just got to keep a distance I've got to you know sometimes there's too many words and too much passion but that work is just getting got to, you know, sometimes there's too many words and too much passion. But that work is just getting that fine balance, you know, of not stripping all that away. But at that point, James lived in a studio anyway.

That was, you know, he still would if he could probably, but he is pouring out with music all the time. And is the music that you really like similar? I like less and less music than I used to. It's a bit of a sad indictment on myself, but... Have you tried smoking weed? I've never... The only drugs I've ever taken, really, are when I've been in hospital or Nurofen Express. Right.

I've never smoked a cigarette in my life. Have you not? I feel like the only organ that sort of functions vaguely well in my body is my brain. Right, OK, yeah. Because everything else does fall apart. Yeah. When it feels like it to me.

And I'd like to keep that as, you know, in good nick as I can because it is a muscle after all. Is it? I was thinking about that the other day. It's not literally a muscle, is it? It must be a muscle, isn't it? It's just a big old... What is it? It was thinking about that the other day. It's not literally a muscle, is it? It must be a muscle, isn't it? It's just a big old... What is it? It's a brain. Isn't a brain a specific thing?

The mind is a muscle too. Is a brain an organ? That I don't know. It's got special status, doesn't it, the brain? The brain is just a brain. But it's not a muscle. You're not going to pick anything up with your brain. I don't know about you, but I find the things that burned into my skull But it's not a muscle. You're not going to pick anything up with your brain.

I don't know about you, but I find the things that burned into my skull from 14 to 24 resonate much more. It's the first time the last two years where I've struggled to remember things, recent things. Yeah, I know. That's a horrible feeling, isn't it? It is. Yeah.

But even before you came in, I wrote a few things down. And also... Hairdressers, Nick Clegg. There's like a list up there. Little pointers in my own mind. Japan, because I remember your trip to Japan. What were you going to say about Nick Clegg? Oh, just what a terrible cunt he is, you know.

Why was he on your mind? Oh, what was it? Just in case politics came up and you just, you know, that the idea that one, because he's such a fervent remainer, all of a sudden people have started liking him again and stupidly sort of trusting him again. of head of foreign affairs for Facebook, you know, a company which colludes in rigging elections. Anyway, it just seems so, you know, it just sums up the sort of hideous nature of politicians now. I mean, not that I'd ever won one, and I fucking despise it, but why on earth has he got a knighthood?

Has he got a knighthood? Sir Nick Clegg, you know. Since when? Head of Facebook Foreign Affairs. Can you think of a worse sentence at the moment than that? Not off the top of my head, but if you give me a while, I could probably come up with something. I have no idea why anyone of musical status of our generation

would want to take an OBE or an MBE or anything. Why would you want to be in a club with a lot of dodgy people? A lot of dodgy people. Well, they always say, oh, it's for my mum. Well, I mean, one of my favourite people of all time is Polly Harvey. Yeah. You know, lyrics, just a demeanour, a fierce kind of independence. And then she took an MBE.

And I was just thinking, because a lot of her lyrics just, they don't align those scenarios, do they? And she's certainly not someone who chases any kind of showbiz sort of pat on the back. And I don't even care that she'd done it really, but I do find it weird that you'd want to. Yeah, but that's just her weird thing, and then she could come back to you

with your weird thing and that she doesn't add right hotels whatever it might be everyone's got there i just don't believe that everyone is completely watertight no no you know and 1000 consistent that's not a practical way to live your life and it absolutely hypocrisy or ritchie always used to go on about at the start it's just you know you have to you have to take us that there is always going to be an element of hypocrisy because no one can walk that line like you said you know you can try your best as we had a we wrote a manifesto at the start so i can't remember but it was 10 points like never write a love song never allow girlfriends at gigs basically a lot of it was we can't get any girlfriends. So they're not allowed.

So they're not allowed. Yeah. And it was lots of stuff like that, really. It was quite funny. But, you know, the old Leninist five-year plans were never going to be a reality in the real world. Well, if there's one way to guarantee getting called a hypocrite at some point, it's to write a manifesto.

Yes. The honours list, bowing down before the monarchy, it's just, I'd rather stab my eyeballs out with a pencil. I don't even hate them that much either. It's just not something I could do. It's not a personal thing. It's like an institutional thing, I think. Cynicism.

Yeah. That's where we're at now. Like I was reading about, you know, when I was at art school, it was all about postmodernism. Yeah. Now it's the most fun thing to read about. And it was all like, oh, this is great. We can do everything and just say it's ironic.

And we'll deconstruct it. And wow, we're clever. And it's good because it means that we don't actually have to put quite as much work in. And this is win-win. But then that only takes you so far. Yeah, it does. And then, you know, did you ever read David Foster Wallace?

Only via Ritchie. Right. Yeah. He was into him, was he? Yeah. And he was the first person I was aware of that suddenly started saying, actually, where's all the irony leading to? Yeah.

What are you left with once you've deconstructed everything? You've just dismantled everything and... We're left with now. Yeah. Segway, you're not left with now because I got you a present. All right. Now, don't get excited. This is really a shocking you a present. All right. Now don't get excited. This is really a shocking, shocking present.

Shocking. Yeah. I got you a chocolate advent calendar. I like that. And it's Hotel Chocolat. Yeah. And it's caramel. Caramel.

Is that good? Yeah. That is brilliant. And I thought, what would be decadent for a rock star? And I thought, a chocolate advent calendar and you just eat them when you want. I don't know if you ever had advent calendars when you were little.

I loved advent calendars. Yeah, so did I. It was so exciting. And you respected the doors, right? Yeah, absolutely. Yes, you respected the doors. I still go in for my kids. Right.

Do they respect the doors? They do, yeah. Okay, good. I never, I mean, we didn't have chocolate ones until quite late on. Yeah. But you don't have to respect those doors. I never, I mean, we didn't have chocolate ones until quite late on. Yeah. But you don't have to respect those doors. I will respect them.

Okay. Well, enjoy them. You've got your mug, podcast mug. That will be in the studio. Got your T-shirt. It's the nicest T-shirt. I like the T-shirt. It's nice material. That's a nice colour as well.

What else was on your list, by the way? I think we probably could. And the more I find my voice, the more I hate the sound of it, which is a brilliant quote from Riley Walker. Uh-huh. It's American. I just thought it was... I don't know why I've written that down.

Do you hate the sound of your own voice? Yes. You've got a lovely voice. Oh, that's nice of you. No, you have. I get fucking sick of it. No, it's a nice voice. That's very kind.

I like voices anyway, because I love listening to cricket commentary and stuff like that. I love the radio. I mean, I listen to more radio than TV now because it's still focused and it's still... The amount of Radio 4 I listen to and the archives on Radio 4 and the iPlayer, the sounds, as it's now fucking called. Why has that changed? archives on Radio 4 on the iPlayer.

Sounds is now fucking cool. Why has that changed? What was wrong with the Radio iPlayer? Why have we got to download something new called Sounds? So it's not just BBC stuff that you're going to get through Sounds? Isn't it? No, I think you're going to be... It's like a portal that will enable you to access all kinds of stuff. You're back at the party last night.

It's a portal. It's a platform. It's a multi-platform portal hub that is going to aggregate content and ring fence quite a lot of exciting new media across the other platforms

in a very challenging and forward trusting way. Robust. Robust way... Robust. Yeah, robust way. Yeah, yeah. Robust. That is one of those words that people hear and they're like, oh, robust. I'm going to start saying robust.

It's true. Whenever I say it, I always just think of a robot with big tits. That's my problem. All right, before we wrap up, going back to hotels, if you don't mind, are you a complainer? Never, no. Only afterwards. I very rarely complain about anything, food or, you know,

it's not my thing. Have you noticed in some modern hotels that it's all about smells now? And they have machines that don't have smells. The foyer and down the corridors. And sometimes it's overpowering. It is, yeah. It's too perfumed.

I don't mind a woody, fiery, cedarwood kind of smell. There's a hotel in Dublin called the Marion, which is absolutely gorgeous, which has that smell. And it is a fire, a cedarwood fire, I think. But some are just pumping out, I don't know. It smells like... From the perfume shop.

Freshener, yeah. Oh, I fucking despise people who use air freshener. If your house isn't clean enough to have natural air, don't fucking coat it in something that should be done in a laboratory. Write a song about it. Come close. Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website I see success.

Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch,

use the offer code BUXxton to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain so put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace Yes. Continue. Rosie! Rosie! Rosie, come here! Oh, look how obedient that super-fast Whippet Poodle Cross is, racing towards me as soon as I call. Oh, mate. That is, talk about a bond. We have got an incredible bond, don't we, dog? There was a time when Rosie would just totally have ignored me and carried on buggering around in the middle of the woods, making everyone worried and not returning to the house, sparking searches with

torches and all that sort of stuff. But we haven't had one of those for a while I'm glad to say touch wood fence post anyway look that was Nicky Wire and I'm extremely grateful to Nicky for sitting down with me and being such good company it was very nice to meet him and talk with him I have posted links to some of what we chatted about what have we got what have we got link to NME compilation of Nicky Wire's most memorable quips. The Neil Kinnock 1985 speech. Apparently, there's no one video that I could find that is just full coverage of that speech. Perhaps because the original footage is owned by some news agency or other, I don't know. Anyway, I've put a link to the fullest version I could find.

And there's also a link to the Jeremy Deller rave documentary that we spoke about from 2018, Everybody in the Place. But there you go, Nicky Wire links. Couple of quick plugs. I was on Sue Perkins' podcast. And we recorded that conversation a while back. Feels like the summer. Maybe it wasn't that long ago. Anyway, it was very nice to talk to Sue. I like her a lot. Hope that I'll get her on this podcast at some point.

Link in the description. And I also recorded a small part for a new comedy drama audio series called Fugitives. Written and performed by Max and Ivan. Very talented, funny character comedians who I hadn't met before, but I'd seen some of their stuff. So it was nice to be able to do a little bit with them. And it was produced by Ben Walker of Rahalestapa fame and Do the Right Thing fame. So anyway, some extra listening for you there if you wish. Rosie!

It's getting all dark and grey, so I'm going to head home, make myself a giant cup of tea and carry on writing some timeless literature oh i'll tell you one more thing i saw joe cornish the other day and we recorded the christmas podcast it was good fun lovely to see joe he was in norwich doing a talk at the UEA after Joe did his talk we went back to Castle Buckley's and we recorded the Christmas podcast it was going to be our last opportunity to do so before the big day for various reasons so we did it but obviously we weren't able to include stuff that uh listeners had sent in which was a shame but there was nothing we could really do about it we had a window we had

to take it plus it just takes so long to get the contributions in and then go through them all. And there just wasn't the time this year. So I apologise for that, but I hope that you will enjoy the Christmas podcast nonetheless. But look, that's enough crapping on from me. Rosie, I think, has already chipped off home. I'm going the same way.

Thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for production support on this episode. Thanks to Annika Meissen for conversation editing. Thanks once again to Nicky Wire. Thanks to you for listening. And until next time, we stand uncomfortably close in the packed podcast commuter train take very good care and look i'm gonna say it i love you okay Bye! Bye. Thank you.