THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.121 - LOUIS THEROUX

Episode Date: May 2, 2020

Adam talks with journalist and documentary presenter Louis Theroux about his lockdown podcast Grounded, Adam's book, advertisements for face exercisers on the internet, a brilliant/boring art film, Louis' time with the Tiger King (CONTAINS MINOR SPOILER FOR NETFLIX DOC) and bonding over the Beatles.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and to Matt Lamont for additional editing.RELATED LINKSRAMBLE BOOK (AUDIOBOOK AT APPLE)RAMBLE BOOK (AUDIOBOOK AT AUDIBLE - use Audible free trial to listen for nothing)LOUIS THEROUX - GROUNDED PODCASTGEAR4MUSIC (ON LINE MUSIC EQUIPMENT STORE)MATTHEW BARNEY - CREMASTER CYCLE TRAILER (VIMEO)CREMASTER MUSCLE FUNCTION INFOPELVIC FLOOR EXERCISE INFOBABOON BOTTOM INFO Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Rosie? Rosie, should we go for a walk? Rosie? Hey, hey, hey, hey. Good response from the top of the house. Boom, dog. Come on, let's go for a walk. 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 Bu buxton i'm a man i want you to enjoy this that's the plan i made mistakes today will i ever learn the lessons that I'll come my way. She's looking at me like, what the bloody hell are you doing? Rose, come on, we're going to go for a walk. Do you not want to go? I'm carrying a small Bluetooth speaker because I'm going to call my guest to help me with this week's introduction and i was just playing a bit of music on the speaker and singing along with it still i dream of it by the beach boys but now she's just standing on the track staring at me

like why were you singing that song why have you got that speaker is this not a normal walk it is a normal walk come on rose rosie come on look the sun's come out and everything i think she's buggered off back to the house blimey everyone's in a bad mood week six of the lockdown and the atmosphere back at castle buckles especially among the teenage boy community, has recently been a little tense. OK, what are we doing here? I am calling Louis the Rooey. Let's try FaceTime audio. Connect to a Wi-Fi network to use FaceTime, you fucking idiot.

Wow, that's a very rude alert. Sorry about that, listeners. OK, just a regular call then. Yo, yo, yo. Hey, Lou, how are you doing? Good, how are you doing? I'm all right, man. Should I be answering this on my computer or not?

No, it's not actually a FaceTime call. I forgot that you can't make FaceTime calls outside. You a um internet connection and i'm outside on my walk with rosie although rosie has gone back home because she senses that something's up and it's not a normal walk because i'm calling you and i've got like a little bluetooth speaker with me so she's acting all like fuck this i'm going home she sort of knows you at a subatomic level she's like this isn't what i signed on for yeah exactly i'm going to read out my introduction that i've written and you can just give me any comments or corrections that uh suggest themselves i often describe you as journalist and documentarian that's my

shorthand description for you. Are you happy with that? That's fine. I don't really like that word. Americans use the word documentarian. Okay. And I just think it's kind of an ugly word. I don't know why. Whoa. What are you having then? Journalist and documentary presenter. Okay, I'll say journalist, documentary presenter and podcaster, Louis Theroux. Good. When the lockdown started, I sent out microphones to a few people I knew

that I wanted to have on the podcast, and Louis was one of them. But, as you will hear, rather than spending all his time talking with me, he's been carrying on with his own set of fascinating celebrity guests for a radio four show slash podcast called grounded yes correct i listened to the first episode the other day with john ronson really enjoyed it but couldn't help noticing that you described the microphone

that i sent you which you were recording on as dodgy i feel well i retract that it's not a dodgy microphone it's an excellent microphone it's the yeti blue it's well it's beautiful i don't know why i said that you know like um i've been caught with my pants down and yeah well good because um as listeners will hear in the first part of our conversation you lured it all over me with your number one podcast recorded on the microphone I sent you. So a bit of pants down action is good. I apologize. That's all right.

We recorded this conversation exactly a week ago, and I was feeling quite ill that day. I hadn't slept very well. I took a pill halfway through the conversation, and then I felt a lot better. But it was a fun chat. Were there any bits in there that you were worried about? I think I was mainly worried that I might be seen to... We were joking about being glib and then kind of enacting glibness, ironically, but I worried that that could be construed as real glibness.

That was, I think, perhaps the main one. I think I also was a tiny bit concerned i might have thrown my dad under the bus by talking about his lack of compassion for students or gap year uh kids who would solicit funds for their travels from him oh yeah probably other things i said that were pretty knob like i think it was fine and um don't say i think it was my thing it's definitely fine it's definitely fine you don't need to worry also i mean you to a certain degree like unless people really think that we're awful you have to kind of assume that we are somewhat aware and sensitive

to the situation that many people find themselves in in the current crisis we're not totally it's too exhausting to worry about everything but the danger is when i'm talking to you it's just like we're talking as friends and so i i let my guard down i'm less um restrained than i would be in another context right you know doing a different kind of appearance and so the good or ill real me has a danger of coming out that could be good and then sometimes it's oh yeah he's a bit of a twat no i think it was fine i think it was good well speaking of being a bit of a twat I was uncharacteristically rude and childish about a well-respected art film. Normally, I like to think of myself as a bit of an eastheat and open-minded and adventurous. But as soon as the subject of this art film came up that I'd seen years ago, I just went on and on about how boring it was.

I sort of felt bad about it. I think you were fine. What did you feel bad about that? Yeah, I just thought, oh, that's a shame's a shame. Yeah, I have kept that in. We talked about lockdown life a little bit, not too much, I hope. And whether there are worthwhile things to be taken away from the whole experience. I don't suppose anyone else in the world has covered that. We talked about the fact that you spent some time with joe exotic which i think you've talked in other places about a little bit but i was interested to hear about your experiences

with him and some of the other people who turn up in that netflix doc tiger king and by the way for people who are sensitive to spoilers towards the end of my conversation with louis about joe exotic there is a possible tiger king documentary spoiler so be warned we also talked about the beatles and that was sort of it who's your next guest on your podcast can you say the next one is uh boy george oh yeah yeah it was a good one he's good value yeah great okay thanks. Okay, thanks a lot, Lou. Thanks, Ed. I look forward to listening to it. All right. Take care.

Look after yourself. Same to you. Speak to you soon. Cheers. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. I'm a bad man. I'm a bad man. I'm a bad man. I'm a bad man. I'm a bad man. I'm a bad man. I'm a bad man. I'm a bad man. I'm on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's chew the fat and have a ramble chat. Put on

your conversation coat and find your talking hat. Yes! 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, 1212. You sound good. Thank you for sending the mic, by the way. Oh, not at all. Has it been useful? Yeah, really useful. I've been getting a lot of use out of it. Oh, that's great. Have you started doing your own podcast your own podcast yes i have i've recorded five or six now wow who have you done

just to keep busy just to keep busy i've done boy george oh yeah that's good yeah lenny henry how was that good they've all been good in different ways all very different miriam margulies gail porter oh yeah john ronson how was boy george very fun and um i just reached out to him on twitter he follows me and he got straight back to me and said oh yeah sure go through my publicist here are her details and so we spoke for two or three hours and it was for me it was just a sort of a little bit of a nostalgia fest fanboy thing he as you know came up through the punk scene through the blitz kids have you ever interviewed him no i met him once ages ago with joe when we were doing a weird thing on tv and he seemed nice he struck me as very funny

sort of pathologically honest but also that he was if you've read his first volume of memoirs he was just a kid growing up in woolwich in a big squabbling brawling irish family went to a school where no one recognized his talents knowing he was gay i think from a pretty early age and then got swept up in this kind of half avant-garde half pop scene walking around dressed as a nun or flamboyant plastic clothes and for him it was all Bowie right he was absolutely he's got a tattoo of Bowie on his arm as well as a tattoo of Susie from Susie and the Banshees another one of Lee Bowery and another I think of Mark Bolan anyway so he's a real music and fashion obsessive and I think all of that's really interesting.

Plus, his first sexual experience at 15, it was just, he'll talk about whatever you ask him about in a very free and honest way. And he doesn't take any shit. Oh, wow. That sounds great, man. I'm looking forward to hearing those. It was fun doing them. A little bit stressful because of the technical side.

And I'm aware that I'm sort of pissing on your patch quite right and using your microphone if i can mix the metaphor i'm pissing out of your microphone onto your leg and saying okay little doggy it's time for the big doggies to play run along now exactly which is not an ideal position to be in with a close friend but it's coronavirus time we we have to make a living presumably some of those people that you spoke to and the horse you rode in on news flash you've had this stage to yourself for long enough it's time for a real broadcaster to show you how to do it all right fair enough uh well here's an amateur broadcaster question what was your criterion then for getting hold of the guests great question and what was the concept of the podcast like that's my other question because it's supposed to be um talking to you about your

favorite food or your inspiration or conversations in a kitchen cupboard. It's all done in a cupboard. There's no gimmick. There's no concept other than having a longish chat. And the criterion for guests was to try and have a mix that they should all be, I guess, I mean, it sounds very vague and bland, but people I was interested in, people who I felt there was something knotty to get into with.

And they are all, in different respects, people who are happy to open up. None of them so far, touch wood, it will continue, has been resistant. In fact, with all of them, I found myself saying, it'll be about an hour to an hour and a half, and then at the two-hour mark thinking, I wonder if I'm taking the mick now. The other thing, because I thought about you a lot while I was doing them, in the sense of how you approach your subjects, and I was aware that I also didn't want it to feel like a Desert Island Discs, right?

Because there's a temptation, and Marc Maron does this as well, to start at the beginning and go somewhat chronologically towards the end, which I think in general you don't do. No, I go too far the other way i it might turn out like this i just start talking and then i forget all the things that i wanted to ask and then it's just a meandering i mean that's where the whole rambling concept comes but i think that's what's good about how you do it with me i haven't quite worked out whether it's one or the other so i've been trying to jump in in the middle, then go back for a bit and then jump off.

So I've been a touch of ramble, but a touch of chronological. But I'm occasionally guilty of kind of grinding into something and then just grinding and grinding. And then it gets a little bit heavy. You go into reporter mode. Yeah, I go into sort of psychotherapist reporter mode where I'm like but i want to dig into this what was it in you like with miriam margolis i had it in my head that it must have been quite traumatic growing up with same-sex attraction right in that era she was born in 1941 so in the 60s when homosexuality was outlawed although only for men not for women but either way i thought, that must be difficult when you grew up

and you know that you are pre-Stonewall, you know you're attracted to people of the same sex. And she just sort of tossed that one aside, stepped over it. And then so I came back to it. I revisited it four or five times before I realised either it wasn't difficult or she wasn't interested in talking about it, but it was getting me nowhere. Okay.

Get over it, Louis. And then you're like, you're a lesbian. You're a lesbian human. Why are you a lesbian human? Like, I was sort of objectified, like a specimen under a glass. Yeah. It was a very kind of cis male gaze that I was applying. So you're gay, a lesbian gay woman who's attracted to people of

the same sex is that correct so when you see someone of the same sex you feel aroused you know it's like come on louis get a grip it's 2020 but i think it's fair enough to expect the listeners to adjust to your point of view to accept the fact that you are asking questions that interest you you don't have to ask questions that are going to be entirely objective that are going to represent absolutely everyone listening there's no way you can good point and in fact we were accused of when we made a program about polyamory in portland and one or two of the contributors were not happy with it and said it was very i don't know what they said maybe heteronormative might have been the phrase

in other words they were saying like you came at it from the approach of someone who's not polyamorous that was their criticism to which you can only say like yeah that's because i'm not polyamorous right and in fact that was the view i was reflecting and in a certain respect that represents the view of the majority of the audience which isn't to say that there's anything wrong with it but that's where the questions are coming from yeah so i think it's valid isn't it but then i found myself not panicking but feeling my conversation with miriam because then i started well i wonder if i'm i'm sort of erecting this fence between us if she's the lesbian and i'm the straight so then i began talking about same-sex attraction I'd experienced growing up which I I think I overdid

it a bit I said I had crushes on older boys growing up which isn't really completely true but anyway it's all good did you ever experiment you never actually kissed anyone. No. She said to me, I've never had a penis inside me. And I said, well, that's something we have in common. I've never had a male tongue inside me other than my own. I never kissed with tongues. I snogged a couple of boys experimentally and didn't enjoy it that much. I don't even know if it's a snog if the tongue's not it has to be tongues i think a snog now look snog if you go and kiss a girl on the lips as a

heterosexual married man that's not going to go down well with your partner she's not going to be equivocating about is it a snog i'm not sure if that's true depends i know women friends who when i kiss hello goodbye they go for a mouth kiss yeah but that's a surprise when it happens i mean this is in the old days it's you're not going to be doing any mouth kissing for the next year or two corona check okay uh thanks so much for doing this by the way lou pleasure it's nice to catch up congratulations again on your book oh thank you yeah it feels good to have at least got the audiobook out it's quite weird because the physical thing doesn't come out until the end of September, end of August, maybe. For the dinosaurs. Yeah, I think I'm right in saying that it's the first time an audiobook has been released before the physical thing.

Once again, you're blazing a trail. No one ever thought about doing this buxton wants to do what that's impossible it doesn't make any sense we've talked to the guys on technical and they think we can do it but how so that's what i've done and there's a podcast at the end of it with me and joe talking and joe did a certain amount of roasting of he's thrown podcast at the end of it with me and Joe talking. And Joe did a certain amount of roasting. He's thrown me under the bus again. Does he roast you face to face? Doesn't he roast everyone face to face in life?

Yeah, he does. And that's one of the things that we talked about. It was quite a satisfying conversation that I had with Joe, which you can hear at the end of the audio book. which you can hear at the end of the audiobook, because there was a couple of moments of genuine catharsis for me, of settling things that I'd been worrying about that I wrote about in the book, and kind of left open-ended and sort of imagined that he would either ignore or... I just assumed that he wouldn't process them. But he did, and we spoke about them, and it was quite good. I had an odd feeling of closure at the end of talking to him about it. Well, what kind of things do you mean?

Things about our friendship and the kind of imbalance in our friendship. Not very specific. I mean, you know, it's not the kind of book that really is digging too deep into my relationships, other than the one with my father, I suppose. into my relationships other than the one with my father, I suppose. I started getting into the whole power struggles that happen within a double act, you know, when you're working together and your friendship is suddenly switched to a different track and you get all these pressures

that you'd never really considered before or that maybe were operating in the background and suddenly they have to be dealt with. They're all right there in the foreground i thought joe came across very well in your book and at the same time your affection for him and a very faint sense of you needing perhaps more from him at school emotionally and in terms of recognition and affirmation that he was prepared to give and that maybe he even was aware of that and played on it a little bit by saying oh we probably won't be friends you know after we leave or in 20 years or whatever it is which is i think that is quite joe like you know

we've joked about the fact that we both used the term aloof but to describe joe and he picked up on that but haughty haughty that's right haughty but that part of joe's haughtiness is a self-protection mechanism right and that he is underneath he's a very lovely guy i you know what i mean like he's actually an affectionate and thoughtful and vulnerable human as we all are don't you think you're laughing as though i've said something you think i was going to say something mean and i pulled out of it but i wasn't i actually think that joe is capable of extreme thoughtfulness and consideration and sometimes when he thinks he's under attack his haughty side comes out what do you think about that well again like all of us but yeah i mean i don't want to um give the game away you'll have to buy the audio book to discover but yeah i mean i don't want to um give the game away you'll have to buy the audiobook to

discover but yeah i think you're absolutely right and you've picked up on a couple of the things that were most important to me to to convey or to explore a little bit and also to pick up one other thing i think you are revealing in your book of your relationship not just with joe but especially with your dad and some of it is extremely powerful and affecting and raw and what you say about him as he approached the end of his life and then the revelations about his financial stresses and what he went through to raise and educate his children in the manner to which he felt they deserved, right? And privately educating you and then attempting to get loans from people.

I mean, I thought the letter he wrote to John le Carré, a.k.a. David Cornwell, was amazing, like extraordinary and must have been, I can only think, brutal and painful for him to have to send. Yeah, he was so proud of being friends with john le carre you know what i mean they they were at university together and dad was older than him but he just thought he was the bee's knees especially when he turned out to be this successful writer and yeah when he got into financial stress he was one of the people that my dad wrote to to ask for a loan

quite a big loan and yeah i i think he found it incredibly humiliating as you would it was 50 000 pounds right i think 40 40 oh well that's different in olden money but can you imagine writing to someone and sort of saying dear jim please can you fix it for me sorry dear john i find myself in the embarrassing situation of having to ask you for 40 000 pounds like it's i don't know that would be tough my first thought when i read it was like well if i had lots of money and a friend of mine wrote to me ask you for 40,000 pounds I think I would give it to them I think my instinct would be like yeah if I can afford it here you go and it would be good if you paid me back and don't take the piss and understand that this is because you're my

friend blah blah blah but you would want to do it I'm so glad you said that because this is going to be so much easier now yeah not 40 though it's a hundred thousand okay have you got it well actually i'm seeding the ground for my letter to you which i was going to send in a couple of weeks well you don't see that but what he wanted the 40 000 for was it walks in country? No, it was to keep my brother at Halebury. So this is the thing. My dad, all these humiliations that he experienced were for things that for most people in the world would not be considered important.

It would be like, well, here's a solution to your problem. Don't send your children to a fucking private school, you maniac. You know, just get your head around the fact that there are all sorts of ways for a person to turn out to have a worthwhile life. And they don't all include going to a private school. You know, I thought he in his letter, but in his pitch to John le Carre, he had said, oh, it's I'll be able to pay you back because i'm going to use that 40 000 and i'm starting uh you know a tech company i've got an idea for something called the worldwide web or whatever it was and that he would but if you write to someone say i want 40 dear john lecari please can you send me 40 000 pounds so i can keep sending my children to private school how is that gonna go well well he wasn't as explicit as that you know because the thing was

that he had used up all his money his mortgage payments were in arrears the bailiffs were knocking pretty much but it was because he spent all his money and mortgaged the house to pay for our education. And so he got himself into that pickle, but he didn't explain that explicitly to Le Carre. It was just like, look, I'm in trouble. I need this amount of money. And here is a scheme for how I will pay you back. And so over about three pages after the initial page of like, can I have some money? Were all these ideas for how he was going to pay him back. One of them was, I'm going to write a book about wine. It's going to be great.

I know all sorts of stuff about wine. Walks in the wine country. I remember that. A book that he eventually did get published, but it certainly didn't make him any money. And he had another idea about writing a book about boarding school, about prep schools and all these sorts of schemes that he had another idea about writing a book about boarding school, about prep schools and all these sorts of schemes that he had that he thought were going to make him a load of cash. Just parenthetically, on a tangent from that, one of the things that I remember from my childhood was that my dad occasionally would receive letters, because he's a travel writer,

because he's a travel writer, from students who are on their gap year or approaching their gap year and were trying to fund their sort of volunteer or charitable endeavors. Like, I want to go and work in an orphanage in Burma, or I'm going to travel around India and teach villagers how to irrigate their crops, whatever. So this is going back quite a few years. And once or twice he showed me the letters and he's in and i sort of think oh well that seems fair enough what are you going to do and he would sort of look disbelieving and say it would become clear that he was actually annoyed by the letters and said i think i'm going to write to their parents and say do you realize i've just received a begging letter from your child like the idea of him financing

someone else's children deeply offended him and i think because he was self-made he'd grown up poor you know in an immigrant family in boston and made his own money and i think he thought that and he just the whole idea of asking for a handout if that's what it is i mean maybe that's unfairly characterizing it but rubbed him the wrong way absolutely and it did for my dad too um one of his favorite sayings was neither a borrower nor a lender be yeah is that it yeah neither a borrower nor a lender be yeah something like that yeah where's that from hamlet i think from hamlet okay I think it's from Hamlet. I think Polonius, it's one of the fatuous phrases that he comes out with.

Well, my dad definitely believed in that. And I would characterize that as a sort of Tory-ish way of looking at the world, kind of get on your bike. Self-reliant, I can do it, you can do it. You are sort of teaching an attitude of learned helplessness. Right, if you sort of rely on handouts um i've got a terrible headache and i am struggling to actually organize my thoughts i'm sorry do you want to take a a neurofen or something i might do yeah i might do it okay hang on take a couple i slept very badly last night.

I had to get up four times to go and use the toilet. Every single time I woke up. I woke up. I stared into the darkness and I hoped that perhaps I'd go back to sleep. But the pee-pee pressure was too great. And after a while I would swing out my legs, and my body would follow, stumbling off to the toilet. I don't stand at night for number one fun But sit instead till the transfer is done Depress the chap so he doesn't spring out

And cause the jet to fly all about delicious are you stressed in general in general stressing maybe a little i just headache maybe i don't know i woke i slept incredibly badly last night and I woke up feeling really rough and thinking, fuck, what's that? Is that covid? It can't be covid. I haven't been anywhere. I've just you know, I've received a few packages and there's been a couple of delivery people. But how could I have got covid? I've been here for four weeks. And then I thought, oh, well, if it's not that, then what is it? Something incipient and terminal. So i'm in that kind of frame of mind it's probably the final straight you've had a good run we're middle-aged men coming down the

home stretch listen if i was this is uh obviously glib by the way if i was diagnosed tomorrow with something terminal i'd be fine with it i've had a great time and been luckier than most, and I've certainly got nothing to complain about. That's very glib. It's glib. In the midst of a pandemic, you've got a strange sense of humour, young man. I mean, obviously, it's more than glib. It's super glib.

It's a new glib plus. The most powerful glib yet. Glib. New improved formula for even more glibness. Extra strength glib. Someone was saying the other day, one of the weird side effects of the whole pandemic has been for some catastrophists and for some people who are kind of paranoid and afraid of all sorts of things in the world that they now feel a sense of calm

because the worst has happened. John Ronson was saying something like this. I mean, it's not the worst, is it? There's loads of ways that it could be worse even. But it's not ideal and it's pretty bad and it's the kind of thing that people who worry about things in the world might have imagined before. And now here it is. And surprise, surprise, everyone kind of adapts. Not everyone. And it's certainly worse for some people than it is for others.

Are you still using your glib or maybe i'm should turn it off now oh no that's i wasn't using glib that was old glib that's not new extra strength the old glib was quite powerful because there's a lot of people who are not adapting and dying that's what i thought i covered that i said not everyone i didn't want to really go too hard on the not adapting and dying. Speaking of that, along that sort of line, someone was saying, oh, there's people tweeting, like, stop calling frontline workers heroes. Stop calling the people who work in shops or make deliveries heroes.

They're people doing jobs that aren't properly paid, that they don't't want to be doing and they don't want to be on the front line and they don't appreciate being called heroes when they don't have any choice in the matter that's interesting that's like fucking hell i don't think anyone was trying to be mean i hadn't seen that i do think that with everything going on like there's certain tropes that become irritating and one of them is well look the crisis brings out the best in us we hear that on radio for at least a couple of times a day and i'm not really sure if it's it's certainly not true across the board in some ways it does in some ways it doesn't i I think it brings out, in certain respects, the truth in us. You know, there's people who are pitching in and helping and doing a lot,

and then I think there's other people who aren't doing much and people capitalising on it in different ways or fraudsters trying to make money out of it. Yeah, have you noticed that there are a lot more twat-ish ads online and especially on YouTube, like for all kinds of really ridiculous products popping up in front of videos? Is this the segue into you buying a mouth exerciser? Yes. That was incredibly smooth, though, that segue.

It was absolutely, it could have been seamless. And then you called it out because you couldn't just let it sit there. You couldn't let me have that moment of doing the fucking smoothest segue, seamless segue into a thing that you knew I was going to talk about. I thought, no, I'm going to just call that out. I did. But that was like me kind of saying, bravo, you know, underlay. I was just noting the suave that you were displaying. Go on, tell us about your mouth exerciser. I bought a mouth exerciser. That's the end of that.

How about this? Oh, what kind of thing do you mean? There you go. Here's what I was imagining. I was thinking you were going to go, yeah, you're right. And then you could have given me a couple of examples. I only know them. I haven't seen any other than the mouth exercise. That's the only one I've seen. Have you not seen magic teeth? No. What's that? There's a big long ad for this product called magic teeth. And it has all these people grinning at the camera, and there's some problem with their teeth. Either they've been knocked out or they're very badly decayed. And so with Magic Teeth, that needn't be a problem.

But Magic Teeth are just like sort of plastic teeth, really white teeth. Like Halloween teeth that you would just stick in your mouth exactly are you serious but then the other ad i saw have you seen this one is for jaws a size j-a-w-z-r yes i love that because it's a pun on jazz a size right which is already a portmanteau word of dubious construction and the ad ad, if you saw the same one, it's a bald guy who looks a bit like Michael Chiklis. Yes. Saying, I saw this and I thought it looked kind of weird, but then I tried it. So he acknowledges, I look like a complete goofball doing this, but wait.

But everyone is employing that strategy with all their crappy ads at the moment. Like there's people doing ads for, you know, selling at home. You sell Amazon products and stuff and you can make thousands and thousands. And they're all scams of one kind or another. But they all begin with like, I know it looks like a load of bullshit, but it's true. And I made thousands and you can too. And anyway, so they do that with jaws a size a little bit so jaws a size if you haven't seen the ad it's a kind of rubber ring and you stick it in your mouth and it comes with a couple of little bite strips that looks what's

it called a squid when you get it as a oh calamari it looks like a really hard piece of calamari yeah blue calamari and you're putting it between your teeth to upper and lower mandibles yes and you chew away on it chew away on it it's got 20 to 50 pounds of resistance however much that is that means nothing to me right how much resistance do you get from a normal piece of calamari not even five pounds this specially created calamari from squid available only in certain parts of the mediterranean with regular calamari you can only expect five to seven pounds of resistance. And generally, they will only come in one color, a dispiriting white. And it rejuvenates your chin and your...

It chisels and sculpts the jawline for the best look ever. It's fitness for your face. Aloha. That's what the ad says. But did you say that you'd actually ordered one of these? Yes, so I bought one. Have you got one there with you? No, I don't have it yet. It's being the ad says. But did you say that you'd actually ordered one of these? Yes, so I bought one. Have you got one there with you? No, I don't have it yet.

It's being delivered from America. Is there any medical foundation for it? Well, I'm glad you asked me because I'm fully qualified to answer that question. And I would say no. I mean, there can't be, can there? Because, I mean, did your parents ever used to do this? Like my mum, I remember in the 80s or the late 70s, would sometimes do these weird exercises with her jaw and she would sort of pat underneath her jaw and slap her face and stuff. And I'd go, mummy, why are you doing that? And she'd read in Cosmopolitan or something. It was the back then

version of the fucking jaws of size you know what i mean it's just a total scam surely that's not i would think so because in fact your jowls droop in middle age not really so much because the muscles are any weaker it's just your skin is becoming more slack i would have thought so all the chewing on calamari or rubber balls in the world is not going to tighten up the skin yeah well we'll find out plus you've got a beard so no one knows what's going on underneath your beard anyway that's why i've got a beard once my face is transformed by the jaws incisor i will shave the beard off and i will show off the incredibly ripped face underneath. Right.

You'll be able to flex different parts of your chin and lower cheeks. I'll be doing expressions that no one has ever seen me do before. And I'll probably get a lot more acting work out of it. It's all very exciting. But now I want to know if there is a way to, you know, like where's the

exercise equipment for your hair? How do I bulk up my testicles? There's so many other exercise products that I would buy. Or just make your testicles less droopy. Exactly. People must have vanity surgery on their nutsack. The muscle that causes your testicles to go up and down is called the, do you know this? No.

The cremaster. Cremaster. I don't you know this? No. The cremaster. Cremaster. I don't even know how you say it. Cremaster. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because Matthew Barney. That's right. The artist.

Used to be married to Bjork. Who was married to Bjork, made an entire sort of 20 hour movie cycle of about five or six different films called the cremaster cycle, right? Yeah. It was all about that muscle didn't we go and see that at the bfi i never saw it i've never seen it maybe i went to see that with joe or at the ica or something we saw it and i just like what the fuck am i doing watching this was it good no it wasn't good of course it wasn't good it was so boring it was an art film you know he's a big fan of your podcast he's welcome on any time to talk about how shit his film is no i didn't say did i say it was shit

i didn't say it was shit you said no it wasn't good it was so boring yeah i stand by the boring part i suppose i meant good in the sense of like if if you go and see a regular film, is it good? No, it wasn't all the things. I love how you're walking this back now. It was. I want to see how you get out of this particular box that you find yourself in. It wasn't all the things that you would want normally from a trip to the cinema, i.e. excitement, some kind of relatable characters and story, any sort of interesting experience whatsoever.

Actually, that's not true, because it was interesting. Like, the level of technical expertise, there was incredible make-up. The stills from it make it look amazing. He's sort of dressed up as the Greek god Pan, right? You know, he's kind of in a goat suit. Yeah. Looking sort of quite cool.

Looking really cool, with quite good prosthetics, like state-of-the-art prosthetics at the time, giving him a weird snout and strange ears and things like that. So it was all incredibly beautifully put together. It didn't look, usually what differentiates kind of art films from mainstream films is the production values because there isn't the budget available. But he had found a

way of making it look as if it was made to the standards of your average mainstream feature film so that in itself was quite weird and unsettling so i guess a success on that level but then once you got beyond it you sort of i don't know we're bored but maybe i just didn't understand it or i didn't know what to think about i didn't know we're bored but maybe i just didn't understand it or i didn't know what to think about i didn't know how to occupy my mind while i was watching it well what you could have been doing which is what i'm doing now is flexing your cremaster because that's an exercise you can actually do sitting down to tighten up your nutsack and you don't even need a blue piece of calamari to do that you can just do that anywhere any place i'm doing it now you're

doing it yeah yeah but that's not the same as women exercising their pelvic floor muscles is it for example i think it's our version isn't it i think that's what we do. No. And they would do the same thing. No, because for women, pelvic floor exercises, as far as I'm aware, I don't know exactly what I'm talking about, give them a greater degree of control down there, which can be useful for all sorts of reasons. But exercising… Taking up loose change. Exactly. change. Exactly. When you're carrying two cups of tea and then you see a piece of Lego and you're like, oh, OK. Oh, I know what I can do. Yes, it is very useful, which men can't do. Anyway, well, to get it back to the cremister, which we're OK to talk about, I don't think that a strong cremister would serve any practical purpose whatsoever would

it well unless you were sort of flying through the air and there was like a knife and you're having to clear like a long jumper or a hurdle and you're having to get over and your balls were slightly lower you lifted your legs like a hurdle to get over but your balls were hanging slightly lower right and then you're like holy shit my balls are too low they're going to get sliced that's when your cremister comes into play you can lift them a little bit you can just lift them up that half a centimeter yeah you know when they come into use this situations of extreme physical exertion right where your body says okay tighten up guys this is intense we need to pull everything extraneous in because you know something we need to be in our kind of game mode

or on a we're on a war footing and nothing can dangle nothing should be flopping that happens automatically high and tight because when you go into the sea and it's cold as if they've been worked properly but i don't think that's the cremister doing that though is it that's just the skin contracting and turning it into a hard walnut walnut intense leathery protection this is getting quite X-rated. Yeah, I'm sorry. That's my fault, as usual. No. No, thank you.

No. No. I'm going to ask you some lockdown questions I don't think anyone else is doing this it's a good point, this pandemic that everyone's ignoring and that you're not hearing about on the radio about how our lives will never be the same again I'm just going to come out

and talk about it will we be using new improved glib? For this? You can if you want. It's always there as an option. I'm going to see how it goes. My MO is to use both. I'll use a little squirt of glib and then I'll wipe it off and

use a bit of Sincerosol. Some people, it's like Coke. Some people prefer old Coke. In fact, probably more people. Like, in fact, the launch of new improved glib may be one of those things that goes down as a marketing disaster. Cherry glib. Like, what a strange decision to launch new improved glib

during a pandemic at all times when you didn't need added glibness. Surely it's madness. It's a marketing nightmare. Yeah, but I would argue that times of stress are when you need a bit of need added glibness. Surely it's madness. It's a marketing nightmare. Yeah, but I would argue that times of stress are when you need a bit of humorous glib. Anyway, look, here we go. So generally, COVID news-wise,

how on top of the situation are you staying? Like, do you know what the ins and outs of the lack of PPE in the UK are? Do you know about when we might be getting out of the lockdown how up are you on all your info i would say a medium i've not been listening to the news i don't watch the news on tv i just i have the radio on through the day so i'm dipping in and out i'm not across the hard data last time i checked which was i think three or four days ago i think i read that in europe there were a million cases and a hundred thousand deaths does that sound right yeah

i know i haven't been watching the tv news as often as i would normally i think because we're watching more tv and films as a family and so we don't tune in for news at 10 as often as we would i haven't watched the news the tv news for years or i hadn't i should say and then last week because of everything that was going on i thought well maybe we should watch the news and and it felt a bit like pulling out a gramophone and cranking it up you know it felt like oh yeah remember this we just don't watch much sort of what do they even call it narrative or linear tv the kids are constantly either watching streaming platforms or we're catching up on iplayer tv very rarely goes on in the ordinary way in our house. But I sometimes

think about you and your homestead and without giving away too much and destroying the mystique that you've worked so hard to cultivate over the years. You've got a lovely house, plenty of space for the family and you can toddle off and do your own thing. You've got a kind of a studio. And in many ways, you were on lockdown, not lockdown, but you've been leading your own life away from civilization while making obviously forays out into the world for years. You feel eminently well equipped to deal with lockdown. Does it feel that way to you? Yes, I suppose. My average day is not that different. Before COVID, I'd get to go to London every week or two and talk to some people for the podcast, maybe go and do a show here and there. But actually, while I was at home,

I could just not see anyone for weeks. And it was fine. I didn't mind it. I liked being at home. You've got a beautiful house. I hope you don't mind me telling your listeners that it's a beautiful house that you don't lock the doors that often. And you're away, usually in August, with many valuable paintings, heirlooms, silverware in the kitchen on the left as you come in. paintings heirlooms silverware in the kitchen on the left as you come in even a zombie apocalypse film yours would be the house or the home i should say which you would really want to hijack and hole up in yeah right because you could almost you've got plenty of room to run around in you could probably grow some vegetables and stuff we We are growing vegetables. We started growing vegetables. Yeah, yeah.

We're moving towards some level of self-sufficiency and trying to embrace a life more in harmony with nature. I mean, so far it's going very slowly and we're in very early stages. But yeah, I mean, well, we're lucky is what it comes down to i guess it's a difficult thing to talk about because so many people are suffering so much and yeah exactly that the parts of it that you take away from this that are positive have to be contextualized but the truth is there are parts of it that i've taken pleasure in a kind of simplification of the routine and cooking more just being around

the clock at home taking satisfaction in just making the three meals a day and I don't know just taking care of the kids really making the house sweeping cleaning all that stuff simple pleasures simple pleasures right but they are rewarding though don't you find yeah well one of the last times that we spoke on the podcast you remember this we were thinking about like if you were on your deathbed how would you look back on the way that you spent your time and um i described the kind of thing that makes me feel i've had a good day and it was something like you know playing 10 minutes of bomber man with my children or something and you like with a squirt of glib said god that sounds boring

you said something like are you bored even just saying that? Gosh, I don't remember that. What an arsehole I am. No, no, no. It was funny. But it did make me think like, God, you know, what constitutes a worthwhile life is really not the same for everybody. And I suppose the dominant voice on Radio 4 at the moment, perhaps, is that one of saying, you know, let's take pleasure in

the simple things in life. Let's remind ourselves of what's really important. Let's appreciate the fact that a lot of our struggles and a lot of the things that worry us, perhaps, in the grand scheme of things are not that important. Everyone is so focused on like getting ahead and doing better than everybody else and being a success and you can forget to ask the question but why what's at the end of all this you know what i mean i do 100 and in fact i don't know if this is a forced analogy but we were watching the first season of is it called the island the survival show that has bear grills on it we've talked about this yeah i was gonna go on the island okay good i'm glad you said i wasn't sure if we were allowed to say that but what's amazing about that that's sort of the lockdown existence

time 100 right because they don't have they have to forage all their own food and and you just see how when things are stripped away you take inordinate pleasure in survival just starting a fire or finding some honey is an almost ecstatic experience and so i think we've had a little those small compensations that can be extracted from the pandemic and from lockdown are to do with that the feeling that simple things become maybe more satisfying. And have you had an experience like that with your family in the last four weeks where you've just caught yourself thinking, hey, look, this is as fun and as rewarding as any of the things that previously I might have considered fun and rewarding in a career context, winning awards,

meeting my heroes, whatever it might be, doing a great documentary. There's two things to say on that. One is, yeah, I mean, I don't know how to compare it, but I've definitely felt close to my family and I've enjoyed being around the kids and seeing them and seeing the ways in which the two older boys who are teenagers have, for the most part, adapted and been pretty responsible about doing their lessons and embraced the strange situation they find themselves in you know while keeping up with friends uh they sort of play video games in order to socialize and talk to one another through headsets or through their phones so that's how they socialize and then the rest of the time you know we do stuff as a family and then

the little one who's only five he's been the one that's demanded the most time and so far as we've had challenges domestically it's been trying to get work done but also have a five-year-old who really needs someone there with him most of the time but when you commit to being with him he's gonna say do you know what? I'm actually not going to try and work. I'm just going to spend two or three hours and we will do some craft stuff or jump on the trampoline

or go out and do some coloring or whatever it is. Then I think it is very fulfilling. But that being said, when we got back into work in earnest, when I started taping these podcasts, I had this enormous feeling of relief maybe enormous is too strong but i did afterwards i thought oh wow that's what that feels

like even though it's only two or three weeks of doing nothing not doing of not working in the in the normal way it felt like quite a long time like i suppose it says something sad about me that I felt that I do seem to need that sort of self-expression whether it's self-expression or or just being busy in a certain way or using those muscles that are brought into service to do interviews or to make programs or I had it when I because I wrote a longish article for the Sunday Times times about joe exotic and the tiger king the program and have and doing that i felt the same feeling of release or just a kind of little endorphin dump of having been a little bit creative or productive no i know

what you're saying i didn't read your jo Exotic article. It was behind a paywall. Ah, right. There you go. Can you extract some of the fun nuggets of the article from behind the paywall? Oh, I think really all it was was just sort of basically putting my flag down and saying like, oh, by the way, in case you didn't know, I knew Joe Exotic before he was famous on Netflix. I spent a week with him in 2011. he was famous on Netflix. I spent a week with him in 2011. He had two boyfriends then as well. And one was John Finlay, the guy with no teeth or very jagged. Certainly he could maybe benefit from what are the teeth called? Just plastic teeth. Magic teeth. Magic teeth. He'd be a great candidate. He actually seems to have magic teeth now. Back then he had non-magic. He had muggle teeth. Harry Potter joke.

But there was a different other boyfriend. The other third leg of their relationship was someone else. He was a... I can't even remember his name that clearly. Anyway, I don't know that there was much of a scoop in it, except that Joe was, more or less as you see him on the Netflix show, obsessed with Carole Baskin, told me that he thought Carole Baskin had murdered her husband and fed him to the tigers. And what else is there to say, really?

But I'd also mistreating the animals. Basically, you could see that the animals, more than the tigers, the primates and bears especially, seem to be going out of their minds behind bars. Yeah. And the other guy you spoke to to because this was a show you did called america's most dangerous pets and the other guy you spoke to was tim stark tim stark he was the one who actually let loose a baboon called tatiana who clambered onto me yes and then he encouraged tim encouraged tatiana to give me a kiss. And she sort of, you know, the first thing I'm supposed to say about the baboon is, like other baboons I've seen at zoos, Tatiana seemed to have a very protuberant rear end.

Is that because she was in heat or are baboons' bums always like that? A lot of them are like that, aren't they? It's like the most extreme case of hemorrhoids you've ever seen in your life extraordinary like an enormous kind of donut of monkey leather and so you're obviously trying i'm thinking like okay i'm going to try not to touch tatiana's hindquarters because that's going to be feel really odd and then tatiana extended a kiss and i genuinely had the impression that there was some sort of primate to primate connection tatiana had taken a shine to me because i'd had a lot of worries about being attacked by either a

monkey or a baboon or yeah there were moments in the show where you looked genuinely frightened i'd be because i'd read so much about chimpanzee attacks and when a chimpanzee goes for you it's game over they are depending on what you read either five to ten times as powerful as an adult human male and will typically either rip off your face rip off your nose or rip off your genitals none of which i was particularly excited about happening. Right. It doesn't seem good. But Tatiana,

instead of that, it became a kind of, instead of aggression, what I felt was a sort of erotic energy, but I did not actually snog her. But what did you, how did you feel about Joe Exotic? Because you didn't,

there wasn't too much of an implication in the film that he was trouble. I mean, I suppose there was certainly a suggestion that this was not an ideal environment for the animals and some of his ideas about, oh, you know, wouldn't it be great if tigers and bears coexisted? Because that would be an inspiring message. Tigers and bears. I was like, why would you have tigers and bears in a cage together to show people how, you know, if they can get along, we can all get along. You know, great message for kids. You know, we can all just get along with each other. And you're like, OK. Do you think when people like Joe Exotic are saying things like that, do you think that it's total bullshit that they're just feeding you a line and it's just like, I'm just going to say this because it sounds fun? Or do you think they genuinely believe that? I think it's a little bit of both.

I think there's definitely part of it is a marketing spiel. And I think at some level he slightly believes it. It's probably more bullshit than sort of sincere because one of the things that i noticed about joe and there was a challenge at the time was he'd get lost in his own bullshit like he would say things i knew he didn't really believe you know if you said like well wouldn't the tigers be better off not in tiny cages like or wouldn't you just be better working on saving natural habitats you know well it's people working on that like he would just sort of

palm that off or you would say i remember saying to him um why are you breeding more animals more tigers like because it's one thing to save tigers that are already in cages owned by people who can't handle it and then you're like okay i'll take your tigers and we'll let them live out their days over here but joe was breeding he was bringing new lives into existence he was doing that because for the first few months of a tiger's life they're harmless enough to be sat down with children for photographs and people will pay a lot of money for that so that was one of his few guaranteed ways of making money so i said to him why are you breeding tigers expecting that he was going to say that and he said so that when all the tigers are dead in the wild we can repopulate the

wild and i remember thinking like that's not even your message like did you not read your own publicity material it was one of those weird things where you're with a contributor and you just think like, dude, get on your brief. That's not even the lie that you're supposed to tell. The lie you're supposed to tell is a different lie. You know, that doesn't make, no one thinks that you can release tigers raised in captivity back into the wild. They can't survive. the wild they can't survive you are saying something completely nonsensical and it's sort of detrimental to the documentary that we have a spokesperson for this practice who can't even remember his own lines you know what i mean and also he's just been telling you as well that

if someone came to try and shut the zoo down he would execute all the animals which by the way would make more sense than saying we can release them back into captivity that's the thing about the show about tiger king that i think a lot of people have said is that it's just grim like when people started talking about the show initially a couple of weeks back when it became clear that we were going to be in lockdown and people wanted to watch stuff and binge on box sets or whatever. And they said, oh, you've got to see the Tiger King. It's crazy.

These crazy characters and it's funny and hilarious. And actually, even by the end of the first episode, which is as far as I got, it's like this isn't funny or hilarious at all. It's depressing and grim. And all the main characters are in one way or another a disaster area really and the animals are adjuncts to a a well a human menagerie of sort of misbehavior and folly and ridiculousness not to say that i didn't enjoy you know chris smith our mutual friend exact it

and yes i did was instrumental in putting putting it together and i think they did a great job of organizing a massive kind of complex and chaotic material and there's moments of extraordinary power spoiler alert if you haven't seen it there's a person who dies about halfway through or two-thirds of the way through did you make it that far no a person who dies about halfway through or two thirds of the way through. Did you make it that far? No, but I've read about that. It blindsides you and the person's mum talks about it and the other contributors are all reacting different ways. And I thought that was really shocking.

That was the thing. There were lots of things I didn't know in it, but that was the part that really blindsided me and shocked me. Hey, everybody in the modern time. They got to get themselves a podcast. I will do yours and you'll do mine. We're sorting out the problems of the world so fast. One of the rewards that has come out of this lockdown period for me as a father is spending some time with my teenage boys and really bonding with them about music, which is something I always fantasized about. Fatherhood wise, I always thought, oh, God, I can't wait to enthuse with them about some of the music I love. And now that's actually come true. And we've had a lot of sessions where after we eat together in the evening,

we'll sit around and we'll use Spotify and DJ to each other. You know, we'll say, have you heard this? I'll play them some orbital track and they'll play me something by, you know, Thundercat or whoever it might be. And it's been really enjoyable. And my 15 year old has suddenly got into the Beatles. So most of the time he's pretty grumpy and monosyllabic. I hope he wouldn't mind me saying, but in the moments where he does get more chatty, he'll just suddenly light up and

say, Oh yeah, I was, uh, I've been listening to a lot of the beatles they're pretty good aren't they i'm like yeah they are good and it takes me back to kind of discovering the beatles which i didn't do until at the very end of my teens what about you were you always into them well i know i was about 12 when i went through a big beatles phase right and but i say that big but my parents had um the red album which i listened to, you know, as like 10, 11, 12. So that was always part of the soundtrack of the house, which was a love me do and Michelle and things like that. And then when I was about 12, I got the Blue one. And then it blew my mind.

I was like, oh, my God, didn't know the beatles did things like this and we also had sergeant pepper in the house so blue compilation has got i am the walrus and stuff like that does it it's got all this i guess singles and the hits from 66 to 70 i would say yeah i am the walrus here there and everywhere and come together and then i think around the same time maybe my brother brought home abbey road oh yeah when i was about 12 because he was two years older and so that was my key beatles phase my mum used to listen to the beatles when i was growing up a little bit when she was around with friends so to me it just sounded like oh well this is my parents music this is boring and i kind of ignored it.

I just discounted it for years and years. And not until I was about 17 or 18 did I start listening to them and then thought, oh, okay, right. I get it. I think I did get it. I do remember when my brother brought Abbey Road home and put it on, and I was like, what's this? And the first track, well, one of the tracks,

I don't know if it's the first one but the i want you she's so heavy which is just this whole heavy guitar arpeggio oh man and it's amazing it's a great track but i remember thinking like it sounded a shade more metal-y or aggressive than i was used to yeah and it's more primal somehow i'm feeling a little bit like oh hang on what's this but then quite quickly I got down with it. And then it was about two years later that I got the White Album. So I suppose it took a little while to go all the way with all of it. I Want You, She's So Heavy is the song that got my son into the rest of them. Because I played it before the lockdown.

I went to pick him up from school one day. And on the way back, I stuck it on. And I said, have you ever heard this? And it was a really great moment. He was sort of staring out of the window and not being too chatty. And I couldn't tell if it was because he was bored or just thought that I was a dick or I don't know, any number of options. And then we got home and parked just as it was finishing. Down, down, down, down, down, was finishing down down down and if you know that track it's fucking epic and

it just gets madder and madder and bigger and darker and it's a sort of wall a wash of feedback that starts building up i mean it's really elemental and then suddenly it just goes and ends like the tapes run out or something. And my son just sort of turned around. He was like, wow, fucking hell. Really? That's great. Yeah, it was an extraordinary moment.

I loved it. Anyway, so after a few days of him getting into the Beatles, I said, well, let's watch. Give me some truth, which is the documentary about Lennon making Imagine in 1971, I think. And have you seen that doc? No. It's quite good. I'm semi-obsessed with Lennon. Like I go through phases of being really, really fascinated by him

and watching a lot of stuff about him. Do you ever go through those? I mean, my love for the Beatles has been a consistent background note from when I was 12 onwards, but I've never sought i never read the lives of john lennon by albert goldman and although i dipped into it i i did read revolution in the head oh yeah me and mcdonald's book the song by song deconstruction

yeah it's great so i've never gone full sort of obsessive fan as i have say maybe with the doors or with prince at one time or with, you know, rap in the early 90s. So I don't think I've ever... There's a lot about Lennon that I still probably wouldn't know. He's really a fascinating character. So many kind of strange contradictions and... Anyway, he's good value, very good.

Like, one of the amazing things about him was that he genuinely didn't seem to have much of a filter. He would genuinely say whatever he wanted. And you couldn't imagine him ever sort of turning around to a guy after doing an interview and saying, Oh, actually, do you mind losing that bit that I said about so-and-so? You know, he couldn't give a fuck. And I'm kind of, I suppose I'm so the opposite that I find that fascinating. And also it scares me the idea of actually knowing someone like that.

And what would it be like? Like, for example, I've always been hung up about How Do You Sleep? You know that song? Yes. The one that you wrote about Paul McCartney. Yeah, right. So this is, I'm semi-obsessed with this and keep crapping on about it but um i just think how could you write a song like that about your friend about this guy you

were in a band with so to give it some context if people don't know the song it was lennon's riposte to this song that was on paul mccartney's album ram from 1971 and mccartney wrote this song too many people and some of it seemed to be a little bit of a dig at john and yoko who were in that phase of campaigning for peace by staying in bed and holding press conferences in bed and in bags and is there a salient lyric in that one that was construed as barbed? I think the line is, too many people preaching practices. So literally that was it. Oh, and there's another line that says,

you took your lucky break and broke it in two. So those are the two lines that could possibly be about John Lennon, right? But John Lennon obviously listened to it and thought, fuck you, that's about me. Fuck you, Paul McCartney. And then writes this really long, mad song called How Do You Sleep? Just taking him down in four verses or something. And there's no ambiguity because he references lyrics.

It's not it's coded only in as much as Paul's not named. But there's yesterday is referenced and just another day is referenced and so on. That's right. The only thing you've done was yesterday. And since you've gone, you're just another day. And you live with straights who tell you you was king. Jump when your mama tell you anything. I mean, fucking hell, that's hardcore.

But I think at that point he probably hated Paul, didn't he? Yeah. The sound you make is music to my ears. Ooh. But afterwards he always sort of said, oh, no, it was just bands. Paul was fine with it. I love how in Beatles lore there's certain things that always come up. That's one. Another one is that when John died, Paul was asked how he felt,

and he said, yeah, it's a drag. And then he walked to that back right and i think he didn't mean anything horrible by it just came out wrong right but i always felt bad for mccartney because you would think something like that happens how are you able to express the extent of all the confusion of feelings and someone sticks a mic in your face and you just say, it's a drag. It's not brilliant phrasing. The messaging is not ideal. No, you're right.

It's not candle in the wind. Anyway, look, to wrap things up, I have emailed you an audio file, which is a very exciting discovery that came to light a few years ago. It's an earlier version of How Do You Sleep with even more pointed lyrics.

This is quite a big discovery. It was a massive discovery. I can't believe you didn't hear about it. It came to light in 2017. They were remastering the Give Me Some Truth doc for what would have been Lennon's 70th birthday, and they found this take with these lyrics that are going to blow your mind.

Are we going to listen to it? What do you think? I do not think the cheesy music you make is good If Stevie Wonder asked you to do a song Comparing race relations to a piano keyboard I bet you would Some people think your eyes are like those of a sweet puppy dog But to me they just look like two giant piles of shit

Paul McCartney I'm upset so I'm lashing out at you Oh Oh Oh my coffee hurt my feelings So I'm trying to hurt Paul The kind is too So there you go That's amazing.

That actually is kind of an astonishing little piece of musical history. Yes. Do you think it's definitely about Paul? LAUGHTER 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. 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 Buxton 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. Hey, welcome back, podcats. Thanks very much indeed to Louis. I'm very grateful to Lou for his time. I'm also very grateful to Gear for Music, an online music equipment store that I've been using recently for my podcasting needs.

And it has served me very well. I told them I'd give them a shout out. Because they've been helping me find the right gear for another podcast project. That I've been involved with. With a charity. That I'll say more about if and when it all comes together. But Gear 4 Music have also been, I know, helping out other podcasters, working for charities and for various good causes.

If you're involved in getting a podcast together or you're a musician or whatever, then I would really recommend their site. They're friendly and efficient, and they've got like loads of stuff. There's a link in the description, should you wish to check them out. What else?

I'm going to wrap it up fairly quickly this week, because I've got to get back. I have a Zoom call with a future lockdown guest on the podcast. Hope you're doing all right out there. I've noticed that certain gigs that have been cancelled during the summer are starting to be rescheduled for later in the year, October and November. I don't know what's happening about my book tour. Obviously everything is still so up in the air. People don't exactly know what the exit from the lockdown is going to look like

and what form it will take. It may be that I don't actually get out and about on tour until early next year i'm not sure i will keep you posted when i know anything my website is currently being overhauled but i hope it's going to be ready in a new form more easily maintainable form so i might actually keep it somewhat updated in the next few weeks. But I'll let you know about that too. So this is valuable waffle, isn't it? Here's a load of stuff that may or may not be happening. And I'm not sure when.

Thanks very much, Buckles. You're welcome. Thank you very much indeed. Once again to Louis for his time. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support on this episode. Thanks to Matt Lamont as always for his superb edit whiz bottery. Thanks to all the folks at ACAST

for their continued support of this podcast. Thank you very much for listening I hope you're doing alright and until next time we meet, take excellent care. For what it's worth, and I hope this isn't going to creep you out, but, well, I love you. Bye! Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when my bum's up.

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when my bum's up. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when my bum's up. Thank you. Thank you.