THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.146 - STEWART LEE

Starting point is 00:00:00 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, how are you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here, out in the Norfolk countryside with my dog friend Rosie. Rosie, on the last day of January 2021 and towards the end of the COVID coronavirus or SARS-CoV-2

Starting point is 00:00:49 pandemic. Yeah, I think that might be excessively optimistic, don't you? Yes, okay, Rosie. I know the crisis is still raging. We're in the midst of lockdown three. A few weeks ago, the Capitol building in America was attacked by people who passionately and genuinely believe the baseless claims of the outgoing president that the election was stolen. Baseless claims is my DJ name. DJs like bass though, don't they? Yeah, I'm not getting many gigs. Anyway, I just thought it'd be nice to have a big helping of excessive optimism for a change. And although it is so cold that my fingers are nearly falling off, I shouldn't have worn fingerless gloves, it is at least not pouring with rain today.

Starting point is 00:01:42 And you are about to hear an enjoyable, upbeat chat with my guest for podcast number 146, the British comedian, writer, musical theatre director and left-field music champion, Stuart Lee. Stu-fax. Stuart Graham Lee, currently aged 52, was born in Wellington, Shropshire, and was raised in the West Midlands by his adoptive mum after she and her husband split when Stuart was four. Some personal details there. He filled his teenage years with book reading, listening to music and going to see the bands he heard on John Peel's legendarily eclectic and influential shows on BBC Radio 1.

Starting point is 00:02:18 Stuart had received what he has referred to as a waifs and strays bursary that enabled him to attend a local independent school, later earning himself a place at Oxford University, where he studied English in the late 1980s. At Oxford, he met Richard Herring, with whom he ended up writing on radio shows like On the Hour, starring Steve Coogan, Amanda Iannucci and Chris Morris. Lee and Herring's popularity as a live double act led them to getting their own BBC TV show, Fist of Fun, in 1995. And then in 1998, This Morning, with Richard, not Judy.

Starting point is 00:02:56 Both shows featured sketches and satirical commentary on modern culture. I'm saying that like I'm quoting it from somewhere, but I just made that up. All the while, Stewart was honing his skills as a solo stand-up comedian. Though for a few years at the start of the 2000s, after he and Richard Herring parted ways, he stopped performing live altogether and instead shifted his efforts to writing. His debut novel, The Perfect Fool, was published in 2001, as well as working on music journalism and script editing jobs that included comedian Harry Hill's first TV show. In 2005, Stuart's musician friend Richard Thomas

Starting point is 00:03:39 enlisted him to collaborate on Jerry Springer the Opera, which, despite massive critical success, was beset by controversy, and Stewart found himself involved in a bitter legal dispute started by the group Christian Voice over whether or not the musical was blasphemous. By 2006, Stewart had re-established himself as a stand-up comedian, and regular excellent stand-up specials have followed since then, as well as four series of his BAFTA-winning TV stand-up show, Stuart Lee's Comedy Vehicle, on BBC Two. Stuart currently resides in North London with his wife, the comedian and former guest of this podcast, Bridget Christie,

Starting point is 00:04:22 and their two children. For the last few years, in between numerous other projects, Stuart has been working on a documentary about legendary Birmingham cult musician Robert Lloyd and his band, The Nightingales. The doc is called King Rocker and is being broadcast on Sky Arts on Saturday, February the 6th at 9pm. If you go to the episode notes of this podcast, you'll find a link to the trailer of King Rocker, as well as a load of bits and pieces related to my conversation with Stuart, which, as well as much music chat, touched on those 90s TV years with Richard Herring, and the dangers of being misunderstood when it

Starting point is 00:05:06 comes to referencing other comedians in his live shows. But our conversation started with me saying to Stuart, how do you feel about podcasting as a medium? Back at the end with more news and waffle, but first, here is a song that contains a bit more info on the nature of the conversation you're about to hear. Have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. Yes, yes, 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, 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 how do you feel about podcasting as a medium well i've only ever listened to two i listened to one about walking around london which is about acton other than that i've only ever listened to ones where people go you'd probably need to listen to this because there's people libeling you in it or something okay right so other than that i've only ever listened to one but i know that they're very where people go, you'd probably need to listen to this because there's people libeling you in it or something. Okay, right.

Starting point is 00:06:27 So other than that, I've only ever listened to one, but I know that they're very popular. Yeah. I know what they are. Like, would you listen to an audio book? No. Do you like listening to conversations, long-form conversations? No, I just listen to music. But people these days say to me,

Starting point is 00:06:38 well, what do you listen to if you don't listen to podcasts? And I listen to music, but I'm always the last person to come to anything. I only got Netflix because Bridget filmed a special for it yeah and she wouldn't let me watch it and so when she was out I got Netflix and I could when I watched her special that's why I got Netflix I got Netflix to see my own wife and then I realized there are all these things on it and it's amazing but I haven't done spotify or anything like that yet i still buy the physical media okay right spotify is quite a good resource

Starting point is 00:07:11 and it is becoming better and better because it just is now a good database for more or less anything although there are gaps and for someone like you who's into fairly left field and often quite obscure stuff i would imagine there'd be a lot of gaps. I just feel a bit overwhelmed, Adam. I can't cope with the amount of information. When I wrote a novel in the 90s that isn't very good, just about the time I was finishing it, the internet was invented, or one could have access to it easily anyway.

Starting point is 00:07:38 Yeah. And so I never kind of... The final research took me about five years because suddenly I was finding out all these things that are relevant to it and i couldn't sort of turn it off yeah so i find it's really difficult like that and also i like sonic youth for example and suddenly every like little side project they did where they went and improvised in a shed somewhere for two days with some old jazz guys someone's recorded it and i'll be on some place where you

Starting point is 00:08:05 can download it and suddenly there's no end to things and it drives you a bit sort of mad and the thought that i now would have to get on top of loads of interesting people talking about things as well it's just it's too much yeah you have to sort of realign the way you interact with it and you need to sort of stick to your interests yeah you know because the internet wants to feed you things and so you just put in one search query and then that's it it's off yeah and from then on it is just feeding you stuff and saying you might like this you might like this i noticed you like that i like that about it the other night i was reading a an old book of scottish folk tales it was a 19th century book and i noticed that in the front there was a sticker saying it had been owned by a dr wt

Starting point is 00:08:52 crow and his address was there so i googled him so he was head of a lot of occult organizations in the 20s and 30s a lot of those sort of occult organizations that now have sort of gone a bit far right you know they're all a bit awkward viking runes and things he knew alistair crowley he also knew some guy who set up some weird commune in west london i started reading about him then i realized that his family had all disowned him and his daughter had gone off and um had written really bad pulp fiction that she disowned but also the only thing she'd done apart from the pulp fiction was a travel guide in the 1930s to walks around Herefordshire

Starting point is 00:09:30 which I realised I owned. And then she was the niece of Elsa Lanchester who was the bride of Frankenstein. And she was the cousin of this weird guy that W.T. Crowe knew and Elsa Lanchester was married to that actor Henry... He's in loads of horror films

Starting point is 00:09:46 and he had an affair with Billie Holiday. It sort of all just spiralled out, like it just kind of went vroom vroom. But then the internet suggested to me that there was some amazing story to be told here about all these crazed overlapping things and I mean, we're going to talk about the film later, hopefully. That was part of the thing with that

Starting point is 00:10:02 is at some point we had to draw a line under it because Rob Lloyd's life connected out to so many mad things luckily he'd forgotten many of them or we couldn't afford the footage or there was simply no corroborative information relating to them so it did but i should probably say i've made this film with michael cumming who comedy fans will know did brass eye and toast of london and it's about a guy called robert lloyd who was um in bir Birmingham's first punk band the Prefects and is still going and doesn't play the hits because there aren't any and keeps writing new stuff and it's a sort of adventure about his mad life and um we made it ourselves and we were going to tour it around cinemas but then this virus happened

Starting point is 00:10:39 so we need to do something with it and then some Sky Arts are going to show it on the Sick the Feb but there were things that were nearly in it that are insane. But I just couldn't kind of verify. Even with the Internet, I couldn't verify them. Yeah. That's actually one of the motifs in the film, isn't it? It's the shifting nature of memory and the way that history, cultural history, is written and recorded. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:11:02 It starts with a disputed story of whether Frank Skinner was in the Prefects or not, which I really, right from the beginning, no one's quite certain. And the Prefects was one of his earlier bands. Yeah, it was the first one, yeah. Well, there was one called Dragon Mustard before that, but they have gone undocumented. Like, I'm sure you have an undocumented teenage band somewhere. I wish I did. I was never any good.

Starting point is 00:11:24 I always wanted to be in a band. But you were in bands, right? I was in one, yeah. What kind of music were you playing? It was copied off the Dream Syndicate, who were an American band that sounded like the four across with the Velvet Underground that are still going.

Starting point is 00:11:37 It was basically copied off them. So you were already into your left field music at that point? Yeah, well, yeah, I was, yeah. Did you have more accessible mainstream beginnings when you started listening to music or were you someone with friends or parents who got you into that kind of stuff the first group i saw live was the wombles wow so yeah the one then the next group i saw live was madness oh man i was listening to madness the

Starting point is 00:12:01 other night what were you listening to well i was playing some stuff to my son again from spotify they're a thing that works across the generations aren't they yeah i forgot though how how inventive it is and i played him ernie because i think maybe that's the first madness song i ever heard there was a girl who was into them and i was like wow what is this song and it's two minutes it's about about the machine. About the Pulse machine. Yeah, that's right. Electronic random number integrating equipment. Nice recall for the acronym. Yeah. And it's got about four very good hooks in it. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:12:34 And that's the thing. I don't know if you liked the Strokes back in the day, but on their first album, you were struck by the fact like every one of these songs has got about three or four really good ideas and really good hooks in it yeah and that's so fun when you hear an album like that and that's what madness were like all the time all the time and you know that's the thing you can put on in the car with the kid i love that sketch used to do actually of the dad trying to get the kids into music because i know that i am exactly like that really but you know and so when they uh played about uh the end of the year before last we took the kids who were nine and 12 at the time. It was fantastic.

Starting point is 00:13:08 I was so proud of them. We were in the bar getting served and we were at the front of the queue at the start of One Step Beyond, the saxophone started. And they went, One Step Beyond, and they ran back to their seats. It was just the best thing because the first half of the show,

Starting point is 00:13:24 they made the set look like Dublin Castle on Camden Parkway where they started out and they played all the stuff from that period on what looked like old equipment, then the second half was a beautifully designed rock show, it was fantastic

Starting point is 00:13:40 I really think they're one of the great British groups and luckily I've been able to run into a couple of them and thank them for that. And I don't think there's any shame in that. I think that you should do it. Just say it and go. That's great. I've never seen them. I'd love to. Yeah, but still, it's not remotely shit. It's really good. Yeah. And yeah, right. They're still tight.

Starting point is 00:14:01 Yeah. And they've got an edge for guys in their 60s. And yeah, right, they're still tight. Yeah. And they've got an edge for guys in their 60s. They've still got a slight edge of being a bit dangerous. And they look a bit like mean gangsters as well, who would be sarcastic. They got banned from Top of the Pops four times, I think. Did they?

Starting point is 00:14:17 Yeah. What four do you know? For things like just wandering off the stage at the end of the song and not paying attention to the instructions they were given by the floor manager and just making the whole thing look a bit shit and a bit amateurish yeah and that upset the bbc badly and then they would do things like let off fire extinguishers and get pissed because they had to spend the whole day they did about four or five rehearsals before the actual shoot and they just didn't see the point yeah and so they would just go to the bar and drink a lot and behave like you know naughty teens which is what a thing though what a program that was we why when i scripted when i script edited uh the harry hill show for channel four

Starting point is 00:15:01 this is what you do on these things and you do show these anecdotes it was produced and directed by Robin Nash who was a guru of light entertainment and had produced and directed Top of the Pops at the height of its powers in the 70s and he had brought from Top of the Pops a number of dictates namely that no

Starting point is 00:15:19 thing should go longer than 3 minutes so Harry would write something with loads of badges that went on for ages and then Nash wouldn't have it because it had to be less than three minutes so harry would write something with loads of badges that went on for ages and then nash wouldn't have it because it had to be less than three minutes and because he said all light entertainment has to be less than three minutes and there was never anything longer than three minutes on top of the pops and i went all right robin hang on you were producing and directing it weren't you when bohemian rhapsody was number one i was yes well that's longer than three minutes yes and so what i did was I told Roger and the boys

Starting point is 00:15:47 that they could sing the first half of it the first week. And if it stayed at number one, they could perform the second half. And that's actually what he did. He was so enslaved by notions of entertainment that he wouldn't let this masterpiece of pop run out at its natural length. But what an amazing privilege to have worked with him, really, because once you know the rules, you're allowed to break them.

Starting point is 00:16:13 And the problem with these kids today, Adam, is you don't know the rules in the first place before they break them. So, you know, it was brilliant. I wish it was still on, because I was number one in the charts after Christmas. Did you know that no oh right yeah an old routine of mine got sampled by asian dub foundation and they decided to release it as a single because it was about immigration and multiculturalism and the history of people coming to live in britain yeah so they

Starting point is 00:16:40 decided to they would release it and see if it could be number one on the day we left the eu and it was number one in all the sales charts for two weeks but not in the streaming chart i didn't have any idea and that is how distressingly cut off i am from no one knows about the charts now do they know and also i suppose that is reflected by or a symptom of the fact that there are no real music shows anymore. Watching King Rocker, your film, I was reminded and delighted by the clips of shows like Razzmatazz and Snub TV. I mean, Razzmatazz was a big tea time kids show, right? Yeah. What I love about the Razzmatazz clip is it goes from the Nightingales on Razzmatazz to a few seconds of david kidd jensen saying something as someone with a puppet comes and sits beside it when you think yeah that's what it was

Starting point is 00:17:31 like when it would go from sort of soft cell to some sort of puppets having a fight or something and then you know you get the strangest things on those shows sometimes right like the nightingales and ted chippington yeah and fuzzbox they were with weren't they yeah we've got a fuzzbox and we're going to use it here we're known as fuzzbox by then yeah there was a sort of feeling that things could break out in the most peculiar ways in the 80s and then leak into the mainstream and they didn't do it through astroturfing as they say on the internet or through viral campaigns or misinformation or hacking your Facebook account. Things just seem to sort of happen in weird ways.

Starting point is 00:18:09 Yes. Well, I suppose radio played a large part in that. John Peel was responsible for getting Oh Superman by Laurie Anderson into the charts, next to very accessible things. And then, yeah, you get those Saturday morning kids' show strange juxtapositions. It was great. And the voice said, Neither snow nor rain, Nor blue night,

Starting point is 00:18:42 Shall stay these couriers, For the swift completion Of their appointed round Isn't that amazing to think that O Superman by Laurie Anderson was on top of the pops? Because it's just a heart-stoppingly brilliant work of art that got into a place like that. It's fantastic when things like that happen. Do you remember how you responded to it when you first heard it?

Starting point is 00:19:11 Because I was on a diet of Adam and the Ants, madness, etc., kind of pretty accessible pop, and I didn't really know what to make of Oh Superman. I didn't know what to make of it. In fact, it's only in the last decade or so that I've found it overwhelming. You know, so many things change as you get older and you have kids or you experience loss. Certain things just don't seem to be fixed in time because they're changed by how you feel about them. And Oh Superman is something that I like it more and more as I get older. The wise of acknowledgement A claim, but what is the point?

Starting point is 00:19:48 Pay the rent and look for friends Pay your speech and to an end A claim for making people happy Halligating's something you make it snappy And popularity, it comes easily Yeah, popularity, it comes easily What was your relationship with the Nightingales then as a fan? How did you get into them?

Starting point is 00:20:13 Am I right in saying you're sort of a Brummie yourself? Well, I grew up in the suburbs of Birmingham. I lived some of my childhood just inside the border and some of it just outside it. True Brummies would say I wasn't. But my family were, and my cultural centre was Birmingham, and my family had all worked at Cadbury's actually on the shop floor. You can't get more Brummie than that working at the Cadbury's Chocolate Factory. So I came to them, like lots of people did through things in the 80s,

Starting point is 00:20:40 being a kid listening to John Peel, where they were absolutely ubiquitous. It's amazing how many people can't remember them because they were on John Peel all the time. Them and The Fall were the group that did the most sessions for him. Really? I never saw them in Birmingham because they split up before they played the kind of venues I could have seen them in. They never got to the level where they do the Birmingham Odeon,

Starting point is 00:21:00 like Big Country, that you could go to an all-ages show. They would still have been in the back rooms of pubs or nightclubs which were i managed to get in to things from about the age of 15 like that but they're a bit more tightly policed in birmingham because it was an old quaker city now very tight about rules and regulations you know but then i was really delighted when they got back together rob had about 10 missing years which is the sort of that's the downer emotional bit of the film yeah where was he was he doing for 10 years and then when they got back together rob had about 10 missing years which is the sort of that's the downer emotional bit of the film yeah where was he was he doing for 10 years and then when they got back together rob didn't really know who i was but he knew that i was doing a telford art center and i'd mentioned

Starting point is 00:21:35 that i like the nightingales and he turned up looking for some way of exploiting the situation which is what he does he's always looking for some way of using things for the band you know and then he asked me if i'd open for them when they did london and i don't like opening for bands i don't think it works no it's usually disastrous it worked in the 80s because in birmingham in the 80s we wanted to see the alternative comedy and there wasn't any in birmingham it was all in the comedy store and the comic strip in london and when phil jupiter something for billy bragg or peter richardson open for dexys,

Starting point is 00:22:05 you were delighted. But actually, it was all right doing The Nightingales. The people, the audience were fine. That's how I got to know him. What sort of date are we talking here? What sort of year are we talking? That's 15, 20 years ago. And then about 10 years ago, he said to me,

Starting point is 00:22:18 do you think there should be a documentary about The Nightingales? I said, what do you mean? He said, well, a bit like that Anvil film. And I think, well, not like that, you know, because you're not, I don't know. I think The Nightingales i said what do you mean he said a bit like that anvil film and i think well not like that you know because you're not i don't know i think the nightingales are really great but just not known so yeah but it took a long time to work it out i went to nobody wants to do it obviously because no one will fund anything like that yeah then as luck would have it i was talking to michael coming who i already knew because he directed the pilot of this show i did for BBC2, Comedy Vehicle

Starting point is 00:22:45 and then he went off to do Toast instead and he, not only did he really like the Nightingales but 30 years ago he'd submitted three proposals for documentaries to BBC2, to the Late Show or something, one about the Nightingales one about the comedian Ted Chippington and one about

Starting point is 00:23:02 Jake Thackeray, the folk singing comedian and I said well this is what we want to do so we worked out that he could edit and I could sort of front it and we raised some money by doing benefit shows where I did stand up and he showed the film he'd made about Brass Eye we asked Fire Records to help out with organising it we did a bit of crowdfunding

Starting point is 00:23:21 some really strange people that you wouldn't think would be fans of them gave us bits of money odd sort of wealthy punk fan benefactors yeah there's got to be a few there's got to be a few and um we made it for about a fifth of what it would cost to make an episode of stuart lee's comedy vehicle well it seems to be made in the spirit of some of the music itself you know it's kind of i'm glad you of amiably DIY and it's got a nice kind of occasionally cut up and collage-y feel to it. You do little things just for the sake of doing them and deconstructing rock docs a little bit. It has a critical relationship with itself, which I like. And it also, because there was only me and michael and that we weren't accountable to anyone when rob would suddenly tell us that he'd been a food critic

Starting point is 00:24:09 for gq we we could go off and follow that blind alley there was a couple of great blind alleys that we couldn't get down because we didn't have the money the time or anyone doing research we just couldn't track it down a lot of the footage we couldn't find or clear and there isn't much footage of the night girls anyway so that's sort of why it looks like it does right right right that i would say if i had one complaint and it's a very small one it would be that there wasn't more of their music in there yeah but you know these days it's like as we said before you go on spotify and it's all, well, there is no other footage of their music. Right, right. That's everything there is.

Starting point is 00:24:47 There's the Arena footage from 1980. There's the Razzmatazz footage of one single. There's the footage from German television of them doing a song on a flatbed truck in a square. And there's a pop video for Rockin' with Rita, but W-E-O-A own it and we couldn't afford to license it. And then there's the uh the two clips from um snub which we got somewhere when rob was doing his solo album in 1990 the shetland fiddler ali

Starting point is 00:25:13 bain who's thought of as a sort of miles davis of shetland fiddle and he had a show on scottish television where folk musicians did sets on a barge floating in the Clyde and Rob suddenly let slip that Ali Bain had invited him and the guitarist tank on that and had sort of told them that he was sick of folk music and how polite it all was and they should do something disruptive and they can't remember what they did and the footage was not broadcast and no one knows where it is and that was something I want to see what it was that they did that was so bad on a barge on the clyde in a folk show that couldn't be shown i managed to find the director through the sister of an old girlfriend nobody knew where it was so that kind of went missing but that's the

Starting point is 00:25:55 only bit of footage that existed that we couldn't use yeah that was it but luckily we've got spotify and i'm going to make a playlist to accompany this podcast. Yeah, right. And I will include those tracks that you recommended. Yeah. Tell me about the little clips that you sent to me. I asked you to send me a few of the tracks that meant a lot to you from the Nightingales. Well, I sent the first thing I think I put on there was Barbarella's by the Prefects,

Starting point is 00:26:22 which were the first Birmingham punk band. And Barbarella's was the Prefects, which were the first Birmingham punk band. And Barbarella's was the club that everyone played at. Yeah. Barbarella's, interestingly, is where the scene that sort of spawned Duran Duran started. And Duran obviously is a character in Barbarella's. So that must have been in the ether. Right. But, you know, I missed all that.

Starting point is 00:26:39 I was too young. I missed it. I knew it was there, but I missed it. Someone describes Rob Lloyd as being the Birmingham Johnny Rotten. But actually what becomes clear almost immediately is that he's much nicer than Johnny. I don't know Johnny Rotten. Right. And I like a lot of his stuff and I think he's funny. But he doesn't seem like someone that you'd want to hang out with necessarily. Whereas Robert Lloyd really does. he's a sweet guy and it sort of struck me that actually

Starting point is 00:27:06 maybe one of the things you need to become well known or remembered or legendary especially in music is to be a bit of a cock yeah and to be a dictator with your group yeah and many of the people that you and i like i'm sure mark smith being an obvious example are people who didn't mind rubbing people up the wrong way a lot of the time. They were single-minded to the point of mania. Although with Mark, I think there's another thing. With Mark, as if I know him, I don't. I think there's a thing where he sometimes behaved in a particular way

Starting point is 00:27:36 to sort of provide you with an anecdote, if you know what I mean. And certainly he gave you a priceless one, which is that you go to an interview and end up essentially being assaulted and hit over the head and yeah i mean that's much better isn't it then i went to his house and i put the tape recorder on and it wasn't even his house was it was at your house yeah he was in london so for people who don't remember we had a segment in the adam and joe show called vinyl justice where we went around to artists houses and went through their record collections and we were dressed up as policemen

Starting point is 00:28:09 and doing these stupid accents and going oh dude you got some criminal records here i see yeah that was basically the whole joke and he didn't want us to come up to salford to do it so next time he was in london he and i think a guy from the record company showed up to this basement flat where I was living in Clerkenwell. Immediately drank pretty much a whole bottle of vodka between them. And Mark was immediately cantankerous, quite, you know, in a sort of spirited, fun way. But just being weird and oblique and answering strangely to everything. We said, it's a barking at us every now and again. And then speaking in a kind of staccato way while he was staring at us menacingly.

Starting point is 00:28:53 It's a really funny clip because it's sort of not like any other pop interview, is it? No. It's sort of like something from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And Joe didn't really know what to expect. Like, I was the big Fall fan. Joe was just sort of like something from the texas chainsaw massacre and joe didn't really know what to expect like i was the big fall fan joe was just sort of going along with it and so he wasn't quite as reverent yeah and maybe markie smith picked up on that and ended up just putting a plastic bag over joe's head and then wrestling him down to the couch and then sat on his head and then lit up a ciggy and sort of sat on his head in this

Starting point is 00:29:27 kind of very regal way as if he was sitting on his throne and occasionally he would punch joe's head through the plastic bag and take a drag on his ciggy and look imperious it was very good yeah well i mean you get a display of him you don't get that with rob and i think one of the nice things about the film and why people might like it now is you see a load of people just hanging out in pubs talking yeah and then being in crowded small rooms enjoying themselves or on moorland covered in snow walking around and they're all things that we can't do now and it suddenly seems irrespectful whether you like the music or know the band the kind of postcard from the past of human

Starting point is 00:30:08 civilization yeah that's right you and he having a fry up in a calf yeah but the nightingales was a cliche that people talk about things being like a family but it was so nice to be around them they were so helpful to each other and tolerant and supportive

Starting point is 00:30:24 and they all knew their place and they always thought of the greater good of the thing they seem to have reached an equilibrium yes what's the name of the drummer and the singer now who's kind of given them another list of life yeah she's superb isn't she yeah she's great Suggs is her godfather I just found out no way but yeah she's fantastic and what a great character as well and what an inspiration to young girls that want to play the drums. You know, I mean, she's great. And to taxidermists. Anyone who wants to do taxidermy.

Starting point is 00:30:51 Yeah, she's fantastic. And she's really turned it around musically and in terms of the administration and the sort of spirit of it. But, you know, all these people working as a waitress in a cocktail bar in Wolverhampton, as well as being, obviously, one of the greatest drummers in rock and roll, I think. And she helps write the songs as well now, doesn't she? Yeah, they all do, yeah, they all do. Right. She does the words, yeah. I had never heard of the Nightingales at all because I wasn't really a John Peel guy in the 80s.

Starting point is 00:31:38 And after I watched your doc, I went and took a deep dive on Spotify and started with the most recent records, which are really good. They're immediately catchy and enjoyable. Lots of good ideas. And she's very good. Her vocal counterpoint to him is great.

Starting point is 00:31:56 Yeah, it's got a bit of a Lee Hazelwood, Nancy Sinatra thing going on as well. I think he likes that male-female. Yeah, Pixies as well, I thought of with kim deal and frank black but there is a moment talking about the fact that he is quite vulnerable sometimes and you know straightforwardly emotional there's a moment that i found quite moving when he and you are in his place and he's describing the moment towards the beginning of the 90s where he got dropped by his label. And he just had that full experience of just suddenly thinking,

Starting point is 00:32:32 what am I doing? Like, I'm totally irrelevant now. Have I just wasted my time? Is the problem with me that I'm actually just not very good? And that horrible feeling, which I'm sure anyone creative has felt very often. And he's on the verge of getting a bit teary when he's recalling that time because it was obviously such a desperate and bleak time for him. But it's funny to watch you in that scene because you're looking very sympathetic because it's a really obvious, you know, this guy is really vulnerable. But then he shifts to taking the piss out of himself a little bit laughing at himself and you can almost see the look of relief on your face well you know well that's the thing is i'm not a journalist at the end of the day and there were probably some tragic and dramatic elements of the story that aren't told because i don't have the heartlessness that a real journalist would have to dig you know and that's

Starting point is 00:33:22 why you know we were lucky that we got that scene with rob talking to his son louis because you get more out of him there and also as a funny little bit we picked up i mean rob wrote was offered a sitcom pilot by the bbc in the mid 90s another mad thing yeah but the writer him and stephen wells the late great stephen wells fell out in the pub between being offered it and finishing it so we did a read-through of that sitcom with a cast of modern day comedy celebrities and bridget christie my wife really likes the group and we just picked her up sort of almost by accident having a conversation with him about his stage fright and how he copes with it and whatever that again i wouldn't have got that out of him but the funny thing about that interview in his house when he was talking about being dropped by a virgin,

Starting point is 00:34:06 what I like is there's a sort of clothes-drying rack behind him throughout it. There are loads of things like that that I've noticed. There's a kid falls over in the opening five seconds. The child falls over in the square behind us. He does a little ninja roll. It's like two little mad things that you notice having watched it hundreds of times i really enjoyed it i watched it with my son big thumbs up from him

Starting point is 00:34:31 it was great and he's tough man he's a real snob my 18 year old um is that a luke drost um poster you've got there yes he's great he's really good yeah that's right i've got one of your tour posters in fact with the uh he did yeah he did some artwork for this film which has been really good yeah that's right i've got one of your tour posters in fact with the he did yeah he did some artwork for this film which has been really good as well yeah he's brilliant yeah the proper poster artist what are you up to at the moment i am just sort of doing this really i mean i'm in a slightly dangerous position i feel with the podcast because i could kind of just make a living doing this for the rest of my life and never do anything else and i think most people would be fine with that it's not like anyone be going oh no you're not going to do any more failed tv pilots oh no you're not going to do any more

Starting point is 00:35:16 but i remember the last time we talked like this or perhaps at all in fact was 15 years ago um at the hundred club were we on one of those bills that was david cross yeah that's right it was david cross was over in the uk and he would do a set every night and he was the headliner and then there was lots of other british acts yeah that uh would do bits and pieces and you and i were on the bill one night in um 1995 i uh i went traveling around america you know on greyhound buses and i ended up in um la where um david baddiel was in a hotel with his manager for some reason and with the spice girls as well who were called spice at the time right they were in the bar and i remember talking to them they'd been taken to la to sort of be waltzed around,

Starting point is 00:36:06 and I remember thinking, I felt so sorry for them. I thought they were so out of their depth. I felt they were being exploited, and they clearly hadn't got a hope, and it was not fair. Anyway, the deal said, we're going to this pilot. They're shooting this comedy pilot. Do you want to come? So I went, and it was the pilot of Mr. Show.

Starting point is 00:36:24 Oh, wow, Bob and Dave. It was David Cross and Bob Odenkirk. Yeah, and i went and it was the pilot of mr show oh wow bob and dave david cross and bob odenkirk yeah and i remember thinking it's pretty funny but i can't believe now that i was at at that and then i never heard of them again you know because back then things that happened in america you didn't couldn't just look at them on youtube and stuff and then suddenly he was in like the chipmunks films and stuff and yeah i didn't really know that he was a thing you know but i thought he'd be amazed i remember saying to him that night that i was at the pilot of mr show and he just sort of took it in his stride i would have gone oh wow really yeah you know what another thing

Starting point is 00:36:54 happened to me like that once i was in about 1989 i went to this show in edinburgh there's only about 10 people there there was a kind of weird band on at the end it was americans they all lived in a commune somewhere in the desert there was like a weird band on at the end that were like a captain b fuck on a group it started with a woman doing a lecture about cloud patterns on a screen and the middle of it was a bloke and he had a big jar of mayonnaise and then he vomited it all up in a perfect spiral shape like a massive spiral about 10 feet across like a shell yeah coil you know and i went a number of i really miss those days i still like going but you don't see that kind of thing so much anymore then about seven years later i was in san francisco and i went to see the boredoms the

Starting point is 00:37:39 japanese sort of hardcore noise band and there weren't many people there and i was standing behind this bloke and I realised it was him I said to him I saw you in Edinburgh about seven years ago eating a big jar of mayonnaise and vomiting it up into a spiral

Starting point is 00:37:53 and he went oh yeah yeah that was me yeah and then he just went I thought you'd think that was amazing wouldn't you that someone had seen that there was no one there

Starting point is 00:38:03 and also correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think he went on to be famous for that it's not like it's not like um loads of people saw the mayonnaise vomiting spiral man i thought he would be really impressed but these people operate on a different wavelength in that respect and i think that's part of what makes them fascinating for people like you and i perhaps I was thinking this about the doc about King Rocker do you think people like you and me are attracted to these kinds of figures MES and Robert Lloyd and Ted Chippington maybe because they are very different their DNA is quite distinct

Starting point is 00:38:37 from people like us and I think of myself more than you because I think actually you straddle those two worlds well it's kind of you to say that but you know if I was who I pretend to want to be I would be Robert Lloyd or Ted Chippington I wouldn't be someone who'd had a BBC series you know and I think the film turns in a way on the axis of a fantastically useful quote that Frank Skinner gave us Frank turned up and I don't know if he'd given the fact that he was being interviewed any thought before but he was able to come out with a number he's a very literate bloke anyway but he was able to come up with a number of perfectly formed sentences that seemed to sum up the film and actually sort of helped us in where it was going and one of them

Starting point is 00:39:21 he was singer of the prefects for five rehearsals he wrote a song with them and then rob replaced him and you know we said to frank do you wish you'd stayed as the singer of punk band the prefects brackets rather than becoming you know this tv personality and whatever and he said um i think all cult figures wish they'd had mainstream success and all mainstream figures wish they had the sort of kudos or whatever of cult figures and it really sums it up and it's difficult to have it both ways because they require the first position being a cult figure often requires a bloody-minded rejection of opportunity in uh the face as paul morley puts it in the film of a loyalty to some insane idea of purity that doesn't really exist whereas being

Starting point is 00:40:06 a mainstream figure requires a number of moral and personal compromises that someone like rob would probably not be able to make for various reasons not necessarily moral reasons but also reasons about having to deliver a certain consistency of product you know which isn't the way of those sorts of artists yes and um you know frank just delivered it and i yeah i think he's got a good feel for that because he's one of those comedians who's also into that sort of music and he has that familiarity with those sorts of figures well actually he does have it both ways in a way although he's sort of in denial about it he always maintains he's an entertainer and not an artist that was a distinction that he drew

Starting point is 00:40:44 but his stand-up is absolutely of the highest quality and it's deceptively good because it's very accessible and yet the construction of the sentences of language that he chooses is very literary and he has that thing i've said this before in things and i always come back here probably sounds really pretentious but it's a said, you know, the funniest things are a delicate idea in delicately put or an indelicate idea delicately put. And that totally sums up what Frank does. And as far as his standup goes, he's an artist,

Starting point is 00:41:13 but he's also a mainstream entertainer who can do a chat show about football or whatever. So I think he has managed to get into both best of both worlds. One of those qualities, I think that certainly I admire or envy in those singular figures is that quality of not over analyzing not seeming to be an overthinker there's a bit when robert says to you problem with you is that you analyze things too much and i thought yeah yeah that's my problem as well when i was working on jerry spring of the opera

Starting point is 00:41:44 with richard thomas it was richard thomas's idea i was brought in to make a story out of it really Oh, yeah, yeah, that's my problem as well. When I was working on Jerry Springer the Opera with Richard Thomas, it was Richard Thomas' idea I was brought in to make a story out of it, really, but the choreographer, Jenny Arnold, was great. She was one of those ageless people who was fitter than I'd ever been in my life at any point, even though she was probably past pension age. And when I would be sitting around trying to direct it and worrying about what to do, she had a very practical saturday

Starting point is 00:42:05 night special attitude to it having been the sort of person that had done choreography for bbc shows where loads of young people dance on a pier she'd go well just get something on its feet just do something and then see what happens and find it frustrating that i would be thinking and thinking about what was the right thing to do and you have to get on with something and then see what happens and um that's what i like about stand-up is in the time that it takes the tv process to analyze your proposal look at it come back with notes bounce it up to some committee and then for all the people that were on the committee to leave their jobs and work somewhere else and be replaced by someone else that's right that can be years and years during which time as a stand-up you can get out do 30 warm-up gigs around little clubs working the stuff out do a hundred day tour get it filmed write it do it

Starting point is 00:42:53 bang get on to the next one it's really like a live art form but it sounds to me like you need to do sounds to me adam buxton in your room there yeah man with your Yorkshire tea, that you need to do a thing just quickly. Yeah, that is all, man. Don't worry about it. You know, the other extreme is you get people that just produce stuff all the time and overwhelm you with it. But I think you just need to do a thing. No, I am.

Starting point is 00:43:17 Don't worry about it. Do a thing. I'm too precious. Just do a thing. But you have never paralyzed yourself, though. You are, looking at your cv you are ludicrously productive and you only barely slowed down when you had children because that's the thing that really put a spanner in the works for me for a few years yeah but i think i misjudged

Starting point is 00:43:35 that things started to work out for me in about 2006 when i left avon and I tried to get control of how I wanted to work and then the logical approach of taking a new show to venues every year and it being a good show and the next one being a bit better and more people coming just gradually built and built and it didn't seem like mysterious but it was just as the kids started to come along i was doing that and i thought i had to push through with it and you know and i was um i was away and then i tried to pull back now for bridget to get on with opportunities that she probably missed because i was um away but on the other hand you know we're lucky that that meant we've got a house in this period of time with enough room for everyone and a garden with a trampoline in it, which is sort of the difference between going insane

Starting point is 00:44:30 and just going mildly insane. But, you know, I think I've messed up, and I think you'll probably have a happier life and future as a result of not, you know, missing those times. But my legacy, Stuart, my legacy. How would your legacy be you're not old enough i don't even dignify legacy that was that was i mean i am certainly in the thick of a midlife extended midlife crisis that is being intensified by the process of

Starting point is 00:44:57 sorting through my dead parents belongings i've got to do that next week oh mate my stepfather died and all my mother's stuff is still there. And, you know, it's been an ongoing process for you, hasn't it? Yeah. And because I like to make everything as labor intensive and time consuming as humanly possible. For example, I've mentioned a few times the fact that my father was a photographer and left me with about five or six large boxes filled with slides so i mean hundreds of thousands of slides and i couldn't get my head around the idea of discarding them unseen don't discard no i mean for god's sake you've you're a person who's worked in

Starting point is 00:45:43 visual media and doing comedy exactly in a high-tech fashion, and you've been handed this huge analogue resource, which will seem amazing in a digital age, and it has an emotional resonance for you. Now, bad things happen to me quite a lot of one form or another, and I don't really do shows about them, but quite a bad thing happened about a year ago, and I wanted some sympathy, and my wife said, I envy you, and I said't really do shows about them but quite a bad thing happened about a year ago and I wanted some sympathy and my wife said I envy you

Starting point is 00:46:08 and I said why she said because you'll get a really funny shout of that in about four years time and I'm already like putting that together and I think what you've got here you're a man who's known for working with film and multimedia you've got a box of a thousand slides you don't even know what's on them

Starting point is 00:46:22 and it has an emotional resonance for you about your own middle-aged obsolescence. I do know what's in them now because I'm coming to the end of the process of sorting through them. Has they not organized themselves into some sort of pattern that suggests a hilarious 50 minutes? Not really. No. Because they're mainly just okay. Because they're mainly just okay.

Starting point is 00:46:50 Some of them are really beautiful landscape shots of various countries that my dad visited while he was a travel writer. And there's some really lovely family snaps. But there's nothing that jumps out as like, look at this crazy snapshot that is a revealing insight into my family dynamic. Well, then maybe it's the opposite. Maybe it's the sort of the lack of information is is the funny thing i mean right no there might something may arise but no i certainly couldn't discard them unseen but the feeling of going through every single one and i did it very quickly and just had to for practical reasons you know just discard as many as i could because if i don't do it someone else will just throw them away I'm the only person left that is going to be invested in actually studying each one and if I leave it for another generation if I pop off tomorrow and people have to sort through all my shit they're

Starting point is 00:47:35 going to go I'm not that's going to take a year to go through at least and so they'll throw it away I think there's a weird thing about that. I think people of our generation, particularly slightly spotty men that liked music or comics or books, before everything was digitized, I think in our self-aggrandizing imaginations, we imagined that we were constructing some important archive that history would thank us for. Thank God someone kept all those gold key Walt Disney, Huey and Huey comics from 1974 that are now the cornerstone of our understanding of the future. And I'm starting to realise with my son that that's not the case. I've got loads and loads of Marvel comics. And even though he likes the films, you know, they look like the eagle would have looked to us. Sort of ancient ancient just not really drawn in a way that makes any the things i think are cool about them the foreshortening of the figures and the rough and ready aspects of it and the slightly surreal bodged together notion of

Starting point is 00:48:36 this hack work yeah it's just it's nothing it's meaningless i have not created some british library like resource i've just created a problem for someone when i've died that's the thing isn't it because i mean at least with someone like you i would imagine that there would be people interested in sifting through anything you leave behind in dusty boxes and they will say look at this an unproduced sitcom script here some stand-up ideas that were never worked up yeah but i don't keep any of that i don't that's a stupid thing i don't keep any of that anyway do you keep have you got i used to but now this experience of sorting through my stuff has encouraged a cull because i'm like what the who in the world would give a shit about this stuff that i've been carefully

Starting point is 00:49:20 hoarding for years you know like sheaves of notes and faxes and ideas from when we started doing the adam and joe show with me in my mind thinking well one day someone is going to think this is a very valuable thing well i'll tell you who'd be interested in professor oliver doble of the university of canterbury who runs the comedy course there where comedy is studied as if it were art okay he would like them is that his real name yeah he's written i'm sure he would like that in fact i went to see him once and he he had a box containing the sort of booking book of the woman that ran the mccarno comedy club on yeah islington green in the 80s with her little notes about who'd done well and badly and wow it was like time

Starting point is 00:50:00 travel yeah he would love that give him all your stuff all right but look if i turn up and oliver dobel says now you're all right that's gonna finish me off and there's no way it's worthless it's absolutely worthless សូវាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប់ពីប្រាប� attention you were talking about the point at which you started getting into the swing of things around 2006 i think i had a strange relationship with you as a performer and as someone watching your stuff because we were on tv around the same time in the 90s when i was doing the fist of fun yeah fist of fun although you got there first and you'd already been a stand-up for a few years by then and you and richard herring were a sort of fairly well established doublelished double act. And then you did Fist of Fun on BBC Two, 1995 to 1996. And I was very jealous.

Starting point is 00:51:30 I was jealous of you and Rich. I was jealous of people like Chris Morris because all of that stuff I was into. And I had thought, you know, that's the sort of stuff I would love to have done myself. That's funny because I felt that Channel 4 got behind your and Joe's projects and gave them a sort of identity in the way the BBC never really did with us.

Starting point is 00:51:52 I felt like it belonged on the channel and it was part of the brand identity of it. And I remember thinking that I wish that we had the apparent support of the channel and they sort of trailed it or seemed to acknowledge its existence in the way that they did with you and i also in the first series of fist of fun i wanted to inculcate into what was a piece of light entertainment a sort of feeling of mess and um disruption and it was um ironed out of it in the second series sort of against my will really but i felt you hung on to that and it seemed really uh kinetic and energized and um sort of vibrant to watch whereas we were sort of pushed certainly against my will anyway towards more of a conventional shiny floor show light entertainment sort of feel that was the thing that i clung on to to cheer myself up about i just sort of thought

Starting point is 00:52:44 oh no they've got an audience we don't we're against audiences and we're against like sets and things like that so so that's okay even though i don't believe it in my heart i can tell myself i've got more integrity than these guys and then you did this morning with richard not judy which i think by that time i was so jealous that i couldn't really watch it. Well, I mean, that was Richard's idea. He had, Richard wanted to do this sort of chat show. And I'd forgotten actually with some daytime host

Starting point is 00:53:13 he wanted to do it with. But then in Edinburgh, I was around anyway. And he said, do you want to help out? So I did it with him. And then it wasn't, didn't have my name in the title or anything. But I really, I mean, I find it really hard to remember that period of doing that show

Starting point is 00:53:27 because we used to film them live on Sunday mornings, which was so insanely stressful. Oh, man, because this is the thing. I watched it. I watched the first episode on YouTube this morning. So it's broadcast live, 1998. You and Rich in a kind of gaily decorated daytime TV studio environment, live audience. Richard Thomas as a one man house band.

Starting point is 00:53:49 Yeah. And I hope you won't mind me saying that you don't look comfortable. No, it was all right by the end. Actually, what got better was in the second series, we moved from the BBC to Riverside Studios. And the BBC in the 90s had an almost unique ability to suck the energy and life out of any room because they used to make

Starting point is 00:54:10 all the people queue up outside in the street and then they'd sort of shuffle them in and they weren't able to buy a coffee or a drink or anything but then when we started

Starting point is 00:54:18 doing it at Riverside it was more like they'd come to an actual show like going to a theatre or a club because there was a bar on the way in and they weren't made to wait in a line in the street,

Starting point is 00:54:27 in the rain outside. So it partly was much better, the second series, because the audience were happier, and we were happier being in an environment. And it was much easier with the second series of Richard, Not Judy, to make it feel fun, because it was fun being at Riverside Studios, and it wasn't fun being at the BBC

Starting point is 00:54:45 because the people were appallingly treated. I mean, that shows, because then I watched an episode from the second series and you can see that you're much more comfortable and visually you're sort of on the way to much more your 2000s stand-up persona. Yeah, yeah. On that first series of This Morning with Richard, Not Judy,

Starting point is 00:55:04 you're still in you look like you're in a band yeah you've got groovy hair and you've got your top button done up on your shirt and you look very self-conscious and it really reminded me of myself and all the faces i used to pull and the little unnecessary hand gestures and raised eyebrows I used to do whenever I was on camera because I didn't know what to do. I was trying to be cool and funny at the same time. And those things generally cancel each other out. Maybe giving up liberates you because, you know, you were saying, you know,

Starting point is 00:55:39 about getting to this point where you can't work out what to do and how you're going to carry on and everyone reaches that point. After this one with not judy was cancelled when i say cancelled i mean it was cancelled it wasn't taken off for offending some sensibilities right not the modern sense of not like now you're actually cancelled but um the problem was that um there was nothing coming in from that i didn't really want to do anything like that again. But also, I couldn't really make the stand-up work because it may be different now, but Avalon's maths for live work at the time, basically you always ended up in debt.

Starting point is 00:56:12 So you had to have something out. I couldn't really afford to move forward. So I just sort of stopped, really. And weirdly, at the time, my main source of income for the next few years was I used to write two record reviews a week 110 quid for the Sunday Times and I'd written a review

Starting point is 00:56:29 of a record by Hal Gelb from the old country group Giant Sand who I love and he got in touch with me I didn't know him but he got in touch with me surprised that I'd intimated certain things about his state of mind from the record and we both

Starting point is 00:56:45 seemed to be going through a similar thing where he'd just been dropped by Virgin and Virgin were I'd offered him a certain amount of money he could buy the record back and release it himself and I got into this email dialogue with him in the early days of email that sort of taught me out of completely giving up I would have got some kind of job I I think, at that point. But as it is, I hung in there doing bits of freelance writing, script editing things, and then after the failure, the commercial failure of Jerry Spring of the Opera, where I couldn't make a living out of it, despite it winning Olivier Awards and things,

Starting point is 00:57:19 that's when I realised that actually if I did stand-up in pubs and 100 people came and I got 60 of the door you know if i could have 5 000 people that liked me and they all gave me 10 quid in a year it would be fine and um i shrunk everything down to that tried to sort of step away from the business of it and just try and find a way of making what i wanted to do economically viable rather than loss making and everything sort of followed from there. But I think you have to be, you sometimes have to be destroyed before you then work out what you want to do.

Starting point is 00:57:51 And really, I've just realised, I've just described the plot of King Rocker, actually, in that Rob has to realise, the fictionalised Rob Lloyd has to realise, through the way that we've edited it, his story, what he holds dear, and go back to it and find a way of making it work. And that's Joseph Campbell's hero's journey. And then by the time I first watched your 2005 special, Stand-Up Comedian, you were a different person to me.

Starting point is 00:58:21 And I guess I no longer felt threatened by you. I can't believe you're saying this. Well, it was clear to me then that it was like, because at first I thought, well, we're kind of competitors. We're both doing this sort of pop culture deconstruction thing on TV. And I felt threatened for that reason. But then when I saw you all those years later doing stand up comedian, calling Scottish people Scotch and things like that, that really made me laugh. And I thought, oh, he's totally different now. This is what he does.

Starting point is 00:58:50 And I could never do that. And so I was able to sort of relax and enjoy it. And also I felt like there was a sort of vanity to you and to me very much when we were on TV in the 90s. And that seemed to have fallen away from you. Well, you know, rapidly aging towards the end of my 30s was a huge help. I mean, Frank Skinner said to me when I was young in the 90s that my act didn't suit what I looked like because I was, you know, a young, presentable man,

Starting point is 00:59:19 and yet I had the cantankerous, cynical attitude of someone who had been through it. Then as I started to look more like that i had a reason to be annoyed it worked better i think i may have overdone it now i've gone too far the other way 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, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, buckets of scorn over in your act from time to time. And I came across something that the poet Shelley said in an essay he wrote in 1821, that the job of poetry was to, quote, strip the veil of familiarity from the world. I thought that was a lovely phrase. In other words, what it meant to

Starting point is 01:00:18 me was that what art in general aspires to do is to change your relationship with the mundane. general aspires to do is to change your relationship with the mundane. So the currency as an artist is that the more subtle the truth you aim to reveal, the smaller your audience, because most people won't be able to relate to what you're making art about. But if you can uncover a truth that is widely relatable, yet previously unidentified you've absolutely smashed it as an artist so that sounded to me in my head like a good description of observational comedy right which you've been withering about in the past and in a sort of funny over the top way and i think is it you or rich that sort of maybe it's both of you that kind of talks about it's just noticing things well i don't know who did it first but it's become a thing that lots of people do it and i imagine if either of us did it first or together or individually it's sort of in the

Starting point is 01:01:17 ether that right you know it's become a thing i mean one of my ideas for a post-covid show is about not noticing anything because everyone's been in. There's a third way, though, in what you said. That is a brilliant quote from Shelley, and I'm not about to say that I'm going to improve on it, but both those things are true about ways of producing stuff and what its purpose is. But the beauty of stand-up is that it's a genre, right?

Starting point is 01:01:41 And it's a recognisable genre, and it has rules. And one of the great services Michael McIntyre did to the genre was to make it so ubiquitous that it is fully understood now, I think. People know what the rules are and he plays by the rules and he plays by the rules very well. And so everyone carries around within them an understanding of the genre. Then, once the genre is understood, you can appear to work within the genre

Starting point is 01:02:04 but actually be doing something else. and a great example of this is i am obsessed with the italian western of the 60s and 70s you know i've watched hundreds of them i've watched about 200 there's about 400 more to watch man right yeah there's about three basic plot lines after a certain point it's diminishing returns but um a lot of them they were made and marketed to audiences of working-class Italians who went to the cinema five nights a week because there was no telly in poor southern Italian towns. But often they were made by Marxist theorists, frustrated artists, people who'd been partisans in the war, people with a real political agenda or um a belief that art

Starting point is 01:02:46 should be done in a particular way and they were able to get those ideas across people like kolbucci and leone by um burying them in this genre and the audiences didn't realize they were being exposed to art or political theories because they were disguised as genre and if the film had been advertised as a marxist critique of colonialism they wouldn't have gone but because it looked like it was about a man shooting another bloke and then going off with a woman in a low-cut dress they were happy to see it and i think stand up is a brilliant trojan horse for that because it's a commonly understood genre so the third way from what shelly has said he wasn't to know how the world would develop. He was doing his best in 1821,

Starting point is 01:03:27 is that you can sort of have your cake and eat it and you can be someone doing something quite obscure, but you can disguise it, where the genre is doing the work of making it accessible, but the ideas can still be quite bizarre and strange. And that's why when people try to aggrandise what I do, people writing papers about it or critics are saying I don't really see it as stand-up it's more like performance art

Starting point is 01:03:49 I might secretly think that I'll be pleased about it but I'll always resist it because I think the greatest thing about it is that it looks like vaudeville it looks like entertainment and formally it has a connection back to the musical back to everything like that and so we sort of know where we are with it that's why I never want to stop doing it and it's taken me a long back to the musical, back to everything like that. And so we sort of know where we are with it. That's why I never want to stop doing it. And it's taken me a long time to work that out. Rather like in that film, it's taken Rob.

Starting point is 01:04:12 He had 10 missing years before he realised that what he was always going to be was a singer in a Captain Beefheart style punk band of some sort. No matter what other things he tried to do. There's no way out from it. It's what I wanted to do when I saw Ted Chippington in 1984, and it's still what I'm doing now. And because it's genre, instead of being embarrassed about it, you can think, well, I can get all sorts of things into this.

Starting point is 01:04:36 As long as there's a microphone in the middle of the stage and it looks like it's this normal piece of entertainment, then, you know, all bets are off. Yeah. The thing is that you say you've gone too far i don't know i mean the thing is that it works very much the lack of vanity that it must take to look like santa yeah and i say this you know hoping that i'm not kind of prodding or making light of something that you're anxious about or that worries you because I don't like it when people make comments about the way I look, you know,

Starting point is 01:05:09 and I don't want to sort of be one of those people who's going, ha, you look like Santa. But it works for the comedy very well. And it enables you very much to do bits like the thing I was watching the other night with my family which was from content provider from 2018 your last stand-up special right yeah and you're doing a bit about oh you mentioned russell howard who previously you've kind of uh ribbed in previous specials and the bit this time is not so much about him as his fans and younger comedians who challenge you about like, why do you need to be mean about a fellow comedian about Russell? You know, you don't really get beyond them just saying, mate, but it's ugly. you're mining it because it is this older out of shape guy really laying into a younger superficially commercially at least and i wanted to talk to you about the whole punching up thing

Starting point is 01:06:13 yeah yeah superficially more successful and it's very funny and how childish and how playground pathetic bullyish it is is what's funny yeah well that's the intention and but what's happened with that bit is funny like well basically that gets clipped by people that hate me so that all it is it gets clipped so it's just me like making all those noises for five minutes and then there'll be comments underneath it going is this what pope passes for woke modern comedy it's just a man like making noises that to make it actually was from probably what gave me the idea for that where you realize that you're an old guy you know about 10 years ago two doors down from us lived you know a shared house of uh hipster trustafarians having a

Starting point is 01:06:58 holiday a childhood holiday in hackney before they went and got jobs in the city whilst they were students. And they lived above a lovely old lady whose husband had been one of the people that tracked the moonshot from Woomera in Australia. Oh, right. When the British scientists had to do that. She was disabled with a little dog that she'd managed to take out every day that really kept her going.

Starting point is 01:07:23 And then between them and us was an elderly art historian who didn't really look after himself or his house but was a delightful bloke who died recently and um they just put a note out saying we're we're having a party you know groovy man anyone can come i thought i've been young i've been to student parties but got to about five in the morning and it was still banging away. And I was thinking of the lovely old lady from Woomera tracking station with the dog in her wheelchair in the cellar. Who used to make us little fluffy things for Christmas to hang on the tree. And I just thought, for God's sake, we had a baby that was away. And I went out into the street in a dressing gown and some walking boots, which were the only things I could find. some walking boots which were the only things i could find and um i saw a young man in a motorcycle crash helmet through the window dj he was djing whilst wearing a motorcycle crash helmet with

Starting point is 01:08:15 the visor down like he was in daft punk but he wasn't in daft punk was he was just in a house right and then then there was a bloke outside in the street trying to get his attention and shouting, mate, mate, mate, can you come to the door, mate? Mate! And then I went up to him, forgetting that I had just my pants and a dressing gown. I went, how old are you? Because I was really angry that ostensibly an adult could be so stupid and insensitive. And he was going, I'm 21 years old, mate.

Starting point is 01:08:52 And I was going, how fucking old are you? He's going, I'm 21, mate. 21, mate. 21, actually, mate. He's going, how fucking old are you? And then I went, ah, fuck, and went in. And my wife often says to me that I

Starting point is 01:09:07 don't realise how frightening I am, and I may be right, because obviously I used to being on the state, but then a week later I was at

Starting point is 01:09:14 some little kids football in the park, and this bloke who was a university lecturer, whose kids were also in little kids

Starting point is 01:09:20 football, he went, do you live on so-and-so road? And I went, yeah. And he went, some students of mine said that you were violently intimidating

Starting point is 01:09:27 so basically it was like revenge on that bloke i'm 21 years old mate wasn't really anything to do with russell howard it was more to do with sort of how young people yeah speak and how you get annoyed if you're old at being called mate in a posh voice fucking that was funny adopting a kind of s sats yeah street persona anyway that's where that came from it was funny though because i told my family at supper one evening that I was going to talk to you on the podcast. And my younger son wasn't familiar with your stuff. He's a comedy fan. So I said, oh, man, you'd like it.

Starting point is 01:10:12 And I described that bit and I put it in context by saying, oh, it's kind of superficially sparked off about by Russell Howard. He's another comedian. And sometimes Stuart kind of ribs him in his things. I've only done it once. It was only that thing about the I got sent a press release, right? Because I used to be a journalist. I got sent a press release and on one side of it

Starting point is 01:10:36 was a big thing about how he was raising loads of money for charity, which is great. But on the other side, because it was from Avalon and they never miss a trick, was loads of marketing stuff about products of his you could buy or whatever and i just thought it was funny that the two things came out together and that was the routine i did before and it could have been about anyone it just happened to about him because it was that was the naff thing that crossed my um yeah but it is very easily misunderstood that whole thing and that whole

Starting point is 01:11:03 dynamic and the thing that you sometimes do with people in the media and You're asking a lot from your audience a lot of the time and that's what makes it fun. Yeah, but people regularly Misunderstand it. Well, I you know some of these things That people still see on the internet are 16 or 17 years old now, right? And at the time I was doing them i was playing 100 150 seater rooms so that to do a bit about michael mcintyre when you're that person is funny to do it when you're can do a quarter of a million people on tour and you've won a british comedy award is different right but i haven't really done it since then because i know that the um the balance has changed although bizarrely of course to most people i am still an obscure person i'm not on things so regularly people don't really

Starting point is 01:11:56 know what i do or assume i'm trying to get publicity for myself the thing happens to me regularly is i might get a cab at night after a gig and reluctantly, when the cab driver says, what do you do? I'll say I'm a comedian. He goes, oh, you've been working tonight. And I go, yeah. And he goes, where? And I go, at Leicester Square Theatre. He goes, oh, you want a bill there?

Starting point is 01:12:14 I go, no, I'm there for six months, six nights a week. He goes, really? I go, yeah. Have you been on telly? And you go, and then he goes, what's your name? And he's never heard of you, right? And then he asks me about all these people. Do you them i go yeah i've done that and it's really you can see they think you're a liar right or mad because they would have heard of you this happens over and over again you know and um so i've managed to be simultaneously

Starting point is 01:12:41 considered a significant and influential figure and yet also utterly obscure to the average person so when you're if you're going to talk about punching up where am i punching up from it doesn't no one yeah but that's the problem with the concept of punching up i always think is that it's it really depends on what metric you're using to punch yeah yeah a lot of those comedians may be more commercially successful than you but actually the more valuable currency in the comedy world is kind of critical respect longevity consistency of the material and in that way you are high status well it's nice of you to say that i don't there was a period where you know if I'd done a shit on a bit of paper, it would have got a good review in a broad-shake newspaper.

Starting point is 01:13:29 But I don't feel like that's the case, you know. And I don't feel like lots of young comics really know who I am. I'm not really on social media, so I'm not really aware of it. I don't have a presence in things. The audience don't seem to be going away live despite the fact that i'm not on things anymore which is nice um now you know so i don't feel like i'm really in the game you know i um i i've got more out of doing this than i could ever possibly have imagined and i feel ashamed uh of it because I think of all the people I

Starting point is 01:14:06 think are much better than me like Simon Munnery or Kevin McAleer at the craft of stand-up who haven't had the financial compensation I've had and I feel much more ashamed about that than I do aggrieved by the fact that

Starting point is 01:14:21 people that have been prepared to make compromises or work out the kind of material that people that have been prepared to make compromises or work out the kind of material that people really like have done much better. But, you know... Yeah, I know what you mean. You've just got to live with it. You know, you can't really...

Starting point is 01:14:37 Although I did have a situation where I used to love doing the Galway Festival, doing gigs in Galway, because you could go afterwards off on your own. I could make three Guinnesses last for about six hours, and these just world-class folk musicians are just doing sessions going from pub to pub, and you'd end up talking

Starting point is 01:14:55 to people. And I loved it. I was not known by anyone there, and I liked being able to just hang out. But one night, I'd done the gig in Galway at the venue. I suddenly realised I couldn't stay there, because I wanted to hang out but one night i'd done the gig in galway at the venue i suddenly realized i couldn't stay there because i wanted to hang out and have a drink but it was full of just by sheer coincidence about four or five comedians that i'd done really long stupid routines out there i've got it i've got to go i can't really be in this place it's too awkward i made sort of my life really difficult

Starting point is 01:15:27 but you know you've shat your own bed you've got to uh own it you know mate yeah you're reaping what you sow mate yeah 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.

Starting point is 01:16:23 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! Hey, hey, hey, hey!

Starting point is 01:17:11 Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was Stuart Lee, of course. And I'm extremely grateful to Stuart for making the time to talk to me. A reminder that his very enjoyable documentary, King Rocker, can be seen on Sky Arts on Saturday, February the 6th at 9pm and I guess if you have Sky and it is after that date you will be able just to

Starting point is 01:17:33 call it up anytime you like and watch the living heck out of it it's so cold that my fingers have lost all their feeling you will also find a link to a Spotify playlist which I mentioned I was going to put together featuring some of Stuart's favourite songs by Robert Lloyd and the Nightingales including the songs I played clips from. That's in the episode

Starting point is 01:17:58 notes. In those notes you should also find links to among other things well there was a very brief mention by Stuart of the sketch I did years ago on a sketch program called Rush Hour back in 2007 in which I played a character called Rock Dad based on my own experiences of being a bit of a dick when it came to listening to music in the car with my young children. One of those sketches was me censoring the lyrics to NWA's Fuck the Police, but I uploaded another one of those sketches, which I don't think was on YouTube previously. And I hope that it doesn't set off the BBC's copyright algorithm alarms and just immediately get yanked.

Starting point is 01:18:52 Anyway, it's there for the time being. Also, you've got a link to that whole May bit from content provider Stuart's recent special. There is a link to the Facebook page where you'll see, I think, the video for the Asian Dub Foundation song featuring Stuart. That was number one, which I didn't realise.

Starting point is 01:19:17 There is the video for Oh Superman by Laurie Anderson that we mentioned. A great video, and it is an amazing piece of music also in those links a really good radio for documentary that stewart made in 2006 about the pueblo clowns of new mexico who he went out and visited and talked with and that was part of a whole program about the role that giving offense plays in comedy. There's also a couple of episodes of Lee and Herring's Fist of Fun and This Morning with Richard Not Judy

Starting point is 01:19:54 and there's an episode of a series called Don't Get Me Started in which Stuart was talking about the aftermath of the Jerry Springer, the opera court case. All that stuff and more you can also find on my website, adam-buxton.co.uk. At least they will be there at some point. If you're listening to this on the day that it plops, I might not have got round to it yet. It takes me ages. All this stuff takes ages. It takes ages.

Starting point is 01:20:30 It's a young person's game, doing things online on your own. Anyway, if you do go to my website, you can sign up for the newsletter. If you scroll down to the bottom of the front page of my website, there is a place where you can sign up. I don't send out very many, but if you were already signed up earlier this month, you would have been the first to receive links to the David Bowie Ashes to Ashes clown suit story animation that was by the Brothers MacLeod

Starting point is 01:21:07 and voiced by me that I posted on YouTube on Bowie's 74th birthday. And that newsletter also contained links to the audiobook version of Animal Farm that I recorded towards the end of last year. George Orwell's 1945 novel, of course, and that was to tie in with the 60th anniversary of the Penguin Modern Classics series. And there's a clip of the audiobook, you'll find it in my most recent blog post there.

Starting point is 01:21:46 of the audiobook. You'll find it in my most recent blog post there. So you can take a look and see if you prefer me having a go at George Orwell over the other versions of Animal Farm that are available in audiobook form. The most recent being one by Stephen Fry. But look, come on, you know what Stephen Fry sounds like reading books. He's really good, okay? Just lay off him for a while. Give Buckles a go. I do all the animal voices, turning it up to 10, as much as the producer would allow me. Anyway, investigate Animal Farm audiobook and sign up for newsletter. In other exciting news, I'm appearing in a new sitcom. It's not on TV or one of the major streaming platforms. Those places are so yesterday, it makes me physically sick. No, this is a sitcom that

Starting point is 01:22:40 was made in the lockdown by the people that run the Angel Comedy Club at the Bill Murray pub in North London and it is about life in lockdown at the Bill Murray and features remotely recorded appearances ingeniously woven into each episode from comedy superstars like Maria Bamford, James Acaster, Tim Key, Jamali Maddox, Nina Conti, and of course, Adam Buxton. How did they get him? As well as a regular cast made up of angel comedy regulars like Barry Ferns, Mark Silcox, Sunil Patel, James O'Donnell, Mark Silcox, Sunil Patel, James O'Donnell, and quotes octogenarian American comic Lynn Ruth Miller. Now, of course, Angel Comedy are just one of the hundreds of venues who are struggling to find a way through the effects of the pandemic. And you should, of course, support your local venue if you can. support your local venue if you can but i have a soft spot for angel comedy because i spent a few nights there back in 2019 reading a few bits and pieces to audiences like really

Starting point is 01:23:53 lovely small audiences while i was writing my book and that was not only very, but very helpful. And lots of comedians I know hone their material at Angel Comedy. I also have a very fond memory of taking my son to see his first live comedy show there. We saw Daniel Kitson doing a work in progress. And it was a wonderful evening that we will remember for the rest of our lives. Me and my son, that is. I don't know about Daniel Kitson. Anyway, look, to see episodes of the Angel Comedy YouTube sitcom and to help support Angel Comedy, visit their Patreon page. There is a link in the episode notes. Final thing this week.

Starting point is 01:24:47 I mentioned on the Christmas podcast that I had been enjoying myself playing around on Logic Pro with a load of virtual synthesizers and noise-making plugins that were sent to me kindly by the people at Native Instruments. In return, I was happy to hand over the original stems for my Ramble Chat jingle. So that's all the logic loops I used and all my layers of vocals. So that people can remix them by downloading the stems at Native Instruments' metapop page which regularly runs remix competitions to help anyone who's interested get inspired and make music in a friendly and helpful community and helpful that is not unhelpful if you go to their metapop page link in the notes you'll be able to download those stems, fool around with Ramble Chat,

Starting point is 01:25:45 and if you wish, enter the competition. Three prize winners will have their remix played on this podcast and will receive big bundles of amazing Native Instruments software. Deadline for entries is the 15th of February, 2021. You can find all the rules and listen to other people's Ramble Chat remixes on the Metapop page. Check it out.

Starting point is 01:26:12 Rosie, come on. Let's head back. Oh, my fingers are painful. How are you, dog? I love you. Hey. Come on. Thank you, time. I love you hey come on thank you time thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell

Starting point is 01:26:30 for his production support on this episode thanks to Matt Lamont who edited the conversation with Stuart the artwork for the podcast is by Helen Green thanks to ACAST and thanks

Starting point is 01:26:43 most especially to you out there and hope you're not being dragged down too badly by lockdown. Obviously it was lockdown that encouraged me to start putting out episodes of the podcast a bit earlier than I was planning to do this year. So I've got a few bits and pieces in the locker, which I will put out, as well as some new conversations that I'm in the process of recording. And I'll do my best to keep those regular for the rest of the lockdown. No, that's fine. You're welcome. Until next time, huggles.

Starting point is 01:27:23 I love you. Bye! Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Give me a smile and a thumbs up.

Starting point is 01:28:03 Give me a smile and a thumbs up. Like and subscribe. Bye. Thank you.

THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.146 - STEWART LEE

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