THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.154 - TOM ALLEN

Episode Date: March 28, 2021

Adam talks with English comedian Tom Allen about music, self loathing, dreams of being a British butler and camp sci-fi movies.Recorded remotely on January 19th, 2021.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and Matt Lamont for conversation editing. Podcast artwork by Helen Green RELATED LINKSMSF UKNO SHAME by TOM ALLEN - 2021 (GOODREADS WEBSITE)ADAM ON TAPE NOTES PODCAST - 2021 (TAPE NOTES WEBSITE)SUSAN SONTAG - NOTES ON CAMP - 1964 (PDF) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how are you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here. It is rather a grey day out here in the Norfolk countryside

towards the end of March 2021. countryside towards the end of March 2021. My best dog friend Rosie, a whippet poodle cross, black in colour, though increasingly grey, like myself, is up ahead. She is bounding around in search of wildlife that she can play with in a fun, carefree way slash bully. I don't like to use that word, but you know, you've got to see it from the rabbit's point of view. That's what I'm saying. How are you doing, podcats? Not too bad, I hope. Sorry about not putting out an episode last weekend. As I said at the end of the last podcast, I've been taking a bit of time to begin getting my ducks in a row for this auction that I want to do in aid of MSF. I'll say a little bit more about that at the end of this week's podcast. But as far as today's intro goes, I've got a lot to pack in.

And I should warn you that I will be saying the word podcast a lot. Almost as much as they say chiz in the new series of Line of Duty. Takes too long to say covert human intelligence source, you see. So the police have to say CHIS. They used to just say SOURCE, but that didn't sound enough like JIS. So now they have to use the acronym CHIS. Oh, windy. So anyway, podcasts.

Before I tell you about my guest this week, I wanted to mention another podcast on which I recently appeared, which I think you will enjoy. It is the excellent Tape Notes podcast, hosted by XFM DJ John Kennedy, in which he talks to artists and producers about the creative process. Previous guests have included Matronomy, Leanne Le Havas, Caribou, Haim and Paul Weller, so it was only a matter of time before they got round to the Artist A. Buckles. And I talked about some of the timeless music I've made over the years and played a few extremely rare bits of audio of things I made when I was at art school. And I engaged in appropriately in-depth analysis of classic songs like Party Pom-Pom, The Mind of a Pirate, The Counting Song, and era-defining jingles, including Text the Nation, Have You Seen My Phone Charger,

and Like and Subscribe. Where is the jingle category at the Grammys? Anyway, that is me on the Tape Notes podcast, available now, link in the description. But let me tell you a bit about today's guest for this podcast, number 154, the English comedian, actor, writer and TV presenter Tom Allen. Tom Fax. Tom, currently aged 37, grew up in the South London suburb of Bromley, David Bowie's old stomping ground. Stamping ground? Stomping ground. Stomping ground. And by the end of the 90s, Tom was on the path to becoming an actor. He got into the prestigious National Youth Theatre. But by 2005, at the age of 22,

Tom had shifted his focus to stand-up comedy, where he quickly made his mark and won like a bunch of newcomer awards and shit. Over the next decade, he began making appearances on TV panel shows in the UK, as well as landing the odd acting role too. And by 2016, Tom was supporting stand-up comedian Sarah Millican on a tour that took him around the UK,

as well as Australia and New Zealand. He's also toured with other giants of the current UK comedy scene, Josh Whittacombe, Romesh Ranganathan and Michael McIntyre. In the last... all right. In the last few years, Tom has become a familiar presence on British TV, instantly recognisable. He's got a good look, a strong look. The natty suits, the shaved head, the cocked eyebrow, the acerbic wit. He's also no stranger to the world of podcasting, having co-hosted the Like-Minded friends podcast with comedian Susie Ruffell since 2015. And I believe he may even

have appeared as a guest on some other podcasts apart from this one too. I find that hard to believe. Comedians just going around being on a load of podcasts. Poopycock. That's the expression, isn't it? My conversation with Tom was recorded remotely back in January of this year, 2021, with me in my nutty room in Norfolk and Tom in the Bromley home where he still lives with his parents. We were speaking just over a week after the attack on the US Capitol and as the post-Christmas wave of COVID infections was steadily intensifying in the UK, we didn't talk about any of that. I just thought you'd enjoy a snapshot of January. Remember January?

Crazy times. Some of the things we did talk about, however, included Tom's experience of visiting Japan, being a youngster and getting into old people's music, dealing with self-loathing, Tom's adolescent yearning to be a butler, detailed in his very enjoyable book, No Shame, published earlier this year. year, and those butler dreams began, as you will hear, after Tom saw remains of the day as a young man, providing a neat but coincidental callback to some of the things I talked about with Kazuo Ishiguro on the last podcast. Towards the end of my conversation with Tom, we also spoke about science fiction and camp, with Tom, we also spoke about science fiction and camp. And the super nerds amongst you may notice that at one point when talking about the 1980 version of Flash Gordon, I mistakenly refer to Dale being drugged by clitus rather than Ming. I'm sorry, please don't write in everything else in this podcast I get absolutely right back at the end

for a few more details about my exciting auction but right now with Tom Allen here we go Let's have a ramble chat We'll focus first 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 La, la, la, la, la, la, la La, la, la, la, la, la, la La, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, 20 minutes later, after some technical fiddling, I'm not going to do what Louis Theroux does on his dreadful podcast and spend the first minute or so doing a little montage of technical set-uppery. Good. But suffice to say, Tom and myself have spent the last 20 minutes setting up. But I really appreciate your patience and conscientious attitude towards the whole technical aspect of this conversation. Please don't apologize.

I feel like there's just always another wire. There's another setting to check. Absolutely. And if that's not how the old saying goes. Yeah, I think that is how the saying goes. I've got a poster and it says, there's always another wire, another setting to check. It's written in lovely serif. Oh, that's a nice thing to have.

Yeah. I have it embroidered. My great, great grandmother did it during the First World War. You should have it as a tattoo. That would be a good tattoo. Oh, yeah. I was thinking about getting a tattoo, maybe an anchor, which would suggest I maybe spent a period of time in the Navy. Where would you get it? On my arm, I think. I say bicep, but that feels a bit of exaggeration. On my upper arm, I think is a better description. At the moment, you are free of tattoos. Yeah, tattoo free, yeah. Because, you know, in Japan, you are free of tattoos. Yeah, tattoo free, yeah.

Because, you know, in Japan, you can't have tattoos. People don't like tattoos in Japan. And I went there once and I would like to go back again. Is that true? Well, you can have them, but I think it's a suggestion that you might be part of the... Yakuza. Yakuza, yeah. So you can't go into any of the onsen, which are the sort of spas. Oh, I didn't realise that. Yeah, I remember seeing like no tattoos was any of the onsen, which are the sort of spas. Oh, I didn't realise that.

Yeah. I remember seeing like no tattoos was one of the signs. Very interesting. I found the whole place very intriguing. When were you there? Oh, like eight years ago. But also friends of mine love to make fun of the fact that I will crowbar into any conversation that I've been to Japan as a sort of status thing.

You know, I went for two weeks eight years ago. I didn't live there five years ago. I just went and I went on my own. And it was actually, it was very lonely. It was very isolated because everything is very different to here. So it's quite difficult to sort of make new friends. It was kind of quite a lonely experience. So I'd like to go back and have a bit more of a fun experience, I think.

I'm interested to know what you were imagining from your solo holiday. What did you think was going to happen and how was it different? That's a good question because I think a lot of the time I live in this fantasy that I'm going to go there and I'm going to have this revelation. I'm going to be so sort of enriched by everything.

I'm so stimulated by all the new experiences I'm going to have that I'm going to be in this kind of nirvana of exaltation. And in truth, I got there, I was very tired. It was far too warm. I'd booked the wrong sort of accommodation. I was basically staying. It wasn't even a fun capsule hotel. It was a cupboard. It was literally a cupboard in a youth hostel. Yeah. Because I thought that would be the way to, you know, you've got to do it. Keep it real. Keep it real. You've got to have real experiences. And this

would be a fun way to meet people. But it was, it was was really stressful and then you can't sort of unpack anything you're living out of a suitcase and there's no room and you're sleeping in a tiny cupboard and you're jet lagged and that was terrible stuff there were all sorts of moments i was like what am i doing here and i'd write in my diary and then a diary can quickly spiral into misery if you're not writing it for any purpose because you just go well i've just found myself going well i can't believe i came here on my own and then i went there and i couldn't understand the menu again so i had something i didn't like for lunch again this is a terrible trip maybe i'm just trying to change my flight i just want to go home and then i wouldn't go home i'd stay there for a bit longer and then resent myself for that

i mean it's terrible but i make out to my friends that it was wonderful yeah because i actually talking about japan is one of the things in my locker as well. I've got a little jukebox of subjects that I talk about that roll round and round on this podcast. And I have mentioned my time in Japan a number of times. But it is such an impressive place. It really does stay with you. And just the atmosphere there is so genuinely different. Like throughout Europe and america the experiences are getting more and more homogenous in a lot of ways same sort of shops you know the language

cultural reference points are becoming more and more similar in a lot of ways yeah for sure but in japan it's like forget about it it's totally yeah different um sorry i'm out of practice i haven't done one of these for a few weeks i've been in lockdown three on my own well i say on my own with my family and i feel as if i'm going a little bit crazy how are you doing with it um yes sort of similar and i feel like it's been difficult hasn't the last couple of weeks because it's january and that's a difficult month anyway that's right it's the bleakest of months and it's been difficult, hasn't it, the last couple of weeks because it's January and that's a difficult month anyway. That's right. It's the bleakest of months and it's been a particularly cold one. We had snow up here in Norfolk. Did you? You had flooding, you had snow.

Is there no extreme weather you will not take? Sandstorms? Have you ever had a sandstorm? No, even though it's very sandy around here, so far the topsoil has remained intact and we have not had a sandstorm. Grateful for that. Or a plague of locusts. OK. But yeah, you're right. It's been really bleak and grim. And then, of course, with the events of the American protests and COVID news in general, it has just felt

very different to the lockdowns last year in 2020, don't you think? Yeah, that's true. Yeah. I love how we're able to compare like, what was your favourite lockdown? I like to think there was a sort of, oh, I'll make the best of this time. This will be a really productive time in the 2020 March, April one. Yeah. However, looking back, a friend of mine reminded me, I was actually very anxious and very miserable and was worried about everything all the time.

But I'm just looking back going, oh, discovered Todd Rundgren. Wow, such an amazing time. And the birds were singing and the sun was out. We sat in the garden all the time. No, it was very stressful. So I think there's that human capacity to forget all the bad times when we move on from something.

Yeah, because it was sunny and you had Todd Rundgren. You can't just drop Todd Rundgren in and expect me not to pick up on that. I thought you'd like him. What are you listening to? Wizard and a True Star. Yeah, yeah, I think that was the album. Yeah, that I got into. When I saw the light.

Is that, that's on there, isn't it? Yeah, yeah. Or maybe something, anything. Anyway, yeah, he's an interesting guy, isn't he? I feel bad because I feel like now the way we discover music through, say, Spotify or indeed iTunes is that you don't see the album. Whereas I used to remember getting an album and I would listen to the album right I go I like that track I don't and I'd let it play in the background I go oh is that still playing oh I quite like this song and then get into the whole album there'd be like one key track that would take me into the album yes I know that's a bit weird now isn't it what kind of numbers is Todd Rundgren racking up in his top five um what songs

on Spotify like how many listens has he got? Oh, I don't know, actually. Probably not that many. I don't think that many people know about him, which I like because it's the same with, for example, Rufus Wainwright. Yeah. I remember getting very into Rufus Wainwright in the mid 2000s. And I was like, he's so cool.

I love him. And then everybody got into him and was like, oh, my God, I went to see him at the Eden Project. You know the types. And then I was like, oh, everybody's into him now. Oh eden project you know the types and then i was like oh there everybody's into him now oh well it's not so special to me now it's not so special i still do love him uh todd rungren i saw the light is his top track on spotify 33 million listens and counting nearly 34 i'm out but the other day i was talking to my son. I had a wonderful moment with my son the other day, a great little shining moment in lockdown.

And we were painting a wall in his room where the paint is all flaking off. And he kept on saying like, Dad, can we do something about it? I was like, yeah, let's sort this out, son. We are going to sort this wall out. It's going to be a father-son DIY. And while we were doing our DIY, I stick some music on and so he said have you heard this and he put on a track by radiohead called how to disappear completely oh which is beautiful song and it has these unsettling strange almost atonal strings that open the track

at the beginning creating this weird unsettling mood mood. And I said, ah, you know where they nicked that from? And they have admitted themselves. Johnny Greenwood said on a documentary that they stole it almost wholesale from Scott Walker. Really? Yeah. It's a track of Scott Walker's called It's Raining Today. And it's sort of mid-period Scott when he's still crooning,

but things are going a little bit weird. Do you know Scott Walker? A little bit, yeah. Actually, I think I might put him on my list i'm going to write him down but i said to natty like have you heard of scott walker and he said no and so i stuck on it's raining today and he was like oh wow yeah that is the same idea and then we went on a scott walker jag and i ended up playing him a track called the electrician from a kind of comeback album that the walker brothers did which is really extraordinary very odd half kind of avant-garde experimental spooky almost horror film music it's about a torturer oh and then there's periods where it's very lush and orchestrated and beautifully melodic and he listened to this and he's like oh my god that is everything i love

about music in one song oh wow it was so fun just to have that thrill of seeing someone experiencing an amazing piece of music like that. But I brought it up because Scott Walker on Spotify. Let me just check. I'm not talking bullshit. Top track from Scott Walker. The old man's back again from Scott for which is maybe his best album. That's only got just over 7 million listens. Not as popular.

And you compare that to, you know, obviously chart artists, they're up in the high billions. Yeah. And you just think, wow. Yeah. If you take Spotify as some indication of what younger generations are listening to, they barely know about Scott Walker. It just seems so strange. Yeah.

I feel like I don't listen to new music actually very much I used to listen to I used to get quite excited about oh there's a new band out yeah I used to listen to Absolute Radio actually quite a lot that was because it was before when it was just Radio 2 or Radio 1 and I'd listen to Radio 2 as a teenager because I was very unusual and I used to like Desmond Carrington and the David Jacobs collection because as a child I was old because it's before like Radio 6 existed. So Virgin Radio, as it was before it was absolute, used to play like new bands quite a lot. And I used to get really into it.

But I don't do that anymore. And I sort of feel sad about that. I don't know why. Who were you listening to on those old Radio 2 shows then? So the David Jacobs Collection, which would be at 11pm. Moira Stewart now does that time slot. And did they get you into any artists, though? Did you discover any music through those programmes?

I think, well, it got me into sort of musicals, I think, quite a lot. And it got me into listening to Victor Moan. Crooners and things like that. Yeah, sort of crooners and kind of Peggy Lee, I suppose. It's that sort of, it's not as kind of saccharine as some of the 50s music, but I suppose it's sort of the 60s and it's got more of a folk, like when you think of the folks who live on the hill is very folky really isn't it it's very kind of grounded in that modality of kind of winsome hills and people living on hills

and i kind of always like that sadness i always like sort of i've always liked sad music actually yeah like i do like a bit of folk music as well and i'm noticing there's a big trend for sea shanties at the moment which i quite like a sea shanty. You know, I like classical music that was always a bit sad and sort of always enjoyed a bit of Renaissance choral music as well. Or maybe on Radio 3, I listened to Radio 3 as a teenager. Isn't that weird? Yeah, that is weird. I mean, were you being exposed to this stuff by your parents or were you discovering it yourself? I've never been very good at going to sleep. And so my dad said why don't you listen to Radio 4

they have this thing called Book at Bedtime at 10.45 and I would listen to that and then I wouldn't be able to sit and I'd end up listening to lots of things on Radio 4 all the way through to the shipping forecast which I loved and followed by well sailing by

the shipping forecast introductory music which I still enjoy love it the shipping forecast and followed by the national anthem which just seems so so camp everything about it is so camp and friends of mine are radio 4 announcers and it's been pointed out to me that nobody who needs the shipping forecast gets it from listening to it on radio 4 at like 10 to 1 in the morning like if you're a fisherman you're not tuning your FM dial.

Like you just get it on your phone. You just get the shipping forecast. Like you get any news on your phone. But yet Radio 4, there would be such an outcry if Radio 4 suddenly stopped covering what, you know, Trafalgar's gale warnings were. They have to keep it, which is lovely. And I like it.

And I like the sense that it kind of reminds us a bit of the natural world and all of that. But yeah, so I listened to that. And then I got a bit bored of Radio 4. And I was like, what do I want now? I want something more. And so I get into Radio 3 and Late Junction, which I still think is one of the best bits of radio. Yes, that's very notoriously fantastic and eclectic.

Eclectic. And I think that's especially BBC radio stations, I think, are so good at they aggregate kind of different forms and different things. And so you go, well, I like that that thing so I listen to it for that and then they go well have you thought about actually how that influenced theologian monk and oh you might like that and you go oh I didn't think about how Gregorian chant influenced jazz and then you go oh that's interesting and you feel very smug about yourself and then you fall asleep it's great so you are quite open-minded then as a young man right not to suggest that people who just go along with the top 40 are not open-minded i mean i was definitely a top 40 guy i was a radio one okay guy okay but i was less adventurous i was

still at the point where i found different music a little bit weird. And it was a few years before my mind opened up a bit more. And I explored some of the late night shows on Radio One or whatever. But I wouldn't have been open minded enough to go, well, why don't I change the dial completely and listen to a totally different set of music? But did you think of yourself as quite adventurous? For me, the hallmark of my youth was that I knew I was different. I felt different and I wanted to be different. I wanted to be away from everybody else, not just be geographically away. I wanted to be away in terms of eras. I wanted to live in a fantastical world that I'd created that was just mine and I and nobody

could sort of trample over which sounds like the beginning of a thriller doesn't it but why was he so strange well that's the next question when do you remember being aware of that and was it as a response to something directly or was it just always the way you felt I remember I'm always feeling different I always spoke differently so I've got this posh voice which isn't the same as my parents and nor is it the same as people around me they've got London accents so I always knew i was different and i felt very different at school i always lay it at the feet of like oh it's because i'm gay and maybe that is a big part of it because i somehow knew that i wasn't relating to the the sort of relationships i saw around me but at the

same time i don't i think i was just an outsider just enjoyed being an eccentric and so everybody else seemed to like say garage music the uk garage scene was very much on vogue a la mode when i was a teenager and so i knew i couldn't i wasn't into that and so i just sort of was like well i'm going to be completely different to that and i'm going to go over there and find my own little corner of the world to exist in and i'll pretend that i'm a 75 year old gay man with probably an antiques shop living in Hampshire. And I'll live out that life. And that suited me much more because I, yeah, I just, I couldn't relate to a lot of the sort of garage scene and like pirate radio and, and like raves and parties that were advertised on roundabouts. I was far too frightened of, actually. I was just frightened of other kids, basically.

And I was frightened of older teenagers who'd be like, why are you so weird? And would beat me up. Yeah. The nineties when I grew up, wasn't a very flamboyant time at all I often people get annoyed with me for saying this but it was a very dour sort of like keep your head down don't dress up don't stick out don't be different why are you like that what are you doing oh my god why are you doing that it was very I found it anyway that was my experience and I suppose that might be quite specific perhaps to where I grew up like the suburbs of London I think aren't traditionally very like oh my goodness you're incredible like it's very much like what why are you like that why why I don't like that what and that was very much the experience I had at school and it was always like ah my cousins my cousins are going

to come down and beat you up it was very sort of bubbling undercurrent of violence yeah well you had that early experience of actually being beaten up by someone who didn't like the fact that you were looking at them in the wrong way or just decided that you were looking at them and they were like what are you looking at and it ended up you talk about it in your book which i've really enjoyed by the way i listened to the audio book i thought it was great and i want to talk to you about a lot of bits and pieces in there but you describe very well a time how old would you have been when you got beaten up at school i think i was about 12 i think it was like 12 and it is it's shocking because you're quite matter of fact when you begin to describe it and initially you know it sounds like the kind of

thing that unfortunately happens on a regular basis at schools kids are regularly and routinely mean to each other and it's sort of you know it's kind of what you expect and some people get picked on more than others and it goes around but then it's so sort of insistent the way it develops and the guy just doesn't give up and he gives you a really good kicking in the end right uh yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it's really shocking and upsetting. And you realize you get a sense of how those experiences, which you sort of take for granted when you're little,

because you don't know how the world works. It's like, oh, this is happening now. But actually afterwards, gradually, as you get older, it stays with you and you look back on it and you think, fucking hell that was horrible yeah i mean i think a lot of people do have experiences like that sadly which is why i wanted to write about it in a way and also to be honest i hadn't thought about it until i got into my 20s and i was speaking to a therapist and they were like oh so you were the victim of a

homophobic attack and i was like oh no that's something that happens to other people i was just kicked and then you go oh no that is you know that's what it is and I think I had to I couldn't talk about it because if I talked about it people would go well why did he pick on you and it was like because he said I was gay well are you gay but there was no way I could talk about that at all and that's kind of hard to convey I think to some people and at the same time it's sort of that sense of I wasn't marching around organizing a gay pride march I was literally just stood in the queue and I wasn't like ogling this guy I just glanced at him and he just picked and I think you know he sort of probably saw a weakness in the fact that

I was an outsider and knew that I was somebody that would be a good person to pick on I suppose you weren't at that point dressed in full Victorian costume no not at that. I was just in school uniform, just being really, and actually trying to blend in, which was sort of what was so frustrating about it. And I think it gave me a message, which I'd already experienced when I'd, actually at primary school as much as at secondary school, a sense of like, I shouldn't be here.

I shouldn't, you know, you feel so shit about yourself that you kind of go, I'm not entitled to be alive, basically is how you feel, because you have to apologise for yourself so much. And that sort of sense of constantly feeling like you're apologizing for yourself and thinking you're doing your best to blend in and not cause a fuss and please don't look at me and then to have that experience I think it perhaps on some level made me go well if that's going to happen like what am I going to do just sort of half hide and still get picked on I may as well in some way go

full throttle and be very different but even in saying that it sort of suggests that it was kind of simplistic I didn't then after that go like well to hell with it and came in dressed in a wig yes in a film you would go home and you would have a tearful moment of galvanizing yourself and thinking screw them i'm going to express myself and they're just going to have to deal with it and then the next day you come into school wearing i don't know whatever yeah yeah i'd have some sort of like experience with like watching dolly parton on the television that would inspire me and she would perhaps reach out of the television and speak directly to me in a magical moment you know and i suppose i'd experienced so many stories that were so like that and i felt like well if i don't represent that actually it wasn't like

they didn't teach me anything it just made me go deeper into my shell but in a sort of more kind of convoluted way and like sure like not long after that I did School Cabaret where I decided to do a Julie Waters monologue from Alan Bennett's Talking Heads and there was no rhyme or reason to that it wasn't like it was a monologue about someone coming out it wasn't a monologue about someone being different it was about if you know Alan Bennett's Talking Heads this one Her Big Chance is about a woman who wants to be an actor and she gets her big chance in a film she thinks it's a film she doesn't realize she's so kind of unaware that she ends up being in a porn film where everyone's horrible to her but she's thinking of it's like finally my chance to be in the movies and it's harrowing and totally inappropriate for a like 12 13 year old to read never mind perform so i did it

and people like gave me feedback and were like but after that did you get that sort of sense of like people left you alone because they knew who you were because you stood up to them in your own way and i was like no no no things just carried on as they had before and did you feel more confident yourself no no probably felt worse about myself just never even mentioned it again it was never even mentioned and i wanted to express that because i wanted to go it's complicated isn't it and it doesn't always work out it doesn't always get tied up with a bow and i just for me I just carried on being a weirdo and people go but why are you dressed like that why are you into that what do you like oh what

what's this music you like why do you like that oh I don't really get what what you're talking about like that was just what carried on and I think that's perhaps the case for a lot of people and I go well I suppose I wanted to bring that out into the open and go hey maybe you've had an experience like this and that's okay too yes very little is neatly resolved in life you know sure everything just the loose ends stay frayed and you get little moments of closure and resolution and you're grateful for those but then they often come undone and everything just sort of goes on messily. Yeah. Now we're roughly halfway through the podcast. I think it's going really great.

The conversation's flowing like it would between a geezer and his mate. All right, mate. Hello, geezer. I'm pleased to see you. There's so much chemistry. It's like a science lab of talking. I'm interested in what you said. Thank you.

There's fun chat and there's deep chat. It's like Chris Evans is meeting Stephen Hawking. There are a few moments, sort of passing moments. You don't really dwell on it in the book where you're quite candid about your insecurities. It's like a motif. In fact, you say that as a teen, you really loathed yourself. You use that phrase. And I suppose, you know, we're familiar with the concept of self-loathing and many of us suffer from it in some form. But the phrase you used, you know, you loathed yourself. It's sort of shocking when you put it like that. Is that something that you

still struggle with from time to time that is that something that you still struggle with from time to time is that something that you feel defines you or is it a war that you feel you've won oh no i think it's still very much in me and i think it's sort of insidious to me if that's the right grammar sure see i can't even allow myself a sentence without criticizing myself yeah screw you grammar police i think i'm better understanding myself and better understanding the relationship I have with myself now but um yeah I think it still is there and I think it is there for a lot of people and I think you know the relationship we have with ourselves is complex and the way we see ourselves and how we fit in with the world and how we kind of validate ourselves

and feel like have I done enough with the day have I done enough with my life have I done enough with this year have I done enough with the lockdown all Have I done enough with this year? Have I done enough with the lockdown? All that stuff, which I think a lot of people have been exploring in the last year, especially, I think is in all of us. Yeah, there were many things I related to in your book. And I think a couple of times you made observations that were very similar to some of the things I made in my book recently. I'm sure they've popped up in other people's books as well. I'm not suggesting that you and I are the only people that have thought of these things but one of the things you said was yeah it's like when you're nervous and you're about to go on stage or something or you're about to do a show and people say oh just relax and enjoy it yeah yeah and you're like oh relax i hadn't thought

of that thanks so much that's a great top tip. Yeah, exactly. Just, oh, just enjoy it. Just enjoy it. Oh yeah. Okay, fine. Just be yourself. Just be yourself. Just be yourself. Yeah. All those sort of platitudes. You go, I find myself going, I can't even just be myself. I'm being myself. I fucking hate myself and I'm screwed up and I'm insecure and I'm really nervous. This is myself. Sorry. Exactly. But to be honest, it's only when i've kind of taken that strand and gone yeah well maybe i do hate myself sometimes and sometimes i do feel sad and sometimes

i do listen to sad music and i like feeling that and that's sort of a comfort blanket for me or whatever but when i do that i go oh i feel a lot lighter and actually i start to like myself again it's like oh well i can embrace all the elements of myself without going yeah oh i feel nervous now you shouldn't feel nervous you should feel confident well maybe you're feeling nervous because you haven't done enough work to prepare for this out and all that sort of building up all these layers and actually when you take all these layers and you go oh i'm just feeling a bit nervous today okay maybe what people mean deep down when they say like oh just enjoy it just relax is that on a practical level they're sort of saying well we always have a choice as people to focus on the things we don't like about

ourselves and to reinforce a narrative, to use kind of self-help speak, that is unhelpful. And it is possible sometimes to concentrate on more positive things, to stop yourself just completely getting overwhelmed by a sense of insecurity and self-loathing. Yes, I think that is probably true, isn't it? I suppose as well, that does demand a certain clarity, I suppose, which takes time. Yeah, presence of mind. And that's tough when you're nervous because all that stuff abandons you. Yeah, I think sort of breaking down all of those kind of the different lines coming at you,

to dismantle that, takes a bit of effort. That is what takes training isn't it just to sort of separate out those thoughts and those kind of those words or those kind of sensations you have if you're feeling anxious about something or nervous about something i guess that's mindfulness right yeah i think it probably is isn't it but i just don't like doing it on their terms i don't like it when i have to sit there and listen to a tape telling me to breathe and think about my legs sound like a miserable git no you don't at all i led you down that path anyway because i don't know i'm just i'm in a very i'm in a very emotional

place just because i am finding the lockdown hard and i'm in the process of sorting through all my parents bits and pieces i've got boxes of all my mom's stuff now as well as when my dad died five years ago i got all his stuff over here and then my mum died last year and now I've got all her stuff to go through. And I just thought, okay, January, lockdown, here we go. I'm going to do it. Otherwise, it's just going to be bugging me

that it's all sat there in the shed. So I'm doing all that, but it is a bit of a mind... Is there another expression apart from mindfuck that I can use? Mindshag. Yeah, perfect. It that I can use? Mind shag. Yeah, perfect. It's a bit of a mind shag. Have you read the Marie Kondo book? Remind me of the title of that?

I think it's called The Japanese Art of Tidying. Oh yeah, no, I haven't. I know the one you mean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's very interesting. I mean, I read it and then I threw away loads of books and then I sort of regret it. But that's the thing. I'm in the phase now where I sort of regret it. But that's the thing. I'm in

the phase now where I'm really finding it hard. I'm being tortured by the possibility that I will regret throwing some of this stuff away. But at the same time, it's like if I don't do it, then someone else is just going to go, well, none of this means anything to me. I'm just going to lob the lot. You know what I mean? If I don't rationalize and go through and preserve at least some of it and say, look, this is worth hanging on to, this means something, then all of it will go at some point. It's not fair just to pass the responsibility on to my children just because I've got the space to store it all in these sheds we've got, you know. Well, I suppose as we live in a very online age, there's sort of less, I often think like this, like photographs, for example, or photographs don't really get printed now. So the idea of holding on to physical copies.

I know. But what are you going to do? Because taking photographs is so easy that the average person is going to have thousands and thousands of unsorted digital photographs that no one is ever going to have the time or the inclination to go through. And it's sort of meaningless. We're just robotically snapping away, trying to preserve all these moments because we're so hardwired to judge the worth of an experience like a holiday by the memories we take back, by the photographs we take especially. That's why everyone's got their cameras out. As a culture, we're now in that mode. It doesn't mean anything unless you took a photograph of it yeah and you you've held on to it which i

totally i'm not poo-pooing that i would never put poo-poo on that notion instead because i totally relate and i'm i've always been big into photographing things and archiving things but the upshot in the digital age is that you're just creating this huge unwieldy archive and expecting someone else to go through it one day and there won't be any photographs of grandma and grandpa because as you say no one really bothered printing them out they're buried on some hard drive on some laptop that's become obsolete yeah i guess there's that danger too isn't it yeah sorry i painted a very extreme picture no no but you're right no i sort of think in an increasingly disposable age like it's probably quite nice to hold on to a few things if you've got a bit of space but that's yeah exactly as well um and so in your book

you talk about the fact that part of the process of managing that self-loathing feeling that you would occasionally feel was falling back on your Victorian fantasy life. Yes. And so your version of Teenage Rebellion was visiting vintage clothing shops and and all of this came together when you saw Remains of the Day in some ways the James Ivory film based on the Kazuo Ishiguro novel. Talk to me about that, because that was a big moment for me as well, maybe for different reasons. But what did you get from it? I think it was suddenly being presented with, oh, being a butler would be my ideal job because you live in somebody else's world. You sort of create the formality of their world. I've

always liked formality, I guess, because it's sort of a structure that like feels understandable and feels kind of like, yes, and then this happens and this happens. And it feels controlled and manageable and understandable and not as complex as the wide, wild world. And this idea of a character, the butler in the film played by Anthony Hopkins, who dedicates his whole life to somebody else and doesn't have to worry about his own feelings and his own sort of thoughts and insecurities are immaterial because his concern is always the running of the house and the importance of the lord of the manor yeah the importance of his work and facilitating that providing a service in the best way that he possibly can yes and i suppose that's simpler in a way isn't it because you're not having to deal with all those difficulties and like oh but what if this and what of that? You just go, no, dinner is at eight.

That's right. All those things that people worry about, how to express themselves, how to be of value, how to live a meaningful life. You don't have to get hung up on any of that because you know what you're supposed to do. Your purpose is clearly defined. You can perform your job as well as you possibly can. There's pleasure in that. Yes. And a pride in that. Yeah. And you can, yeah, become completely subsumed within that role. Yeah. And that, to me, felt like delightful.

And you have such meaning and there's such importance to your day because you've been exhausted from doing all of that. But at no point, this is my fantasy idea of it, at no point have you had to go, oh, I quite fancy that person. I wonder if I could start a conversation with them. What if they'd like me? I wonder if, you start a conversation with them. What if they'd like me? I wonder if, you know, I wonder, or maybe they won't like me. And then I'll feel hurt by that.

And how will I deal with that? You know, you don't have to deal with any of that because you just go, your coffee, my Lord. Yeah. And that sounds great in a way, if you're frightened of that or frightened of other people and what they're going to perceive. It doesn't matter what they think of you if you just bring them their drink. Yeah. You just got to focus on bottling. Yeah.

Just got to bottle a bit more. Adam, I feel like you understand me because i whenever i'd express this to people as a teenager they'd be like what what are you talking about there was always a sense of like what and whenever i had like the summer holidays i'd always look forward to when they came along i'd have no idea how to fill a day because i think i had no idea of of kind of what i was allowed to do or what i was supposed to be doing and i didn't often relate to the other kids in my year so i was just like I don't know and I just spent just hours just sort of wandering around mum and dad's house and just sort of feeling low because I had nothing to do and so I thought

well the idea of having this formality would be great but no one could understand that and I think I'd then have to sort of explain myself and then I'd give up explaining myself and I'd go excuse me I'm going to go and listen to Michael Parkinson play some Frank Sinatra on Radio 2. Yeah. And that felt a lot happier. One of my favorite parts of the book is where you talk about your relationship with the lady who ran the Saturday afternoon drama class that you attended. Yes, Miss Hammond. Miss Hammond, Patricia Hammond of the Patricia Hammond School of Dramatic Art.

Yes. So you had been to her classes, you you admired her and then she got in touch with you as a teen after her husband died is that right uh yeah yeah we kept in contact and then when her husband died we i guess became friends really well first of all you wrote her a letter of condolence tell me about that because that really struck a chord that reminded me of my dad a lot the way your dad responded oh really oh how interesting well i you know sort of 15 16 years old at this point received this news and thought well because i'd up until this point been obsessed with etiquette manuals and reading about etiquette and reading again about formality and often these were books that were written in the late 19th century so they were full of the kind of victorian

customs of mourning. Debrets and all that kind of thing. Exactly. I've got it right here. And so I took it upon myself to, I would write a very formal letter of condolence expressing my deep sadness in the kind of very florid terms, which, you know, actually would, I'm sure, have been endearing, but perhaps wouldn't have seemed that sincere. But I would have thought they were very proper and very right. You know, deep sadness was exactly the time when formality comes into its own own because it's a kind of framework to cling on to in times of turmoil and so I thought this is perfect and so I wrote this long letter and

I showed it to my dad and he went oh no you don't need to write all that what's all this oh no don't write that just write thoughts and prayers Tom that's all you got right just write that thoughts and prayers Tom and family if you want you know that's it and i was like that doesn't feel very like was it the direct opposite of everything i sort of thought you had to do and felt i wanted to do and you want to make a connection as well you want to sort of express to that person i get it i feel so bad that you feel bad yes and i want you to know that and i suppose the formality of writing those letters or the formal language that comes in is a way of kind of going i get how serious this is and i get how important this is and i get how momentous this feeling is and i maybe have not had that experience but i can empathize or sympathize literally yeah

and i respect you that's i suppose what it comes out it comes out of deep profound respect of going i will reuse the biggest words i can find right show I have respect for your sadness. Exactly. But your dad pointed out that actually that can tip over into self-indulgence, really. I don't know the meaning of the expression. Well, it's a funny thing about people who suffer from self-loathing, I think, is that it is quite close on the spectrum to self-regard. You know what I mean? And this is true of myself and a lot of people I know, is that people who are quite harshly self-critical sometimes are also pretty in love with themselves

in some way, you know, and there is something a little bit, you're in danger of sometimes being a bit self-absorbed in those situations where actually, if you're writing a letter of condolence, it should really be something, you know, formality is useful because it does stop you kind of tipping over into writing this kind of five page essay about how deep you are and how much you understand the other person. And, you know, often when you're grieving, when a person is grieving, it's very hard to know how they're going to take anything really. And sometimes the simplest things, when my parents died, when people sent me very short messages,

sometimes it was just condolences, you know. All right, yeah. That was great. I suddenly understood it was like, oh yeah, this is good. Thank you. They've thought about me. They know I'm sad.

And this is actually condolences is a great word. Yeah, clearly that is right. Yeah, I mean, my dad, as well, he was born in 1941. My dad's sense of it was, yeah, if you write lots, you're basically doing this for yourself and how you seem, because you want to use big words, and you want to express how you feel. Well, this isn't a time for you to feel something. This is a time for her to mourn her husband. And, and I suppose I was like, was like oh yeah i suppose it's not part of the performance of my life it's about somebody else and so yeah difficult to know what to do there

isn't it but yeah i think simplicity is probably best and probably thoughts and prayers is fine well whatever you wrote seemed to work because as you say you became friendly she invited you to see a production of hms pinafore and croydon. In a garden, yeah. And you got all dressed up. Of course. Like a deck chair attendant, yes. Yeah. And how old would you have been at that point? So I think I was about 15, 16 at this point. Right, quite young. And she's so nice to you. The whole anecdote made me quite emotional. Oh, really? Yeah, because I just i just thought god people can be very kind and nice you know what i mean yeah i have been very lucky that i've often had people in my life thus far who have been very sensitive and very in tune with kind of me being different and them sort of supporting that

and supporting me and and you know great kindness and you know she did encourage me at a time when i felt like i don't know who i am and i don't know what i'm supposed to be and i'm doing my gcses and i guess it's going okay but what is all this life about and she was like it's great to be different and it's wonderful and because you still hadn't come out at that point right oh no way and the very much the mindset for me at that point was i'll never tell anybody and i'll be a butler and i'll live at the top of a grand house and i won't even see anybody else even though i was crushing on people dreadfully and really in love with people and in my year and stuff and i didn't have any way of um yeah there was no way i would be able to explore that because as well

again it doesn't feel like it's that long ago but because of things like section 28 which, which meant that teachers weren't, you know, in schools they weren't allowed to. You couldn't promote homosexuality. Yeah, which the idea of promoting it, I mean, geez, as if we can't promote ourselves. That's right. The idea was that if you sort of talked about it, if you normalized it. Yes. And you just sort of implied that actually there was such a thing as, you know, being gay is normal in some way, then that's tantamount to promoting it. Exactly. Yeah. And that's going to dissolve the

fabric of society. Exactly. And you know, like, there was that sort of homophobia that was used as a slur, just to call someone gay. And it was really in my mind, it was the worst thing that I could possibly do, because it would, well, I didn't know what it would result in. And the only thing you saw were the occasional late night films on Channel 4 where people either died or were beaten up and killed. There were no positive stories about what happens when you come out. It's very different to, I think, what happens a bit more now. You know, people didn't talk about anybody being gay at all.

And sometimes when I'd go on television and I'd talk about, you know, sexuality or something, people go, oh, why do you have to keep talking about being gay all the time? And it's like, yeah, because for the first 20 years of my life, I wasn't allowed to mention it. It wasn't me. I didn't make it a big deal. Like, you know, it wasn't me who sort of made it illegal to talk about it in schools.

But yeah, it's kind of difficult to explain that I had no idea what it would entail. You know, would I be thrown out of home? Would I be disowned by the whole community I'd grown up in? I had no idea. And you have to live that in your own head. You can't talk to anybody about it because you're too scared to talk to anybody else about it. So you carry this terrible, terrible weight inside. And I guess

that's where the self-loathing stuff really starts. But to express that kind of sense of not being allowed to be as a human being is very pernicious. So yeah, there's absolutely no way I'd be able to come out. But despite that that there were these sort of silent messages that i guess people picked up on kind people like miss hammond who have are continue to be very sensitive intuitive people and generous people who had intoned that i was feeling like an outsider and you know she wanted to come for me and that and say you know and i'm an outsider too and that's great isn't it? I love the fact that she sort of indulged your Victorian fantasies by calling you Sir Tom and you bumped into a friend of hers called Beryl

after seeing HMS Pinafore and she introduced you to Lady Beryl and then she said would you like to come for lunch with me and Lady Beryl and so you enthusiastically accept but you say in fact rather than being a guest why don't i be your butler it was a perfect setup and so finally the fantasy could come to life and i could be but of course beryl was not into it yeah she'd hadn't asked for this kind of remains of the day reenactment. This kind of 15 year old role playing. She had to ask for this immersive theatre piece. So she was kind of, well, to say the least, annoyed and irritated by it.

Like she was just coming around for lunch with her friend to just have a bit of lunch in the garden, a glass of wine and a catch up. And there was this kind of bizarre theatrical performance going on in the corner for no reason. And you're all dressed up, right? Of course. Of course. In a tailcoat. Of course. What did your parents say when you were dressing up and i'm spending the

afternoon uh pretending to be a butler i'm gonna dress up and what were they saying well by this point they were like oh all right i mean they've gone through so much of this weirdness for so long now that they were like oh yeah all right do you want a lift yeah okay fine and i was like i didn't want to lift because i was like butlers don't get lifts off their dad but then i was like i would actually quite like a lift and so yeah they were like all right well let us know when you want to be picked up don't overstay your welcome and so left me to it but just like oh yeah all right and just sort of went along with it i mean didn't you know couldn't tell anybody about it we were like oh yeah i don't know what he's doing now what's he like i think they were

terrified that i was just going to turn into this oddball eccentric without any means of like being able to support himself or earn a living or do anything with his life because he was you know frankly just too eccentric to put it mildly and so there was a concern there but they ultimately let me get on with it and then how did your butling stint go? Terribly. Because, well, I was in somebody else's kitchen trying to be a butler. And the worst moment really was when I put down the serving dish, which had some poached salmon

and a dish of hollandaise sauce down. Delightful. Delicious lunch. But it had been heated because my parents had always heated plates. They still do. They're obsessed with hot plates. But I didn't, you know, in the remains of the day he doesn't go ow oh that's a bit hot

so i carried it all the way to the table outside but it was so hot by the time i got to the table i just dropped it onto the table but it fell off and so this salmon and this hollandaise sauce went all over beryl's dress lady beryl lady beryl covered in hollandaise sauce a terrible sight to see like she'd been paintballing or something or worse Lady Beryl. Lady Beryl covered in Hollandaise sauce. Oh, mate. A terrible sight to see like she'd been paintballing or something, or worse. Yes, you reference Monica Lewinsky in the book. Oh, yes, I do, don't I? Yes. That was the tamer version of something else I wrote.

But the, yeah, no, it was terrible. And then, of course, Beryl was not only irked by the fact that I was doing this pantomime around her. She was then,, like her clothes were ruined. And she was having a miserable time. And now she had food thrown over her by this idiotic teenager that was hanging around. And she, she was furious, but then had to cover it in that sort of suburban way that you're not allowed to show any feelings. And Mrs. Hammond, meanwhile, she's cool with all this, is she? She's just sort of like rolling with it. She, as somebody who's always enjoyed outsiders

and enjoyed a bit of like cheeky naughtiness. And I think it was a friend, as I remember, it was a friend that she liked to catch up with, but wasn't like, you know, she sort of could see that this friend was a bit uptight, but she felt that she had to catch up with every now and then. Yeah. And so I think she didn't mind that there was all this happening

that was annoying to this friend. I think she quite enjoyed it. And then she left annoyed. And I think she kind of thought, well, more fool her for not playing along, you know, and that was very rare to see that sort of behaviour because in suburbia, everybody's quite uptight quite a lot of the time. Yeah. I mean, I would love to think that I would be like Mrs. Hammond, but I probably would be, I don't know, my tolerance would probably be too low. I would sort of go, no, I'm not going to deal with this 15-year-old dressed as a butler.

But I think it's so, as I say, it's so heartening to know that people like her exist. And then your anecdote about that concludes with you sat in the garden staring up at the stars and making chit-chat with Mrs. Hammond. And she says, what's your favorite film and you answer independence day of course because because you would think like with everything else that you're into it would be something like casablanca or i don't know yeah brief encounter or something yeah i again wanted to represent that, particularly as a teenager,

when you've got so much going on in your head that you just do weird things all the time. And you go, that's not expected. That came out of nowhere. But I quite like things about aliens at that point. I really like the X-Files. I love the idea that aliens existed. And so when the film Independence came out, this film about this massive spaceship

that comes down and hovers over New York and tries to abduct the president, I was like, this is exactly what I'm intrigued by. I mean, literally, I was just sort of fascinated with other, again, other worlds and other places and other ways of being, I suppose. And so that's why I said that. And I think she was kind of like, oh, that's an unusual choice. Yeah, that's a big scene in my mind in the movie of your life. You and Mrs. Hammond. And then at the end of that scene we pan up to the stars oh oh it's great have you watched independence day recently you know what no i haven't i can only imagine it's

still as brilliant as it seemed at the time i would say that it's dog shit yeah i mean i can imagine it's one of those films that came out at the time and everyone was like oh you've got to go and see it and it cleaned up at the box office. It was huge, yeah. Yeah, I remember. And I went to see it. And even then, I was aware, like, well, the first half hour is pretty great. And the rest is not as good as the first half hour. And then I watched it a few years later on TV. I was like, this is more or less unwatchable.

Oh, is it as bad as that? Yeah. I think so. Maybe I've been too harsh on it. I can't remember how it even ends. I mean, I'm sure it is terrible. But again, special effects weren't such a thing then. Well, the ending of Independence Day is famously ludicrous

because Jeff Goldblum goes up in a captured alien spaceship and manages to very easily interface with a totally alien computer. Whereas to this day, everyone knows that, you know, getting your phone to pair with a Bluetooth speaker is... It's complicated enough. Often a living nightmare. And dealing with alien technology is unlikely to be that smooth. Yeah, that's something to bear in mind, isn't it? Maybe this is all a big preparation. Maybe this is our national service, really, is all that pairing with Wi-Fi printers. That's our training

for the forthcoming alien war that we're bound to face at some point at some point listen the last few years have taught us that anything is possible and it really wouldn't don't you feel like it really wouldn't be that surprising if the printers rise up well if one day the printers start printing out alien literature that would be quite good wouldn't it in a movie so the aliens hack into all the printers on the earth and they start printing out weird alien instructions and some mega nerds kind of assemble yes some machine that they've been given the instructions for this is a bit like the plot to Explorers, a Joe Dante film, where this kid dreams.

He realises that he's getting... Oh, I think I've seen this. He's getting the plans for a little spaceship beamed into his dreams by aliens. And he constructs the ship. It's really a great film. The only alien film I've continued to enjoy as well is Flash Gordon. Oh, yeah.

Which I think is very much like Star Wars for gays. And huge generalisation. I don't know if people will be annoyed at me saying that. I watched that recently on HD, and you can see how crappy those sets are. Oh, mate, yeah. I tried to watch that with my children the other day, didn't I? I bet they were like, what the hell is this? Yeah, they were just like, hang on, none of this computes at all, Dad. I bet they were like, what the hell is this? Yeah.

Hang on. None of this computes at all, Dad. I don't know what you're on about. Because I love that. Me and Joe used to adore that film. I can imagine you guys would like it too. Yeah. I didn't know it at the time, but that was high camp.

Yeah. I was like five years old and I was obsessed. Didn't like Maudlin Joy, but I was obsessed. Didn't care for Flash Gordon and Gale. Like they're running around playing rugby with the guards. I was like, Ming is great. Like what a great life Ming has. Or of course, Clitus,

the man with the sort of skull mask. Yes. Robot mask. It's an obscure planet in the S case. The inhabitants refer to it as fear. And Max von Sydow is like, yeah, what does he say? Ah, play with me. gliders i'm bored it's in a song isn't it yeah oh yeah so great high collars have you seen that one recently though because there's a bit where kleitos drugs dale oh he has her drugged dale isn't it not kale

yeah so that he can basically have his way with her do you remember that bit oh what went she's taken into being a concubine i think concubine yeah yeah yeah oh yes i do but she manages to like subvert she just has the strength of she comes around from it yeah that's right i think she's so strong-willed she realizes what's happening to her and she zaps herself out of it before the worst happens yes that's it isn't that is very troubling it really is because i went to see it with my family when it came out what is it 80 1980 maybe i think it's 1980 yeah and i thought it was terrific and my dad though afterwards he said that was a very sinister film indeed oh true i mean there was a lot of

odd stuff going on i remember when emperor Emperor Ming discovers that he's not with Dale and he just looks at this other concubine and goes, you! Yeah. And then walks off. There's one where the Emperor's daughter, who's in love with Flash. Flash.

Princess Aura. Princess Aura. They're in a sort of, a bit like, you know, on super yachts when they have like a dinghy they go in, but that's bigger than the majority of boats anyway they're in like a spaceship version of that yeah not that i know a lot about super yachts by the way i was gonna say yeah by the way i've got i live on a super yacht no um the ones i've seen in the magazines at my dentist and they're coming to land somewhere and she i'm sure she has the line some it's basically like release the flaps and

it's such a ridiculous like camp line, which as a child, of course, I never picked up on. You go, this film is just teeming with ridiculous innuendo. The whole script is sort of littered with kind of either super dramatic language, which is so dramatic, it's tipped into that camp realm, which something like Independence Day doesn't have that kind of ability to sort of, I never know quite what that difference is, but I suppose it's self-awareness that they're kind of, the makers of Flash Gordon were like, oh yeah, this is obviously the campus thing that's ever existed.

That's right. I mean, that kind of camp doesn't really exist anymore in mainstream culture, does it? Hello. Is that it? Are you, is that the role you play, do you think, nowadays to fill that gap? Because I'm'm thinking of there used to be a certain amount of that that would pop up in mainstream culture that, you know, the Batman TV series in the 60s was very much like that. Oh, yeah. And now all that is gone because of the Marvel and the DC franchises. Everything is played straight, literally and metaphorically. Yeah. And it's all oh oh it's super serious now this isn't camp mate this is the high stakes this is dark it's important it's not just a cartoon no i mean susan sontag has written the essay on camp but i think that for me camp really is taking the

serious and treating it flippantly and taking the flippant and treating it seriously so it's a sort of seesaw or a reversal of how serious we take things so it is it's always playing with that which is deemed most serious because that makes the world more bearable i think that's what camp comes from so i think making a story about an alien emperor who is bored and wants to play with the earth and doesn't understand them. It's super grand. It's a way of kind of playing with the, you know, the oppression in the world and the horrors of the world and going, hey, look how ridiculous it can be if we play with it. And then it loses some of its, at least some of its power and disappears into the realm of kind of playfulness and acting out, which feels so much more palatable than the reality of the situation

and makes it more manageable. 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. 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 code BUCKSTONE 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. Ugh. Rosie, should we head back? Hamble past. How are you, dog? I love you. Ah, Rosie's doing a lot better these days podcats all the patches of hair that got shaved off when she was ill a few weeks back are now more or less grown back she's just generally a much bouncier person than she was this time last month, which is great. Welcome back, podcats. That was Tom Allen, of course, that I was speaking to

there. A real pleasure to talk to Tom, and I'm very grateful indeed for his time. And I look forward to bumping into him IRL at some future point. Hello, techno bird. Now, I'm pretty sure that I know the name of that bird now, but let's check it with chirp-o-matic oh very windy analyzing waiting for results skylark alauda arvensis nice job chirp-o-matic not sponsored by chirp-opomatic i would like to remind you more cynical listeners it's just the first phone app that i tried when i was looking for things to identify birdsong and so far it's worked quite well although i haven't really tried it on anything particularly challenging anyway look um tape notes a reminder

to check out the tape notes podcast it was such fun appearing on there and getting to just crap on at great length about my musical efforts and they did a really nice job of editing it all together and it sounds great. So check out my appearance on the Tape Notes podcast. As I said at the end of the last episode with Kazuo Ishiguro, I plan to do this auction at some point. I think it was going to be in a few weeks in April, but I think I'm going to give myself a bit more time and do it more like the beginning of May. I thought about doing it a few weeks back when I was still in the process of sorting through a lot of my stuff that I've accumulated over the years and throwing things out and sorting through my parents' stuff. And, you know, this whole last year has been a long sorting process,

which I've mentioned a few times on the podcast, and I talked about it with Tom in this episode as well. But anyway, looking through some of my stuff, especially my old memorabilia, it didn't feel right to just throw it out. That would have been too much of a sentimental yank, a Tom Hank. But on the other hand, what's the point of just keeping it in a dusty box until after I'm dead and someone comes across it and goes what are these old manky toys let's put them in the bin you know what I mean so I thought well maybe these could go and live with some people who are interested in them

at the same time they could be providing a bit of support for Médecins Sans Frontières. So for those of you not familiar with Médecins Sans Frontières or MSF, hey, it's no chiz, but it does the job. They are an organization that provides medical assistance around the world to people in all kinds of crisis situations. Basically, if you see something grim happening on the news or rather i should say when you see something grim happening on the news in a foreign country for example those rohingya people whose refugee camp in bangladesh burned down the other

day that was i mean talk about hardship piled on top of hardship then there's a good chance that behind the images showing the effects of a tragedy like that one or a war or natural disasters or covid around the world there will be volunteer doctors from msf helping to provide emergency assistance to some of the people affected. Anyway, it seems to me that they're doing an extraordinary job. And I thought I could show my support in some small way by auctioning off this stuff. So I'm talking about very valuable items of profound pop cultural significance. I'll give you a few examples. profound pop cultural significance i'll give you a few examples i am going to be auctioning off my sailor's cap and t-shirt with my name on the front from the adam and joe show

a few of the stuffed toys that appeared in our movie parodies on that show and what else i've got some big blow-up reproductions like full-colour reproductions of book pages mounted on polyboard from the Adam and Jo book that we got made when we had a book launch at the ICA Gallery in London and we put these big blow-ups of the book pages on the gallery walls as if it was art. There will also be in this auction

some souvenirs from the time I played local reporter Tim Messenger in the film Hot Fuzz. It is one of the greatest deaths in cinema history. My head is exploded when a church turret is toppled onto it. And if you heard me talking to Rose Matafayo recently on the podcast, then I described to her the prosthetic they made of my head and they filled it with all blood and guts and blew it up that day out in Wells in May 2006. And after they had done the special effect and blown up my character's head, I went and retrieved some of the bits of the head, including quite a good chunk of the face.

It's really quite macabre. On the back, It's really quite macabre. On the back, there's even... There's still kind of congealed gore and blood and hair and things like that. Fake blood, obviously. Anyway, I thought maybe one of you would like to own that slightly grotesque piece of movie history. And, as well as loads of other odds and sods, t-shirts, posters, etc. There is one of the bike helmets that Garth Jennings and I attached to the members of Radiohead

when we did the video for their track Jigsaw Falling Into Place in 2007. I got Tom York and Johnny Greenwood to sign one of them and that will be up for auction as well. I'm hoping that these items and other bits and pieces will be available to bid for on my eBay page sometime in early May and then towards the middle of May I'm hoping to do a live streamed event from my nutty room here in Norfolk in which I'll show a few clips and tell a few stories about some of the items in the auction before final bids are taken that's the plan I'll let you know how it goes. Okay, that's it for this week. Thanks very much indeed, once again, to Tom Allen. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his production support and to Matt Lamont for his conversation edit skills. Thanks, Seamus. Thanks, Matt. Thanks to

Helen Green, who did the artwork for this podcast. Thanks to ACAST for their ongoing support. And thanks very much indeed to you for continuing to listen, especially you, because you listened right to the end. You know, a lot of other people don't listen right to the end. I know, it seems unbelievable. We have such a great time at the end of the podcast, but they just, for whatever reason, think they've got more important things to do.

But they are not getting sonic hugs. Unlike you. I love you. Bye! Bye. Thank you.