THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.169 - KATY WIX

Episode Date: November 18, 2021

Adam talks with British actor, comedian and writer Katy Wix about brain fog, not making it America, a stressful improv audition Adam and Katy both attended in 2006, eating anxieties, dead parents and Katy's book Delicacy: A Memoir about Cake and Death.There's also a clip from the archives of Adam and Joe talking about the improv audition soon after it happened.PLEASE BE AWARE: The conversation with Katy also includes a detailed description of a car accident she was involved in (around 37 minutes in. Skip ahead 10 minutes if you want to miss it).This episode was recorded remotely on July 27th, 2021.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for his work on this episodePodcast artwork by Helen GreenRELATED LINKSAN IDLER'S MANUAL by TOM HODGKINSON - 2021 (IDLER WEBSITE)SODAJERKER 10th ANNIVERSARY Q&A WITH ADAM BUXTON - 2021 (SODAJERKER WEBSITE)DELICACY: A MEMOIR ABOUT CAKE AND DEATH by KATY WIX - 2021 (WATERSTONES)KATY WIX TASKMASTERMIND - 2019 (YOUTUBE)KATY WIX WON A MEET AND GREET WITH DIRE STRAITS - ALAN DAVIES AS YET UNTITLED - 2016 (YOUTUBE)DELICACY: THE INTERVIEWS - KATY WIX TALKS TO SUSIE ORBACH - 2021 (YOUTUBE) 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.

How's things? Not too catastrophic, I hope. I'm reporting to you from a field in Norfolk. It is round about the middle of November 2021. It is the afternoon of the day out here. And it's a good one. Excellent job from the trees, from the grass, from the sun, the sky. It's all working out.

It's nice and cold and fresh. Very bright. The colours of autumn are popping. I have been doing some shopping. Rosie is up ahead bopping. It's really beautiful out here. What do you think, Rose? I love it.

Let's stay out here for a long time. Okay. Hey. Hello, dog. I love you. That's what I was shooting for. I was hoping for a flappy reset and i got one okay hey stop aimlessly waffling and tell the podcats about episode number 169 which features a rambling conversation with the british actor comedian and writer Katie Wicks, or as my

autocorrect would have it, Katie Six. No, I mean Wicks. It's a name. I appreciate all your help with all my atrocious spelling, but come on, mate, I've written this name over and over again. So, you know, flex those AI muscles and stop suggesting that I call her Katie Six. Thanks. Okay, Wix facts. Katie, currently aged 41, grew up outside Cardiff, Wales. She studied at the University of Warwick. Then Katie attended the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, where she competed in the Funny Women Awards, meeting her sometime comedy partner Anna Crilly in the process. Anna and Katie ended up making a sketch show on Channel 4 in 2013. It was called Anna and Katie. These days, both are successful actors in their own right.

These days, both are successful actors in their own right. Katie is one of the stars of Staff Let's Flats on Channel 4. She plays Carol, the estate agent. But she's also been an integral part of shows like Ghosts, Not Going Out, and The Windsors, in which she delivers a suitably unhinged and brilliant portrayal of Sarah Ferguson. unhinged and brilliant portrayal of Sarah Ferguson. She was in Emando Iannucci's satirical show Time Trumpet back in 2006. I was in that too. We didn't talk about that.

But we did talk about another show that we were in together around that time, as well as, also from around that time, quite a painful audition that we both attended. In 2019, Katie was one of the cast of Taskmaster, series nine, though sadly she had to miss a couple of days filming, following the death of her mother. She'd been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour shortly after Katie's father died from dementia the previous year, and the year before that, Katie's best friend had died. This brutal run of bereavement is one of the things Katie writes about with a combination of humour and painful insight in her book Delicacy,

a memoir about cake and death, published earlier this year. In the book, Katie talks about the many strange and surprising aspects of grieving, including being asked to talk about it on podcasts, and she also describes her sometimes fraught relationship with food and body image, a relationship that, not just for her, is seldom made easier by casual comments from family members and people in the TV industry. Early on in Katie's career, one sitcom producer advised her that she was, quotes,

I talked about some of this stuff with Katie when we recorded our conversation remotely in July of this year. It was just over a month at that point after all the legal restrictions on social contact intended to reduce the spread of COVID had been lifted, though both of us were still feeling a little uneasy about the prospect of socialising more heavily again. Katie had also recently had her Covid vaccination and was feeling brain foggy. What else did we talk about? We also talked about not making it in America, the weirdness of small talk and the therapeutic value of music.

And just so you're aware, towards the end of our conversation, as well as some fun death chat, there's also a description of a car accident Katie was involved in that she writes about in her book. That's probably around the 35 minute mark of this podcast in case you want to skip it for whatever reason. I mean, you know, it may be that there's other things we talk about that you find unpleasant to listen to, but I suppose that seems like a specific one I would understand. If I'd been in a serious car accident, I wouldn't necessarily want to hear people talking about them afterwards. Anyway, if you skip that bit, come back for the outro about 10 minutes later, where I'll be serving up some more great hot waffle and playing an old clip of me and Joe on XFM

talking about that nightmare audition that me and Katie attended back in 2006. I'll also be giving a couple of shout-outs for things you might enjoy, too, a couple of recommendations. But right now, with Katie Wicks, here we go. Bye. when i said because i'm filming staff at the moment oh yeah which um hooray by the way can't wait i know it's an absolute dream because you know we're all just good mates and it's just so funny i love it anyway i said to tash yesterday that i was doing this any i said any tips and she went i'll just be silly just be silly and um i haven't spoken out loud today so i'm really i'm nervous about that yeah so that

and the brain fog you know you do well to get a personality out of me plus I spent all day writing yesterday I didn't see anyone so I actually haven't spoken to anyone for 24 hours so I don't really I haven't really spoken to anyone other than my family and it's pretty much monosyllabic exchanges that I have with my children and my wife as well it's all just kind of admin, house admin, you know? Yeah. We just came back from a few days at Latitude Festival, though. Oh, yeah. God, I remember festivals.

Yeah. It's a test of all this one because, I don't know, they managed it. I think it was the first festival in the world to go ahead at this point in the pandemic. And people are curious to see how it goes for the people who were at the festival. How many people get infected? I mean, so far, everyone I know at the festival has been pinged. And they must have known that that was going to happen. You think it was a trap?

But the reason I mentioned latitude was, oh yeah, just general brain fog I mean it definitely comes and goes now we have a phrase for it brain fog which I don't remember people using that much before the pandemic do you no not really I mean it was really yeah when I had the vaccine it was a really intense experience I felt stoned for about two weeks. I mean, I was off my face. Yeah, like I was like, gone. I had to go for a neurological exam. I had to go to hospital. I was really... Because you were really worried? Well, no, after 10 days, they said, I went on the website and it said, look, if you've got a headache and short term memory, and brain fog, still after 10 days, you should call whatever the number is

111. So I did. and I was filming and they said oh yeah no you you've got to go straight to hospital but I think they were like completely overreacting so I did I had to wait for so long but um no I'm quite relaxed about it but yeah I mean it's a little it is a bit of a worry but it's also it's it's lingering it's going but it's it's lingering yeah it is it's a really weird feeling may i ask which flavor of jab you had az zeneca yeah i like to think of it as the punk option yeah also i'm just like a you know my body's so sensitive it's really boring it really reacts to whatever i put in it like paracetamol makes me go to sleep okay ibuprofen makes me feel really weird like you know i knew

i knew going in it was going to be like a festival in my body. How are you doing anyway, though, Katie? I haven't seen you. When was the last time I saw you IRL? No, I was just thinking that. My guess would be it was probably at some sort of gig, but I feel like I haven't been in a room with you for a long time. I haven't been in a room with anyone for a long time yeah

definitely the last time maybe the only time that we worked together was on rush hour yeah i was hoping i think i'll get mentioned the bbc3 hit sketch show you don't get many themed sketch shows anymore do you no you don't and this one was the theme was say the theme drum roll trans transport transport and travel yeah funny things that happen in vehicles seem to be the theme yeah i mean it was it was my first not my first ever job but first ever series i'd been oh really i was probably a baby yeah i would have been about 26 or something wow so you were in it frankie boyle was in it frankie boyle was in it weirdly yeah i remember doing the sketch he was he was very nice he was very um he was quite sort of paternal he was wasn't he he was friendly and smiley yeah i mean

it was um miranda. Oh, yeah. She did a series of lollipop lady sketches and perhaps they just filmed them in a block. And I think Laura Solon was in it. Yes, she was nice. I haven't seen Laura in a really long time. I hope she's all right. I think she's in LA.

For her sins. Doing all that. She's been banished to LA. Bloody la la la. Have ever um gone out and done what do they call it no pilot season pilot season um no i haven't i hate flying so that's a factor i thought you're gonna say i hate americans i hate americans um yeah that that is a factor it's got better one of my best mates who is a physicist once on a flight spent a whole flight explaining to me exactly what was happening and aerodynamics and everything with like a comb and a piece of paper she like sort of demonstrated it well like humming a couple of instruments.

So that's a factor. I just, I've never done it. I've never been tempted. I think things have changed, but I think for years and years, I just thought that maybe you had to just sort of be beautiful to do it and that there was no point. I just sort of decided that it was really shallow and was going to be really stressful.

And if I was going there now, it would be amazing to sort of go as a writer and go with a script and wave that around I think that'd be much more satisfying would you ever want to do that I mean I would want to what I would want to do is um be offered a part unconditionally be flown out there be told I was brilliant to do the part come back win some kind of award that would be great but what i would not want to do is go out there and really work hard and schlep around and be humiliated and turned down which is what you have to do of course unless you're lucky or you've got some kind of unique thing about you or you're incredibly hot for some reason but i've never been in that position there's enough to be

getting on with here it's's fine. Yeah, exactly. Plus, I always think, like, what's the end game for these people? What is really to be gained from going out and, you know, like, best case scenario, you become a movie star and you're one of those Brits who's like a big famous Brit. But then for most people, even if it goes quite well, most likely scenario is you get a part in a sitcom and the sitcom gets cancelled after six episodes or something.

Yeah, or you're in a bad sitcom for like eight years and it's hell and you're not allowed to do anything else. Yeah. That would make me feel like my soul had shrunk. Horrible. Also, I feel like for some people it's just about you know they'll never be satisfied it's just a hunger that's never sated for power and attention and i feel like you know we all know people like that yes in this in this no this is good this is good this is making me feel better about um not going out and making it yes they are

yeah insecure needy people who are trying to fill a hole within themselves that will never be filled and the fact that i'm not doing that makes me brilliant also yeah if you see more confident yeah if like again to return to the best case scenario long-running sitcom that people love friends. I mean, look at those guys. Did you see that reunion thing? No, because I don't have special telly, but I never really liked it, to be honest. No.

I never really got into it, but I've seen the clips. Yeah, yeah. Did you ever see Matthew Perry's play when it was in the West End? No. There was one review that said something like, just as David Mamet probably wouldn't be good in a sitcom it hasn't worked the other way around here as in you know like why does the sitcom actor think he can write a play as well as david mamet and i yeah that that

sort of fear of being a bit of a hobbyist who's just decided to do this now no it's difficult to reinvent yourself and people are delighted when other people do try and reinvent themselves and fail somehow because they they just think oh yeah good i'm not going to do that because it takes a lot of guts to do that and everything is geared towards people carrying on. You stay in your lane. You carry on doing what you're doing. Don't rock the boat. I mean, there's lots of practical reasons for that. But it's really hard making a massive change.

That's why people write books about it. And, you know, it's a bit like diet books, isn't it? It's this spurious promise of your new ideal life yeah all you have to do is make it happen and and then you get there and it's still you exactly so wherever you go there you are you are yeah that's the title of a monk's book isn't it is it there's a monk who wrote that book i don't know him personally it's just just monk trivia hang on this is what google is for well i've got a the first result is book by john cabat zinn that sounds as if it might be a monk yeah 1994 no matter how busy you are find quiet reflective

moments in your life and reduce your stress levels drastically with this classic best-selling guide from a mindfulness expert but uh wherever you go there you are is a quote that people had on posters in the 60s you know i mean it's been around for a long time really yeah yeah yeah i think so by the way i just said that the way i just said yeah yeah in that kind of dismissive way my wife absolutely hates it because she thinks I'm being sort of contemptuous and lording something over her. And it's a really bad habit that I've got into because I don't mean I don't mean it to be like that. But I can understand how it might sound like that. So I apologize. Yeah, I mean, I yeah, I can understand if I was hearing it every day.

Yeah. I yeah I can understand if I was hearing it every day yeah I think I'd like it are you in a long-term relationship or marriage currently no neither right I have I have options yeah I'm sure you do yeah I'm a real loner like if anything I spend too much time alone and I have to I mean I find it quite tiring being around a lot of people you know small talk and all of that I don't totally understand the rules I don't know like I just run out of things to say so quickly when it's not like a topic not like this this. I mean, like, you know, in hairdressers and stuff. When it's kind of like you don't really want to give away, like you don't really, it doesn't have to be intimate.

No, you, in fact, you don't want to. That's the whole thing about small talk is that you want to steer clear of anything that will introduce points of potential friction, right? Yeah, it's meant to be bland and accommodating exactly and it's a practical relationship either you're in a shop there's not the time it's not useful for you to get to know each other or someone is maybe cutting your hair or you're at the gym or whatever it might be it's not useful to suddenly start sharing your views on

transgender rights or whatever it might be. Yeah. But it's interesting because also when I was writing yesterday, I was writing the script and I haven't written dialogue in ages. And I was thinking about how like tricky it is. But also I was thinking about how the way people speak in real life is so fucking bizarre when you really listen to it. You know, people talk over each other and say such odd things. And like I frequently put real things that have happened or real speech you've overheard into scripts and stuff. But it's always the thing that people often say, oh, that's a bit unbelievable or that's, you know, too much. It's always the most real thing that i think is the most weird it's like you want in drama you're doing a version of real life that you're trying to organize and make real life

less messy or something like that aren't you now here's a segue for you okay is that what you were doing with your book katie delicacies which i read and very much enjoyed it's heavy though to pick up is that okay to say yeah no of course like i know it's interesting because i don't think of it as heavy because in my life it just seems like you know what happened not heavy but yeah no i like it it's better than someone saying it's not it's not heavy yeah it is because it's you tackling I mean it's a memoir right yeah but it is you focusing on some of your struggles with anxiety and depression and then grief after the loss of your parents and other people in your life that you have loved. So you're really tackling things that are difficult.

And people are talking about them more these days, I guess. But how did you feel writing all that stuff? Because I had a similar thing of touching on some of those subjects when I wrote a memoir a couple of years back. And I found it quite strange and you talk towards the end in the sort of afterward you interrogate what it is that makes you want to write about these things and write about grieving and I had that I spent a lot of time thinking like is this good is this really helping me or anyone else is this just

kind of uh just self-indulgence is this sort of weakness to to want to air all this stuff publicly yeah and um maybe get a pat on the back for being brave or maybe just make myself feel better or you know did you have all that stuff? Oh, completely. Yeah, go on. I mean, well, I guess I think that I was raised to, I think my family were incredibly private. And there was a sense of you at one way, sort of outside of the home. And then inside the home, you can kind of, you know, there was like a kind of performative version of you when you talk to the neighbours, and then you could just kind of relax when you weren't around people. So I think for ages,

I wouldn't have dreamt of saying any of this out loud, because it's really shameful to write about it or talk about it, definitely. But I think it got to a point where I felt really angry about that. Like I sort of thought, or who's going to decide what's private? I want to rebel against it. Like, fuck that. I think that's how I felt. And also, I think I was in, you know, it was a really painful time. And I felt really, there was something very teenage about it. Like I wanted to just tell everyone that I wasn't having a good time. Like I wanted to hold people prisoner to this and go, look at this. Like, it isn't funny. It's actually not funny at all. It's horrible.

Like I, I felt like I was in that place for about three years. And that's when I was writing. So it felt like a sort of tantrum, a book tantrum. And that time was after your mother died. Is that right? Yeah. So so my friend my best friend dying and then my parents died you know quite quick succession so it all happened in about three years them all dying together which so it was kind of like my I was really close to my parents and um so it was a bit like having your kind of foundations taken away it was really destabilizing and strange to kind of just feel like you've lost your family almost like overnight. That's how it felt. And I mean,

I was 37, I think when the first, no, 36 when my friend died and 37 when, so again, it's funny. I think being in your thirties is quite young to lose both, but you know, I know people, there's lots of people that have lost parents much younger than that so you know I'd always try and remember that and I think I wrote about that in the book as well there was a feeling of well what at what age do I have to be where it's not where it's like I'll get less sort of sympathy and you know like maybe in your 20s it's like oh god this is going to really affect you all your life but maybe 37 it's like oh come on you're you're an adult you'll get over this now this is just like what happens but I um I mean I was yeah I was really close to both of them and it yeah it did affect me deeply I just the fact

that people actually have to die just really affected me for ages I couldn't really get my head around it it was like you, it seems so sort of in the abstract, doesn't it? Until someone you know dies. Yeah. Did you used to think about all that kind of stuff before? I mean, I was definitely like a gothy, morbid teenager, but it was more like I was obsessed with ghosts and the paranormal and like I had weird shrines. Yeah. So it was the fun aspect of death. I had a really atheist upbringing, but there was something in me that was very sort of like, intense and fanatical. Like if I'd had a religious upbringing, I would have been doing it to like the maximum. I wanted to be a fashion designer for

ages. So I just remember drawing a lot of dresses and being really into wearing black and dyeing my hair purple. But other than that, you weren't overly morbid or worried in that respect. I mean, you talk about your, there's a lot of stuff just your relationship with your body and the way you regarded yourself and the kind of comments that people made to you about your body. I mean, people do this stuff really without thinking, don't they? Because I think a lot of the time it is people projecting their own insecurities onto you. Yeah. I mean, I suppose it comes from like an internalized sort of fat phobia, I guess. Right.

Like when I was growing up, the women that were most concerned with my appearance were the ones who had issues, definitely themselves. issues definitely themselves sometimes it was a thing of like people who maybe have been in a kind of state of semi-starvation or control all their lives and when they see someone else who's put on weight it's a kind of like why am I doing this then you know how dare you I've I've you know been starving every day of my life why are you just suddenly deciding that you're gonna you know be happy and be the size you want to be? Like, how dare you? I've been struggling every day. So it's almost maybe like a jealousy. I don't know sometimes. But I mean, I would just never try and I just don't think I'd ever comment.

I try not to comment on people's appearance, I think, at all now because I just never know what's going on. And, you know, I just never know what it's going to bring up for them, good or bad. What were your parents like with you? My mum, it turns out, and I'm, you know, this is if there was a bingo card for this podcast, this would definitely be one of the squares is me talking about or using the phrase, I'm still in the process of sorting through my parents' belongings. I think I use that phrase on pretty much every episode of this podcast or have done for the last few years. It's catchy. I'll give you that. I should get it put on a T-shirt.

You should get back on the old panel shows. It's brilliant. Have you got a caption for this funny photo? Wow, it looks like the Prime Minister is still in the process of getting his belongings. It looks like the prime minister is still in the process of going to bed. Longings. But at the moment I'm finding all this stuff in my mum's boxes. All this evidence of her ongoing campaign to have control over the way she looked.

Yeah. Diet, mags, all these articles about food that she would cut out from the Daily Mail and all these bits of equipment like you know things that you strap to yourself and they send electric shocks through you or something so you can just strap them there while you're sat at your desk or doing whatever you're doing and in theory it's supposed to encourage weight loss she had loads of these gadgets and i always knew that she cared about that stuff because she gave my sister quite a hard time about it not so much me and my brother yeah but um you know i definitely acquired a few hang-ups but at the same time my mum made sure that there was a never-ending supply of French fancies in the cupboard.

And I was delighted to be able to snaffle as many of them as I could. So how does that work? That thing is so common with so many women I know. Or the women I grew up around of self-sacrifice. But you always give and nurture and make sure everyone else is having the French fancies like that feels like it was kind of the the running theme of like this is kind of what the women do they just put their needs last and you know just make sure everyone else is okay and that's definitely a big part of how I was raised which I've had to try and kind of fight against but I I think I was really raised to see how I looked as being that I what I should base all my self-esteem

on as it is for a lot of women I think that I know anyway and and I saw that and like so how my mother dealt with like aging for example I that was quite a sort of painful thing that I would see and I mean I felt it a little bit with writing the book because it was just so nice to use my brain and feel really it felt really like liberating that I wasn't that from the neck down it was just like whatever I'm writing a book it felt really nice yeah because I was just raised to think that that was the thing that should give you a sense of having any value in the world to concentrate on how you look but yes using your

brain as opposed to your career as an actor and someone who has to for practical reasons be aware of how they look yeah I really loved it I think for that reason yeah and I felt excited about just um having a different way to feel proud of something I'd done, a different way to have self-esteem, I guess. And also, I was so aware that, yeah, like watching my mum age and stuff, I was just so aware that, well, of course, that's not going to work if you put all your sense of self on appearance. Like, that's going to go. That's going to be fleeting so I'm gonna have to come up with something else eventually you know I also think it's really common that people kind of swap around I see that quite a lot of like oh I'll get my self-esteem

from this or from this or from this and then you know if it's not a kind of foundation then you're always going to be in trouble I guess aren't you't you? If you're looking outside of yourself, I guess that's the dream, that you don't have to look outside of yourself for validation. But, you know, I think that's really hard not to do that. Yeah, of course. This feels like stupid pop psychology, but... I like stupid pop psychology. I even read... Do you read stupid pop psychology books?

Not really. I do. Sorry, we're not the same. No Not really. I do. Sorry. No, that's okay. We're not the same. No, they're good fun. Sorry we're not the same. Oh, that's okay.

I celebrate diversity. Do you ever meet people who get really annoyed that you're not like them? Do you know what I mean? Give me an example. It's a weird thing. Like when you show somebody that you love something you really love it it is kind of devastating when they don't like it because it feels like you're they're rejecting you yeah it's really hard things i love so much that they may as well be me you know so

it's like it's like an extension of me come on try a few out on me let's see if I get you. Well, I started playing guitar in lockdown. Good one. There's my guitar. Mainly classical guitar. I really like it because you have to hold it like this. I find it really fun. Katie is indicating that she would hold it up. Like a double bass.

Like a dance partner. Like a dance partner, did you say? Yeah. Yeah, classical and I mean Spanish guitar is what I want to really play because I think because my dad loved it so much and I think it's really common when someone dies to just so you know like absorb something that they were into or whatever I've been having weekly lessons via the zoom yeah and I've been learning with someone else as well so we can sort of hold each

other accountable it's been really nice and i haven't played since i was a teenager so it was like almost like starting again and we're on like we've been doing these like working through these guitar books the guitarist's way really great because i think they're written for like you know younger people but uh yeah i think i've made a lot of progress the guitar teacher he's amazing he's he's a jazz guitarist but the music theory I don't I mean I find it really really difficult really confusing but it has it really saved lockdown for me I really loved it it's very therapeutic anything musical yeah it's great I had Brian Eno on this podcast and oh yeah I think I heard that one that was a dream come

true for me very exciting yeah but he does this thing in his london studio i think every few weeks where he just gets a load of people together and and it's like a choir and they just sing together but the the deal is that they have to all sing together it can't be you know if chris martin is there or something it can't be him showboating and grandstanding about how yeah cold player she is it's all about joining their voices together and everyone making a lovely sound it would be like if we all got together and had to all say a joke at once and no one was allowed to say it louder or have a microphone yeah that love that communal comedy supportive non-showy offy comedy i don't believe that that's a thing do you remember were you part of that thing where they decided that

they were going to bring back oh hang on did you do it no? No. They decided to bring back his lines anyway and we all had to have like mass auditions. Do you remember? Yeah, man. I'm sure you were there and it was like you got asked to stay, you got tapped on the shoulder

like in the room and got asked to leave. It was terrible. Yeah, it was a big circle of people. I talked about it on the podcast when I was on XFM with Joe years ago, like 2006 it must have been or thereabouts yeah and it was a big group of people and I was one of the older

people going along because mainly it was young hungry comics yeah desperate people who'd like tread on you too but I ended up doing the pilot and Tim Key did it Marek but yeah I just remember yeah like being in a massive circle and then the producer saying something like right you you and you go in the middle and start a scene it was that kind of thing yes it was horrendous and then you'd have to go around the circle instead of riff on subjects like then you'd have to go around the circle and sort of riff on subjects like the last book you read and i had nothing i was literally just saying through words and you got through because all meant to be improvised but it wasn't because when i did the pilot he came around to my dressing room before and knocked on the door and went do the woman who's off to buy eggs do that

make sure you do that woman everyone loves her and i was like oh okay so and then i had to act surprised when the host whoever it was was like uh katie have you got anything to say about buying eggs what would you say now if someone put you on the spot for some egg material oh god i mean um i can't remember the last time i made a joke that wasn't about an egg so i'm extremely excited tell us a yolk there you go through to the next round torture no i'm glad i don't have to do that anymore do you go up for auditions for things a lot yeah I do I mean I I find it tricky on zoom zoom auditions I did a zoom audition recently and it was like balanced really precariously on something and it like the top of my head kept getting cut off in

the audition and then something else happened or whatever and um it was pretty awful anyway but about half an hour later the the casting director went on Twitter and wrote a tweet of something like, actors, don't do the following in auditions and then listed all the things I'd done. I couldn't quite handle it. He didn't mention me by name, but it was, I mean,

it was literally like 20 minutes after the audition so this is a sort of handbrake um tonal shift now so feel free to bat it away okay oh god oh god but can i ask you about the car accident that you had and oh god yeah there's so much worse you could have asked okay you write in your book about this car accident that you had when you were in your 20s. How old were you? I was 26, I think. Or maybe I was just about to turn 26. Yeah. And that seemed like a watershed in a lot of ways.

Is that the way it seems to you now? Yeah, it's funny. I mean, because I don't drive and I'm sure it's, I mean, I wasn't interested in driving before. But I think afterwards it was hard to be a passenger even for about a year. And my dad never drove again, bless him, because he just, you know, blamed himself and just thought I'm stupid and old and I've really hurt my daughter and I can't be trusted to drive. So it was really, it really impacted on everyone, you know, blamed himself and just thought, I'm stupid and old and I've really hurt my daughter and I can't be trusted to drive. So it was really, it really impacted on everyone, you know, the whole family. And what happened? So I was back home in Wales where I grew up and I'd gone back to visit my parents. And the only reason I know what happened is because the police came and

had to like investigate the tire marks and do all that which was quite kind of exciting I think what happened really was that it was kind of a blind spot so I think my dad pulled out and didn't see this car coming and it hit us side on so we and the car was going at about 50 so we span and span and span went through the central reservation and the car was just a right off my dad was unconscious but I was I didn't I was conscious for the whole thing so I remember being inside you know it was like being inside the washing machine being inside the spinning was so so so fast and like the sort of g-force of being like in the seat and then the safety belt broke everything it sort of touched really on my body so collarbone and sternum and ribs and my knee

kind of was really badly hurt because it touched the middle bit of the car and my dad fractured his skull on the kind of car frame like that so I think the fire brigade like got us out of all the metal and then I just remember being on a you know the back of an ambulance and and that was it really the the violence of the impact was that was like unbelievable it was just this horrendous you know to be hit at like 50 miles an hour that was hard that kind of the sound of it and everything I had like really strange dreams thinking about the sound sometimes I also think well I'm not going to have two in my life. What are the chances of that? So sometimes I feel like, oh, I've got immunity.

This is fine. This is all fine. Touch wood. It hasn't happened. Your chances have definitely gone down statistically, haven't they? I would have thought so. And then in the book you, well, I've heard you saying that, and maybe you say it in the book, or maybe I heard you say it elsewhere, that, you have to kind of adjust to letting go of that person that you used to be and what they were preoccupied by. And adjusting to this new person and a new set of preoccupations.

And I really related to that. And I just thought, yes, that's what my last five years has been all about and how are you able to express how you are different now yeah I mean it's funny because the brain fog that I had it's taken the edge off the kind of intensity I think of some of the emotions so it's actually been quite nice in some ways. It's like other medications, I guess, in that it takes off the top and bottom, doesn't it? Like when people talk about antidepressants, it's like you're just in the middle band. So I, and I think it's because I'm busy again and working. So I feel a little bit more kind of like I'm out of the period of like really intense grief. I think, I think I heard you in an episode talking about, you know, whether to be there at the end and actually what it's like to be in the room

and the noises and all of that detail, which I actually loved hearing because it's like, you know, so shocking. You sort of can't believe you're saying this, but it's weird how you can just sort of live through something really horrendous that I don't think I ever imagined I would have been able to deal with. So I'm kind of surprised that how I've been able to deal with it. Do you think maybe it's made you a little bit more fatalistic and robust as far as mortality goes? Yeah. How I feel about it is that it's a strange thing of feeling you know tougher and weaker at the same time because I feel as though my resilience to things has gone up or the kind

of list has got to shuffle down a bit in terms of things that I think I would have got really stressed or upset about before so there's definitely a sense of putting things into perspective. But I think that I felt very, well, I guess it is, you know, like a form of PTSD. I had really bad insomnia for about two years after they died. And that was hard with filming because you have like 5 a.m. starts. And I just would, you know, be like a zombie thinking, oh, please don't put this on TV. But, oh my God. What were you filming at that point? this on tv but oh my god which what were you filming at that point i think i think second series of staff that was i wasn't sleeping so well and i think maybe it was there was one series

of ghosts where i was pretty that was a bit of a wreck and also mum died in the middle of filming taskmaster which which i didn't think i could carry on, but I'm glad I did because I was just a real mess. Oh, man. Yeah. But, you know, sometimes these things help, I think, the distraction or being forced to seem like you're okay. Mm-hmm. One thing that I find myself talking to people about

a fair bit now is the possibility of acquiring some skills to help me face that moment better than my parents did not that they did a an especially bad job they weren't kind of freaking out or uh you know it could have been way worse but i did feel like there's got to be a better way to to get ready for it and to make peace with it and to because i think both of them my mom was just fed up and like she sort of gave up a little bit and my dad was just very melancholy you know it sounds like a joke yeah of course he's melancholy he's gonna die but i think that there's got to be a way of making peace with it and not being like his thing was he was fretting i was like what are you fretting about he's like so many things it's like what's the point now though you know what i mean like mate i know that one of the things he was fretting

about was the sale of his house and you know so so he wanted to tie up all the loose ends basically and it was right up until the you know the final as soon as the the sale of the house went through then he was like okay i'm gonna die now but um you know he didn't get as much money as he was hoping for and all this kind of and it really bummed him out it's like yeah don't worry too much about the sale of the house yeah i mean do you think things like that are just a way of clinging on to a little bit of control and when you don't really of course have any i mean i remember trying to explain to my mom that she didn't really need her purse anymore she just didn't there was nothing to be done with her purse that was really or she didn't

need shoes anymore that was really hard just sort of sort of like, no, that's it. You know, you're 68. You don't need shoes. It hasn't made me think about my own death, which is odd, because I feel in some ways that I have become. Well, in answer to the question earlier about how I'm different, I feel like I've become more of a person now that they have died. That I feel like I've really. I mean, they call it individuating in therapy talk, don't they? And I, so I feel as though in some ways it's like things are about to be more real. So I feel like it's almost, I don't, I don't feel morbid at all i feel like okay life like this is being an

adult now this is like it feels like the beginning not an end at all for me so i i don't think that's a normal reaction because my brother's gone the other way i mean he said to me the other day he was like i've i've worked it out i'm gonna drive up to the top of a uh volcano in iceland and just drive in i'm just gonna drive into a volcano i wonder if that's a male thing because i i can relate to that i think it's a volcano he's like i don't i don't want any of that i don't want to be in a hospital get on my ass hanging out i'm just gonna go in a i'm just gonna go into a volcano yeah yeah i i can i really can relate my my one is um i always imagine going off the niagara falls in a barrel as a party trick i don't know i don't relate to that i want my every last word recorded

i want to be you know saying like something really wise and helping someone right to the very last minute no i mean obviously i'm going to be doing a podcast, but then I'll be checking the charts and getting really pissed off that Louis' podcast is above mine. Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop.

These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code Buxton to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with square space. Yes. Continue. Continue. Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was Katie Wicks talking to me there.

podcasts. That was Katie Wicks talking to me there. Thank you very much indeed to her for making the time to waffle with me through the brain fog. And I have posted links in the description of this podcast to a few clips of Katie doing a task mastermind with Alex Horne, The Taskmaster Mind with Alex Horne appearing on Alan Davies' Yet Untitled. A couple of clips of her in other things. And there's also a link to the Waterstone site where you can buy her book, Delicacy, a memoir about cake and death. There's also a link to a podcast that I hosted recently. Well, I kind of hosted. I was a guest host for the Soda Jerker podcast, which I mentioned on here before,

hosted by a couple of musicians from Liverpool, Simon Barber and Brian O'Connor. And they interview other musicians about their process and the songwriting craft. And it's a really fantastic archive of interviews with all sorts of legends of music there, a lot of them from the 80s, from when I was growing up and getting into music. And there's loads of conversations with people I really loved,

like Howard Jones and Nick Hayward and Martin Fry and Colin Hay from Men at Work. But it's not just sort of 80s pop maestros on there. You've got Sir Paul McCartney. You've got Alicia Keys. You've got St Vincent, Charlene Spiteri, Roisin Murphy, Maximo Park, Nitin Sawney. These are some of the more recent ones. Gregory Porter, The Staves, friends of the podcast.

Mark Oliver Everett from The Eels. That's a really good one. Anyway, if you want to hear musicians talking about the secrets of their songwriting process, then I highly recommend Soda Jerker. They've been at it for 10 years now, and for their 10th anniversary bonus edition, I spoke to Simon and Brian about making the podcast and put a few questions from their listeners to them,

as well as some of my own, and I also waffled a little bit with them about the tricks and techniques of talking to musicians and trying to get the best out of them when they are sometimes reluctant to share and it was good fun. So that link is in the description of this podcast. Now I was going to play a clip of me and Joe talking about that audition that Katie Wicks also attended back in 2006 that we were talking about there. I will do that shortly, but just before I do, I wanted to give a shout out to another friend of the podcast, old friend of mine and Joe Cornish and Louis Theroux as well,

Tom Hodgkinson. He is the editor of the Idler magazine and he has a book out, The Idler's Manual. So, for those of you not familiar with the world of the idler, here's my pitch. Are you the kind of person who's racked with guilt and shame if you have five minutes to yourself and you don't use it to maximize your potential for personal or professional advancement? If so, Tom Hodgkinson is here to provide reassurance in the form of his new book, The Idler's Manual. It's a collection of wisdom and experience accumulated over many years on the subject of idling as a means to getting more from life. I think when they first started doing the idler it was a bit of a goof. The idea of celebrating idleness, not laziness,

but specifically idleness. And well, I suppose what they are extolling the virtues of is something that crosses over with mindfulness just trying to promote the benefits of taking it easy and stopping to look around once in a while Ferris Bueller style and to not feel you have to fill every available moment of the day with industry that serves your ambitions. Sometimes it's not only nice, but beneficial to do fuck all. That sounds nice, but not everyone has that luxury. No, good point, Rosie. Thanks very much for making it. But there's various ways to embrace idleness, even in the context of a life filled with work and family commitments. Yeah, whatever. I haven't got time to listen to you. I've got to go over here.

Fly past from the hairy bullet. Right. Clip of myself and Joe from the archives now. from the archives now. This was when we were on XFM in 2006. When did we get to XFM? I think we started doing radio shows there in 2003. And by 2006, we were doing podcasts for the first time. And this was one of the conversations from the live radio show that we used to do on Saturday mornings at XFM that ended up being part of one of the podcasts we put out around that time. And even though I don't think I was being especially indiscreet, I'm not sure that this conversation did me many professional favours, certainly not with Dan Patterson, who I think may have emailed after I put this out and said like, oh, I'm so sorry to have ruined your day by giving you an opportunity to be in a TV show.

Fair point. And you might say, well, why are you raking over it again? 15 years later, Buckles. Well, because why not? So here's me and Joe in 2006 on XFM talking the weekend after that audition that Katie Wicks was also present for. And it must have been March, I think, of that year. Here we go. Let us travel back into the toilet of time. Long ago when you were even more stupid.

Do you remember when you did that thing? Oh, no. Let's discuss it in slightly too much detail. I got a call from my agent. She said, are you up for going to do an audition at the BBC where you'll have to do a little bit of improvising? Hey. So I thought, yeah, I'd love a bit of improv.

You know, I'm the improv king. And I imagined what the deal would be was going in there, two or three people maybe in a little room. You're given a scene and you kind of go crazy all over its arse. And I was led into the BBC and into a big room, and there were, in this very large room, I would say about 30 or 40 barely well-known comedians from the current live stand-up circuit.

Any names we'd know? Well, let me see. I probably shouldn't say exact names. OK, no, it's a secret. OK, that's good enough. But I can tell you that there were people in there who've been on shows like little britain titty bang bang uh a lot of bbc those are some of the greatest shows on television uh the office that oh you know a lot of pretty

well-known faces there and certainly very um well-known stand-ups from the current stand-up scene and they were all half of them were sat around the side. The other half of them were stood in a semicircle in the middle of the room, improvising Whose Line Is It Anyway style games, you know? Yeah. And it turned out that this was a show being put together by the producer of Whose Line Is It Anyway, Dan Patterson, a new kind of improv show.

And I didn't realise that was the deal at all. So I just went in there and I thought, oh my God, this is my worst nightmare. Because I, like many other people, used to watch Have I Got News For You and think, I mean, whose line is it anyway? And just sort of imagine what I would say if I was in that situation. Would I be able to come out with anything funnier than Tony Slattery? And usually the answer was no. You know, maybe, you know, Tony Slattery may not be saying anything that that funny but it's probably better than i could manage if i was on the spot so let's see joe cornish how you

do oh wow with some of the things that were thrown at me okay okay basically i wanted to just turn around and get out of this room immediately so were you standing in front of all these other comedians when you were asked to do this yeah so you were being watched by like 38 other top stand-ups so so the first thing was uh for example they had an object do you remember that they would give them an object and they'd have to sort of say crazy things about the object to recontextualize it amusingly and they had a toy truncheon was one of them brilliant and so what you'd have to do is when you had an idea for something funny to say about the toy truncheon feeling nervous you went into the middle of the

semicircle and you tapped the person with the truncheon on the shoulder and said freeze. And then you would say something funny. So you didn't have to go up. But if you didn't go up, you're not going to be in the show. No, exactly. Got to make an effort. And some people were going mental with this thing. They were really trying hard and they had loads of things to say.

Some funny, some not. For example, there was with the plastic truncheon. People were coming out with stuff like sir this is salami you are really spoiling us that's good right uh someone said uh step over here sir empty your pockets please you know like a handheld security detective someone said i've been overfeeding my slug so anyway then it was my turn it's gonna be a good show isn't it yeah when it was my my turn to do something i was sat down in a row because i was a late comer i was sat down in a row with the other four late comers and people were just told to fire questions at us and we had

to just come up with answers on the spot amusing answers to these questions so here you go joe cornish yeah see how you do with these. State a fact about yourself that would surprise the audience. I've got three bums. Not bad. You see, I think probably about as good. Hanthe's laughing. Hanthe loves that. Look at that.

She just loves bums. I came out with, check this out for rubbishness. Right. I came out with, I'm sleeping with David Cameron oh come on that's political that's rubbish did anyone laugh at that? no not really

people were supportive everyone was laughing at everyone else's gags give me another one what book are you reading at the moment? oh this is tricky you can't just be honest so I was going to say so what are you going to say? at the moment oh something funny you can't just be honest you gotta say something funny

so i was gonna say yeah so so what are you gonna say uh the argos catalog quite quite good quite good i was gonna say okay i'm gonna say the da vinci code and then i'm gonna be like pretend to be a ponce about it you know like as a joke but then the person sat next to me said it you could have made a dick and dom. But then the person sat next to me said it. You could have made a Dick and Dom in Da Vinci Code joke. You could have said, oh, I'm reading the kids version of Da Vinci Code. Dick and Dom in Da Vinci Code. That would have gone down well, wouldn't it?

That would have gone down brilliantly. Trust me, that would have gone down amazing. I'm sure, but obviously I didn't think of that because I'm a jerk. OK, how about this? Who's responsible for bird flu? Who's responsible for bird flu? I need some for bird flu you can't i need some thinking time no you can't have any you're on the spot mrs thatcher mrs thatcher what does that mean it's like your david cameron one but more dated i'm glad to see that you would do as well as i did

okay here's another one world's worst person to share a flat with this was one of the ones where you have to stand forward and impersonate the world's worst person to share a flat with this was one of the ones where you have to stand forward and impersonate the world's worst person to share a flat with here's what i did i stepped forward and i said i won't need to use the toilet i generally pee in bottles what what's that what is that all about i mean christ why did i think that was even worth stepping forward for the only reason i did it was because i hadn't said anything for the last 17 minutes or something. I thought, this is embarrassing. That sounds embarrassing.

Oh, it was hideous. And here's one more. First scenes of first drafts for famous movies. Go, Joe Cornish. Okay, Titanic. Oh, I don't know. You see? I don't know.

E.T. I don't know, I don't know. I don't know, I can't think. It see? I don't know. E.T. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I can't think. It's horrible, isn't it? I stepped forward and I said, Hey, guys, I just woke up from hypersleep and I found this really cuddly alien.

Can we keep it? Oh, that's the first scene from Aliens? Yeah. Yeah, that's good, man. First draft of Aliens. I just said the names of films. Yeah, you did. That's not good enough, is it?

No, you wouldn't get through to... To prove I know some films. Anyway, it was exhausting and I'll never do it again. films. Yeah, you did. That's not good enough, is it? No, you wouldn't get through to... To prove I know some films. Anyway, it was exhausting and I'll never do it again. There you go, you see. So even Cornballs, a very quick-witted and funny man, wasn't able to do that much better than I did in those auditions. I'm not sure if they ever did a show in the end. I don't remember seeing it, but maybe I blocked it out.

OK, that is it for the podcast this week. did a show in the end. I don't remember seeing it, but maybe I blocked it out. OK, that is it for the podcast this week. Thanks so much to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his work on this episode, for his production support. Thanks to Becca Tashinsky for her additional production support. Thanks to Helen Green for her brilliant artwork for this podcast and for my book, Ramble Book. Have you read Ramble Book? Oh, it's so good. Oh, hey, look, speaking of Ramble Book, perhaps I should have said earlier in the podcast, I wanted to apologize to some more people who had bought tickets for a Ramble Book live reading show that I was supposed

to be doing in Cork in Ireland this weekend. And a couple of weeks back, I was bemoaning the poor ticket sales for that particular show. Unfortunately, it doesn't look as if they've picked up in the interim, despite my shout out. My agent is stressing to me that Ireland is still dealing with lots of COVID restrictions. And she's saying, oh, no, no, no, it's nothing to do with you being totally unpopular. It's COVID. It's quite good that you can blame anything on COVID. Makes you feel better. But the show in Cork is sadly not going ahead. The promoter has said that they just haven't sold enough tickets to make it viable, which is a real shame. And I'm sorry, if you're listening to this and you bought tickets for that show, you probably know that already because you would have been contacted to get a refund.

I certainly hope. But I'm really, really genuinely sorry about that. I hope I'll get out there another time when there's less COVID restrictions and perhaps my profile is a little higher. I need to get back on TV buckles. What about some kind of improvised comedy show? I just like being out here. It's so beautiful. The sun's going down. You can see all the spider's webs stretching across the grass and the fields.

But yeah, sorry, people of Cork, albeit a small group of people in Cork. Thanks once again to Katie Wicks, and thanks as ever to ACAST. And would you like a creepy hug? Oh, okay. No, no, that's fine. Not everyone's into it. Well, yeah. Good to see you. We should do this again.

Want to do it again? I'm improvising an awkward goodbye. I am good at improvising. Come here, I love you. I like to growl when I hug people. Is that good? Until next time, take extremely good care. I love you. Bye! Bye. Thank you.