THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.204 - JESSE ARMSTRONG

Episode Date: September 24, 2023

Adam talk to English writer Jesse Armstrong about his comedy influences, why he's happy to leave the 4th wall unbroken, whether Peep Show was realistic, the challenges involved with writing Succession, separating the art from artist, audiences laughing in the wrong way, whether satire does more harm than good and other hot waffle.This conversation was recorded face to face in London on March 29th, 2023Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and conversation editing.Podcast artwork by Helen GreenRELATED LINKSHELP END HOMELESSNESS - PLEASE SUPPORT LORNA TUCKER'S FILM SOMEONE'S DAUGHTER, SOMEONE'S SONLORNA TUCKER ON THE ADAM BUXTON PODCASTSUCCESSION - AN EVENING WITH THE WRITERS @ RFH (hosted by Adam Buxton) - 2023 (YOUTUBE)AMOL RAJAN INTERVIEW WITH BRIAN COX - 2023 (BBC iPLAYER)FRESH AIR JESSE ARMSTRONG INTERVIEW - 2023 (NPR WEBSITE)JESSE ARMSTRONG SCREEN TALK - BFI INTERVIEW WITH NISH KUMAR - 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 you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here, reporting to you from a muddy farm track out in the fields of Norfolk County, UK. fields of Norfolk County, UK. It's a nice afternoon out here towards the, what are we looking at, coming up to the last week of September 2023. Very picturesque, painterly

clouds, bit of sunshine over there beyond them, not too windy, Nice temperature. I would guess at 16 degrees Celsius. What about that? Okay, I'm going to just look it up. See if I'm way off. 17 degrees. That's a good feeling, isn't it? When you can accurately feel the temperature. It's one of my skills. They call me Thermos. How are you doing, podcats? I hope you're not too bad. I've been all right, thank you. Just doing lots of podcast bits and pieces, trying to line up some interesting conversations for you between now and Christmas. Out here with my best dog friend Rosie. She's perky today. Came out quite happily. Yes, she has the orange padded harness, but I'm glad to say there was no tugging required. Steady. Okay, look, come on, we've got a lot to get through today. Let me tell you a little bit about episode number 204, which features a

rambling conversation with British television and films writer Jesse Armstrong. Jesse facts, Jesse David Armstrong was born... That's a good, solid name, though, isn't it? Jesse David Armstrong was born in 1970 in the West Midlands town of Oswestry in Shropshire, England. It was in the early 1990s, while studying at Manchester University, that Jesse met Sam Bain, who, by the way, you can hear me talking to on the next episode of this podcast. Some of Sam and Jesse's earliest writing jobs included the legendary sketch show Smack the

Pony and kids' sitcom My Parents Are Aliens. But their breakthrough came with Peep Show, a sitcom about two variously dysfunctional young men, Mark and Jeremy, played by David Mitchell and Robert Webb, sharing a flat in Croydon. Between 2003 and 2015, Sam and Jesse wrote nine series of Peep Show, making it one of Channel 4's longest-running sitcoms ever. And, I dare say, one of the best. During that time, as well as other Michelin web projects,

including a film, Magicians, Sam and Jesse wrote two series of the sitcom The Old Guys, four series of the college student comedy-drama Fresh Meat, one series of metropolitan police satire Babylon, co-created with Danny Boyle, and Sam and Jesse also found time to collaborate with comedian Chris Morris on the script for his film Four Lions, a comedy about hapless jihadis from Sheffield, released in 2010.

And there's quite a lot of chat with Sam in the next episode about that film and working with Chris Morris and how Sam and Jesse approached the challenge of writing a comedy about domestic terrorism. Jesse and Sam set up a production company together in 2017 along with some other pals and they remain great friends. But in recent years jesse has been writing a lot more on his own some of his solo writing credits include the first three series

of the thick of it amanda inuchi's satire of the inner workings of british politics starring peter capaldi as malcolm tucker a fearsome foul-mouthed behind thethe-scenes enforcer, said to have been inspired, at least in part, by Tony Blair's sometime strategist, Alastair Campbell. Jesse also worked on the Thick of It film spin-off, In the Loop. And speaking of films, fun fact, Robert Downey Jr. bought the film rights for an episode of Black Mirror that Jesse wrote called The Entire History of You, in which people have implants that enable them to play back their

memories like videos. It is one of the best episodes of Black Mirror. I watched it last night with my son. He hadn't seen it before. Holds up very well. No sign of the film version so far, but all that in recent years has been rather overshadowed by Succession, Jesse's saga about the power struggles between the super-rich, super-damaged children of Logan Roy, a Rupert Murdoch-style media baron played by Brian Cox, with the main three children, Shiv, Roman and Kendall, being played by Sarah Snook, Kieran Culkin and Jeremy Strong, respectively. The first series of Succession aired in 2018 and concluded earlier this year, 2023, in a flurry of critical hyperbole,

not seen since the glory days of shows like The Wire and The Sopranos. My conversation with Jesse was recorded face-to-face back in mid-June of this year in London, and we talked about Jesse's comedy influences, why he's happy to leave the fourth wall unbroken, whether Peep Show was realistic, separating the art from the artist, when audiences laugh in the wrong way,

and whether satire does more harm than good. Plus, much else. Back at the end for a bit more waffle, but right now with Jesse Armstrong. Here we go. And have a ramble chat Put on your conversation coat And find your talking hat Yes, yes, yes La, la, la, la, la, la

La, la, la, la, la, la La, la, la, la, la, la, la La, la, la, la, la, la, la Ga, ga, ga, ga, ga Tell me about David Sedaris and what he did with his notebook. Before we were recording, listeners, I told Jesse that, well, Jesse has a notebook. Jesse just told me that he's going to get a notebook out and write anything down. What kind of things would you write down? I'm not going to be generous like Sedaris and credit you.

This is just things I think that I can then say that might make me sound clever. Oh, I see. While I'm talking. Yeah, so if I forget a question or I've got a follow-up or my brain's exploding in a million directions, I need to just capture just a few of them. That's good, man. That is a valuable insight into the world of the successful. But you were just telling us about Sedaris. I was telling you about the fact that Sedaris,

the first time I spoke to him face-to-face, the second time was over the Zoom. He had his notebook. And at one point I said something I don't exactly, I think it was a phrase I used, a sort of Britishism. I can't remember what it was, but it made him laugh. And he said, can I make a note of that? And it was quite a common thing as well.

It was saying something like someone was a bit of a twat or something, but he loved it and it made him howl and he wrote it down. I was like, yes, that is, I'm being noted by Sedaris. One I heard at football the other day was quite a lot of rude shouting and then, you're not fit to referee. And I thought that's quite an archaic construction for a whole football ground to do. I don't think you'd get that in America, would you?

You're not fit to referee. You're not up to referee snuff. Who's your team? Oh, that's complicated. Do you want to get into it? No, I mean, this isn't... You don't care. This isn't going to last for long because I don't understand and I don't care.

But I'm just saying for people who are interested, they might like to know. I grew up in Shropshire, which isn't enough Manchester. I grew up a Manchester United supporter. And to fulfill all the preconceptions people have about Manchester United supporters, I mainly go and see Fulham because they're in London. Right, okay. So now I'm becoming a Fulham supporter. Is there a profile for a Fulham supporter?

Yeah, sort of Man United supporters with a season ticket. No, but I am now a Fulham supporter. I really, Fulham are very, I like watching them. Good goals recently? Don't, Adam, don't make yourself do it. And what are you up to now then? You're on holiday. So we are speaking in June of 2023, mid-June.

It's a hot day here in London town. And have you already moved on to your next project because when was the last time you put pen to paper for succession oh actual pen to paper I guess we do some tiny bits of so-called ADR in the edit but that finished in like March so yeah that was the last time I did any writing. Yeah. And so now you're just kicking back having cocktails doing podcasts? Yeah, basically, I am I'm trying to do that. I'm quite I like work always structures my life. So I'm trying to see what it's like without having that so much. Are you someone who has projects lined up so that as soon as you finish on one thing, you know, what's next for you? Or do you spend a time wandering around in the creative wilderness waiting for inspiration to slap you in the tits?

I've never had an experience like this before. I've never worked, you know, the British model is often for writers and everyone maybe in TV and comedy is to have a few things cooking because that's kind of how it works and how the money works because it's usually less and people don't have exclusive deals in the US you know once your show is going they buy you the fuck out you're not working on anything else and they're not very interested in hearing oh maybe I could go over here and just I might need to go to do this for 20 minutes or can I take a day off it's like no we paid you a lot of money and you're doing this and that's quite relaxing if you've lived a bit of a portfolio sitcom life of oh we'll do a season of this and we'll do this me and sam trying to do you know three things at once so i've never got to the end of something like this and not had anything lined up and it's quite uncomfortable but quite i don't know i'm trying

to find it interesting also you're you're on strike, right? Also, we're on strike, which is helpful from the point of view of not doing anything. Can you give a potted explanation of the strike and your position within it to someone who doesn't know anything about that world? Yeah, it's the WGA who are on strike, Writers Guild of America. And yeah, it's been a long time coming. They have these contracts which describe the minimums that you get paid, and it came up for renewal.

So this was a point where it had to be decided what the minimum money was. And then a bunch of other issues came up, in particular AI and the way that writers have started getting less money in the streaming world where you tend to get bought out for your script, i.e. you get one payment the last forever rather than writing an episode of friends and you know coining it until you're much older and indeed for lots of other writers who aren't on friends you know you work on something and you get those residuals that might keep you going there's a little bit of a pension through your career and ai which is

complicated and the ai aspect though is i mean who did i hear talking about it the other day someone's sort of saying i think it was tim key saying that he'd been sat in the park and he'd overheard someone a couple of kind of exec looking types tv exec looking types in in the uk this is just talking about ideas that they had generated on chat gpt and that they were quite good and they were going to commission some of them i don't know how real that was how much i twisted that story um yeah i don't obviously there's a bunch of dangers for writers and actors and everyone creative especially i guess what it is is like we've we as individuals who are working now and also the history of writers have done a lot of work on which especially those large language models would be trained. So like that's not AI, right?

That's humans who've done work that computers are then training on to do subsequent work. And we need to keep money coming through to human beings for all the work that's been done, whether it's like us last week or maybe people formerly so i guess we're trying to get into that i mean how do you feel about it do you have you lost much sleep over ai um no i haven't personally i've managed to put it in that box of like i don't fucking know also there are some things right which you can see you know you there's a missile it's launched from north korea and it goes over japan and there's alarms everywhere over south korea and there's uh the climate evidently swinging more violently ai so far the the jokes i see on chat gpc don't scare me much maybe when i see one that scares me i will have a different view but right now it's I'm pretty happy for those

execs to wander around with their pictures yeah oh goodness no I mean I'm I'm not too stressed the music thing particularly indicates to me that there's not that much to worry about at the moment not at the moment not at the moment so let's fuck it don't let's not worry about that one for the moment yeah okay good um speaking of music and football this is a very tenuous segue but you studied in manchester yes and so i'm imagining that those two factors were at play when you went football and music yeah I mean there was a bit of a period when football wasn't such a thing in the in popular culture and I probably hit that I probably dipped out of football a bit in that era but definitely music New Order, Smiths and Stone Roses and Happy

Monday starting to come but especially when I when we started going out from where i come from shropshire north shropshire um you know manchester and liverpool that sort of had the biggest gravitational pull and that was the it was the new order smith's era so they were and the hacienda um so that was a big pull for manchester when did you get to college in manchester 91 okay and you were doing american studies yes what made you want to college in Manchester? 91. Okay. And you were doing American studies. Yes. What made you want to do that then? Ah, it's a good course. You do literature, history and politics, but you do them about one place. So they all interact. So you find out, you know, the literature informs the history, informs the politics. It's a good degree, I think. And you get to go abroad for a year and you don't have to speak a foreign language. Nice. Unless you count American as a

foreign language. And who were the Americans that you were into at the time as a foreign language and who were the americans that you were into at the time as a fan of movies and music and yeah good question or books as well yeah i guess had i read widely i think i was a yeah i probably gravitated towards the cult book section in in waterstone so i was probably hitting carowack and henry miller okay i'd probably read some i had certainly read some fitzgerald and hemingway um the beats the beats yeah and i like i always like poetry and so i read some poetry and what were you like paint me a picture of jesse armstrong at the beginning of the 90s in Manchester. Oh, yeah, good. Oh, in Manchester.

Well, by the time you got there. By the time I got there, what was I like? It's very difficult. I'd like to hear what other people made of me. In my own mind, I was, I guess... Well, what were you wearing? I was, yeah, I was trying to go to the Hacienda. Certainly, we were quite often getting turned away.

But I was probably wearing 90s baggy clothes with some beads. Beads? Yeah, beads. I would go as far as beads. I don't know if I ever carried them off successfully, but I was certainly wearing them from time to time. Did you see any bands? Yeah, I guess we did.

You always feel right that you're too late. If it's 1968, you're probably arriving in Grosvenor Square just after the demo left. And apparently John Lennon was here earlier like so it felt like that already i think i'm right that i went in maybe i went in 1990 91 anyway it already felt like it was over like so everything always feels like it's over oh you should have been at hacienda last year or last month looking back now that was right it was ecstasy central and everyone was yeah because the rave scene was just kicking in right it was it was yeah it was heavily electronic music dance music was the was the thing so i guess we went to see on the guitar front my bloody valentine

we're a big gig uh primal scream we're probably doing Screamadelica about then. Probably was it a bit after Massive Attack were huge with that album. Right. The Smiths had gone and New Order were in a bit of a downbeat after Technique, as I recall. But yeah, it was good music. And then how did you meet Sam? We were on a Creative Rhyme course together. Oh. It's something most universities didn't do i think they do it more now but in like the second or third year you could do

a you could do a module which was creative writing and you do some poems and you do some some writing prose and um we got to know each other then and he was just into the same sort of stuff as you was he or did you like his writing? Or what was the thing that... Yeah, I liked his writing. I liked hanging out with him. And I think our proper writing relationship developed actually once we'd both left. I think he was in London before me. He used to send me letters and I'd send him letters back. And I think that more, even more than the stuff which we'd seen of each other in this

little writing course, which was more socially getting to know him I was like oh you're really funny in these letters they were just funny letters and this is like on holiday was it no this was when this was when that was the best form of communication available to human beings who lived in separate cities and didn't want to spend a lot of money on the phone so um and maybe what had liked communicating by words so he'd send me funny letters and i'd send him funny letters back i hope and i think yeah that was what was one early thing of um our collaboration and also he his mum was in terry and june and his dad was a celebrated tv director including upstairs downstairs other stuff too she was an actor in terry and june yeah

really yeah who was she she was um bt the next door neighbor the best friend of of june god i didn't think bt's the name so he had quite a sense of like oh you know you can you know those things that are on tv sitcoms you can people write those yeah obviously i knew that but i didn't know it like he knew it and you can make money doing that. And so he was maybe a little bit more just attuned to like the fact that you could have a career doing something like that, which it wouldn't, it might've occurred to me eventually, but not for quite a while. You need someone precocious like that, don't you? To show you that it's possible. Yeah, you do.

And also, yeah, somebody, I think I'd I hadn't thought like that about my dad wrote books he'd been a he was an English teacher and and then tried to get published tried to get published and then eventually about the time that I was leaving home and school that finally got published as a crime novelist so when I thought about writing I think I thought about prose and that was like maybe the model I'd had, whereas Sam had this very clear route into like TV and film. And did you read your dad's books? Oh, yeah. Did you?

Oh, yeah. Well, I never read anything my dad wrote. Didn't you not? I mean, I have now. In the telegraph? No, you didn't. No way. No way.

Because it was so boring. Because it wasn't about TV or anything. Plus, no disrespect, Dad, in your grave, but he had a very old-fashioned, quite stodgy style. He loved long sentences. What would be a classic opening sentence? Oh, my God. classic opening sentence oh my god something like you know not dissimilar from enjoyable air travel that i have undertaken in the far east the prospect of being delivered into the warm embrace of the antipodes on a long haul you know something like that i mean honestly he was he was

a great writer and i'm reading his stuff now. He was one of the greats. He wrote a memoir that I finally got round to reading properly. I'm trying to do an audio book of it, in fact, as a kind of side project. But that's really made me appreciate, oh, you know, he really was good at writing, and I'm sorry I didn't give him that respect at the time, because I know that he was annoyed that the family never used to read any of his stuff, you know. But you did.

Good for you. Yeah, good. Well, it's it appealed to me more and I was interested. And yeah, they're good. And did he used to talk about things that he particularly liked or disliked in writing? Huh. He's an enthusiast so i guess what i got from him uh he's quite demanding in terms of prose like he would not read something that wasn't

well written in interesting prose so i got maybe a a sense and i've come to share it maybe that if it's not interesting line by line and isn't powerfully put I'm not interested do you remember some of the first things that impressed you when you were reading them thinking wow this is good writing yeah I think that was slower to come the feeling of like oh this is good prose I remember funny funny books and funny books being finding a funny construction, just very, very, very, very appealing and seductive. Who were those writers? on the floor of a train reading out bits from Woody Allen's um what those prose collections getting on and without feathers um there was one called a guide to the lesser ballets and it had had a line in it about something like um the brass opens in triumphant mood but underneath it the

trombones play in a minor key suggesting that soon all the catering will run out and everyone will be dead. What's amusing to me now is that I guess it was parodying those little praises you get of ballets or operas when you go to see them, I guess, or also in guides. I was completely unaware of that form. Yeah. Never would have read one of those. And yet the mocking form of that, I understood it all immediately in a way or enough to get the joke. And how about films then and TV shows?

What kind of things were making an impression? What did I like? I guess all the things that were around not nine o'clock news and them faulty towers but i think uh the young ones was the first one where i was like oh my god i didn't know you were allowed to do that i didn't know somehow they were older than me the people who wrote it but it felt like oh fuck you're allowed to sort of mess around in the culture like you can people are saying things that i understand what they're talking about and it's very bracing and like incredibly i guess it's

quite a punk feeling it was anarchic jesse it was anarchic they used to say on bbc2 and now time for anarchic comedy on bbc2 with the young And my dad, if he was standing in the back of the room, he would go anarchic. And then he'd stalk out in high dudgeon, revolted at what was happening in the culture. Did you used to watch with your folks? Can't remember. It certainly wouldn't have been,

they wouldn't have taken that view of it. But I don't know if they embraced it like me and my friends did. The Young Ones was amazing, and it did feel... Was it the same show for you? Was it that first one? For me, it was coloured a lot by my dad, because I felt... I mean, it felt extra transgressive for me,

because I felt the weight of his disapproval so keenly. Yeah. And I felt that put me off a little bit did it yeah because I you know I love dad and he was you know he loved me too so it was a relationship I valued it wasn't like oh if dad hates it then great I love it because dad's a fucking dick yeah I didn't feel like that I was like I love dad and if dad doesn't like it maybe there's something maybe I shouldn't like it. Yeah, yeah. So that that was in the back of my head. But I was just swept along by it. You know, it was it was too much to resist. Yeah, I was getting into the young ones as we had our first VCR. My dad got to test one. Okay. So I had a three hour cassette where I had like the whole first series of the young ones oh hello and then I learned how to take long play okay and then I could stick all the young ones on there and we watched the living hell out of those things yeah I think my Julius my friend had had that and we'd

go and watch that on VHS yeah those might be almost the only things in my life that I've tended to re-watch I I'm not a big re-watcher okay right yeah I'm sort of obsessive like when it was an Yeah, those might be almost the only things in my life that I've tended to rewatch. I'm not a big rewatcher. Okay, right. Yeah, I'm sort of obsessive. Like when it was an option to get the jerk on videotape, I'd get that and whole chunks of that were burned into my... Actually, no, I lie. I saw it on holiday and it was on the cable channel and the hotel TV. But we had a video camera.

Again, my dad, because he was a travel writer, he occasionally got to road test these bits of tech. So we had a very early, clunky video camera. And I taped off the TV my favorite sections of The Jerk. Okay. And just watched them back over and over again. And it was mainly the gas pumper, gas pump a bit he hates cans he hates cans he hates these cans i feel like i've stolen the bit where he goes into the bathroom and thinks it's his office and rewritten it in about four different shows with different people jeremy and greg going into

small spaces and sort of trying to make out that they're more accommodating than they are. Yeah. It's a killer. Oh my God. See, I should be making notes here. Can we do sidebars?

You're the boss. Oh, it's dangerous though, because then... What's the main course? Do you want me to use my notepad? I'll draw a tree diagram. Will you write down small spaces and tom throwing bottles of water yes we're going to talk about that later okay Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah Ooh, conversations Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah I really love talking to you so much. Gary Shandling. Mmm, yeah. I heard you talking about It's Gary Shandling's show

and did you used to watch that because you would have been quite young I remember that was like the spooky I think that might have even been like when I was having babysitters when was that show on I feel like that was like late night channel 4 slightly scary

on with the Czech animation what's going to be coming up next uh yeah that's late 80s 86 to 90 16 yeah uh yeah i i remember it i remember i i remember it more for like form formal invention than actually like oh i love i love that show what were the formal things that struck you about it that were i It just has that fourth wall thing, doesn't it? It's like a sitcom and then you pull... I don't know the show that well, but I know, I remember that fact and feeling both interested and slightly unnerved by it.

He's a character in a sitcom who is self-aware. Yes. And he knows that he is a character in a sitcom. Yes. I mean, it is well meta. Yes. Like it is meta in a way that would be pretty full on meta now. Yeah.

But for the late 80s, it just feels as if it's been teleported in from another dimension. Yeah. And the theme to Gary's show The theme to Gary's show Gary called me up and asked if I would write his theme song I'm almost halfway finished How do you like it so far? How do you like the theme to Gary's show? This is the theme to Gary's show

The opening theme to Gary's show This is the music that you hear as you watch the credits We're almost to the part of where I start to whistle. Then we'll watch It's Gary Shandling's Show. This was the theme to Gary Shandling's Show. That is written by Joey Carbone, along with Gary Shandling and and alan zweibel who wrote it's gary shandling's show but that's at late 80s of course there were other kind of self-referential meta shows before that i'm sure but nothing that went that far with the form of tv yeah comedy i think and which now

feels like it informs the whole of contemporary culture. I was watching a video essay on YouTube the other day about how modern movies are now in a kind of meta-modern phase. So you had your modernism, your kind of classics of the post-war era. Then you have your Tarantino's going all post post-modern self-referential and fucking with the form and turning it inside out and now we are in the meta-modern uh-huh and can you define the meta-modern for us so that is even more meta than post-modern uh-huh even more self-aware what would be an example i suppose more meta-modern would be still tarantino he's transitioned into kind of meta-modern from yeah and something like

once upon a time in hollywood yes which really screws around by by just playing fast and loose with the truth of the historical narrative that it's based on yes i'm you know you're looking very skeptical i'm a little bit skeptical i think i'm a little bit of uh there's nothing new under the sunnest right i think you know tristram shandy did it all sort of that's my thing i think um it was woody allen who said all history is a footnote to hegel i have no idea what i mean by that but um yeah no i think that things that play with the form i think occur to artists quite quickly i think and that was never something that you were that interested in doing because obviously the potential for peep show when in its first incarnation was to be quite post-modern and meta-modern i mean as far as i'm aware the initial iteration of peep show was was

a kind of beaverson butthead yes mst 3000 thing about a couple of guys yes watching tv and commenting on it yeah with head cams yes yeah i i guess it's true i've not i mean i like formal invention in other things i like charlie Charlie Kaufman's movies a lot, but it's not something that appeals to me. I mean, Peep Show was formally inventive in terms of like literally the filming approach, but I think that's tricksy enough. I'm not particularly interested in the,

yeah, I'm just not particularly interested in the breaking the fourth wall element of that, which is almost all of that meta-ness. Why do you think you stay away from it instinctively i think i don't have many tricks up my creative sleeve but the main one and the one that interests me is like what's real what's true what's the thing what is it what's it like what's what's anything like why is this like this and i think if i gravitate towards anything it's immediacy realness and truth like those things i'd love to capture and so those layers aren't helpful for

that in fact they're really unhelpful my approach or shtick if you if you were being ruder is just like what would it be like if you were really there and so in succession you don't go meta in that you don't really reference the real cultural landscape or even the business landscape too much i mean they're very broad strokes references aren't they you don't go too specific is that right it's a really really weird line that has to be drawn almost line by line we don't you know there's some we didn't tend to go any further forward than the clintons in terms of real political history references because you start then having these uncomfortable well if that's that who's that but we'd certainly mention some political figures yeah and then we you know we mentioned i think uh mark zuckerberg and we mentioned we mentioned some people

there's just a line you can't cross where the audience's mind to my mind starts bumping on well if that exists how how does this fictional world that you're representing relate to that world? And things start to curdle. And it's quite a curious area where there don't seem to be super hard lines for me. And maybe it doesn't work for some people, but we just have to try and draw those lines case by case. Because thinking about what you were saying before about how things need to feel real or possible in the life that most of us know it's really important to me watching that as a comedy fan as well there's been a lot of shows that lots of people really really love but i've never been able to engage with because too often i'm just thinking but the whole premise of this scene that is supposed to be funny would never happen no one would ever do that and i know it's

comedy i understand it's silly it's over the top but it's just it just wouldn't happen so it's not real so i can't engage with it but then were there ever moments where you felt you were right up against the line in peep show or or any other shows that you did? Yeah, yes. And they're difficult because in a way, that's what you're doing, right? You're trying to bend it, bend it. How big or uncomfortable a situation can we create that still feels believable? For example, wedding episode in Peep Show,

pissing on the... Yeah, yeah, that's, I think that's good. And I believe every step of that so i i would defend that the there's an episode where there's a they lose a dog and it gets um they burn it and then jeremy has to end up eating it and i and i remember saying to sam like do you think we could get him to eat the dog and i'd like to go back in the writing room and make sure that every step for me, things need to be real, to be funny or dramatic. And and so that's always why plotting for me is the key to it all. And and the hardest bit in some way is getting the getting the story right.

That's believable. is getting the story right that's believable. But not to dwell unnecessarily on the Peep Show church wing incident. But I did think, that felt to me like one of those moments where I thought, I would be interested to know what the conversation was. So for listeners, if you haven't seen the episode, classic episode of Peep Show,

sort of midway through the whole thing, really, series four, I think. And Mark and Jeremy are hiding out in the church mark's about to get married and jeremy is absolutely busting for a wee could happen the guests all fine so far the guests uh mark mark's having second thoughts about getting married which is why they're hiding out. All the guests are there. Everyone's wondering where they are. Jeremy is absolutely busting for a wee, but it's this tense moment. He can't abandon his friend who is having doubts about getting married. And he also can't draw attention to their presence.

Right. So what's he going to do? Where can he wee? He looks at, there's a bucket. Prayer bucket. A prayer bucket or prayer bucket or collection bucket or something and he thinks well maybe i could go in there and i was thinking yeah that's what i would do i'd go in there what's wrong with the prayer bucket i just think the

what how do you make the leap from yeah i'm just gonna piss in my pants in my suit i'm gonna piss in my wedding suit and the piss is just going to leak down onto the wedding guests. Well, yeah, what you've got, hopefully, hopefully what you've got there is the interplay of their very particular relationship. Because it's the fact that I think Mark tells him to do it. Yeah. Oh, yeah. That adds a sort of sadistic and complicated edge to the situation yeah the risk for them is that someone he feels he'll die mark i think if if if he's discovered up there

because he's either considering going down and getting married or not and so it's very important he's not discovered until he's made that decision and so he's very worried about jeremy making a noise um yeah yeah i i was i'm more worried by the width of the hole the the gap in the floorboard the floorboards i'd like maybe a slightly more um evident gap to to allow the the urine to drip through. Oh, I didn't worry about that. I thought that was entirely plausible. I was sort of thinking, well, presumably they rationalized this, if there was any rationalization to be done.

Oh, there was. Okay. Presumably they rationalized this, like, it's too funny a premise to get precious about. The idea that the wedding guests are being dripped on by jeremy's urine i guess things which are glaring errors which are psychological to one person are merits to me so i can see how you'd be like well i wouldn't do that just say fuck you i'm gonna go and sort of crouch in the corner or go downstairs.

Jeremy has got a different attitude towards maybe his bodily functions and embarrassment, lower threshold. And so for me, Mark telling him to just do it where he's sitting is both funny and also it's just plausible. But I can see that for somebody else it wouldn't be. I guess it taps into a lot of situations I've been in that are very similar of of wee wee anxiety if you keep on going on about this i'm gonna fucking walk okay if you've got a problem about it let's just take it outside i can't go back i can't get back in the edit adam i'm sorry if you hate the show i love the show i was really laughing i just thought this this is fucking bullshit i just thought this exemplifies because no no how uptight i am when i'm watching sometimes yeah i was thinking because i was thinking like but you don't mind the dog no i mean you hated that no no

no is there any episodes you like listen i loved it and it was i'm not looking for i i was bringing it up because i was interested to know what the conversation around it was. I thought it trod a fine line. And there are the other shows that I'm thinking of, which I won't mention. I just felt like too often they didn't even bother with any of those conversations. Yeah. And I couldn't relax into them. No, nor me.

No, it has to be real for me. But I think, like, I honestly do worry a bit about the dog. I don't think Sam does. I honestly don't worry about the wedding. And I'd sort of write it again tomorrow. You go ahead. Thank you. Have fun.

You have fun. It's a great premise. Why wouldn't you write it? You're just ripping on the guests. That's not even my favorite bit. My favorite bit is when he tells him to stop and then tells him to stop. I'd probably cut the weeing through there anyway. Get the edit going.

Crank it up. All right. Well, look. Get the edit going. Crank it up. All right. Well, look, how realistic is it for someone to be in a confined space and start hurling bottles of mineral water at another human being? Yeah.

I mean, it's just humans, isn't it? The thing is, that's my starting point. Like, humans can do anything. I mean, that has been unfortunately shown for good and ill. And so there's no question about can this happen anything can happen it's can it happen to that person can they put be put in the situation which will make that happen i tend not to start from the premise of like let's get tom to throw water bottles at greg that isn't usually a natural evolution of where we think the story has gone however i'm not above thinking of it'd be

great to get to point x or this would be a funny situation if we got people into yeah were you there when they were throwing mineral water at each other yes it was great of course it was it was great i think they were probably empty and we were worried about getting the weightiness to look right yeah Yeah, it looked really right. Yeah, and some of them may not have been empty. I can't recall. Yeah, on the day often it's not quite as fun as you'd hoped because it's all about execution. Like we've got this bit.

I think it's going to be good. So there's quite a lot of anxiety about the capturing of the great thing. But I think it felt pretty good on the day. And then that climactic Greg and Tom fight in the final episode. The one between Tom and Greg in the bathroom was just right. I think we only did it two times. They were both ready and willing to sort of make contact. And it was a very small space.

I guess there was only one camera in there with them and they went for it. And that sort of shock and recoil is pretty hard to fake. So yeah, that was, they went for it. Do people do real slaps ever? Or are people always pulling their punches? I don't know. You'd have to ask them.

It looked pretty slappy to me. I mean, I don't suppose they was trying to, I think they were a near near full volume did brian cox really slap kieran culkin no i don't think so that was a big slap yeah yeah yeah you'd have to it was a long time ago and i'm really bad at remembering things but i think he was trying to pull his punch he might have made physical contact and how is it on the set are you having fun i was watching a documentary about kubrick the other day and no one was even pretending that it was fun to make a kubrick film like no one involved at all was having a good time on those sets and he was totally unapologetic and said

well you know it's that's what it takes to to get things right but it seemed pretty miserable yeah no assets are not miserable it's like occasionally when people come to visit i say like you know it will be boring but it's about as good as it gets um so so it's pretty fast moving it's pretty funny so it's a pretty fun set there's also an inevitable grind to the repetition of, you know, it's pretty fun the first time and it gets usually gets less fun after that. Although sometimes it builds to a peak and you start getting something else, find something. And how about things like Roman's Cockney accent when they're in the kitchen in

Barbados? Was that all something you'd written going? Oh, he does a funny Cockney accent or,'re in the kitchen in Barbados. Was that all something you'd written going, oh, he does a funny Cockney accent or was that last minute? No, that was written. That was written. He does do good English accent. And so that was in there. But he is good at improvising.

That was very good. And that was a set, was it? Presumably you weren't in Barbados. Oh, no, we were in Barbados. Oh, you were in Barbados. Yeah. I mean, I was going to ask you, obviously we all know that the excessive,

shallow lifestyles of the super-rich are contemptible, but what was your favourite location? What was my favourite location to shoot in? You did some pretty great ones. Yeah. The best one, when we shot i'm not proud of going on about these sorts of bits of it but it was nice when we went to italy it was during covid we had dispensation to travel unlike those people at the tory hq having their christmas party we were allowed to do what we were doing which was to move around in 2021 I guess but we were in Florence and it was not very crowded as full of Florentines mainly

and that was pretty great to see the city a bit depopulated and then the other one that made a big impression on me was the Gojo retreat in the last series oh yeah in norway in norway oftentimes i don't get to really enjoy the places we are because i'm often working on the next episode and when we were in norway it was a particularly tough time on a subsequent episode and i was going out of my nut a little bit so the ones that are at the end like in Italy and even on the boat are more fun for me because we've then basically got the episodes written and we're working on the alternative lines the alts here and there and looking at edits and stuff but in the middle of the season I'm frequently completely absorbed with getting the next episode or the one after that right so

Norway was quite a bleak time in my life oh really and what are you like in that mode are you able to keep it together or do you get heavily drunk or I'm just work obsessed and so the actors all went off and did it had a really nice time at a hotel up a fjord and i guess the thing about the show for me is you can't believe how bad it is before it gets to be good you know it's if you like the show you may feel it has a sort of essential quality of goodness to it or that's what sometimes things seem like that one likes right that if you like a show it's like that's it's probably always sort of good and it either really isn't or it really feels like it isn't for me until we get it there it just feels terrible you know it feels like oh wow we've got all this way now we're gonna fuck it all because this episode's gonna be shit and it's gonna be a

disaster and the whole thing's gonna fall apart because we're going to do this episode, which just is not subtle, interesting, good or true. And that's going to destroy the whole thing. So goodbye. So that doesn't feel good. And you're like getting up every morning thinking, how the fuck do we fix this? What's it? What's wrong? It seemed right in the room.

Why isn't this story working? What's wrong? And you're having those stresses on location. You're not having that. I would imagine that you'd have those stresses in the edit. Oh, well, you have them all the way through that's the fun part right but but you also have the wonderful feelings of breakthrough as well and i'm not carrying that burden completely on my own i'm working with my fellow writers and the writers of the episode if someone else has written it but yeah you it goes in waves right in you know we do we do a writer's room uh where we arc it all out and you

have some of those anxieties but not nearly so acute because there's plenty of time we can fix it this everything feels fun this episode's going to be great that one's a bit of a dud but i'm sure we'll get it there and then the drafts come in and you're working on them and you get closer and closer to production and like you're two weeks out and it's not right and that's the crunch point of like oh fuck we're choosing the locations with the act these are the actors we've got and it's not right and that's the moment when it's most acute and then you can lose faith again in the edit and be like oh shit we need to save this one but um but that's the most terrifying moment for me when the episode isn't right a few weeks out from shooting sometimes it's a good show Sometimes it's bad

But there's no point in getting All sad about it Because tomorrow You've got another show Oh yeah Time for another show Unless you cancel I'm going to change gears Unless you cancel Unless you cancel thing like when you reference Woody Allen is there a part of you that's thinking oh I've got to

acknowledge that for some people he is persona non grata or he's cancelled or whatever you however you want to call it or or is it or or do you feel like no I'm comfortable in making a separation between the art and the artist and I'm and I don't feel the need to have that conversation no i'm this i guess there's just no fixed line like there's it's all up delightfully and difficultly up for play i think if it was a bit about his relationship to women there's a whole bunch of things which are can't help but be part of the discussion about his marriage and then the sexual abuse allegations against him. And you can't get that out of your mind, I'm afraid. That's in there, even if you're more sympathetic. What do I think about that?

Listen, I think there's not a huge amount of joy in the world. Grab what you can. I can still find pleasure in lots of his work if you can't i get it i'm not going to try and convince you you should like oh you should be liking this this doesn't matter or it didn't need it didn't happen i don't know if it if it fucks it for you that's fair enough and michael jackson well we don't need to list them all larkin t.s elliott the list is endless of people who like if you're if you're bowie for some people if it's something that's affected you or for any number of reasons those things can mean you don't want to listen to that person

and that's all right grab what you can from the fire like i can still listen to morrissey and i can still enjoy it some songs i can't i wouldn't like bengalian platforms it's like oh fuck i didn't notice that at the time but that's not great so yeah that's i guess my attitude is there's no you're never there's never gonna be a final position like trying to just definitively put a line like between art and the and the individual is you're gonna you're gonna hit trouble that way like as soon as you get to hitler's water paintings or you know radovan karadich's poems you can't ever think about one when you think about the other yeah they're going

to infect so there's no line you just got to work it out me and my wife my wife had a, I do a thing in my book and occasionally live where I pretend that I have a log. Well, I don't pretend it's real. It's a log where I write down all the arguments I have with my wife. And now because I do it, it's real. You know what I mean? Yes. Because every time we, because it was a joke initially, but now every time we have an argument i write it down in a log and one of the ones we had the other day where i thought i think this i think this is good for the log i'm not sure good for the log in that it's

going to be a win or it's just one that needs to be recorded it's one that might chime or might strike audiences as entertaining or absurd. But I don't know. I'll get your take on it. I haven't mentioned it to anyone. Is this funny? My wife came back with a carpet that her mum had passed on. It's a very old carpet i would say beginning of the 20th century

you know it's it's over 100 years old this thing is not in a good state and yet we have had it passed on to us by the mother-in-law and it is now in our house and one of the reasons that the age is important is that it has it is emblazoned with swastikas and it's an indian carpet and of course this swastika is an ancient symbol that pops up in the uh indian culture and in greek culture i don't know anyway it's been there for hundreds of years way before the nazis got to it and totally ruined it. In my opinion, they absolutely ruined it. Not in my wife's opinion. She thinks it's still good to go.

I think they reversed the, some of the, do the bars go in different direction or is it a perfect swastika, as I call it? It's square. So the spin the Nazis put on it, literally or metaphorically or both, is that they twisted it again, literally. Yes, 45 degrees. Yeah. So that's not something that I think was in the ancient usage. It's in the eye of the beholder you see i think given the history i think i could walk over that carpet and think oh that was from you wouldn't

think any less of you're right yeah you would just put it together in your mind this is obviously not a nazi carpet yeah i think and you might you what you might need is like some museums have now you might need a little panel explaining a little plaque about my wife about your wife you can have two views you can have two views by the side of it this object should not be displayed according to abxton my wife is anti-nazi and yet she loves the symbol of the swastika. I wouldn't put that on your label. See, this is why I was worried about asking you about Woody Allen. Anyway, we really went at it. I thought, surely this conversation is not going to last very long. But it really did.

Because she felt like, she thought I was being a child. And I said i just think obviously they've obviously defiled them i just think they have absolutely fucked that symbol i'm i'm with your wife yeah it's fine i think it's fine it's it's it's it's an old carpet yeah reclaim the reclaim the symbol don't give no don't reclaim it. But I would have it in the carpet. It can exist apart from the associations. Yes. Yeah, okay.

Well, she's going to be pleased about that, but you might be cancelled. Thank you. did you watch Amal Rajan's interview with Brian Cox no I tend to keep a bit of a distance from all the stuff around the show although now I'm starting to read a few selected pieces that people send me and stuff like that but you presumably felt the seismic waves from the interview just washing over you from the sides not being disingenuous when I say I can't quite remember he was it what did he say I mean it was one of those things look you know I did a podcast with Tom Hanks earlier this year. And a couple of bits of that got picked up and run as news stories. I thought, fucking hell, that's news, is it? And he was talking about AI or something. And I noticed that that Amal Rajan interview was picked up and lots of bits in the run up to the finale of Succession. They were tying it in like that. But it was quite good value. I went and I watched it and I thought, OK, fair enough. It is quite a spicy interview he was spicy was he brian is spicy he

gives good quotes he really does i was thinking wow this is old school loose-tongued yeah quotary here basically good he doesn't give a fuck yeah he doesn't seem to give a fuck there was a great bit i mean there's there's quite a few great bits i'll put a link in the description listeners if you haven't seen it i recommend it and you could see arnold rajan as well just going oh my god he's just saying anything so he was he was dangling all these topics in front of him waiting for him to kind of go for it and then the other thing i think that made the news that he'd probably said before, because I think there was a Vanity Fair interview with Jeremy Strong, where he was talking about comments that Brian Cox had already made about the method. Okay. About Jeremy Strong staying in character while he was doing Succession and being pretty hardline about it.

Yeah. And Cox saying it was a little tiresome. Okay. So we kind of retrod that that yeah i know that you are a very diplomatic person having heard you in interview i know that you would never go anywhere near that kind of topic but do you ever have to smooth out ruffled feathers on set um it i'm the showrunner and there's sort of certain amount of like a political leadership kind of role of trying to make sure it's a happy ship i guess occasionally

the only thing i've occasionally tried to do is like facilitate it so that people talk to each other who maybe haven't talked to each other and nine times out of ten these things are things that are resolved in a conversation because it's like miscommunication or a one person thought one thing and another so occasionally you can try and make sure that people are communicating right because I would imagine that it is incredibly I mean I've done a little bit of acting and i know that it is it is mortifying so often just feeling exposed and and feeling like you're coming up short and the humiliation of that feeling and everything about it is very painful or can be like when it's fine it's great yeah but there are moments when things aren't

going well when it is a peculiarly torturous thing to be doing and it feels so weird and exposing yeah do you do you ever pick up on on people just kind of going into a corner and crumpling a little bit yes i've seen it a few times in my career, people who just having a really hard time. And it's so hard from the outside. It's like the people who occasionally say to me when I'm having a tough time with an episode, like, don't worry, you know, the other ones have been good. I'm sure it'll come right. And it's absolutely no use to you whatsoever. Because, you know, that's not what you're feeling. And I know that when an actor is not finding that thing that they need to perform, it. It just feels so unreal and dead to them. And usually I think the thing to do is a bit of space and a bit of time because sometimes you can help with words, but a lot of times the words are not helping anymore because it's something that isn't clicking and you need maybe for the actor to articulate it or for some time to pass

you know the actors who are on the show are so extraordinarily good yeah it's so asinine what you want to say like it'll be good just do it you do if you do it it'll be good because there are so many tiny micro things happening especially in the scenes with tom and shiv i think the sexy cruelty dynamic between tom and shiv is something that i associate with a certain kind of 90s movie joe astahar's type movie basic instinct some of the dialogue in those movies really ridiculous kind of i'm not saying this is what you do in succession no but it but it reminded me of a certain shift in cinema when you'd start getting these ridiculous, supposedly sexy, horrible, mean conversations between people. You know what I mean?

Like we're supposed to get turned on by how mean they're being to each other. And in those films, Basic Instinct, for example. They do that, do they? They do that. And, you know, you got Jowley Michael Douglas and sparring with um sharon stone uh-huh and it's supposed to be super hot and they're saying horrible things and they're saying horrible things because the sexiest thing is to want to kill someone you can't get more sexy than that. That is the ultimate sex. A sexy stabbing.

That is definitely the subtext of that, isn't it? And it reminded me at the wedding in Tuscany when they are being so mean and poor Tom. I mean, I say poor Tom. They're both as bad as each other in a lot of ways. But he's sort of confused it seemed to me like are we doing set being sexy mean to each other i think we only do that really once in that scene i wasn't aware of the basic instinct vibe but yeah i guess i don't know what i've got to say about that except it's a good point and then i feel so sorry for him when he's i'm just i'm just describing bits from your show now but when he gets the scorpion for her

and she's supposed to go oh yeah because i'm so horrible it's like a joke about our kind of um our mean dynamic but of course it's a good observation that someone who's that damaged doesn't enjoy the idea of being seen that way no and is in denial about that was something that somebody we were working with in croatia a woman on the crew said that a boyfriend had got her maybe a live scorpion as a as a gift and like as a sort of knowing gift like you know what a sort of femme fatale you are and like that was immediately the end of the relationship because evidently that wasn't how she saw herself and so it always stuck with me as a way that you could get someone wrong like do you enjoy the way that you're so in my eyes evil and tough yeah evidently

she doesn't but i guess that's what you have to be like if you are a person in power i mean if you are someone who has a lot of power and you want to or need to maintain it that probably takes a lot of qualities that most of us would characterize as negative right like a certain sort of lack of empathy an ability to see people just in terms of their utility not to get too emotionally engaged with people, things like that. You know what I mean? Well, yeah, I don't think there's any rules. Like Obama seems like he has remained quite a nice guy and was quite a nice guy. He was the most powerful person around. I don't think you need to do these things. You can run operations in lots of a million different ways.

I don't think there's a rule about powerful people having to be horrible, but they definitely can be. Obama's a good example, example though because some people are so angry with him you know what i mean have you ever had a conversation with someone who's like obama yeah yeah yeah i don't want to hear about what a nice cool guy he was he did more damage than so many other presidents in the end yes i guess but we're talking about two different things there i think you can have legitimate criticisms of his like policy agenda and what he managed to achieve or didn't achieve and you know some of his foreign policy decisions but i don't think those people would it would say he was a psycho who uh was aggressive to his staff right he was evidently a boss who people still want to work with like the way he affected power

in a way that was collegiate and amenable right so i guess those are the two different things i'm not super critical of obama i think i'm positive about his achievements yeah well i always i mean i always felt but that's a separate conversation probably from whether he's a good example of how power operates sure i mean i'm definitely not the right person to have the political version of that conversation. But speaking of politics, I mean, you were a SPAD. Is that right? I think I was a researcher.

A SPAD is a special advisor. And I don't think at that time I was a SPAD. I think I was a researcher. And now maybe I might have been called a SPAD. Anyway, a SPAD is slightly more senior sort of sounding role. But yeah, I was a researcher for an MP. Right, Doug Henderson. Yes.

And that was in mid-90s before Labour came to power. Correct. And how and why did you get that job? I got it, friend of a friend. I got it, first of all, I volunteered. So it was like a non-paying job initially and then doug managed to get me some money and then i was properly on the payroll so i was politically minded somewhat so i was keen to be involved where did that political awareness come from i don't know why i ended up think, I guess the Thatcher had been in, the Tories had been in power for a very long time at that time, like 95, since 79.

And, you know, born in an NHS hospital, gone to small local schools, gone to a comprehensive, gone to another. A lot of places had been shut by the government. It was evident that, a bit like now, there was just like a lot of people living on the streets like the conservative party cut spending on the whole and public services and public spaces get worse under their tenure and i felt eager to help um change that and what's tony blair like i only met tony blair once and he probably wouldn't think if it was a meeting. I almost physically bumped into him backstage at the 1996 party conference and he was wearing a tracksuit and he looked really like, oh, fuck, is this what you do? You just hang out in your tracksuit all day, like maybe with some aides like Tony Soprano scribbling some like shit down and then jump into

the action suit and go on stage but it turned out he'd been doing a photo opportunity with Kevin Keegan doing headers oh yeah he'd just come from that and he was so that was my one glimpse of Tony Blair so you didn't get to chat no oh no are you steeped in politics day to day now do you listen to politics podcasts are you there with alistair campbell and rory stewart yeah i listen to a bit of that stuff and quite a lot of american stuff that was partially for work but i'm just interested too so yeah i i am interested in that stuff and how do you feel then about i'm not gonna ask that i was good did you listen to the episode of uh the rest is politics where they're talking

about the iraq yeah or fuck yeah that was good wasn't it it was good wasn't it i mean it made me a bit embarrassed for the state of british journalism you because you were like i've never heard uh alistair campbell as forensically examined as this. He was perfectly polite all the way through Rory Stewart, but he intellectually dismembered him. There was like nothing left to the argument. He was jumping from these ice flow to ice flow, like a sort of desperate polar bear, poor Alistair Campbell. I thought it was like a real nail in the coffin for that bullshitty.

Why is this lying bastard lying to me? School of political interviewing where it's like well think about it think about the person's interests who you're interviewing maybe there are some psychopaths out there in the political world i think a few who are lying and venal and obfuscating for sort of to hide something awful about themselves or some huge gaping hole or secret but usually they're trying to hold what something which is coherent in their own mind political position that probably is based on some values and so why is this lying bastard lying to me it's not a good approach to get to an understanding and doesn't mean that doesn't end up in an equally or more brutal place for the position of the person who's being examined.

Do you ever think, though, that us as comedians, I mean, I've never really done much political stuff, but generally kind of comedians play a part in hardening people's perceptions of politicians and making them somewhat cynical? Like shows like The Thick of It, you know, inform that idea of mendacious, self-serving, venal politicians. Yeah, well, listen, I might get my notebook out of here because there's a lot in that. And I do think about it a lot because I care about politics and I'm interested in it. I've got, I probably have a few things to say. I guess one is like in the scheme of things. I mean, if you put the Iraq war into the balance with the thick of it, which one has been more damaging to the general public's view of like how much they can trust civil servants and politicians when they tell them things?

I think you've got to say they're much more responsible than us. And, you know, it would not be an effective show, a sat satire comedy if it did not represent some stuff people were feeling and in that in the show the central insight i guess is like um a presentation has taken over from formulation of policy in terms of what's the leading energy behind politics so that that insight has to have some purchase for the show to work and that's also not of the show's doing also i'd say sometimes people remember shows as rather different than they are if you watch that show the ministers who are portrayed by rebecca front and chris langham are not they're not they're self-serving sometimes they obfuscate but they're not, they're not, they're self-serving. Sometimes they obfuscate, but they're not black hearted.

They are out of their depth. They're hapless usually being pushed around by a machine, which they're out of control and leads them to do ludicrous things. But it's not a show about very bad people. It's a show about what weak people can do under extreme pressure and i'm not uninterested in the idea like what's the worst thing you could say about the show and its influence on people's sense of politics i actually think the thing which i didn't expect and this is i think a fault in human, not something that's our fault, is how attractive people find powerful people. People seem to find the Malcolm Tucker character, some people seem to find his energy appealing in a way I didn't anticipate and I don't think is the intention, if you can call it an intention, behind the show.

And at that point, I think you just throw your hands up and say look i don't i'm not you you take what you want from the show i don't intend this person to be seen as a good guy but people also say about logan roy like he's got the real stuff and the kids are these flakes and he's the real deal and that in some way there's something good about that extreme manifestation of quite male dominating power. There was an episode of a Malcolm Gladwell thing about satire. Uh-huh. Did you ever hear that? I can't remember. It's probably going to annoy me.

Well, it was pretty scathing. And he was talking to Harry Enfield about loads of money. Uh-huh. And Harry Enfield was saying, yeah, I don't think it did any good at all as far like if you're judging it by was this an effective satire of a certain kind of um toryish mentality and did that change people's minds then no when the opposite way do you feel that about satire that it's i think that the the upshot was like no it's redundant you shouldn't do satire it's a waste of time i just thought really uh yeah i've got to get my notebook out here because i've got a whole chain of thoughts about that i guess the one version thinking about satire is poetry makes nothing happen which is the ordan's thing about poetry but you might just

as well apply it to any art right that it just is a separate thing it's a way of doing things away a way of happening the he writes that about the death of WB Yeats and I think the opposite way of thinking about art, including satire, is WB Yeats wrote a line about, did that play of mine send out certain men the English shot? He wrote a play that he felt or was seen as having been influential in the Easter Rising. And so that's the other fear of art and satire that you actually do affect things,

which is in some ways equally terrifying as not doing anything. When you put something out into the world, you've got no clue what's going to happen to it, I don't think, essentially. So you'd better be pure of heart because you'd better be able to stand behind it. And I imagine Harry Enfield feels this way, like, I was pure of heart when I was doing that,

and you'd better be because you don't know what's going to happen. And after that point, it's not... I don't think it's your responsibility in some ways if someone takes Malcolm Tucker, puts him on a t-shirt and says we should all be Malcolm Tuckers or indeed starts going around Whitehall pretending to be Malcolm Tucker. Well, fuck you that you shouldn't be doing that. It's not my responsibility to police your moral code. So you know that. And sometimes you might be on the side of the angels and your satire quote works and people think about it in a way which leads to the world being more as the satirist would want. And sometimes it might happen that you get taken up in a way that you consider wrong. But the only way to avoid that is to not do art,

to do some bullshit propaganda. That's just going to lie there dead. It's got to be open to multiple interpretations. Otherwise it's probably bullshit. So, um, you know, the writer, Laurie Moore,

there was a good review of her stuff once. And I forget the writer, but it, her, the, the critics said something like art is not enough, but it's all we have. And I think that's my feeling in the end is like,

I don't know, but this is what I've got. And I'm without being too, I guess I feel it's an honor to be able to be a part of the conversation, which is, yeah, that's how I feel. And it's lucky to be able to get your stuff out there and,

and fuck knows how it'll get received touched no is that is that would you put that under the category of fuck gladwell or is that who am i coming out in favor or against of there in the cultural discussion fucking gladwell yeah fuck gladwell and we might be fucking harry enfield's oh sorry then like if yeah i oh maybe you feel defensive you see you see your stuff get misused and johnny spate had this didn't he with um until death do us part it's tough you put your thing out there and it would feel it feels bad when people think careful where you put your thing and i where you put your thing. And I remember doing this with Four Lions, listening to it, playing in Sundance when it first came out. I think that was the place it premiered and hearing people laugh in the audience and thinking, oh, fuck, you're laughing in the wrong way. You think this is funny in the wrong way.

I think that was cross-cultural confusion because the American audience didn't get the world of the people or it was people being too eager on the first night luckily in the uk most people laughed in the right way but it's scary when you can when you feel that people might take your stuff not how you intended it needs a plaque everything would have helped with a plaque everything needs a plaque i would like to go and put cotton wool in the mouths of the people who are laughing wrong but but it's frowned upon. Everything needs a lengthy explanation. Let's little audio explanation beforehand with this is how to approach this and this is how to feel about it. You might like to read this, this and this before you considered laughing at that joke. Yeah, exactly.

Like the trigger warning type things, which I think I feel like to be serious, though, I feel like that's OK. Like not a long version of it. But, you know, you show you don't stop showing the films with the bad ideas and the bad language. Just put a thing in front of it saying, just so you know, there's some language that's pretty outdated that wouldn't be acceptable today. And some ideas that are no longer au courant i'm happy with that yeah you know have a go enjoy the uh nazi carpet um so all right man we should we should can i just say how pleased i i really you know i've been on my own quite a lot in america over last few years. I just love the show. You're such a nice interviewer.

I think that everyone who's been on Desert Island Discs should go in House of Lords. But I think that coming on your show is like a knighthood. So I feel like I've been knighted by the culture. That's really nice of you to say. Thanks, man. And may I say that I like some of your stuff. And may I say that I like some of your stuff. And I just, you know, why did they have to piss on the people in the church?

I'm joking about that. Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. And I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed your stuff over the years and how many real emotional and comedic thrills I've had. And the combination, that potent combination of being emotionally invested, deeply emotionally invested in characters who also make you laugh and say mad things is so powerful. Well, I'm closing my eyes

because I find it difficult to accept praise, but it's very nice of you to say. This is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. I love browsing your videos and pics, and I don't want to stop.

And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace. Just visit squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, because you will want to launch, use the offer code Buxton to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace. Yes. Wait.

Continue. He hates these cans! Stay away from the cans! hey welcome back podcats rosie come here say hello to the podcast no thank you i'm going to trot on she's trotting on whoa pheasants hiding in the undergrowth, Rosie. Just stood there. These days, Rosie sees the pheasants running around. Oh, there's loads of them. And she just lets them get on with their lives. So that was Jessie Armstrong. Nice little love in there at the end. Wonderful. I'll say more about Jesse in just a second, but I wanted to very briefly appeal once again. And I know I do this a lot to your generosity and ask if you will join me in supporting a former podcast guest, Lorna Tucker. Lorna is trying to raise funds to get her documentary about homelessness, Someone's Daughter, Someone's Son, into cinemas.

It's a great doc that incorporates Lorna's own experience of sleeping rough in London for nearly two years when she was a teen, a time of her life that she talked to me about on the podcast last year. That is in episode 191. If you haven't heard it, there's a link in the description. It was a fascinating, hair-raising story that Lorna had to tell. But she and her film make the point that homelessness is a problem that is getting out of control needlessly. There are things that can be done to provide practical help for people who find themselves, for whatever reason, living on the streets. And to move towards a society where homelessness isn't on the same scale that it is today.

And getting Lorna's film into cinemas would help spread the word and the awareness of the problem. So if you're able to, please contribute to Lorna's Kickstarter page, where she is raising funds to distribute the film. You'll find a link in the description of today's podcast. Thank you very much. Back to succession, though, and Jesse, I'm very grateful indeed to Jesse for making the time to talk to me the other day. And actually, when we recorded our conversation, I didn't yet know that I was going to be hosting a live event with five of the succession writers, Jesse and Tony Roach and Lucy Preble and Georgia Pritchett and John Brown,

five of the British ones. There's also American writers that work on the show. But it was just the Brits for this event, which was a couple of weeks back, as I speak, at the Royal Festival Hall. I think I'm right in saying that they have uploaded perhaps a slightly edited version onto YouTube. There's a link to that in the description, so you can see Jesse and the other writers chatting about the show and responding to my occasional bits of nonsense there's a link in the description if you're interested but back in June when I was recording

the conversation you've just heard with Jesse went to a cafe bar place and sat outside and it was down a side road opposite Rough Trade East the Reckistow Rosie I'm going to go this way. Rosie's just been chasing a squirrel. That's like the good old days, isn't it, Rose? Anyway, me and Jesse were having a drink and there was a sign outside Rough Trade which was announcing that Damien Lewis, the actor and star of shows like Band of Brothers, Homeland and Billions, was going to be playing a live set of songs from his debut album, Mission Creep. I was telling Jesse that I was quite a big fan of Billions, at least when Damien Lewis was in it. And just as I was saying that, who emerges from Rough Trade East but Damien Lewis looking kind of like Antonio Banderas in El Mariachi he was wearing black jeans skinny jeans black shirt open to his chest black aviator shades cowboy boots he had a guitar case slung over his back the only thing he was missing was a

a cheroot and a pistol although maybe he had those tucked into his pants I guess he'd been sound checking before his show and he was popping out for a sandwich but it was quite weird to to be talking about him and then suddenly here he is looking like El Mariachi and he walked right past our table and I'm afraid that's the end of the story I just thought it was a funny moment that I'd share with you don't forget though that and I haven't been asked to say this but I wish to tell you as a friend that the Succession script books are now available. And they are big. They're giant. And they would make a very nice Christmas present for the Succession fan in your life.

Packed as they are with fascinating stage directions originally intended just for the actors. And there's other intriguing bits of insight from jesse and the other writers about the show it's a very interesting read if you're a fan all right don't forget to check out my conversation with jesse's old writing partner sam bain coming up in the next episode of this podcast whoa stereo pheasant there's another one rosie is just rosie is rosie is gambling through the field of what are we looking at here? I'm so ignorant. Maybe the leafy parts of turnips? Anyway, there's enough leafiness

to disguise all these pheasants hiding in there and Rosie's jumping around and flushing them out, having a great time. Yes, I am! Hey, thanks once again to Jesse Armstrong and thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell Hey, thanks once again to Jesse Armstrong. And thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his as ever invaluable production support and conversation editing. Thank you to Helen Green.

She does the artwork for the podcast. Thanks to ACAST for their continued support. But thank you most of all to you. We here at the Adam Buxton Podcast are aware that you have a choice when it comes to podcasts, and we appreciate you returning to join us with your ears

from time to time. Thank you, and we look forward to waffling with you soon again. Would you object if I gave you a formal hug? Hey, come here. It's good to see you. Until the next time, we share the same sonic space.

I hope things go okay. And for what it's worth, I love you. Bye! Bye. Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile, click the button, subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, like and subscribe, ស្រូវាប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ Thank you.