THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.224 - FENTON BAILEY

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Adam talks with old friend and Rupaul's Drag Race producer Fenton Bailey about managing vanity in middle age and the extent to which reality TV can be blamed for everything bad in the world (with particular emphasis on Don Trump).This conversation was recorded face-to-face in London on 12th January, 2024Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and conversation editing.Podcast artwork by Helen GreenADAM'S WEBSITE (for Rosie rainbow pic etc.)LIVE PODCAST - LAST SEATS FOR LONDON (9th June) & DUBLIN (May 21st), 2024LIVE PODCAST WITH SELF ESTEEM, 2nd June, 2024 @Crossed Wires Festival, Sheffield, RELATED LINKSFRANK BLACK AND RICHARD AYOADE - HEY (REHEARSAL) - 2024 (YOUTUBE)FRANK BLACK AND RICHARD AYOADE - WHERE IS MY MIND (REHEARSAL) - 2024 (YOUTUBE)REMOVE YOUTUBE SIDEBAR - (CHROME WEBSTORE)SCREEN AGE by FENTON BAILEY - 2022 (WORLD OF WONDER)MANUFACTURING CONSENT: NOAM CHOMSKY AND THE MEDIA - 1992 (YOUTUBE)NAM JUNE PAIK - MOON IS THE OLDEST TV (TRAILER) - 2023 (YOUTUBE)HOW MARK BURNETT RESURRECTED DONALD TRUMP AS AN ICON OF AMERICAN SUCCESS by Patrick Radden Keefe - 2018 (THE NEW YORKER)DEPP V HEARD by Nick Wallis - 2023 (2nd hand copy on WORLD OF BOOKS) 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? It's Adam Buxton here. I'm taking a walk with my best dog friend, Rosie.

She's a whippet poodle cross, and she's 13. So she's getting grey in the the head like her human mum and dad also like her human mum and dad she's plodding on aren't you dog legs how patronizing sorry she's trotting along beside me i'm happy to say out here in the fields of Norfolk on rather an overcast, cold and windy day towards the end of March 2024. How are you doing though, podcats? Hope you're all right wherever you are. Whoa! Gap in the hedge opened up here on the side of this field.

Got a bit of a chilly blast. Hey look, I just wanted to say thank you very much to everybody who came along to the show that I did at the Palladium last week, the live podcast show at the London Palladium. It was the first of this year's run of live podcast shows and it was a wonderful evening very good audience I have to say very warm and supportive and understanding about some of the rougher edges because this was our first outing doing that kind of show my son Frank came along again to help me out as he did at the Royal Festival Hall just before Christmas, playing a couple of live jingles. Turns out we need a bit more practice before we do that again. We rehearsed quite a bit in the afternoon, trying to get the harmonies. He was playing guitar,

I was playing the omnicord. But then when we got on stage, suddenly you realize, oh shit, I can't hear what the other person's doing. So we fell out of time. And then as for my harmonies, forget about it. Anyway, the audience were nice about it. I'll have to rethink my live jingle strategy for the next show. And in the end, my guest on the night night the audience didn't know who the guest was and the audiences won't know who the guest is for these upcoming live shows but last week at the palladium my guest was friend of the podcast richard iowady and if you listened to the last episode with jessica nappet and you heard me ringing up richard tochedule a meeting. That is what we were meeting to discuss, the live podcast. Anyway, Richard joined me on stage at the Palladium.

We waffled about films and music, especially our love of the Pixies. And in the second half of the show, we were joined on stage by none other than Pixies front man, Frank Black. He was in town playing some Pixies shows and was kind enough to come along to the Palladium and play a few numbers, including a couple of Pixies classics, Hey and Where Is My Mind, that Richard played lead guitar on. And on the night last week at the Palladium, I said to the audience, please don't film the show, don't record the show, which I generally say. But I did say to them, there'll be a bit towards the end of the show that you can record, and I was thinking of Richard and Frank Black duetting.

But in all the excitement, I forgot to say to the audience, OK, film away for this bit. So I felt a bit bad about that, that people weren't able to come away with a video souvenir if they wanted one. So anyway, I've uploaded a couple of short clips of Richard and Frank rehearsing earlier in the day. It's not quite the same as the live performance with the audience who sang along with Where Is My Mind. We changed the

bit to to customize it for the podcast and the audience is very good at that but anyway you can get a sense of the magic that was happening between Richard Ayoade and Frank Black from these short rehearsal clips there's a link in the description oh it's getting windy Richard said that he was worried he would be shamed for missing a few notes on those rehearsals. But I told him not to worry. Reminded him that people on the internet are very understanding and slow to judge. As far as putting out the audio recording of the Palladium show, I'm not sure exactly how that's going to work, because I'm trying to make these live podcast shows quite

visual. So there's video bits and a certain amount of interaction with the screen. So not all of it is ideally suited to being edited for the podcast, but I will probably put out some edited highlights at some point later this year. Anyway, I wanted to say thank you very much for coming along. As I speak, there are still a few tickets left for Vicar Street in Dublin on the 21st of May and the Eventum Apollo Hammersmith in London on June the 9th. There are links for tickets in the description, along with a link for the Crossed Wires Festival, where I will be appearing on June the 2nd. I'll be talking to musician and actor Self-Esteem. Hope you can make it. But right now, let me tell you a bit about today's podcast, number 224,

which features a conversation with an old friend and a returning guest to the podcast, British-born producer and director Fenton Bailey, who, along with his American partner Randy Barbato, set up the production company World of Wonder in 1991. Throughout the 90s, World of Wonder produced a dizzying variety of shows, including New York Public Access compendium, Manhattan Cable, John Ronson's Secret Rulers of the World, and the Adam and Joe Show, in which two men in their late 20s used camcorders to make a TV show about pop culture hosted from a room in Brixton. Towards the end of the 90s, World of Wonder also produced a chat show with drag artist RuPaul, a friend that Fenton and Randy had met in their New York clubbing days in

the 1980s, when Fenton and Randy used to perform as the musical duo The Pop-Tarts, or The Fabulous Pop-Tarts, as at least Fenton thought of them. In the 2010s, RuPaul would become the cornerstone of the World of Wonder empire, with the phenomenally successful RuPaul's Drag Race. But in the meantime, World of Wonder continued to produce TV reality shows and feature documentaries on subjects like Britney Spears, the artist Robert Mapplethorpe, Monica Lewinsky and American televangelist Tammy Faye Baker. Fenton wrote a book, Screen Age, How TV Shaped Our Reality from Tammy Faye to RuPaul's Drag Race. And that was published in 2022. It's the story of World of Wonder's journey from the fringes of popular culture to the mainstream.

story of World of Wonder's journey from the fringes of popular culture to the mainstream and their part in pioneering, for better or worse, the genre of reality TV, while championing and celebrating LGBTQ voices and topics along the way. My conversation with Fenton was recorded in mid January of this year, 2024, at the vast Excel Exhibition and Convention Centre in East London in the Docklands area, Fenton was there for RuPaul's DragCon, the Met Gala of Drag, providing a focus for the world's largest gathering of drag race queens and fans. While we recorded our conversation in one of the meeting rooms that run alongside the giant hangar space where DragCon was taking place, drag artists and their helpers were busy setting up stalls and stages and sound checking for the three-day convention. If you've never been to the XL before, it's really very big.

It's like a mid-sized airport. And at various points in the recording, you will also notice that it sounds like an airport too. It was great to see Fenton. If you want to hear me and Fenton chatting more about how the Adam and Jo show came about, incidentally, you can do so by listening to episode 72 of this podcast. of this podcast. But my conversation with Fenton for this episode began with us comparing notes on how we are reconciling the ageing process

with our respective vanities. We also talked about reality TV and disagreed about the extent to which it can be blamed for everything bad in society. Guess which side I was on in that part of the conversation. Back at the end, for a few related recommendations and a bit more waffle. But right now, with Fenton Bailey. Here we go.

Ramble Chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that Come on, let's tune the vat and have a ramble chat Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat How are you enjoying getting older? May I say, Fenton, I hope this isn't too gauche, that you are looking non-old. Oh, yes, sir. What's your secret?

What are you doing? Well, you know, it's Botox and fillers and I'm pure Hollywood. You know, I'm like, if there's anything I can do to look younger, I'll do it. And there'll probably come a moment where my face will fall off or something. Have you had surgery? Do you mind me asking? Oh, surgery. I have had surgery.

I have had surgery i have had is i got my eyelids done oh because i was beginning to look a little heavy-lidded and um the doctor said oh i could sort that out for you and um you didn't actually i was really glad of it how long was the recovery they said it would be like six weeks before your face looked normal-ish. Because you're dealing with swelling and bruising, are you? Oh, well, that's like ten days. Okay. Swelling and bruising.

But until it settles in, they said six weeks. In reality, it's more like six months. Oh, really? When was it? It was like 2015. Oh, because Hillary Clinton was campaigning. And I went to this event where, you know, you've got to get your picture of Hillary Clinton, which should have been the most exciting thing.

But actually, I was looking at the photo and I was like, oh, my God, I look so freakish. Because it was less than six months. So I had the eyes done. But by the time Trump was in, you were looking 10 years younger. Looking fabulous, looking on point yes and the other day i should confess to it is does it count i had i got my teeth done i got veneers oh and i was so happy about it yeah because i just had yellow misshapen victorian graveyard teeth you know did you going this way and that way. I never noticed.

It's not like Bowie used to be. You remember when Bowie had an extraordinary set of teeth? I think these days it really shows up because everybody these days has white teeth. Yeah. By whatever they use, those strips, or whatever they do it, they have white teeth. So suddenly you're like, oh my God,

what happened to Bowie's teeth? Yeah, it was weird. I mean, he had the they were quite big and very, very even and very white. So it was very noticeable with him. Oh, but before he got them done, they were horrendous. Yeah, they were mad. They were absolutely mad. But they did give him a lot of character, though.

Too much character. Yes, there are some pictures, there are some unfortunate pictures of him where you do think, whoa, what's happened in your mouth? But other times, I never used to think about it, you know, because the Americans are always teasing the English for how bad their teeth are. And it was not something I was ever aware of until I watched things like Family Guy, where they would do that. Yeah, yeah. And then I realized, oh, yeah, I suppose British people do have bad teeth in a noticeable way. But is it much worse than anywhere else in the world, do you think? Yeah.

Why is it? Well, I guess Americans have been fixing them for longer. I mean, kids, they have braces. Because the average American diet isn't necessarily much healthier, is it? No, no. But they just deal with it. They fix it. Right.

You know. It's like, I think in LA, people's cars are a lot cleaner than in the UK. I'm always like, oh my God. They come here and I'm like, wash your car. I think you're probably right. I mean, I would count myself as nearly royal. And our car is horrible. As a tip. Inside and out.

Yeah, but it's so depressing. I mean, it's partly because we live in the country. So the outside of the car is always caked in mud. And it's not really practical to carry on washing it because we live down down a long muddy drive yeah so i don't mind that really but inside it is depressing to get in there and i am going to blame the members of my family for that get out the vacuum i did because i'm insane about it right my kids leave a like a wrapper in the car really i just can't drive the car until it's removed i wish you would come and stay with us for a while i'll bring my vacuum i have a little mini vac we've got the mini vac

we've got all of that gear there's absolutely no excuse i don't want to start naming names because you know i'm talking about people who work very hard who have busy schedules educational schedule sporting schedules my beautiful wife works unbelievably hard shoulders the lion's share of all the driving duties that have to be done so i can do whatever bullshit i do in my days like this like this but um so your veneers though your teeth veneers if we could return to those yeah yeah very good because they're not too white if you don't mind me saying i of course like when he was doing them i was like i want he's like what color do you know it has a little um canton thing and he's like what what color and i was like that one he said no no you do not want that and i was like well i gotta do i want sort of barbie teeth

or just you know yeah teeth that say I'm new. Liberace. Yes. But he actually put his foot down and said, I won't. I'm not going to let you. So we reached a compromise. Slightly whiter than he would have recommended. Okay. But not so white.

Because every time I open my mouth, I want people to be blinded. Yeah. Did you ever touch up photographs of yourself back in the day? Of course I did. Are you kidding? I used to do that as well, as soon as I got Photoshop. Right. But you're a master of Photoshop. I could never figure it out because of those layers and things. And then actually, more recently, speaking of getting old, I just stopped posting photos of myself.

I was like, this has to stop. It's not going to... Really? Yeah. Why? So what are you not liking about your photos? I'm here to tell you, Fenton, that you are looking great and you should post more photos. Oh, thank you. I met someone who has hair implants, quite a well-known personality. And I was surprised when he told me that he did because I was...

Well, they must be very natural then. Well, they looked really good. You know, I said, how come you... You're older than than i am how come you've got such a good head of hair he said oh they're implants and i was like wow that's quite good and then he i asked him to send me the details of the person who did them you know like i was sort of thinking well maybe maybe i'll just look into it super painful painful process. Is it? Yeah. Apparently, yeah. But did he, nameless celebrity? It was a he, but they sent me the details.

I didn't follow up. I made one inquiry, and then I just thought, I don't know. If I go down that road, I mean, there's so much else that I would change. Well, you know, i think the best thing with hair is a wig you know my favorite andy warhol thing is was that fright wig he wore for years because it wasn't a pretense that that's my natural hair it was just a shock on his head and it i thought was just a fabulous look yeah you're right that that was a brilliant thing but that's in keeping with everything he did though isn't it i don't know if i'd be able to get away with the warhol wig

my version of that is just a beanie cap or a docker cap it works i've changed i've changed hat styles in the last couple of years i used to always favor a baseball cap right did you ever wear it backwards though for a short time but it's a bit kind of douchey it is beyond a certain age i think you're right it is douchey and one time towards the beginning of the 90s which was key backwards baseball cap years for me and i really thought i looked quite great actually but then i went out for a drink and this slightly older guy who worked at the ICA I remember and he was quite a snarky bloke and he just said what do you think you look like with your cap on backwards and I was like what do you mean he's like I mean you look like a brat I mean the thing is that it's annoying with people like that because I do think he was right. But on the other hand, what a twat.

Exactly. Twat calls out prat. I mean, which is worse? But I like this cap you've got now. It's good because it doesn't have a peak. Yeah. So you're not. It's chic, actually.

Thank you. I mean, the worst worry I have about it is that it's appropriating working class fashion aesthetics. You could be cancelled. I could be cancelled because it is called a docker cap. I'm wearing, again, not sponsored listeners. I'm wearing the Stetson docker cap and it's in sort of canvas green. So I suppose part of the allure on some subconscious level is that part of me must think it makes me look a bit like a kind of roughy-tufty, outdoorsy manual laborer. I wouldn't go that far. Louis Theroux, who actually, as I speak, early 2024, has been dealing with alopecia in the last few months.

I always remember having a huge bush of exuberant hair. Yeah, everyone loves Louis Bush. But forever I've had hair envy of Louis. I still do, in fact, even though he is struggling with this condition which has made patches of hair come out. Like Jada Smith? Yes, exactly. Yeah, yeah. And like Will Smith, I would slap anyone at a ceremony who impugned or made light of Louie's alopecia. But Lou found that he was getting quite a lot of congrats from people online for being so open about it and just talking about it very matter-of-factly.

His eyebrow, like one of his eyebrows fell out first of all. And then he just sort of shaved the other one off. So I don't know. I haven't seen him for a few weeks, but I don't know how it's going at the moment. But Lou always was one of those people who had the best hair that just looked good, whatever he'd done with it. And even when it even when he was a bit older and it was getting a bit more wiry and gray, it just it looked right. Yeah, it always looked right. Always looks right, I should say. And I'm sure even if he lost all of it or even if he shaved it off or whatever, he would look great still.

But when he's got hair it looks good and i always envied it because mine never really i had one haircut in um when we were doing the adam and joe show and it was series two i think so that would have been 98 or thereabouts and it was just one of those haircuts and it it was just like, whoa, look at me with my new haircut. This is who I am, finally. Yes, I mean, you need to have hair to do things with it. Yeah. Yeah, but, I mean, I've always had sort of okay length of hair, but it just sits there.

It doesn't do anything. Well, I've always liked that combination of very short sort of buzz cutty yeah and then a big sort of bit yeah yeah yeah david lynch yes right exactly the massive great sort of whipped ice cream thing that he's got going on genius and who's the other the playwright um you know waiting for godot samuel beckett yeah didn't he have mad kind of ice cream hair as well? He did, yeah. He looked really good with that. Einstein had hair.

Yeah, that was good hair. Signature hair. Mad hair, yeah. I mean, I'm trying to pivot to make this what some people might think is a fairly self-absorbed superficial line of questioning from me to make it more relevant to where we are and what we're doing. But obviously, you know, fashion, the way people look.

How are drag queens, Fenton? Here's a very great segue. Here's a segue, yeah. How do drag queens generally deal with ageing? And what role does that play in the art? Oh, that's a good question. Because, you know, I think really the longer a queen has been around, the more dark arts they perfect.

So it's a combination of many things. It could be a little knit and tuck. It could be some abrasion, you know. But also the makeup and, of course, lighting, you know. Yeah. Just blast you with light. Yes. You know, Ru would always say, all I want to see are two nostrils and some red lips.

And, like, bring this light closer, you know. And you're born naked and the rest is drag. And I think that's the truth that, you know, everything we put on, more or less considered, it's some kind of statement about who we think we are or how we want to be seen or a fantasy version of ourselves. I guess it's good that, you know, in the Western world, we're not generally, you know, we're able to think about those things and play with those things. I suppose the criticism would be, though, isn't it, that it's a symptom of an excessively superficial age? That could be. That could be. I mean, but I do think that I tell you what, I think that is the print based supremacist point of view that has an inherent hostility, understandably, to a visual culture. Because if we're in a visual culture, who's reading books?

And I think print's always been very quick to be, almost have a sort of Puritan outlook about things. Where do you think that comes from, though? What's the logic of it? It's the Puritans. It's hundreds of years old. Oh, it is. But do you, I mean, I would think that the justification from someone like Malcolm Muggeridge back in the day

who was railing against TV. Yes. He, I think, because my dad agreed with him, that's why I reference him, you know what I mean? Because he was the kind of person that my dad got a lot of his opinions from. And I think he would think that TV is a passive medium, that it's washing over you. It doesn't require much from you as a viewer. And that print is necessarily more interactive.

You have to engage with it. You have to make an effort to read those words and process them in your mind. And that is somehow going to have a more long-lasting value to it than the more sort of sit-back, passive experience of watching TV. I agree with everything you've said, except that why does one medium have to be better than the other? And why was print so threatened that it had to create this, I think, residual negative idea about screens and TV? screens and TV. You know, I remember as a kid, like, my parents were like, don't sit too close to the color television set. It will make you go blind, which is sort of analogous to that thing

of, like, don't masturbate because you'll go blind. And so there's these sort of hangover values that are simply not real, but that we kind of grow up under the shadow with and sort of internalize and carry with us. But we're in a visual culture, and I think both things are really profoundly necessary. But it isn't about one being better than the other. Actually, that's kind of why I wrote the book, because many of my friends in LA are like, well, why are you writing a book? I don't read books. And I just felt like, well...

Don't worry, there'll be an audio book. Right, I did say that as a matter of fact. Right. But I also felt like, well, if I grew up and I had this education, I should deliver on it in some respects by explaining why I think TV is actually this profoundly revolutionary medium, for good and ill. But I'm just personally tired of working in a medium where it's always getting slagged off.

You know, as a younger person, it was like TV is a bad thing. And then it was like, even as TV just demonstrated it wasn't going anywhere, you know, it wasn't like, oh, okay, yes, TV is bad, we TV just demonstrated it wasn't going anywhere, it wasn't like, oh, okay, yes, TV is bad. We'll just stop it right now. Channels exploded. Instead of four channels, 500 channels. And then the new demon was reality TV.

That's the new evil. And now there's this idea that there's premium TV and that that's okay because premium TV is kind of more like movies you know it's all it's all bullshit I don't know I agree with quite a lot of that as far as reality TV goes though I mean it's hard to deny that that has played a role in getting us to the Trump years don't you know no no no no Trump is not a reality tv president that is not but he's not the truth about trump trump is a profoundly corrupting evil figure yeah who has tainted everything he has touched not just tv real estate trump stakes everything he has done is gross and disgusting. You know, he's got some good ideas.

This is not about. Don't blame reality TV. Reality TV, though, was the platform that enabled him to get into our lives to an even greater degree. Before then, he was only really bothering the super rich who were staying in his hotels. No, not really, because, I mean, his ability is to lie and to deceive. And the lies he is told are so beguiling, he would have found some other way. You reckon? Yeah.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But reality TV just handed it to him on a plate. Well, you could say, I mean, Hitler, you know, Hitler was smart and understood that in the age of radio and the emergent era of TV, if you could control the medium, you could rise to power. I guess you could say that Trump's insight was that you don't have to control it. You don't have to shut everything else out. But if you can tell bold enough untruths and repeat them endlessly and somehow keep yourself in the media, then you'll succeed. And Celebrity Apprentice, which, by the way, I do not like and did not like, so I'm not defending that show. But that ended a long, long time ago. So how has Trump been able to he's been able to succeed because he's been able to keep his name on the radio on tv on twitter every yeah but that show was the thing that first crystallized the myth and what came first was trump the evil you know it's a chicken and egg i think you're right that reality tv didn't

create donald trump but it did give him the tools to do the damage that you don't blame the camera for i do did you ever read that um piece by patrick radden keefe about mark burnett who produced um i've read several i don't know yeah that's a really good one i'll put a link in the description of this podcast but that is a really chilling you know if anything you come away from it thinking that as you say there's always going to be someone like trump stalking around waiting for some way to get through and uh via reality tv or whatever other medium but actually it's in a way people like mark burnett who look at someone like trump and think oh yeah that shoulder perhaps as much blame you know and who don't feel any sense of responsibility when they see what they're dealing with and then continue to give him the

tools he needs to succeed when he starts getting political ambitions and i don't i don't think that mark burnett ended up actually supporting trump i think he was more of a democrat but but you do reading this piece you do think like what mark burnett have a think about who you're dealing with here don't you reckon like don't give this don't give this guy the oxygen of publicity yeah full disclosure though in the 80s before randy and i started world of wonder before we'd made any tv shows you know it was that sort of era of sort of wall street go-go you know it was sort of it was the first time i suppose that money trending, which is a ridiculous thing to say. But there was just this sense of Madonna, material girl.

Yeah, the 80s in their consumerist glory. And sort of embracing that. And Trump was definitely the poster child of that. So he was already up to his tricks because the guy was not a self-made business genius like he presented. He was living off daddy's money and lying his way. And it was all unexamined lies and PR fodder that oftentimes he was putting out. Like he would often call the gossip colonists and give them the scoop as if he was his publicist you know but in that era and when the art of the deal his bestseller

came out we actually wrote a letter to him saying oh you know it'd be fabulous to make a documentary about you thinking that he was this sort of expression of the of the zeitgeist um and we did actually get a reply to the letter his secretary wrote back saying mr trump has no interest in being on television telling yeah wait a few more years though but back then you felt like in pre-internet days all of that just felt like it couldn't possibly have any impact on the real world. It still felt like you were an outsider and that the establishment was still in place and would always be. And that the nerds would never win. Oh, and also that the crazy conspiracy theorists would never really get out of their box.

That's right. I mean, that was, you know, when we made Crazy Rulers of the World and Secret Rulers of the World. With John Ronson. Yeah. Like, I'm not going to speak for John, but I was, like, compelled by these crazy, you can behold a pale horse and the Illuminati and all this kind of bonkers nonsense that to me was interesting because it was so crazy. And I was like, how do you get these ideas and how do they spread? And just so sort of baroque and deranged and a complete absence of any real evidence or factual basis for any of it.

evidence or factual basis for any of it to me that was all fascinating but had no idea that someone like alex jones who was actually in one of the series and took john to bohemian grove where there was supposed to be satanic rituals and sacrificing babies and what have you no belief that that would be what would enable someone like trump you know they're just sort of complete a psychotic break with reality and truth that was like even i remember in the months leading up to trump's election when the fact that he was friends with alex jones was a story and i think was put about by anti-Trump people as like, you know, look who he's hanging out with. Do you want to elect a guy who hangs out with Alex Jones? And I remember thinking, oh yeah, well that probably is going to put the kibosh on it because

it does put things into perspective. But of course it didn't. It just sort of galvanized the whole thing. Trump was in no way apologetic or felt that he needed to be but even john ronson i remember being curious about like why would you ever talk to alex jones or someone like that you know but that was obviously back in the day before he'd done things like deny the sandy hook killings and things like that which are so beyond the. I think what fascinated us all was this. And John said this, so I'm probably going to paraphrase it poorly. But why is it that the most conservative people seem to embrace the craziest ideas? What is that?

How does that work? Because you would have thought that the most conservative people would be the most down to earth i mean only recently has the idea of sort of republicans become oh you know they're just barking crazy going back 20 30 years there was a sense in which they they were sort of traditionalists and wanted to hold on to things as opposed to embracing delusions. I still can't personally completely figure it out. But I do know reality TV is not to blame. But you remember something I discovered literally two days ago.

Do you remember an artist, Nam June Paik? I love Nam June Paik. He was an inspiration to me throughout art school yeah video of course he was of course he was because i always was a bit like you make a crucifix out of tvs you know like it's a little bit i was more in on keith herring you know yeah yeah but namjoon pike was at the same sort of time in New York. And there's a documentary that's come out about him. Moon is the oldest TV. Yeah. Have you seen it? Yeah, I loved it. It's great. I was like, oh, my God. And there's this moment in the film where, and I didn't know this, where they credited him with the information super highway with the coining that phrase i think he called it the electronic highway right and then at one point in the film someone's talking next night no he called me in the middle of the night and said you know what it's not the

electronic highway we're in a boat in the ocean and we're looking for the shore. And I'm like, that just blew my mind because I do think in the sort of tsunami of media, we have become lost. And that's not a judgment. It doesn't mean that this is a bad thing. It's just that it has all the easy-to-hold-onto so-called grounding things that we believed in have just been sort of picked up and thrown into disarray by this new media atmosphere and the sheer availability

of unexpected connections afforded by the technology yeah the fact that you are suddenly being confronted by all these things which 30, 40 years ago, you would never have been. So, so many of your preconceptions and prejudices would have remained unchallenged. Exactly. And so, in a way, it's a good thing that they are being challenged, but then in another way, it's completely devastating. It's disorienting, I think.

And it requires more of us but and i should say yeah adam and joe show in my mind was a reality show uh-huh because i think the genius of so-called reality tv which is a label used for a lot of different things yes it's essentially that everyone can have a chance or that everyone can be on tv i think that's what the great promise of reality tv well i suppose you know the the concept of reality or truth or whatever that's what everyone is shooting for in one way or another whether you're making a drama or whatever it might happen to be, you judge it, consciously or not, on how close it gets to some recognizable truth. So with reality TV, in theory,

it's being ladled out to you, yum, yum, yum. And when you see like crazy moments that are supposedly true, it is an absolute thrill. And I've had many, many happy experiences watching shows like I'm a Celebrity. You know, there was one year that I always wang on about where they had Peter Andre and Jordan and John Lydon was in the jungle. And he got chucked out for saying cunt too many times. And Janet Street Porter, I think.

Anyway, it was like the best lineup they ever had in the jungle. And I watched every single second of that loving it. And there was also an amazing celebrity big brother that had Michael Barrymore in there. Right. Oh, yes. Yes. And that was the one as well where they had put someone who wasn't famous in there and pretended to everyone that she was. She was called Chantel. And so the joke was like, she's not even famous, but they're all just treating her like, oh, right. So what are you doing? She's like, oh, yeah, I'm a pop star.

And they're like, OK, cool. And they just carried on treating her like she was famous. And she really wasn't. But then, of course, she became famous. She ended up marrying one of the guys in there, Preston, from this band, the Ordinary Boys. And it was Shakespearean. I'm going to Shakespearean. I just want to go back to this Trump thing

because you're saying, you know, reality TV enabled Trump. Well, not everyone who goes on these shows becomes president or prime minister. I mean, look at Nigel Farage, right? He went on I'm a Celebrity. It was a complete disaster. Yeah, but the jury, I don't know. I think it's too early to say with someone like him because yeah he's the kind of guy that bounces

back just when you've written him off okay he's troublesome like that but yeah i mean it does seem encouraging that that no one really seemed to give a shit about him being in the jungle exactly yeah but i know you know there's that, a platform can also be a gallows and you definitely can unmask and show the true nature of people on TV in a way that is ultimately useful in demonstrating that they are not to be trusted. Every time a camera comes into play, every time you pick up a camera, you're telling a story. And so this, again, that's like this sort of preoccupation with what's real and what's not. And the idea of rushing to judgment that reality TV isn't real. Well, of course, it's not real. It's storytelling like any other thing you watch is telling a story. Maybe everyone assumes that nowadays in 2024,

but they never used to. If you called something a reality TV show, then most people had a vague preconception that it was real and they didn't really understand how it was constructed. And it was a bit of a shock the first time I heard in the 90s of what would come to be called directed reality or scripted reality or structured reality yeah whatever these kind of weaselly terms that they use to basically say that they told everyone what to do in this thing and passed it off as if it was real but the language is always changing and i think you know people say that ruPaul's Drag Race is a reality show, but I would never say it's a reality show.

To me, it's like a variety show. Yeah. You know, you have acting challenges, you have fashion challenges, you have all this different... It's like a variety show, and Ru is like the host of the old-fashioned variety show. And also something else Ru says that I think about.

I mean, I think about a lot of what he says all the time, actually. But he's like, Jack doesn't disguise who you are. It reveals who you are. Because it's kind of creating an extended self. And so at some point, this idea of trying to decide what is real and what is not, we have to have a more nuanced, complex understanding that it's a many and varied thing. Yes. Yes, please.

Yep. Yes. How is it as a program maker the modern tv landscape because all i ever hear from my friends in british tv is that they're in trouble and especially in comedy it's very very hard to get anything off the ground yeah because everything now is just working off a fairly rigid business model you've got to have you've got to be making shows that are going to be repeatable they have to be easily sellable in other territories all this kind of stuff so a show like the adam and joe show i don't think it would have been made

i mean probably it wouldn't have been made in the last 20 years anyway but i think everything's pretty unique to its window in time yeah and um i mean you're right like it just sounded like an old fart but you know it used to be that you could go into channel four so i got this idea and you would come out with a commission not necessarily straight to series but a pilot or a presentation and that kind of like how The Adam and Joe Show came. Yes. Because it was out of TakeOver TV, right? Yeah. Your tape was on this pile of rejects, I might add. Yeah.

And I don't know why I like telling that story. I suppose because it's sort of self-aggrandizing. It was rejected by Dave, wasn't it? I don't think it was Dave, no. Was it not? No, it was someone who didn't get to work on the show. No, someone was fired. But actually, we should thank them because their post-it note said,

much too clever for its own good. I thought, oh, let's have a look at that. Let's pop that in. I like things that are much too clever for their own good. And it was lovely because you were sitting on the loo with an aerial on your head. Yes. I remember it well. No, I suppose it felt like there was more of a sense of people just making things for the sake of it.

In the way that an artist would make work. Rather than now, you feel like, well, you have to deal with the financial realities of it. You have to consider whether anyone's actually going to watch it. Otherwise. the financial realities of it. You have to consider whether anyone's actually going to watch it. Otherwise. Well,

when you're pitching that always saying it needs to be returnable, it needs to be repeatable. It needs to have broad appeal. Returnable as in audiences will keep. Season two, three, four, five,

six and reach a broad audience, like appeal to everyone internationally. But that isn't how shows are made, really. And even though they adopt this language and create this filter, South Park didn't come about that way. Squid Game didn't come about that way. Everything that's big kind of happens in spite of itself or in spite of the commissioning brief the commission brief is like how is it that you pay people to almost deliberately think of the way not to make

a hit show do you know like yeah it's a weird perverse thing to take all the jagged edges off yeah yeah because no one would ever have imagined that a show like RuPaul's Drag Race would have turned into what it has become. people were watching and there wasn't a lot of you know we were almost too small to cancel for the first few seasons i think and so we had a chance that you just wouldn't have had if it had been on a network or a bigger channel yeah i was trying to think as i was walking to meet you today through excel to the drag con hall do you have a drag name i do actually fentanyl of course i come to slay you never did drag yeah i did randy and i did once a wig stock and uh but in the 90s um we were like because when we had the Pop-Tarts. Pop-Tarts was your band.

It was, yeah. I was talking to Graham Norton, and he said, oh, tell me about, ask some question about what we did in the 80s. And I was like, oh, we were in a band called the Fabulous Pop-Tarts. And he said, well, no one called you that. I just love that. You were just the Pop-Tarts, I think. Speaking of drag, don't you think, what's her name, in Rosamund Pike?

Yeah. Is the draggiest, most fabulous, delicious thing. In Salt Burn. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Did you enjoy that movie? I'm really fascinated by the way everyone's talking about it. You know, and some people love it, some people hate it,

but everyone can't not talk about it. And I read a review, I think, in Variety that said, the problem with this movie is it's the memification of movies. Memes, not not scenes uh-huh and i thought you know that's kind of cool because there are several scenes in that that you cannot unsee yeah give the film this like oh my god you've got to see it or that's true yeah yeah you have to tell people about them and they're not really spoilers so you can you know what i mean having said that i wouldn't tell

don't you think it's a spoiler i think yeah what the plug hole yeah is it a spoiler i suppose it is a spoiler yeah because once you told them yeah i mean because there isn't a great deal of point to the movie ultimately that's why i thought the review about the memeification it's a collection of these sort of viral things yeah and and then the review was like negative saying well it's not really a movie because of that but i who's to say what a movie is who cares like if it's a bunch of memes great i did feel like when the plug hole happened i did think whoa this is suddenly a different film, isn't it? And then I'd heard about The Grave. Okay.

So I was ready for that. But I did think, hmm, I don't know, maybe I'm with the meme-ification guy. But I liked Murder on the Dance Floor. And I liked his floppy cock flopping around. See, by that point, I'd just had enough cake. I was like, I've just had too many slices. And I am done. And can they wrap it up?

Because I want to go home. Because that dance scene goes on a long time. It goes on for ages. Like a lot of other scenes in a movie go on a long time. Whereas I could have watched a whole movie with just Rosamund Pike and Richard E. Grant. Yeah. Just being ghastly. The sitcom of them.

And hay feverish. and Noel Cowardian. Maybe they'll get their own spin-off show. They should. Okay. How about, though, did you get wrapped up in the whole Depp versus Heard court case? No, I didn't really. I preferred the Gwyneth Paltrow ski accident court case. That was my favorite.

And I'm excited to hear. I think either there's a movie or a musical or both coming. Of the Paltrow ski ski accident. And I'm excited to hear, I think either there's a movie or a musical or both coming. So of the Paltrow ski thing. Yeah. That was fun because it was, no one got hurt, right? I mean,

someone got mildly hurt, but not life-threatening or life-changing injuries. And so it was all quite up-tempo. Whereas depth V heard by stark contrast was just... Yeah. I mean, I'm reading a book about it now. Oh, wow. And having not really followed the court case and not really known much about it, oh, my God, it's bleak.

It's just so horrible. The extent to which he has a cult, a protective cult around him, Johnny Depp. Right. I'm not suggesting that it's all on him. I don't know the intricacies of who was to blame for what. It seems like both of them did some pretty weird things. But...

I mean, Trump's a cult. Not that this was that moment, but when Grabham by the Pussy tape came out, you were like, in any other presidential campaign, that would have been the end of that campaign. And I definitely, I mean, you thought it was the end when he was associating with Alex Jones. I was convinced this was the end.

But ever since that moment, I think that idea is just broken. And whether he stands in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoots someone or whether he goes on TV and says, I never said that, it's sort of we're in a different space. But you see, that's where someone like me would go back to pointing the finger at reality TV, having shifted people's expectations of what constitutes normal behavior or acceptable behavior. It's the kind of thing that you might see in an episode of your favorite reality show and go, oh, well, that's just them. You know, you're sort of lapping it up in a way. And it's disconnected from reality.

But those sorts of scandals and that sort of behavior has been lionized in the media long before reality TV. It sold newspapers. So it's actually, I'm not going to let you get away with this. I just don't think you can explain reality TV. I insist. You have a bad actor here, you know, who was savvy at manipulating that opportunity to his evil ends. I agree.

I agree. He says not really agreeing at all no i agree with you that he was gonna do what he wanted to do regardless and that he wasn't invented by reality tv okay but i think i think the worst aspect of reality tv is that it does maintain the mental conditions for people to tolerate and even embrace the occasional trump you know what i mean because they feel like they feel ultimately non-threatening because you think i've seen worse people on a reality show i don't think it's complete cause and effect yeah i mean, Shakespeare's plays feature incredibly toxic people. And we don't blame the play, do we? We don't be like, well...

Actually, Puritans would. In fact, they hated the theatre, didn't they? They wanted to shut it down because they didn't believe people should pretend to be who they weren't and play parts and go on the stage. And they thought that, A, women couldn't do that. Men had to dress as women and go on stage, which some people say is where the idea of drag comes from, dressed as a girl. But because if they did, they were, if women did that, they were prostitutes and whores.

I think there is centuries of, what's the word, institutions. Like these ideas are so deeply embedded in us. Yeah, that's true. They were certainly embedded in my parents. Yeah, mine too. I mean, I think they were appalled by what I decided to do in my life. Are your folks still around? No.

No. Did they ever sort of give you a pat on the back in the end one that was meaningful my dad once left me a lovely voicemail message but he wasn't one to generally it wasn't a you know parents didn't say oh i love you that much they weren't bad at all they were lovely and amazing but it just wasn't a culture where you gave that much positive affirmation and i generally was not what i was doing and who i was like being gay for example was not talked about yeah you know and you never got to that point with them where you felt you were sort of getting some closure or resolution no but um I see. No, but, I mean, I love my mum very, very much,

and she died pretty quickly. And there was a sense of never really... But there's nothing to close. In fact, you know, we were just... We were good. You know what I mean? My dad, it was much more complex, as I understand it often is,

between fathers and sons, you know. And my... I have this weird idea that yeah my dad obviously knew i was gay and i hadn't sort of put it together in the years since but he wanted to after the war he wanted to go to go to Hollywood and be a set designer. And he never did because he was married, he had kids. And I thought, I wonder if my going to Hollywood, on the one hand, he was proud of it, but I wonder if on the other hand, he was kind of pissed off about it, you know?

And I also wonder if there wasn't something pretty gay about my dad, too. You know? wonder if there wasn't something pretty gay about my dad too you know um towards the end of his life he would talk a lot about his cabin mate in the navy in the war he was on the arctic convoys which i think were incredible i could not imagine having the courage i just couldn't imagine doing that. So it must have been a highly intense thinking you were going to die in the ice-cold waters at any moment and be blown up by a U-boat. You know, I can't imagine that.

So maybe that's why he talked about his cabin mate. But me being me, I thought, oh, I wonder. It's just odd that towards the end of his life, that was the thing he talked about a lot. So God bless him. And yeah. So in terms of like putting a bow on it, no. It doesn't torture you?

No. It's not the main subject of your therapy sessions no okay no instead i've got salt burn demons to try and work through wait this is an advert for Squarespace. 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. on your face with Squarespace Yes Continue Hey, welcome back, podcats That was Fenton Bailey I was talking to there. Lovely to see Fenton again. There's a link to his book Screen Age in the description of today's podcast, along with a load of other links to stuff we talked about.

There is a link to the trailer for Moon is the Oldest TV, the documentary about the Korean video artist Nam June Paik, which I really recommend, whether you're familiar with his work or not. He was someone who was very much ahead of his time and made a lot of striking and beautiful work. Anyway, I recommend that documentary directed by Amanda Kim telling the story of Pike's meteoric rise in the New York art scene and his Nostradamus-like

vision of a future in which everybody will have their own TV channel. I've also put a link to the article I mentioned, How Mark Burnett Resurrected Donald Trump as an Icon of American Success by Patrick Radden Keefe. That's on the New Yorker website. Patrick Radden Keefe, another former podcast guest, wrote the brilliant book about Northern Ireland, Say Nothing, and Empire of Pain, about the Sackler family and the opioid crisis, which I talked to him about on the podcast. I also wanted to give another shout out. I think I've mentioned these films before probably many times, but they're two of my favourite films when it comes to thinking about TV and the portrayal of reality on TV, particularly where the news is concerned.

The first one is the documentary from 1992, Manufacturing Consent, Noam Chomsky and the Media, directed by Peter Wintonik and Mark Akbar. And that documentary is like a whole media studies course in one film. is like a whole media studies course in one film. Noam Chomsky, linguist, political commentator, writer, philosopher, I suppose. Fascinating character with some very insightful ideas about the way that TV and news media work. And it's very compellingly and entertainingly put together as i speak there is a copy of it pretty good copy on youtube that someone has uploaded there's a link in the

description and the other film that made a big impression on me when i first saw it in my 20s and have seen several times since then the most recent being last week when i watched it in my 20s and have seen several times since then, the most recent being last week when I watched it with my 19-year-old son, Nat, and it is Network from 1976, directed by Sidney Lumet and written by Paddy Chayefsky. Both men worked in American TV for many years and Network is their satire of the way television was heading in the mid-70s in the US. A time when you could argue the world was, in many ways, even more crazy and frightening than it is now. And Network is all about the arrival of giant corporations, buying up TV stations, putting pressure on TV news to deliver ratings by leaning on sensationalist footage and unhinged personalities, one of whom

is a news anchor called Howard Beale, played by the Australian actor Peter Finch, not Peter Fincham, who is being forced to retire because his ratings are falling. So on a live TV news broadcast, he announces that he's going to kill himself live on air the following week. And the film unfolds from that point. And there are so many great performances in Network. Faye Dunaway plays Diane Christensen,

the brilliant but cynical TV executive who realises that Howard, the news anchor who may or may not be having a breakdown, can be the ranting star of a new reality news show with a live audience that also features footage of real kidnappings and bank heists shot by extremists and revolutionary groups. We've also got Robert Duvall. He plays a corporate executive, and he brings the same sort of manic energy that he does as Kilgore in Apocalypse Now with his I Love the Smell of

Napalm in the Morning speech, which probably would have been shot within a few months of filming Network, in fact. William Holden plays Max, the ageing head of the news division, struggling to come to terms with mortality and professional irrelevance. It's all the big themes you've got in Network. Max's long-suffering and stoical wife is played by Beatrice Strait, and she won an Oscar as Best Supporting Actress in Network. She only has a couple of scenes, but smashes them and you would recognize beatrice straight if you're a fan of poltergeist that she was in a few years later she played the head of the little group of paranormal investigators that take up residence in the freeling household

in quest of air day after caroline gets sucked into the television. So I had problems with screens back then as well, didn't I? The other big performance in Network is from Peter Finch as Howard Beale, the news anchor, who becomes a sensation when he tells viewers that he's just run out of bullshit. And from now on, he's only going to tell the real truth about how fucked the world is, and in so doing, channel the rage and the anxiety

of ordinary people. Remind you of anyone? Angry messianic political and cultural commentators on YouTube, perhaps? Anton Deck, maybe? No, not Anton Deck. Howard Beale's catchphrase, I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore,

comes in one of a series of set-piece speeches throughout the film, which I'm aware for some viewers can be a bit much. It's a lot of speeches, a lot of shouting and network. But watching it the other night with my son, those Paddy Chayefsky linguistic special effects are still completely electrifying. Maybe one day I'll do a film club. My book club didn't get very far, did it?

It was only one episode with Richard Iawaddy and Sarah Pascoe talking about Catcher in the Rye. But it'd be fun to do some more. It'd be great to do one about network, because there is a lot of waffle fodder in there and room for a variety of interpretations. Anyway, if you haven't already seen it, give it a go. Also in the links, there's the Johnny Depp and Amber Heard book that I mentioned.

Depp v. Heard, written by Nick Wallace. He also wrote the excellent book on the post office scandal. That was published in 2021. Nick ended up being an advisor, I think, on Mr. Jones versus the post office earlier this year. Oh, it's the windy stretch again now. What else can I tell you before I say goodbye? Oh, yes. My episode of Travelman with Joe Lycett that we filmed.

I think it was one year ago that we filmed it. Anyway, we went to Prague for 48 hours of fun. And that is finally airing on the 5th of April on Channel 4 at 8.30pm. A family slot. Okay, doglegs, let's head back and get this edited. This will be the last podcast that I put out for a few months now, I think. Over the next few weeks, I'm going to concentrate on trying to do some more writing for my book. And also getting myself together for those other live podcast shows in May and June. Hope to see some of you then.

And then, I hope towards the middle of the summer, I'll put out a few more episodes of the podcast. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support. Oh, there's a beautiful rainbow. I'm going to take a picture of this rainbow. Oh, it's a double rainbow. Oh, double rainbow all the way. Thanks very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support and conversation editing

and all his help last week at the Palladium. He came along from new york and was standing there in the wings it was great to have him there thanks to helen green she does the artwork for the podcast thank you to everyone at a cast for all their hard work keeping the show on the road but thanks most of all to you for coming back for being kind and supportive. I really appreciate it. I'm not going to say anything funny. This is just sincere, all right? Deal with the hot discomfort

of my sincerity and lean in for a hug. Now, hey, how are you doing? Good to see you. Look after yourselves. And until the next time we share the same sonic space please go carefully it's very odd out there and for what it's worth i love you

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