THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.45 - EDGAR WRIGHT

Episode Date: May 26, 2017

Adam talks to British director Edgar Wright (Shaun Of The Dead, Hot Fuzz, Baby Driver) and reminisces about how they got to know each other, awkward celebrity encounters and why Edgar had an affair with Adam’s comedy wife Joe. Plus lots more important waffle. Music and jingles by Adam Buxton Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchel for production support and to Matt Lamont for convo editing. 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? Welcome to podcast number 45

Once again, I'm away from home Missing Rosie and the fields of East Anglia and my family. Not in that order. I don't know, maybe. This time, I'm in Birmingham, and I'm just about to do a Bug David Bowie special tonight. You might be able to hear the walk-in music playing. I'm on stage in 17 minutes. And I was in Oxford last night That was fun And in Brighton the night before that

At the Dome Which was great And, you know, after the horrible events At the concert in Manchester on Monday It's actually been really good To be able to get away from home And out and about and visit a few cities and see people getting on with their lives and with each other. And I get to listen to

a lot of David Bowie, so that cheers me up. And other people too, I hope. So on we go. Podcast number 45 features a conversation with Britishish director edgar wright he directed sean of the dead hot fuzz scott pilgrim the world's end and the forthcoming baby driver as well as a lot of great great television projects spaced i suppose being the most obvious one but he's done a lot edgar We recorded this conversation in March of this year, 2017, in the kitchen of a London apartment that Edgar was staying in. And I had a cold, or a sort of weird throat thing.

So sometimes I sound as if I've just woken up after a long, sexy night. Some of you might enjoy that. If not, sexy night. Some of you might enjoy that. If not, I apologise. So this is not so much a career overview with Edgar as a ramble down memory lane in the course of which we recall how we got to know each other in the early 2000s, when we'd often find ourselves at parties and events at a venue called the TARDIS in Clerkenwell. It's not there any longer.

That's where the expanded Farringdon Station now sits. But we mentioned the TARDIS in our conversation, so I thought I'd tell you what it was. Edgar and I also confessed to our involvement in a series of entertainment industry scams. There's no other word for them. Perpetrated in the early parts of our careers, and these revelations will almost certainly rock the industry to its very core.

We also hear how Edgar helped Matt Lucas and David Walliams achieve their comedy potential, sort of. And we discuss the awkward time when my comedy wife, my wife, Jo Cornish, first began spending a lot of time with Edgar, even though Edgar was supposedly in a stable and loving relationship with Simon Pegg. Edgar and Jo ended up writing on Steven Spielberg's Tintin film together, as well as on the first iteration of Ant-Man for Marvel Studios. Something that meant Joe ended up spending less and less time with his hairy husband and their six-music podcast baby.

Yeah, I know. Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy hearing myself and Edgar skipping nimbly between light-hearted banter and seething resentment. I'm joking. There's no seething resentment. All right. There's also plenty of awkward celebrity encounter chat, high-level name-dropping, and hot fuzz memories. But to warm up the inconsequential waffles, I start by reminding Edgar of the story I told Louis Theroux on podcast number 10 about the time I went to see the film Sunshine with Edgar and I ate a stinky sandwich in the cinema. Oh, Mike. Hey, Mike's the promoter of the shows. How are you doing, Mike? Good. A little embarrassed that I've walked in on you doing this.

Just doing the podcast intro. Mike, you've just joined The Fall. Yeah. Weird. This is true, listeners. Mike is a Manchester guy, and he knows some of the members of the band The Fall. And how did you get invited to join? On a WhatsApp group. He said, does anyone want to play keys in the fall? And I said yes, and I was first, so I got the gig. That's how you join the fall. You've got to be in WhatsApp.

I'm not on WhatsApp. That's why I'm not in any exciting bands at the moment. I think it's because I lived in Manchester for 35 years now. It's my turn. I took a ticket at the deli counter and now it's my go. What are you playing? Keys, synths. Complicated melody lines there?

No, never more than three notes at a time. That's how I keep it anyway. So, yeah, nice and easy. Right, man. I'm on stage in ten minutes, right? Yes. Okay. Thank you very much.

Here we go, podcats. I'll speak to you later. Ramble Chat. That's half of Ramble Chat. We'll focus to you later. I tell this story about when we you and I went to see sunshine and I started eating a sandwich. You, it's funny. And then I got food poisoning as punishment for bad cinema etiquette. The thing is, I only have, I'd heard that secondhand through people talking about on the podcast. Yeah.

And I only have a vague recollection of it. Of the smell of chicken stuffing. Now that you're here, now that you're here, now I'm getting a recollection of it. Of the smell of chicken stuffing. Now that you're here, now that you're here, now I'm getting a sense memory of it. But when I heard it secondhand from other people, people were saying, like, people were saying, oh, Adam really pissed you off once eating a sandwich. I said, I don't remember that, to be honest. I don't think I, I think I probably. I just gave you an odd look, probably. No, you shifted uncomfortably. And I said, I think I probably. I just gave you an odd look probably. No, you shifted uncomfortably.

And I said, I was talking to Louis about it and I said, quite rightly, you know, it's not on. It's not something I do now. And now that I've got children and I, when I used to go to the cinema with them a lot, I remember the earliest memories I have are of being acutely aware of not wanting to disturb other cinema goers. I mean, generally when you're going to the movies with children, all bets are off if it's a kid's film. You know, it's just a melee. But if I was going to see maybe a 12

or something where the audience is a bit more mixed, it's not exclusively children, then I'd be quite anxious about the boys making too much noise or munching too loudly in quiet scenes. All these things that as adults, you know, instinctively. As children, you have to learn them. Like, mate, you don't munch in a quiet scene. You wait for some explosions and then you start munching.

I had a thing the other day where I was, um, I went to see Scorsese's Silence. Right. I saw it in Los Angeles. It's a long one, isn't it? How long is that? It's like two and three quarter hours long. Okay. But it feels a lot longer apparently.

I mean, I'll say this is I'm glad I saw it. It's a very powerful ending. And so it's not something that I necessarily think I'll be in a rush to revisit. Yeah. I think science is actually sort of a worthy one, but sometimes with awards films at the end of the year, I call them like broccoli movies. Do you know what I mean? Cause it's like i i have to watch this it's edifying yeah it's good for you it's good for your moral fiber yeah so maybe to counteract the um the

potential worthiness of it i bought a big bag of m&ms and then i thought i'll make these m&ms last through the two and three quarter hours running time but then in the movie it's the whole movie is about kind of um priests from spain being tortured in japan and adam driver and andrew garfield are so stick thin and obviously went on a brutal weight loss regime to get into shape for the movie and i texted and garfield this is my first name drop of many okay i texted him later after i seen the movie but then i said as i was eating the m&ms i started to feel that you were looking down on me from the screen for this transgression that i was like doing something really bad and that you and i started to feel like

the characters would really want the m&ms right now but they were being like captured and tortured what was his reply he thought it was funny i think it was lol lol i'm eating m&ms now lol are you quite a tolerant cinema goer generally or do you get upset quite easily by bad manners in cinemas i get annoyed by people who think they can't be seen looking at their iphone it's like i can see you cunt it's like i don't care if you're hiding in your jacket i still in my field of vision yeah so i hate that and um i was really used really strong language there to sort of apologize that's what this podcast is all about strong language strong opinions david walliams gets very annoyed in the cinema and one time we were watching uh get carter was re-released at the cinema.

We went to see it, I think, I want to say the Plaza on Regent Street. And two sort of bearded men, older than us, but guys who'd obviously had like four pints, were enjoying the movie but doing that thing where they were basically saying the lines before they came on screen right they thought it was rocky horror or something yeah which you can imagine how irritating that is yeah we must have been in our early 20s and these guys were in their 30s but they seemed more sort of like masculine than either me or wang they probably were and wang stuck his face through the the gap in the seat in between these guys and said shut the fuck up and watch the fucking film you morons and i was like both incredibly impressed and then had that feeling of like we are gonna die tonight like these guys are gonna kill us because what are the chances that a couple of

guys are gonna say oh sorry they did shut up i then spent the rest of the film thinking that we were gonna get stabbed afterwards yeah Yeah. Hard to enjoy after that. Well, it's quite a tense film. So maybe it added to it. There were no reprisals, but I was like, you know, when somebody is like your raw, would it be id? What would it be? Where somebody is like saying exactly what you're thinking.

Uh huh. And the Walliams did it. It was, I was thinking it and then he said it and he said it in no uncertain terms. Like not just to say shut the fuck up and watch the film you fucking morons it's like using the word moron is quite a strong word isn't it that would be the last one i would reach for in a public confrontation this is i must stress this is an earlier walliams earlier incarnation incarnation of walliams from probably about like late 90s he hadn't written any

children's books at that point pre-success yeah he always seemed quite like angsty and angry before he got really well known and now he seems a little bit more you know like usually it goes the other way you know people are light-hearted then they become successful and they turn into like big bags of douche i don't i mean i don't know i think there's something we were just talking about that at lunch actually because i think in terms of careers and stuff it's not obviously like talent plays a big part of it but tenacity plays an equally big part you have to kind of like keep doing keep at it and i think sort of those guys you know i was always very proud of them because they sort of went through

so matt and dave you're talking about. Yeah, several ups and downs before then it finally kind of hit. And I was involved in one of their TV shows, actually two of them I did. I actually did the one that kind of like knocked them off the BBC for a while. What was that one? Sir Bernard's Stately Homes. Oh, yeah. So they were on like a sort of path where they had done.

I'd done a, I should back up a little bit with that because actually they'd done rock profiles by that no rock professors afterwards this is the thing this is how the way things work is it's fascinating is the rock profiles in a way was seen as like maybe a little come down initially because it was like they had a chance of doing a show on the bbc on proper network tv it didn't do well and it got really bad reviews and then sort of tail slightly between their legs the only thing that they could get on the bbc on proper network tv it didn't do well and it got really bad reviews and then sort of tail slightly between their legs the only thing that they could get on the bbc was like oh would you like to do links in between these videos so i think initially it was something that like i guess we better do it because we don't have any other offers and it was even on bbc3 wasn't it well bbc choice choice as it was yeah so but then they turn that into gold do you know what i mean and then it's

like that's what started sort of their that phenomenon of the two of them kind of like happening was doing those silly rock profiles things that were still really funny yeah listeners if you haven't seen them you can find them on youtube presumably yeah the one i remember the one with the bgs where he was like barry gibb a lion and he was in the other two robin and morris couldn't talk right unless he clicked his fingers for one and and he was in the other two robin and maurice couldn't talk right unless he clicked his fingers for one and rang a bell for the other and it was before the other classic one is the tom jones shirley bassey one that's i think those are the two like best ones tom jones and the bgs ones with matt as shirley bassey yeah haven't got the range. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, they were great.

And it was before really people had properly got stuck into lampooning celebrities, as far as I recall, for like comedic purposes. Like, was it even pre-Boselector? Yes. Yeah. I think so. But you did your best to make things go wrong for them. I owe them my break in a way way because we sort of tangentially sort of linked we could come back to that in a second but the first tv job i ever had in 1995 when i was 21

years old was i directed matt and dave in a sketch show for the paramount comedy channel called mash and peas oh yeah and how that came about was because I had made my first movie when I was 20, and I had moved to London to edit it. Fistful of Fingers. Yes, which was a 16mm film that cost like 20 grand. There was a clip of that in Takeover TV, wasn't there? There was, of the original Video 8 version. I did two versions of that movie.

I did one on video, and then after art college, I reshot it on film. Takeover TV listeners was the show that Joe and I first did on channel four. Yeah, I know. It's funny around that time. So we never met through Takeover TV, but obviously I saw it all and you were very prominent in it and, and very funny. And it was obvious. Well, there's funny.

I have, there's a couple of things linked there is, um, so I'd sent things into Takeover TV. And as I recall, they didn't. So I had sent things into Tech Heavy TV. And as I recall, they didn't give you any fee for the clips on that show? No, it was pretty bargain basement. It was a show, for those who haven't seen it, that was, well, it was a bit like YouTube. But it was mainly, you know, it was public access, I suppose. Because there was never really a thriving public access scene in the UK the way that there is in a lot of towns in the states people were encouraged to send in home videos so there was the first series of this show was all people sort of going why aren't the council doing anything about the terrible state of the

bin areas and all this sort of stuff because that was like what real people were like apparently yeah but then of course there was all these people like you and like me and Joe and lots of other people making stupid fun videos that you now kind of see on, on YouTube. And so eventually we started getting that stuff in. We were two of the people, myself and Joe, who went through a lot of the tapes that were sent in. Yes. It was 95% dog shit.

I mean, just absolutely worthless because we're desperate. Like anything half good we're going to stick it on i mean you said generously that we were funny on that show i mean i couldn't really watch that program now without getting very sad well i remember i had the hump with them and i remember i was mad because i watched one of the episodes and i'd sent in this like hour-long film and they had cut it up into chunks and just spread it throughout an episode yes which meant that any time it returned to it it had no credit and that kind of really annoyed me because you know the only thing you've got if you're not getting paid the only thing you've got is that

your credit is on there so then like clips of it would be on with no credit and i was like would it kill you to just put up the name of the filmmaker every time it comes up yes yes um no there were lots of things like that i mean unfortunately yes there wasn't the same level of respect that you would you know that would be in place nowadays with that kind of show well get this i know i'm sure i've told you this story before that around the same time as takeover tv uh the only job in tv that i ever had when i wasn't directing i was very very, very fortunate to start young. And that was through Matt and Dave seeing my film.

But in between finishing art college in 94, shooting this silly first film in that summer, I then moved to London to edit it. Edited the movie on absolutely no money and sort of didn't really have the money to properly finish the film initially. So I had to get a job and i got a job as my only non-directing tv job i was a researcher on a show called beadles hot shots oh right which was essentially like the mainstream itv version of takeover tv that's right i remember being very upset about it well thinking beadle he's just he's only gone and stolen our idea but done it all slick and mainstream well here's the funny thing with that show so beadles hot shots was a spin-off of you've been framed which for international listeners is like the british version of america's funniest home videos and you would get for a clip

of somebody falling over 250 quid yeah on beatles hot shots the idea is viewers send in their sketches and it was 500 pounds per clip and that is in 1994 money so that's a lot of money yeah yeah it'll be a lot of money now if they had that so here's the thing is i was involved in the pilot and they used one of my clips from fist for the fingers in fact i don't think fist for the fingers was in takeover tv i think the clips in Takeover TV were from a different film called Dead Right, which was a cop movie, which sort of became the tiny seed for Hot Fuzz. I just remember a guy in a shootout shoving the barrel of a gun through the back of someone's head so that it came out of his mouth and he carried on shooting.

That was Dead Right, yeah. Okay. Which is actually on the Hot Fuzz DVD is like an extra. So I was involved in the pilot of Beatles Hot Shots and they showed clips of the video version of Fist of the Fingers and I got my 500 quid. And then the producer asked me to be a researcher on the show and to basically do exactly what you were talking about. It's like, look through the sketches.

Search through the dog shit. Yes. So, but here's the thing. And this is, and this is and i've i've never really told this story properly before i've sort of alluded to it beatles hot shots was not a hit if it had been a big hit this would have been a news of the world sort of scandal on a sunday morning so that show was on itv and it was six half hours and i would say that a third of the clips i shot myself oh because as you just said the actual submissions there was not enough to fill six half hours yeah so this is the two things

that happened and i can tell the story now because jeremy beadle is no longer with us also he had absolutely no knowledge that i was fabricating some of the clips but there basically was not enough stuff idea number one was okay go through what there is and we'll pick out the best ones and there were some good ones but not enough for six half hours number two is take the clips that are like good ideas but terribly shot and go and reshoot them for the people so that was something that i did on that show and would you get in touch with those people and explain that that's what you were going to do yeah i would get in touch with them directly but it would be something where it was

me as and i was a 20 year old researcher so it wouldn't really be sort of any more official than that it's like i'm working on beautiful shot shots we really like your sketch but it's not broadcastable i'm sorry to say that it's too dog shit so i so i basically um i re-edited a lot of clips with the editor on the show is anything better i re-shot some with members of the public which was actually even though it was you know immediately breaking the premise of the show it was actually a lot of fun i'm sure yeah but um i always thought about that in terms of and then there were some sketches where there still wasn't enough to fill six half hours that me and my brother and my friends just shot stuff. Usually without our faces in it.

Jeremy Beadle had no idea at all. And in fact, even the checks for 500 quid. Because they had to send them somewhere. Well, that's sent to like my dad instead of me. Okay. Oh my God. So you even got the money. Well, they had to.

It was like, I guess to balance the book. Sure. Complete the charade. But I always thought if that show had been a bigger hit that would have been a proper scandal yeah yeah well it might still be jeremy beadle god bless you i'm sorry you didn't know anything about it so he's completely innocent but the thing is that pre the bbc scandals that i guess the queen was the watershed, wasn't it? What was the Queen one? The Queen was when they re-edited a sequence in a documentary about the royal family.

Oh, yeah. To make it look as if the Queen... She walked out on Annie Leibovitz. Right. Was pissed off at the photo shoot. Was that when it was? Exactly. Right.

Yeah. And actually, they just reordered the sequence a little bit to reinforce their narrative. And it was a massive massive scandal and the bbc was never the same and now has to run through all sorts of checks and balances to ensure absolute transparency quite right to ensure that the license payers aren't being swindled but even when we were on xfm i remember um doing competitions 2006. And you'd have to have competitions. They were foisted upon you. It's like, all right, you've got the 10 to 1 slot on a Saturday.

What competitions are you going to do kind of thing? We got all this stuff that we'd give away. And we're like, OK, we'll come up with some competitions. So we came up with some lame stuff and said, all right, competition time. We had a little jingle and everything. And no one would enter. Why would they? Either there weren't enough people listening or the people that were listening just thought, I'm not going to enter a competition.

So you'd have to make up winners. So we'd make up mates. And you'd just say, listen, you know, would you pretend to be a person that has entered this competition? It didn't always happen. Yeah. But it did happen once or twice. Yeah. And you just do it for the sake of filling up airtime

and keeping the show running because the alternative was just a sort of humiliating climb down. You may remember we launched the competition in the last half hour. Well, no one's entered. And I think we're not going to be able to do the competition now. So forget we ever mentioned it. Here's the darkness. So you have, everyone did that.

That's just the way things were. It's like, duh, sometimes there's not the enthusiasm. So you have to, it's entertainment. It's showbiz. That's what it is. Then the idea that everything had to be 100% real just seemed bizarre. I mean, it can't be now. I think about it like sort of,

it was something where I was in London for the first time. I was working at London TV Center. I mean, I was getting paid, but also like I knew how to order cabs all of a sudden, which is like, oh shit. It was like, I know what the cab number is and I know what the account number is. Cab on account.

And I'm never paying for a cab ever again. Cab on account those were the days and then someone would always there'd be one person that ruined it by sort of going to manchester or something when they were i ruined that in one of the edit suites where i had a little edit suite where i could watch tapes and sometimes edit things there was a phone there and i just like i would just make long distance calls all the time and then it got cut off so i ruined that one it is it's one of the greatest feelings in life though to suddenly stumble upon a little loophole like the money tap oh hello it's like someone there was nobody's

checking on this i'm just going to abuse it someone's just forgotten about this i'm just gonna use it and use it and use it until it stops it's great um wow we've talked about takeover tv and beatles hot shots but what's funny about this is that we were sort of involved in the same show yeah but probably didn't meet until like five years later how i mean i met you through joe i remember i remember i met joe in the cinema store which is now no longer with us and we had that thing which i'm sure would have happened if i'd met you first as well where it's like oh we're on the same channel at the same time we should we should say hello to each other because you were making space at that time yes space was

on channel four and the adam and joe show was also on channel four but we'd never actually met through channel four so i'm trying to think where i first feel like i first met you at joe's flat in exmouth market was it when we watched the os Oscars or something at Joe's? Oh, maybe. Yeah. Maybe. Stayed up and watched the Oscars.

That sounds right. Yeah. And then I remember also coming to an Adam and Joe wrap party in Clark and well. Yeah. At the TARDIS. At the TARDIS. And a couple of interesting things happened there.

I remember, uh, maybe that's where I met Garth Jennings for the first time, but I remember also after that, where i met garth jennings for the first time but i remember also after that as chronicled in his biography nick frost got brutally beaten by a group of teenagers oh yeah that was after your party and i remember because he was in a quite he was very drunk and i was trying to get him to come back to my house because i was a bit worried about him and he was like no i gotta watch the boxing there was some fight going on it was gonna be fight at three in the morning and i think he

went to a kebab shop or a chip shop or something and then got like sort of pounced upon by and went to hospital oh no so i actually got home and then i got a text from simon like at five i'm gonna say nixon intensive care oh no and he was just set upon. That was after the TARDIS. Prior to that, the party had been delightful. Hey, everybody in the modern time. They got to get themselves a podcast. I will do yours and you'll do mine. We're sorting out the problems of the world so fast.

This is weird, isn't it? We're just sitting here. This is like being in a time machine now. I haven't thought about all this stuff for so long. I mean, it's one of the nice things about this industry is when the world gets smaller and meeting you guys, and I think through that same nexus, Garth Jennings and Shai Nola and Nigel Godridge, it's always a nice feeling when the world gets

smaller yeah because you went on of course to do quite a bit with Nigel yeah yeah and in fact he's done something on the new film as well right I mean he was heavily involved with Scott Pilgrim yeah yeah he did the whole school for that which was his first school and um it was great it was a great experience I always remember that very sort of fondly, that period, because it wasn't like Channel 4 organized these socials themselves, but we were all on the same channel. And then it was that just the sort of kismet of actually running into each other properly in the streets, you know? Yeah.

It was a really fun, fruitful time. And it was nice to root for everyone because I really, you know, I loved your stuff. I loved Spaced. The first person who told me about the Adam and Joee show in 96 was matt lucas oh yeah he said have you been watching this thing adam and joe show on channel four these guys are really good i'm telling you they're the future he said something very prophetic like that and i think but i will admit i didn't take his advice and didn't watch it for like a year i remember him saying he was the first person in sort of comedy circles that I'd heard rave about it.

Oh, well, he was sort of right. I mean, to the extent that we do exist. In the future. In the future. Well, I brought my friend to your 20th anniversary show at the BFI. I brought along Phil Lord, who is the director of the Lego movie. Yes. 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street and upcoming hand solo movie and cloudy

with a chance of meatballs those are his full credits in the wrong order busy and he's only like about 13 or something isn't he well he's actually he's my age i think we're the same age oh really it likes i'm 42 i think he's 41 oh well that's good i'm glad but he only knew joe through attack the block and through meeting him with me. And he didn't know. And I said, oh, you should come to this. You should see Joe's like sort of like. Baby steps.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's not even that. It's just like, I mean, but their show was great. And like, I, I sort of, it's funny because I also also used to listen to the podcast all the time. So when, then when I was maybe whisking Joe away to write and then he wasn't doing the podcast, I would feel like it was my fault. Well, good. I'm glad you brought it up.

Well, I can say that because also as a listener, I was like, ah, why aren't they doing the podcast anymore? Why aren't they doing the podcast? LA with me poncing around in a manner that will almost certainly be driving Adam to incredible levels of distraction and insecurity. Yes. That is the reason. Sorry, I'll fully take the blame if it makes you feel better. What was the first thing you did together then? We, um, well, we had sort of become Pally probably around the same time that me and Simon were writing Shaun of the Dead.

But as you know, like sort of also when somebody has another career, it's also something that I was trying to find somebody else to write with because I loved writing with Simon. But Simon would frequently have a job and then disappear. Yeah. So. So you thought I'll steal. Steal Adam's writing partner. I'll ruin a marriage that seems very happy cruise in there i'll snog that guy well if it makes me feel better simon always used to feel weird about it as well yeah i remember talking to simon about it well the thing that we first

started writing funny enough we had written a treatment for it it wasn't even for Marvel. It was kind of for ourselves. I had seen this, I'd gone into this meeting at a company called Artisan that no longer exists. And they said, oh, we have some of the Marvel properties. And they showed me this list. And the list was all like the B and C and D properties, not the big ones. And I immediately sort of pointed at Ant-Man. I said, oh, I know that character. And so me and joe this must have been 2001 we went away and wrote a treatment 2001 yes it was that far back for sure maybe it's 2002 but it definitely predated actually

cheating on me in 2001 but what's i think it definitely predates you're on the dead and i remember remember the people at Artisan when they read our treatment said, oh, it's really cool, but it's a bit edgier than we were imagining. We wanted something more like, you know, an Eddie Murphy type film. So they wanted something that was more like a sort of a Dr. Dolittle-y thing and not what we had written, which was like a sort of Mission Impossible, sort of Bourne style superhero movie. So then that was 2001.

So it just went away and then after shawn of the dead then the real marvel came along and they said are you interested in any of the properties they said well actually me and my friend wrote this um thing in 2001 so we had written this treatment that far back and then basically we picked up on it and then i'm whilst me and simon were writing hot fuzz simon had to go at four and do a voiceover and then joe came in but and you know that thing where somebody sort of comes in it might this must be what it must be like having a mistress or something is that like joe came five minutes early and simon hadn't quite left yet yeah and then they're sort of shuffling around awkwardly and um simon's like

oh hey man oh yeah so you're you guys running how's going? So then asking about the other thing that we're writing. How's it going and stuff. And then Joe had sat in Simon's warm seat to then start writing with me on something else. And Simon's walking down the fire escape. Now starting to feel a bit put out. And I remember as a joke, he got to the bottom of the fire escape. It was just three floors down. And then he shouted up, don't forget me.

shouted up don't forget me so if it used to annoy you take some comfort in the fact that you used to annoy simon as well i did talk to simon after doing hot fuzz actually at some sort of get together after that i remember paddy considine mooching around terrifying people in some darkened room and you and Nick off in one corner. And I ended up talking to Simon and saying, yeah, it was weird, wasn't it? Was it weird for you? And yeah, it was very cathartic that we both had more or less exactly the same insecurities about it. I was really insecure because, you know, I wanted to write with Joe. We wanted to do movies together. That was always part of our plan was to do something like that. But we just couldn't get it together. Just the actual business of sitting in a room and writing

with someone else. There's so much going on. But for me, I mean, I would think that you and I are people who are quite similar temperamentally in some ways. You know, we're not the kind of people who can easily just take criticism and have it completely bounce off us. You know, we're not so confident that we can just chuck any old idea out there and feel absolutely nothing if it gets squashed by the other people in the room. There's all those things you have to deal with. It's a very difficult thing writing with anybody. And I think there's also a thing where I think when I wrote with Simon, I would be like the good cop. And Simon would be the sort of like, just slightly, I'll say this,

you know, like this is not a criticism at all, but the somewhat lazy genius. When I say that is like like what he did right is amazing but then it's just sometimes you feel like sort of concentrate man and it's funny like you say about kind of getting insecure and embittered and stuff like you probably wouldn't think of it in i in any way i'm insecure about shaun of the dead however at the time when that film came out a thing that used to happen which is absolutely not simon's fault at all um used to kind of gnaw away at me was that sometimes reviewers would um sort of say star and writer simon pegg and director edgar wright and that would drive me bonkers right and it's such a tiny

thing because it's like sort of a little mistake yeah but it's like i co-wrote that who's in the name edgar right so but i know that's so silly but it happened on more than one occasion sure i know those things and it sort of starts to kind of because then people sort of like and i think one of the reasons was because i didn't co-write space so i think then some people just assumed that i didn't write sean of the dead and it really used to annoy me and it was never simon's fault it's not that simon would ever do that but it was that thing like this kind of weird like sort of like black growing like bile inside you terrible that went away with hot fuzz i think sort of that didn't become an issue anymore and i think mainly because a lot of the stories about the development

of that was the fact that it was based on my hometown and everything and although weekly in the i think it was in the observer last week i had to contact the observer there was an article about i think it was about nick i think it's about simon and it said um in 2007 peg co-wrote uh the hit film hot fuzz with his best mate, Nick Frost. This thing is like, I love both these people, it's not their fault,

but I am writing to the Guardian to get them to correct it. It's like, I actually, I actually wrote Hot Fuzz. Actually, I think you'll find... Actually, you think you'll find out

I am the critic who co-wrote Hot Fuzz? I know if you're listening at home and you think this sounds insane and I'm in any way annoyed about this, I apologise and I'm just trying to you know

you understand you're being candid i appreciate your candor it's so stupid but it's like i think that most people can relate i really do i i think there are very few people who are so supremely confident that these kinds of things don't get to them and those people are generally quite difficult to be around i i find it's funny but what's the here's the irony though that is how we got the job on tintin uh it was actually peter jackson who first he asked me and simon to rewrite tintin because stephen moffat was writing it and he'd done like four drafts and stephen moat wanted to leave. It's like, I've got to go back home and start doing Doctor Who or Sherlock. Probably Sherlock at the time. So Simon wasn't really around.

He was like shooting Mission Impossible or something. And so I said, oh, there's this guy Joe. Because I knew Joe was a big Tintin fan. So apologies if this then wrecked months and months of great podcasts that I would have enjoyed. I'm only ruining my own life. Garth stepped in and he did a great job. I know, I heard it. He was better than Joe.

I love it. A lot of the time. So that's how that came about. And so basically like, and then what happened is I had to leave. I did two drafts on Tintin because I was about to start shooting Scott Pilgrim. And then Joe sort of stayed on as the sole writer for a while. So I always thought that was amusing to me

was that like I, initially it was me and Simon asked to do Tintin. Simon can't really do it. Me and Joe were at the draft. Now I can't really do it. And then Joe is suddenly in a room with Spielberg, Peter Jackson,

Fran Walsh, Kathy Kennedy. So it it was like there's a thing like so when you're meeting steven spielberg you're so aware and this is such a sort of stupid thing it's like sort of like oh i really want you with anybody like that when somebody's a hero of yours it's like sort of how can i be impressive it's like don't don't just say like the obvious things. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was at a party in Los Angeles a couple of years ago. And you know sometimes when you're not ready for something?

My agent came and said, would you like to meet Mick Jagger? And I was like, uh, yeah, what, now? And I'm just not ready. And he said, sure, come and meet Mick. And then you're being escorted by your elbow to meet Mick Jagger. And you're thinking, I'm not ready for this. And then suddenly you're standing inorted by your elbow to meet mick jagger and i'm thinking i'm not ready for this and then suddenly you're standing in like a sycophant circle where mick's meeting and greeting lots of people and being really nice and then suddenly like without any prep whatsoever

your window has arrived you're on talk to some is he he's not a sir mick jagger he's just mick jagger is he sir he may well be mick be. Mick Jagger. I think he is. I think he is because... Sir Mick. Because Keith Richards writes with entertaining contempt about the fact that he accepted the knighthood. So get this, and this is embarrassing to admit. What do you do when you suddenly have 10 seconds with Mick Jagger? Yeah.

Okay, so he had just come in from New York. And I think at the time New York was in a cold snap and literally it just sounds like the worst kind of like first date worst speed dating ever is suddenly you talk to Mick Jagger and Brian says oh there's my agent says um uh Mick this is Edgar uh one of my clients a very talented director and he said oh nice to meet you I said oh you just got in from New york and was it cold this is such a lame just talk about the weather to mcjago and he goes oh yeah freezing freezing just being nice and then suddenly like your time is already wrapping up yeah and then you get in very quickly a huge fan by the way it's awful awful huge fan by the way i know so get this so so now to back up

spielberg there's a thing where me and joe would always like act out the voices so we'd sort of do it'd be funny like in front of steven spielberg sort of doing a tintin voice or doing a haddock voice and um when i was tintin this is just a default thing of maybe like who he is i would sort joe would say to me afterwards he says why do do you keep grabbing Steven's arm when you're explaining a bit and he accused me of getting over familiar that I kept touching Steven Spielberg's arm when I was trying to make a point or trying to make a joke

it's like this, and like grabbing his arm and I was, and I was way too over familiar and Joe said, you keep touching his arm it looks weird I was like, I just want to see that he's real all these uh complex webs of insecurity and jealousy being woven i had the much much much better version of the mick jagger thing yeah because i met ray davis last year oh right who's a genuine hero

also sir ray davis sir ray davis i a huge Kinks fan and Mark Hamill did a talk with him for the big issue at Hornsey Town Hall and it was funny because I had met Mark Hamill at a screening

yeah and I think Simon knew him already so it was the first time I'd ever met Mark Hamill who couldn't be nicer and he was in town shooting the new

Star Wars movie and and he said oh let's let's get together in London so I sort of I got I had his email and I said, oh, let's get together in London. So I sort of, I had his email. I emailed him and said, let's have dinner or something.

He goes, are you a Kinks fan? I said, yes, I am a huge Kinks fan. He goes, well, I'm interviewing Ray Davis on Sunday night. Do you want to come to that? I said, yes. So the Mick Jagger thing makes me still cringe even thinking about it. It's like, what an awful, awful waste of 10 seconds of his life. To ask him about the weather. I'm sure he's still thinking about it it's like what an awful awful waste of 10 seconds of his life i'm sure he's still furious big fan by the way oh awful but ray davis i've got you know ray davis

was in this dressing room and i said to my camera said can you introduce me to ray davis and he came out oh ray this is edgar wright he directed shawn of the dead and then ray davis said to me he goes oh he goes the winchester's around the corner from my house because he lives on um Highgate Hill and the real pub where Simon and Nick used to hang out was called the Shepherds it's now the Boogaloo and then one down and that's essentially the Shepherds in Highgate now the Boogaloo was what we based the film on but one pub down there was a place called the Winchester Park Tavern. It's now been knocked down. So Ray Davis informed me

that the Winchester had been knocked down. So it was the sweetest thing. It was like, oh, he's actually asking me things. Yeah, he's engaging with you. That's great. Engaging with me. But there's another flip to this that didn't quite make sense.

So I'm thinking, oh my God, like Ray Davis has seen the film and he goes, yeah, I know. I live around the corner from the Winchester. He goes, love that film. Great stuff. Great stuff. I was thinking, oh my God, thank you so much and i said of course i'm a big fan i said i used two of your songs in hot fuzz and then he looked completely lost i thinking

you are aware that i used two of your songs because he just tapped me on the arm goes good stuff mate like i know he said good on you mate but i kind of thought i got that sense of thinking he has no idea that two of his songs are in Hot Fuzz. They would have checked with him. Don't they have to? I think maybe some... Or they just check with the publishers? Maybe.

I suspect when you're that big and your songs are that well used, that maybe just residual checks start flowing in and the actual source of them is not important after a while i would have thought that he'd be fairly careful maybe yeah sometimes people are not kind of completely aware that you use their stuff i mean that song that song is almost that village green preservation society is almost the template for the whole film isn't it i mean they're lyrically it's weird there's two things with hot fuzz and The World's End. One is that somebody on Twitter said, have you thought that The World's End is a prediction of Brexit?

Because at the end of the movie, Simon's character, Gary King, tells the all-powerful network to, like, fuck off. You know, like, we'll make our own mistakes. Nobody tells us what to do. And the network in the movie are so sort of tired of the ignorant belligerent humans that they leave the planet and send us back into the dark ages that's the end of that movie and then somebody said do you not think that gary king sort of uh you know he's farage to fuck off it's like yeah it's farage triggering like article 50 i thought you're right right and

then even weirder in hot fuzz jim broadbent's character says whatever the cost we will make sanford great again ah he says that out loud and so i think sort of i've had several because i think hot fuzz is the only film of mine that's on Netflix. And I've had several people have said the same thing. Saying, was watching Hot Fuzz to take my mind off election anxieties? And then Jim Broadbent says, we will make Sanford great again. That film is, my Twitter timeline lights up every time it's on, obviously. People ask me this, I'm going to answer a question

because I get asked it all the time. Yeah. They say, do you get paid every time it's on ITV2? And the answer is no. No. So, no, I don't. And I have no control over it being,

I'm very flattered though that it is on TV all the time. It's a very, I mean, Sean and Hot Fuzz are on TV all the time and that can only mean that it still rates. There's no reason that they keep putting it on. Well, it's so good. I watch it.

I like it more every time I see it. It's one of those films, actually, that I do sit and watch. And sometimes I forget that I pop up in it. I actually, it was, I was, the other day, I was flicking through the channels that it was on. I couldn't stop watching the last half. And I fucking made the movie. Yeah. It's got lots of funny stuff Mike

and the what was it that really made me laugh when Nick gets hit in the head by the bin is the first real big laugh for me and the other thing that really makes me laugh is when Carl Johnson who plays one of the old coppers um just keeps saying church when olivia coleman is speaking he also says as well like um he just says cocks cocks yeah he just said it says random expletives at various points god that was fun that was funny your death scene is i mean that was on my walk to school that church is five minutes walk around the corner from my old family house. Right. It was sort of an amazing and weird experience to shoot that film in my hometown. Were any of the locals actually a bit pissed off with the disruption? There was, yes.

Well, what happened was, as it went on, it's the same, you know this with filming, is that people are always excited for day one. Yes. And then once they realize that it's boring and it's going to be an obstruction to traffic, They're going to close roads and yeah, yeah, yeah. Particularly anything to do with parking

and people get like properly like murderous about that and be really angry. And we filmed in the town square for like 10 days and most people

on board but there was one shop that was very prominently in position, a clothes shop, I think it's no longer there and they started a campaign in the local paper to get rid of us. shop, I think it's no longer there. And they started a campaign in the local paper to get rid of us.

It's like, we're losing trade. And they had this figure, we're losing like 400 pounds a day because of filming. So you can't bribe these people because if you bribe somebody, it'll get around very quickly in a small town. So the only thing that we could do

is the line producer just got petty cash. And basically anybody passing, we would give them money and say, go and buy some clothes in that shop. No way. So my mum and dad came down to visit. And I said to mum, I said, mum, here's 200 pounds. Go and buy some clothes in that shop. And I was still filming. And I remember my mum brought out the clothes to me.

She goes, do you think I should get this or get this? I said, I don't care. Just buy it. It's Beatles hot shots all over again. Oh, this thing i'm the corrupt one yeah i'm the i'm the one who's like sort of like riddled with corruption that's right i'm the terrible evil guy that's me oh this is the twist of this podcast the media is your frost nixon moment absolutely got you on the run one other thing that i remember that happened like people like from my past would come up to me whilst i was filming one time i was like i won't even say an ex-girlfriend i a

girl that like and this is for uk listeners not international this is that i had got off with at a party you know got off with means americans don't i now realize that some lovely it's not strictly first base stuff i got off with this girl at this party whose name was sarah and then i think later at the same party she had got off with somebody else and i was heartbroken and that was the end of my brief dalliance with sarah i don't think i ever spoke to her again at school quite right um cut to like 16 years later filming hot fuzz, this lady, Sarah, who's now a woman,

who's also now a mother. She's now a woman. She's now a woman. I'm standing in the street and we're about to shoot a shot or we're setting up for a shot and this kid has a Shaun of the Dead DVD and he runs across the street

and he says, Mr. Wright, could you sign my DVD? And just as I get my Sharpie out to sign it, this woman, Sarah, comes around the corner and says very loudly, this is the

first time I've spoken to her, she's spoken to me since the party. She goes, no Edgar Wright, I don't want your autograph. And stomped off. No way. Seriously. I thought, wow. I ain't done anything wrong. I know. You should have called

after. You're the one that snogged the other guy at the party. He said, listen, you got off with Johnny Harris after me. That's on you. You snogged Johnny Harris as well. No, no, no, she did. John, if you're listening, you know it's true. Pick up your legs, go on. Pick up a pie, honey.

Come on, come on. You can wiggle it now. I'm so glad for you. Swing it, honey, as hard as you can. Go on, come on. You can wiggle it now. I'm so glad for you. Swing it, honey, as hard as you can. Go on, go on. Forget there's anyone else here. You can't believe it. Were you able to enjoy making Hot Fuzz?

Do you generally enjoy yourself while you're making films, or is it just overwhelmingly tiring and stressful? Well, my producer, Naira Park, who you know, every time I get into a pit of absolute despair on a movie which is on every movie as it turns out she reminds me of the previous email that i sent when i was suicidal so i think every movie one thing i say and it's funny actually getting to know like garth jennings is i always like whenever i watch garth at work I was thinking oh I'd love to be as upbeat as Garth is making a movie because usually I think whatever I am like

in person normally when I'm with you I sort of when I'm actually shooting I get very I'm not like a a shouter I never like shout but I sulk and I can get into a really like black mood it's never like things going badly it's just like there's always too much to do and not enough time so I wish I could enjoy myself more on movies Sean I did not have a good time there was like an element on the movie sort of conspired to sort of ruin the actual enjoyment of making it which was really annoying are you talking about just people being obtuse and there was one element of the crew on tron of the dead that were just not on board at all and had a real sort of jekyll and hyde moment where they couldn't have been nicer during the prep and then on day one of the shoot is like they were just against the movie and me and simon and

nick i won't say what department because i don't want to bad mouth them but they said to me and nick and simon all within the space of a day said remember this is film and not video dear so i was like fucking hell like this is like a real like sort of like oh i'm being belittled on my own like movie put you in your place i know it's's not Beatles hot shots now. Or maybe it is. It was a very weird thing. And it's funny. I knew I had to get myself out of a funk about it. And like, I think I remember on Shaun of the Dead, I got really depressed about it. Like, sort of because it was something where my dream of making the movie I wanted to make was happening.

It's something that me and Simon had been trying to get together for years and you know, I'd made a movie when I was 20 but Shaun Dead felt like I have a chance to make a real movie and I can visualise it and I can see it and I've been wanting to make this for several years now and also when you've made a movie when you're 20 and it didn't

do that great and then you get a second chance it's like I've literally got a second shot at my debut movie because nobody remembers the first one. In fact, when I did press for Shaun of the Dead in the States, if people said, no, with your debut movie, Shaun of the Dead, I would never correct them. In the UK, it was different because lots of people had reviewed it here.

So it's a very strange thing when suddenly there's like an element that are not on your side. It was awful. And did you on your side it was awful and did you ever identify why it was that they were annoyed with you i think they had no faith in the movie right you know so i'm sure privately when me and simon and nick are not in earshot they're saying what the fuck is this shit in fact somebody somebody literally as you might imagine you've seen me on set i very frequently people assume that i was probably a pa and not the actual director maybe not anymore but definitely on like sean and hot fuzz that he's having a lot and on sean of the dead one of the older zombies who

is not one of our friends a lot of our friends are playing zombies in that but um one of the older zombies came up to me assumed i was a runner and he stood next to me looked at the set and he goes straight to video for this one and i just went yeah like hot fuzz was different because actually everybody was on board like the crew and in fact every crew member except the um the black marks in um sean returned for hot fuzz so you can probably quite easily figure it out on IMDb if you wanted to. But on Hot Fuzz, it was like sort of, the crew were great.

But then you had the added challenge of having this insane cast of like acting legends that you assembled. I mean, look, I've got my call sheet here. This is incredible. This is one day, Saturday, the 3rd of June, 2006. Simon Pegg, Nick Frost, Timothy Dalton, Jim Broadbent, Paddy Considine, Rafe Spall, Kevin Eldon, Olivia Colman, Carl Johnson, Edward Woodward, Billy Whitelaw, Anne Reid, Adam Buxton. Unbelievable.

He's amazing. But, you know, that must have been, and all of those very strong personalities as well actors with a huge amount of experience and that that was no i mean that was never a problem actually i think what happens with those in that situation is you might be able to kind of establish actors that might be divas and other sets but if they are confident in the film then it'll be okay and the good news on that was that even these big and established actors, I think because everybody else was in it as well, and I think the mood comes from the top down.

And I've been very lucky on Sean and Hot Fuzz, at least, and World's End, is even if I can sometimes be in a bad mood, Simon and Nick are like the nicest guys to have at the centre of a film. And when I've done movies without them, I probably had to be a lot more personable right so on scott pilgrim i think i was probably in a much better mood and a lot more personable because i'm working with a young cast and i'm in charge and i haven't got simon and nick you didn't have any of your regulars there did you uh the crew members i did oh you did right in fact a lot of crew members some of my crew members like my production designer and editors and um sound guys it was like remain the same since space and my producer as well there's some people that have gone through right from space all the way through

to baby driver but i think i would rely on simon and nick to be the good cops and i could be the sulky one on set and it's something i'm not proud of at all i wish i could be in a better mood and even on this new one i reached a point in the middle of baby driver where i was at my lowest and usually i sort of realize it's just sleep deprivation irritability like sort of malnutrition malnutrition and sleep deprivation there's a point on baby driver where i was shooting main unit and parts of second unit or at least overseeing the second unit at the same time and one was a night shoot and one was a day shoot and so i'd end up like being on set for like 20

hours and getting four hours sleep there was a space for about 20 days where I was shooting every single day and I was at absolutely incredibly bleak mood Naira is always the one to talk me down because I'm really proud of the new movie it's it's turned out really well and I'm really happy about it but it's that thing where she's she never like is annoying enough to say remember when you thought it was going to be shit in the middle of the shoot but I'm like that with every film I always think everything's going to be shit in the middle of the shoot but i'm like that with every film i always think everything's going to be shit it's not good i mean on the flip side if you're really happy all the time and you're happy with everything and you're going home early there's probably also a problem do you know i mean of course like if you're making a comedy and everybody's having too much of a good time that's usually like a um usually i think you can identify those films when you see them you just think

oh they must have all been howling with laughter that day yeah and it would have been great if they'd um concentrated a bit more on chopping certain elements back or whatever yeah i think you can i think so if that said is it would be nice to sort of actually enjoy the process a bit more yeah well for us the actors on Fuzz, it was a hoot. And everyone used to hang out in the evenings when we were in Wales. Yeah. And there was a lot of social engagements. I remember a bowling competition one evening.

Hanging out in Simon's trailer, I remember, with Paddy Considine and a few people. And I remember Paddy flipping through this big wallet of DVDs that Simon had. Yeah. And he had like every single Buffy the Vampire Slayer or something. And Paddy Considine was just rolling his eyes. He's like, what the fuck is all this shit you got? That's not a good impression of Paddy Considine. But I remember Simon looking a little bit hurt.

That's Buffy the Vampire vampire slayer that's good stuff but no it was fun the only time when i felt quite out of my depth was doing a scene with tim dalton oh he slapped you on the back pretty hard right and like his his character was supposed to be annoyed with my character to messenger i'm the annoying local reporter and he turns out to be uh spoiler alert you know one of the big bad guys in the village and he comes and he had to clap me on the back like quite hard but he really genuinely did like smack me on the back and we did it several times so after a while my back was stinging and also it would shock me every time so that i found it hard to deliver my line and i think i said to him

eventually like when you know when you slap me on the back there that is quite hard do you have to do it quite that hard and uh he just looked at me like what are you even doing here that would be an even funnier situation if you were playing like a um like a henchman in a bond film yeah um timothy uh in that scene there you when you hit me you don't have to hit me i wouldn't say it in that voice that's the voice you did you don't have to punch me quite so hard. It'll look real. With film tricks, you can do it so that it doesn't actually hurt. I don't know if you know that. But I was thinking that, like, mate, no one's going to know if you just act slapping me on the back.

They can put a sound in. You don't have to genuinely wind me every time. I mean, he's amazing in the movie. I loved working with him. I think afterwards, you know, like, one of the best things about him, and this is not a bad bad thing at all he's just one of those people that doesn't suffer fools gladly you know but he's somebody also that i never really i feel very fortunate that i didn't really have to explain how to do it and i've had other situations where you do have

to explain like oh it would be so much funnier if you did it straighter with timothy you never really had to say that and like for somebody to come on and just nail the tone of it immediately it was just like oh this is great i couldn't think of somebody better doing that and he slays every line that he does it's just beautiful i do remember there was one thing i'm not sure i've ever told this story this is actually almost going back to sort of david walliams saying out loud the things that you're thinking yeah so one of the things that would happen and it would happen to him a lot, and I remember Nick Frost saying this thing about Timothy Darwin. He said, if you play James Bond, it's like being as famous as a president.

They're not former President Barack Obama or former President Jimmy Carter. They are President Jimmy Carter. And Bond is exactly the same. You're always James Bond. So it was an interesting thing that out of all of those actors jim broadbent simon and nick billy white or edward woodward by far the biggest amount of autographs would be for timothy don because he's bond and every person in that town every publican in a location would seem to have a copy of the living daylights under their bar right somebody be hiding

in the bushes when we're shooting a scene saying oh timothy and they'd have their bond annual or something so you'd see he'd bristle at it a little bit because he's trying to concentrate and i'm sure if like it's a blessing and a curse being james bond but i do remember this really made me laugh we're standing in the town square and you know that thing when parents have told their children that somebody's famous but the children have no idea who that person yes it's like my children and the parents have said that man there is really famous like go up and ask for his autograph and maybe they've said he's james bond but the kids who come up and tug on his shoulder and this is in between takes come up and this is what they say to timothy excuse me mister are you famous and he just went under his breath he went oh fuck off like that to like an eight-year-old

and a six-year-old five minutes later a police woman comes up says mr dalton did you just swear at two children and he says uh i don't think so and he goes well they definitely think you did no a real police a real police person oh my so they the kids are told said that man swore at us so the police woman came up to the door and said did you swear these kids go i don't believe so well they definitely heard he says or i maybe i said under my breath but i didn't intend for them to hear i do apologize so he apologized profusely but i imagine the next part of the story that i imagine happening off screen is that that police woman went back to the station said oh my god you never guess what today i only had to tell off james bond

wait continue There we go. Thanks to Edgar Wright for talking to me. It is the morning after my show in Birmingham. I'm in my hotel room. The show went very well last night. Really good crowd, which included Nicola, the director. You know Nicola. She directed the Travelman episode that I was on with Richard A. Waddy. And in fact, she pops up briefly on the second of the two episodes that I did with Richard. So if you've listened to those, you will have heard Nicola. She's based in Birmingham, along with the rest of the Travelman production team,

some of whom came along as well last night. We had a little drink afterwards, which is unusually sociable for me. And as we were leaving the pub, a young couple came up to me and the guy said, and this is true, excuse me, mate, are you famous? Exactly like the little kids with Tim Dalton. I decided against saying fuck off under my breath. And I just went with, well, I mean, I was on Travelman and I got killed by a church in hot fuzz. Does that count? And then I posed for a selfie. It's the kind of constant harassment that makes it very difficult

for me to go out in public. Despite that, I was able to make it to the venue yesterday without too much hassle. It was a beautiful hot afternoon and at one point I found myself walking through Birmingham's busy shopping district near the Bullring Mall, where due to the current terror threat level, there were armed police in flak jackets wandering amongst the happy shoppers, while representatives from some of the major religions shared their messages. I turned on my recorder and drifted between them. And peace be upon him the day he was born,

the day he dies, and the day he will be raised up to life again. And remember in the book of Mary, when she was taken from her family to an eastern place. The families of God will comfort all those families in Manchester. Hallelujah. And we have to stand together. Together we stand, divinely before. Hallelujah. Together we stand, divinely before.

But love conquers all. You can have prophecies. You can speak in tongues. You can do prophecies, you can speak in tongues, you can do medical things. I'm not going to say I got it all wrong, it might have been more appropriate. I don't know if I'd be arrested. Here's a little song I wrote You might want to learn it just for now Don't worry

Be happy In every life we have some trouble When you worry you make it double Don't worry Be happy When you worry, you must be down But don't worry, be happy Don't worry, be happy Three of the big religions represented there for you. You're welcome.

A bit of Islam, some Christianity, and a slice of McFerrinism on a peaceful summer's day in Birmingham. I thought it would be nice to end of McFerrinism on a peaceful summer's day in Birmingham. Thought it'd be nice to end with a bit of an audio picture there for you. Alright, thanks very much to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for production support

and to Matt Lamont for conversation editing. I'll be back next week. Take very good care. I'm not going to shout because I'm in a hotel room. I love you. Bye. This is an advert for Squarespace.

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