THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.72 - FENTON BAILEY

Episode Date: April 14, 2018

Adam talks to British producer and director Fenton Bailey one of the co founders of TV production company World Of Wonder, responsible for Rupaul's Drag Race, Jon Ronson's Secret Rulers Of The World and The Adam & Joe Show)THIS PODCAST HAS BEEN NOMINATED FOR A WEBBY AWARD!You can vote for me at wbby.co/pod-intVoting is open until Thursday, April 19th, 2018Thanks!DOWNLOAD THE FREE ADAM BUXTON APPhttp://adam-buxton.co.uk/appEP.72 - FENTON BAILEY NOTESHello, Adam here. As I write these notes myself I thought I may as well start doing it in the first person rather than pretend I have someone to do it for me. It’s more or less a transcript of my spoken introduction, but here it is for your reference pleasure. Podcast number 72 features a conversation with an important figure in my life, British born producer and director Fenton Bailey who, along with his partner Randy Barbato, set up the production company World Of Wonder. In the early 90s I would stay up late and watch 'Manhattan Cable'. It was one of a number of World Of Wonder programmes that showcased and celebrated marginal culture, often with a trashy or camp aesthetic although from time to time they also produced shows like 'LA Stories' and Jon Ronson’s series 'The Secret Rulers Of The World' that had a more serious journalistic edge.In an effort to tap into British homemade video culture Channel 4 commissioned World Of Wonder to make a show called ‘Takeover TV’ in 1995. I sent in some videos I’d made while at art school and ended up presenting several episodes. By that time Joe Cornish was also involved and we went on the make ‘The Adam & Joe Show’ for Channel 4 between 1997 and 2001, with much of it shot and edited in World Of Wonder’s office opposite Brixton tube in South London.Although the bulk of World of Wonder’s output, which currently includes the phenomenally successful ‘Rupaul’s Drag Race’, is overseen from their offices in Los Angeles, Fenton and Randy met in New York in the early 80s. It was in NY that they formed their electronic dance duo, The Fabulous Pop Tarts, and in the course of gigging around New York’s clubs they met not only drag artist and musician RuPaul but the so called Club Kids, a group of outrageous party scenesters whose number included Michael Alig. Fenton & Randy had already begun filming the antics of the Club Kids when Michael Alig and his roommate Robert Riggs murdered fellow Club Kid Angel Melendez.The story formed the basis of World of Wonder’s 1998 documentary ‘Party Monster - The Shockumentary’, and was further adapted as a 2003 feature film ‘Party Monster’ starring Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green.My conversation with Fenton took place in November 2017 at World Of Wonder’s LA offices.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support.Music & jingles by Adam BuxtonRELATED LINKSMANHATTAN CABLE (1991)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GF4GjU6W9i0LA STORIES - THE RIOTS THAT SHOOK THE CITY (1992)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyIZp3XZ6Hs‘PARTY MONSTER - THE SHOCKUMENTARY’ (1988)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYvDm-9ofSsMICHAEL ALIG & THE CLUB KIDS ON ‘GERALDO’ (1990)

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

Just taking a walk on yet another overcast April evening. But fear not, golden balls on the way next week according to my phone's weather forecast fingers crossed because hey we could all use a bit of sunshine how you doing Rosie hi I'm not too bad bit worried why are you worried Russia Syria Donald Trump no I did a pee on the stairs before we went out and it's really yellow and it's changed the colour of the carpet and I'm worried you're going to be angry when you find out. Well, you've peed on pretty much every other part of the house. Why should I be upset about the stairs joining the pee-pee patchwork?

Oh, wow, you're really easygoing and cool. Yep, so my wife tells me. Is that my wife's thing from Borat? No! How many times do I have to explain? All right. I'm sorry, Rosie, I love you. It's just the Cold War. Look, I should tell the listeners about this week's episode, number 72 of the podcast, which features a conversation with an important figure in my life. British-born producer and director Fenton Bailey, who, along with his excellently named partner Randy Barbato, set up the production company World of Wonder.

Now, in the early 90s, I used to stay up late and watch World of Wonder's show Manhattan Cable. Some of you will be old enough to remember that. It was hosted by Laurie Pike, and she would introduce weird clips from new york public access shows and just be cool and funny and new yorkish i was quite in love with her and it was one of a number of world of wonder programs that showcased and celebrated marginal culture often with quite a trashy or camp aesthetic world of wonder also produced shows with a more serious journalistic edge, like LA Stories, which was one of the first of its kind

to encourage subjects to document their own lives in the wake of the 1992 LA riots with newly affordable camcorder technology. World of Wonder also worked with John Ronson early on in his career. They produced his series The Secret Rulers of the World, as well as a late-night talk show about subcultures and conspiracy theories called For the Love Of, also hosted by John.

And it turned out, fun fact, that one of the people who used to watch For the Love Of on occasion was director Stanley Kubrick, whose estate later allowed access to his archives for John Ronson's 2008 documentary Stanley Kubrick's Boxes. True. But anyway, back to World of Wonder. In an effort to tap into British homemade video culture, Channel 4 commissioned World of Wonder to make a show called Takeover TV in 1995. I sent some videos in that I'd made while I was at art school and I ended up presenting several episodes of that show and by that time Joe Cornish, my childhood friend,

was also involved and we went on to make the adam and joe show together for channel 4 between 1997 and 2001 with much of it filmed and edited in world of wonders modest office space opposite brixton tube in south london but to this day the bulk of world of wonders output which currently includes the phenomenally successful RuPaul's Drag Race, is overseen from their offices in Los Angeles. Fenton and Randy moved to L.A. after meeting in New York in the early 80s. And as you'll hear, it was there in New York that Fenton and Randy formed their electronic dance duo, the Pop-Tarts. formed their electronic dance duo, The Pop Tarts. And in the course of gigging around New York's clubs,

they met not only musician and drag artist RuPaul, but the so-called Club Kids, a group of outrageous party scenesters whose number included Michael Alig. Fenton and Randy had already begun filming the antics of the Club Kids when Michael Alig and his roommate, Robertiggs murdered fellow club kid Angel Melendez. And that story formed the basis of World of Wonder's 1998 documentary Party Monster and was further adapted as a 2003 feature film of the same name starring Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green. feature film of the same name starring Macaulay Culkin and Seth Green. Now although I owe a great deal to both Fenton and Randy I suppose it was Fenton that I got to know better over the years because he tended to be in the UK a little bit more than Randy so I guess that's why I talked

with just Fenton on this occasion rather than both of them in case you're wondering. Our conversation took place in November of last year, 2017, at World of Wonder's LA offices, in a room that looked down over one of the most tourist-heavy parts of Hollywood Boulevard, famous for its star-paved Walk of Fame. But before I asked Fenton about those early days in New York and beyond, I started by offloading about my plane journey over from the UK the day before and my attempts during the flight

to watch a 2016 documentary made by Fenton and Randy about the controversial photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. I'll be back with exciting podcast-based gossip and more recommendations at the end of the podcast, but right now, here we go. Ramble chat, that's a far ramble chat recommendations at the end of having a couple of drinks. I was on the plane yesterday, on my way over, and I made the mistake of having a couple of drinks. You're a frequent flyer, right?

Mm-hmm. Do you drink? I do, yes. But I try to sort of keep it under control. Yeah. Because you just feel awful. Exactly. You just feel much worse.

You really do. Because I had a couple of drinks. I was on my own, and I was flying i was flying to la and you sort of feel slightly off the leash you know yes yeah right definitely it's party time so i had a gin and tonic and then i said yes to a wine with my meal right and everything's good up to that everything's good and then you get about an hour of euphoric excitement right and you're checking stuff out on tv that you're going to watch and i was thinking at that point i was thinking finally this is the time i can watch the maplethorpe documentary maplethorpe was it on the plane no but i had it with me i had it with me yeah a lot of peni well exactly that's the thing so i put it up on my laptop and my laptop screen is even larger than the screen in the back and then about five minutes in you know who is it

newt gingrich or someone said look at the pictures look at the pictures and there's a montage of that is just the beginning there's a lot of big cocks you know just all the way through yeah because we put extra ones in extra thinking hba would make us take them out because they didn't so it's like it's a big cock fest right yes sometimes i'd have to watch cuts on the plane and i would make us take them out because they didn't so it's like it's a big cock fest right yes sometimes i'd have to watch cuts on the plane and i would make it as tiny as i could make it like the smallest you know thumbnail so i could just see it and do my notes well anxious about people looking at my shoulder exactly that's what i was doing i minimized the window yes you do minimize i was fearful that my neighbor was a little conservative he introduced himself as a

ex-navy man and then he spent before or after the cocks before the cocks right and then he spent the rest of the flight playing i know some sort of nerdy computer game with his light on the whole way he was a really nice guy actually and he would have turned it off if i'd asked him but oh it's driving me crazy so i got self-conscious and paranoid about the cocks and thought i'm not going to enjoy this i you know if i'm going to watch cocks i want maximum cocks right because full screen cocks you know it's it's like david lynch says about watching films on your phone he's like when people say they watched a film on their phone that's not watching a movie You can't watch a movie on your fucking phone. That's right.

Which I sort of agree with anyway. Well, you can get the gist. Yeah, but I thought I wasn't going to do it justice anyway. But then I started getting that thing of feeling incredibly uncomfortable in my skin. You know what I mean? I imagine it's what it's like going cold turkey when people talk about not being able to get comfortable

and getting the sweats and things like that. I always have that on a plane and I don't know if it's to do with the booze or not. It's the altitude and the booze. So you sort of bloat up and your feet start to sort of feel weird and you just feel really uncomfortable. You can't get comfortable.

And it's too hot one moment and then you turn on the air and then you get cold and you pull on the blanket. And you have that weird kind of sweat. It's awful, and I had to get up. And I always think of Brian Wilson from the Beach Boys, who had an episode on a plane just before they did Pet Sounds and stuff. He decided to quit touring partly because of this episode he had.

He just started freaking out and saying, I can't be on this plane! I can't be on it! No, no, this is not right! Oh, you don't want that. had he just started freaking out and saying i can't be on this plane i can't be on it no no this is not right oh you don't want that no but i felt very close to that yesterday but you've always felt ambiguous about flying haven't you uh yeah i don't mind it so much now actually it changed when i had children funnily enough so your dna is safe you're you're entrusted to the biosphere i think that's what it is. Yeah, it must be on some level. My work is done.

I'm ready to go down. Although I was thinking yesterday on my way to LA, I was thinking, fuck this, I'm too old for this. Because it's plane stuff. Yeah, just for being... Ready for teleportation. I really am. And then you get to LAX and...

It's a shit airport. It's shit and everyone's horrible to you and you get stared at like a sort of sex killer by the immigration people the whole atmosphere is like you've done something wrong and you're going to get busted any second and welcome to America that's definitely the vibe now so how did you come to be in New York in the first place because you're a nice British man are you even an Oxford-educated nice British man? I am, yeah. Right.

What were you doing at Oxford? I read English. Oh. I was just reading Tina Brown's Vanity Fair diaries in her introduction. She talks about she read English at Oxford. And she put in parentheses, that means studied. I guess you have to explain what reading means. It's not like reading the instructions on a packet.

Right. I read English the other day. I read English. I did theatre and things. You did theatre, right. And did you have any idea at that point that what you were going to do or where you wanted to head? No. Well, I knew I'd seen The Naked naked civil servant on tv when i was 16 at christmas and i was like whatever i do i just have to get to america was that quentin crisp yes right and that was uh john hurt playing of course just the most fabulous camp thing so that was what i was like

i've got to get to america and i just thought all my problems would be solved if I went to America so I wasn't quite sure what I was going to do because I there was the you know after Oxford you could do if you were sort of an arty sort of English reading person what are you going to do you know media so there was the BBC you know I didn't really fancy that and just didn't know what to do I was a bit clueless really But I just knew I had to get to America. And then my roommate, lovely guy, Tim Whitby, his mother was a major media executive. So he just knew what to do because I had no clue. And he applied for this thing called a Harkness Fellowship. And basically, it promised you two years in America, tuition paid, living expenses,

just everything. And he was applying for it. And he said, I'm never going to get it. It's very competitive. And I thought, well, apply for it too. You know? And it was like a nightmare application. And I remember being such a daze

after the interview. But long story short, I got it and he didn't. Wow. Which was really unfortunate. Oh, man. His mother, i don't think ever forgave me so i went to my film school and what year was that when you arrived in new

york that was 1982 82 yeah oh that was a good year were you into the music that year oh yes of course it was psychedelic fuzz love my way do you like that? Oh, yeah. And there was Soft Cell, Tainted Love. Sure. Oh, and I guess the year before had been, you know, Don't You Want Me Baby. Yeah. Everywhere, Human League. That's right.

Yeah. I love it. I mean, that was my year, 1982. That was peak. I love everything in the charts. It was really the pop manifestation of those synths. That was that first wave of, like, synths and, like, you know, Warm Leatherette

and The Normal and Silicon Teens and Mute Records I think had just launched and yeah it was very I didn't know about any of that stuff

so for me it was all the poppier end of all that the chart manifestation of that right and Gary Newman and I love Gary Newman all that stuff

Haircut 100 me and Joe well Joe got me into Haircut 100 and you know I like my madness I like to all right music videos yeah all that stuff is great so you're at NYU well his thing you see because unlike you I didn't like guitars because couldn't play guitar yeah no musical ability whatsoever but I

love synthesizers because you program it it goes pink plonk and I love drum machines and I was NYU and that's where i met randy who you know together we started world of wonder but randy and i met and the thinking was very wrong but the sort of gist of it was hollywood then was impossible to get into and so almost the independent film business didn't really exist but we we thought, well, if we became pop stars, we'd have hit records. And with all the money we made, we'd be able to make films. That was really genuinely what we were thinking. And so together we started a band called the Pop Tarts.

And because I had no musical ability whatsoever, synthesizers were just perfect because I could do that. However, synthesizers were just perfect because I could do that. And this was like, you know, a little bit before Blue Monday, which really is the ultimate drum machine hit. Yeah. I mean, there is no better. And I thought, oh, well, we could do that. And I got my scholarship money and they said,

well, you don't have to get at NYU anymore. You can use it to start the Pop Tots. So we started a band. And who were your reference points then? Who did you feel you were emulating? Well, retrospectively, it was really the Pet Shop Boys, but the Pet Shop Boys didn't exist then, or if they were, they were sort of still making demos and, you know, didn't know who they were.

But it was a little bit of ELO, was sort of the sort of wish to sort of have lush orchestral arrangements over these synthesizers so not the kind of minimalistic not like suicide or something no no no it was nothing grim about but i was camper than a row of tents really it was like it was so camp i don't know what we're thinking because no one was ever gonna go along with it you know it was like now maybe yes but then it was like you know you're gay and you're out. And we didn't think of ourselves necessarily as a gay band, but you know, just take one look.

You know, I wore a gold lame toga and a big sort of moiré bow. And Randy wore some sort of hideous robe made out of fabric you'd use for curtains. And where would you play? We played at Pyramid Club, Dancerteria, Limelight. We played at China Club. We played all the sort of, we even played CBGB's actually.

Did you? Yeah. I was quite scared. I'm sure. Did you pack it out with your friends or were there scary? Of course. No, of course we did.

Yeah, we played some quite macho venues. Well, I suppose CBGB's was the most macho place. Supposed to be really genuinely disgusting place. That was vile. I really was, because I was like, this is not, I'm not into this sort of graffiti and smelly loos and... Cockroaches.

Yes, I was like, drum machines. Gary Newman was an inspiration. I wanted that, you know, clean and sort of professional. Yeah. You wanted to be and sort of professional. Yeah. I wanted to be a robot. Exactly. Not a vagrant. Exactly.

I wanted to be a well-paid robot. But we persisted and we ended up, you know, we got a music publishing deal. And actually that money for the music publishing deal is what we used to start world of wonder the the company so the plan sort of worked well that the the hits bit eluded us you know we it's harder to write a number one than people make out well you know we did we were vindicated 25 years later with uh arman van helden you know who he is, right? Yeah. Our first single was called New York City Beat. And we did get a record deal. We were signed to the same label that Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam were signed to.

You know, I Wonder If I Take You Home. Same label that George Kranz, Din Da Da, was signed to. I don't know George Kranz. Din Da Da, Din Dun Dun. One of the most annoying songs of that period. Yeah. And we had a record deal. And the record came out.

It was called New York City Beat in 84. Anyway anyway it went nowhere it was in fact it did it went straight into the bargain bin at some mark space records where you could buy it for 25 cents where i imagine is where armand van helden found it some years later because he sampled the entire thing. Like, the verse, the chorus, the whole thing, and made a record called New York City Beat that he released and was a big hit in Europe. Wow. And it was in, oh, Adam Sandler movie, The Zohan. Oh, don't mess with The Zohan.

That's one of his better ones. Lying in bed, trailer for The Zohan comes on. That's New York City beat. And Ru, Paul called us up and said, you know, Ru was doing some gigs in Europe. He said, you know, that song you did, it's a big hit in Europe. And we're like, yeah. But it was.

And so, you know, we went after him and we won. Good one. Yeah. So we had a hit. we had a big hit congratulations thank you very much that's amazing 25 years yeah yeah didn't he have to apply like beforehand didn't he have to clear the publishing well he should have yeah but he initially when our lawyers contacted his lawyers he initially said that he had written a song himself but fortunately we still had the the record yeah just said look

listen i mean it's it's pretty amazing yeah it's the same i mean his version i guess it's better a bit more stripped down you know a bit less gay i think really it's a bit of a pounding sort of i've identified what is wrong with this song it's too gay okay I'm removing the gay with my special anti-gay computer. He's gay, isn't he? I don't know. You know, a friendship has not blossomed. I mean, I don't think... I wonder if he's listening. I hope he doesn't feel badly.

He's fine. He's got bigger feet. Yes, I think so. Hello! Fact-checking Santa here. Armand Van Helden is actually a heterosexual man from Boston, Massachusetts, so he doesn't speak with a weird European accent. Merry Christmas. And who were the people that you were on the scene with back in New York?

Instead of film editing class, we would go to happy hour at the Pyramid, and that's where we met Martin Burgoyoyne who was madonna's bestie and he i remember him showing me this album cover of this blonde woman with a hand on her face and it was the cover of the first lp he was sort of the stylist and a designer and then of course in we also met rue rupal during that period randy and i can't quite remember. I have a very clear recollection of being in Atlanta on tour and seeing RuPaul wheat-pasting posters of himself. And the poster said, RuPaul is everything.

You know, typically sort of modest, self-effacing thing. He was wheat-pasting posters of himself, and he was in thigh-high wader boots and football shoulder pads with shredded bin liners off and a jockstrap and a huge sort of ratty wig. I think I had the same look around that time. It was a fabulous look. But then we also saw him at the New Music Seminar

where he was causing a scene. But immediately there's some story about Picasso. Picasso's father was a great painter, I think. And when he saw what his son could do, he put down his paintbrush. And it was a bit like that with me and Randy. When we saw RuPaul, we were like, we have no business. We put down our drum machines. What was he doing then?

Was he singing his own music? Yeah, he was in a band called Wee Wee Pole. And he'd also... That is a good name right and he was just what is a wee wee pole well i think it's exactly what you think it is it's not a pole that you wee on it is i guess the pole you use to wee with it's uh very sort of punk and he was doing this sort of genderfuck look and I think he'd sometimes perform with the Now Explosion

so they were from Atlanta and he'd moved to New York and he was just performing in clubs at Pyramid and Larry T's Palace Debute and Go Go Dancing I mean you couldn't miss him he was so sort of charismatic. Was he part of that whole sort of Paris is Burning scene?

Was that before then? No, it was sort of concurrent, but that was sort of uptown. Voguing and... Voguing, that was much more uptown scene. Okay. Like way uptown, not like the sort of uptown, downtown. I mean, they were up in Harlem and the Bronx,

and it was just a very... Really, it wasn't until Paris is Burning, certainly that I was aware of that scene. The documentary, you mean? Yeah. In the early 90s, right? Yeah. Right, okay.

I just always assumed... He was very much part of a downtown club scene. Ah, right. Dance interior, limelight. The grimy, more DIY. Tunnel, Roxy, yeah mud club did you hang around with the club kids um so cold or well yeah randy and i would dj sometimes at danceteria and this annoying little prick was a bus boy and he'd come up to us and say can you play blondie's heart of

glass he always wanted that and his name was michael Ehrlich. And we were like, oh, here he comes. But he was very sweet, actually. He was very nice. And one day he called us up and said, oh, you know, how do you throw a party? Because, you know, you could at that time in New York, you could make a living as a sort of event promoter doing these parties. And that's part of what we did as well. So he took us to McDonald's because he said he'd take us out for well. So he took us to McDonald's because he said he'd take us out for dinner

and he took us to McDonald's and we told him everything we knew. We're like, you need a mailing list and you do this and you do that. And he was off. I mean, I can't say that we created the Club Kids but he was definitely a driven person who was just this cute kid, busboy

who wasn't going to let anything stop him and for people who don't know who were the club kids and what was that scene well generationally the you see so you have these sort of arty club 57 scene john sex and magnuson you know keith herring that sort of group who were doing these sort of cabaret-type things. And Randy and I came in on the tail of that. And then you had this sort of... I suppose like any sort... It was kind of like high school, you know. There was this sort of very...

fairly rigid hierarchy of who did what and who was who. And in comes someone like Michael Ehrlich, who no-one would give the time of day to, to and no one really wanted to let him into their clubs or he was just a busboy it was very it was slightly snobby and elitist and with the club kids he created this completely alternative scene of people who deliberately looked ridiculous because they wouldn't no one thought they were cool and because no one thought they were cool and because no one would think them seriously as cool, they decided to be completely uncool

and created this sort of attention-shifting movement that was just freakish and absurd and ridiculous. And that was really the club kids who really did kind of take over from this other scene, this sort of, you could call it a celebutant scene or a sort of, just a downtown artist scene, really. And so they shifted the emphasis onto this more, was it quite hedonistic?

Very hedonistic. It was just famous for famousness sake. It wasn't, these club kids weren't necessarily poets or performance artists. They didn't necessarily sing. They were, in a very Lee Bowery sense of way, they were the canvas. They were the product. Right.

And so they would look crazy. There's some footage on YouTube of them on Geraldo. Yeah. All looking mad. And as you mentioned, Lee Bowery. And yes, they are making themselves into little crazy DIY works of art. Yes. And they were fueled by huge quantities of pills.

Oh, well, that came later. Because Michael Eilig didn't drink, didn't do any kind of drugs. In fact, he kind of made fun of people who did. But at some point he decided or realized that the art of doing this nightlife promoting thing was to appear to be fucked up, to appear to be drunk, appear to be on drugs. And I guess at some point the appearance crossed over into the reality.

And when Ecstasy came along, it was this sort of huge popularization of Ecstasy, they all jumped on that bandwagon. And then, I'm not saying Ecstasy was a gateway drug, but it seemed that it did go from there to heroin and you know just spiraled into something much darker yes yes and that's mid-80s the club kids really emerged yes late 80s and then the murder because that's sort of we were trying to Ren and I, we moved to LA in

94 and we were trying to make a film about the club kids because we thought they were an extraordinary phenomenon and everybody hated them but we were like, it's amazing how they could get all this media attention and everybody resented them because they said they did nothing, it was just really fascinating to us. Was it

comparable to the New Romantics in the i suppose so but the new romantics they fronted bands right they they were doing something right right i mean these guys were just scenesters yeah yeah i mean very i mean it was very situationist though i mean they were you know the the parties they did the blood feast parties and the sort of disco 2000 the kind of freaky circus, perverse circus they were doing. It was very inspired. And because it annoyed people so much, we thought, oh, this really should be documented.

But everyone was like, no, you know, it wasn't, couldn't really get any funding for it until there was a, you know, the story of this this murder and that was in that was in 96 so yeah and so by that time you'd shot a load of footage of these guys yeah hanging out doing their thing yeah and then what was the first you heard about their murder well i can't remember when we first heard about it but i did have a sufficient presence of mind to go to new york and interview michael aylick and we did like two or three interviews with him after we'd heard about the murder but before he was arrested so it was

pretty powerful stuff because then once he got arrested we had a story and Channel 4 came in and gave us the money to make the documentary and did Michael Michael Eilig murdered Angel Melendez right so what happened is Angel Melendez was a club kid and a drug dealer

and he was Angel because he had this signature thing of walking around with these giant angel wings which in a packed club is actually a very annoying thing to do because you're always swiping people in the face. Maybe not enough to get killed. Absolutely not. No, he didn't deserve that at all. And he definitely, there's no question, he fell in.

It's one of those things I think that will always defy, as perhaps any, you know, why anyone kills anyone is very hard to understand. But Michael was definitely by this point in the sort of abyss of deep, deep addiction. I was pretty sure he was going to die of an overdose or, you know, something going to come to an unpleasant end. And then, you know, Angel went to his apartment, and they got into a fight over money that was owed, and that was the end of Angel. Bashed him on the head. Right.

And then chopped him up. Yeah. Put him in bin bags. Yeah. And tried to get rid of it. Yeah. And those were found fairly quickly. Right.

And they washed up in Staten Island. Yeah. I mean, that was the extraordinary thing, is that from when he committed this murder to when he was arrested, it was a number of months. And during that time, he was going around saying that he did it. And he put murderer on his forehead in Sharpie. I mean, because he was still in the...

I mean, just very strung out. But he also thought that if he told people he had murdered someone, that was such an outrageous thing to say, that people would think he was joking and that it was part of his act. And I think, actually, frankly, I believed it. I didn't believe he was capable of murdering someone. And I thought the whole thing was an elaborate hoax. You know, the angel was off somewhere

and the angel was going to reappear at one of his parties descend from the roof with his wings and it would all be some sort of ultimate situation some sort of bad taste prank yeah yeah and he did you know he excelled in doing bad taste pranks and as someone who was engaged in shocking people yeah you know you always need to up the ante. So that's what I thought. So he went to prison for how long? 17 years, yeah. And he's out now.

He's out. In fact, we've been filming him since his, because, you know, we made Party Monster the documentary,

then we made Party Monster the movie with Macaulay Culkin playing Michael Eilig and Seth Green plays James St. James and it's very much sort of twisted buddy movie because James and Michael monster the movie with macaulay culkin playing michael a-league and seth green plays james st james and it's very much sort of twisted buddy movie because james and michael were these very competitive not frenemies they were sort of best friends but but you know always james wasn't

doing any murdering though no murdering james was trying to get his act together he sat a few meters away from us in the office outside so during that whole time james never visited him once and we we're there when michael comes out of jail and they're reunited and we've been filming for the last two years it's called after party where can people see that that's well it's it's still being um we're still we it. So what form will that take? We think it's going to be a series rather than just a single feature. And it's going to be, we're going to put it on our streaming network, Wow Presents Plus.

So we're going to unveil that. Michael is doing YouTube videos as well, though, isn't he? He is, I think. And he is, I i mean what's the deal with him now then is he does he is he in therapy and stuff or i mean how does he present himself these days how does he deal with the fact that he's someone who's murdered someone well you know and and he is sort of enjoying a certain degree of notoriety off the back of it well i don't... Thanks to you. Right. There's a lot of questions in there. Like, how does...

I was interested to see how someone copes with life when they come out of prison after 17 years. And the short answer is not well, you know. And in a way, I suppose, in narrative, you always hope for some redemption or some sort of transformation. And I wouldn't say there is that. I mean do you and Randy

have to sit down and have deep discussions about telling a story like that and because it has an effect on that person presumably as well right? Yeah well you're right and in this this is the most difficult case

of all for us. Do you engage with those gray areas when you're making these programs and um do you ever sort of talk about it because i remember the first one of the first shows i ever saw that turned me on to your stuff was a documentary called videos vigilantes and voyeurism right which was i saw on the bbc in the early 90s maybe 93 or something and it was in the wake of the rodney king beatings and a wave of people empowering themselves with affordable camcorder technology and the effect that it was having and the beginnings of the CCTV panopticon that we now live in. Right. And that documentary was, on the one hand, trashy and thrilling in the sense of...

It was a clip show in some respects, right? Yeah, and there was a certain amount of voyeurism from our point of view involved because some of the clips were outrageous of things that had been caught on camera. But you were also very much engaged with the nuances of where this was headed, morally speaking, or, you know, you weren't making any judgments, certainly,

but it was, certainly that was part of the agenda. So I'm just kind of making a statement rather than asking you a question. No, but it's a good statement to make because it is so interesting. But it wasn't, like, World of Wonder for me was always not just as clear-cut as being lurid and voyeuristic oh thank you there was something else there was that there was that but there was something else going on as well in in tandem which made it really compelling well it is so i mean it is that coming of the sort of camcorder revolution and just look at where we are now. And I don't think then I imagined, I didn't imagine now then, but you could see something was happening. I still myself can't completely process the amount of which we self-document and self-broadcast.

the amount of which we self-document and self-broadcast. And the other day, have you been in a situation where you see a public confrontation and people start videoing it on their phones? I have not, no. I saw that for the first time the other day. Instead of like trying to help? Yeah, yeah. A couple got on the train and they were having a massive row, a young couple, screaming at each other to the extent that

i thought it was a prank i thought it was one of those things like improv everywhere you know you're supposed to do some confrontational theater and see what you know blow the minds of the straight and um so i was sitting there thinking hmm i don't know i don't even know if this is real but let's see where it goes but at one point it was getting quite gnarly and it looked as if maybe the girl was going to start beating the guy and maybe he was going to fight back. And so at that point I turned around and was ready to go over and intervene. But as I turned around, another guy got up and just started filming them.

So it actually ended up having a similar effect because it calmed the situation down and shifted their focus of attention onto him she started screaming at him going don't film me please i'm having a huge argument with my boyfriend you know excuse me we're being insane here can you just can you respect our privacy and uh it was really weird it was really weird how he just made the judgment which i understood that they had transgressed society's normal rules to such a degree that he was now he now had license to film them do you think it was that or do you think he was just like oh this could make a good clip on youtube well yeah but i think that um that's probably what he was thinking consciously but subconsciously i

think he must have thought that he had been authorized to do so by how crazy they were being how loud they were being and interesting too that it them suddenly becoming aware that what they were doing was going to be broadcast, calm them down. Yeah, there's that. It's shocking when you see footage of yourself that you didn't realise was being taken. Right. Oh wow, that's an amazing point. I never considered that point till now. You're so deep and you made me think. And now I'm going to change my life somehow.

Thank you very much for your wonderful, deep and amazing point. You're deep and amazing point. You're deep and amazing point. You moved from New York to LA.A. at a certain point. Yeah, right after the earthquake, the Northridge earthquake of 1994. One of the things we did was the L.A. riots happened, and continuing this theme,

it's like we were fascinated by the fact that the Rodney King tape played such a central role in that because their caught on tape was this appalling police beating and then a jury acquitted the police officers and then you LA went up in flames so this piece of tape you know caused this city to burn down so we came to LA and we gave camcorders to like 10 different people in LA to make video diaries about their lives over the course of a year. It ended up being the year from the riots until the verdict was returned in the civil case, which...

The Rodney King verdict. The Rodney King verdict, which turned out to be a bit of an anti-climax, the actual thing. But it was interesting to see these LA Times reporter, young gang kid, old gang banger, someone running for mayor, cops. They were all making diaries about their lives and they were interwoven into this two and a half hour feature documentary for BBC. Right. And one of those kids was Ennis.

Yes. Who was Ennis then? How did you get to know him? and one of those kids was Ennis who was Ennis then? Ennis was a kid who was living with his not his father really, his guardian and his guardian Howard ran a dry cleaning store right at the flashpoint of the LA riots

in the heart of South Central and Ennis lived in the back of his dry cleaning store and was just a remarkable kid, he was like 11 when we met him How did did you meet him then we were doing casting we were trying to find characters to give cameras to and selena who was here doing the research just said i met this kid he was just hanging out and seemed interested in what i was doing and we found that it wasn't living with his parents, and we managed to get in touch with his mother, who wasn't really supporting him and wasn't doing that well.

And we ended up giving him a camera, and it really sort of focused him, and he just took to it. And in fact, for the second trial, the civil trial of the Rodney King, he was down at the courthouse and became something of a sort of sensation, because there's this kid with a camera, you know, Africanan-american kid doing his own reporting he wasn't involved with a gang at that point though was he no he wasn't he was kind of truant from school and we thought that what we should do is if we could get

him out of la we would be doing him a service and we found this sort of school that he could go to in North Carolina. And he went there and just had trouble adjusting and ended up actually being expelled because he punched someone. So he was back here in South Central and was just walking along the street and was, I don't know if he was... The extent of his gang involvement. He never really told us. He was definitely wearing a red sweatshirt, which was the Bloods.

So probably not a good idea, you know, to be wearing gang colors in South Central. He was walking along the street with his friend and a car came up and shot him. And he died. Yeah. And so presumably, well, you know, you were one of the people that tried to get him out of the environment

that he was in because you could see he was a bright kid, interesting kid who was in a place where things could easily go wrong for him. Was it just because he was so young that in that case you felt,

God, that we can't just stand by and do nothing? Right. Because that must have been very difficult as well. Although that's a minefield, is getting involved in someone's life in that way. Someone whose life is so different to yours from a totally different background. Yes.

And probably we were very naive in that respect. But we'd finished the film and there was a sense that we couldn't just you know, when you make films about people they can be these very intense and intimate relationships and then it kind of ends, you know and I think between consenting adults that's okay

it's hard for you and it's hard for them and what takes an adjustment but you do it but with him it just felt we just didn't feel we could and we didn't want to and we i think naively i mean who knows what would have happened if we'd left him where he was you know if we hadn't sort of taken him to a school where he got kicked out, you know. I don't know. But things weren't going well for him before he went to that school. Right.

So it's unlikely that you made things worse. Yeah, it's a very, you know, it's a really sad story. Did it change your mind about the way you make documentaries and how you should conduct yourself when you're meeting people who are in trouble and you're documenting their lives? I don't know. We rarely make films where people are in dire circumstances, I suppose.

Maybe that's a choice i don't know ennis's death was a real lesson in how hopelessly deep the racial divide is and how deeply ingrained violence as a way of life is in america and i think I was naive to that and certainly the last what 20 years I've only reinforced what a fucked up violent place this is you know and the mass shootings and the complete absence of gun control and the out and out racism it's unbelievable I mean as shocking as it was then with one person's death, with Ennis' death to me it's even more shocking now, I mean the scale of it is so epic

and you, I suppose you know I came to America thinking oh this is the land of opportunity, which for me it was and you know it's so optimistic and yeah I mean I love the States and I know you do too and there's so much to love about it yeah but then it is at odds with with with something really sinister and yeah

that they refuse to well i say they i mean we're all guilty of of similar things aren't but but but out here there's a real sense that they just won't engage with certain realities pretty glaring realities yeah and they and they find ways to argue around them and i mean it's most glaring with gun control isn't it yeah sexual harassment also seems to be a mass point of denial yeah a lot of and you're like i mean even though i'll be wanting something you're like really is you're really a uh are you amazed at the scale of the situation right i'm really shocked so you have no one's like even look i'm gay so i'm not going to see a lot of heterosexual interaction well we've seen obviously with kevin spacey that's not purely heterosexual exactly. And even then I'm like, you're kidding me. I mean, yeah.

Yeah, and I just, what reality have I been, like. No, of course, I mean, I, well, as you say, you're gay. I'm straight, but I'm not a woman. So we're not in that way in particularly high risk areas. Right, but you never, like, have you in your career come across that? I mean, no, but I mean,

why would I, you know, no one's, I'm not like a high value target. And I hope I haven't been responsible, you know, in a, in a sort of casual.

Right. It's weird, isn't it? When we were doing the Adam and joe show back in the day we were working with female researchers and aps and stuff and you know there's the usual sort of silly bants and some of that is like flirty yeah but that's normal i don't think i hope it never i don't think you were masturbating into pot plants i mean it was the one time but it was everyone was fine with it

no that's so visual and what about just being out here I mean this might be wrong to conflate the two but there's a sort of culture of disrespect and arrogance in the TV and film industry out here

I think that even me of disrespect and arrogance in the TV and film industry out here I think that you get that even me I mean I haven't done much work out here at all but even the few meetings I've had you pick up on this sort of whiff of kind of toxic contempt almost then that I feel contributes to this whole harassment culture in some way I'm not saying that it's directly comparable. But you know what I'm talking about at all? Like, just the kind of behavior

that is celebrated on shows like Entourage. Right, or The Comeback. Yeah, just execs being outrageously horrible. Well, I'm talking about Kevin Spacey. Swimming with Sharks was a film, one of the films that made his name, where he played this loathsome bully exec right that's true and on the one hand it was like oh isn't this guy appalling but on the other hand you know there was something slightly cool and anti-heroish about them and it's it's that it's that sort of

like yeah isn't this out isn't this fun you know but i suppose we did like wherever we've encountered that we were i just ended up avoiding it like um i mean i did have some dealings with miramax once over santino rice's guest on drag race and there was some scheduling conflict and miramax called up and they were horrendous just rude and abusive and bullying and like and it's like excuse me we have him in first position and we'll let you know when we you know we're and they were like screaming blue mud and i'd like how i'm thinking good god i never like you know just steer clear of that lot you know it's just a toxic place and you're probably right i mean it probably is like that that as an industry that there is

you know like this kind of nice guys finish last culture where if you want to play with the big dogs

and you've got to play rough and mean and then once that once you think that's okay then yeah why not yeah

coerce an actor to do whatever you want them to because you know that's the way you know that's the sorry but that's the way it works that's power dynamics right let's go again what don't you fucking understand kick your fucking ass let's go again what the fuck is it with you i want you off the fucking set, you prick! No! You're a nice guy! The fuck are you doing?

No! Don't shut me up! No! No! Ah, da-da-da-da, like this! No! No! Don't shut me up! Ah, da-da-da-da, like this! Fuck's sake, man, you're amateur! Seriously, man, you and me, we're fucking done professionally. And so, of course, in the last few years,

one of the pillars of the World of Wonder empire has been RuPaul yes Ru came to us and said will you manage me and we just started

World of Wonder and so we managed him early on that's the beginning it was a funny choice of his in a way because you know Pop Tarts had not had

we hadn't had that big hit single with Armand Van Helden thank you at that point but i mean he rightly surmised that we didn't know who to talk to and and you know the steps you had to go through supermodel was the single was the first single yeah you better work work a girl do your i mean that's like 24 years ago we taped it like literally we did the video

literally 24 years ago and now i mean drag race is a massive phenomenon right it is but it's crossed over though i mean it's not just you know it's like everybody likes it i feel out of the loop not knowing it it's one of those things like celebrity love island over in the uk well you should really watch it you should at least have an opinion on it um and i'm now going to ask you the question that always makes me audibly groan when people ask in interviews did you know at the time it was going to no i know i know that question no he had no idea and ruined sausage i'll do anything except a competition elimination reality show and then he thought it was too tacky right well too tacky or too obvious

whatever the reason was he just didn't think it's what he should do okay but long story short we sat down with him and we pitched him all these different ideas and he's like you know the one thing we should do is a competition elimination reality show and we sold it so we had no idea no idea i mean that's that's the magic, isn't it? Yes. Because if you knew it was, if you could figure it out. Obviously. We wouldn't be sitting here.

Exactly. I mean, who has ever been in a, actually once or twice I've heard people sort of say, yeah, we knew it was going to be massive when we were doing it. Really? I bet they're lying. Probably. Because once or twice I've thought things are going to be massive

and they haven't right speaking of which it never fails actually the bigger you think it's going to be the smaller it is well that's exactly

and now I try to like do the reversing oh this is nothing's going to happen with this and then often nothing does so it's like

it doesn't work either way right so you worked with a couple of geniuses right at the very beginning of their career

do you remember how that relationship began I totally remember are you kidding I like first of all

not just because you're sitting here yeah like to me the Adam and Joe show is one of the most fun creative things

I ever did the only thing well one of the things that comes a close second to that is probably the Divine David

oh yeah who actually came out of you know Adam and Joe too yes well Take Over TV The only thing, well, one of the things that comes to close second to that is probably the Divine David. Oh, yeah. Who actually came out of, you know, Adam and Joe, too. Yes, well, TakeOver TV. Right. Yeah. Right. But meeting you guys was amazing. I mean, my version is this.

And maybe you have a better version. But, like, Manhattan Cable was really our first show. And it was really our first successful show, which was taking clips these public access show in new york that were very wacky unlike anything else you'd ever seen on tv before there was no public access in the uk that's right yeah and so off the back of that we were able to sway channel four to give us a chance to do takeover tv which was like the equivalent idea of like well let's get people with their camcorders to make their own shows and create a show called takeover tv which really was very uneven you know it was and it started out being a bit more worthy didn't yes like trying to be everything to all people yeah trying to be a good diverse cross-section of right society this is because

youtube didn't exist this was because viral videos didn't exist we just didn't believe necessarily that wacky crazy unmotivated was the giant tsunami of the future you know we thought we had to pay some homage to other things but i remember i was sitting in an editing suite in Brewer Street around midnight with this pile of tapes to put together this proof-of-concept reel for TakeOver TV. And I'd been through all the yeses, and there was like sort of nuclear disarmament videos, wrist-slitting stuff, I felt. And then there was this pile of no's to tapes with no on. And I picked the top one off, and the post-it note said,

too clever for its own good. And I put it in and it was you. It was you. And I can't remember what you would see. You sat on a loo and you had some headphones on and you had a satellite dish in your hand singing a song. I can't remember what it was.

It was Randy Tart. It was Randy Tart. And maybe because of the Pop-Tarts, I felt a flush of nostalgia. Yeah. But it was really good, actually. It was brilliant. And I put it on the tape, you know?

And out of that, really, because Takeover TV went for a few seasons, but really out of that came the joy of the whole thing, which was the Adam and Josh. Who put the Post-it note on the video? It's never been heard of again. I wish I could remember his name, a researcher. I mean, he's a very nice guy, but there was an epically wrong

judgment call. Well, depends on your point of view. No, I mean, I know where he or she was coming from completely, because it was something I made at art school. It was too clever for its own good. I think what they identified was very it was something i made at art school it was too clever for its own good i think what they identified was that it was too sort of self-aware trying too hard

to be something that really i wasn't and it wasn't do you know what i mean like what you what you're always looking for when you're sifting through tapes whether it's music or whether it's videos or whatever it happens to be is you want something or at least i want something kind of unfiltered something genuine you want to see someone really expressing themselves in an unusual original way whereas oh you were doing that no question you reckon yes yes yes no i i think he was wrong about that i mean it was very clever and it was very knowing but it was also very funny so i get what you're talking about, though. Like you want to find something unintended.

And that's such a fascinating, endless conversation about, you know, can you make camp or does camp just occur? Is it, you know, in these sorts of shows? Is it all in the discovery of something that isn't as OK? Mariah Carey, brilliant singer. But actually what she gets more attention for is when she goes on New Year's Eve show and completely screws it up. So then the audience is involved

in discovering how awful it is. And it's not about the skill of delivering a perfect performance. And in fact, she can do all the perfect performances she wants, but no one really cares. What we love is the fuck up. And isn't that kind of the whole

concept behind the current president it's just like the fuckery of it all is what's keeping people engaged yeah i don't know how much we love it well no i don't know either like it's really hard one to figure out yeah but we started doing takeover tv so you got in touch with me yes my details were with the tape. Yes, they were. I remember coming home from college. I graduated from art school. And when I got back home to my parents' house in Clapham, there was either a phone message from you.

Yeah. Or my mum had written down a message saying... I think I spoke to your mum. I remember. Yes... I think I spoke to your mum. I remember. Yes, I think I spoke to your mum. Fenton Bailey called from a TV company. I was like, whoa, whoa. And then I spoke to you, and this is a story I've told many times,

but you were in the habit of using the word genius a lot. I still use it. Do you? You would describe everything as, you know, because on the phone, you're i see i saw your tape i was watching your tape it's genius and so to me i'd never heard anyone use that expression before i was like he's calling me a genius this is amazing still to this day probably the best call i ever got uh work-wise and that makes me sad no No, honestly, it was great. I loved it.

And then when I met you, obviously I realized that you used the word genius to describe Boralus anything. You said that's right. You said someone brought me a cup of tea, and I said, oh, that's genius. He's genius. These curtains are genius. Look at that.

Oh, that door is genius. But you also said, oh, oh you got this friend joe i thought oh god who the fuck's joe and it took me it took me a while to warm up to the joe of it all right but but then you know adam and joe it's like peanut butter and jelly it's this genius combination and that's a good bit of advice for people i think i saw it written down somewhere and seeing it written down look very bold someone else giving advice about getting started in comedy and things like that and that's a good bit of advice for people I think I saw it written down somewhere and seeing it written down looked very bold someone else giving advice about getting started in comedy and things like that if you've got a funny friend get them involved

yes I think also you can't always see everything yourself the potential of something and if someone's in it with you because there are dark moments of despair and they can like cheer you on and you can cheer them on like i mean i well wonder like i don't think would exist

were it not for randy and i think without him i wouldn't have done it it would have been impossible yeah i mean you've been in and out of a relationship with randy there was a period when you were together right yes so we've been out of the relationship for the last 13 years so we were together for like 20 years when we met at film school we were an item right and uh then filming party monster was the the movie was what finished us off. Oh really? Yes. I just remember one morning realising oh this is not this part of the relationship

was over but we continued to work together. Yeah which I really admire and I'm impressed by. Well we went to couples therapy which was crazy. I mean at one point the therapist because we were really

mad at each other and and just not really talking so the therapist's strategy was to jump around the room and to come over on my side of the room and stand behind me and put on my voice and say really i'm feeling this and then run over to where randy was sitting and put on randy's voice and you paid someone just to take the piss out of you basically it was like this is completely ridiculous it's so embarrassing um but it was useful i think so that was a total waste of money yeah well we did it for like we did like three or four sessions and then then we're like, I cannot. This is just, you know, let's just break up.

Let's just be friends so that we never have to do that again. Right. That's great, man. I mean, I think Joe and I went through something similar. I think you have to when you work closely with someone. You do, yeah. It becomes difficult. The point about relationship, I think, is I was just thinking about they grow. So the longer any relationship i think is i was just thinking about they grow so the longer

any relationship goes on it surely is like it's like a sort of pokemon go it's increasing levels of difficulty yeah it it can't be any other way exactly that's true isn't it and i know it seems so obvious but now you mention it it's like yeah. Of course they develop and they go through different stages. You have in your mind an idea of a friendship as just being a thing that you can rely on and it's always there. And, you know, you've got to work to maintain it, but it's this thing. But no, of course it changes and goes through different stages and the dynamic shifts and the power shifts around.

How is your relationship now? Our relationship is good, me and Joe. Yeah, I just did a cameo on Joe's new film. He is shooting as we speak. I'm excited. It looks really good, and it was great seeing him on set. He was on really good form, and, you know, I love him, and I'm happy for him now rather than feeling threatened by his success,

which I certainly did for a while after his first film came out. But what did you ever look at us when we were doing the Adam and Joe show and sort of think, oh, watch out. Watch out? Yeah, when Joe and I were working, because we used to make the show in the offices of World of Wonder. You did, yeah. Upstairs. Yeah, in Brixton. Yeah.

And you had an upstairs office area above the body shop. Right, right. And we went and that became our room. We were locked in there. Yeah, you said, okay, that's your floor now. And you can turn that into your bedroom. Right. okay, that's your floor now, and you can turn that into your bedroom.

At first I was thinking that I would actually genuinely be making the show in my bedroom because that's how we sort of started out doing things. But then I can't remember who it was said, actually, you're going to go mad if you do that. I think you would have done, don't you? Yeah. And your dad would have killed you. Yeah, no, it was definitely a good call. So we had this shared space. out don't you yeah and your dad would have killed you yeah no it was definitely a good call so we had this um shared space but i was my thing was that i was so insecure and i was such a control

freak i wanted the control because i wasn't confident that i had that much to contribute creatively oh i think you're both control freaks yeah yeah oh god yeah both of you yeah and i think probably i imagine that's where the tussle was probably but joe was much more of a laissez-faire control freak in those days he would just be well i think it was difficult for him because so much of it was started out being in my area oh right at home and things like that you know so he felt that i he rightly felt that I was kind of jealously guarding this zone, creative zone. I was the master of it. This is my house. This is on my terms.

What I say goes ultimately. And he was contributing to that. He was kind of a junior partner in that respect. So when it shifted to us doing it at World of Wonder, we were on a level playing field. And then I think I got even more insecure. And then I started totting up the time that he was devoting to actually working on the show. And I'd be thinking, I'm doing more late nights than Joe is. Well, you both worked so insanely hard on it.

I mean, you know what I mean? And that's the only thing I ever, I was always thinking, God, I wish he could just do it quicker. I wish it just didn't take so long. I mean, of course, you can never look at a piece of Chippendale furniture and say, oh, if only it was made like, if it came in a flat pack, I could self-assemble it. But that's, you know, and I always felt like such a crass TV person, always wanting more, faster. No, it wasn't really Chippendale furniture. Because it was beautifully handmade. No, come on.

I mean, the Toy Story is just fantastic. Yeah, but you're right. It was possible. It should have been possible just to churn them out. I mean, you look at Robot Chicken, which came out after we did... Well, Robot Chicken is the Arthas show. Yeah. But they found a way.

They found a way of doing it, of being able to mass produce them and make them look beautiful produce them and make them look beautiful as well and make them look homemade i mean they're almost too well made because you sort of think well one person couldn't possibly make that and our stuff genuinely was homemade and it looked that way but yeah no you know fenton i i let me go on record by saying thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to do all that and and being so fun and positive with it and and you know i had so many fun times and memorable times thanks to you guys and the stresses and strains and anxieties and insecurities that came out of it were all worth it, I think. Oh, thank you.

I mean, it was like, it was just the best experience and the best adventure. And I loved it too. I loved every minute of it. I loved it. I didn't have to do the late nights, you know. I just say genius. How right you were. How right you were.

Wait. This is an advert for Squarespace. Every time I visit your website, I see success. Yes, success. The way that you look at the world makes the world want to say yes. It looks very professional. I love browsing your videos and pics and I don't want to stop. And I'd like to access your members area and spend in your shop. These are the kinds of comments people will say about your website

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Fenton Bailey there of World of Wonder Productions. Thank you very much indeed to Fenton for giving up his time when I was in Los Angeles in November last year. It was lovely to see Fenton again. I wish I saw more of him. And I do owe him so much. You know, I don't think I'd actually heard the full story about him having rescued my tape from the reject pile all those years ago before I got my first job on Takeover TV. I'm very glad he did. I'm sure there are some people who aren't so pleased, but they'll be all

right. Now, quite a bit of podcast business and bits and pieces to get through before I bid you farewell today. The Webby Awards. Wow. Great response from the podcats, the quartermasters and the podcast faithful after my call out last week to say, please vote for me in the People's Voice section of the Webby Internet Awards, which are based in America. And subsequently, I am in a category for this podcast alongside Alec Baldwin and Oprah. They are, I see them as the two big threats, although there's another podcast there, Sex, Death and Money, which is supposed to be very good as well. And I'm sure the other one is too. I keep forgetting the name of it and I fail to write it down. Apologies, no disrespect intended. But yeah, you guys voted en masse.

Thank you very much. And suddenly I went from fifth in my category to first within a few days. I think that probably had the effect of galvanizing some of the other people, especially Alec Baldwin. I think he mobilized the Baldies, whatever they're called. Now he is in first position and I'm trailing second. There's still a few days left to register your votes.

I think the deadline is the 19th of April and I will put a link, I'll pin it to my Twitter feed. So it should be at the top of my Twitter feed there. A simple link that you will be able to click on and then cast your vote for me or whoever else you wish to vote for. Maybe it's Oprah.

Maybe it's Baldwin. Adam Buxton app news now. Occasionally people will get in touch with me and ask where they can hear some of the great great sponsor jingles that i have made in the past oh the great squarespace jingle the vegetarian shoes song the argument on the train for both headphones etc etc because of course the sponsor reads rotate on this podcast they're not burned in as it were they and go. But now you can hear a selection of some of my favourites on the Adam Buxton app.

A free app, which has all sorts of goodies on there and quite a few of the jingles from the podcast and now the sponsor jingles and reads as well, if you are unbelievably bored. Thank you very much indeed to really quite something who have developed the app and are maintaining it really appreciate their continued support there is some paid for content on the app a bonus episode of the podcast in which i chat to garth jennings i think it's 99p you have to pay to listen to that. But really, it's just a way of supporting the ongoing maintenance of the app.

A comedy recommendation for you now. Someone tweeted me the other day and said, when are you going to get Limmy on your show? Glaswegian comedian Limmy, Brian Limmond. And I have actually asked Limmy in the past if he'd be up for coming on the podcast and I think he said yes but we've yet to sort it out I hope that's going to happen but do check out Limmy's homemade show here's the description that's on BBC iPlayer where currently you can see it before Limmy made it onto BBC Scotland with limmy's show he became known through his own rough and ready funny homemade videos when limmy's show stopped limmy took to

vine and youtube racking up millions of views for videos made on nothing more than his phone limmy's homemade show takes the diy style of his homemade videos, the cast of one, the staying at home and losing his marbles, the going out and about and speaking his mind, and puts it on the telly. Limmy jumps from sketch to observation to nonsense. He'll take you down to the Clydeside for a tour of Glasgow and get into an argument with himself. He'll play you some techno nursery rhymes on his synth. He'll show you his toilet and a particular tile that's been bothering him. It's one of those shows that's not very easy to really do justice to in the description, as I believe you have just heard.

But it's really worth seeing, I think. have just heard but it's really worth seeing i think he's got a genius for capturing the way that the mind works when it's idle and when it starts getting a bit frayed and paranoid and he illustrates it by shooting these conversations with himself he shoots them himself he has the conversations with himself playing all the different parts of the conversation apart from anything else it's very cleverly and smoothly edited so that these encounters with different facets of his own mind flow very amusingly but also quite unsettlingly it's good it's good i guess it's not everybody's cup of tea but I found it to be a great cup of tea and finally this week wow this is like a magazine program here's a message that I got from Mark's Twitter Mark is from Welland Garden City East And it says on his profile, co-creator of my sons, Jack and Maxton. Maxton,

that's a good, I haven't heard the name Maxton before. That's a good name. Anyway, Mark's Twitter says, hey, Adam Buxton, I'd like to weigh in on the fun year pronunciation debate. It sounds like you've had previously. Ha ha ha ha ha so he's talking about my struggle to settle on one way of saying the year sometimes i'll say 2018 and then people say no that's too american so then i say 2018 but it's such a mouthful that i end up just making even more of a meal of it. Mark's Twitter says in his message, pre-2000 it was always 1986, since 1066 at least. 2000 to 2009 is a bit awkward, but from 2010 onwards, should it not be 2017? And I think he's right. You know, we were perfectly happy saying 1965, 19, I'm not going to go through all the years, but just saying 19 and then the number after that. Why can't we go back to that?

I think we're safely through the 2000s bit. Yeah, it would have been weird saying 2001, etc. But we can go back now, can't we? 2018, that's perfectly fine. I mean, I'm aware that there are some people who got that memo a while ago, but I wasn't one of them. So that's, thanks, Mark's Twitter. I'm going to adopt that as policy now. 2018 it is. Wow, this is important stuff, but we should head home.

Rose! Rosie! Oh, look at this. Maximum fly pass from the hairy bullet. Phew! Beautiful, man. Well, that's it for this week. Thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell, as ever, for his invaluable production support. To Matt Lamont for additional conversation editing.

Thanks to Really Quite Something Limited for their work on the app. Don't forget to check out the free Adam Buxton app for goodness sake. Do it now. And thanks finally and most especially to you. Wow. You made it right the way through to the end. I wish I could give you some kind of medal or at least a hug. I'm going to hug you. Come on. You stand there. I didn't come on. I'm going to hug you. Come on, you stand there. I said come on. I'm going to hug you, hug you, hug you, hug you. Oh, I went too far, didn't I? That was inappropriate. I'm sorry. Until next time, we share the same hour old space.

For goodness sake, take care. I love you. Bye! Bye! That was echoey. Bye. Subscribe, like and subscribe, subscribe, like and subscribe.次は、ステップ3のトレーニングです。 Thank you.