THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.8 - ROB DELANEY

Episode Date: November 11, 2015

AdamBuxton talks to Rob Delaney, (co writer and co star of Channel 4 sitcom 'Catastrophe') about writing with Sharon Horgan, being a parent, stand up comedy, Adam's recent trip to Barcelona, bothering famous people and dealing with depression (yay!!!) Features a clip from 'Catastrophe' episode 1, series 2. Podcast music/jingles by Adam Buxton except outro music bed from 'Wario’s Woods' game (Dr Buckles remix. Music composed by Shinobu, Soyo Oka, 1994) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Will there be swearing? Yes, there is quite a bit of swearing! 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. Hello. Adam Buxton here. Sorry, I'm just finishing the end of a jazz apple. That's kind of rude, isn't it? Why didn't you just finish the jazz apple, then press record on the audio device buckles? Well, I don't know. I just didn't.

Alright? I've thrown it in a hedgerow now. The core, that is. The core. What a film that was. Listen, this is a very rambly start to the podcast here. I apologize. I'm still finishing my mouthful. That was not the best jazz apple I've ever had. Normally, the jazz apple is just about the most reliably crunchy and sweet apple that I have ever tasted. But that one did not come from my normal supermarket.

I won't tell you which one it came from, but it wasn't quite as good as the ones I normally get. That's my honest voice. That's the voice I use when I'm being honest. If I'm talking to you like this, then I'm just... I'm being insincere and charming. But if I suddenly start talking like this, then I'm just, I'm being insincere and charming. But if I suddenly start talking like this, then it means I'm laying some truth on you, but I have to do

it in a different voice. That's not true. Hey, how are you doing? Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for joining me. And I am, once again, walking beautiful Rosie the dog. Although, she is currently AWOL. I don't know where she is. I just carried on walking on the route. She may well have turned back and headed for home because it is not the nicest of days. headed for home because it is not the nicest of days. It's raining and it is, it's pretty windy. It's quite Vim Winders, fairly bluster Keaton and extremely David Blowey. Sorry, I'm sniffing. I'm getting over another little cold as well that I acquired last week. You may think, Buckles has always got colds. That would not be correct.

My cold safari episode was recorded, well, the voice notes part, was recorded last year. So it's been over a year since my last cold. I don't consider that too bad for the old buckles immune system there anyway I'm getting over it now wasn't too bad if you get it it's one of the better ones going around I think I got it on a plane coming back from Barcelona incidentally thanks for all your tweet suggestions I was in Barcelona a couple of weekends back doing a couple of bug shows and managed to wangle a ticket for my wife to come over with me and so we had a brilliant brilliant weekend out there but I didn't really have time to organize any actual activities so

I ended up rather lazily leaning on Twitter and saying, Hey, has anyone got any ideas for things that a couple of old hipsters could get up to in Barcelona this weekend? And I slightly braced myself for some sarcastic replies, but none came. In fact, they were all extremely helpful, and we ended up enacting many of those suggestions. There was one person, in fact a few people, who suggested a kind of groovy, healthy eating restaurant called Flax and Kale or something. And so we went along there for breakfast feeling a little bit beaten up after a slightly boozy night the night before and it was so great

oh my goodness so it was all, you know, just delicious fruit and they had all kinds of crazy smoothie flavours like lime, ginger, bergamot, lilac, temerity and Jeremy Corbyn's. A tiny bit of his blood. And it was delicious, let me tell you. Oh, just wonderful. But in the meantime, we walked around and we saw lots of the things that people recommended on Twitter. And I talk later on in the podcast as well about another recommendation that I followed up.

And it was just wonderful. We had such a great time. So thanks if you gave us a bit of Barcelona advice. Anyway, boy, it's really windy now. Rosie's miles away. She's thinking, no, no, no, no windy now. Rosie's miles away. She's thinking, no, no, no, no, no. I'm not going to start walking around in this. That's not fun.

I mean, it's nice when the sun comes out and I can chase rabbits and terrorise birds, but no, not this. I'll see you back at home. She's got a very familiar sounding voice. So today's podcast, yes, it features a conversation, as you probably have realised by now, between myself and Rob Delaney, co-writer, co-producer and co-star of Channel 4's sitcom Catastrophe. star of Channel 4's sitcom Catastrophe. That is, I suppose, how he's best known now, even though he's been a well-respected stand-up comedian for many, many years. He's an American man.

I didn't know much about Rob, actually, to be frankly honest. I'd heard he struggles with clinical depression and alcohol addiction, which he has spoken about before, and he talks about that as well on this podcast at the end of our conversation. We met up in an edit suite in central London, where he was sitting in on the edit for one of the last episodes of Series 2 of Catastrophe, and you can probably hear a buzzing in the interview. That is the buzzing of an edit machine filled to the brim with brilliant bits of footage featuring himself and co-writer and star Sharon Horgan, who I hope to speak

to in this podcast at some future point. The show Catastrophe, if you haven't seen it, is really amazingly good. I'm sure you've heard things about it because it is one of those shows that kind of arrived fully formed and it was really a no-brainer. It's like, OK, this all works. And it exploits the talents of both the performer, like Rob and Sharon, brilliantly. All the things they can do, everything just came into focus in that show. And they say things to each other, Sharon and Rob, that I certainly wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable saying in my relationship, for example. But it's very cathartic to hear them going at it.

So I might play a little clip here, just by way of my own podcast teaser. Here we go. Can you move your feet? That's really uncomfortable. No. Can you make your legs less heavy? Are you going to make me do it? Why'd you move my legs like that? I'm sorry. I have a cramp.

You didn't say. That actually hurt me. I said it was uncomfortable. I didn't know how to give you a diagnosis. I asked you to move them, and you didn't move them. I was just really aggressive. I wasn't aggressive. You're so aggressive. I'm aggressive. Agg was just really aggressive. I wasn't aggressive. You're so aggressive. I'm aggressive. Aggressive. Aggressive.

It was even aggressive the way you said that, Mark Wahlberg. I'm not aggressive. When have I ever been aggressive to you? Just now, the way you moved my feet. I have a fucking cramp. Don't loom over me. Don't threaten me. What? Do you know what threatened means? Yeah, and I felt threatened. You felt threatened? What what threatened means? Yeah, and I felt threatened.

You felt threatened? What are you, a blogger? I felt threatened. Post. Fucking Syrians are threatened. I felt threatened. You live on a cream puff. Do you want to take a walk and just like, calm down? Okay. Where are you going? Out.

Out? What are you, a teenager? Going for a drive. Bullshit, you're going to McDonald's. Fine, take your purse and get out of my house. Uh, this is my house. I bought this house. Fine, well then get off my rug that I bought in Amsterdam where I had sex with a guy whose last name I didn't even learn. Oh, like I haven't done that. With women. There you go. That certainly made me chuckle when I watched it last night. So look, let's go to the conversation with Rob and I will be back for Mo Rambling at the end. Here we go.

Ramble Chat, let's have a Ramble Chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's tune the fat And have a ramble chat Put on your conversation coat And find your talking hat Yes, yes La, la, la, la, la, la

La, la, la, la, la, la La, la, la, la, la, la La, la, la, la, la, la, la So we are in a fancy edit suite. Yeah, we are. In central London. What are you doing here? We're editing series two of Catastrophe, specifically episode five out of 6, so nearly done. How are you feeling about it?

Very happy, very gratified, grateful. I can't believe that we're enjoying Series 2. I mean, it felt crazy uh anybody would want to watch series one we knew we enjoyed it you know when we were making it then people liked it which was crazy and i was sure when we started to put two together i think well you know it's just not you know we didn't do a very good job and the fact is i'm really really enjoying watching it get cut together. I'm excited to release it into the water table. And so you've turned around a whole second series in the same year. That's outrageous.

It feels outrageous. It was a lot of work. Yeah, was it? Yeah. Have you done a lot of writing with other people? No. This is really the first thing of any sort of stature. But you've written books, though, before.

I did write a book, yeah. I did write a book, which was a hateful experience compared to writing with a partner. Writing with a partner, a lot more fun. Yeah. The older I get. When I was younger, I thought, oh, maybe I'm a solo writer, misanthrope on the fringes. And no, in fact, I'm a social animal, and I like to be with my fellow man and woman. And so right now, I don't know if I would want to write another book anytime too soon,

because that's kind of lonely. You have to do it in a basement. And are you quite disciplined? No, not with a book writing with sharon i am because we sort of want to prod each other along you know we want to impress each other we want to drive each other um sounds quite sexual so far it does it yeah i mean um i wouldn't know um i you're both happily married we are yeah no i mean i wouldn't know you're both happily married we are yeah no I mean I wouldn't know because the way I impregnated

my wife is I issued my essence into a diet Pepsi can behind a barn and then she just poured it onto her ovary so I've never made love to a woman but that's the best most efficient way I think that's how it's just easier doctors Doctors recommend that way.

Yeah, they do in America. They do anyway. Um, so maybe not diet Pepsi. That's, that's true. There's a lot of, there's a lot of weird stuff in there, but, uh, no, it's, I enjoy writing with a partner cause it's fun, you know, and you're talking and you can talk it out. You can write in a more performative manner and, more performative manner, which also polices you if you're saying it out loud. You might write something on your own, and then you go to read it out loud, and you're like, hey, that would never come out of a human mouth.

It's too hoity-toity or literary. Right. It's too wordy. You don't want to hear that. If you're watching a TV show and somebody talks like that, you don't want to hear that. I mean, that would stop. If you're watching a TV show and somebody talks like that, you're like, oh, right, I'm watching a TV show. And you don't want that to happen.

Yes. Presumably, if you're happy with the basic premise and there aren't too many problems there and you're not suddenly going to run into a brick wall with the whole show, then it takes care of itself and it is fun. And you can just uh go on flights of fancy and say well what terrible thing can happen to them today for for me uh a percentage of what you just said is true uh which is that it's fun can we can sharon and i still run into For example, our episode six, we really just threw away and rewrote wholesale.

We had no other massive problems like that with the rest of series two. But episode six, we wrote it and we were like, I think we have to write a whole new one. Even though we had outlined it assiduously and there were isolated funny things in it, it just didn't kind of cohere into something we wanted to do. Unfortunately, sometimes you have to actually write it before you realize that, you know. So we can still have major, I mean, if we're a van traveling down the motorway, we can still absolutely drive into a ditch. And then when you have driven into a ditch, do you start fighting with the other fellow in the van and saying, I never want to see you again. This is a nightmare. I wish I'd never got in this van.

We don't. We'll get mad at God. We don't. We'll get mad at God. We'll get mad at our partnership or something. But, you know, we won't snipe at each other because we kind of, it's frustrating, but we know nobody did anything wrong. You know, somebody tried to tell a funny story that was, you know, heartfelt and moved in the right direction and it didn't work. You know, we try to do a hard thing but we had a problem and then we've got to fix it so and there aren't do you have though those moments where you lose confidence either in yourself or the other

person and it becomes difficult and you think yeah for sure sure. Again, we're pretty democratic, and I think we pretty function kind of yin and yangy in that I'm not going to be like – I wouldn't look at something and be like, well, we've got a Sharon problem here. And nor would I on most days look at my own sort of contribution for the day and think like well poor sharon having to work with me you know it's more of course there's problems and the the what separates i think probably the professional writer who has a modicum of occasional happiness from a miserable person or someone who isn't writing at all is that you get back on the horse or the van i don't want to mix metaphors but and i would like to pronounce the van and you ride it like a horse exactly yeah i also mispronounce i don't want to mix metaphors is what i said what am i a kiwi i don't want to mix metaphors i also don't want to

mispronounce metaphors the word that's almost worse than mixing them. In a lot of ways it is. Because it makes you look ignorant. Yeah. And it is a show that has, I think, appealed to a lot of people partly because of a level of truthfulness and honesty that they haven't seen in that kind of show before. That's what I got from it. Yeah, if that's true, that's great. I mean, certainly, you know, neither Sharon nor I are old, but we're not 22 years old either. So we're we kind of we love to be silly, of course, and shame on us if there's not capital S silliness in each episode. episode but the overarching thing we wanted to do something that we cared about which was really looking at the male female dynamic and uh and and what that's like to be in a marriage and

to be parents and it's extremely difficult it's extremely funny um you have three children i have three children just like you when you told me you had three kids, I was so happy. And I just kind of relaxed because I felt here's a man that can understand what my life is like. I'm in the future from you, though. Your children are that much younger than mine. And I would describe your situation as still being in the tunnel. Which is what I say to anyone who has one or more children who are younger than two.

Yeah. Because that is maximum full time. It's pretty physically brutal. I mean, you know, you're trying to change a shit-filled messy nappy with a kid who's just started solid food so their diapers are just like the Holocaust.

It's like dog shit, isn't it? What's that? It's like dog Holocaust. It's like dog shit, isn't it? What's that? It's like dog shit. It's like dog shit. As soon as they start eating meat. Oh, no. I have no sympathy for a parent changing a diaper. I do have a little bit of sympathy, though, for the one trying to change a diaper while a two-year-old and a four-year-old crawl on them, try to pull their hair out, are biting each other.

That's hard. So, yeah, I have three kids under the age of five um it's it's really very difficult um i'd have them all again as the exact same people and three boys mate isn't that interesting because here we are you know we've got beards we're sitting um crisscross applesauce that's what they they now call what I called Indian style as a child. It's very racist. It's very racist. So now we're saying crisscross applesauce.

Okay, that's not racist. And so what I'm saying is we're a couple of, you know, I fancy myself a progressive gentleman. I identify publicly as a feminist in private. We know that's not true. But I mean to say, I would surely go out into the street with a baseball bat to fight for the right of women to have all equal rights and everything.

Then at the same time, now that I have children, I'm also becoming an elderly hunchback of a man who just says vitriolic things about either gender, both negative, mind you. I have no kind words for men. I don't think that they're better. I think men and women are both terrible. I think boys and girls are terrible, each in their own way. And while we all deserve equal rights, unfortunately, I'm learning as a parent that a lot of the stereotypical things that i wanted to

as a parent and fight and resist and really just turn back the tide turn over a new leaf sure maybe be given some awards as i did it is just that's just balderdash what kind of thing are you thinking of boys we're gonna come into any space and they're going to break and ruin everything in it they might throw other people out the window and that they're gonna do that by and large you can round it up to a hundred percent of them are going to do it some of them aren't but it's still closer to a hundred percent whereas girls are gonna sit quietly and play and they're gonna do things like um exclude one of the like there's three girls in a room they're gonna going to exclude one of them just for fun. They can't help themselves.

And it's so fascinating to observe these things. I think that that's children under five in general, male or female. They did a study where they actually... I just want to say quickly, I'm happy to be proven wrong here. Well, by no means am I going to prove you wrong. I'm the master of half remembering things that I once overheard or read somewhere in a magazine. And then it turns out that my facts are entirely wrong. But as far as I'm aware, if you poke your head into a classroom of under fives, they all seem to be getting along and chatting away and there's lots of hubbub and they're all playing happily together.

But if you actually listen to what each one of them are saying, there's almost no communication going on between them whatsoever. They're just bollocking onto themselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, for sure. Yeah, it's just bananas. And it's after that age, I think, where they start becoming aware of other people. Maybe it's not five. Maybe it's younger than that.

But then at a certain point, they do actually start to empathize and consider what it is to communicate with another human being. Yeah, my four-year-old boy. And I think girls probably do that faster than boys. Oh, they for sure do. Yeah. All the things about girls being more mature and better at things at an earlier age are beyond true. year old boy and i think girls probably do that faster than boys oh they for sure do yeah all the things about girls being more mature and better at things at an earlier age are beyond true um they're true plus they're truer than true maxi true maxi true um yeah my four-year-old when he

shows empathy which he's really beginning to be able to do i usually just sit down and cry for a little while because it's so beautiful i don't even know what to do. Isn't that so funny? Your kids which you would gigglingly run into traffic for, not even to save them, just like if they were like, run into traffic daddy, it'll make me happy. You'd be like, okay. When they sleep or when they do something, like you look at your kid when you're asleep and they're like, oh they're so beautiful. And it's really, I think in a way you're almost like reconnecting with a part of yourself that they're really trying to murder when they're awake and uh and then i don't know what i'm

talking about you can see i'm very tired i mean they were out they woke me up in the middle of the night oh yeah our baby sleeps quite well our two-year-old wakes up just all the time uh i'm actually taking him to a doctor soon because he snores louder than a man oh man and you shouldn't do that when you're two you're not supposed to snore louder than a man roll him over onto his side yeah um but uh i'll solve that um do they know what you do do they understand they're starting to get it uh you know like they'll see me on on tv and stuff um they don't watch catastrophe of course um and in fact if they never see it that would be okay with me i mean when they're older it would be cool um like what about the rest of

your family because catastrophe i i wonder sometimes in the sex scenes like what do your partners make of it uh what what does your partner make of some of that stuff because you must be drawing on some real bed tactics yeah and things that have happened to you or is that not true oh bed tactics and stuff you know i don't know because definitely we for like intimacy type stuff i think we just more ask like what would be funny to show on television i mean definitely some of the other stuff we uh we borrow from our own lives of course and from things that might have happened with our spouses or even just people that we know and stuff certainly we our characters function to

sort of synthesize just things we've heard you know so that's not not autobiographical in the strict sense. The figure we jokingly throw around is it's like 49% true what happens on the show. It's probably less so in series two. But yeah, the intimacy type stuff, no. I mean, that would be weird. I wouldn't even want to tell sharon in a room what uh you know my wife and i do no of course it would be very embarrassing so what do you do though because you there must be times when you are drawing on personal experience and do you try and disguise

it as something you've just thought of oh that's funny yeah i, I'm not above that. I would certainly fold an idea in that was too personal for myself to the concept of it being a flight of fancy that I just thought of. Yeah, no, yeah. I would do that to Sharon. And she to you, presumably. I hope so, yeah. I mean, do you watch them with your partner? Yeah, I watched all of series one, I think, with my wife.

Series two, she saw the first two at a screening. So we're about to find out if we'll see the last few episodes together or not. I know next week we won't be together, so I guess it's up to my wife if she wants to watch it or not. And she likes it, presumably, does she? Yeah. It's always weird when you watch stuff with your wife slash partner i find my wife finds it incredibly embarrassing to watch anything i'm in oh wow okay because she's worried for me right yeah that's sweet she doesn't want people to hate

me it's weird because i used to think like well that just means that you think i'm shit yeah yeah yeah and you're worried and you just don't want to deal with people letting me know that right but it isn't that really because she does she does laugh at my jokes and stuff but um she's just worried she doesn't like seeing live stand-up comedy she doesn't like that anxiety that someone might fail right okay you know. You know what I mean? Yeah. You do stand-up, right? Sure do. Sure you do. And have you continued?

I guess you haven't had much time, have you? No, but I'm going on tour in the spring, and I've played around the UK a fair bit. So, yeah, there's a lot more stand-up coming up, actually. When did you start doing stand-up? 2007 is when I started doing it all the time the first time i ever did it was like 2003 you like it oh christ i love it so much how do you go about getting stuff for that together then um i write on stage i'll think up a bit you know and have it like bullet pointed in my mind and then go on stage and work it out on stage.

I used to write material out more before I did it in the earlier days. But that rarely results in the funniest sort of personal stand up. I think it's best to discover it in front of a crowd. Not in front of a big theater, but at a comedy club where you beat it out and you see how far you want to take it and what direction you want to go. So I'll think up things that are on my mind and then I'll go discuss them on stage.

And I record my stand-up so that I can listen to it afterwards. Oh, you actually do that? Yeah, audio. Because a lot of people record them them but I don't know how many people actually listen back to them oh I certainly don't listen to it all the time I just need it just in case I need to go back and check the wording because sometimes you get a nice

little riff on stage and you're like oh how did that go yeah good luck remembering that so that's why I audio record don't care about video yeah um yeah watching myself do stand-up no need did you ever see that seinfeld uh documentary comedian many times love it with orny adams have you ever gigged with orny adams no i never have um i've seen him around uh but i have never been in a lineup with him or spoken to him. Yeah, I don't think I've even...

For anyone listening who doesn't know what I'm talking about, there was a documentary that came out in 2002 or thereabouts, maybe? Sounds about right. About Jerry Seinfeld relaunching his stand-up career after they finished doing the Seinfeld TV show. And it juxtaposes the story of seinfeld going back into the clubs with this um story of a a then fairly young comedian called orny adams who was trying to make a name for himself and he's pretty like he's good he's like a solid technically gifted hard-working comedian yeah but he's got this unbelievable level of sort of self-belief and um

self-absorption and he the whole the whole business of doing comedy for him is a science yeah and they go into his room and he's got shelves heaving with tapes of all his shows that he's done in notebooks where he goes through and he watches every set that he does back and he takes notes and yeah and it's it's sort of half impressive and half just like mate yeah what are you that's not what it's about is it funny because you know we all i've gone and knocked my microphone over i i hope that i haven't shuttled the whole thing is that a word do you say that here shuttled shuttled i don't know i mean i would say shuttled if whole thing. Is that a word you say out here? Shuttled? Shuttled?

I don't know. I mean, I would say shuttled if I was moving from point A to point B. Shuttered? I don't know what I'm trying to say. Shat on? Shat on, that's what I have to say. Here, hang on. Let me aim it round at your magnificent beardy face a little more.

There you go. Cool. Okay. Yeah, we all obsess over that stuff i mean one thing i remember from orny adams was he was going to do a set on letterman and he they wanted him to change a disease the name of a disease that was in one of his jokes from lupus to psoriasis and he for whatever reason you know they maybe they thought they didn't want to get a laugh out of that name of that disease or whatever which i mean call it a mistake number one diseases are funny uh no matter what you know the worse the better um and he had to change it from lupus to psoriasis and he really didn't want to and he was

like weighing the sort of comedic weight of each word and i'm quite sympathetic to that i mean yes because uh you know the lang the music of language and just whatever the comic weight i don't even quite know what lupus is i know it can kill you and it's debilitating. So it's, it's freighted with, yeah, I think a lot of people don't know what lupus is. I think they're aware that it can be terrible. Yes. So that's like scary and mysterious,

which are major building blocks of, of laughs. Yeah. So, and then he had to change it to psoriasis. Everybody has freaking psoriasis. Who doesn't know somebody has psoriasis, you know? So that's not. Haven't you seen The Singing Detective? Yeah. So I really felt for him that he had to change lupus has psoriasis? Haven't you seen The Singing Detective? Yeah. So I really felt for him that he had to change lupus to psoriasis.

Okay. All right. Anyway. But then he's also nuts. I mean, the guy presented in that documentary, he certainly wouldn't want to hang out with. I mean, he's bananas, you know? Yeah.

And super obsessive, which a lot of comedians are. But then I don't know. I mean, I also have a hard time now as somebody who is for the current moment able to make a living from stand-up it's also hard to criticize other people who can do that because you just know how hard it is you know and like anybody like are you making people laugh are you making people laugh so dependably that they come and pay you to do it? Then whether or not I think you're necessarily funny or you're my cup of tea,

I'm still going to identify with you a little bit because you are climbing, I won't say Everest, but maybe Mount Rainier outside of Seattle. Not quite as dangerous as Everest, but maybe die yeah every few years on the on the mountain but do you find yourself backstage happily getting into all the comedy science conversations about like you know what comedians talk about all the sort of forensic sometimes sometimes not yeah that can be fun yeah with my friends you know but i don't don't want to, you know, that's also selective. That's like, and it's not like trade secrets cause there's no such thing as a secret. You could give somebody a bound book of all your life,

work habits and secrets and they're not going to do a goddamn thing with it. So there's no, um, danger in that. But I guess I'm selective with who I comedy nerd out with. I don't know. I don't know necessarily why. Cause maybe cause it's kind of intimate a little bit. I don't know with i don't know i don't know necessarily why because maybe because it's kind of intimate a little bit i don't know i don't know and what's

what was the stuff that you really enjoyed when you were growing up uh comedy wise um you know what's funny is uh the new star wars movie is coming out and um i remember some of the first rewinding I ever did on a VCR was in Star Wars, the original Star Wars. Chewbacca is on the Death Star. Or he might be on Darth Vader's big ship. Anyway, some commander level, whatever, sees him. Maybe lieutenant, not quite commander sees chewbacca goes and get that thing out of here and i remember screaming laughing at that the guy calling him a thing and uh and rewinding it again and again and laughing at that another one and when leia calls him a big walking carpet that's quite so good that's

pretty good so good i mean so that was one of my first big laughs probably the moment that i understand understood like the real power of comedy like the alchemical power of what comedy could be was when i was in a restaurant in massachusetts uh where i grew up and some guy came into the table next to us and he was late for lunch and he apologizes to the people there now we're in a little town outside of Boston Massachusetts the guy comes in he goes hey sorry I'm late I had to park in fucking Tel Aviv and I just was like what it was like the world stopped for me. Like, he didn't have to park in Tel Aviv. But he also wasn't lying.

He was using language to express a concept in a way that had just a dissonance that just you had to laugh. And he said fuck, which was cool as well. And then Tel Aviv, what a lovely sound that is you know and so to me that's when i was like huh i thought i had stumbled upon like a wizard who like whoops by mistake had like done a magic trick um and so to me that to me is like maybe i heard that at the right moment um so to sort of be indoctrinated into like I wanted to reproduce that. And to me, they don't jokes don't get much better than that right there. You know, you're trying to ease tension.

You're late. You're not supposed to be late. You know, like maybe the people are getting hungry and they're frustrated with you. You come and you say something that makes everybody smile and laugh, including a little kid at the next table. I mean, what a mitzvah to do that. I said mitzvah because Tel Aviv is in Israel. Brilliant, man.

Your stuff is very finely worked. Thank you. Yeah, I'm operating at a high level right now. Well, if you read the Talmud, you recognize... No, I don't know. We're out of my depth. I didn't tell you like who you were like what comedians did you like as a kid oh no not really i was just thinking you you you did exactly what i hoped you might do uh in a far less boring way um than i was imagining if that makes sense you know what i mean like well basically i was just thinking what an incredibly lame question what are your comedy influences and actually you gave me a more interesting answer

than just saying well i enjoyed uh the work of just a list i just give you a list that's like how verner herzog says you know that if facts were the important thing then the manhattan phone book would be the most interesting book in the world but it's not that's why even when you're making a documentary you have to just really put your imprimatur on it, tell the story you want to tell. There's a whole genre of... I've just suddenly noticed that there's a load of American

comedians who are into doing Werner Herzog impressions. Well, I mean, he's an amazing singular character. You know, at the end of the day, he's just amazing and you don't need to put him through um your own second rate um psyche to make him interesting you know what i mean and he's just so amazing on his own but then also yes he has a funny voice and is easy to ape uh which have you

seen do you like his stuff presumably um have you seen the one about Kinski, My Best Fiend? Yeah. Oh, that's quite a thing, isn't it? Fitzcarraldo. What's the documentary about Fitzcarraldo? Burden of Dreams. Burden of Dreams. Jesus Christ.

That's good. The Jungle Murder. And then he makes fun of himself beautifully in Incident at Loch Ness. I haven't seen that. Yeah, the Zach Penn film. That's amazing. What's that one? It's a joke documentary where Zach Penn recruits actual Werner Herzog to go to Loch Ness.

And it's in the style of a Herzog documentary. No way. Herzog is so on board with it in such a delicious way i mean it's really fun and it's not too cheesy because sometimes that kind of thing can be a bit self-congratulatory yeah no good old vernon because zach penn is a sure hand you know um that's storytelling so he knows what he's doing do you watch a lot of documentaries no No. I mean, yes, number-wise. If you're on a transatlantic flight and you have the, you know, they've got quite an amazing selection now, don't they,

on those things of stuff you can watch, what are you going to watch? Well, first I'm going to see if they have Catastrophe. Yeah. And then I'm going to watch it. See if you can leave comments. Yeah, I'm going to watch it long enough so that I can, like, hit the star or the recommend or something like that while I read. So I'll just turn it on and let it run.

Thank you. Then after that, I mean, I watched on a London to LA flight not too long ago. I watched the whole first series of True Detective. I watched eight hours in a row of True Detective. Oh, my God. Did that not just make you... Oh, I was insane at the end of it in a great way. I had a lot of fun doing it.

It's quite a depressing show, though, isn't it? Yeah. Did you watch the whole first series? Yeah, man. Yeah, but you know what? It's funny because it was kind of an influence on Catastrophe because their conversations that they have in the car, the way they sort of philosophize in a way that, you know,

there's questionable as to whether or not it's advancing the story but they're having fun conversations yeah that's what it is and isn't so uh yeah i loved true detective's curious one i find myself i sort of binge on these things like a lot of people right with the with the box sets yeah and it's like podcasts as well i suppose i've talked about this before on this podcast about how much you can get obsessed by a person who you suddenly have this relationship with via this medium where you're hearing these conversations and they become part of your routine. whether it's The Wire or for me, it was the first time I watched Breaking Bad. I was obsessed by it and I couldn't stop watching it because it was so compelling and brilliant. But I began noticing that I was pretty sad like a lot of the time because it is horrible what's happening in this thing.

And all these individuals are basically having their lives irrevocably ruined. And I just started getting very melancholy. Am I taking it too seriously? No, no, no. That makes sense. You should. I think that's a sign of emotional health. Does that happen to me?

Not that I can think of, but I also don't watch a lot of box sets. It is rare for me to delve into that. Maybe, you know, like a book or something. That's why you get stuff done. Well, you know, my wife, it's funny because my wife is such an amazing partner for me to have. Because she doesn't like to watch a lot of TV. And our time, once we get the kids together, is pretty limited. So if she doesn't want to watch something, I don't get to watch it yeah so that's that and uh so she is just like military in her insistence that we get outside get into nature read read aloud to each other i mean she's it's like robotic in a wonderful way. So she really provides an amazing sort of, uh, skeleton for keeping our intellects going.

Yeah. And so I'm very grateful for that. It's very interesting because we sort of collide and butt heads in a lot of different ways, but it's, it's good. It's good for me. You know,

I don't know what she would say about that, but she's a very positive influence on my life and the way that I spend my time, big time. I mean, the thing is that me and my wife, we do tend to enjoy the same kind of level of, well, we have what we call party night, which is Friday, Friday night and Saturday night. what we call party night which is friday friday night and saturday night and that tends to be just like uh once the children are dispatched we've got we've got like quite a nice big projection screen that you pull down and uh stick on the projection screen and just watch like um whatever's on goggle box oh i love it and great i saw one of the women from goggle box uh at the victoria station the other day oh which one i got so excited can't remember her name you know the two black women yeah they're the best oh so excited um sandy and sandra oh they're you're kidding oh god that's so great

i don't know if it was sandy or sandra um i guess because they both have sandra um they both have will both wear like fantastic outfits and nails and stuff yeah so i don't know how to tell you i think it's the lady with the short hair has um these demented rings that she wears like there's always this one typically has longer hair okay yeah yeah sandra anyway i got very excited yeah they're great they should have their own show they really should i didn't go up to her and be like oh my god yeah you know because i you know what it's like to get that and it's not like a big value add to your day when somebody does that you'd kind of rather enough people are going to do it anyway you might as well just be able to walk down the street so i figured the nicest thing

i could do for her was not to freak out yes yes i managed not to sometimes like a nice smile is really good you know when you when you see that someone has recognized you and they just that could be nice it's i like those yeah yeah and you think okay um and they're like we saw ron wood the other day we were in barcelona me and my wife i was doing some a couple of shows in barcelona and uh we were wandering around during the day my wife's like there's ron wood wow and i thought she was joking like it was an old guy that looks like well a lot of catalonian women look like round wood now they're like all beautiful and amazing a lot of old ones maybe and if this isn't sexy enough already i mean obviously i you know i don't think i have to sell your

listeners on the fact that spain is a candidate for best place in the world yeah that I it so happens I speak French and I can remember getting along kind of okay in Catalonia because Catalonia is a kind of blend of French and Spanish. Oh, really?

I mean, it's just a sexy place that takes naps. Yeah, yeah. Stays up late. I mean, get over yourself. Smoke wherever you want.

Rest of the world. that's not really we're nipping at their heels you know uh you know todd barry sure do love him yeah great american comedian and he um i tweeted that i was in barcelona and said has anyone got any good suggestions for what me and my wife could do anything for a couple of old hipsters to get up to. And he recommended this bar called Bar Pastis. Oh, wow. And so I tracked it down and I said, come on, let's go and investigate Todd's Bar. So we go there. I don't know exactly what I was expecting,

but it was down a little alley off La Rambla, off the main tourist drag. And you go down and suddenly you're in a weird kind of pee-pee-smelling little tiny street. And at the end of it is this old, weird bar that we go into, and it is the size of a small toilet cubicle. You know what I mean? Like the one we met at, or even smaller?

Smaller than that. Oh, my God. Yeah, less... That was very roomy there was room to maneuver if you remember i do and um in this one though there was there was like two two guys sat at the bar actually no there's three people sat at the bar there's this old bloke who looked a bit like philip larkin who was um the bartender um and there was a middle-aged couple who were setting up their mics

and just about to start a set over like two feet away from you on this tiny little raised platform and the whole place was all done up with crazy bits of old photographs and knick-knacks and there was a strange bit of sculpture a weird mannequin

with fairy lights draped on it hanging from the ceiling and the ceiling itself was black and it was like the hull of an old galleon or something you know wow it was such a cool place but it was one of those things you go in there there was no way we could go in and immediately turn around and go out because we were in the little special box and we had to stay there. I was thinking, okay, let's see how this goes. But then the couple started playing and it was just great. And they were singing this kind of slightly wonky, demented... I might play a little bit here right now because I recorded some of it.

No fun. Here's a clip. it just ended up being one of those things it's like oh this is brilliant we would never have found this place it's one of the good things about Twitter. Yeah, yeah, truly. That's funny. When you said asking for suggestions of what to do in Barcelona, and you said Todd Barry weighed in with a suggestion, I was positive he was going to tell you that you should watch one of his stand-up specials.

My Barcelona crowd work special. Oh, I went to one of his crowd work shows. It was so great. Yes, he was talking about maybe doing some in the UK. Oh, God, he should. Asking about venues and saying, do you think it would be a good idea to do it? Do you think people would be mean, he was saying. And I was thinking, no.

No, I think some people might be. But if, okay, people people there are enough people here uh certainly in london who are going to know who he is uh and know the setup and then he still runs the ship it's not like he's at the crowd's mercy you know he's he really knows what he's doing so i think he should do it here especially in a country where people love to talk back. Yeah. No, it would be great. It would be really good. But yeah, Ron Wood.

And he looked like an old puppet. And I was surprised. And he looked totally carefree. You see maybe some famous people, and they look hounded and hunted. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're just trying to get to the next place without getting hassled. Fair enough. hounded and hunted yeah they're just trying to get to the next place without getting hassled you know fair enough but he was just like wandering around chuckling away to the lady that he was with who my wife informs me is his latest um partner and um you know didn't have shades on or anything like that and it did cross my mind to sort of go up and i mean for for a tiny second yeah you know go up and say hello

or something but then i thought no of course you wouldn't do that because yeah his life his daily routine must be just every five minutes he has oh yeah must be a nightmare yeah i'm trying i think like probably i the most famous person i've ever just like seen just in, in public, not guarded by a billion people are on a stage or whatever is Ringo Starr. And, um, I, I definitely just didn't bother. Yeah.

Yeah. Have you ever gone up to someone famous? I don't think I have. Um, not in, not in public. You know, I might've introduced myself if we were at a thing or whatever.

Yeah. You know, but no, I generally do don't. I remember my uncle pushed me in front of Harry Connick Jr. when I was 12, maybe, because we had gone to see a show of his. Uh, cause we had gone to see a show of his and then we were able to go backstage and, um, and my uncle, I didn't know how to approach him or what to say. Like when really, if it's just been his show, a nice entry would be like, Hey, great show. You know, there's, it's a pretty easy way to do it, but I just didn't know what to do. And my uncle pushed me in front of him and said, this is my nephew, Robbie, and he has all your records and tapes.

And I was like, and, uh, you know what i do remember though is he shook his hand he stuck his hand out for me to shake which i did and he had really hairy hands oh which made me feel comfortable because i have hairy hands so i'm glad my uncle did that because i got to hold hands with another hairy handed man yeah um but at the same time you know i knew it can be really fraught you know saying hello to people that you don't know. Yes, yes, it's usually inadvisable. Jingle break, it's a break from the podcast. In between the next bit and the rhythm once last.

Every now and then you have to take a little rest. Otherwise you're going to get tired and depressed. Take a look around, think that you exist. Think about the person you last kissed. Right, that's enough now, think about peace. Think about sausages, think about trees, think of alien vehicles moving out in space

think about the wonder on the little baby's face now think of Stevie Wonder's face on the baby's face now stop thinking completely because you're ready for the next part of the podcast here it is I mean at the moment I'm getting a picture of you having not really ever met you properly Because you're ready for the next part of the podcast.

Here it is. I mean, at the moment, I'm getting a picture of you, having not really ever met you properly before, of being quite well balanced. Like, you seem to not have too many hang-ups. Is that fair? No. Well, fair, I don't know.

I would say it's not accurate. I mean, I'm a pretty... Like, I don't exercise as much now that I have a third kid. I used to love to exercise. I do have to do... My life has regimented in the sense that, like, I have been sober for 13, almost 14 years now. So I don't drink. After you had a car accident.

After I had a car accident. And So I don't drink. After you had a car accident. After I had a car accident. And so I don't drink. I do find I have to take pretty good care of my mind and body generally, or my mind at least won't work very well. But you suffer from depression, is that right? Yes. So I take antidepressants. Yeah.

And so I have to do that. And then in addition to that, I have to eat fairly well. I definitely have to get enough sleep. So it's almost like to prop up my jalopy of a mind and a brain. I do have to stay somewhat fairly regimented. But once sort of the basics are taken care of i mean all i fantasize about now is just sleep just weeks and weeks of sleep because with three kids under the age of five yeah and a tv show in which you know we write and star in and and produce um it's just

you know i really would love to lie motionless on a floor for at least three weeks and then get up and go to the bathroom and then lie down for another three. Um, so those are my greatest fantasies right now. And in fact, I said fantasies, it's just one fantasy. I just want to sleep. Um, but I don't, and I won't get to for some time. So I guess why not work, you know, with the waking hours? Are you one of these people that needs to work in order to just, because if you weren't working, you would get too introverted and then you would start to slide into a problematic mental area?

Yeah, it's important for me to work. I think it's important for everybody to work. I'm paraphrasing, but Chekhov said something along the lines of, yeah, we're not here to be happy. We're here to work and I like that yeah we have to work we're worker bees

but do you have signals where you think oh hang on like I'm feeling pretty bad I'm kind of sliding into a bad area now and if you do have those then what are they like for you is it like you just start to get negative with yourself or you start to just feel bleak about everything yeah doom feel doomy um like nothing like things are gonna start to really uh systemically fall apart and so you become sort of chronically pessimistic yeah i can

but i also have learned for me the big thing i have to do is uh fake it till you make it which is uh okay pretend I have an appetite you know pretend um I it's bedtime and I have to get into bed you know pretend um I want to exercise pretend I have to put one foot in front of the other and get these tasks done so I definitely um but do you fall off the wagon sometimes? You just think, fuck this, I'm just going to do what I want. Not for very long. Because then everything would unravel. Yeah, the thing though is, and this is a good thing about families, I think,

is I've sort of booby-trapped my life with all these people who need me. And I need them, you know? So that's why I actually don't think of that as like a negative. I mean, that's one of the big positives of people in your life with good people and becoming all interwoven and codependent, not in a negative sense, but you know, I can't really, if I, you know, just fuck off on my own, other people are going to be hurt. I don't want to do that, you know. And then I can work backwards. It's easy for me to think of other people first and realize they need me.

And then after catering to them a little bit, be like, oh, hey, look at that. This is also good for me, you know. And maybe that's backwards. I don't know. But I don't care. It seems like you've reached a point of enlightenment that's still ahead of me. No, certainly not. Certainly not.

Yeah, like I said, I don't exercise now that I have three kids. I take two antidepressants every morning, which I feel... Do they zonk you out a bit? No, not at all. Okay, that's good. Antidepressants now, SSRIs and SNRIs, are so fucking many light years ahead of what they used to be. Oh, really? Yeah. And they're constantly changing them.

I mean, one of the good things about, you know, big pharma is they're just spending billions of dollars figuring out, oh, is there an unnecessary isotope in this particular strand of the DNA, whatever, that makes up this medicine? Okay, we can remove it. So, but I still would like to figure out how to not take them. But I am one of those people. You know how you hear about the over-diagnosis of depression and drug companies peddling things?

I happen to not be one of those people. They make me be not actively suicidal. And they allow me to eat. They allow me to sleep. So they allow me to do the basic things. So I need them and did you arrive at that point um after having tried therapy and those kinds of things oh yeah yeah yeah yeah in fact depression for me only showed up after getting sober um right because your booze was

just blocking yeah it was kind of self-medicating. So about a year, not quite a year after my accident, which prompted me to get sober, that's when my brain really stopped working. You know, it was like a thunderbolt just got hurled into it. Man, that's frightening. Yeah, it was. It was very frightening. And so I started taking medication then. And it's been, you know, jiggered with.

And I've experimented a little bit, of course, under a psychiatrist's care. But, yeah, now 12 years down the line with managing depression, I take, you know, the smallest amount, which isn't a small amount of, uh, of two drugs in tandem that, uh, are, are good for me. And it is, it's smart that I take them, but you know, you don't want to, do you want to wake up and take a pill or two every day? I don't, I'd love to. Uh, so I struggle with the sort of things that even somebody early in beginning to accept the fact that they might be dealing with depression might deal with, which is like the stigmas of mental illness. I feel like, uh, deficient sometimes. Uh, I feel weak sometimes that I have to do these things to manage my depression, but I don't listen to those voices or sort of grant

them enough audience that I'm going to act on them. You see it from my point of view, it just, you seem so much more admirably in control of your life and so much more like you're actually dealing with the challenges that life throws at you whatever they are for some people it's depression for other people it's you know various forms of disability or other kinds of illnesses or i don't know just fucking shit that happens you know and um everybody struggles to find the right way to respond to those challenges and a lot of people just don't and and slide into bad habits and and life gets the better of them but you know here you are i must say from from the outside looking in doing quite

a good job of it well uh a thank you b i believe and i could be wrong but i do believe that if I don't manage my alcoholism and my depression, that I'll literally die. So I kind of, to me, I have to do these things and I have to guard and protect my sobriety and my sanity so that I can stay alive. Not so that I can't be miserable, but that I'll literally die. Because my depression, untreated, was saying, kill yourself, kill yourself, fucking kill yourself. And it was extremely physically painful, by the way, which I think is important to mention. Depression, for me at least, was accompanied by incredible, thrumming, unbelievable physical pain. Really? Yeah.

And so there's that. And then my drinking, you know, the last time that I got drunk, I wound up in a wheelchair in jail with one broken wrist, one broken arm. Someone threw you in front of Harry Connick Jr.? They threw me in front of Harry Connick Jr. And as I said, he's very hairy. And he tore me limb from limb. Fucking hell, what happened?

I drove, I was in a blackout, drunk. Oh, this was the car accident? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right. And so, and it was, it had been heading really steadily towards that. You know, if my life were controlled by a knob, somebody was really ratcheting it up. Somebody. I just absolved myself of all. Somebody was really ratcheting it up. Somebody. I just absolved myself of all.

I don't know who was doing it. You know, I suspect it may have been Patricia Arquette. Yeah. And, you know, it was really steadily, in a graduated manner, getting to that point. So it wasn't like, what? Did you hear what happened to Rob? People were like, Oh, of course that happened to Rob, you know? Uh, cause I was really just in a methodical fashion heading

in that direction. So, so for me to drink would be to die for me to, to, to disrespect my depression, uh, and not treat it would be to die. So if I have to not drink and I have to manage my... And not just not drink, but do it in a way where I can be happy and a contributor to society. I guess what I mean is by respecting the fact that I can't drink personally, I'm nothing against alcohol, just I can't drink it, the fact that I can't drink personally. I'm nothing against alcohol, just I can't drink it. And respecting my depression have been allowed me to have been, it's been quite powerful.

You know, it has granted me sort of access to a lot of wonderful things by accepting a couple of big basic truths that, that again, wouldn't make me sad or blue or miserable, but would make me coffin contents, you know. Coffin fodder. Coffin fodder, yeah. And there are rewards, though. You know, like when you think about booze and drugs and the escape that those kinds of things afford,

or you think they afford, then those are the rewards there. It's like, oh, I'll be able to get out of my head. I'll be able to get away from myself. Right. And that's the reward. And if someone took that away, then where am I going to get my rewards?

But, you know, obviously, as you found, you are rewarded in all kinds of other ways by making a success of your family and your work and all those things yeah just have a bunch of kids even if they're have a bunch of kids yeah and even if they're not you know because it's not all like yeah as we've said having a family's hard and there's lots of trials and moments there where you just think oh i'm terrible at this yeah oh yeah yeah i mean it's worth it i i don't proselytize i would i would i would never say to somebody have kids i'm super glad i did

you know um but uh you know of course it's hard yeah man i know that you've got to carry on editing your show um so i'm gonna wrap things up but thanks so much for talking to me rob i really hey my pleasure so nice to meet you i've seen you before at things i've seen you and uh i've always kind of thought oh he looks nice and then i saw when catastrophe came out i just it was one of those things and i'm sure this has been said to you before where it's it's so delightful it's so joyous when you see a show that you instantly connect with. You just think, oh, this is great. And then it keeps delivering

and it's really a wonderful thing. Very enjoyable. And I can't wait to, I haven't started watching series two yet. I've got a few of those in the bank. And me and my wife are going to sit down. On your big screen? Yeah, on party night.

Right on. That's what's going to happen tonight. I love big screen. Yeah. On party night. Right on. That's what's going to happen tonight. I love it. So thanks a lot, man. Thank you. Really appreciate it with everything. Fun stuff.

Yeah. And see you soon. Thanks buddy. Fun stuff. Indeed. The lovely Rob Delaney there. Very much. Appreciate him giving up his time to talk to me.

It was really nice to meet him and get to know him a little bit. You've got to fake it to make it. Sometimes that's just what it comes down to, isn't it? You've got to put one foot in front of the other. Yeah? Okay. The bar, the clip of the people in the bar there in Barcelona, I didn't give them credit. And that's because I didn't give them credit.

And that's because I didn't know what their names were. I'm just hoping that they won't object to me giving them a bit of free pod publicity. But if you're ever in Barcelona, you can go and check out Bar Pastis. Although I'm just looking at the TripAdvisor reviews here. And there's not a very good one here. Avoid this place. This is supposed to be a traditional old-time Barcelona bar slash cafe, but don't go here.

The drinks are very expensive and the service is awful. The place is supposed to have character, but what it really is is a dump. Just don't bother. There are so many fun things to do in Barcelona. Barcelona, don't waste your time here. Well, I don't agree with that. Um, John Chappell. Here's another more positive review.

Authentic charm. If you're looking for something truly charming, then you have to visit Bar Pastis. Says Helgack16. Stepping inside the door is like stepping back in time fantastic relaxed atmosphere coupled with great music i think we've established that drinks are reasonable considering the history oozing from every crevice i don't know what that means does he mean like there might there's so much history oozing out of the crevices that it might get in your drinks? And despite that, they are still reasonable.

I think maybe he's talking about the price. They didn't seem too expensive to me. But what do I know? Yeah? I've got to check my privilege. The barman has been described in previous reviews as grumpy. I beg to differ. While being quite standoffish in the beginning, if you give him a chance, he will regale you with anecdotes of mad nights out.

This bar has to be visited by those who appreciate and embrace the essence of what a good bar should be. Well, I must say I agree with that. Hellgack. I thought it was pretty great. What's the worst that can happen? You just turn around and leave. Okay, other business.

Oh yeah, I've been meaning to say for a while that I have an app, the Adam Buxton app. It's free from all good app outlets. And it's pink and has my silly face on it, like the same icon that I have on my Twitter profile. And it is from the good people at Download, D-W-N-L-D. And they basically give you the tools to create your own app for free. They're not sponsoring the show, by the way. It sounds like I'm doing a read.

But they did make me a free example of this app, which anyone can download. So I thought it would be polite to give them a shout out. It essentially aggregates my online presence under the banner of one app. So you can check out the latest blog posts that I've made. Some of them about these podcasts, and see my YouTube videos, and see what I've been tweeting, and all that incredible stuff. So check it out, the Adam Buxton app on iTunes, created by Download, D-W-N-L-D giving you the tools to create your own free app.

So I'm limbering up, as you can tell, for the new year when I hope I'll have a sponsor for this podcast. My plan, let me tell you, for the next few weeks is to do a few more episodes and then I hope I'm going to do a Christmas special with Joe Cornball's Cornish. I emailed him the other day.

He said he was up for the idea. So I'm going to pin him down and we'll do some Christmas rambling for you, I hope, if all goes well. And then I'll take a little break and relaunch in the new year with the New Look Adam Buxton podcast. No, it'll be the same, but I hope it will have a sponsor attached to it. If you're interested in sponsoring this show and you've got giant pockets and you aren't involved with dealing arms or ruining people's lives actively, then do get in touch. And that includes Squarespace, by the way.

I mean, we can still be friends even after the Spare Squares thing, right? I'm very happy to do a vault farce on that if it means some some sponsorship and there's got to be a way of doing a squarespace ad that isn't teeth grindingly annoying right i'm up for trying it so that if that happens will enable me to spend some money on a producer and uh i hope one of the things a producer will do as i said before is to vary the kind of um people that i get together with for these conversations uh speaking of which i am going to tease my guest next week because it is an actual woman a woman and that's only happened once thus far on the podcast otherwise Otherwise, it's been a kind of succession of white males, albeit brilliant ones.

But next week, I am meeting an actual woman, and she is very talented and funny. A writer, not only of newspaper columns, but of best-selling books, and a wonderful TV show that she co-writes with her sister. Of course, I'm talking about Catlin Moran. That conversation is in the bag and it was very enjoyable as well. It was the first time I'd met her and I really liked meeting Catlin and I've admired her and her work and her ideas for a while now. So it was good to meet up up with her you can hear the fruits of that conversation next week but that's enough woofling for now until next we are together take care i love you bye 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. your members area and spend in your shop these are the kinds of comments people will say about your website if you build it with Squarespace just visit Squarespace.com slash Buxton for a free trial and when you're ready to launch because you will want to launch use the offer code Buxton to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. So put the smile of success on your face with Squarespace.

Yes. Hey. How you doing, very end of podcast nugget fans? Adam Desperate to Please Buxton here with one more morsel for you. And this week I am delving back into the archives, in fact, the Adam and Joe archives, for a piece of music that I always really loved

and felt that I had an excuse to roll it out this week because of the John Lewis Christmas ad over here in the UK which features the Oasis song in fact it's a cover of the Oasis song Half the World Away and the original of that song was of course used as the theme tune to the show The Royal Family one of the greatest shows from the 90s or any other decade for that matter and we did a spoof version of it on the adam and joe show back in the day with star wars figures i guess you can find it online somewhere maybe but um the thing that i was most excited about when we did that was recreating the oasis theme tune and putting star wars appropriate lyrics in there.

So, and also we had to change the tune ever so slightly so we wouldn't get sued. And I drafted in, I was able to draft in Fran Healy from Travis. And he was nice enough to come over to my flat and we spent a very enjoyable afternoon recording a sort of acoustic version of that with him adding percussion on a box of quality street and tapping a wine glass and just sang this lovely vocal in a couple of takes it was very it was a great afternoon anyway i re-gifted to you now bye bye Thank you. you You

Yet I would like to leave this city Jawas and Banthas don't smell too pretty And since the evil Empire fell All we do is watch TV I've had more fun With my Millennium Falcon

And my blaster unstun A long time ago In a galaxy Falcon and my blaster Unstunned a long Time ago In a galaxy Far away Far Far away Far

Far away Thank you.