THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.81 - LOUIS THEROUX

Episode Date: October 27, 2018

Adam talks to journalist, documentary presenter and old friend Louis Theroux about writing, grim celebrity rumours, polyamory, death, and the daily routines of Mark Wahlberg and Oprah Winfrey. Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and Matt Lamont for additional editing.Music and jingles by Adam Buxton LOUIS & ADAM’S AUTOBIOGRAPHY RECOMMENDATIONSBOB DYLAN - CHRONICLES, VOLUME 1 (GOODREADS WEBSITE)MARC MARON - ATTEMPTING NORMAL (GOODREADS WEBSITE)STEVE MARTIN - BORN STANDING UP (GOODREADS WEBSITE)WALTER KIRN - BLOOD WILL OUT (YOUTUBE)AL KOOPER - BACKSTAGE PASSES AND BACKSTABBING BASTARDS (GOODREADS WEBSITE)TRACEY THORN - BEDSIT DISCO QUEEN (AUDIBLE)LUKE HAINES - BAD VIBES  (GOODREADS WEBSITE)RELATED LINKSWHEN LOUIS MET JIMMY (Louis’ original Jimmy Savile programme)BEST OF ENEMIES (Gore Vidal vs William F Buckley Documentary) TRAILERBURN THE PLACE YOU HIDE Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how you doing, podcats? Adam Buxton here, walking on quite a miserable day here in the east of England, October 2018. Something got very cold this last week.

Just a few days ago I was walking through these fields underneath spectacular skies. Beautiful over-the-top George Lucas style Star Wars prequel CG sunsets. And now it's all grey and cold. Oh, lordy. I am Thermos, the god of temperature sensitivity, and I can tell you that the temperature now, I'm going to guess at 10 degrees Celsius. Thermos is checking his phone to see the actual temperature

and it is, oh it's 7 7 with rain and let's look at the forecast rain Sunday rain, Monday rain Tuesday rain, Wednesday rain Thursday rain, Friday a bit of sunshine Saturday rain, Sunday rain

Monday rain oh man oh well, we've got each other and we've got for episode 81 a long conversational ramble recorded in London in September of this year with friend of the podcast and mine since we were about 13, journalist and documentarian Louis Theroux. Some of you listening may have tattooed Louis' face onto a part of your body If you search Louis Theroux tattoos on Google You will find a much larger selection than perhaps you might expect

Many of the tattoos make Louis look like Harry Potter It's quite a strange phenomenon Anyway, I don't speak to Louis about that. Instead, we talked about the three new documentary films set in America that Louis has made for the BBC this year under the banner Altered States. Says Louis in the press release, I've always been interested in how people conduct the most intimate aspects of their lives. For this series, we looked at new ways Americans are approaching some of humanity's oldest dilemmas. Pregnant mums who feel unequipped to keep their babies and so pick new parents for them. The world of polyamory, aka ethical non-monogamy, and people with debilitating conditions who opt to hasten their own deaths.

So quite a lot of serious stuff to talk about there, including in the second half of our conversation, thoughts on the big D, that's death, not dog turds, and I suppose it could also be dead dads, a subject that does pop up quite a lot in this podcast, regular listeners will know. And sometimes I do worry that I go on about my dad a little bit too much. But as I say to Louis, I've been writing about him recently. I've been trying to write a book this year, as has Louis, so he's on my mind a lot, you know. Plus, I don't know, I just think about him a lot anyway. So I apologise if it's a downer when the subject comes up, but rest assured, as well as some fairly serious conversation on a variety of topics, some of which may be offensive to certain listeners. It's probably not a family

podcast, I wouldn't say. We do fail to prevent some quite juvenile silliness creeping in now and then, as is often the case when I sit down with Louis. But we started our conversation by talking about Louis's own efforts to write a book this year about his career thus far, and he told me about the techniques he's been using to get the job done, which included some good recommendations for other autobiographies. I've tried to put as many of those as I can in the description section of this podcast. And Louis also related to me a few words of advice that he'd been given about writing by his dad, celebrated travel writer, Paul Theroux. 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 chew the fat and have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat. Yes, yes, yes. How you doing, man? Good. How are you doing? I'm fine. Slight tickle in the throat. I'm worried it's going to develop into throat cancer.

I'm trying to write a book at the moment are you yes funnily enough yeah i've been writing one more or less for a year in the gaps between making programs right okay a kind of professional memoir uh-huh it's been a lot of fun actually that's it yeah I mean, in parts. I did a sort of first draft. Well, actually it was more of a brain dump. It was the draft before the first draft, whatever that's called, where I just sort of puked it all out. And then I went back to do some revisions and I think I kind of fucked it up a bit. So now I'm going to try and get it back to what it was before. Do you do that in bullet point form then? No, no. You just sit down almost as though you were composing an email to someone.

Now, here's me talking about it like I'm now an expert, whereas in fact I'm slightly lost in the jungle of my own composition. The worst case scenario is paralysis, isn't it? Right. Is where you're sitting there in front of the paper and you can't think where you start, what the first sentence is and you're overwhelmed by all the other superior possibilities what philip pullman refers to as phase space and he talks about all the possible versions of a better book that exist and taunt you exactly so what I found was I'm going to absolutely disengage the editing brain

and engage the kind of almost the more primal, unselfconscious kind of drunk brain. Although I wasn't drunk, but it was just that thing. I don't really care what... Anytime I thought, should I be writing this? I thought, yes, I just keep going, keep going. And the surprising thing was when you read it back back it has very often a kind of fluency and an energy that's really quite good there's no direct speech by and large it's just like hearing an interior monologue of a slightly crazed neurotic person confessing all the insecurities and all the weird, random, intrusive thoughts, which has a kind of power and an honesty to it.

So that I found a helpful exercise. But after a while, I think it gets quite grating and monotonous, doesn't it? So I tried to go back and break it down into scenes and direct speech. I can't remember who it was. Might even have been my dad who said, your brain has already done a first draft before you even sit down to write. In other words, it's already sifted and selected material and imposed a kind of shape on whatever you've experienced. And you sort of have

to trust your brain to dictate what the order of priorities is and how the events flow on the page. And so when I did my, because I've written a book before, The Call of the Weird, in which I went around interviewing people I'd interviewed before in a sort of private safari of my old sort of sparring partners from programs, the 10 most fascinating characters from programs I've done. I wrote and researched that 2004, 2005, and I was recording the interviews. I was literally tape recording for the first half of it or so. My dad, who's a writer, had said, the thing about tape recording is it sucks up too much material.

You get too much data. First of all, the act of transcribing a sort of three- or four-hour conversation is in itself almost like a day's work. Yeah, at least. And you don't need, there's so much conversation that's irrelevant and not helpful. You only need little bits of direct speech and scene setting. You get bogged down in the woods of what the actual point of the encounter is, whereas you need a little more perspective.

Does that kind of make sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you went round, say, on a travel, my dad would travel for maybe three to six months and if you imagine every day all the conversations you would generate enough for several books you're actually trying to tell a story and storytelling requires a kind of well obviously a beginning and a middle and an end but also like a controlling intelligence that sits above the material and decides why this is being told. So have you had that conversation with yourself in your head? Do you have a beginning, middle and end?

Are you aware what the most important or interesting arc of your career thus far is? Yes, but I also have to be careful not to put too much shape on it. But yeah, I think so. And I think just to finish the previous so so i i kind of when i went back for the second go at the material i found i was interpolating i did look i looked at the old shows and what happened was a little bit was good and then it got to a point where i was just getting lost in the programs does that make it like if you want the programs go and look at the programs.

Yeah. Do you know what I mean? But it's not like, then I went to see a man in another cell and he said this, and then I went to another cell. It's like, okay, enough. What's the bigger story? The book has to be a kind of meta narrative. You know, it has to be the story of the stories. Right. Okay. So you're not going off on too many tangents. I'm not going on a lot of tangents. And, you know, I second-guess everything I do and I worry about things. So I do worry that it is too linear. Like I've been reading a lot. I've revisited Bob Dylan's Chronicles. Oh, yeah.

Volume 1. Like we're going to get. When is Volume 2 coming out? And one of the things he does is obviously he plays around with the chronology in a really clever way. And I'm really conscious that I'm trying to avoid it being two and then and then, you know, A, B, C, D, E, just following the narrative of the chronology. But that being said, it kind of is that. Are there any books in a similar genre that you really like?

Well, I looked. Apart from the Dillon one. I'm sort of influenced by whatever I read last. So in no particular order, I looked at Mark Maron's book, Attempting Normal. Yeah, that's funny. Which is really funny. And the first few chapters are astonishingly self-lacerating and self-exposing. Do you remember there's a story about taking coke and going with a prostitute

and then he gets pulled over by the police and he looks down and he's got a condom down he loses his erection so thoroughly and then he looks down his condom's still around his tiny wrinkled penis do you remember that anecdote yeah and there's a lot and then there's another one about an argument where there's a flimsy chair and he kind of puts it down quite aggressively on the ground and it breaks so he sort of de facto smashes the chair during the argument. And so there's a lot of stuff like that where he's really revealing the most intimate part of his life. And I'm trying not to do that. Well, you weren't addicted to drugs for a long time. People who are addicted to drugs, one of the concessions that the universe gives them is

great stories. Steve Martin's book, Born Standing Up... That's good. ..I found helpful as a... It's funny, but he actually just has the confidence to assume that readers are interested in the craft of how stand-up happens, and his particular brand of stand-up, how it evolved. But this personal revelation about his relationship with his dad,

his dad, who was unbelievably sort of uninterested and borderline contemptuous of Steve Martin's career to the point of, do you remember there's a bit where Steve Martin, when his first movie comes out, his dad, who I think is an estate agent, works for a large company and writes a review of it in the office newsletter, a scathing hit piece about his own son's movie which steve

martin's completely confused by do you remember that i don't remember it's amazing yeah and he's really his feelings are really hurt by maybe what unsurprisingly maybe i screened it out because i had similar experiences with my dad he didn't write scathing reviews but he made it clear that he didn't really like a lot of what I did. Did he? Yeah, he thought it was embarrassing. And, you know, he just didn't like, he especially didn't like the lavatorial stuff and the swearing. And he just didn't get it, you know.

I've finally got to the point with my dad where either he can't or won't keep up with how many programs I've made. He used to watch them all religiously and give me feedback and he's always been very supportive. And I almost take it as a kind of vote of confidence that he's at the point where he doesn't feel obliged to watch all of them, you know? Yeah. Because that's how I feel about his books, quite honestly. Keeping up with my dad's books, he comes out with at least one a year. Does he? Yeah, it would be a full-time job. You wouldn't have time to read anything else if you read all my dad's books, yeah. Right, God.

He's up above 50 books. He might be more than 60 books. Whoa. And they're not short. Have you ever had a discussion with him about writing? And has he given you tips, like practical tips beyond the one you mentioned? Yeah, he often, I have to take beyond the one you mentioned he often i have to take it in small doses because he loves to give advice and it's always been his dream that i would

be a writer really more than anything more than a um a tv maker so he it's almost like the worry is that you take your finger out of the dike and say, yeah, okay, dad, have you got any advice? And then you're overwhelmed by a flood of kind of paralyzing and slightly emasculating cascade of wisdom. Do you know what I mean? And I didn't, when I wrote my first book, I actually sort of battened down the hatches and said, do you know what, dad, I think I'm going to try and do this without help. And actually, I think it was maybe the right thing to do, but it might also have been my loss. And he volunteered himself five or six times and said, when you want me to read something, I'd love to read something. But what he said that was helpful was, I mean, a few different things. There was the thing I mentioned about that your brain has

already made a first draft. You remember to use direct speech. That scenes can be oppressive. And the density of the paragraphs is relieved by having moments of direct speech. Each chapter should be like a little short story was one. I can't remember much else. Substitute, this is Mark Twain. I just found some random quotes. I've been reading Twain at the moment and found that kind of helpful. He's just a quote machine, isn't he? He's very funny. You know that

idea that comedy doesn't date well? But Twain's one of those few people who, he's still pretty funny from time to time. You know, like reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated. And another one is, he described the Book of Mormon as chloroform in print, which is he's got great little phrases like that. Well, he says, substitute damn every time you're inclined to write very. Your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. He's right, isn't he? His prose, you know, some 90s, because he was writing in the 1870s, his first books, and it still reads very contemporary in its tone there's no pretentiousness

the voice is natural he was suspicious of religion or at least sort of dogmatic religion he was you know for his time progressive on the sort of racial issues and he was a kind of a you know free-spirited american humorist, so his attitudes have aged pretty well. Yeah. The ones that I hoped would be a model, but in a way were too technically accomplished for me to seek to emulate, one was called Blood Will Out by Walter Kern, and it's really a true crime memoir mixed with a sort of...

Well, I have to explain what it is it's about his friendship with a guy who was super rich and a member of the rockefeller family and he's a novelist and you know this is all true this actually happened he would hang out they met through a bizarre connection to do with delivering a dog that the rockefeller was going to look after as an act of charity and he found the so fascinating, they would hang out and they became something like friends and he stayed over at his house a few times. Anyway, he turned out to be this Rockefeller, a con artist who wasn't a Rockefeller

and was in fact a murderer who had murdered at least one and maybe more people and convinced people, basically beguiled them under the illusion of being wealthy and influenced them to do various things. And the book is a kind of self-portrait. This author, Walter Kern, is a dupe, and he beats himself up about how could I have been deceived?

What's wrong with me that I wasn't able to see through this guy? It's a brilliant book. So it's about that one incident in his life. It's about a passage of his life, and it starts with the first sort of third to a half is to do with how they became friends. And then there's a middle passage to do with uh walter kern and his own foibles and frailties as a person why he thought he was susceptible to someone who flattered him who felt like he was rich and classy and then the last third is an account of the trial he attends

the trial and then he goes to the prison and has one last confrontation with the guy, the fake Rockefeller. Because I see Jimmy Savile as quite an important part of this professional memoir that I'm writing. Right. So needless to say, there's quite a bit of self-excavation to do with what I really thought about Jimmy Savile and what was the nature of the strange professional relationship we had. But I'm having to be a bit more traditional. It doesn't, it's not quite as

novel. I'm not able to be as novelistic or deft as Walter Kern was in Blood Will Out. Also because unlike Jimmy Savile, the fake Rockefeller guy stayed alive and faced trial. So there's a third act to that. What's with Jimmy Savile, Obviously, he died without me ever sort of confronting him. So it's a little bit open-ended. It was one of the most selfish things that he did. To leave it open-ended so you couldn't get a second Louis Theroux meets Jimmy. See, I was talking about something quite personal. And you just turned it into a cheap little gag.

I thought I'd lighten it because sometimes I feel like you must be bored of being asked about things like that and sometimes I wonder if you get defensive and to what extent you did squirm and you did feel like, oh, maybe I was just too glib and foofily. Foofully? I don't think I was that foofily. I mean, if we're going to go down this avenue. You made me.

You pushed me. I wasn't that foofily. It's a long story. But when I go back and look at the original program, what strikes me is actually I'm fairly hard-headed. I had a very hard-nosed exec at the time called Kevin Sutcliffe who'd come off Panorama. And his attitude was let's get the goods on this old codger like there was nothing foofily I've had foofily series producers and execs at the time running with that word yeah and I've made programs that

were foofily but because of Kevin and also I suppose my own instinct that there was something there that we needed to to out. But nothing as... Nothing solid. Nothing solid and nothing as appalling as what came out, though, right? Correct. At that point, it was all just like, well, he seems like a shady character, he might have a few... Well, the allegations or the rumours were appalling,

were actually probably not as appalling. The rumours were that he was, I guess, a prolific groper and paedophile. That was a widely circulated rumour. We might even have talked about that. They were so over the top, the rumours. Yes, and they were rumours. The key isn't what the rumours were. The rumours were, if true, would have been

and were completely grotesque, but the key is they were rumours and while being widely circulated, they were not widely believed. It sounded like the kind of thing that people sometimes just say about famous people, you know, just outrageous. Well, the example, I mean, one of the... Going back to when I was literally five or six years old, because I've always had an interest in the macabre, right?

And so when someone told me a story that was in some way strange or grotesque, I would find it fascinating. And I remember when I was five or six, a friend told me that Mick Jagger liked to get a pint glass and pass it around all his friends. Have I told you this before? I don't think so. And get them all to spit in it.

And then when it was sort of half full or whatever, he would just chug it back. He just liked to do that. And also when he wasn't doing that he would corral a small a small group of baby chicks uh-huh you know fence them in with a little tiny fence until they were in a small enough space that he could just stamp on them what and so yeah and so those are the story now i don't know if those things are true or not. It seems unlikely. No one knows. Right.

I mean, maybe. But the point is, these are the things that get said. And I'm sure, now those ones I never ever heard subsequently. I think people just like the image of Jagger with his hands on his hips, stamping, with his sort of pouting as he does which is undoubtedly if he did do it how he would have done it with his top off probably that's right and his glitter mascara pointing every now and again yeah with his lips out and and the other one which was very widely circulated but had a number of different protagonists

when i first heard it was Mark Armand from Soft Cell, no, it might even have been Rod Stewart, collapsed on his way to a gig. Uh-huh, yeah. You remember this one. That was straightforwardly sort of homophobic scurril, that, as you say, was... Scurril.

It was variations on... Is that a word? Isn't it? Scurril. Yeah. Foofully scurril. Like scurrilous. Foofully scurril. Like scurrilous. Foofully scurril.

That's my pen name. But no, don't you reckon... So this is variations on the stomach was pumped and there was half a pint of semen. He collapsed, he was taken to hospital, his stomach was pumped, and this is the great reveal. And it was a pint and a half of semen.

Or three pints. Sure. Pints is the key unit. Yeah. There's a half of semen. Or three pints. Pints is the key unit. There's a litre there. It was a family-sized bottle. But the one that also, when the subject of Jimmy Savile comes up, the one that I reach for to try and explain the mindset is, well, it's a bit like the story of a top film star who, according to rumour, went to hospital and had a furry rodent, I think a gerbil, removed from his anus.

Why are you suddenly being coy with the name of the film star? Well, would you get sued? I think, didn't they sue someone? Would you get sued? Why? Because they took, they took, we're talking about Richard Gere. But, but did he... I don't know. He took it seriously.

Didn't they take out a full-page ad, him and... Cindy Crawford. I didn't have a hamster in my bottom. Listen, I did not have a hamster in my bottom. I would never put a hamster in my bottom. Enough. Yeah. A hamster was not taken out of my bottom.

Okay, all right. Leaving open the possibility. Yeah, he might have just popped it in there and incubated it. Imagine how annoying that would be. Yeah, he might have just popped it in there and incubated it. Imagine how annoying that would be. Yeah, it is annoying. Exactly. So all these kind of rumours... Is it true?

I don't know. It's like the idea... Imagine if it turned out that for the last ten years, Richard Gere had been ritually killing rodents, gerbils, at the rate of one a week, and people said, why did no one do anything? Who knew about this? And then you say, well, I'd heard a rumour. Yeah, rumor yeah yeah yeah and then suddenly the burden of guilt's on you for not

calling the rs taking it seriously but that's the thing about several isn't it is that that's exactly how it seemed it just seemed like outrageous rumors about this guy and it sort of fitted because here was a person who was sort of eccentric anyway and a bit weird and a bit creepy. And so the pieces fit. And so it was an enjoyable rumour until, of course, it turned out not to be. It was often a friend's mum. At least once it was like a friend's mum. So it wasn't as though it was coming from nowhere.

Well, now, of course, there's the situation where people know all sorts of stories about other people and times when they've acted less than brilliantly with women and ourselves and i mean don't you find yourself when with this latest yeah you know at the moment brett cavern of this supreme uh in the running to be a supreme court justice and he's been accused of a sexual assault on a woman when he was 17 and she was 15. And then I've been thinking back, do you find your mind going to times you've behaved not well growing up? Yeah, yeah.

And thinking, wow, given the wrong, given an unkind kind of gloss or complexion, not to say anything as bad as that, but certainly incidents that wouldn't look good if put in the national press. Yeah, and also when people who've been in relationships, I'm thinking of one person, I guess we can say, isn't it, like Chris Hardwick from Ex-host of The Nerdist. Yeah.

A former girlfriend of his. He's an American comedian and talk show host, isn't he? Chris Hardwick, yeah. Yeah, did The Talking Dead. Talking Dead. An ex-girlfriend of his who he'd had a relationship with for three years or something wrote a big blog post about behaviour within that relationship that she now felt was abusive. It was a little bit like the Aziz Ansari story in that it really divided people.

Some people felt that she was talking about incidents that actually occur quite often in relationships. Regrettably, you know, people behave badly. And they weren't really the same sort of thing as more serious incidents of abuse that women suffer and that they find difficult to talk about and that it's difficult to come forward with and actually she was sort of trivializing some of these more serious incidents by writing about things like one of the things she wrote about was that the wine was it that? He gave her red wine without asking whether she wouldn't prefer white wine. That was one detail that a good editor who had

looked at the original article would have said, you know what, take that bit out because that's not really helping the case. Yeah, the most serious bits. Mixing that in with the more serious stuff. And she also talked about the fact that he expected to have sex whenever he got home and i read that and i sort of thought hmm i mean a man would not use the word expected they would use the word hoped and have i ever been guilty of that i really really hoping that some sexy time is going to happen at certain points in the relationship and being disappointed when it doesn't? And even being kind of sulky? Yes, I'm afraid is the answer.

Not now, because now I'm brilliant. And I've been married to my wife so long that we've absolutely nailed being married and we're so respectful. Well, I don't think, in my experience, sulking... It's not a brilliant game plan if you're trying to turn the situation around. If I keep sulking for long enough and if I just keep being passive-aggressive, she'll find that really sexy.

And her clothes will fall off. And that will be the golden key. I don't think so. But I think no-one seemed to be able to agree with Aziz Ansari whether it was a sexual assault or a bad date. And I think he was held to a higher standard because he'd written a whole book about dating etiquette. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, certainly the men involved in both those stories don't come out of it well. You know, if you surveilled people... I i mean why are we frightened of you know the idea that uh our laptops might be spying on us you know they can hack into your laptop and using high-tech gadgetry you know that right and the idea that oh in a surveillance society well if you've got nothing to hide what are you worried about but actually we, everyone is shameable. You know, there's no one whose life is so pristine that there's nothing there that they wouldn't find embarrassing or difficult to defend. So that's what it comes down to, I think.

When we were clearing out my dad's garage shortly before he came to live with us in Norfolk when he was ill in the last months of his life. Me and my brother came across a bag full of diaries that dated back to about 1944 when he was in the war. So we said, hey, Dad, you want to keep these, right? Because we were chucking away stuff. We were figuring out what was going to come with him to Norfolk. And he said, no, put those in the bin and not the recycling the landfill and we like really he said yes throw them away that's like you can't throw them away it's like years and years and years of diaries you want to keep some of those it's interesting isn't it

no throw them away he got really annoyed and really angry didn't even want to discuss the idea that he might keep them so that immediately made me and my brother incredibly curious obviously and determined not to throw them away so in the end we kind of compromised and threw most of them away but kept a random selection thinking that maybe we'd get a sense of like what is he is he hiding stuff he hiding stuff? Is he covering up stuff? Has he been killing people? What's he been doing? So at this point, what are you thinking? Are you thinking, like, that's not cool?

Because obviously, technically, it is not cool. To not throw them away? Yeah. No, I think you're... I don't mind. I really was thinking, wonder what was in them. Yeah. Did you look at them? Yes.

Did it become clear what he didn't want you to see? No. No. They were totally boring. I mean, not... You didn't save the right ones. I'm being glib. What do you think was in them?

Probably just... Stuff that we already suspected. Previous relationships. Yeah, previous relationships. A couple of indiscretions that we kind of knew about already within his marriage. Really? Slip-ups? Yep. Slip-ups. couple of indiscretions that we kind of knew about already within his marriage really slip ups yep slip ups oh i've made a slip up i've done another slip up oh dear i've had a slip sorry um and uh you know random bits of meanness. I wish my willy was bigger

That was every other page. Was it? Yeah That's a bit Adrian Mole isn't it? I wish my willy was bigger Why can't my willy be bigger? Measuring my willy today, slightly longer after a week of stretching Willy small again

So no, there was nothing shocking but I think in his After a week of stretching. Willie Small again. So, no, there was nothing shocking. But I think in his mind what he wanted to protect us from was just a version of himself that we all have that exists only in our head. Yeah. That we don't care to share with people necessarily because we want to be free to um be rubbish and unpleasant sometimes but the meaningful thing surely is how you interact in reality yes yeah and then and then then inside your brain there's different levels of nietzsche talks about your your mind being like a society with a kind of aristocracy and then the lower orders and even within that there's a sort of policing that takes place he's a horrible person nature so i wouldn't listen to anything

he says he was very nice about you or just saying should we talk about your book because i'm curious to know uh how you are finding the act of composition i I would refer you to Spalding Gray, the, how do you say it, monologist or monologist? I don't know, monologist. The monologue guy who died a while back, but I always liked his stuff. Fell off the back of a ferry, didn't he? Jumped off the back of the Staten Island ferry. Oh, did he? Yeah.

Yeah, just offed himself. Right. I always found him really interesting and there's a good documentary about him directed by steven soderbergh called and everything is going fine from 2010 and at one point he talks about writing and he says finally i did get down to the writing and i got down to it and it was awful I don't know why I'd romanticized it it's disgusting writing is like a disease it steals your body from you there's no audience there's no feedback so he just didn't enjoy the process at all and I I related to that because just the physical business of being sat hunched over and not being strong-willed enough to

have a routine that includes regular exercise and eating properly and all those things you end up just thinking oh god i've got a day i've got to do as much writing as i can because i've got the whole day free so i'm just going to stay at my desk and i'm going to sit there and then you get up at the end and you can barely move and that's after you've actually only written a paragraph yeah and the rest of the time has been flitting around online or going to the toilet or making cups of tea or just you know ironing shirts or you just find all these other things that suddenly it's the right time to do when you're supposed to be writing did you not find that uh I did at times, especially when I was going back to try and smooth the material and add things in. With a TV show, you can watch the cut, right? You

got an hour, you sit down watching, like, here's where the problems are. But you can't read a whole book in an hour. It would take probably 8, 10, 12 hours. So you're only working on one tiny patch, and you're really blind about how it fits into the bigger picture. And then there are times when you just feel completely lost and you can't tell what's working and what isn't working and where anything goes. And in general, my strategy has been to try and not, instead of trying to take things away or improve or finesse, I've just thought, you know what, I'll just work on something else. It's not like making TV programs at all, is it? You just forget, you know, how collaborative TV is.

Yeah, there's so many other tools at your disposal when you're working in that kind of medium you know you can improve things with editing with music the camera work's important you can make everything look at least superficially pretty good do you have a theme for your book no not really i mean it's a lot about my dad so that seems to be the overarching narrative. Because I never really thought too hard about our relationship before he died, you know. Him and Bowie were quite loomed in a similar way in my life, i.e. they were important in the early part of my life, and I absolutely adored them. And then they went off the boil, and I lost interest. And then I just sort of wasn't in contact for ages and ages and then they came back into my life towards the end and sort of blew it apart a bit and made me

quite confused about what I've done so far and what I'm like and did Bowie do that yeah in what way well because it reminded me so much of things in what I was like when I was little and how I used to think of him. And also he just was, I found it very inspiring the way he tied up all the loose ends. So will yours be a narrative? No, it's probably more like a combination of sort of essays and anecdotes. probably more like a combination of sort of essays and anecdotes and i'm aware that probably a lot of the people buying it might be the people that listen to this so i hope that um they'll already be familiar with a certain amount of of what i do but also the other the other thing is

i can't really tell like is anybody interested in the Adam and Joe show still I would think it's a small footnote in TV history how much do I go on about that I feel my instinct is that talking about just general things is more interesting than just talking about like you know then me and Joe did Adam and Joe go Tokyo and you know it's hard one to judge and I've had similar thoughts about how interested people are, but I also think that, in a way, it isn't really whether you're interested in the show, it's what you have to say about it.

And Backstage Parties and Backstabbing Bastards, have you read that? Who's that by? It's by Al Cooper. Oh, OK. A friend of mine recommended that to me, yeah. I haven't read it. I want to read that.

It's really good. Yeah, because that's another one I don't know anything about. Well, he turns out to have been a bit of a musical zealot. And there's a funny section about how he came to play the organ on like a rolling stone. Uh-huh. Have you heard that story? I think so. And he didn't really know how to play.

Yeah. And so you know how there's a slight delay every time the chords come in on like a Rolling Stone, just like a half second. And he says that's just him struggling to find the right keys on the keyboard. Yeah. And yet it became a huge smash and everyone was like, hey, man, we all want, he kept getting bookings based on it because everyone wants that new sound that Dylan's got.

Also, he's a bit like Luke Haynes. Maybe there's a lesson in this. He's very disparaging about the scene and rather scathing in general and thinks most people are full of shit and doesn't hesitate to call them on it. I love all that stuff. It's quite good. It's a fine line because you don't really want it all to be nicey-nicey, but you've also got to live with the consequences.

I don't want to be shitting on people. No, and defending yourself as well, having to just constantly be setting people straight. And then you realise, oh, perhaps I should just say an executive, you know, or someone at the channel, because I don't want it to sound like i'm you know or a fellow director you know if i've got something that could be construed as yeah i wouldn't name check anyone unless it was absolutely germane to the story or remain to the greer yeah

i just bumped into you at the supermarket i was backing out of a parking space and I hit your car. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. But you're angry now. Very angry now. And that's making me very angry too. No, fuck you. And your mother too.

So apart from the book, what are you working on at the moment? I've got three shows coming out, and they're coming out on BBC Two starting November 4th, a three-parter called Altered States. Cheery or dreary? Bit of both. Well, none of it's dreary, but there's some heavy viewer discretion is advised may have...

What are the disclaimers they put on? May it contain scenes that will you know upset people trigger warnings it'll be big time trigger one of them is about in america there are laws that allow you to take medication if you have a terminal illness to end your own life it's a relatively new law in california and so if you have six months or less to live and you feel like you don't want to drag it out you you can just basically take a cocktail of, it's not a real cocktail, it's an expression, take a cocktail of drugs and end your own life.

And so we filmed a guy who does that. And filmed him at the point of death? Yes. So what we are filming is people who are being aided in dying. And then there's also also we follow a group called final exit network they see it as their mission to advise people who are thinking of ending their own lives who are not terminal but who have unbearable pain so they don't fall under the law it's called the end of life options act so if you feel like you're in so much pain or

you've got progressive dementia although you're not terminal therefore the the physicians won't prescribe the drugs then this group final exit network sends an exit guide to educate you that's their term on how you can end your own life so we followed a person going through that i'm'm making it sound ultra grim, and it's certainly heavy viewing. On a kind of happier or maybe funnier note, there's also one about polyamory, in which I go to Portland, Oregon, to explore the world of what they call ethical non-monogamy,

people who are opening up their relationships. It's sort of amazingly kind of sensible in some ways, leaving aside the obvious. They're saying, well, we've been married for 14 years and we thought we'd mix it up a bit. And if you fall in love with someone else, it doesn't necessarily mean you've fallen out of love with your significant other.

And so they are in polycules. There's a lot of funny terminology. Polycules. And so why be in a couple when you can be lot of funny terminology. Polycules. And so why be in a couple when you can be in a thruple? Oh, shut your face. Or a fourple. I'm going to stay monogamous so I don't have to use that terminology. There's a lot of funny terms. And also there's relationship anarchists. And they believe that... Why would you say thruple when a trio is at your disposal? Well, trio, isn't that a chocolate bar? A trio is a little vague because trio is three of something,

but is it actually a thruple? Fourple, you didn't hear as much, and fiveple, while it probably exists, I didn't hear as much. And five-pole, while it probably exists, I didn't hear anyone. And they've invented another word called compersion. Have you heard that? No. Well, when they say, like, compersion sounds like a real word, but it isn't. It's invented by, I think, a psychologist. And what it means is the pleasure that you get more or less seeing your other half sexually or romantically fulfilled

in another relationship and then you think well the fact that they're cuckolding isn't it well it's a it's the happy cuckold well cuckold's a horrible term isn't it because that's only men it's it's one of those things where when you unpack the language, it's encoded with all kinds of strange gender assumptions. Like a woman is not traditionally a cuckold. A cuckold is a man whose wife is having an affair. There's no word for a woman. From sort of Chaucerian times, it was meant to imply that a man has been made a fool of

because his wife was having an affair and he didn't even know about it. That's right. But now in sort of porn speak, it's just a bloke enjoying watching his wife having sex with someone else. Having sex with someone else, yeah. So compersion, you get pleasure in, say it was you and your wife. Yeah. And your wife went off with some guy guy some random guy with a big knob and really loved

boning all night right and and then and you the first reaction is wow i'd have a problem with that but actually if you got sort of into the groove of polly you'd experience a pleasure in how happy she was doing that. Right. When she came back with a big smile on her face. And then you would feel compersion, and that's the pleasure you would feel. Okay. But then the fact that they had to invent a word, doesn't that sort of suggest that if that was real, we would have had a word for that for hundreds of years?

Do you know what I mean? Like they would have been saying, oh, wow, feeling so much compulsion. Yeah, because aren't there words for that in other cultures where polygamy is more common? Well, I have no idea. I don't know. And I think what's complicated is clearly polygamy and polyandry are both in a way quite different from polyamory. What's polyandry? Polyandry is multiple husbands. Okay, okay. One woman, two or more husbands. Polygamy is one man, two or more wives.

Whereas polyamory is all about a kind of... That goes both ways. It's both ways. And it's a much more kind of, I guess, progressive attempt to manage relationships. It's just an open relationship with some modern... Everything's out in the open with some modern terminology. Modern terminology attached.

And if it's a Persian that she's enjoying herself with, then that is Persian compersion. Right, hadn't even thought about that. Very interesting. And if they're doing weird stuff, then that is Persian compersion perversion. Comperversion. So we've moved off the death one fairly quickly oh you know what it's a minefield to even talk about it's one of those

sure i do think that it's a an important thing i guess it's i've just been talking about my dad and uh obviously getting older and so it's on my mind a lot more. Probably when I was 25, I would not be watching your show about a guy dying. No. But now I certainly would. And I do think that it's one of the changes that society seems to be going through

and having to go through is to think about that a lot more, especially with such a massive aging population. It just seems to be the final one of the final taboos one of the things that everyone is just too bummed out to talk about but actually it would be so helpful if they did yeah certainly speaking for myself i didn't really know what that even looked like i mean in a physical and literal sense what it looks like when someone is dying. And we're sort of fed a slightly Hollywood script that death is actually a kind of full stop, whereas it's a process that can be rather

protracted hours, if not days or weeks. And not to sort of put too fine a point on it, it takes a long time to die. And it involves also all kinds of decisions from those people, both the person going through it. It's a process and people who are around that person. And in making the program, what I was thinking about most of the time was what a difficult thing it is to be a responsible, sensitive and supportive loved one to someone who is either going through extraordinary pain or faces a life-ending illness. And they say, I'm thinking about ending it. And you obviously can't sort of say, right, fine, when should we do it? You know, and also they're vulnerable and weak. So you're trying to figure out what do they really want,

Also, they're vulnerable and weak. So you're trying to figure out what do they really want, you know. And as bad as it is in normal relationships, second guessing what the other half wants and attempting to figure out what you even want, it becomes 100 times more serious when the stakes are actually death. Did you come away from it thinking more about what you would be like at that point? What came home to me was almost not totally relevant to the programme, which was a sense that, because the guy we followed had an amazing life. He was from Texas, but he lived in California. He was into motorbikes. He liked making music. He had a band. He was a bit of a badass, a hell-raiser,

but in a wonderful way, and who had a beautiful, lovely wife, daughters, and terrific friends and his house was what he had one of these houses where people were just constantly dropping in coming and going he had an amazingly full life for anyone by anyone's standards plus he was in his mid-70s so my thought was god am i living enough You know, it brings home the fact that you've only got a limited span and there will come a time when you're looking back and thinking time's nearly up. Will you think there are all these things I haven't done? Have I actually sucked the marrow out of life?

And I'm not talking about bungee jumping. You know, it's just kind of have you lived life to the full? Yeah, you're talking about flying suits. Flying, have I, you know or it's just the kind of have you lived life to the full and yeah you're talking about flying suits flying have i you know microlight aircraft and threesomes four poles four tractor all the poles have i done all those things i'm trying not to say have i had sex with enough people but you can get hung up on that because that is kind of what it comes down to a lot of the time, isn't it? No, it's a joke.

That was a joke. Obviously it's a joke, but I mean... That takes us to the Polly story, actually. Yeah, but I mean... Because that relates, and actually, you know,

the thing about... Sorry, go on, I interrupt. I mansplained you. I was just going to say that... You just loose-flamed me. I was going to say that... Can you mansplain another man? No, it's all about a...

It implies a contemptuous sexist power dynamic, doesn't it? Yeah, I don't think you can mansplain a man. What about a really weak man? Yeah. You could mansplain me, that's the thing. I think you definitely could. Carry on, sorry. I get mansplained all the time.

I'm interrupted. I was going to say that you can get too hung up on the idea of what constitutes a good life. I think, you know, you might be doing a job that some people would consider fairly mundane and have a routine that is not particularly full of variety, but that can be a good life if you're kind to people and they're kind to you and they value your company and you read things that interest you and watch films that you like. I mean, that's a meaningful life if you're kind to people and they're kind to you and they value your company and you read things that interest you and watch films that you like and i mean that's a meaningful life you didn't even convince yourself with that did you and occasionally you know you put a flying

suit on right i did convince myself with that because i think about that all the time you know sometimes i i do think like well today is technically gonna be a fucking bust i've got to do a load of boring admin and things that need to be done but that's a whole day that's a whole important 24 hours i can't just sleepwalk through it completely no but all you need in that day i mean the vast majority of it is going to be fairly forgettable stuff i won't be recalling it fondly on my deathbed but all i need in that day is 10 minutes playing pikmin with my daughter and her saying something funny or and then that and that's good enough it saves the day yes do you know the, you can't kill time without injuring eternity?

No. I think it's either Thoreau or Emerson. The thing is you can't lead a life of maximum intensity all the time, that's for sure. When you look back at the most important, when you're on your deathbed, right, hopefully, you know, no time soon, what do you think you'll look back as the golden times of your life hosting never mind the buzzcocks no um i thought you were serious did you host it yeah was it really special i did well on it was the first time i'd been on a panel show that it wasn't a total crushing humiliation and you hosted it yeah i guess host and that's one of the things you would think about

no yes is it no what do you think you'll think about i'll think about when you were hosting never mind the buzzcocks i lied when I said I hadn't seen it. It was amazing. It was amazing. No one had ever seen anything like that. Serious answer? Go on. I've got no idea. I remember that my dad, in his last few days,

began to wear a pained expression. He was obsessed with admin at the end because he was selling his house so it was a race against time am i going to get he was determined like i've got to get the house sold because i don't want you guys to have to deal with the admin we were like don't worry about it just have fun let's you know what movies do you want to watch i've got loads the last film he ever watched was air force one really I wish I've never seen. He liked it. It's good. It's solid. Anyway, he wore, for the last few days of his life,

an expression of worry, anxiety. He was fretting. I was like, what are you fretting about? I said, are you frightened? And he said, no. I said, why do you look so fretful? What are fretting about and he just said so many things and i just didn't get the impression that he was lying there replaying the time that he hosted never mind the bus cocks no this is what i mean though i think you need to be trained you need some guidance for how to live those last days.

That's what priests used to be for. Right, OK. Isn't it? Ministers. Yeah. Who chose Air Force One? I offered it up to him because we had once very much enjoyed watching The Firm. I was talking to Tim Key about films that we used to watch as a family at Christmas. Air Force One is Nicolas Cage?

No, no. Harrison Ford. Hijacking a plane? Yeah. Gary Oldman hijacks it. Is that Grisham as well? No, I don't think so. Isn't it Jack Ryan? The Jack Ryan stories? Or am I confusing that with... That's Patriot Games. Air Force One. I that with that's Patriot Games Air Force One

can't believe you've never seen Air Force One there's a lot of films I haven't seen three stars I mean I guess most people would agree it's I just have a soft spot for it maybe it's not that good I haven't seen it for a while I didn't sit and watch it with my pa that time oh no he's the president that's right he's not jack ryan harrison ford is the president and what's the source material what is the source it may be an original screenplay source material that would be a good name for a thriller when did it come out 1997 right when the world was a very different place america was just bullish riding high riding high and they very much thought of themselves as harrison ford being handsome and reasonable and sexy and striding around and doing the right thing so it was celebrating all that

so that's the last thing my pa saw i mean i gave him so many options. One thing he nearly went for, but he bailed on at the last minute, was the thing about William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal. He didn't like it? He wanted to watch it. But when I finally... The documentary, what's that called? I've seen that. Best of Enemies or something? Yeah, Best of Enemies, that's right.

When I finally got it onto the iPad and sort of set it up on a little stand on his bed, and it started, I got the sense that it was just like, oh, fuck this. You know what I mean? Yeah. From him? Yeah, he didn't say that.

He's just like, oh, I don't think I will. He wanted something more escapist, maybe. Don't you reckon, like you would? Yeah, probably. Something to remind you about what fun life was rather than how hard it was yeah yeah nothing too gritty and what about i didn't know what to do with my photo albums like all the photo albums that i make for the family every year i do one right and so i couldn't figure out if he would find it nice to have those or whether it would be too painful because photo albums are a bit of a disaster area like

emotionally don't you think like they start out being fun then 10 years go by and they're unbearably poignant because there's all oh he's dead and she's died and and too much emotion do you think we don't do albums really i do understand what you mean but i think having an occasion to wallow a bit is probably a big part of reaching the end stages and i've also noticed that in making programs where i've um interviewed people who are approaching the end of their life because i've made a couple i also made one about um people with life-threatening illnesses doing last chance treatments at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in LA and what came across was the

people who were very possibly approaching the end really appreciated a kind of platform or a moment or a space in which to think out loud and somehow commemorate what they were going through and that whether it was because I was there as a neutral figure or whether they just needed it from someone and it could have been anyone it was a chance to just speak meaningfully about everything they were going through and that families where sometimes they, I don't know, I guess they resist trying to talk very dispassionately or to really dig into what the person is going through, maybe for fear of becoming upset themselves. And actually, I think it does a disservice in some cases to the person who's dying, that they actually want to talk about everything that they're going through does that does that make any

kind of sense yeah that would that's been my experience everyone sort of resists talking about the elephant in the room you know which is that you're dying and how do you feel about it is it what what are you going through what does it feel like um and maybe not in all cases but the situations i've been in the person had wanted the end of their life documented but we have to sort of get that across and you you do find that you know we are there by invitation because the person wishes to have on record have some record of of their last time on earth man that sounds amazing i'm going to watch that although probably not on friday night it's sun it's on sunday night sunday night perfect depressing yeah get easy back into the week i think we'll put that one out probably last of

the three and what's the third one so the other one is about adoption and it's a kind of middle ground between the harrowing and the more life-affirming. And it is about women in America who, they're pregnant and they don't want to keep their babies or can't, can't or won't. And so they join agencies and they meet parents who are looking to adopt. Is it the plot of Instant Family starring Mark Wahlberg? It's real. So Mark Wahlberg wasn't there. Sounds like you should see Instant Family with Mark Wahlberg. And I think it's fairly remiss that you haven't. I wish I, now I feel like I didn't do my research.

Well, did you even look at Mark Wahlberg's routine? His daily routine? No, I didn't. What is his? Did you not? What is his routine? Marky Mark. And his funky bunch. And his funky bunch. Do you think that's what he calls his scrotum? Did you really not see this? This is new to me. Mark Wahlberg's daily routine. He was doing an interview and someone asked him about, what's your daily routine? And so this is it. 2.30am, wake up.

That's early. 2.45am, prayer time. That's half an hour of praying. That's a lot of praying. But mind you, he wants a lot. He's getting old. His knees, he has to be careful of his knees getting down and getting up. Oh, okay.

3.15am, breakfast. 3.40am to 5.15am. Workout. Wow. Early workout. That's an hour and a half. Hour and a half, starting at 3.40am. Does he have kids? Yes.

Oh, this is insane. 5.30am. We're only at 5.30am. Post-workout meal. Imagine what that is. Has he had breakfast? Well, yes. He had that at 3.30. Post-workout meal. Imagine what that is. Has he had breakfast? Well, yes. He had that at 3.15, didn't he?

Yeah, that was breakfast time at 3.15. Now it's time for the... He's been working out for an hour and a half, so he's built up room for... There's no name for this meal. Post-workout meal. Post-workout meal. What is that, lunch?

There should be lunch, but you can't have lunch at five in the morning. We don't know as well what constitutes a meal for Marky Mark. It may just be protein shakes. Then he'd say shakes. I think meal, he knows what a meal is. Protein shakes is a meal to Marky Mark. Possibly.

We don't know. Carry on. We don't know. I like the way you're coy when we're talking about whether these people like protein shakes, but Mick Jagger stomping on chicks is fine. He denies that he did that. 6 a.m., shower, 7.30 a.m., golf. So he spent an hour and a half in the shower.

8 a.m., so golf only for half an hour. 8 a.m. That doesn't make any kind of sense. It would take at least five or ten minutes to get to the golf links with no other range yeah maybe it's golf for 10 minutes that's ridiculous maybe it's maybe it's an hour and a half of golf and only half an hour shower 8 a.m snack 9 30 a.m so that's a long snack as well 9 30 a.m i mean obviously he's doing other things in between. Who can tell? He's probably writing scripts. He's playing with the Funky Bunch. Having a Tommy Tank.

9.30am. Cryo chamber recovery. What is that? When do you do yours? Cryo chamber. Darling, I'll be in the cryo chamber recovering. I don't even know what that means. No. Isn't that what Michael Jackson used to sleep in? He had an oxygen tent. It was a hyperbaric chamber. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is that the same thing? Maybe. Cryo chamber. Cryo chamber, as far as I understand, is it's like lying in a

ice bath. Is it? It's very, very cold. You are chilling. You are absolutely chill. Yeah, yeah, very cold. Where are the kids all this time? Just, we'll get to the kids. 9.30am. So there's an hour in the cryo chamber, just chilling. 10.30am. Snack. I wish he said what was in the snacks. I wish he said what was in the snacks. Protein shake. 11am. Family time. There it is.

But it's not just family time. It is family time slash meetings slash work calls. Until? Two hours of that. Until 1pm. So where's the family been for the first eight hours? Asleep. Right.

Because they wake up at a normal time. He has staff, I guess. Does does he or is his wife doing it presumably they all have cryo chambers of like the three beds in different sizes do you think yeah there's so much we don't know we're only only halfway through the day. 1pm lunch, 2pm meetings, work calls again, 3pm pick up kids at school. So he's like, he's doing all the stuff. The crazy part is he's been up since 2.15, right? 2.30. He's left for half an hour to play golf. Other than that, he's been completely housebound. Has he not? Yeah, I mean, one has to assume that a very small proportion of his days actually follow this routine because he's filming, he's out and about, he's doing stuff where he can't stick to that unless he's got the portable cryo chamber.

Portable golf course. Yeah. And not everybody else is going to be getting up at 2.30am with him and indulging that routine. Anyway, this is the ideal scenario for Marky Mark. Pick up the kids from school, 3.30, it's snack time again. And then at 4, it's workout, number two. That's a one-hour workout. And then 5, shower, another half an hour shower. 5.30, dinner slash family time. So that's a lot of pressure on dinner slash family time so that's a lot of pressure on dinner slash family time because

dinner can often be quite a bummer as far as i'm aware with your family everyone's sat around in a grump because they're tired but just angry don't you ever get that you sit down for for dinner and people aren't in the mood to chat and you try and do some small talk to get everyone going and someone's in a mood there's always someone who's in a fucking mood and then they infect the rest of the supper and then you can go either way right okay and then it's bedtime at 7 30 in the evening wow is that really real apparently so where was it leaked no no he he tweeted it, I think. Loads of people tried to do the same routine and then write about it. And most people's reaction was, you know, consternation and just like, oh, that would be awful.

And the thrust of most of the articles where people tried to recreate the routine was, it was shit. Because too much working out, too many shakes, too many snacks. Too much cryo chamber. Too many showers. not enough golf time but i think people wanted to bring it down because secretly they're thinking wow that's impressive i wish i was that disciplined well i i could imagine that also it feels more like an athlete's yeah routine doesn't it and did you read oprah's one no come on but he i guess he's he's married right yeah if he's got kids like he's getting no time with his wife away from the kids like when does he

talk to his wife about you know know, how's it going? I think they've... Do you want to be in a throuple? She might have a cryo chamber right next to his with a little radio. Right, or a tube. Or a tube, yeah. It is odd, though.

It doesn't really make any kind of sense. Maybe he's taking the piss. I don't think. No, I don't think so. He doesn't seem like he's got that sort of a sense of humour. Yeah. Tell me Oprah's one. All right, then.

The thing is that these are both big, big stars, right, with lives that are not in any way similar to most of ours. And Oprah especially. She seems more diversified, as in she's got a TV network, a magazine. She's in movies. She may be president. She's running for president, whereas no disrespect to Mark Wahlberg, but he's an actor, right?

I know what you mean. She's got an empire to run. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can't spend three hours in a cryo chamber when there's business to be sorted out. She very much wants to communicate that she is getting a great deal out of her life, and she very much appreciates where she's got to. She wakes up at 7.10.

The other thing I'm going to quickly say is Mark Wahlberg is almost exactly my age, I believe. Which is another reason why I'm interested in his routine. Oprah, I feel, she's quite a bit older. She's not raising children. So anything she does, I'm going to be a little bit less engaged by because i'm not thinking hang on what about the kids and what about his wife and how does he manage to integrate all of that with his unbelievable snacks and workout regimen but anyway let's do oprah op Oprah is 64 years old currently.

And Marky Mark, I'm almost certain he's 48. He is 47. 47. As we speak. Oprah wakes up at 10 past 7 every day. That's about the same as me. Yeah, that's fair enough, isn't it? She lives in Montecito, California.

With Stedman Graham. Yeah. Her royal consort. She says, Oprah, this morning when I hit the blackout shades just after seven, the light was casting its golden glow over the green lawn with the clouds and ocean in the distance. I watched three geese fly over the backyard and land in the pond. I don't know if that happens every morning. I was going to say, this isn't her routine. Well, this is typical. Unless she's got a guy who's in charge with releasing three geese every morning.

This is typical Oprah. This is her talking in Bazaar magazine, I think. And I think she does have a guy who releases three geese every morning that fly over the backyard and land in the pond. I hadn't even had a sip of coffee, but already it's a perfect day. guy who releases three geese every morning that fly over the backyard and land in the pond. I hadn't even had a sip of coffee, but already it's a perfect day. 8am. After I walk the dogs around the yard, I make my favourite espresso. I mix caffeinated and decaffeinated espresso with milk and a little hazelnut. I wait for the brew to froth. I pull out a card from my 365 gathered truths box. Have you got one?

No, I want mine. Get it together. I read five of them each morning. It's a beautiful way to start the day. Today I got this great one that said, wealth is not measured by dollars and cents, but by the love we make, the laughter we enjoy, the meals we share, the dreams we enjoy, the meals we share, the dreams

we experience, and the hopes we create. Some guys put 365 in a box, right? So you can read one a day. Yeah. Not so you can read five in one day. She's messing with the system. That's too many truths, you reckon? Big time. 8.30am. I have a series of spiritual exercises that I do every day. Then I meditate. This morning I observed 20 minutes of silence sitting in my breakfast chair. If it were warmer, I would go outside. My house is surrounded by more than 3,000 trees. It feels like I live in a park. When I want to meditate, I can go to a special rock that's carved in the shape of a seat. Now, couldn't she just sit on a rock or lean up against a rock? I don't, this rock is not comfortable. I need it to be carved into the shape of a seat. That's how she speaks. Or I can sit underneath the 12 live oak trees that i call the apostles

it's my favorite place on earth that sounds nice though that's how nice 12 30 but this is you have to sort of think of this partly as an exercise in preparing the groundwork for her possible presidency i mean i would say that she's that would worry me if she was doing that in the oval office really yeah you don't want a box of truths in the Oval Office? Well, it's like we got a meeting in the Oval Office, you know, Russia's going nuclear, and then she's sitting on her rock. She's meditating in her breakfast chair for 20 minutes. 12.30pm. We, Winfrey and her longtime partner Stedman Graham, always try to eat lunch in the garden. We have a rule. If we cannot find it in our garden, then we cannot eat it.

I have the same sort of rule. I generally just eat bits of KFC that people have chucked out of the car and dog toes. But if you can find it in the garden, yum-yums. Fried squirrels. So she won't eat anything that's not in the garden. Some grass. They can only eat stuff that is in the garden yum-yums fried squirrels so she won't eat anything that's not in the garden some grass they can only eat stuff that is in the garden i've got a vision of him lying in the garden with his willy poking out oh that's uncouth i found something in the garden he seems like a nice man this is in the garden. He seems like a nice man.

This is in the garden! How do you remember our rule? 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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to be with you once again walking through the fields of east Angula on a day that, well, it's cold and it's been very rainy and depressing, but as I look over to the west, there's some blue sky and things don't look quite so bleak. Anyway, listen, thanks very much to Louis Theroux for his time. Good to see Louis again. Back in the UK, he's been out in the States for quite a while. A reminder that the first of Louis' three altered states films, not remakes of the Ken Russell film sadly, but documentaries, goes out on BBC Two on Sunday, November the 4th. So yeah, thanks to Louis for his time and to our friends Mark and Zivi for letting us record at their place thanks both of you much appreciated now it's absolutely freezing so i'm gonna head back rose rosie let's head back

before i go i just wanted to make a quick doc recommendation on the subject of documentaries and this is one actually that i will recommend to Louis as well because I think he'd enjoy it. It's called Burn the Place Where You Hide from 2016 and here's the description. A shy young man stumbles into the spotlight in this award-winning documentary on Norway's most incendiary pop star. Fated by critics as the Norwegian Neil Young, St. Thomas became an overnight success. But beneath the clamorous applause lay an increasingly

discordant mind. A bittersweet tale of obsession, friendship, and the need to be yourself. It's available to view on Vimeo, VOD, Video On Demand, and Amazon Prime. Again, I've tried to put a link to that in the description of this podcast,

but sometimes it only lets me put so many links in. So please don't shower me with abuse if it's not there. But I do recommend it. I thought it was extraordinary. I like those kinds of documentaries anyway. I love music documentaries. But this was someone, St Thomas, who I remember reading about in the early noughts, but never really sat down and listened to. His music's lovely, folky, quite odd, pop, traditional.

Lots of different elements creeping in there but a really intense interesting troubled guy and it is a sad story but told very sensitively and interestingly lots of home movie footage that was shot by pals of his I I guess, while they were doing gigs. Lots of strange moments when he just loses his temper and he loses his patience with an audience that often won't listen properly when they were playing smaller clubs and touring around. And he's playing this very sensitive, soul-bearing music a lot of the time. And he gets frustrated with the audience when they're just chatting and sometimes these gigs grind to a halt while he admonishes the crowd or gets frustrated

with his bandmates or whatever it's very compelling stuff to watch an amazing character and also the people around him seem like a really interesting group as well. His girlfriend especially, yes, she's amazing. You could almost do a whole documentary about her starting out as a fan and meeting Thomas. There's even actual footage, I think, of the night they meet. Him inviting her to write down a request for a song and then sort of falling in love with her on the spot

and then their relationship develops thereafter. She reads out letters that he sent her and talks very affectingly about the ups and downs of their relationship. I thought it was a really great documentary, actually, very nicely put together, and I think if you like music and people and stories, you would like it. Burn the place you hide, it's called.

Right, I think that's enough bollocking on for one week. Thanks very much indeed, once again, to Louis. Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his continued invaluable production support. Thanks to Matt Lamont for additional edit whiz-bottory on this episode. And thanks to ACAST for continuing to provide a platform for this podcast and many other great ones besides why not check them out thank you especially i i think i am okay in assuming that seeing as you've

listened this far there's a good chance you might listen again sometime until that happy day take good care and for any peppercorns listening, don't let the bastards grind you down. I love you. Bye! Subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when they bums up. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when they bums up. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe.

Please like and subscribe. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when they bums up. Give me like a smile and a thumbs up. Nice like a pat when they bums up. Like and subscribe. Bye. ស្រូវាប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ប់ Thank you.