THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.89 - DAVID MITCHELL

Episode Date: April 19, 2019

Adam talks with actor, writer, and British TV panel show king, David Mitchell about bad habits, bad driving, bad small talk at school gates, the technical challenges of filming 'Peep Show', David's comedy influences and other important stuff.Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support, Matt Lamont for additional editing and Dan Hawkins for bass playing on 'Supermarket Car Accident' jingle, which also features 'Soniccouture' virtual instrument plug-ins (see below for links).RELATED LINKSADAM BUXTON BOOK WORK IN PROGRESS READINGS, NORWICH https://norwichartscentre.co.uk/events/adam-buxton-nac-regeneration-fundraiser/#ticketsSHORT ARTICLE ABOUT 'GREED' STARRING STEVE COOGAN, ISLA FISHER, DAVID MITCHELL ETC.https://www.empireonline.com/movies/news/first-images-steve-coogan-michael-winterbottom-greed/'UPSTART CROW' https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b07bp64b/upstart-crow-series-1-1-star-crossed-loversTHE ADAM BUXTON APPhttps://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/the-adam-buxton-app/id1264624915?mt=8HOW I FOUND MY VOICE PODCASThttps://play.acast.com/s/howifoundmyvoice'CATCHER IN THE RYE' (REVIEWS, SUMMARY & LINKS TO BUY)https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5107.The_Catcher_in_the_RyeDAN HAWKINS (ON LINE BASS PLAYER)http://www.danhawkinsbass.com/SONICCOUTURE VIRTUAL INSTRUMENT PLUG-INShttp://www.soniccouture.com/en/ 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. How are you?

Nice to be back with you again. Guess what? I'm on a dirt track, walking by some recently ploughed fields out here in the east of England, in the countryside of the county of Norfolk. I'm walking on a cold day in April 2019 with my best dog friend in the world, Rosie. Hey, Rosie. What? Come over here and say hi quickly. We'll have a good chat at the end of the podcast, but just come and say a quick hello to the podcast. Rosie, come here. She's loping. Come and say hi. Can you make some noise, Rose? do like a wolf or something. Don't patronise me.

Sorry, I don't mean to patronise, but is there any way you could just prove that you're here and you're a dog? Do the noise you do when we go for a walk, when I say that let's go for a walk. You go, aww. Rosie's looking at me. Why are you doing the noise? We're already on a walk.

All right, sorry. There you go, that was a little coat shake. Off you go. Enjoy your gambling. And we'll catch up at the end of the podcast. There's a lot to catch up about, isn't there? A lot of important stuff. There's a few live dates I want to share with you and details of appearances on other podcasts, a few recommendations for you. Oh, and a trail for another episode coming up in this run of the podcast, which you might want to do a little preparation for. Anyway, all that will be explained at the end. But right now, let me tell you a bit about podcast number 89, which features a conversational meander with actor, writer and British TV panel show king, David Mitchell.

As I speak, David is 44. He is married with a young human child. He is a graduate of Cambridge University. And that's where he met his comedy partner Robert Webb. David and Rob have written and starred in a number of TV and radio sketch shows together, as Mitchell and Webb. And of course, they also starred in the Channel 4 sitcom Peep Show, written by Sam Bain and Jesse Armstrong, which ran from 2003 to 2015. from 2003 to 2015. David's other acting roles include the part of William Shakespeare in the BBC Two sitcom Upstart Crow, which started airing in 2016 and was written by one of David's comedy heroes, Ben Elton. We talk a little bit about that in this conversation, which was recorded in November of last year, 2018, around the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I.

I only say that because I refer to it a little bit in the conversation. And we talked about bad habits and how best to deal with them, bad driving, bad small talk at school gates, the technical challenges of filming Peep Show, David's comedy influences, and lots of other important modern stuff. I'll be back, as I said, at the end with more Stodgy Waffle and news about some exciting podcast-related events. Links to these and other related bits and pieces

should be found in the description of this podcast. But right now, 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. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that. Come on, let's tune the bat and have a Ramble Chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking

hat. Last weekend I went to... There's a brilliant thing at the Postal Museum in London where they're running a train. It's called the Mail Train. Yeah. And it was a system that was built in the 30s. It was built in the 30s to basically take posts from the different depots around London,

underneath London, because posts were so important then and there were loads of deliveries every day and it was a major medium. And then it closed down in 2004 because, you know know people were fine with letters being late and plus they didn't send any yeah exactly so the few that get sent might as well wait around in a gridlocked van so they've turned it into a you know a museum as they will

with our entire civilization piece by piece but it's um it's a brilliant thing to go to they've done a great display and you ride on the train like the parcels used to, but the parcels didn't know what it felt like because they weren't sentient. So, you know, I would recommend it. But also I instinctively thought, oh, this is terrible. We used to have this thing for taking parcels around. And, you know, we used to have proper infrastructure and we used to be great.

And now everything's terrible. And then I thought, but actually, no, it's fine. There is an internet and that's probably better than letters really yeah is it we shouldn't have stayed with letters deliberately yeah so I you know I have to tell myself change isn't always bad no it's good to be reminded of that especially these days I think yeah but then people who do say actually things aren't so bad these days are then generally sort of privileged white blokes yeah that say that so they can fuck off i tell you what the privileged white blokes are saying

things are okay now they need to learn some history because things were great for them they've missed their glory days they really have yeah but you know a hundred years ago things for a lot of people were not as good as they are now. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. It's a very reassuring thing about history. Yeah. You know, obviously, there could be thousands of nuclear weapons could explode in 25 minutes time. Sure.

In which case, what I'm about to say will no longer apply. But still, broadly speaking, now is not a bad era to live in. It's sort of almost anywhere because there are terrible things happening in the world at the moment but that's a constant terrible things have always happened and if you roll the dice what's most likely to come up is oh tell you what you're a fourth century infant and you die in an hour's time or or you're a malnourished peasant and you die of exhaustion at the age of 21. So sort of anything in Britain in 2018 is statistically the equivalent of a six.

What was the philosophy of a person growing up in the Middle Ages like compared to now when they knew that they were going to be lucky to make it to 45? Yeah. What kind of goals are you setting? I don't know. I mean, yeah, I think it depends on the person yeah doesn't it i mean very much depends on their role you know i'm assuming they're most likely to be a king or an archbishop but it may be that many medieval people were neither i haven't looked into it but yeah i suppose most people didn't have to have goals because they were released from any

sense of self-determination by the desperation to remain alive till the next harvest. So what a tremendous boon that must have been. Well, yeah. You don't have to worry about your career at all. Just worry about the turnips. In a way, that sounds nice, though, doesn't it? Well, if the turnips... As long as everything's OK with the turnips, yeah.

Then that's fine. Sure. That's great. I talked over your very good pun there. What, the turnip turn up thing? Sure. I wasn't happy with it anyway. I hate you to think that was in any way planned.

I apologise for drawing attention to it. And when you were a young man, you used to dress up as those popes and archbishops and things. Is that right? Yeah, I've got a lot of my childhood dressing up in basically costumes that were normal clothes that i'd adapted okay to turn yourself into some form of authority figure yes and one of the things i was a lot was some sort of king i was never an archbishop or a pope okay but i was a i was a guy i didn't have a crown

but i was sort of aware that kings only wore crowns, you know, on ceremonial occasions. What form did the role-playing take then? I can't really remember. I sat in a chair that I considered to be a throne and I would have a sword. Did you have like a haughty demeanour that you would adopt? Yes. Very haughty demeanour. The costume I was in, in my mind, was essentially 18th century dress.

So there's sort of stockings that come up to the knee and a kind of frock coat. I was that sort of king. And I think I would have liked to have a powdered wig, but that wasn't available. What about a mitre or something like that? Now, only popes have mitres, do they? Bishops and archbishops and popes have mitres. I didn't, I had no... Kings just have swords in my world kings had swords and also i would use the sword as sort of a stick as well i was an old king i was drawn to the sort of glamour of elderly power where did that uh attraction come from i don't really know the glamour of elderly power You know it's not surprising that that you know then later in life I've got all nostalgic about the way the postal service used

to be organised. There's a sort of through line. I used to get in the winter I used to get chapped hands. Yeah. Because I would always wash my hands after going to the loo but I wouldn't always dry them and then they'd sort of get dry and wrinkly on the back and I'd look at my hands and I thought yeah they look old and I really liked that. So do you relish the prospect of growing old in some ways? No no I don't I think I liked the thought of the trappings of being elderly when I was a child. Wisdom respect. Yeah and I think and children a lot of children that are drawn to their grandparents i think on some level they they're interested in the idea of being old they want to be six rather than five or seven rather than six yeah growing up is better so if you're like 74 then that's

incredibly high ranking in this uh system of one-upmanship that children have so So I think it was sort of to do with that. But you're aware of all the positives of being old in terms of you've got experience and authority and wisdom and, you know, they're potentially the parents of your parents, what a trump card that is, but you're not aware so much of the imminence of death. Yes. That's definitely the downside of being old

the irreversibility of the various manifestations of decrepitude and the imminence of death that is that's the massive you could be old for like a few months like a you know dying your hair and then go back to being middle-aged and then young for another year and then then that that would be fine nobody objects to gray hair they just object to your hair going that color and never turning back and that's a sign of other things you can't turn back yeah in the future according to Yuval Noah Harari do you know him is he the sapiens yeah he says that like everything he says is like it's already happening this isn't speculation this is reality it's happening now and he's saying there's all kinds of things that medical science will enable us to do when we get older in all sorts of ways

that particularly the rich and powerful of course will be able to extend their lives and you'll be able to just go in and a combination of gene therapy and bionics basically will enable you just to to cruise on for years and years and years you just go in and replace a load of bits and pieces every three years or whatever yeah when they wear down and you can live into your 300s or whatever are you going to be signing on for that probably but i always think i'm very short-sighted and i wear contact lenses quite a bit and less so now that i'm you know my wife doesn't seem to mind my glasses so i can't be bothered to wear contact lenses so much but I always think why don't I just get them lasered though and then I think well I'm up for that in general but I'm not up for that on any specific day so the day in which I get up and write today

is the day that what you're choosing to do today rather than to not do this today is to go into a place where someone will point a laser at your eyes and slice a bit off your eye with that laser and apparently that'll be fine although people do say don't inhale because you can smell your eyes cooking yeah and i think on any given day i'll go well yeah in principle that would be good to have perfect eyesight but not today and i think i might at the age of 270 i might be like that about death all right yeah i think I've had a good innings and everything and that's all fine. So, yes, I think basically I'm not just going to carry on replacing parts indefinitely. So at some point I'll come to terms with death and deliberately die.

Yeah. Just not today. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm sure I'll change my tune. But recently I've been coming to terms with the idea of just going for the three score years and 10 and i'll be delighted if i get that because i used to think oh i'll definitely be a hundred because it's modern times and also i'm very lucky like me personally things generally go right for me but then at a certain point i stopped thinking that and i thought oh realistically, I'll be lucky to make it to 70.

But, you know, what's that? 20 years? Statistically. I should do, right. You should make it to 70. Yeah. That would be below average. But also, you've already got to your current age.

I've already won. Oh, you've got through the various death spikes. Yeah. The infant death spike. The unwise men in their 20s death spike. 30s is a good, safe, non-death decade. Yeah. And then 40s it starts to creep up again.

Yeah. Until, you know, the 110s. Although recently with the World War I coverage, they had quite a few people in their hundreds on there, some of whom looked really pretty great. Like, totally compus mentis. Didn't look a day over 80. You know what I mean?

Yeah. That was good. Hey, you need to move much faster in the street. Come on, I want you to be speedy with your feet. You're wasting my valuable time. I got people to meet. But instead I'm moving very slowly behind your ass. Hey, I'm important.

I need to travel faster. How can you walk so slowly? I'm very important. You are a walking disaster. you have just walked here i have here how long was that walk it would have been 45 minutes but i i gave myself an hour and went slightly circuitously right i like to do an hour's walking every day oh you're still doing that because I read your book. Yes. A few years ago, Backstory. Yes, I still do that most days. Yeah. Yeah.

And the motif in Backstory was your back problems, hence the title. Interwoven with, you know, reminiscences about your life and career. Very enjoyable. And how is your back? Basically all right. Yeah. Yeah. The walking has sort of... It's continued to be. Yeah. Yeah, the walking has sort of... It's continued to be efficacious.

Yeah. I mean, I think I have a grumbly back, but no, it was terrible. For the most part of a year, about 11 years ago, it was terrible. And I thought, this is unsustainable. But at the same time, I'm sort of, I don't know how to address it. So you were in constant pain? I don't want to have an operation. Constant discomfort? Constant stiffness and discomfort.

And I would look at myself sometimes in the mirror moving around and I thought, this is like someone really quite elderly. You know, that was a particularly bad few months. And then, yes, I started trying to walk an hour every day and it really, yeah, now i just get the odd grumble well good i'm glad your back is doing better thank you because that is a nightmare those kinds of things i was going to do a i'm not sure if i'm going to do a little sponsor read for the versus arthritis society but they are kind of rebranding or at least trying to spread a new message about people not you know take

arthritis seriously right it's not just one of these slightly amusing aspect of getting old i don't think anyone thought it was amusing though did they no but anyway they won't be able to take it more seriously what do you do about arthritis what do you do probably turns out walking is an absolute nightmare for arthritis yeah just if you walk an hour every day that's an arthritis time bomb well the thing that was supposed when you're at school do you remember like if you cracked your knuckles people would say that's how you're gonna get arthritis now yeah it's it's not as terrifying for children as some warnings. Yeah. Is it? That's one. So I always think that with smoking, the genius of smoking is that it carries, it's dangerous.

So, you know, there's a cool element to it. It's sort of to do with death and therefore you can seem like a rebel. But at the same time, the danger is on a timescale that can't possibly impact on the teenagers who are thinking of taking it up. Right. Just that this could take years off the end of your life. Yeah. Right. Okay. Well, I mean, I'll stop at some point. I'll stop at some point. But either way, years off the end of my life. Exactly. When it's going to be shit anyway. Yeah. So that warning actually, I think, adds to the cachet of the product. Yeah. If they said it doesn't do you any harm, but it's smelly, then they go, oh, yeah, it's smelly.

Maybe I should stop. But no. No, it's dangerous. Yeah. It's really foolish. It's imprudent. At some point, have they ever experimented with slightly more lateral warnings because they that where they are now it's just pure horror organs and diseases and and then a bit of emotional

they've tried sort of emotional techniques with the impotence and with the children sat around the dying person yeah um tugging on the heartstrings in those ways again those things aren't going to address the people who are thinking of taking it up i don't think impotence is a tremendous worry for teenage boys more the worry is getting an unexplained erection on a coach and equally the the feeling of responsibility to dependents who you may leave if you die young again that's not something many 16 year olds really struggle with yeah because my wife used to smoke very heavily and gave up and it was know, it's a really difficult drug to kick. But you sort of realise that people, a lot of people who hate smoking, they don't want people to give up smoking.

They want to hate smoking. They want to say you shouldn't smoke. Among the anti-smoking lobby are a lot of people who aren't really, if they fully analyse their motives, they're not really into the most effective way of stopping people smoking they're into getting to say to people who smoke you idiot it gives you cancer you idiot and you know if everyone stops smoking that's gone you never get to say that you never get to identify yourself as in the more prudent tribe that didn't do the carcinogenic thing purely to seem cool. Yeah, that's right.

And they were a sort of early iteration of something that's now absolutely gone viral in every conceivable way, i.e. the enjoyment of judging other people harshly. Yes, absolutely. I always think this about climate change. The thing that so much of the sort of advocacy of the addressing of climate change, which is just happening, is undermined by the fact that there are too many people who they don't want cars and factories and things anyway. They wouldn't want them if they were harmless. And that doesn't speak to the mainstream who don't want to accept this terrible thing that all the things we do that are convenient and cool and warm and involve going on holiday.

You know, all this stuff we have that destroys the environment. We want to keep that middle ground, which is who you've got to convince. They're very susceptible to people who will say, do you know what? It's not really happening. Yeah, because that's what they want to hear. It's what I want to hear. I would love to believe it's not really happening because I'm not that into the idea of just cleansing the environment because it would be a nicer way to exist. I like electricity. I like cars. I like farmed meat and all these things. But I do accept that if we carry on like this, we render the only inhabitable space in the universe uninhabitable. But when doing something about that is advocated by people

who are sort of putting it in a kind of, and this is a positive because we can be sort of in some way cleansed. Right, go back to the... That's really unhelpful. Hunt to gather a lifestyle that you have no interest in whatsoever. Well, yeah, I mean, I don't think anyone's seriously saying that, but it's still... Some people are.

Well, I mean, there's no way the planet could support seven billion people like that. But it's just so frustrating that people, as you say, in this internet, social media world we're in now, people identify so strongly with the things that make them who they are. Well, I'm a green person. I don't believe in climate change person. Or I'm a Doctor Who fan or whatever it is.

They don't really want to convince anyone. They're not interested in the middle ground. The centrists are a despised majority. They're just interested in... Maintaining their own position. Yeah, and saying things that get applause from their own choir that they're preaching to in um maintaining their own position yeah and saying things that get applause from their own choir that they're preaching to yeah yeah the green party says so many things that allows you know the donald trump's of this world to take the piss out of them

and yet their fundamental message is just for god's sake there's a fire we need to put it out yeah it's weird isn't it yeah almost like you don't want the message to be hearable by people who you despise you know i don't think that's anyone's conscious view but i think subconsciously people put it in a way that is antithetical to the values of the very people they should be trying to convince. Yeah, because I think people are sometimes worried that to put it in that language, you would have to compromise or sell out to some degree. Yeah. In the case of, you know, climate change, if you're not doing everything you can to just dispel this entire myth that it's not happening're then you're doing something much more irresponsible and you're selling out to a image of your own purity at the expense of humanity's future yeah

but they're not saying that they believe that they are doing everything they can to tell people that that's the situation they're saying it as loudly and positively as they possibly can but it's the way that it's being said isn't it yeah that is off-putting and that causes people as you say to shut down and to withdraw and also the lack of kind of realistic alternatives or useful bits of advice for how we can realistically change i don't know maybe you know i suppose it's a question of well you've got to eat less meat and if you you're George Monbiot, well, you have to stop having children and taking international flights. And maybe that's what you have to do, I think. But, you know, I don't know.

I think you have to find a political system where you can make the things that are environmentally destructive appropriately expensive. And that's an unpopular way of putting it but that's how governments have historically inhibited things that are dangerous to society you you know even an economist would say you tax what you want to discourage and you don't tax what you want to encourage and if you want to discourage the use of carbon and the courage and economy that is looking for ways of finding alternatives to that then you put a tax on carbon but then all of our political systems are so fundamentally undermined by lobbying by corporations uh twisting politicians arms that there's no way they'll never do that right and taxes are always so such a They're not really a vote winner. Exactly, yeah.

You mentioned that you like cars. Do you like cars? No, I don't like cars. Oh, OK. What I mean is I like a world in which it's possible to get around at 30 miles an hour rather than on a donkey. Yeah. I have benefited from the invention of the car.

What, you hate donkeys? Wow, that's harsh. 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. you drive right no oh do you not not out of merit out of uh you know out of um ignoring

your responsibilities to your family exactly yeah how did that happen then did we frightened to drive you just never found the right moment i yeah i was frightened and then i did an intensive driving course when i was about 30 i think for a week and i hated it and i took a driving test and failed yeah and i left it there that's that's where you know i haven't had to do anything since then and i um i feel a bit bad my wife is a keen driver she likes driving and doesn't mind doing most of the driving i think there are times when she minds doing all of the driving i was busted for speeding on the motorway the other day i was driving to canterbury to do a show and i don't drive that often i i get everywhere that i can if possible by bike on my

Brompton but every now and again it's just going to take too long to get there by train or it's just overwhelmingly convenient to drive so this is one of those occasions and I always forget about the speed cameras in those situations and this is on the motorway where everyone is just overtaking you know they're in the fast lane you're not supposed to call it the fast lane it's not a fast lane it's an overtaking lane it's a marginally less slower lane yes but it's incredibly slow and safe lane the also incredibly slow and safe but potentially marginally faster lane and that the overtaking lane right okay the safe overtaking lane please stick to the national speed limit so overtaking is is very offensive language

it should be it should be you know whatever the the impatience lane yes um the failing to be at one with oneself lane and the failing to be at one with oneself to an even greater extent lane. Well, that's exactly why I was in that lane. And I got busted. And rather than take the points, I went on a speed course. So you've obviously never been on a speed course. It's pretty boring. I mean, it's quite a good deterrent because it's wham that's

half your day down the lav and you are set in a school classroom environment with a group of strangers i'm ashamed to say i've been on a couple of speed courses in my life can you go on enough that you would qualify to be one of the teachers the teachers are at pains to tell you how spotless their record is right i mean they they're meant to be whiter than white there's no question that they would be hired if they had ever been guilty of any sort of infraction because they just need to be holier than thou that's a very odd approach to that sort of training, though. It'd be like a sort of clinic for, you know, alcoholism, where none of the people there had ever been there in any sense at all.

They'd say, I don't know what you're doing. You know, I once had a sip of whiskey. I thought it was disgusting. You're out of your mind. I might be wrong about that. Maybe they were wild in their youth it should be i yeah i've been there i know what it's like and then suddenly there's a roundabout and you lose control and suddenly you're six feet in the air and your white van and you feel like you're gonna

live forever but you're not um and there was a woman an woman, sat on my table at the course, and she was very proactive and keen to participate because they ask you all these questions. It's just like being at school. You know, it's like, okay, what are the kind of things... Oh, it was in a Scottish instructor. What are the kind of... This is a Scottish accent.

What are the kind of things you can do if you're worried your concentration's flagging? What sort of things can you do to take steps to correct that? So Kathy puts up her hand and says, you can turn up the radio very loud. And he says, OK, how would that help your concentration, Kathy? Well, if you're falling asleep, it would wake you up. Says Kathy. And right the way through, everyone everyone's like no one else is the whole project because you're there for five hours the whole project is don't meet the

instructor's gaze participate as little as you possibly can let's just get through this as quickly as possible without making it obvious that that's your strategy right so but maybe Kathy's right though maybe i mean but she what did she make it longer or is five yeah yeah yeah that's the tip of the iceberg i gave you there right she was chatting away and uh talking about experiences she'd had with her husband my husband would never let me use the cruise control he'd never let me use it he hated women drivers and it would just go into all this and it's like oh i'm sorry to hear that kathy i mean if she'd had the opportunity she would have been talking about the whole history of her relationship with her husband and all the

chats they had in the car but you do come away from the course they there's a long section in which they illustrate, they sort of remind you, if you do get into an accident, and it is quite serious, they draw lots of pictures to illustrate all the people that that's going to affect. Right. You and your life will be affected. The victim's life will be affected. The families and the friends of that victim, even the people in the emergency services, the trauma that will be suffered by them if it's a particularly grisly accident, you know, the police, all these people are affected by these accidents. And it seems like very obvious and banal in a way you're like duh yeah

of course it's no good to have an accident but actually they spend such a long time talking about it that it really does sink in right to some degree and you think oh yeah maybe for the sake of just getting ahead of some annoyingly slow guy it's uh it's not such a good deal i mean that's definitely something something that has put me off driving. Yeah. The sort of feeling of that, you know, on a low level, the constant awesome responsibility. And most people are pretty sensible and careful,

but it could happen to anyone, really. Yeah. The loss of concentration at a certain time, and then something terrible happens. And, yeah, that ripple effect of ruined lives is the consequence of a mundane journey when you know you glance at a text message right exactly or you can't get your phone to pair with the fucking bluetooth stereo yeah exactly bluetooth is

responsible for a lot of these things i think we all agree that the world would be a better place without Bluetooth. The wireless dream. Yeah. Was it worth all the pain? Yeah. I think that the Viking it was named after was better than the technology. But I keep thinking like...

It wasn't Viking, wasn't it? Was it? Yeah, I think because it's Ericsson or Nokia or a Scandinavian company wasn't it was it yeah i think i think because it's it's a ericsson or nokia or something a scandinavian company and they named it after a famous viking warrior no way called bluetooth shut up are you just no i think that's true you're gonna have to google that now i don't know whether he had any sort of esp right heads bluetooth here we go bluetooth was named after a 10th century king harald bluetooth king of denmark and norway also known as harald bluetooth gormson or harald

the first of denmark holy shit there you go good knowledge where the hell did you get that I've done a lot of trivia based panel show I can't believe you actually retain the stuff yeah I couldn't do CPR um but to go back to the driving thing I was you know I I'm just trying to think through like do I want to say this or not? Not something I've been doing with all my talking about environmentalists being pathetically poor advocates of their own cause. People are really relaxed about that sort of thing. It's not like anyone listening to this online will be in any way scrutinizing it for any lines I may inadvertently have crossed. We don't live in those times.

No, no. But the main thing that I felt coming out of the driving course, though, right, to go back to that, was that I thought, well, this is all valid and useful and important. Why didn't I have to go to a similar course before I had children? And why doesn't anybody? I mean, is that just so banal that it's not even worth saying? Because I think it all the time. Like, there are certain fundamental things that I could have been taught. And I'm not just talking about going to antenatal classes. I'm talking about the actual nuts and bolts of parenting right through until maybe 20 or something.

It would be fucking useful well yeah absolutely you know all the time it's sort of thinking how is this affecting my child's brain yeah once you get past the simple okay we're you know the the initial terrifying challenge of keeping a very vulnerable infant alive babies are really small and helpless i mean i found that very very worrying you know and i knew it in principle but in practice and you sort of think this is really why couldn't we be like horses where they like get up after about 25 minutes and start running around and having some grass you know that they're basically are a horse later that day and it's you know babies just aren't people for for years and years and years and that's right but no but now i now that our daughter is you know it's healthy thankfully and

chatty and now you're thinking how how do you make her have a brain that can be happy you know she's all happy now really upbeat and positive how old is she now three and a half okay um that's a good age yeah it is a good age it's really great but um but i don't know you know i i want her to be easygoing and contented and i don't know how to make her that i mean generally i think the wisdom is they'll reflect most things back at you. So if you're relatively easygoing and loving, then they shouldn't go too badly wrong. So you are still a few years away from the school gates and the small talk that will be involved at the school gates

doing the school run or whatever. Yeah. How's that going to be for you? Are you the king of small talk uh no i think i will try not to think about that in advance but i think i find increasingly most casual social interactions that i come away from i feel like i've been insufficiently friendly or insufficiently normal and i think a lot of people feel like that i don't think it's quite most people but i also think i i worry that i'm caring a bit less about that okay

and i'm and i'm just being a bit you know and i'm just accepting that well i'm not that friendly yeah it turns out you know it's not like i mean to be unfriendly but i don't mean to be friendly enough and that is being unfriendly and maybe it's just better everyone will expect me to be unfriendly and then they won't try and talk to me and then it'll be fine I can be friendly with my actual friends who know what I'm like and I'm less shy with them and so I will talk to them but I haven't really got the energy or concentration or courage to be a normal chatty guy just generally i tried that exact speech with my wife when she was complaining about me not being more proactive with the with school socializing right and it didn't go well she what did she say she said that's

that's a load of bullshit she She said, you just be nice. You're able to be nice. Be nice. It's a question of having to do it all the time. Exactly. Yeah. I think that may be something about being, I don't know, what I like about being a comedian and performing in general

is that there are occasions where you sort of have to be energized and think and you know in certain you know situations chatty i'm trying to be chatty now yeah but you sort of know while doing it that that that's part of a sort of discrete project and then when that project ends you can go back to being unfriendly and morose and quiet. Yes, fine. It's nice to put on an iron shirt and have a wash. But it's also nice not to have to just be generally clean. Yeah.

But you won't be able to avoid those duties, I think, just by saying I'm not really that kind of person. Right. I'm just setting that up as a possibility i think you're right i think i'm not sure i would have tried it as a speech well it wasn't a spit i didn't come down and say i have the following statement to make about not being more sociable with the parents at school we're halfway through the podcast. I think it's going really great. The conversation's flowing like it would between a geezer and his

mate. Alright, mate. Hello, geezer. I'm pleased to see you. There's so much chemistry. It's like a science lab of talking. I'm interested in what you said. Thank you. There's fun chat and there's deep chat. It's like Chris Evans is meeting Stephen Hawking. I'm interested in what you said. Thank you. There's fun chat and there's deep chat. It's like Chris Evans is meeting Stephen Hawking.

So I read that you are about to do a film with Steve Coogan. I've nearly finished it. You have? Yeah. Are you able to say what it's about? It's a comedy satire about a retail tycoon. He plays the retail tycoon. It's a comedy satire about a retail tycoon. He plays the retail tycoon.

And I play someone who's been paid to write a very complimentary biography of him. Okay. Yeah. Is that the first time you've worked with him? It is. Yeah, yeah. I'd met him, you know, the odd do. Yeah.

And he's, you know, I think he's brilliant. Yeah. And it's directed by Michael Winterbottom. Oh, right. Obviously, The Trip and everything. I hadn't worked with him and he's 24 hour party people one of my favorites yeah yeah does he have unusual working methods and directing methods and i well i haven't done many films but i think so i think he has a slightly i mean it's not just documentary it's not a spoof documentary either but he has a slightly documentary-ish

feel to it so it's there's not a like a video village where the director and the costume and makeup people are looking at the monitors kind of thing it's like Michael's there sort of behind the camera deciding what the shots are then and there and it's quite informal in that way and I think therefore quite quick yeah are you improvising in that environment? Bits of improvisation, but also there's a script and that. So I think in general the aim is to get the script in the can and then... Have fun with it. And then have fun with it, yeah.

And are you, when they say have fun with it, are you having fun or are you just going, oh, I'll just say the line again? Well, oddly, I have had a bit of fun with it. And my expectation was very much it would be, well, I'll just say the line again? Well, oddly, I have had a bit of fun with it. And my expectation was very much it would be, well, I'm happy with the line. But I think largely because it's intended to be, OK, we've got the line and now we might have a chat around that subject. So it's not felt like we've compromised the line.

The line's there. And now we can do other stuff as well that might be useful. And so I'd be more comfortable with that. Certainly in my experience of TVs, they're always under pressure of time when you're filming and so I'm quite a believer in thinking about what's going to be said in a different room when there isn't a crew waiting but when you've got a little bit more time and you're not worried about dropping a scene if you don't move on then then it turns out I can enjoy that a bit and you're not worried about dropping a scene if you don't move on, then it turns out I can enjoy that a bit and, you know, be a little bit less arsey. And was the filming of Peep Show, for example, that pressurised environment? Yeah, very much so.

We were always up against it because of the POV filming style. That takes longer and there wasn't more money for it to take longer understandably so yeah I was very comfortable with we talk about the scripts and then we start shooting and that you know and Sam Bain Jesse Armstrong who wrote it wrote brilliant scripts and I never really wanted to if I had any issues with them I wanted to talk about it before we were shooting not on the day because it was quite a taut show. And that was one of the things that was good about it. And anything was 20, you know, it's channel for half hour, 23, 24 minutes. It goes by very quickly and there's not really time for longers or little comic cul-de-sacs.

Yeah. Yeah. I remember doing some job or other where the makeup person was saying, oh, I've been working on this pilot called, I don't know if it was called Peep Show then. It would have been called POV then. Right. And you actually had cameras mounted on your head. Yes, yes.

We did that quite a bit for the first series and very occasionally for the second series. And then never again. Yeah. Because, you know, the footage quality was terrible. Yeah, because this is way pre-GoPro. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so it wasn't easy to get a decent camera mounted on a hat like that. No.

And even in the edit of the first series, I think they used comparatively little that they got from the head cameras and a lot more that they got from a normal camera where we were sort of reaching around the sides. That was always the acting ball ache for Peep Show was when you had to do stuff with your hands on your own POV. You had to sort of pick something and have a sip of something, you know.

So what are you doing? Reaching around the camera person? Yeah, sort of reaching around the camera person that it was always easier if in a scene you only did things with one hand if you had to use both hands that would involve either running all the way around the cameraman and sort of getting a right hand on the other side or sort of somehow squeezing yourself under the lens and shoving your right arm outward so it looked like it was coming in from the right direction. Yeah.

Because it was no good if the two hands appeared to be coming in from the left-hand side or the right-hand side. Right. That was a sort of boring, repeated problem that we never properly solved. Which the head cam did solve. Yeah. But the head cam footage was crap. Yeah.

And originally, was it you guys were just sort of sat watching TV? That was the original concept. We never shot it as just that. OK. It was sort of like a live Beavis and Butthead. Yes. I think that was where the idea came from. Because Sam and Jesse and Andrew O'Connor, who was a magician and impressionist.

And then a presenter on the word. Yeah. Yeah. And, um, and he, he set up objective productions who made people. And the three of them sort of hatched the ideas starting with, as a kind of Beavis and butthead thing, which would be heavily reliant on talking over other television programs and then that got developed into well actually maybe you see other things through their eyes and then

Sam and Jesse had the idea of the interior monologues and you know as they thought it through and started writing it the watching tv bit became less and less prominent and then when we came to make the series it became clear that getting footage for them to watch is incredibly expensive and difficult and so there was a massive incentive not to have very much of that at all and so ultimately it was hardly any of the show but that's how it started yeah and did those characters yours and robert's characters come fairly fully formed. Presumably they developed when you dropped the TV commentary thing.

Well, oddly, we'd co-written a show, a pilot with Sam and Jesse for, I think it was then BBC Choice, before Peep Show or POV was commissioned. It was called All Day Breakfast. I don't know quite why it was called all day breakfast but that was to be a studio sitcom set in a living room of a flat it would aspire to be more in the comic area of something like father ted you know where things that are a bit more comically heightened can happen yeah but the characters were probably not a million miles away from mark and jeremy so i

think when sam and jesse then went to write pov they took what what the four of us had kind of worked on there as their starting point right so yeah but how long did it run in the end it was on from 2003 to 2015 but only nine series so it wasn't one wow that is like a sort of american program we'd by the end we'd it would like we'd done two american series yeah my children are getting into it oh that's that's very nice yeah it's cool i mean there's lots of stuff around that i think sometimes a certain type of teenager enjoys watching stuff that isn't exactly of the moment. You know, it's got some kind of retro cachet to it. I think I felt that.

I used to watch a lot of Monty Python. Yeah, OK. Listen to The Goon Show and that sort of thing. I think I had a sort of sense that you can never be sure of the quality of anything contemporary because the jury's still out on it. How did you get into The Goons? I think my friend at school had some tapes

of them and it was i quite you know i thought they were in places very funny in places incomprehensible yeah that's the thing isn't it because you're drawn in by i i liked the tone of of it yeah that and python as well i like the funny voices i like the personalities involved but then sometimes i either didn't get the jokes or the jokes just didn't really seem to land that well you don't know do you yeah as well you don't know am i missing the reference or or is this it's just not a low quality piece of material yeah and when i was a teenager comedy i was really into it and I was defining myself by it. And, you know, I wasn't into music and I didn't know about the charts and stuff.

But this was something I could call my own. I didn't blame the shows when they didn't make me laugh. I blamed myself. OK. And I tried to look for what was funny about them. And, you know, I've learned so many cultural references just from working out oh well that must be funny because of that proust must be some sort of posh author because that is what would make the summarized proust competition funny he must be highbrow and verbose or for me or this

isn't a joke with american comedy it was references to Spiro Agnew. And I was like, is that a made-up name? And then finally you find out who Spiro Agnew is. And it's like, oh. I don't know who Spiro Agnew is. He was Nixon's VP. Oh. It's a thing, though, about comedy. I think that comedy, for the core comedy fans,

it doesn't need to be consistent. It needs to be engaging and and weird and it needs to feel like it's something that not everyone would be into yeah the universe needs to be consistent or the personality oh yes absolutely yeah but that you don't need the gag rate doesn't no um and the necessity for for the jokes to keep coming at a high rate and quality is much more of a mainstream requirement you know and that's the python films versus the python tv show i suppose yeah in fact at a certain point i realized that the shows i liked least were the ones with the most jokes in right and you saw that

most obviously in the more low quality american sitcoms and they're very heavily structured gag gag gag and they were all pretty lame gag, gag, gag, gag. And they were all pretty lame. Yes, absolutely. And then I would say something like Seinfeld though. Yeah. That's later on.

And then I'm talking about watching mainstream American sitcoms in the seventies or whatever, or the early eighties. Yeah. Then when you get to Seinfeld and the Larry Sanders show, it was suddenly, Oh, okay. this is much better. Yeah.

What was the British stuff? Were you into... You're obviously in Upstart Crow, Ben Elton's show. Were you into his stuff when you were a young comedy nerd? Yes, very much into Blackadder. Yeah, Blackadder was a huge show for me. I watched that over and over again. And Fawlty towers doesn't it's almost not worth saying because it's it's so good it's not interesting to like it but what was it

about black ever just just the that central performance that central performance and the sort of historical world and the sarcasms and the rhythm of it yeah the word play yeah i sort of feel that my comic rhythms the things that i'd be or what i hope a sketch will have uh there's a tune in my head that the beat in my head is something that's been set by black adder and monty python you know that's how i feel jokes should come and which I love doing Upstart Crow, and it's the closest I'll ever get to being in Blackadder, which was sort of literal. Not a dream, I hoped it awake when I was a teenager.

The theatrical artifice of it, the studio audience laughter, the scenes building to a punchline. I loved all that. What's he like to work with Ben Alton? Oh, he's brilliant. Yeah. Terribly nice, creative, good man. I'm sort of thrilled to have got to know him, really, because I'm quite nervous of meeting comedy heroes. Because you sort of think,

it doesn't matter, really, what they're like. You know, it's whatever. It's Monty Python or Fawlty Towers or Blackadder that I liked and that's that why confuse that but he's so nice it's fun and funny and intense yeah he's inspiring basically he's a I'm yeah I've got a real comedy crush on him and have you you met any pythons? I've been introduced to John Cleese to say hello to, but I haven't spoken to him. And I've met Michael Palin a few times. And he was charming. And I feel like at every moment in his company,

I was pathetically gauche. But I'm very glad I met him because I think he's really brilliant. And I've also been introduced to Eric Idle. I didn't speak to him. No reflection on that because I think he's really brilliant. And I've also been introduced to Eric Idle. I didn't speak to him. No reflection on that. I think they're all brilliant. That sounded like, yeah. Michael Palin, he was amazing.

And I've also been introduced to Eric Idle. And he poked me in the eye. Yeah. No. I have nothing. I just said hello to him. And I thought, wow, that's one of the pythons. The one I've spoken to is Michael Palin.

Yeah. That was great. But I was awkward the whole time. Right. So he knows, he literally definitely knows who I am. I'm that awkward person. He's great. I like Eric Idle too.

I think maybe he was my favourite of the Pythons. You know, you like Palin because he's like the most approachable one in this group of slightly threateningly crazy people but Eric Idle just the voices I really liked they were just a brilliant sketch team yeah you know and they had that that not you know there's some brilliant sketches but also all the time you're watching you sort of have a sense of this impish creativity about to fire. You know, they're thinking about all these things and things are coming in from different directions.

Yeah. And so you're not just... You feel you have a sense of their collective creative identity, that there is this authorship. And, you know, yeah, I was obsessed with that show. I take out the bins And, you know, yeah, I was obsessed with that show. week it's recycling the next week it is stinky bin if you miss the stinky bin collection it'll be sat there for a fortnight going shit so what what does your average week look like when you're in panel show world and are you now here's a bunch of questions i'm throwing at you panel show related have you had to just

commit yourself to would i lie to you for example and stop playing the field with other panel shows i there was a long time when i would just i mean i like doing panel shows i do you know um but i you'd be in trouble if you didn't like yeah people would feel so sorry for me. But I don't always, I say no more often than yes now when asked on things. Because yes, I sort of feel, would I lie to you? I know it's going to come out well and you don't know so much for someone else's show. Yeah. I mean, is there any big panel show you haven't done that you think? I haven't done a League of Their Own, which is I think a sky sport one.

Right, right. And then there's an ITV one with Keith Lemon. Oh yeah, okay. I haven't done that, but they're both in a, they're I would say slightly different genre. They're more, you know, sort of crazy variety show around some desks.

My favourite kind of panel show would be just as good on the radio. Okay. You know, it's basically incidentally televised did you ever play the book game like i'm not talking on tv because i don't think there is a tv version of it or even a radio version of it and i can never think like why i've talked about it on this podcast before but do you know the game i'm talking about is it uh the first lines game yes i have played that game you can buy it yes you don't need to buy it because it's just you.

All you need is some books. That's right. It's called Ex Libris. There you go. I was made aware of it after I spoke about it before. Yeah, Ex Libris. Ex Libris is a good game. It really is great, isn't it?

I could easily see that on TV. You went on Room 101, right? Have you been on more than once? No, just once. Okay. Yeah. What were some of the things that you didn't get through because you have to pitch for the stuff you're going to yes you put on there

don't you to the producers i remember doing sugar cubes oh yeah that's right that's all i remember about it i can't remember the other things i was banging on about oh i had a go at cajun food as it manifests itself in uh british restaurants uh-huh but i can't remember whether that i did on the show but it might have been cut out anyway that's not what this is the opposite of what you asked um no yeah i was wondering like if you had was it easy for you to come up with stuff it was quite i mean yes and no in that i've spent i realize that a lot of what i talk about is things that annoy me right uh and that's that's my sort of comic way in i'm on the lookout for that quite often yeah so having to pick some new ones that are my special favorite ones you know what i suppose it was a bit, I was slightly picking my way through a land that was quite,

now this is a metaphor I'm going to get out of, picking my way through a land that was already quite intensively farmed. Wow, you really did the justice of it. Why picking my way? Hoeing some... You could pick your way through the land reaping a decent performance lunch from a land that had already been i thought you were great with picking your way through because you're looking around picking up little stones here and there thinking is this annoying yeah and then discarding it and then you find one oh this is a

peach and although not a peach um this is one that I wouldn't have even have pitched. I wonder if you can relate to it, though. The brown paper that Amazon use in certain boxes. It's very, it's sort of long sheets of crumpled up brown paper. But it smells very strongly of vomit. I've never smelled it. Have you not? Well, I'm not going to now.

I've had situations where I'm just walking through the house and I'm thinking, oh, who's puked? And then I'll go around the corner and I'll find that there's an Amazon box lying there with the crumpled paper. And it's like, oh, that's it. Holy shit. Yeah.

It really reeks. Maybe that's my problem. Do you feel bad about using Amazon? Yeah, sometimes. Yeah, I do. I've decided with Amazon, because I thought for a while maybe I shouldn't use Amazon because it's destroying the high street. But then you think Amazon are very convenient. So I've decided to use Amazon but feel bad about it.

I think anyone would say that's a good system. Because that's a big thing about that. The high street is dying, you know, and everything's closing, which people don't want. But at the same time, I don't, I can't think that the whole notion of things delivered that you order online is

something that therefore humanity shouldn't do. I mean, that's not in itself immoral, is it? Well, no. The problem with Amazon is there's only one of them. Yeah. So it's not really... There's only one of them and they don't pay their taxes.

Yeah, exactly. If they paid their taxes and there were two competing ones, or three competing ones, and obviously there are other online retailers that like Amazon with that kind of model, then you sort feel well that's fine we could use the convenience why do amazon diminished convenience obviously because they'd be paying tax so they'd be less good but nevertheless still relative that's how they got to number one we really by not paying tax really helped apparently i mean it's bound to help isn't it if you're starting up a company because you

can use that money for something else right i'd like to say as well that i try to find alternatives to amazon when i can and only sometimes have to lean on it because we're out in the middle of nowhere no i i mean i try and find alternatives when i can. But also sometimes when I can, I don't. Yeah. Then I feel bad. And then I don't. It's very efficient. It really is.

And that's good to be celebrated. People doing a thing well. Yep, yep, yep. Although it depends what delivery guy you get out where we are. Right. Some of them are great. DPD can frankly fuck themselves are dp who are the ones that i don't know if it's probably not dpd but it's a very funny story i thought

that suddenly a few months ago all the kfc's had to close for like two weeks because they changed their chicken deliverer the company company that KFC had previously used were a specialist food delivery service company. And as a result of KFC leaving, that company, I think, had to lay off a load of staff. It was a real blow losing that contract. And they'd gone to a generic delivery company. And the whole of KFC ground to a halt

like two and a half days into this company taking over the contract. And it just seemed so comic. This new company just couldn't believe the amount of chicken that they were expected to deliver. They said, yeah, we can do that. Whatever. We'll undercut this specialist food delivery company. Yeah, we can do it for less than that. Yeah, we'll deliver the chickens.

And it's almost like they sort of thought, so what is it like one chicken a week to each KFC? You need more chicken? They couldn't believe the amount of chicken that they suddenly had to get to different places all over. Can you imagine how much chicken that is to take over the contract tomorrow? That's the stuff of nightmares. You've got to make sure that every KFC in Britain has enough chicken perpetually.

How would you go about that as a starting point? And I think some chancer at this delivery firm said, yeah, we can do that. Yeah, how hard can it be? And then found out very quickly how hard that could be. But they didn't, I bet, have a problem with just turning up and instead of chicken, they were just getting the little cards saying, we tried to deliver your chickens but you were out.

Yeah, yeah. We'll try again tomorrow. 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.

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Hey, welcome back, podcats. That was David Mitchell there, in case you forgot. Very grateful indeed to David for making the time to talk to me. Looking forward to seeing that film, the Michael Winterbottom film, with Steve Coogan. Greed is the name of the film. I put a little link to a short Empire article about that. And there's lots of other links to related items

that you can find in the description of this podcast. But let me just flag a couple of those things for you right now before I waffle a bit further about other bullshit. I was interviewed for a podcast the other day by Samira Ahmed. It's quite exciting. I like Samira Ahmed and I felt, well, I felt important being interviewed, especially as I was in the company of quite a few cool people for this new podcast she's doing called how i found my voice and it is basically samira doing i think it's half hour programs with

people talking about their formative creative influences so uh other people in the series include Benjamin Zephaniah, the poet, Rose McGowan, activist, actor, Philip Pullman, writer, Catherine Ryan, comedian, and one of the greatest artists and thinkers of his generation, Adam Buxton. But it was good fun and very nice to meet Samira. You can find the How I Found My Voice podcast on Acast and other podcast bins. Next, let me tell you about a forthcoming podcast episode which you might want to do a bit of prep for. Up to you. At the end of this run of podcasts,

and the plan is to put about 10 or 11 out once a week for the next few weeks I'm not sure exactly how many there'll be but towards the end of the run will be a podcast in which myself Sarah Pascoe and Richard Iwadi discuss the book Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. It's one of the most famous books in the world. I had to read it when I was a young man at school and didn't really get it or like it very much. And then recently I was staying at the house of my friend and podcast producer, Seamus Murphy Mitchell. There's loads of books lying around and one of them was Catcher in the Rye. And I sort of picked it up and started leafing through it

and immediately got hooked back in and read it all again and really enjoyed it and just felt that I wanted to talk about it with some other people. And I knew that Richard Ayoade was a big fan because I'd spoken about the book with him before. It was a big influence on him when he was growing up. And I thought I'd ask Sarah Pascoe to join us because she's a voracious reader and I don't know I just like Sarah Pascoe so she came along and we recorded a very rambly conversation about it book club style talking about the book itself and the way it's written and about J.D. Salinger and the the kind of myth and controversy surrounding him as an author and a person. As I say, very, very sort of formless and rambly, but you might find it interesting, especially if you're a fan of the book. And if you've never read the book before, well,

maybe this is an opportunity for you to give it a go. It's easy to read. It's not very long. I'll put a link to the Goodreads website in the description of the podcast where you can read a synopsis and reviews of the book, and you can also buy a copy if you wish. So that's coming up. We'll give it a go. You know, maybe we'll do it again with other books in future. I thought we'd start with a big obvious one. So yeah, speaking of books, as you may know, I've been spending the

last few months trying to get more of my book written. Still not quite finished, but I do feel as if the end is in sight and I hope it's going to be out towards the end of this year, 2019, towards the end of this year 2019 and I'll be traveling about reading from the book and chatting with audiences in autumn of this year but I'm still doing the odd work in progress show before then and what I mean by that is just doing shows around about an hour an hour and a half long, where I read bits from the book and kind of talk through what I'm writing. And it's a useful thing for me just to hear how it sounds out loud, you know what I mean? Anyway, I'm doing a few shows here in Norwich. If you're local, you might like to come along at the Norwich Arts Centre, a venue I like very much. And this is part of a fundraising drive for the Norwich Arts Centre. So all proceeds from the show will be going to

support the Arts Centre. Shows are in June, mid-June, I think, and then maybe one more night in July sometime. There is a link in the description of the podcast so maybe I'll see you there and when and if you finally get my book I'm sure some of you will think why did this take so long Rosie come on Rosie come on dog Oh, she's bouncing. It's a slow fly past from the hairy bullet. Rose, don't go down there, though. We've got to walk back this way.

Yeah, because it's lunchtime soon. So, yeah, the thing is, it's hard working from home on this kind of thing. I'm sure a lot of you can relate. There's just so many distractions. And I've got my various household duties that I still need to perform. You may know I'm responsible for the bins and the recycling at Castle Buckles and you may also be aware that I'm the house's entertainment manager so it is my responsibility to recommend films and TV shows for my wife and occasionally for my children. Though actually, increasingly,

they are the ones who recommend stuff to me nowadays. And the last thing my son told me that we should watch was Russian Doll. Actually, this was a couple of months back. But I really liked Russian Doll. And it's on Netflix. A lot of my, you know, I'm aware that people get very angry sometimes. Why are you always going on about fucking Netflix?

Fuck you, is what they say. Just in the street. It's very shocking. But that's a media stranglehold problem that I am not personally responsible for. So get off my back, all right? Before you even get on my back, get off my back.

Natasha Lyonne, American comedian, actor, stars in this. I'm quoting now from the blurb stars in this comedy drama series is Nadia, a young woman who is on a journey to be the guest of honor at a party in New York City. But she gets caught in a mysterious loop as she repeatedly attends the same event and dies at the end of the night each time only to awaken the next day unharmed as if nothing had happened it's kind of a groundhog day situation she's dealing with there in addition to starring leone co-created the show with amy polar of saturday night live andreation, who also serves as a writer and director for the Netflix original series. I thought it was so good. I really enjoyed it. I thought she was brilliant. Oh, it's properly raining now. Um, am I going to put my hood up? Nah, because I'm an outdoor guy. I'm just going to commune with the

elements and carry on talking about shows that you've already seen. Russian Doll, it's good. It's funny. It's weird. It's interesting. It's clever. It's beautifully put together. It looks great. It's just eight half hours, so it's not a life-destroying commitment, really. You know, you can pretty much blaze through the whole thing, certainly in a week. Give it a go. What else have I been enjoying? I mean, all the usual stuff, I'm afraid to say. I'd love to come back and have all these obscure recommendations for you but uh no it's Alan Partridge this time which was so good so many brilliant performances so many proper laugh out loud moments there what do you think, Technobird? Yeah, Technobird agrees. Line of duty, another obvious one, but come on. Come on.

It's fun. It's tense. It's solid. It's satisfying. It's like my favourite kind of trip to the toilet. And then, of course, there was Fleabag. What do you think, Rosie? Did you like Fleabag? I thought it was a superbly articulate yelp of generational angst and

spiritual panic that managed to be funny, clever, compassionate and caustic while maintaining a level of ingenious invention that few TV shows of any genre have matched in recent years. Yes, Rosie, I agree with you. I just thought it was marvellous the way she used the breaking of the fourth wall thing as a motif about establishing meaningful emotional connections. And I just thought it was the best thing I've seen since she put that big bit of chicken in my bowl last week. It was a masterpiece. Yeah, what, Fleabag? The chicken. Well, it was nice chicken. And how about Alan Partridge? It was a masterpiece.

Do you like the stuff with Tim Key and the interactive board? Now I'm talking about the chicken still. Right, okay. And how about Game of Brexit? Oh, I love Game of Brexit. It's so good. Who's your favourite character? Oh, God, I love Laura Koonsberg.

I love all the characters, you know. They're so scary and weird. And I just hope it never ends because it's so exciting. It's supposed to be finishing in October now, but I'm pretty sure they'll do another series. I hope so. It's a masterpiece. Yep.

Right. Let's head home. And oh my goodness, I nearly forgot as well. Don't forget to check out the Adam Buxton app. Now the Adam Buxton app and my blog are, let's face it, not updated that often. But they haven't been forgotten about. And there will be new bits and pieces going up there on the app. The app is free, by the way, but there are little bits of bonus content that you can access for a very small fee, which goes towards maintaining the app and the blog.

Thanks to the good folks at Really Quite Something Limited. And there are going to be a few new bonus podcast episodes up there. So do check it out. I think the next one is going to be with the director Chris Smith, who directed Jim and Andy, The Great Beyond, which was a documentary I was really kind of obsessed with in 2017. You may have heard me talking about it with other podcast guests, but if you go and explore the bonus audio section of the Adam Buxton app, you will find a conversation with me and Chris about that film and some of his other work. Well, mainly his film American Movie, which is great as

well. And yeah, that's on there, as well as lots of other bits and pieces that you will be able to access for absolutely nothing right flipping heck tucker time to go home thanks very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his production support thanks to Matt Lamont for additional editing on this episode thanks to ACOST for continuing to host this and many other great, great podcasts on their platform. Until next week, please be careful. I love you. Bye! Like and subscribe. Like and subscribe. Please like and subscribe.

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