EP.223 - JESSICA KNAPPETT

Come on, then, Rosie.

It's up the fun hill.

Up the fun hill, up the fun hill, up the fun hill, up the fun hill.

That is where we shall walk.

I don't want to, don't want to, don't want to stick the fun hill up your big fat bum.

Those are not the lyrics to up the fun hill, Rosie, as you well know.

Come on,

dog dog legs

oh rosie come on it's a beautiful evening

are you a bit cold

yeah

all right i'm just gonna take rosie back i'll be uh with you shortly podcasts

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 are you doing, podcats?

It's Adam Buxton here.

Solo ramble today.

Doglegs was not in the mood.

I think it was just a bit too cold.

It's a beautiful evening.

It's been bright and sunny all day

out here in Norfolk towards the beginning of March 2024.

I was even beginning to think, oh,

might be a bit of spring.

But actually, it is cold and there's a bit of a wind now.

And Rosie

was refusing to budge so felt a bit mean to drag her along.

My eldest son is visiting this weekend

so Rosie is now curled up next to him on the bed while he strums away on his guitar.

Despite the cold it is looking very pretty out here.

The blossoms peeking out on the big magnolia tree.

Got the black thorn in the hedgerows.

Anyway, how are you doing podcats?

Not too bad, I hope.

I'm going to tell you about my guest for this week's podcast in just a second, but before I do, a quick reminder about the podcast live tour, which is happening towards the end of May, beginning of June, and the tickets are pretty much all gone.

There are a few left for the show on the 9th of June at the Eventim Apollo in Hammersmith.

I have a very special friend of the podcast guest lined up.

Maybe some live music as well.

It's going to be a fun night.

There's a link in the description of the podcast for tickets.

But I'm actually doing another live podcast date around then.

It's not part of my tour, it is part of the Crossed Wires Festival.

It's a brand new podcast festival.

It's taking place in Sheffield between May the 31st and June the 2nd this year.

I'll be doing a show there on Sunday the 2nd at 5 p.m.

and I'm very excited to say that my guest will be musician and actor Rebecca Lucy Taylor, aka

Self-Esteem.

I took my wife, my wife, for a birthday treat this week to see Cabaret in London.

And it was one of the last performances featuring Self-Esteem in the role of Sally Bowles.

And it was fantastic.

She was extraordinary.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to meeting her for some live waffle, and maybe I can get her to duet on a podcast jingle or two.

What about that?

Come and see if that works out by visiting crossedwires.live and booking tickets for mine and other shows at the Crossed Wires Festival.

Brown Girls Do It Too.

John Ronson is there, Catherine Ryan, Newlyweds, Talk Art with Corbyn Shaw, Uncanny, and Wolf and Owl.

They are all there at Crossed Wires.

There's a link in the description.

I hope to see you.

But right now, let me tell you a bit about podcast number 223, which features a rambling conversation with actor, writer, and comedian Jessica Nappett.

Nappet, facts!

Jessica was born in 1984 and grew up in Bingley, West Yorkshire, England.

She attended Woodhouse Grove School in nearby Bradford before earning a place at Manchester University, where she studied English and drama.

A period of casual employment followed.

She took jobs in promotions and telesales, but a significant step towards realizing her comedy ambitions came in 2008, when Jessica and some university friends made their Edinburgh fringe debut as Lady Garden, an all-female comedy troupe in those days that was still a rarity, and they performed around the country for the next few years.

In 2011, Jessica was cast as Lisa, the object of a holiday romance in the In-Betweeners movie.

a role that led to her developing a sitcom with the production team behind the In-Betweeners.

That show was Drifters, which followed the exploits of a group of friends from Leeds as they struggled to make the transition from university to the adult world.

The show ran for four series on E4 between 2013 and 2016.

Drifters is currently available to watch on Netflix.

In recent years, Jessica has appeared on TV shows like Richard Osman's House of Games, Alan Davis's As Yet Untitled, Mel Gedreich's Unforgivable, and Alex Horne's Taskmaster, that's what I'm calling it, as well as Travelman and Question Team, both hosted by Richard Iawade.

Jessica has also been playing the part of Ramesh Ranganathan's wife in his BBC One sitcom Avoidance.

She's also been writing on that show.

My conversation with Jessica was recorded face-to-face in London on the first day of February this year, 2024, and it was only the second time that I've met Jessica, first time I've met her properly, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it was like seeing an old friend.

I hope she would agree.

We talked about the challenges of trying to make a good sitcom, how the stress of filming a pilot for American TV made one of Jessica's internal organs literally explode, and how the world can be fixed with balls of energy and love.

We also talked about noises that we both make, vocal noises, with a particular focus on a noise that was sometimes made when we were at school, if someone did something nerdy, in separate schools, that is, we didn't go to the same school.

And it occurred to me while I was editing that bit of the conversation that it could sound as if we were celebrating cruelty to nerds.

I associate the noise in question with good-natured bants between friends and not bullying, but I appreciate that sometimes there is a thin line.

Or if you're on the receiving end and the people making the noises are not your friends, it's a big giant line.

The hell is this noise, you're thinking?

Well,

you'll have to wait and see.

But my conversation with Jessica began with her commenting on my texting technique.

Now I should explain why.

When I was cycling to the station in Norwich to get my train to London, I got a flat tire on my Brompton, on the rear wheel.

which Brompton owners will know is quite a palava to fix.

So I had to push my start time with Jessica back, which she was very nice about.

But I was also due to meet a friend after meeting Jessica.

I held off rescheduling with them because I thought that we might still be able to meet at the arranged time.

But once I'd started recording with Jessica, I realized it was going to be tight.

So I texted my friend to ask if they would be okay to reschedule too.

However, the specific technique that I used to text my friend was, for Jessica, a source of great consternation, as you will hear.

Back at the end for news of an upcoming guest and a bit more waffle.

But right now, I don't want you to get disorientated or anything, but I am going to play, instead of the regular Ramble Chat jingle, one of the remixes that was submitted for the Native Instruments and Meta-Pop remix competition a while back in 2021, I think it was.

And this is one that I particularly liked by Anthony Brown, a kind of pastoral version of Ramble Chat, which I thought it would be nice to start with today just for the sake of a bit of change.

After which, you will hear my conversation with Jessica Nappett.

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 do the vat and have a ramble chat.

Put on your conversation coat and find your talking path.

Alright, hang on one second.

Let me sort this out.

Flat tyre has pushed back all my business

this afternoon.

Dash, sorry.

Dash, is there any chance you could

do 5 p.m.

Dash, or does that fuck everything up?

Question mark.

Who

does that?

This guy.

Nobody actually does that.

I've never seen anyone.

Why are you not just sending a voice note?

Because

it'll come up as text if you do that.

And that's actually more useful.

How do you feel about voice notes?

I like voice notes, but my problem is that I waffle.

So I end up sending five-minute voice notes, and people don't like it.

I hate that.

They hate it.

They stay who do you think you are.

And the truth is, I think I'm a sort of brilliant guy with a great voice who anyone would love to have a five-minute voicemail from.

I'm a famous podcaster.

That's who I am.

So you're lucky.

This is, you didn't even have to download.

this is a private podcast that you're receiving that's what I think when I send them I just think they're lucky they're getting a private podcast but then I've been led to believe

yes I have been internally criticized by friends and people just pointing out like that's too long I've got a life that's way too long I feel the same way I love a short voice note But I think you have to be careful with voice notes.

I think before I send them, I say, you don't have to reply with a voice note because I don't think you're a voice note-y person, are you?

Yes.

I would say yes, correct.

But

what I've just witnessed from you, Adam, is an extraordinary.

Have you never seen anyone doing that?

I've never seen anyone dictate a text message

that will then be read.

You might as well have been a voice note.

So you've gone to the trouble

because what you're saying is if it was a voice note, it would end up being too long.

Why don't you just leave voice notes that are

as short as no?

Can't be concise when I'm speaking, as people who listen to this podcast are well aware.

But, you know, I can have the concision of the text, and now dictating is so accurate.

I do like the idea of eliminating auto-correct.

When I was on the way here and you were running late,

I texted somebody that I was seeing next saying

person I'm about to see is running late, but it autocorrected autocorrected to rubbing latex.

What a strange autocorrect.

It must have just thought,

well, rubbing, what do you usually rub?

Yeah, but also, have we got to be careful now?

Because does that say more about me and the things I like?

I think it does because

the AI suspicions it has, which is at work in that autocorrect.

I can guarantee you I have never texted anyone the word latex.

Really?

But maybe you've texted some saucy stuff.

There's saucy stuff.

No, no, I don't text.

I've seen your work.

Absolutely not.

Have you?

There's rubbing, there's all sorts of fluids, there's references to body parts.

Can I just say something about that?

Yeah.

And I realize now that that's who people think I am.

And that's my own fault.

Just a filthy woman.

Just a filthy.

Yeah, and that is a shame, isn't it, really?

For me, it's a shame for me.

Why is it a shame?

Because

that may have been a small part of who I once was.

But

now all I want to do is redeem myself.

You want to write some highbrow drama.

You want to be picking up those golden globes alongside the succession team.

That would be lovely.

You want to be hobnobbing with Phoebe Wallabridge and I actually do hobnob with Phoebe Waller Bridge.

She's my best friend.

Is she?

Yes.

Oh.

Well, there you go.

You're sorted.

It's happened.

You're fine.

It's happening.

It's happening for you.

Don't worry about some people thinking that you're filthy.

No, I know, but I suppose it's not a great reputation to have.

Phoebe Waller Bridge has got some filthy stuff going on in those shows as well.

There's different kinds of filth.

There's different filth and bad filth.

Yeah, I know, and

I think I'm part of the bad filth.

I do, and it's my own fault.

It's what was available to me at the time.

Well, you were excited.

You had just come off doing the In-Betweeners movie, your first movie role.

It's like, yes, I'll do it, sure.

And

I've read the script.

Okay, yeah, not that many lines, but that's fine.

It's a fun show.

It's a big hit.

I love Damon Beasley and Ian Morris of Boach, who produced the show.

I've worked with them too on The persuasionists.

Were they talking to you about the persuasionists?

I remember the persuasionists about the ad.

I watched that show.

Yes.

Oh my gosh.

Did you write that?

No.

You were in it?

I was in it.

I was one of the stars.

You were.

Of the Persuasionists, along with

Simon Farnaby.

Oh, my God.

And Ian Lee.

was really the my co-star.

Nice.

And Daisy Haggard.

Wow.

Jared Christmas.

It was good fun.

We had fun making it, but it didn't turn out great.

No disrespect to the geniuses.

So there was only one series and then.

Oh, yeah, only one series.

It was eviscerated.

Chess.

Eviscerated.

The thing is, it's very difficult, isn't it?

It is, yeah.

But you see, that was just before, I think, the In-Betweeners movie, or a couple of years before that time.

And it was, I think, we were coming off the back of the success of the in-betweeners

when I say we I'm talking about the production company and Ian and Damon.

Yes.

And it took everyone a little bit by surprise, the strength of the feeling that we encountered when it finally came out because they sat on it for a year or so.

This was the BBC.

And then one dreary January, I think it was 2010 finally when it came out.

It limped out.

And maybe someone thought, oh, no one will

in January.

They'll be doing that.

January is when people really

notice everybody notices.

That's when everybody's in.

Have you had a re-watch of the persuasionists?

No.

No, it's too painful.

The other day I was actually looking through.

I'm trying to write a book at the moment.

Excuse me, I'll say that again.

Ooh, hang on.

Here's the reply to my text.

Do it in his voice.

Do it in his voice, please.

This is Richard Iowedi name-dropping.

Sorry to hear that.

They're such a pain.

No, five.

That's good.

Would it be less stressful to rearrange for another day?

But five is fine.

What a kind man.

He's a lovely man.

That's a great response to someone running late.

Yeah.

How can I help you?

Instead of actually, that's quite annoying.

Let me make this about me.

That's a good point.

Maybe I could.

Shall I?

He means that.

I might feel him out for tomorrow.

Why don't don't you ring him?

Should I ring him?

I would love to know how he responds.

Well, if he's texting, then he's ringable, isn't he?

Hmm.

Then you're doing that thing where someone's text.

Yeah.

No.

He's in a meeting.

You've gone too far.

You've gone too far.

Hello.

Hey, Richard.

Hi, how are you?

I'm alright, thank you.

I'm sorry about that.

No, not at all.

I had one the other day, like going down Camberwell Hill really fast, a total blowout.

You just go, I can't believe an error has occurred.

And errors occurred with the normally faultless Brompton.

And then I got that it was the rear wheel that was flat.

So

it's a whole.

I mean, you might as well get a new bike.

You can forget about catching your train in half an hour.

So everything got thrown out of whack.

5 p.m.

would work.

I mean, this evening would still work, but I'm thinking, would you be around tomorrow?

It could be between midday and sort of 3 or 4 or something.

Okay, yes, let me think.

I might have to be back

at 2,

but it's to do something I don't want to have to do.

Don't do it.

Could I discuss and revert?

Of course.

Good morning, no.

Yeah.

Okay, I'll do this kind of thinking not

while you're having to listen to it.

Yeah, no worries.

I'm here with Jessica Nappet, by the way.

Hi, Richard.

Iowadi.

Hello, Jessica Nappet.

How is she?

She's very well.

She's alright.

She's alright.

You're already mitigating her feelings, which is classic male behaviour.

You know, she said she's good.

She said she's alright.

Well, her face lit up when your name was mentioned.

Well, I'm a tonic.

All right, man, we'll listen.

That's good.

We have a good record, I imagine.

Yes.

And let us, yes, eaten on.

Okay, thank you so much.

No problem.

Thank you.

Bye, Richard.

Bye.

Such a great guy, but you know, quite difficult to have a three-way conversation

when I wasn't really supposed to be there.

If you were listening to that, would you think this is gold, this stuff?

Like, he's getting a call from a famous comedian.

He's talking to it.

Or is it a bit much, isn't it?

There was some pretty nice stuff at the beginning with the Brompton blowout.

I enjoyed that.

I don't know if I need the whole thing.

No.

I felt embarrassed for myself sitting there.

And then you told me to shush.

That's right.

I felt bad as soon as I said it.

And then I thought, because I thought you were going to ring him and say, I'm with Jess Nappett.

Yeah.

And you didn't.

Well, that's why.

You started doing diary work.

Yeah.

And then I couldn't speak then.

And then I started, and then I thought I should speak.

And then, and then you told me to shush.

And then I did speak.

And then it was just awkward.

But then afterwards, I straightened it out.

Listen, this is the first time I've been out of the house in 2024.

What?

Yeah.

It's February.

I know.

Yes.

The first, to be fair, the first.

How come?

Actually, maybe that's true of me.

Well, hang on, look.

We're in danger of not tying up any loose ends.

Let's circle back.

Oh, okay.

The persuasionists.

We've got to finish what we started.

The last thing you said was: have you gone back and watched it.

Have you gone back and watched it?

Because here's my new theory.

And maybe this is because I'm someone who's written, yes, a filthy but pure comedy.

It was a proper sitcom with jokes, a completely implausible situation.

Four series on Channel 4, I think we can qualify as a success.

Thank you.

However,

it was

at a time, and I think it suffered slightly, and I think this is the interesting thing about what you're saying as well, with regards to The Persuasionists coming out in January in 2010, I think.

10.

What I felt was happening when Drifters came out was, for instance, it came out at the same time as Girls.

So those were two shows that were about the same thing being made in a very different way on very different budgets.

But really, one of them is a broad silly sitcom and the other one is a comedy drama.

And the fashions were definitely changing around that time and edging away from broad sitcom comedy.

All I'm saying is I wonder if you went back and watched The Persuasionists Now

with a more sympathetic mind.

I think that there was no, but I bet it's really good.

I don't

bet.

And

it shouldn't be eviscerated.

I think I said that I'm writing a book at the moment, and I was looking back through some journals to check a few things.

And I came across an entry from around that time when the Persuasionists went out.

And I guess somewhere online, I read a comment from someone, an actor who was still working, who said something like, I watched the Persuasionists.

How do you feel about the fact that the only black character in the whole thing was the cleaner

and that all the female parts were totally retrograde and two-dimensional?

I mean, we all need the work, but seriously, come on, Adam.

Hmm.

Well,

I just thought, I didn't write it.

The thing is, that's not your...

Yeah, quite right.

That's not your fault.

A couple of questions.

I know this is, you're the person asking questions, but do you journal then all the time?

Have you always and do you always?

Off and on, yeah.

So do you journal on a daily basis?

Pretty much, yeah, yeah.

Certainly for the last five years or so since I got a journal app.

Oh, you've got a journal app?

Yeah.

Do you talk into it like you talk your texts out?

I don't.

You type?

I type at the moment.

In the past, I have.

I used to do voice note journal entries.

Have done.

How about you?

Were they too long?

Yeah, they were very long.

I'm really interested in that.

I used to do something called morning pages, which comes from the book The Artist's Way.

Oh, okay.

Do you know that?

I've heard of The Artist's Way.

It's a little bit

massively wanky?

Yeah.

It's a little bit massively wanky, yeah.

Is this something you found in your LA days?

No, it was before that when I lived alone and was

very, very, very anxious and was trying to find ways to combat my anxiety.

And

I went to see a hypnotherapist

to try and cure my anxiety.

And she said, because I couldn't sleep and I couldn't, I was a mess.

Oh, man.

And she When was this?

How old were you?

When I was making drifters, 27, probably.

Oh, wow.

Going into the age of 30, arriving at 30 was the worst time of my life.

Oh, man.

But you were riding high.

No, well, you would think so.

From the outside.

I didn't feel like it at the time at all.

No, it was incredibly stressful.

Of course it was.

It was all awful.

I completely crumbled, actually.

In In the

it could have been,

oh my god, it has turned into therapy, hasn't it?

I'm definitely not going to cry.

You're not a choir.

No, I am a choir, but I don't reflect on that time and start crying.

I just mean that I've gone deep.

Well, maybe today's the date.

Anyway, let's see how it goes.

Oh, my God.

What a little Stephen Bartlett you've become.

I would feel bad if you did start crying now.

Do people cry?

People don't cry on this podcast.

They have done, yeah.

I mean, me probably the most, but other people have done.

It's not the aim of the game.

No, it's not.

Ideal.

Ideal.

Now, I usually feel bad if people cry.

I think, like, shit, I made you cry and you're feeling bad.

But

why were you feeling so overwhelmed then?

Hang on, did we finish talking about the persuasionists?

Did we?

I mean, I think for me, the punchline was that a fellow actor told me I should be ashamed.

Yeah.

Yeah, okay.

Oh, yeah.

And

I was trying to say that I think now that perhaps we would be less hard on an attempt at pure sitcom than...

I don't know, though.

I just think fashions have changed.

Yeah.

And I think that possibly they're going back round.

I also think we're starved of it.

There just isn't as much.

And there was a time when there was a lot more being put out, but people just still feel

very...

that people get very upset, don't they, about comedy?

Oh, they really do.

But listen, your first series of Drifters was 2013.

God, you're good, aren't you?

And was that sort of exciting to begin with, though?

Or was it immediately like, uh-oh, this is a bit much?

Yeah, it was really thrilling and exciting.

And I, I mean, I guess it because it was hot off the tales of the In-Betweeners movie, and I was kind of wrapped up in this new, you know, it all just sort of happened quite quickly.

Suddenly, I was kind of

I'd gone from working in a call centre

to walking down the red carpet and being in a movie and then getting a pilot and then getting my own TV show and yeah it was thrilling of course it was but then the reality kicks in and you realize that you actually have to write something you actually have to sit down and do the work

and it was really fun the first series was really fun

but also just really daunting and I think To be honest, I had my hand held all the way through it by some very kind producers, but there was just a lot to manage as a new young writer, even though I think people were trying their best to help me and support me and make something good.

I mean, I just didn't know what I was doing, really.

And

yeah, I kind of enjoyed it, but then

I don't know.

I suppose I just felt terrified the entire time I was doing it.

And then it went out.

And I'm also,

on the one hand,

you can be supported to the point of being

steered in a direction that maybe I wouldn't have gone down that path if I had been left to my own devices.

I remember thinking that I wanted to write a show about boredom and the mundanity of being in your 20s and being unemployed.

And so, the boredom of having an empty life led to,

I suppose, sexual exploits and promiscuity as a symptom of boredom.

That's why I had the word drifting in the, you know, so it's about drifting through life and waiting for the movie of your life to start.

And it felt more

in my mind, it was much more artistic.

More like a kind of indie movie or something.

Yes, but the reality was, I was the girl from the In-Betweeners movie.

And I was making a show for E4.

And so I was never going to make my indie movie TV show.

And I suppose that's my own fault because I did it.

That was the way I

saw to make it.

I still, by the way, feel proud of quite a lot of it.

And by the end of it, people loved it.

People did love it.

But I think, you know, it's funny.

I'm proud of how many jokes are packed into it, whether they're believable jokes or not.

I think the people who enjoy it really enjoy it and it makes them laugh and that's

and it makes them really laugh and they return to it again and again and again and it's what they go to when they're feeling shit at the end of the day and they've had a long shift or they've been ill or whatever.

And there's nothing I'm really genuinely really proud of.

Yeah, that's a wonderful thing.

You know, we've made this really stupid but glorious.

And you've got to work with Bob Mortimer.

I've got to work with Bob Mortimer and Couldn't have been here.

Yeah.

And all the people that were in Drifters and wrote on, there were lots of other writers as well.

And, you know, in fact, Phoebe Woolbridge and Emerald Finnell, who then

did they work on it as well?

I didn't know that.

And they're in it.

Brett Goldstein, Nick Mohammed.

Right.

Some incredible, incredible people worked on it.

We did have a lovely time.

But I did also sort of have a breakdown while I was making it.

When are we talking breakdown?

Series one?

Well, I don't know if we, yeah, series two, I think.

I mean, end of series two.

I'm being flippant when I'm using the word break.

Yeah, I know, so am I slightly.

I mean, it was a kind of physical.

What happened was it's a really strange set of circumstances.

And my life just became really sort of bizarre and kind of unmanageable overnight almost.

It was like, okay, well, you've got all of these things that you've auditioned for, but that people want you to be in.

You can't be in any of those because you've got a TV series to write.

And you can't do anything else because you've got five months to do it.

And then we're going to film it for two months.

and then we're gonna edit it for the rest of the year and then we might if you're lucky start again start the process over again and all I was doing was just writing in the day and sending myself slightly mad and then I got a call

David Schwimmer Ross from Friends wants to meet you he's filming a pilot

you know

And then I thought, I'm not really supposed to be doing anything else because they're all stressed about me getting these scripts in on time.

Well, you have to do it.

You have to do it.

Okay, did this weird

improvised audition with him, then got like flown to New York

to do another thing, met with him, and then the next week they were like, Okay, we're shooting a pilot, and it all honestly all just happened so quickly that I was suddenly write an entire series of drifters, but I also had to shoot a pilot with David Schwimmer playing his wife.

What was the pilot?

Did he ever no?

Of course not.

So there was no script at all.

How soon after you met Schwimmer did you start improvising being his wife?

I mean,

immediately.

Oh my god.

And we'd met once in an audition, and then suddenly we had to be.

And I couldn't do anything to please the director.

She just,

I mean, I'm sure she would agree with me now

if she was here and would say that she just absolutely hated me.

Why do you think she did?

So, so there was this scene, for instance, just by way of example.

The waitress came along and put the bill down, and I handed it to Schwimm, my husband,

because, you know, he was my husband, and I thought it would just be funny.

I won't look at it, I'll just give it to him to pay.

Yes.

You know, whatever, it's just a thing.

It's nice detail.

Cut.

She came over to me and said, look, you have to look at the bill

when the bill's put down.

I was like, okay, I didn't know that because there isn't a script.

We'll go again.

Went again.

The bill was put down in front of me.

I looked at it and then I handed it to him.

Kut.

So I had got that wrong.

She said, look at the bill.

Look at the amount on it.

It's a large amount, isn't it?

We had to go again and I had to react.

Oh, that's a lot of money.

and what she wanted was the scene to be about how much money was on the bill you know and for everyone to react that the bill was large but I I don't know how I was supposed to know that and so what it felt like was that I was continually being set up for a fall yeah I had

Just such a terrible experience on that obviously and it is no exaggeration to say that I got like I cried myself to sleep every night I would go back to this hotel

Oh my god, where they and they put me up in the Trump Hotel.

Oh my god.

And I'd get back to my room and every night they'd done that turn-down service thing and there'd be like two pairs of slippers on each side of the bed and there would be like a bottle of brandy on ice and two glasses

every single night and sort of some like sex music.

Coldplay.

Snowboard drop.

And

then I would just cry and go to sleep and then get up and go in the morning.

And basically,

long story short, when I got home, I had a total meltdown, obviously.

Yeah, yeah.

Because I was like,

who am I?

I'm shit at my job.

I can't do this.

This woman hates me.

And then I came back and

my gallbladder exploded inside my body.

Oh, mate.

And I had to go to hospital, which was the best thing ever because, well, it didn't quite explode.

Where's the old gallbladder?

That's um above your liver.

And so I had this sort of physical,

I think it was just a real physical reaction to the stress.

And that meant that I had to go into hospital for a week.

And that was just, I remember thinking as I came around from my operation, sipping my cup of morphine,

oh, this is so fucking nice.

I love this.

I'm just going to get to lie here in this cozy bed.

What's it like when your gallbladder explodes?

How does that feel?

Well, no,

I have exaggerated.

It exploded as it was removed from my body.

As it was trying to escape.

Yeah.

So it was, they said it exploded on the table, actually, as they got it out.

They all had to duck.

So I had been having

such horrific attacks of abdominal pain.

And then it was only because we were in production and there was, you know, they have to look after you on TV sets.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They have to get you doctors and things, they have to get a diagnosis.

So,

you know, this private doctor gave me an ultrasound, and they were like, Oh, you've got a really hot gallbladder, it's called

and then out it comes.

Yeah, I mean, I don't know why I'm talking about this.

Plus, I asked you,

yeah.

Well, I guess

I have made my peace peace with the whole period of making drifters.

How do you look back on it now then?

I mean, could you have done things differently?

Yeah, I have thought about that.

And I think if I'd have had more confidence and artistic integrity at the time,

would I feel happier about the work that I'd created?

But maybe I just am still not smart enough.

No, I do think maybe it's just, you know, it's not...

Or I probably wouldn't have got a second series if I'd have really made the show that I

thought I wanted to make.

Because I was sitting in meetings with directors using words like, well, I just want it to be sort of verite, really.

And they were going, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure, sure.

Sure, you do.

I mean, have you talked to other people, other friends in the industry who've had similar experiences?

Other women, particularly?

I don't know anyone who

hasn't had a bad experience, actually.

Yeah.

It's a shame that, really, isn't it?

I'm trying to think of someone who's had a good experience.

I think it's so hard to get it right because firstly, you've got to have the right team around you.

I wonder if, I don't know, sometimes I think if you're kind of an auteur, people can identify that.

And so they work to support you rather than, and I do know people who are like that and function like that, rather than somebody who might have a weaker idea of what they want their show to be.

For instance, something like Fleaback.

It began as a stage.

And actually, so much great comedy does.

It began as a stage show, and it was so clear what that show was.

Well, you've got sort of proof of concept.

Yeah.

Girls began as tiny furniture.

I'm slowly starting to realize that the DIY way is the best way.

Yeah, yeah.

I think it is.

I mean, if you take

sort of the mainstream out of the equation,

then your chances of being able to do what you want and have it work out somewhere close to what you were imagining do go up quite a bit, I think.

Yeah.

And the other thing is that, yeah, it's all about control, I suppose, to a large degree, isn't it?

And it seems to me that the people who consistently make the most interesting stuff or the best stuff are often working with a lot of the same people over and over again.

So the environment is controlled and predictable, and there's a shorthand there.

People understand each other, they know what they like, they know what they don't like.

So, yeah, your chances of getting what you want on screen are just that much better.

Yeah, but it's sort of also being able to experiment.

And I think it's very rare to just

begin and it's perfect.

You know, the first thing you make

is perfect, and everybody loves it.

I mean, most people have a few flops first, don't they?

But it's just whether or not.

And, you know, and I don't want to say that, oh, it's, you know, it's because I'm a woman, but I do think it's harder for women to

have failure and recover from it.

I do see

more

mediocre output from men repeatedly before they're given the opportunity to succeed.

Because I think it's just so, but is that, I don't know, is that fair?

Yeah, I think you're probably right.

I mean, I don't know, that world seems so

distant to me now.

Yeah.

Why did you stop?

Well, I didn't really ever stop.

You know, every now and again, someone will say, Hey, I like your stuff, you should do a thing.

And I go, Yeah, okay, great.

But then it just, then it just hits a wall, I think.

I mean, I don't know why.

A few of the things I've done were absolutely rubbish.

But then I did a couple of things that I thought, yeah, that was okay.

That worked out quite well, actually.

I did a thing in 2014 called Adam Buxton's Shed of Christmas, and it was not, it wasn't like what I would choose to do if I could do anything in the world, but it was fairly close to a thing that I thought was quite good.

It was just me in my shed, and it was a combination of things I liked doing, reading out some YouTube comments.

There's a bit of animation that had been done for a little sketch I'd done.

Tim Key came along, read some poems.

Gaz Coombs from Supergrass played a song in the shed.

Where can we find this?

Yeah, it's on Sky, if you've got Sky, I think you can call it up.

Was it a Sky Arts thing?

Yeah, yeah.

And it was one of those things where, you know, it all came together quite easily.

And it was Seamus, who produces this podcast, was working with me on that.

And it was really fun.

And it was a company called Burning Bright.

that did it and it was a laugh and it just sort of plopped out and I was really happy with it.

And I watched it back not that long ago.

And actually, you know, there's always stuff where you think, oh, that's, oh dear, that's a shame.

But not that much.

Most of it was like, yeah, that's not too bad.

I think the channel liked it and they said, great, let's do loads more of these.

I was like, okay.

And I, you know, you write a whole list of, here's some other ones we could do.

And then it just, you know, you don't hear anything for a couple of months and then they go in another direction.

That's just the way.

Yeah.

I think to a degree, you have to play the game, right?

At a certain point, it's not good enough you just being a sort of amiable so-and-so who's quite good every now and again.

You have to plug away and you have to humiliate yourself a little bit.

You have to put yourself out there.

Yeah.

Probably you have to be on social media.

You have to, you know, you have to tick some boxes.

You have to, you have to make yourself visible.

You have to make yourself a person that if your name is brought up in a meeting, everyone's going to go, oh yeah, I know them.

Yeah.

And, you know, do all that.

And

I just never had the will to do that, really.

But how do you feel now, like years after that period of your life, do you feel like you're still someone that is tortured by

your expectations and how you would like things to be and how difficult it is to match those?

No, not.

I mean, I feel so far away from that.

I honestly,

I genuinely

very, very happy as a person.

I have regrets and I look back on my time and I ruminate

and I also get absolutely furious about things

but

on the whole the anxiety is

so manageable now and so minor.

And I really do, I am genuinely so grateful for that period of my life because

I really did have to turn it around.

And the biggest thing to come out of it, I suppose, if I can be really cheesy about this, is just that I had put so much focus on external validation,

as a lot of performers do, I think.

And

now I just don't get my validation from those.

It's nice, but it's a bonus.

I don't really get it from that anymore.

And I think that's a lot to do with just growing up and having a family and all of that other stuff but i like my job and i'm well i love it actually i genuinely love the writing process i love sitting in my sad little room i'm by my sad little self coming up with my stories and almost to a fault it doesn't matter to me if anybody sees them or not

And maybe a little bit of me has been slightly hiding away because I'm scared that if I put myself out there any more than I have been doing, like I'm, I think I put myself out there at a very sort of safe level

that something bad might happen to me again.

So that, I suppose, in a way, yes and no.

Like, yes, because I'm managing it and I'm not like, I haven't got a show.

I mean, I have got a show, but it's not mine.

It's Romesh Ranganathan's.

Avoidance.

Avoidance.

And we've just made the second series of that and I'm in it as well.

And wrote two, I wrote, I was in the writer's room and wrote two episodes, but it's not mine, so I don't have to.

Yeah, I don't have to fear the criticism or anything, and it's not like I wouldn't be affected by it.

I would think Romesh is a fun guy to work with on something like that as well.

Great, he's a great guy.

I haven't seen Romesh for a long time.

I hope I'm going to see him soon.

You won't.

Probably not.

You're not going to see him.

You're never going to see him again.

I mean, that's.

I hope you're working with him on something because

that's the only time he's a crazy level of productivity.

Yeah, well, I've got my theories.

But would you aspire to that level of sort of visibility and productivity?

I mean, I personally would not.

I don't think so, thank you.

I don't, because I want to,

and this is no disrespect to Romesh, but I do love hanging out with my family.

I love being at home.

But he, the thing that I heard about him is that he's very strict with his office hours.

Is this true?

Because I said to him, like, how are you?

How are are you still married?

Given the amount of work you do and how often you must be away.

And he's like, no, I structure it quite carefully so that I do go home every

afternoon.

I only saw what I, I mean, I, you know, when you're filming, you don't, you can't go home, can you?

I know that he,

when he tours, he goes home every night and he only tours in places that are close by.

Down the road.

Yeah.

So.

He should just build a stadium.

Like the Abba Stadium.

Yeah.

And his house is just

behind the back of that.

And then he does his live shows in the stadium for a few months, and then they switch it to TV studios.

He does his situation.

That's such a good idea, the Rama Sharanga Stadium.

And then he does like a film there

around August.

Why hasn't anyone done that before?

The kind of Elon Musk approach to entertainment.

One of the last times I saw you

was

doing Richard Herring's podcast in 2017.

Oh, yeah.

At the Leicester Square Theatre.

And you were pregnant with your first human child.

That's right.

My first child, who is, yes, now six.

Great.

It was

very...

I enjoyed having babies.

I have enjoyed having babies.

I have enjoyed it.

It goes without saying, and yet I say it a lot.

You're like Liz Truss making a statement.

That was very truss, wasn't it?

I like babies.

I like enjoyed.

There are babies that I do enjoy and have enjoyed.

I don't know.

Oh, God, I don't know what I am.

It's almost, actually, it's quite a weird gear switch.

I think I compartmentalise motherhood and work.

Yeah.

And

it's it's such a different part of my life.

Because I think when you have kids, it has been quite

a shattering of the old identity.

Yeah.

The old former, you know, talk about

Lashtown Napit

shagging about

being a legend.

She's gone.

When did she go?

Well, she hasn't completely gone, I'll be honest.

I was in Amsterdam last week on the 40th.

She

reared her ugly head.

But I don't know.

Yeah,

it's been a bit of a ride, actually.

It's been so massive, and I find it

so glorious and so crushing at the same time.

Yeah, I think that's a very fair encapsulation of the experience of having children.

I call it, when I first had a baby, I started calling it the magical nightmare.

Mm-hmm.

That's the film.

Let's start writing it.

Are you back in Bingley now?

Is that right?

Wow.

No, I'm in a town called Ilkley.

Oh, yeah.

Which you may be aware of because, you know, it has its own anthem.

Yeah.

Does it?

What's the anthem?

Ilkly Morbata.

No?

I mean, that does ring a very small bell, but you can have.

Ilklemor Bata.

On Ilkley Moor Bata.

On Ilkley Moor Bata.

Right, so you don't know the song, but you just sang along anyway.

It's so musical, you can just do that.

Yeah, yeah.

Are there any other lyrics?

Yes.

Well, the song is about.

So, do you know what Ilkley Moor Bartat means?

No.

No, well, it means on Ilkley Moor without a hat.

Ah.

And then the verse is

something like,

that it goes,

thou's been a court in Mary Jane

on Illclare Moor Bartat.

So,

no, you've been on a date with Mary Jane,

not marijuana.

There was no way they were importing marijuana at the beginning of, well,

1900.

When do you think

the English folk scene

really began to thrive?

English folk songs.

Well, I'm thinking of fishermen people now going, oh no,

and I would think that they would have been doing that

for ages, absolutely ages.

It's just been forever.

People always have sung folk songs.

Could be

as it is.

Think of all those guys prancing around with their lutes.

I mean, yeah.

I rolled myself a wonderful joint upon the moor last night.

I smoked it, but got a white tea, and it gave me a fright.

A fry tea, for I was ghostly on the doobie,

and I fell on my ass.

Next time I'm offered smoky pokey, maybe I shall pass.

That kind of thing.

That's an ancient, that's a traditional folk song.

1850s to 1870s.

I absolutely loved that, by the way.

But I was googling Ilklimar Ba Tat at the same time.

It took ages to write it.

It was so good.

They were working on it for 20 years.

They went down the studio.

Guys, how's Ilklimar Bartat coming?

We're nearly there, but we need 10 more years.

Because at the moment, we got Mary Jane,

a reference to marijuana.

And but we don't know where to go from there.

I just bumped into you at 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

That's a noise I make.

Have you got any noises that you do?

Yes.

I have a really annoying noise that I picked up from school.

Oh, yeah.

In my school, if someone was being nerdy, the whole class would go,

we did that too.

Yeah.

So if someone achieved something,

really,

there was just a heckle of e.

I was telling my friend about this and he said, oh yeah, at my school it was vague.

Do it again.

Great.

Very.

I think I've seen that one as well.

They're so mean, aren't they?

And so you couldn't, you know, if you were going to be a geek,

then

you would get a heck of, you know, you would get a chorus of eee at my school.

But I'm still friends with quite a lot of my school friends.

And whenever they do something nerdy, like one of my friends is an astrophysicist.

Okay.

Imagine how much eer she gets in one conversation

from her 40-year-old friends.

Yeah.

Eeeee.

She's just a.

Eeeee.

Because that must have come from, what do you reckon, like a sitcom or something?

No, no, I don't, I don't think that's ancient.

I think, well, I think possibly the evolution of it at my school was, as it often is, it was just a condensing.

We had a teacher, a CDT teacher, who would get heckled.

What's C D T?

Craft design and technology.

You know, the guy you make the um you'd make a wooden fish mounted on a wooden board.

Sure, yeah, yeah.

You know.

Um

and he was called Cyril Taylor, was his name.

So may he rest in peace.

He'll definitely be dead because he was.

But we all used to call him Cyril Sneer because of

what would that cartoon be now?

Do you know what?

Cyril Snit, Cyril Sneer from

there was the cartoon with a character called Cyril Sneer in it.

And so everyone used to go, Cyril Sneer,

like that.

And I think Sneer, Snit, Cyril Sneer, because he was, I just think it was an evolution from Cyril Sneer no because everyone had we had that at my school you had E you didn't have E yeah we had E

so you do the same yeah you did exactly the same sound same noise then it's just the sound of a geek isn't it

yeah

also we had a teacher Stuart Murray yeah

you see um

boxton there you're lazy you're idle

was he mancunian yeah I guess is Is that Mancunian?

What I'm doing?

Yeah.

He was, and he

was a full bully.

He has left the planet.

They wouldn't get away with it now.

And

Joe Cornish emailed me the other day because he was reading a biography.

Whose was it?

It was.

Please hold.

Your call is very important to us.

You carry on filling.

Adam Buxton will be with you in a moment.

There's been a cotton merry Jane.

Thou's been a cotton, Mary Jane.

On

you are second in the queue.

Il clemar batat.

Here we go.

That was good.

You used to work at a call center, so.

I did.

I did.

That was good skills you picked up.

Andrew Lloyd Webber.

Joe Cornish was reading Andrew Lloyd Webber's diary.

What?

Diary?

Diary.

Remember.

Did he know?

Yeah.

Which is called Unmasked from 2018.

Wow.

I think Joe said he was reading it for research for some project he was working on.

Anyway, Andrew Lloyd Weber went to the same school that we did.

Really?

Westminster School for Arrogant Young Men in central London.

That one.

And we found this reference to the PE teacher that we had who was called Stuart Murray.

Get up the rope.

Come on, get up the rope.

Andrew Lloyd Weber says, for your first two weeks at the new emporium, i.e.

Westminster School, you were allocated a boy a year older than you who was tasked with sympathetically demonstrating the niceties of the institution in which you you were to spend the next few years.

In fact, you were regaled with tales of the headmaster's legendary beatings and the sadistic antics of the gym master Stuart Murray.

I was familiar with this bastard, says Andrew Lloyd Webber.

He had practised minor versions of his craft at Westminster Under School, which was the sort of one before.

And he drilled into me a loathing of exercise and sport that was only partially sorted out by a Californian swimming instructress called Mimosa in the 1970s.

I don't think I'm vindictive by nature, but when I read in the school magazine one morning years later that Mr.

Murray had died, I wrote two tunes and had a bottle of wine for lunch.

Wow.

Says Andrew Lloyd Weber.

You see,

and that's what you get.

You see, Nappy, you're idle, lazy,

that's your problem.

So that's the noise he made, but it's a different, it's different to the nerd noise.

What?

What was the question?

The question was: Do you have any noises that you make?

Because the noise I do is.

But what was the noise I made?

It was like.

Oh, yeah, because you were trying to find the questions and then you said,

I do my sort of pirate noise.

That's not exactly it.

But my children tease me for doing the noise as well.

For doing your thinking noise.

Yeah.

Are you still, do you still do massages?

oh my god is that is that why I'm here well this does my back just my

shoulder a little Weinstein

give you a nice wheezy laugh there just to it's getting dark and you've just asked me if I'll give you a massage.

I didn't say will you give me a massage?

I said do you still do them?

Slightly different.

Okay

so

the answer to that is yes, but not professionally.

Something slightly batshit that I've been doing lately because of having a midlife crisis

is Reiki.

Oh, magnets.

What?

Isn't it magnets?

No.

It's a Japanese relaxation type.

I know I've heard of Reiki, but I thought there was magnets involved.

There's no magnets involved, no.

Not the type like get/slash/give.

Maybe I was thinking of magnetic Reiki.

I mean, I understand why people think it's bollocks.

Well, what is it?

I mean, it is.

Well, what you have to do is a certain kind of meditation every day.

It's a bit like.

Have you ever heard of Qigong or Tai Chi?

Yeah.

I did Tai Chi for the first time over the last holidays.

And

I thought it was bullshit.

I did think it was bullshit.

But I really liked it.

And

it was just funny.

I mean, it's like, you know, it's like you're doing, it's like yoga, isn't it?

It's a dumbass.

To a certain level.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, you're stretching your body and you're breathing deeply, all things, you know, it's all good for you, isn't it?

And it's nice and relaxing.

And the thing is, Reiki's even less than that.

Like, it's even harder to believe that it works.

And the only reason I believe it works is because I've had it done to me so many times now and have really felt the difference so then I got quite into the idea then I accidentally went to a Qigong class that I thought was going to be a yoga class accidental Qigong

accidental Qigong made us do these all these exercises where we had to like move the energy around our bodies

and then we had to hold The energy ball.

Then we had to have you done the energy ball.

Could you feel it?

No.

Everyone else was like, I had a ball.

I had a ball.

Did you have a ball?

It was such a ball that I was scared to drop it.

Wow.

And I didn't want to.

And then she said to put it down or put it away, and I didn't want to.

So explain for people not familiar with this how you get to the point where you are holding an energy ball.

Well, I guess there's movements that you do and you're kind of bringing energy into your body when you're doing Qigong by the way that you're moving your body.

And there's a lot of sort of like bouncing up and down and like brushing things things off.

And then, if you stretch your arms out really wide and slowly bring them in,

which is what you do, but you're also imagining beams of light

in Reiki, you are.

Well, I don't know, I haven't seen it.

Well, this was Tai Chi.

So, in Tai Chi, in the Tai Chi session I did, you're imagining a beam of light connecting you from the sky.

It's coming down through your head and it's going down through your feet into the earth.

And so you're on a kind of continuum of energy.

And then throughout the class, and she's saying things like,

at one point, she said, now I have to pause because I'm absorbing a lot of energy from the group, and it's very overwhelming to me.

Okay, now let's carry on.

Now we're going to go with the, we're going to swim with the dragon.

And the dragon is your negative energy.

And some people don't like to swim with the dragon because they don't believe that you should encourage negative energy.

But we're going to swim with the dragon because we will be respectful to the dragon.

We're going to take the dragon for a swim, hands together, bend your knees and take the dragon down to the bottom of the ocean.

Anyway, there was a lot of that.

And then at the end of it, she said, now gather all the energy.

And it's like you're shaping it with your hands into a sphere.

And you're...

really imagining that you are holding this powerful ball of energy that and it's such a powerful feeling that you can almost see it she was saying And then there were people I was doing the class with who were going, Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, I'm seeing the energy.

Yeah,

so maybe those people were just imagining it,

but even if they were, I mean, yes,

whether they were right, so you think definitely they were imagining it,

yes.

I mean, there's no real energy ball, I don't think anyone had an actual energy ball.

I don't think that

obviously, there's no way you can measure it, but but you did.

No, I just,

whatever my imagination is, is

I believe that they felt the energy.

I think there is such a thing as being able to feel a certain non-corporeal energy, metaphysical energy.

Every now and again, you can definitely feel that kind of thing.

And if you focus it mentally, then yeah, you could feel a sort of magic ball.

I mean, I sort of think

that love is kind of like that.

This is going to be good for the end of the podcast.

Come on, let's go.

Well, you can feel it and you know it's there,

but you can't see it and you can't touch it.

But I'm not imagining it.

And so I think in a way, it's...

It feels a lot like that when you get really good Reiki.

You feel just kind of like you're being loved.

So, yeah, maybe that's all it is.

Sure.

And I think that that's also,

I just think that the more you can bring that into your life, the better.

So that's why I'm into it.

But what if it was possible to use the force of

love.

To charge phones.

To

know.

What if it is possible to

move it around and pass it on to someone else

just by standing next to them?

What if it is possible?

Then Reiki is real.

Oh, right, okay.

Then Tai Chi is real, then, you know, that's what the energy is that they're talking about.

What I'm saying to you is, um,

I know, yeah.

What was that?

That's actually what's happening, Jess, is you're repeating the plot of Star Wars to me on a podcast and describing it as Reiki.

So,

do you know Ben Kenobi?

No, no,

I know how I sound.

Listeners, I want to describe to you my face, which is non-sarcastic.

When Jess was saying all that stuff about balls and love, I was not doing a face.

I was.

No, you weren't doing a face.

I didn't need to.

I like it.

I believe in it.

And I think.

I believe in it, and I believe we need more of it

to counteract the hate.

Do you think this is going to sound sarcastic, but it's not meant to be?

Because of course the big problem with all this is getting

sceptical people to indulge it because it sounds

absolutely batshit, whackadoodle.

I get it.

You know, outside of the goop universe, I know, I know.

It's difficult to get some people to take it seriously, especially the people who most need to take it it seriously.

You know what I mean?

Like,

I don't think Donald Trump is going to be doing any of this stuff.

And I think that he could really benefit from it.

Maybe I'm wrong.

I don't want to harshly judge Donald.

Maybe he doesn't want to.

I don't think it would work on him.

You don't reckon.

Maybe not.

I don't know.

But if it was true that you could make it as literal as you're talking about, where you could gather up an energy ball of pure love, and if it was possible to transfer it from one person to another do you reckon you could just walk past someone like Donald Trump and just lob it at him?

I know people who think you can.

Oh really?

And

the problem is

you have to be able and ready to receive love, don't you?

Listen, I am down for it.

It's

it has been honestly have to say and I am I what I think is good is to have a little tiny smattering of something like this in your life

just something to believe in that's bigger than yourself whether that's aliens

or a bit of religion or whatever.

Do you know the Philip Larkin poem An Arundel Tomb?

recited.

Well, the famous Philip Larkin poem, obviously, is They Fuck You Up Your Mum and Dad.

This Be the Verse is the name of that They Fuck You Up Your Mum and Dad poem.

And unfortunately, it was written after An Arundel Tomb, which is a more hopeful poem.

I mean, This Be the Verse really is...

Do you do you are you familiar with the poem?

The Arundel one.

No, this be the verse.

No.

I don't think so.

I don't know.

Well, the last line is: get out as early as you can and don't have any kids yourself.

I mean, I think it's supposed to be funny,

but it's also not funny.

And there's also a sort of streak of sincerity in there, which is quite chilling.

But it's a shame because an Arundel Tomb, which he wrote about, you know, sort of 15 years before that,

is very sentimental for Larkin anyway it's about him going into a church and seeing a kind of marble effigy on a tomb plinth thing a sort of stone carving of a lord and his wife and they're lying side by side and Larkin is struck by the fact that they're holding hands and he's very moved by that and

their features have been worn down by time you know and everything but but yet they're still there and they're holding hands and the last line is what will survive of us is love

and so it's the line that people use when people say oh Philip Larkin God he was depressing

well he could be nice but as I say that was early on it wasn't

it wasn't get out as early as you can don't have any kids yourself which was where he was at a little while later.

But you know,

writing from a place of hurt.

But you could still,

both of those things are true.

Well, that's the thing, isn't it?

It's like if you put your finger on something that is true, I think that it transcends who you are, where the world is at, what anyone says or does, or however your life goes.

You know what I mean?

I think you can, if someone nails a little nugget of pure truth, then you can separate that from them and everything else and it lives on.

Even if that same person says 10 years or 15 years or however long, you know, that thing I said before, I didn't mean it.

Yeah.

But love,

love never dies.

And if it doesn't, then there's loads of it, isn't there?

Knocking about.

Where is it all?

Wow, we've really ended up in quite a

I love talking about love.

Oh, that's just broken my dream.

I'm not joking, that's just broken my dream.

From last night.

Which part?

I had a dream last night that I was, I kept having to get naked.

And

that dream is going to come true.

My shoulder's going to be sore.

Yeah.

And I kept being like, oh God, I've got to get naked.

And then as I took my clothes off again and people were there, my old friend, my school friend, Will, was sitting in the corner as I pulled my top down and he was very clearly supposed to look away.

And I said, Will, why aren't you looking away?

And he just went,

That's one for the wank bank.

I had my tits out, and then I looked in the mirror and I was like, Fucking hell, I've got great tits.

I don't have great tits, unfortunately, but I did in my dream.

They were the tits of my dreams,

ladies and gentlemen.

Sucking that bit.

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Continue.

Hey,

welcome back podcasts.

That was Jessica Nappet talking to me there.

It was great fun hanging out with Jessica.

And I hope that from now on she will consider herself a friend of the podcast and always welcome.

I wanted to tease a forthcoming guest, which normally I wouldn't do because I'm not that organized.

But

basically, I'm going to put out one more podcast after this one

and then

press pause in order to get some more writing done

and also

get my ducks in a row for the live podcasts.

And then I will try and put out a few more episodes in the summer

in late June, July,

and then take another little break and then come back in the autumn.

That's the plan.

So I think one of the episodes that I hope to put out either in the summer or in autumn will be with the mighty John Cooper Clark, poet, movie star, rock star, TV and radio presenter, comedian, social and cultural commentator, and Britain's best loved and most important performance poet.

That's according to his website.

but I would agree.

I had a very enjoyable ramble with Dr.

John Cooper Clark in a studio in Colchester a few weeks back.

It was very good fun to spend a few hours in John's company and I would recommend the experience which you can have too by going to see John when he is touring around the country this year.

He's doing a load of shows.

all over Europe in fact.

There's details on his website.

There's a link in the description.

And he also has a brand new collection of poetry out, which is called What?

And it is filled, as ever, with examples of Dr.

John Cooper Clark's typically mordant wit and insight

and linguistic invention.

I went to see Dune 2 this week.

with my daughter and my wife

and quite enjoyed it.

I think I might have liked the first one a bit better.

Do you know what?

I liked the costumes in the first one.

I just thought they were terrific.

And I liked that scene towards the beginning of the first one where they had all the different

emissaries from the different planets and the families, and it reminded me of the ceremony at the Vatican where they swear in the new Pope swearing.

And the new Dune movie is a little bit more sandy.

Also, the bombast level of the the music got to me a little bit.

That's the sound of Hanzimma.

It's good.

Don't get it.

I'm not complaining.

It's good, epic stuff, but it's just a lot and it goes on for a long time.

That's becoming a cliche now, isn't it?

To say, oh, films, why are they so long?

But they still are.

So I think that's okay to say i i refuse to be shamed for wishing that all films were about an hour shorter anyway it was good fun and i also liked javier bardem's noises that he makes to communicate with the rest of the fremen out in the desert makes a special sound that's a little bit like a squeaky fart.

Let's see if I can have a go.

No, it's not like that.

I apologise.

That's not cooth.

One thing though, for a film that's called June 2, why didn't they just wait a few months and release it on June the 2nd?

Has that joke been made so many times on social media?

I apologize if it has.

I don't look at social media.

June the 2nd.

Yes.

Thank you very much indeed once again to Jessica Nappet

for waffling with me and being such fun company.

Thank you to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support and conversation editing.

Thank you to all at ACAST for all their hard work.

Thanks to Helen Green, she does the artwork for the podcast.

But thanks most of all to you.

Look, I really appreciate you coming back.

I know that you have many, many choices in the podcast world.

And as I watch the sun sink beneath the hazy Norfolk horizon.

I'd like to, if you don't mind, just give you a non-creepy hug.

Come here, babe.

Great to see you.

Until next time, please go carefully.

It's treacherous out there.

And bear in mind, for what it's worth, I love you.

Bye.

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