EP.213 - WILL SHARPE

Come on, Rosie.

We're on the regular track that we go on for our walks, and Rosie is just rooted to the spot about halfway up the first section of the track,

glaring at me with an expression that says, This is bullshit.

I don't want to go on a walk.

It's windy and cold.

It's really not that bad, Rosie.

It's not raining, it's not that cold.

10 degrees, Rosie, that's not too bad.

Plus it's good for you.

You have to get some exercise.

We can't just both sit in our nutty rooms all day.

I think I can.

Yeah, I think you probably could, but it's nice to be outside.

Come on.

What's nice about it?

It's beautiful, Rosie.

Come on, look, even though it's a little bit of a cloudy day, there's some magical autumnal colours.

Sure, a lot of the beautiful autumnal leaves were blown off over the weekend in the high winds.

But it's still nice out here.

Come on, let's go.

Let's go.

No.

All right, just going to chat with Rosie for a second.

Listeners, be with you shortly.

Here's the intro song.

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, listeners?

Welcome back.

Adam Buxton here out on a Norfolk farm track

with my best dog friend Rosie.

A whippet poodle cross.

In colouring, black and silvery.

In temperament, mellow, sweet, quiet.

But when it comes to walks, often stubborn.

For no apparent reason.

Just in the first section of the walk these days,

it's always a bit of a battle.

But then once we get a certain distance up the track, it's all fine.

I hope you're doing well, podcats.

Alright, let me tell you a bit about this episode of the podcast number 213,

which features a rambling conversation with the English writer actor director Will Sharp.

Get my notes out.

Okay sharp facts, William Tomomori Fukada Sharp was born in London in 1986.

He moved to Japan with his family, his mother is Japanese, when he was just a few months old.

They lived in Tokyo until Will was eight when they moved back to the UK.

UK.

In the mid-2000s, Will earned a place at Cambridge University and after graduating in 2008, he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company for a year.

In 2009, after getting the Royal Shakespeare Company out of his system, and on a break from a regular acting job that he had landed in the TV show Casualty, Will travelled back to Japan with fellow Cambridge graduate Tom Kingsley, where they made a short film called Cockroach that Will also performed in.

You can see Cockroach on YouTube.

There's a link in the description.

Tom Kingsley has since gone on to direct shows like Ghosts and Staff Let's Flats, but back in 2010 he and Will capitalized on the excitement they generated with Cockroach and together they made the low-budget feature film Black Pond, a dark comedy in which a family is accused of murder after a stranger comes to dinner.

It's got Simon Amstel in it.

Tom and Will's second low-budget feature was released released in 2016.

The Darkest Universe is about a man searching for his sister who has gone missing on a canal boat.

It's mad, it's sane, defies description, said the Financial Times.

That year, 2016, Channel 4 aired the first series of Flowers, which Will wrote, directed and acted in.

The show starred Julian Barrett as Maurice, a depressed children's author, with Olivia Coleman as his music teacher wife, Deborah.

Flowers also starred Daniel Rigby and Sophia DiMartino to whom Will is now married.

A second well-received series of Flowers aired in 2018.

The following year, Will co-wrote and directed the biographical comedy drama The Electrical Life of Louis Wayne, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the titular 19th century artist best known for his drawings of anthropomorphized cats and kittens.

The film was released in 2021, the same year that another Will Sharp directed project aired on Sky Atlantic.

Landscapers was inspired by the true story of a murdery couple from Mansfield, played by David Hewlis and once again, Olivia Coleman.

Meanwhile, as if he's not busy enough, Will has been acting in a number of big TV productions that include the 2019 crime drama Giri Haji, set in Tokyo in London, in which Will played a flamboyant sex worker called Rodney Yamaguchi and The White Lotus 2 in which Will played Ethan Spiller a newly wealthy tech entrepreneur on holiday in a high-end Italian resort with his wife played by Aubrey Plaza.

I really liked The White Lotus 1 which followed the interactions of obnoxious overprivileged guests in a Hawaiian resort but I think I might have preferred White Lotus 2.

What do you think of that?

But for those of you unfamiliar with White Lotus's 1 or 2, the series was the creation of American writer and director Mike White, who, like Will, writes, directs and sometimes acts in his projects too.

For example, Mike White wrote the screenplay for School of Rock and also plays the best friend of Jack Black's character.

School of Rock was one of Mike White's most high-profile projects prior to White Lotus, but the TV show Enlightened, which he created with Laura Dern, is also well worth watching.

Laura Dern plays a former high-powered executive in the process of getting her life back together following a breakdown, and it's very much the kind of show that I could imagine Julia Davis having written and performing in.

It's that same sort of comedy vibe.

But back to Will, our conversation was recorded face to face in London back in May of this year, 2023, the good old days, remember May?

And we talked about mental health, therapy, what it was like escaping the lockdowns to work on White Lotus 2 in Italy and why Will had to get into incredible shape to play his part.

We also talked a bit about AI, gotta have an AI chat, and we talked about favorite robot-based entertainment.

But we began by recalling the first and only other time that we have met.

Back at the end for a bit more waffle, but right now with Will Sharp.

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 bat and have a ramble chat.

Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat.

I've met you once before.

That's right, yeah.

When was it?

Like

you were just about to do flowers, right?

I think you're right, yeah.

It was just on, it was going to be on TV in about a month or something.

I feel like it was probably just under

10 years ago.

Okay.

Eight or nine years ago, maybe?

Yeah.

I think.

And it was a channel for what they call a talent dinner, which is always a sad thing to attend.

Yeah.

Because I don't know about you, but I always feel as if, well, obviously I shouldn't be here then.

Yeah, yes.

And I remember being excited slash scared to tell you that I was a fan.

of the sketch that you and Joe did

where there's like if it's 20% free

that you were going around just like drinking the free part of the juices and stuff.

Yes.

Listeners, if you're not completists, this is a sketch that me and Joe did on the Adam and Joe show.

One of the very first things we did in the very first show, I think, back in 1996.

And it was actually, it was an idea that Louis Theroux supplied us with.

Okay.

And he said, why don't you go into a shop and find the items that are marked 20% free or whatever it might be, and then open the boxes and help yourself to that proportion that is free until the people in the shop tell you to stop and you just explain at that point well it says it's free we're just taking the free bits yeah and i still think about that when i'm walking around supermarket yeah yeah just nick the free bits yeah that was stressful have you ever done any stunt stuff or pranky stuff uh

i remember there was one

While I was at university, we filmed a sketch on a train where I was doing things like climbing onto the luggage rack and stuff like that.

Getting onto the lying.

Just pretending to be like, I can't even remember what the point of it was, really.

What's the point of anything, yeah?

But yeah, nothing, uh, nothing serious.

Did you enjoy doing those things, or did you think, hmm, maybe this isn't me?

No, it was fun.

I mean, you're so innocent, you know, in those days.

You're just full of energy and like want to throw yourself into like whatever it is.

So, no, it was fun.

What were you studying?

Classics.

Which is like Latin and Greek.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Everyone needs Latin and Greek.

Everyone needs that bit of ancient Greek.

Yeah.

No, they do.

I mean, I'm being flip, but my daughter wants to do that.

You know, she loves all that stuff.

Does it inform your perspective on the world nowadays?

It's a good question.

I mean, like, I guess I really liked the sort of plays.

Yeah.

Which are the bangers?

You know, I can't believe this is where we're starting.

I guess like the Aeschylus tragedies, Oedipus Rex is quite a famous one.

The Euripides has some goodies.

But I think I also was like, because I guess like I wasn't very good at maths or science or anything.

And so the other option was maybe English.

But I remember thinking that I would always be able to read

and probably find books, but

when else would I I do something as weird as this?

Also, it feels, I suppose, that you're starting with the very bedrock of the things you're interested in, of language, storytelling.

Yeah, the epics.

I'm not too strong on the epics.

No, although I remember there was something about like when I first got into watching

series like The Sopranos or The Wire.

Right.

Like, in the days where it felt less like everywhere you looked, there was a different series.

And it was kind of like, well, here is the story that spans,

you know, however many episodes.

There was something about that that felt epic in that way.

And yeah, I just remember thinking this is really impressive storytelling, you know, that works like chapter by chapter, but also you travel so far across the journey of it.

Yeah, and that has really well-realised three-dimensional characters and very complicated story arcs, which I don't think I was aware of seeing on TV before.

Like, I'm trying to think of the shows that my parents used to watch that were big in the 70s, and it was things like iClaudius.

But if you watch an episode of iClaudius now, it's a very different thing.

It's not like, it doesn't feel like the Sopranos.

It's so stylized.

Yes, yeah.

Because

I was thinking about that scene in White Lotus

when your character Ethan is sat around with Harper and Cameron and Daphne,

and they are talking about what they've been watching.

Oh, yeah.

And they're kind of verbally scrolling through all these shows.

And that is, that made me laugh because that is the conversation I have with a certain group of friends whenever we get together.

Yeah.

There's just an hour of it.

Yes, just checking in.

And it's no longer possible, I don't think, to all have watched the same stuff.

No.

It's not possible anymore.

That's right.

So you get to a certain point after you've done, like, have you been watching Succession?

Have you been watching

White Lotus?

Have you been watching Sweet Tooth?

Whatever it might be, and then it starts getting more and more obscure.

Yeah, yeah.

Have you been watching the Ulysses diaries?

Have you been watching Why I Killed Your Teacher?

Have you

like, are these real shows?

Yeah, yeah, so much content now.

It's like there's billions of shows.

Everyone's trying to keep up.

It's kind of suffocating, honestly.

Yes, too much.

It's like we're all entertaining each other while the world burns, right?

We're all just zombies, you know.

Like,

I love a binge.

I remember filming that scene because there was

the four of us.

Every time we were due to film anything, there was always like terrible weather.

Oh, yeah, like severe winds.

It was really cloudy, it was raining.

And so, our scenes kept getting bumped for a while.

And when we finally got to shoot that scene, it was a nice day.

And I remember Mike just giving us lots of time.

So, there was lots of additional footage of just scrolling through lots of other shows and just kind of like

trying to guess what each of those characters would or wouldn't watch and what their opinion of it would be.

Because they all agree on Ted Lasso, don't they?

They all, Ted Lasso is the one that was a good observation of one of those shows that at a certain point everybody was watching.

You kind of had to like it.

If you didn't like it, it was a bit of a statement.

Yes.

But I feel like Harper

is like non-committal on Ted Lasso.

but i can't remember i can't remember how it was in the end i think you're right i think i think she's that was one of the funny moments was that she was like i don't think i do like ted lasso but i can't be bothered to get into the why's and where of it yeah

what are you watching at the moment i'm uh watching succession obviously um and then

we watched that stutz

documentary Jonah Hill and his children.

Jonah Hill getting therapy.

What did you make of that?

It was interesting.

You've got to be careful now because you probably know some of those people.

No, I don't.

I don't know any of those people.

But it was, yeah, it was like helpful.

It was like just like well-intentioned documentary.

This kind of slightly avant-garde left-field therapist, who I think is also like Leonardo DiCaprio's therapist as well.

I get the impression he does therapy for a lot of Hollywood films.

Yes.

And he just has these kind of what they call tools, which are maybe versions of what would be recommended anyway.

And they kind of walk through this and try to give a sense of this guy, like who he is as a person and his relationship with Jonah Hill.

But I think what was most interesting about him was at the beginning, he talks about how a lot of the time in therapy, the correct way to do it is that you don't push too hard on your patient and you don't give them too much.

You try to receive and leave openings for them to give you what they have to offer.

And he was like, That's bullshit.

I just tell you what to do.

I'm like, whatever you're doing is not working.

Here are some things that you can do to change your life.

Which, in a way, that does make sense, I think.

That's exactly what I wanted from therapy.

Right.

That I didn't get.

I got the you know, very nice and helpful in its own way, but I got the how did that make you feel right in school and you know, sort of go further with it,

see every thought through to its logical conclusion, conclusion, stay with uncomfortable thoughts, describe them,

which is, you know, quite often painful and uncomfortable.

And sometimes I felt like, how is it useful replaying this uncomfortable, unhappy memory?

But I was assured by the therapist that it is useful.

It's better than forcing it down.

It's better to see it through right to the end, to follow.

Yeah, these horrible thoughts to the end.

But what I kind of wanted at the time was someone like Stutz

who could just say all right I see what's wrong with you yeah this is what you'd have to do just do this yeah yeah well I think I mean I'm not an expert on this but my understanding is that there is like a kind of therapy that is like analysis or a version of analysis which is more that kind of gentle technique which I when I've done that I've also found it pretty frustrating and kind of some and it works for some people really well I think but it didn't for me for sounds like similar reasons to you.

But I got more out of the first time I did cognitive behavioral therapy, where it was more a bit like almost

like a science lesson or something, where it was kind of like, what are the symptoms?

Here are some things you can do about it.

And it was just sort of very practical and demystified it, which I found helpful.

But, you know, everyone's different.

Yes.

Everyone needs different mixes.

Yeah.

But I did like, I've always liked the idea of cognitive behaviour therapy and but then when I was in a position to seek out therapy I was recommended someone by a friend and that recommendation trumped my desire to actually just find some random CBT therapist.

But I think I would like to in future.

I'd really like to give it a go because I do I mean I am a bit of an overthinker so that might be a problem in itself.

It is.

But I like the idea of unpacking things and trying to understand

what is short-circuiting and what mistakes I keep making and

trying to find ways to avoid them, you know, little heuristics to get out of those constant loops.

Yeah.

I mean, you talk about your bipolar 2 diagnosis.

Is it a diagnosis?

Yeah, it is and what's it.

Yeah.

And are you okay with me asking you about it?

Or is it a person?

I think so.

I mean, yeah, there's certain

probably certain things that feel personal, but I'm also not embarrassed about it.

Sure.

Obviously, it informed the stories you wrote for flowers

specifically.

I mean, are you able to explain what the condition is?

Like, what's the difference between bipolar two compared to bipolar classic?

So full fat...

Type 1 bipolar is just more extreme is my understanding.

So

you might,

in a a manic state enter into sort of full psychosis and you might become a real threat to other people.

Whereas bipolar two I think you tend to I mean the lows are lows, they're sort of fairly consistent across the board I think but your manic

spells are gentler.

So that's what they call hypermania, which is like kind of mini mania.

So it can be inconvenient, embarrassing, you may endanger yourself, but it's not kind of as delusional or as extreme as type one.

And even on within type two, my understanding is that it's relatively mild.

And like I, with sort of discipline, I'm able to manage it pretty, well, better and better, cashwood.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I guess like the treatment of that is to try and minimize the fluctuations because obviously like shifts in mood are natural like that's part of being a human being but there is a version of it where it is slightly atypical and also I guess not entirely always influenced by circumstance or your situation because that can obviously affect our mood as well.

Right.

Yeah.

But I'm not like a I'm trying to answer it as correctly as I can, but I'm not like an sure.

I don't mean to characterize you as like yeah, hey, you've got this so you must be an expert.

Yeah.

No, that's interesting.

I mean I remember a friend of mine who I know was bipolar,

when he started having episodes, it was when we were still teenagers and it was very intense and he felt like he could understand the nature of the universe and there were signs everywhere and everything connected up.

And so with him, it was medication that kind of...

even things out.

I guess it's a bit like compression on music, isn't it?

Kind of getting compressing the particular troughs

with the right medication.

And as I understand, difficult to find that exact right

dosage or exact right medication.

But

over the years, he's got better at managing it and avoiding those trigger situations and

things.

Well, thank you for letting me ask you about it.

No, of course.

I appreciate it.

But did you feel like...

Was it cathartic dealing with it in flowers?

And were you nervous that

it would lead to you having to do a lot of explaining or did you feel like people could just take the experience of mental illness more or less at face value via your comedic version of it?

Well, I mean the weird thing is I didn't set out to make a show about mental illness originally.

I remember like at the beginning you know, in those treatments that you do when you're trying to pitch a show to get it made.

I think on the very first document it said something like I'm trying to make an uplifting uplifting show about melancholy.

Okay.

And the first scene that I wrote was the scene where Morris, the dad of this family, played by Julian Barrett, tries and fails to hang himself.

And then from that, I suppose, just in a writerly sort of dramaturgical way, every moment, scene, interaction thereafter felt like it needed to relate in some way back to that inciting incident, I guess.

And it was like, how is this affecting his relationship with his wife?

How is it affecting his relationship with his kids?

And like, at the time when we were developing the show, the conversation around mental illness was not what it is now.

People weren't as fluent about it, I don't think.

And

there was still the sort of attitude that hopefully I think is not as common anymore, where it's kind of like, well, can't you just

sort of cheer up?

Yes.

You know, and there's the analogy of like, if you've got a broken leg, it's like, can't you just get up and walk?

It's like, well, no, because I've got a broken leg.

So I remember a lot of the like script meetings were about kind of like,

for example, instead of trying to think of what's the specific reason why this man was depressed, trying to be like, well, I think the harder, more honest way to do this is to try to work out, or try to express basically that he's just simply unwell, he's just ill, and that that has an effect on his life and the lives of the people around him.

In a roundabout way, I suppose what I'm saying is, I think it was cathartic, but I didn't really know what I didn't set out to write what I ended up writing.

And so I suppose there were lots of things that I discovered that I wanted or needed to say that I wasn't aware that

I did.

So, yeah, I mean, yes, it's the short answer.

That's good, man.

I mean, because my question was, it wasn't even a question.

It was just like a long ramble of words.

But obviously, you're very productive, and you are now kind of entering another phase where you are more in the mainstream, more recognizable because of appearances in shows like White Lotus.

You know, in addition to all these projects that you're writing and directing yourself,

is there a part of you that finds that anxious making, or are you kind of rolling along with it?

Are the struggles that you've had in the past operating in a different area?

Do you know what I mean?

Like, so that they don't really impinge upon you being a public figure?

I guess I haven't really thought of

anything in that way yet.

Sorry,

I'm making you anxious.

So maybe now.

I mean, I guess like it's, I've never had like a plan.

I'm not very good at like having a plan.

It's always just been like

thing to thing, project to project.

What is the thing that I find myself thinking about all the time and that, you know, I'm sort of waking up in the night thinking about and what's the thing that I'm really hungry to move forward and it won't always work out.

Yeah, I've been lucky that there have been enough things that I've been reasonably busy, you know, for the last few years, especially during lockdown.

I was very grateful.

to be working.

Yeah.

I mean, you did a couple of things.

You did White Lotus towards the end of lockdown.

There was a movie called The Electrical Life of Louis Wayne, which shot before

Covid.

Okay.

And then Covid

began,

like in that during our edit.

And then there was a show called Landscapers.

That's all.

Which we shot in the thick of COVID.

Yeah.

Full masks and visors.

Full visors, masks, yeah.

So then you're out in Sicily doing White Lotus 2 in 2022?

Yeah.

You made a reference earlier on to bad weather out there.

That was one of the things I was thinking because

occasionally I sort of assumed you must have been shooting off-season because it's an incredibly touristy part of the world.

So, yeah, that must have been a massive pain in the ass trying to make it look summery when there were just clouds rolling in every day.

Or was it mainly okay?

There was definitely a bit of like having to move the schedule around, and it seemed normally to be tied to us four that like whenever, whenever we were due to film, you had a lot of balcony scenes yes on the terrace of the hotel yeah exactly um

but i mean they got through it it was i mean it was a pretty big

shoot for mike white and for the core crew and what's the name of the location you were shooting in

so most of it was shot in this town called taumina which is a very beautiful town in sicily and Mount Etna kind of looms pretty large over it in a small surreal way.

Yeah, it's just like there would be days where it was erupting, or it looked like, I mean, it was erupting.

With like orange stuff coming out.

Yeah, but it's apparently that's fine.

It sort of just does that every now and again.

It's just expectorating.

Yeah.

A small amount of lava is fine.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, don't worry about that.

Had you been to that place before?

No, never.

I've never been to Sicily before.

Right.

Yeah.

It looks amazing.

It is an amazing place.

It's very beautiful in that Italian Mediterranean way, but but there is also, like, I was talking to someone about it a couple of weeks ago, it's like it's quite hard to explain, but there's this kind of almost sort of hot

melancholy, like a sort of dark, there is a sort of darkness there as well.

And I don't know

if it's to do with the mafia or it's kind of like war history, like being an occupied kind of whatever it is.

Some of your classical stories there, some of those crazy stories.

Maybe.

Yeah, there is a feeling of something like simmery um which is sort of what those opening titles for white lotus were doing weren't they i think so yeah all these little creepy details in the corner of details

that should be the name of the show

that's another netflix creepy detail it's in creepy details you've got to stick with it for a few episodes and then it gets really good but that yeah that sort of thing all those classical images yeah with like oh he's what's going on there yeah what's that about

But once you'd got that gig, and you must have been jazzed, I think you, I've heard you saying that you enjoyed the first series.

Yes.

Yeah.

Also, I just said jazzed.

Jazzed, yeah.

I was jazzed.

Okay.

I'll be jazzed.

Jazz.

What was, I just want to know what it was like, because that is a fantasy gig.

Like, in every conceivable way, you're coming in on a show.

I suppose there could have been the anxiety that it might not have been as good as the first one, but you were the safe pair of hands.

Mike White, brilliant writer, director, amazing location, cool cast.

What was it like, sort of turning up there?

And, you know, what was your first night like?

How were you feeling?

Do you remember?

It's a good question.

I mean, so the headline for me was that we had recently had our second child.

Oh, yeah.

And so there was a whole

I was

jazzed to get the gig.

But there was also a whole kind of organizational aspect of how we're going to move our life over there and

what a lovely place to be and what a lovely problem to have.

And I remember going for a walk and just kind of not really knowing where.

I could quite like doing this sometimes where it's just sort of like, don't know where I am, just walk around, see what there is.

And ending up on the sort of on a pebble beach with the volcano kind of looming over me and just thinking, this is very strange that I'm here all of a sudden.

And also, I don't think I have it as much, but there was a thing that I think a lot of people maybe started to have it one way or another, where you're just slightly distrustful of reality, where it's just kind of like.

And I remember the first time I ever had it was when, like years and years ago, when Sophia, my partner, and I went on like a West Coast road trip and we went to the Grand Canyon,

and I couldn't see, I couldn't see it because it was like too big.

It was just like too big, so I couldn't like compute it.

Couldn't process it, and so it just started to feel like my brain was processing it as a sort of screensaver or a photograph or something.

So it was simply too big for me to see.

And then sort of didn't really have that feeling for a while.

But increasingly, over lockdown, I did start to have that feeling more and more.

And kind of like, I suppose, going on the same walks over and over again, you start to feel like a computer game character being pushed around one of those maps.

Yeah, what are they called uh npg nonplatform rpg non-playable

nprs npr nprs that's correct tyra glass just wandering around

npcs non-playable characters npr npr the computer game would be quite funny um

need to find a story on this island um yeah there's definitely like an element of that of i guess because the volcano is quite a surreal image too.

So and I remember like there was a time where we were being sort of ferried from one side of Sicily to the other for another sort of section of the filming where there was like a view rolling past and it was a really beautiful landscape and I just remember thinking, don't buy it.

Nah, it's not there.

I know what you mean.

I do know what you mean.

Do you think that that is a product of the digital age of having all these parts of the world available to you at the click of a mouse so you have a fair idea of how things look and sometimes you know you can check out i don't know if you've ever done this but sometimes when i'm going to stay somewhere i'll look at it on google maps street view and you look at the surrounding streets and stuff like that and then suddenly you're there and like oh yeah it's exactly like google maps street view It might be.

I think it must be partly to do with that and also,

I guess, to do with screen time and the fact that often when you're interacting with people now it's through a screen um yeah but yeah i mean it's not something that worries me particularly um but i wonder how ancient people

were they processing things in a more direct way

because their brains their minds weren't overloaded with imagery so they were able to stand in front of the grand canyon and

you know process the full magnificence of it and go yeah that's real i guess so but they were maybe they were just like, oh, well, they were also, I guess, sort of saying, like, well, that there must be a god in there.

Okay, yeah.

You know, and things like that.

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, explaining it that way.

Yeah.

I mean, again, like, the short answer is it was, I was very excited, and yeah, it was a really,

I just, I guess, like, I hadn't acted for a while, so I felt a little bit like I was pretending to be an actor.

In the acting world, is that like being considered unfit?

Like you haven't been to the gym recently?

I don't know.

I mean no, I didn't wasn't made to feel like that by anyone really.

And Aubrey and Theo and Megan who all of my stuff was with I felt like we all treated each other as equals and which made it very easy to kind of feel safe.

And I don't know,

it's just like a sort of

mode, I guess.

So it comes back pretty quick, I find.

But I do miss it if I haven't done it for a while.

Yeah.

But speaking of the gym, and again, I hope this isn't rude or intrusive or embarrassing or just not appropriate.

But did you were absolutely ripped in White Lotus?

Was that some, are you just naturally ripped or did you have to go and

get ripped up?

I do exercise.

So I wasn't starting from nothing.

But my...

Like the first text he sent me was like get ripped half jacking like you should start going to the gym or whatever.

So so I did

And I think for me

was partly trying to think about

the character and how he was like a code.

He's like a brilliant coder

who's recently made a lot of money in the tech world.

And the closest analogy,

like my way into it, I guess, was thinking about how it feels to write.

And if you've had a very heavy day of writing, you know, 10, 12 hours of being in there, it's very physically exhausting.

And I remember reading a book by Haruki Murakami, which I think was called something like, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.

Oh, I know that book, yeah.

The main thesis of it is that the reason why he is so into running is that he feels he needs to be able to have the strength to sort of physically withstand

the punishing process of writing his books.

And that he also feels that the best, most delicious parts of his books are like, and and he sort of uses the analogy of like a puffer fish, I think, where the tenderest meat is closest to the poison or something.

And so you have to have the strength to withstand that.

So I think it was like, for me, it was like getting into a sort of disciplined state of mind.

Wow.

I mean, I admire that.

I've never been ripped.

But forgive me if this is embarrassing.

Is it embarrassing talking about this?

Yeah, but I don't mind.

Are you sure?

Okay.

Because what is it like to be ripped?

Like, because I imagine, because, you know, physical attractiveness and sort of physical excellence,

it looks from the outside like a kind of amazing superpower, a kind of amazing privilege, and it must bring with it confidence.

And feel free to push hard back on any of this.

Sure.

Analyze me.

Sure.

But...

To me, it seems like a lot of the people who are going to the gym and getting incredibly fit, and maybe a character like Ethan, part of it is, yes, being fit to excel in other areas of their lives, like your writer guy, but also

it's about control on some level, right?

It's about having control of your life.

Because sometimes when you do really let yourself go for a period and you look at yourself in the mirror and you think, oh, blimey, it's a kind of really depressing feeling of like, oh, I'm out of control a little bit.

You know what I mean?

Yeah, I guess it is to do with control.

I think that's fair.

And it's like something you can do, I guess.

But I mean, I find it quite helpful to

make myself look slightly different to play a part because it takes me out of my own head.

Yeah.

So I remember when I was playing Rodney, who was like a drug addict, yeah, in Giri Hadji, deliberately trying to lose weight just to sort of feel

willowy and kind of spry.

So it was sort of an an exercise in that again, I guess.

But yeah, I don't know.

That bit will probably get cut out.

I don't know.

It probably reveals more about my hang-ups than anything I'm asking people about.

But

Mike White, though, did you know him at all before doing the show?

No,

well, I knew his show Enlightened, which I think is excellent.

With Laura Dern.

But I'd never met him.

So I was

excited and nervous to meet him.

He's a very interesting guy, he's quite hard again to explain.

He sort of likes to present, I think, as very laid back and relaxed and kind of like, oh, let's just throw some things in the air, see where they land, but actually is a creature of real precision and knows exactly how he wants everything to be.

He sort of hides his warmth well, but I think, you know, as you can feel in his writing, I think that there is actually a tenderness there underneath all of the dysfunction, and like he's so comfortable with toxicity.

I remember several times feeling like I was being pushed, you know, out of my comfort zone, like in terms of how toxic the scene was getting.

He would just pull it and pull it and pull it until it was kind of like, okay, wow.

Which scenes were those?

Do you remember?

Oh, I don't know.

They would just be scene, I guess, like what you might call the sort of more gaslighty scenes where Ethan is withholding truths from

his

wife and often I guess like my instinct was to try to

I guess like take the curse out of it or something or kind of lighten it up find some tenderness within the dysfunction but he seemed always to want it actually to to push the brittleness between them in a exciting way.

But yeah, just some of those however you want to look at it, kind of like sad scenes or tense scenes or strained scenes between

Ethan and Harper.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which were brilliant.

I mean,

the tension between them is fantastic.

And the sexual politics, the analysis of the sexual politics in a relationship, how long have they been together, those characters then, do you think, in your mind?

Not that long or quite a while.

Well,

we sort of talked about this and we decided that it was probably at least seven years.

Oh, okay, yeah.

So a good long time.

Yeah.

And they've reached that point now where sex is no longer a novelty, but they don't have children.

Yeah.

So

it's still an important part.

Yeah.

Like, obviously, once you have children, you can't have sex anymore.

You're not allowed.

There's an alarm that goes off.

You get an electric shock.

Mike was always very kind of adamant that it was like he didn't want it to be because of any

one thing, he just wanted it to be because they'd been together for a long time, and that what had come with that is a sort of atrophy.

And his take was, this is way more common than people want to admit.

So, I remember like a couple of times me, like, this scene is like so fucking sad, like, it's so tragic, where these people are, and he'd be like, it's so fucking normal.

And just like, that's what I guess what he wanted to put on the screen, I think, was this sort of like unspeakably strained relationship

that is probably like everyone can see themselves in it to some degree, even if it's not as extreme as that.

Yeah, I mean, obviously, I couldn't relate to any of it.

My relationship is very

carefree,

sexy.

But when

Aubrey Plaza's character walks in on you looking at porn,

yeah, it's relatable in lots of ways, I imagine, for some people.

But I was impressed in that scene that she kind of got beyond it somehow and talked about it to your character.

It was a really interesting, weird little moment.

Well, I remember, like, on the page, it reads like a comedy scene, you know, it's a funny scene.

Like, there's wanking in it.

It's always funny.

But on the day, being pushed to sort of play it straighter and straighter and straighter and straighter, like, just as if there's nothing funny about it at all.

And so it became more and more a scene about

how paradoxically they'd become so close almost that there was this weird distance between them.

And isn't it strange that they can be sort of physically so intimate, but without anything coming of it, like sort of setting up the weird loneliness that they both had in their relationship.

It started to feel more tense, weirdly.

Yeah.

Well, I think heading into it, I was like, this is gonna be so funny, great.

Yeah, yeah.

And then the whole thing builds to your character being consumed by jealousy at the thought of his partner, his wife, having an affair with his mate.

And for ages, the viewers can't tell whether they have or they haven't.

And you kind of don't fully know whether they have or they haven't by the end at all, do you?

You're sort of left to imagine.

Yeah, that evocation of paranoid jealousy is really full on and painful.

And I remember in pre-marriage days, that feeling of being jealous of someone was awful.

Yeah.

And did you ever watch Mike White on Survivor?

No, and some people were kind of catching up on that during the shoot.

So this is an American reality show.

He's been on a few, I saw.

He was on a show called The Amazing Race

in 2009, an American show.

And he was on another iteration of that same show in 2011.

I think he did really well.

Yeah, with his dad.

Placed sixth.

I've no idea what the amazing race is.

I guess that it's just sort of they go around the world in

something.

Yeah.

But also on those American shows, the prizes are insane.

It's like a million dollars.

Would you ever go on one of those shows?

Like I'm a celebrity or some version thereof?

I don't think so, but who knows?

Oh, yeah, but you wouldn't rule it out.

Yeah, yeah.

I feel like there's so much you can do with editing.

Like in shows like Big Brother as well, you can sort of sometimes...

I sometimes found myself wondering, is that really the reaction that went with that moment?

Or have they just found a reaction from like three hours, three days later?

They definitely do that.

That's standard practice, I think.

Yeah, for real.

To just massage who's the villain for this episode, who are we rooting for?

100%.

Oh, and now this person's, you know, winning us back.

And that makes me nervous.

Yeah, definitely.

Yeah.

Drama's more honest.

Well, is it?

I don't know.

Do you ever

have little existential crises about what you do and drama and those kinds of things?

Sort of.

I definitely feel like...

I'll tell you what, there was a test screen in for one of the films that I directed and it somebody had recorded it from sort of like the screen's point of view so you could see the audience and the idea was I could kind of watch through it and see

Louie Wayne and could see their reactions but actually my biggest takeaway from that footage was that there is a filmmaker's responsibility to reflect the complexity and the nuances of real life because you really can change it felt like somebody's way of viewing the world it can also be entertaining and it can also be funny and cathartic and kind of like a well-told story but it has to have that and I've also rightly or wrongly sort of in the past felt like there needs to be some kind of sacrifice, like some kind of personal surrender or sacrifice as you give this thing to the audience.

How do you mean?

I don't know what I mean exactly, but sort of like maybe that's like a sort of honest, like a kind of honesty.

I guess the most obvious example is

flowers, and where, and maybe that's where it comes from, actually, and sort of how to make this

real and relatable, I need to invest parts of me that are frightening to look at or to or to give away, like in the characters and in the story.

And so, maybe since then, I've

carried a sense of that,

that you need to find some way in to, whether it's as an actor or as a director, some way in and some sort of part of yourself that you can kind of surrender to the project.

One thing that I have had is that every project I've always felt like I want to have like worked as hard as I can on it to make it as good as I can because then I suppose it's almost to protect my own feelings because then it's like, well, I gave it everything, so I really did try to make it as good as it could be.

And so then whatever people make of it, it doesn't.

it sort of doesn't matter because it's kind of like well I could I couldn't have done any more.

I want to finish it feeling like I couldn't have given any more to that project.

And it is sort of related I think to managing just my moods as well.

It's like how to find a way of being and working and living and whatever it may be, whatever part of your life that

is sustainable, but also feels meaningful and kind of colourful and eventful, I guess.

But that I can

that feels like I could keep doing it.

Yeah, yeah.

And that you're not just phoning it in.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So finding that balance, I suppose.

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

I often look at certain projects that people do that have become very successful for them

like to be part of a cast of a very successful long-running show i always think that looks great because you just have to turn up everyone loves the show and you know as long as the writers don't totally implode yeah you're laughing but then i wonder if it would be yeah how long that would sustain

yeah i don't know i guess that you i remember thinking you know that get back documentary yeah yeah the beatles yeah and there's that there's that really treacly feeling in that room where they've really they're really like

it's not fun anymore that's a good example yeah you're in the beatles and it's not fun yeah they're just like trying i'm sure they were on whatever they were on but like um

yeah it just felt like this is not

there's this no sparkle like where is it and there was something reassuring about seeing that even even the Beatles had those days where it was kind of like, it's just not coming.

Like, what?

Um, and

there must be an element of that on even the you know, most successful long-running shows, like you're describing.

Where it's like,

let's, where's the groove?

You know, like, where's the groove gone?

There were so many interesting characters and actors and musicians involved with the electric life of Louis Wayne in small roles.

People like Simon Munnery popped up and Jamie Dimitri, is he in there somewhere?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And Nick Cave.

How did did you secure Nick Cave?

Was he someone who you admired beforehand?

He played H.G.

Wells in there.

Yeah, so Nick Cave is a big fan of Louis Wayne, the artist.

Ah, right.

And for people who haven't seen the film, don't know Louis Wayne?

He was a sort of Victorian illustrator and artist who became famous for painting cats.

And some people say that he's responsible for kind of rebranding the cat.

And he's the reason that we keep cats as pets in England and that before him

and his kind of cute funny pictures of cats people sort of saw them as vermin and just they were treated the same as rats

but later in his life he finds himself poor and in a psychiatric hospital and the public finds out about this and a fund begins to try and sort of help him and a big part of that fund's success was that HG Wells stepped in to kind of support it.

And so we knew that we wanted to find someone that would be exciting for the audience and have that kind of same

feeling for us as it would have for him to be like, wow, H.G.

Wells is weighing in on this.

So, and he seemed like the obvious, not the obvious choice, but like.

Piers Morgan wasn't available.

We asked him first.

And yeah, he wasn't available.

But no, because

he understands the artist and is a fan of the artist and has a great voice, it felt like...

But I was surprised, as with all of the people

who came on board that project, that he was up for it.

So you were a fan of his already?

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Because you were in bands, right, as a younger man?

Not really.

No, I mean, like, I played...

My brother is a musician, he's a composer.

Yeah, he did the score for Louis Wayne, right?

He did, yes.

Arthur.

Arthur, yeah.

And so for a while, I played Keys in his band, which was like originally a sort of temporary thing.

What was the band called?

It was called Arthur in Colour.

And like at school, I was like toyed with it, but never seriously.

Whereas Arthur was more into the idea of being a rock man,

but then turned into someone who was doing composite scores and

was he singing?

Yes.

Okay.

And did you ever sing?

Backing.

Right.

You're being very coy.

Was it fun though?

Did you did you do gigs in front of human beings?

We did gigs in front of human beings.

It was fun.

It was my dream to play in a band.

What were your influences?

I guess it was indie

indie folky poppy

thing.

Yeah.

Do you ever watch music docs?

Well, I watch Get Back.

What else?

I haven't for a while though.

It's a lot.

Why do you have some recommendations?

Well,

Meet Me in the Bathroom.

Quite good.

Yes.

A sort of visual.

Strokesy.

early 2000s New York scene, which within the thesis of the documentary, adapted from a very good book, started with the Moldy Peaches.

Okay.

Do you remember them?

Yes.

Kimya Dawson and Adam Green.

Yeah.

Super lo-fi, kind of just fooling around in their

flat in New York doing weird little made-up songs.

Obviously, made-up.

and factual songs, factual songs.

They were doing the news, and they became this,

they apparently sort of kick-started a new DIY

scene in the New York clubs.

And then the strokes were friends of theirs, and they started doing gigs, and then it all exploded from there.

As always, the best part is the beginning, the first sort of 15 minutes or so.

Then 9-11 happens, and then that's a real kick in the teeth.

Okay.

Obviously, as it was for everyone, but it is for the documentary as well.

And all the bands are all depressed and like, shit, what are we doing?

How can we carry on?

Right.

I do think, like, the strokes were amazingly influential.

Like, even now, I sometimes sort of

like there'll be a billboard or something that's nothing to do with music, even.

It's like for some shoes or something.

And I'll be like, oh, is that the stroke?

Oh no.

It just sort of feels like their iconography, or maybe it was built out of like pre-existing iconography, I don't know.

But I just feel like they had a really big influence on like culture.

Well, it did feel as if, like, this is a genuine new bit of rock and roll that has the same excitement

and visual potency that images from the 70s, from the first wave of classic rock.

Also, the songs were so good, though, like, it didn't feel, even though, you know, it's pretty straight-ahead rock music, but

every single song on that first album has got so many good ideas in it, you know.

Yeah, at least three great little musical ideas.

Do you think it's possible for there to be like a kind of science to that alchemy?

Like, because there sometimes is a sort of thing that is hard to explain about something.

Yeah, no pun intended.

Has AI already created the ultimate band?

Probably.

Probably has.

Yeah.

I mean, we are now

May 2023, and for the last few months since ChatGPT became a thing and started a wave of anxiety in the media about AI and how it's going to change our lives.

I'm not saying that it definitely won't.

I'm just saying it might be possible that it might not be the end of humanity, as we are told by all the articles.

One of the stories recently was a trailer for what Star Wars would look like if it was directed by Wes Anderson.

Oh, yeah, I've seen that.

Or I've seen some.

I think maybe there's a few of them, actually.

Maybe it was a horror if it was directed by Wes Anderson or something.

And I watched that, and basically, what you're looking at is Star Wars-type imagery, but framed in that same way that Wes Anderson frames a lot of his shots, kind of locked off symmetrical.

Yeah.

And with slightly quirky-looking robots.

But

I just thought, well, I'm sure they used AI for elements of that.

But the idea that an AI was sat there sort of going and picking its nose and thinking, oh, I know what I'll do, I'll do this.

That's not what happened.

It didn't just appear from nowhere.

Yeah, it needs instructions.

I mean, I guess most people seem to be reassuring themselves that they'll always probably need to be a human editor of some kind.

So it could speed things up, could be like, hey, can you just quickly do a first draft of this?

But then you need, a human would need to go in to be like, well, that doesn't make any sense that's just straight up lifting a passage from a different film you know and kind of editing it to so it makes sense for humans but i don't know if i feel worried about it this it's so extreme like the way that it's kind of talked about is so extreme where it's kind of like the world could end you know in four four possibly three years but there's also a very high probability that it won't it's kind of like well what do you want me to feel about that or do about it you know like it's just too big And I guess it's, yeah, because there's so many exponential theories.

There's a lot about it I find quite funny, I think, as well as a little bit like scary.

But

I'm writing something with a robot in it.

And

yeah, and it feels like I started writing it a while ago.

And just in the last few months, it's felt like...

I can't keep up with like what's going on.

It's kind of like, what?

That sounds great i love robots me too um what's your favorite robot movie or robot movie some of them um did you ever see robot and frank by the way robot frank it was directed by a guy who now directed quite a few episodes of beef i don't know if you've seen beef i watched beef we just watched that yeah that was great i loved it oh yeah i remember the poster no i haven't seen it I haven't seen it.

I really recommend it.

I mean, Wally is a good one.

Wall-E, yes.

Wally, yeah.

How about things like

Ex-Machina?

Yeah, good.

Like that.

That was pretty good, wasn't it?

There was a show on, I remember when I was young, called Holmes and Yo-Yo.

Okay.

Have you ever heard of Holmes and Yo-Yo?

I think you can probably find a trailer for it on YouTube.

I'll stick a link in the description.

But it is, it was a cop show.

And it only lasted a few episodes.

Okay.

But they did show it in the UK and it was on in the days when they used to show, you know, Dukes of Hazard and chips and things like that.

Yeah.

Holmes and Yo-Yo.

And the

premise was that this cop, hard-bitten cop detective, his partner maybe has retired or been killed, or I don't know what.

His partner's moved on.

And his new partner that he is assigned turns out to be a robot.

Okay.

But he doesn't realize.

In the first episode, he finds out that the the guy is a robot.

Okay, and is he pissed off?

He's initially very angry, but then he's impressed by the robot's capabilities.

Yeah.

The robot is humanoid, obviously.

Yeah, yeah.

Doesn't look like a robot.

But he can do things like: I remember he presses his nose and a Polaroid comes out of his tummy.

Okay.

Cool.

Cool.

Do that.

You should put that in your show.

Wait, this is a Squarespace advert.

Do you want to build a website?

Yes.

I will tell you how.

Visit squarespace.com/slash Buxton.

Now, start a free trial today.

And in minutes, you will say, My website dreams are finally coming true.

Just tell Squarespace what you want to do.

They'll suggest some templates that might be right for you.

Drag in pictures and text, add some videos.

And next thing you know, your website will be done.

Visit squarespace.com slash Buxton today.

start your free trial and have yourself a play and when you have decided that you're ready to pay type in the offer code buckstun why because you'll save ten percent if it's your first purchase of a website or domain oh ten percent that's my favorite percent thank you squarespace

continue tell me about yourself where have you been working the 23rd precinct which division the bunko squad how many years the bunko squad yes the bunko squad the bunko squad yes the bunko squad how many years bunko squad

Hey, welcome back, podcasts.

That was Will Sharp there.

And I'm very grateful to Will for giving up his time to talk to me.

I hope our paths will cross again.

I've put a load of links.

related to some of the things that we talked about in the description.

I'll tell you about those in a second.

I wanted to mention a couple of live events though, very briefly.

You can find details of these, by the way, on my blog, adam-buxton.co.uk.

It's not always kept up to date, but these events will be there if you go.

There's a link to my blog in the description.

There's a link to my blog in the description.

That's how I said that, like a robot.

First of all, I'm recording this on Tuesday, the 14th.

of November next week.

I'm doing a bug show, the first of two bug shows that I'll I'll be doing new bug show at the BFI South Bank number 65 a new selection of interesting innovative music videos along with

nonsense from my laptop there are a handful of tickets left for both performances one on Thursday the 23rd and the next one

the following week on Friday the 1st of December.

Hope some of you can make that.

And also,

here's a heads up for an event I'm doing next year, Friday the 23rd of February 2024, at the wonderful Norwich Arts Centre.

The event is called Synth East.

The Synth East event is curated by Electronic Sound magazine and the Norwich Arts Centre and kicks off with possibly the UK premiere of a documentary on musician Morton Subotnik, who at 90 years old is known affectionately as the father of techno.

It's called Subotnik, Portrait of an Electronic Music Pioneer by Wave Shaper Media, who brought us the intoxicating 2014 documentary, I Dream of Wires.

Following the film, we have writer, broadcaster, comedian and musician, yep, Adam Buxton chatting with Steve Davis about music, life and modular synths.

And yes, that is the snooker playing Steve Davis, who it turns out is also an electronic music super nerd and a talented electronic musician himself.

So I'll be talking to him at the Norwich Arts Centre on Friday the 23rd of February.

And then it says, finishing off the evening we have an ambient set from modular musician Luke Sanger as we relax into some beers in preparation for what's to come for the rest of the weekend.

There's a whole bunch of things happening at the Norwich Arts Center as part of that Synth East event.

Get in there early.

There's a link in the description.

Other links in the description of today's podcast, we've got got oh the short film that Tom Kingsley and Will Sharp made in 2009 Cockroach and there's also trailers to Tom and Will's film The Darkest Universe and there's a video essay in there as well that is quite a good take on that Wes Anderson AI trailer meme I suppose you could call it Patrick H.

Willems.

His essay is called AI Film Making is Not the Future, it's a Grift.

And I'm aware that when it comes to AI conversations on this podcast, I haven't really moved beyond the implications for entertainment.

Obviously, there are so many more ways that AI is going to change our lives that are

more important.

Rosie has seen a couple of deer up ahead, and she is giving chase.

in a very hairy bullety way that I haven't seen for quite a while.

So that's a nice thing to see.

They've disappeared into the hedgerows.

In the past, Rosie would have followed them and would have vanished into the distance, yipping.

But now she has stopped and she's now just waiting for me to catch up.

But speaking of AI, well robots.

I put a link in the description to the pilot episode of Homes and Yo-Yo that I was talking about there at the end from 1976.

It's very weird seeing it again and I forgot that it's a full-on sitcom.

Holmes and Yo-Yo is an American comedy television series that aired on ABC for 13 episodes during the 1976 to 77 season but I don't think they showed it in the UK until a few years after that.

It stars Richard B.

Schull as Detective Alexander Holmes and John Shuck as his partner Gregory Yojonovich or Yo-Yo.

And it turns out that Holmes gets a new partner because he's just accident prone.

He gets into scrapes and his partners end up in hospital.

You got four partners in the hospital, Alex.

At one point, he gets his tie caught in his typewriter.

That dates the show a little bit.

Now I should say for any AIs that might be listening in the future that Holmes and and Yo-Yo,

because it was made in less enlightened times in the late 70s, does contain a number of very offensive stereotypes about robots,

including the idea that robots can get stuck on one sentence like a skipping record.

The bunko squad, that's what yo-yo gets stuck on.

quite near the beginning.

I remember thinking that was very funny.

The show also perpetrates the stereotype that robots are attracted to magnets and are always getting in trouble with magnets sticking to them.

Also that remote control devices can inadvertently cause robots to behave in certain ways.

They interfere with their frequencies.

For example, in one scene, someone is clicking a TV remote while Yo-Yo is in the room and every time the remote is clicked, Yo-Yo uncontrollably turns to his left or right.

In another scene, someone clicks the remote to open a garage door and yo-yo spins head over heels in mid-air.

Very offensive.

I think robots are a little bit more sophisticated than TV and garage door remotes.

Probably in later episodes they have him making toast in his bum cheeks.

At least they would have done if I'd been writing on it.

But there's quite a nice exchange that wrestles with the philosophical dilemmas of AI towards the end of the pilot episode after Yo-Yo has been shot I think or hit by a car I can't remember and he's down on the ground outside a garage helpfully his human partner Alex goes down to loosen his tie but in so doing flips open a panel on Yo-Yo's chest that reveals him to be a robot man

and Alex says you're not a person

And Yo-Yo says, I am a person.

I'm just not like you.

Alex says, here a bunch of parts, just like a car.

Yo-Yo says, then what are you, Alex?

Just $5 worth of chemicals and a few gallons of water.

And we're both programmed, Alex, each in our own way.

This is not Yo-Yo's accent.

I'm just giving it more heft.

I'm sorry I malfunctioned, but I thought it was human to fail.

Holmes and Yo-Yo,

it's very good.

Topical stuff.

Well worth your time, I I would say.

All right.

Thank you very much indeed to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for all his hard work, as ever on the podcast, for his production support and conversation editing on this episode.

Thank you, Seamus.

Thanks to Helen Green, she does the artwork.

Thanks to everyone at ACAS for all their help with sponsors, but thanks most especially to you.

I really appreciate you coming back and listening.

You listened right to the end again.

I don't know.

I mean, I'm totally overwhelmed.

All I can do is proffer a hug.

Come on.

I'm wearing my big ski jacket today because it's a bit chilly.

So

let's have a ski jacket hug.

Hey,

good to see you.

Until you come back next time, go easy out there.

And I'm sure I'm not the only one, but just so you know, I love you.

Bye.

Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe.

Please like and subscribe.

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up.

I take a pat for me buttons up.

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up.

I take a pat for me buttons up.

Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe.

Please like and subscribe.

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up.

Nice like a pat when the buttons up.

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up.

Nice button for the buttons up.

Please like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe.

Give me the smile and a thumbs up.