EP.258 - EMMA SIDI

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Speaker 1 added added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin.

Speaker 1 Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening. I took my microphone and found some human folk.

Speaker 1 Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke.

Speaker 1 My name is Adam Buxton. I'm a man.

Speaker 1 I want you to enjoy this. That's the plan.

Speaker 1 Hey,

Speaker 1 how are you doing podcats? It's out in Buxton here.

Speaker 1 It's a windy day out here in Norfolk. Grey clouds are scudding.

Speaker 1 A few drops of rain coming down on me and my dog friend Rosie who is here, present, correct.

Speaker 1 Oh, some hooting over from the fields. What do you think about that, Rosie? It's a hooter nanny.
She's pulled over to the side of the road. She didn't like the hooting.

Speaker 1 She wants to go back. No Rosie, come on sweetie.
It's fine. The hoot is fine.
I'm here. I'll look after you.

Speaker 1 Blind me, I'm more worried about the wind. I think this is building up to be an actual storm, according to the news.
This morning was beautiful. Now it's gone all inclement.

Speaker 1 How you doing anyway, podcats? Not too bad, I hope. Thanks for joining me for some more top quality inconsequential waffle with my great guest who I will tell you about shortly.

Speaker 1 First of all, I just want to say a very quick thank you to everyone who bought my album, Buckle Up. I think all those pre-orders helped propel it into the higher reaches of the album charts.

Speaker 1 Someone told me it made number 16, but they did say it's likely to drop out again immediately.

Speaker 1 But thank you so much if you have bought a copy of the album or even if you've just listened to it on a streaming platform, I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 I did send out one of my very infrequent newsletters, which you can sign up for by going to my website adam-boxton.co.uk. There's a link in the description.

Speaker 1 If you scroll down to the bottom of the front page, you'll find somewhere you can sign up for the old newsletter. Blimey, we're gonna get blown away here.

Speaker 1 Whoa key doggy.

Speaker 1 We're intrepid, Rosie.

Speaker 1 I don't want to be intrepid. I want to go back to the kitchen sofa.
Kitchen sofa, yes, yes, I know. Well, we will.

Speaker 1 Right, it's a couple of minutes later now, and

Speaker 1 haven't really found anywhere more sheltered

Speaker 1 to record this, so

Speaker 1 I think we might head back.

Speaker 1 We're back in Rosie's favorite place, the kitchen. It's gonna fill up your water bowl, dog legs.

Speaker 1 There you go, mate.

Speaker 1 That was delicious. Do you want some too, Rosie?

Speaker 1 Well, look, let's go and sit on the sofa.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, this is

Speaker 1 way better than being out there recently. I don't know what I was thinking.
Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, yeah, the newsletter. I'm sure you were all riveted.

Speaker 1 I was saying that I sent out a newsletter on Friday on the day of the album drop. just to let you all know and give you some great fun links to click and that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 But I noticed because you can check how many people have actually opened the newsletter, and I couldn't help noticing that quite a few people had not opened the newsletter.

Speaker 1 Now, that may be for all sorts of reasons, but there is a possibility, an understandable one perhaps, that it was filed as spam or junk, if you prefer.

Speaker 1 So, if you had signed up for it and you didn't receive it, then take a look in the old junk box.

Speaker 1 But right now, from the piece, the beautiful piece of the buckles kitchen, let me tell you about my guest for podcast number 258, the British comedian, writer and actor Emma Siddy. Ciddy facts.

Speaker 1 Emma was born in 1991 to English parents who were living in the United States at the time. But she was brought up and educated near Woking in the English county of Surrey.

Speaker 1 She studied French and Spanish at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where she developed her talent for character comedy as part of the famous Footlights sketch troupe.

Speaker 1 Edinburgh shows and short films followed after leaving college, and by the late 2010s, Emma was landing character roles on TV shows like W1A, Staff Let's Flats, and Liam Williams' 2017 spoof of YouTube celebrity culture, Please Like,

Speaker 1 which is really great if you haven't seen it. I think it's still on YouTube, P-L-S-Like, in which Emma played a Zoella-style social media influencer called Millipede.

Speaker 1 Tim Key is in that show as well, and Jamie Dimitri, lots of funny people pop up in that show.

Speaker 1 In 2020, drawing on her experiences studying Spanish for seven months in Mexico, Emma wrote and starred in La Princesa de Woking, a parody of a 1980s Spanish-language telenovela, like a soap, set in contemporary small-town England, which the whole cast performed entirely in Spanish.

Speaker 1 There's a link in the description. You can see it on YouTube still, it's only short.

Speaker 1 Since then, Emma has popped up in comedy series like Ghosts, Black Ops, and King Gary, as well as playing a central character in the TV comedy drama Starstruck, co-written by and starring her old flatmate and former guest on this podcast, Rose Matafeo.

Speaker 1 Rose's co-writer on Starstruck was fellow Kiwi Alice Sneddon. Emma played Kate, the best friend of Rose's character Jesse.

Speaker 1 In Starstruck, Kate ends up marrying Ian, played by another Stafflets Flats alumnus, Al Roberts, to whom Emma Siddy is married in real life, and with whom, as of this year, she has a human child.

Speaker 1 In 2024, following the correct path for most successful comedians in the UK, Emma was a contestant in the 18th series of Taskmaster.

Speaker 1 That same year, she toured her show Emma Siddy is Sue Gray, which had begun life a few years before when special investigator and former civil servant Sue Gray was in the news as the investigator of the Boris Johnson administration's partygate scandal.

Speaker 1 Emma's portrayal of Gray was, intentionally, thoroughly inaccurate. My conversation with Emma was recorded earlier this month, September 2025.

Speaker 1 We met at Rose Matafeo's house in northeast London, which was a quiet place to record near where Emma and Al live with their baby son.

Speaker 1 And as well as talking about Emma's experience of giving birth by Caesarean section and her parenting strategies as they currently stand, we talked about the ethics of character comedy and life on the road with Alan Partridge.

Speaker 1 By the way, the new partridge show that Emma mentioned having seen is called How Are You? It's Alan Brackett's Partridge, which is out in October on BBC One.

Speaker 1 We also talked quite a lot about Matthew McConaughey. But after some chat about Emma having stayed up all night with the baby, we began by establishing whether we'd actually met before.

Speaker 1 I'll be back at the end, probably still from the kitchen, with a bit more waffle. But right now, with Emma Siddy, here we go.

Speaker 1 Ramble chat, let's have a ramble chat. We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that.
Come on, let's chew the fat and have a ramble chat. Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat.

Speaker 1 You're looking very fresh, may I say? This is the first time we've met.

Speaker 17 Yeah, ah, we've met very briefly.

Speaker 1 Where did we meet before?

Speaker 17 This is one of those. It was so brief.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 17 It's a big name-drop, this.

Speaker 1 Do it.

Speaker 17 Jonathan Ross's Halloween Party. Oh.
Isn't that such an iconic event? I can't even believe it's coming out of my mouth.

Speaker 1 Yeah. So.
I haven't been invited for a few years. So

Speaker 1 that was back in the day.

Speaker 17 Actually, I was even a plus one. I wasn't even invited then.
Yeah. So, very briefly then, I think I was with Rose or something.
Rose Matafeo. Rose Mattafeo.

Speaker 17 But we've never met properly, properly, at all.

Speaker 1 What were you wearing at Jonathan and Jane's Halloween party?

Speaker 17 Oh, God, what's thingy called in

Speaker 17 Wendy? I was dressed as Wendy from The Shining.

Speaker 1 Oh, right, not from Peter Pan.

Speaker 17 Not from Peter Pan. I had a bat and the fringe, a fake fringe.

Speaker 1 That's a good costume.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's actually really good because I didn't have to buy anything for it. Even the fringe I own.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 17 What were you dressed as? Well, actually, you don't remember, so.

Speaker 1 I think.

Speaker 1 Was that the one where Sarah Pascoe and Ashling B and Rosheen Connerty were dressed as people from The Handmaid's Tale?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 They were dressed as handmaidens.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it was that one. And was Alan Carr dressed as a gingerbread man or something?

Speaker 1 It's entirely possible.

Speaker 17 God, it's electric even saying these sentences.

Speaker 1 And Frank Skinner

Speaker 1 was dressed as.

Speaker 1 Who does Adam Driver play in the Star Wars films?

Speaker 17 Well, that's a really difficult question, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Is it someone called Lilo?

Speaker 17 Rex? No, Reno?

Speaker 1 Rido. Roly, Rolo.
Anyway, I think it was...

Speaker 17 Kylo Wren!

Speaker 1 Kylo Wren. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyway, remembering the name is important because Frank's costume was him holding a big black Lilo. What?

Speaker 1 Because he was Lilo Wren.

Speaker 1 So it was a mashup of... Got it.
I'm probably not doing justice to...

Speaker 17 Did he have any Wren elements?

Speaker 1 Yeah, there were some. I think he had some superficial elements of the Star Wars character, plus the Lilo.

Speaker 17 You could have a bird, the Ren.

Speaker 1 Right, there you go. Whatever.
But he, I think, spent his whole evening explaining his costume. Sure.

Speaker 17 I guess that's the point of Halloween in a way.

Speaker 3 I think I was dressed as...

Speaker 1 a kind of generic alien. I had a cardboard head, like a giant brain, that I'd strapped to myself, and there was was little fairy lights on it.

Speaker 17 You actually looked really plain. Yeah,

Speaker 17 I think that could have been a different year.

Speaker 17 Like that costume sounds amazing, but when I met you, I'd probably taken it off by maybe, yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't keep the cardboard head on the whole time.

Speaker 1 It was a very impractical costume.

Speaker 17 Yeah, and I'm sorry, I'm just meeting again properly now. I shouldn't say you looked plain.

Speaker 1 No, that's okay.

Speaker 1 You thought I was a disgrace.

Speaker 17 But I mean, I think that's why I don't go to those parties, or maybe why I don't get invited very often, because I don't actually like dressing up yeah I absolutely hate it and I think Halloween is one of the worst nights of the year because when you're on the tube just everyone looks awful everyone looks beaten up yeah dripping with blood and bruised just makes me feel a bit sick and actually very sad for I don't know

Speaker 17 violence.

Speaker 1 It's a tasteless celebration of violence. I think it, I honestly think it is.
Which is a real problem in society. Yeah.
And where do you draw the line?

Speaker 1 Like, you know, there's people genuinely being injured in horrific ways. Yeah.
And suddenly it's okay just to go around and pretend that you've been horrifically injured. I don't think so.

Speaker 1 Well, I think... This is where the pushback starts.

Speaker 17 For me, you know, I don't want to be too judgmental because people can have a bit of like carnivalesque fun. Do it.
What I don't like is that they actually look rank.

Speaker 17 Like you wouldn't normally leave the house like that. Like if you're dripping with blood, you just kind of wipe it away and go, God, I need to sort myself out before

Speaker 17 going out today.

Speaker 1 Yeah, those are always the lamest costumes when they just squirt some

Speaker 1 blood on and they look all grimy. Would you go to the Met Gala?

Speaker 17 Um, well, I'd love to go to the Met Gala. I can arrange for you to.
It would be very difficult to say no, wouldn't it?

Speaker 17 You'd go, God, I've got to turn up.

Speaker 1 I mean, that, to me, that's my worst nightmare. I wouldn't like to go.

Speaker 17 I was once on an EasyJet flight sitting next to an act.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, now I've forgotten her name.

Speaker 17 Who's Miss Moneypenny?

Speaker 1 Oh, Judy Stench.

Speaker 17 No, she's Naomi Harris.

Speaker 1 Naomi Harris.

Speaker 17 Okay, so I was once on an EasyJet flight sitting next to who I thought was Naomi Harris.

Speaker 17 And I looked across, and on her iPad, she wrote something along the lines of, I'm not wearing that to the Met Gala. And that's how I knew, oh, it is Naomi Harris.
Who is writing that on their iPad?

Speaker 17 Wow. And then I said to her, you know, actually, this is mad of me, but I was like, you, Naomi Harris.

Speaker 1 Did you?

Speaker 17 Well, it's because the air stewardess said to her hey you're on our in-flight video you're on the training video and she said no i'm so sorry i'm not and they go well we think you are we all recognize you it's from the in-flight video she said i'm so sorry i'm not and they go well you've got a doppelganger going round and they left her alone but clearly they just recognized her from being miss moneypenny and i said look i actually recognize you i think you're great and then we had a great chat she was lovely good one but she gave me some advice this was about 13 years ago.

Speaker 17 And she said, my advice is you just need a big break.

Speaker 1 I mean, that is good advice.

Speaker 1 It is a form of the ultimate true advice, which is you just need a bit of luck. Yeah.
But the rest of that advice in a wider focus is that's why you have to stick with it.

Speaker 17 Yeah. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Because you have to increase your chances of getting the luck.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I suppose that's right. I felt, because she went on to say, and for me, my big break was Danny Boyle.
And I was like, this is great advice, but how do I wait?

Speaker 17 Okay, Nahomi.

Speaker 17 How do I get Danny Boyle? Yeah. But you're so right.
That's the more insightful. It's the wider thing of going

Speaker 1 trucking. That's your only hope of applying that kind of advice.
Yeah, so much. Because otherwise, yeah, it's just like, my advice is be incredibly beautiful.
Yeah, that's exactly it.

Speaker 1 Meet lots of amazing people and be very talented.

Speaker 17 Totally.

Speaker 1 Well, I just finished reading Matthew McConaughey's book,

Speaker 1 Green Lights.

Speaker 17 Right.

Speaker 1 Have you read Green Lights?

Speaker 17 No, I have a bit of a...

Speaker 1 Aversion. Yeah.
Why? Explain. To Matthew McConaughey.
Sure, I think maybe a lot of people do, but...

Speaker 17 This is awful. I hope he never hears me say this.
I just don't. There's something about it.
I don't know. Too on the front foot.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Just, like, what do you want from me? Do you know what I mean? I can't, what is it? How can I say this in a way that is okay?

Speaker 1 Is there an incident or an image you have of him that encapsulates your antipathy?

Speaker 17 Yeah, well, all those rom-coms, I didn't get it. For me, I was like, why is this guy everywhere? And then in Wolf of Wall Street, when he's just, you know, it's so celebrated, that scene.

Speaker 1 Pounding on his chest.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 17 I just know he's loving it. But look, if I met him, I'm sure we'd have a great time and go, oh, look, I love him now.

Speaker 1 His chest pounding was something he did before a tape.

Speaker 17 Yes, yes, I know. We all know that.

Speaker 17 Okay, that is what sums it up. That

Speaker 17 pinnacling that. We've all improvved, man.
It's fine.

Speaker 1 It was Leo who suggested he do it in the scene.

Speaker 17 Okay.

Speaker 1 I think you need to read Green Lights. No, I can't do it.
It's really amazing.

Speaker 17 Are you reading it or listening to the audiobook?

Speaker 1 Of course I'm listening to the audiobook.

Speaker 17 Fine. So you like him then? So because you like to hear him saying all this.
I love voice.

Speaker 1 Oh my god, green lights, he says that's because it's all about his philosophy. It's like jam-packed with all his kind of hokey philosophy, which I thought of it because talking of

Speaker 1 you know, people with incredible genes like Naomi Harris,

Speaker 1 he is this, you know, exceptionally beautiful man.

Speaker 17 And he's, oh, really, you know, fair enough. No, no, no.
No, I don't, honestly. All right.

Speaker 1 But he,

Speaker 1 you know, a lot of this book is him talking about how he has bent good fortune to his will and how he has nailed all these breaks.

Speaker 1 And the subtext right the way through as a listener is, yeah, but that's because you look like Matthew McConaughey. Exactly.
He was brought up by,

Speaker 1 he doesn't talk about where they were politically, but they sound like fairly conservative parents, certainly religious.

Speaker 17 Whereabouts?

Speaker 1 In Texas.

Speaker 1 And there was a lot of kind of physical abuse is what you've got to call it.

Speaker 1 But he insists that it wasn't, he doesn't see it that way. He feels like I was brought up the way that I should have been brought up and, you know, it was tough love kind of thing.

Speaker 1 And he still loves his parents. But there's hair-raising descriptions of some mad, mad stuff.
Wow. Like at the beginning of the book, he's talking about his dad getting back from work and

Speaker 1 his mum is making dinner and his dad, big guy, huge guy, and sits down and he's like where's my dinner and classic kind of confrontation ensues with the mum saying there it is you fat pig

Speaker 17 and I can tell you listen to the audiobook

Speaker 1 and then it kicks off so they have a physical tussle and this is Matthew and his brother as young like around about 10 years old are in the room watching all this happen according to him. Oh my god.

Speaker 1 And but he says this is just, you know, this is not unusual. This is the kind of thing that used to happen a lot.
So they're having a tussle and then at one point mum grabs a kitchen knife. Right.

Speaker 1 But she's going over to the phone to call the cops because it's already got physical.

Speaker 1 And then she grabs a kitchen knife and she is brandishing it and the dad

Speaker 1 to diffuse the situation grabs a bottle of ketchup and starts squirting it at her and like sort of slashing her with this ketchup in the air.

Speaker 17 Wow, I'm trying to think.

Speaker 17 Is that funny or violent? Is it just violent?

Speaker 1 It's kind of nightmarish. Like, if you saw it in a film, it would just be like it's almost lynchy.

Speaker 17 Yeah, yeah, you go, who wrote this?

Speaker 1 Yeah, because it's sort of funny, but it's but the subtext is so upsetting.

Speaker 1 But that diffuses the situation.

Speaker 17 Oh, God. Actually, I genuinely got chills thinking of the knife.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 It's so, it's a really scary image. And then they start snogging, all covered in ketchup.
Oh, okay. Because

Speaker 1 they're so violent and turned on that they grab each other and they and they collapse to the ground and then they have a shag.

Speaker 17 Shut up. This is it.
No, this is right. And the boys

Speaker 1 are behind the sofa. No.

Speaker 1 And he's like, that's what it was like rounded my house. And it's not described as like, poor me, imagine me.
witnessing this kind of horror. It's like, well, that's what mum and dad were like.

Speaker 1 Oh, God.

Speaker 17 This.

Speaker 17 this is why this man drives me mad. Do you do you really?

Speaker 17 Do you think that happened?

Speaker 1 I don't know. If I ever met,

Speaker 1 I would ask him. There was a possibility that he was going to be on the podcast, which is why I listened to the book.
And then that possibility evaporated.

Speaker 17 Why did it evaporate?

Speaker 1 Well, it was just a scheduling thing.

Speaker 17 Fine, fine.

Speaker 1 But to be honest with you, I wrote to him, which I very seldom do

Speaker 1 after reading the book because I just just thought I really, really want to ask him about a lot of the stuff in this book. Yeah,

Speaker 1 like and it's not all so shocking, right? It's all a lot of it is much more wholesome and just straightforwardly entertaining.

Speaker 1 Okay, plus, I really genuinely love a couple of his films, like they mean a lot to me: Contact and Interstellar, right?

Speaker 17 I haven't seen those ones, are they both about aliens?

Speaker 1 Or the stars, they are about the stars, yeah. It's definitely.
Jodi Foster is in contact. She's amazing.
Right. And he is

Speaker 1 a kind of

Speaker 1 supporting character, but he's good.

Speaker 17 See, I'm more... This says a lot, actually.
I'm more Magic Mike. Yeah, okay.
And

Speaker 17 How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days. That's what I'd write to him about.
Yeah, okay. And go, sorry, I don't love you, but those films were good.

Speaker 1 Well, look, if he ever gets back to me, because it was a very crawly letter that I wrote,

Speaker 1 then come along and

Speaker 1 sit down with me and Matthew and you can see if you come out of it feeling differently about it yeah

Speaker 1 yeah I just thought here is a guy who is a genuine movie star like one of the last of the real movie stars along with someone like Scarlett Johansson or something like that billboard yeah flagship yeah he's larger than life he's this kind of mad crazy all right on right on you know he's like almost bigger in real life than he is on screen yeah

Speaker 1 and um i just thought it would be amazing to meet him and kind of.

Speaker 17 Yeah, and to be fair, he's putting it all out there, isn't he? Yeah. Saying something like that in your book.
God, I hate you for this. I think I'm going to read it.

Speaker 1 It really is pretty entertaining. But right the way through, his part of his philosophy is trying to turn adversity into a learning experience.
He doesn't put it in that way.

Speaker 1 He says it's a green light.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 You might think it's a red light. But then when you look back on it, green light.
Right. And then every now and again, he'll do a bit of poetry.

Speaker 1 Sorry, I'm not going to just talk about Matthew McConnell.

Speaker 17 No, no, it's great.

Speaker 1 It's great.

Speaker 1 Like, one of the stories is, and this is, I'm not making light of the McConough Hillary.

Speaker 17 No, no, of course not.

Speaker 1 And I'm not.

Speaker 17 Sorry, that sounds like I was. Sure.

Speaker 1 I'm not either. Right.
You know.

Speaker 1 His dad died. How do you think his dad died?

Speaker 17 Okay, how old was he?

Speaker 1 I'm not sure exactly, but I would say late 60s, early 70s.

Speaker 17 I'm going to say trespassing.

Speaker 1 Why trespassing?

Speaker 17 I can just see, you know, Texas, I can see something weird going on in the tracks in Texas. Do you know what I mean? Some train story that

Speaker 17 we were looking for the tracks. You know, I can just see that.
Stealing lead packs. Yeah, stealing copper.
Oh, we'll sell it.

Speaker 1 Anyway, but I'm wrong, am I? Yes, he died climaxing while making love to his wife.

Speaker 17 Matthew's mum or different wife.

Speaker 1 No, no, Matthew's mum.

Speaker 17 How do we really?

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 1 Shut up. He was probably watching.
Shut up, Matthew.

Speaker 17 Yeah, watching again.

Speaker 17 So they know that just because his mum was like, oh, I'll tell you the moment.

Speaker 1 I think so. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 17 What happened? His head blew off or something.

Speaker 1 No, he just had a cardiac arrest. Oh, I'm sorry.
That's okay. I mean, Matthew McConaughey's not going to come on this podcast.

Speaker 1 I think that's the end of that. I've done peyote in a cage with a mountain lion.

Speaker 1 Green light.

Speaker 1 I've had 78 stitches sewn into my forehead by a veterinarian. Green light.

Speaker 1 I've had four concussions from falling out of four trees, three of them on a full moon. Green light.
I have bongoed naked until the cops arrested me.

Speaker 1 Green light.

Speaker 1 I believe everything we do in life

Speaker 1 is part of a plan. Green light.

Speaker 1 Sometimes the plan goes as intended, and sometimes it doesn't.

Speaker 1 That's part of the plan. Greenlight.

Speaker 1 I apologize for only just meeting you and just downloading all my thoughts on Matthew McConaughey.

Speaker 17 No, I really liked it because it did, as you can tell, you know, it touched a nerve for me.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 17 So it felt kind of personalized.

Speaker 1 Good. Greenlight.
Oh my God. I can't do it.
Can't do it. How are you doing at the moment? How is life for you?

Speaker 17 Yeah, life's good. Life's good.
I have a baby. So I think that really dominates life, doesn't it? Because when you have a baby, it is really within the year, like it won't be a baby for forever.

Speaker 17 And the year of being a baby is actually pretty nuts. So I suppose at the time of speaking, my baby is six months old.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're speaking in September 2025.

Speaker 17 In September 2025. And

Speaker 17 yeah, so that feels like that is obviously major, major tenet.

Speaker 1 This is your first?

Speaker 17 This is my first.

Speaker 17 And I am, I have gone back to work as well. I'm sort of doing like a version of part-time work, I guess, or doing, you know, saying no to some stuff, able to do some other things.

Speaker 17 Auditioning and not getting the roles, you know, when you're like, you're being more discerning, so it hurts even more when you don't get something. You're like, what? Yeah.

Speaker 17 I thought my discernment meant

Speaker 1 I've got a baby I could be bringing up. Exactly.
Give me that part, you shitbag. That's exactly it.

Speaker 17 So it doesn't make any sense. But yeah, that's been interesting.

Speaker 17 But yeah, so so that's cool and it's a little baby boy i didn't know what i was having a boy or a girl yeah it's nice to have a surprise it's amazing it's free it means i think during those first months you're coming to terms with even that

Speaker 17 and actually i'd watched i wasn't i had quite a complicated birth in the end it was one of those lots of labor c-section at the end and it took me a while to kind of get over it i suppose not get over it i'm still you know processing it but it was i couldn't really look at the photos and the videos at the time because if you have a C-section, they can take lots of photos and that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 17 The other day, I was like, you know what? I'm really ready to look at that stuff, and I think it's going to really help me.

Speaker 1 Of you all opened up.

Speaker 17 Yeah, of me opened up, of the baby coming out, of all that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 Like a scene from the thing. From you probably haven't seen this thing.

Speaker 17 I haven't seen this thing.

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 1 It's a lot of kind of C-section stuff. Oh, right.

Speaker 17 I'll check it out. I'll be able to deal with it now.

Speaker 17 And there was this video that I hadn't seen at all. And, oh, it's so beautiful.
But obviously, flipping intense. Sorry, I was going to say fucking.
Obviously, that's fine as well to say.

Speaker 17 It doesn't matter. Fucking intense.
This baby is halfway out of me. So they even said to me, do you want the screen lifted down a bit? So you can see.
So you can see. And I'll be honest.

Speaker 17 My partner in the room? My partner's in the room. My husband Al is in the room.

Speaker 17 I was like, yeah, yeah, put the screen down. If I'm totally honest, I was out of it.
I'd had a long labor, labor, gas and air, all that, you know,

Speaker 1 pissed up.

Speaker 17 I'm pissed up, exactly. It's the best way of saying it.
The screen comes down. And so you can see this, I guess, envelope hole in my stomach.

Speaker 17 But it doesn't look like my stuff, you know, it looks so disconnected from, I don't know. And this baby is halfway out.
And

Speaker 17 his eyes are sort of half open.

Speaker 17 And he's got these little arms that are like zombie arms. And he's halfway out.
And they say, now, we know you don't know the sex of the baby. And we want you guys to find out first.

Speaker 17 So all of us, the surgeons, anaesthetists, everybody, we're all going to close our eyes in the operating theatre as we lift this baby out of you.

Speaker 17 And you see all these medical professionals, you know, pretty impressive people go, right, we can close our eyes for a minute. Oh, God, I'm getting chills talking about it.

Speaker 17 And so they all close their eyes and lift out this thing because he is a thing. I mean, he said the thing, but it is.

Speaker 17 is well it's more like alien actually oh god yes i've heard of some of that happens in alien yeah lift him up and then there's little d and balls are there

Speaker 17 and yeah my my husband goes it's a boy and i go my beautiful boy again i don't remember i don't really remember realizing it was boy for a few minutes later but yeah isn't that cool That thing of going, we're all going to close our eyes, so you get to be the first people to see.

Speaker 1 I wonder if that's protocol now. Maybe someone got angry with them and said like how dare you find out the sex of my child before i do i'm suing you

Speaker 17 we would never have thought imagine demanding that of your surgeon yeah excuse me while i'm open could you just shut your eyes for a minute um but yeah i think they're called gentle cesareans and uclh does a version of the gentle cesarean which is where they close their eyes and gently show you your baby.

Speaker 1 Gently cut you open.

Speaker 17 So pretty cool, really.

Speaker 1 That's amazing.

Speaker 17 Yeah, it's amazing. So feeling all good.
And the little baby is just so freaking cute.

Speaker 1 Oh, good. I'm glad.
Yeah.

Speaker 17 But it's a lot, obviously. That goes without saying.

Speaker 1 It's a sort of fun madness, that time, isn't it?

Speaker 17 Yes, exactly. My dad said this, it was really helpful.
He was like, oh, you're going into the most exciting time of your life.

Speaker 1 And I hadn't thought of that. Yeah.

Speaker 17 Think of uni or something being like that.

Speaker 1 Right. And I think there's a lot of that.
Because it's very different to everything else. I mean, obviously, it's only fun if you're lucky and everything's gone relatively well.
For sure. But

Speaker 1 you're so physically altered by the lack of sleep and all that sort of stuff that your brain works in a different way.

Speaker 1 And also, you know, you just are reeling from the weirdness of having created this thing.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I never understand that.

Speaker 1 And it loves you.

Speaker 17 Also,

Speaker 17 this shouldn't be TMI because humans are humans. We conceived in our house.
Yeah. Fine.
In our bed. Oh, God, that does feel like TMI.

Speaker 1 God.

Speaker 17 Anyway, now that baby, you know, hangs out in the bed. Yeah.
So often I just look at him in that bed and go, Jesus Christ. Do you know what I mean? You just think,

Speaker 17 that's too much. I wish it had been on holiday.
It would give me some kind of separation. Right, okay.
Wow, that magical place where you can do that.

Speaker 17 Just did it in, well, I won't say the borough, but a borough in London. Oh, it gives me the ick.

Speaker 1 Not the ick, the creeps well at least there wasn't like a video or anything how do you how do you know that no there isn't a video mconaugh's probably not a video yeah he will do of his um

Speaker 1 but oh good well i'm glad it's sort of gone yeah relatively well it has it definitely has yeah yeah good and has it given you lots of great ideas for shows

Speaker 17 Great question. And my answer to that is no.

Speaker 1 Because I don't think anyone's done one.

Speaker 17 about

Speaker 17 you're so right, it's such a

Speaker 17 such a gap in the mindset.

Speaker 1 A lot of funny material there.

Speaker 17 Actually, there's this amazing thing that the Royal Court have set up called First Words, which is like a sort of NCT group, but for writers.

Speaker 17 So it's for anyone who's got a baby under the age of one who calls or thinks of themselves as a writer in some way. It's a really refreshing group as well, because

Speaker 17 like there was the other day, there was this woman who's like a herbologist who was like, I just love herbs. Don't really know about kids,

Speaker 1 but anyway, I'm getting on with it.

Speaker 17 And you're like, wow, that is so,

Speaker 17 it was so nice to have a herbologist just be like, I don't really know what I'm doing. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like a lot of them, City.

Speaker 1 I don't really like kids, but talk to me about herbs. Yeah.

Speaker 17 And she was like, obviously, I love this baby.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 17 But goddamn, I love her.

Speaker 1 Is the baby's name Basil or

Speaker 1 Derrigan?

Speaker 1 I was just thinking, Herbie. Yeah, yeah, herbie

Speaker 17 i should have i should have asked that put my hand up and say i've got a question is your baby called herbie

Speaker 17 and is it only people who are having a nice experience of parenthood that go to that sort of thing or this is what i'm saying i found the writer's one so a lot of these nct groups you know it's It's a lot of full mat leave stuff where, I mean, people are amazing, but there's a lot of focus on the babies.

Speaker 17 of course, there is.

Speaker 17 And the writer's one was a bit more of a focus on maybe the existentialism of it all and the sort of arty jobs that you feel like you could be doing at the same time, but you've kind of left behind.

Speaker 17 Then there were some writers for like Sky News, you know, they're loving it because they feel traumatized by the news. Oh, yeah, that's interesting.
Mixed with

Speaker 17 they also seemed quite frustrated to not be, you know, news reading or whatever.

Speaker 17 I don't want to speak for these people as well, but this was just my kind of perception of it.

Speaker 17 Then there was someone else who'd done a short film recently and said that when it wrapped, she experienced extreme grief,

Speaker 17 which I really understand. I thought it was really honest, you know, she's there with this baby in a carrier going,

Speaker 17 oh God, now I've got to get fully back to just baby

Speaker 17 while this film is done. So it's funny to call it extreme grief, but you know, I really appreciated her saying that.

Speaker 1 And I think it's kind kind of good to be honest about how it makes you feel I think and you know I'll be there ranting and raving as well about that's the way I used to feel when my wife would ask me to help out around the house yeah extreme extreme

Speaker 17 I think there's a few things with

Speaker 1 domestic life comedy do you know how hard that is I have to pace around in my room for hours on end, uninterrupted, otherwise no comedy will come out.

Speaker 17 But that's sort of to have an NCT group that allows you to say crazy,

Speaker 17 not really okay stuff like that is really, really healthy. I think it's a really great place.
That's good, yeah.

Speaker 1 As long as people don't judge you, I guess.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I know. And it sounds like now that I'm judging the other people, but I want to make it clear that I was also there sort of almost crying talking about doing a sitcom script.
Yeah.

Speaker 17 But yeah, sorry, I think what I was saying with that was that

Speaker 17 at some point, because there's a sort of playwright who leads it,

Speaker 17 and yeah, she's amazing and does such a great job of kind of getting everyone to like talk about stuff and you know, focus it as well.

Speaker 17 But she was asking, you know, how this might affect work or the work you make, and does it affect you being a mother that you kind of want to write about that sort of stuff?

Speaker 17 And I realized listening to it that I don't feel like that at all, but I think that's because I'm like so new to the job. Like it almost hasn't settled in.

Speaker 17 It's almost like I've just become a gymnast and people are like what's it like on the beam and i'm like oh fuck i haven't even done that bit yet i don't know i just do pome hauls i don't know i'm just just trying to think of yeah it's only been six months yeah and it's so old you're still the person that you were before kind of yeah totally what sort of environment did you grow up in if you don't mind me asking are you still friends with your parents are they still around yeah i am it's funny having a baby that makes you think relentlessly about your relationship with your parents and your own childhood, doesn't it?

Speaker 17 Yeah, they're great. They're great, to be fair.
They drive me crazy as well as they're totally great. I had a wonderful childhood.

Speaker 17 I said quite an extreme thing happened when I was nine, and they dealt so well with that, which was my dad had an extreme head injury

Speaker 17 and went to rehab for two years and then actually came out basically fine.

Speaker 1 Just quite fine. He was in an accident.

Speaker 17 He was in a big kind of beating you up in London accident.

Speaker 1 No way.

Speaker 17 And that's why I know they did such an amazing job because that time for my mum must have been, I mean, obviously brutal for my dad, but for my mum, just keeping that all afloat, I think that must have been really, really hard.

Speaker 17 And I don't look at that time as being traumatic.

Speaker 1 How old were you?

Speaker 17 I was nine. Were you wondering? And I had two young seven-year-old brother and a four-year-old brother.

Speaker 17 So yeah, mad, awful.

Speaker 1 Were you very frightened? Did you understand what had happened?

Speaker 17 Yeah, I think I initially found it really funny in that same way that

Speaker 17 when I was also nine, I think when the Twin Towers collapsed.

Speaker 1 Were you laughing at that?

Speaker 17 I found that hilarious. I think some of those things, you know, when you're told about them, it's too mad to do that.
You know, your dad's been in a major head trauma-related accident.

Speaker 17 You go, oh, classic meal dad, anyway. you know, Simpsons on kind of thing.
So yeah, I found it really, really funny.

Speaker 17 And then as time went on, I think it was, it was really weird because when we'd visit him in rehab, he was like a different person, at least for that first year.

Speaker 17 And stuff like you have to do stuff in rehab, like painting cartoon characters to kind of get your motor skills back.

Speaker 1 So he was there full time?

Speaker 17 He was, I think, I can't remember how long the full time was, but I'd say a year and then kind of living there for the second year, but would come home a lot.

Speaker 1 Was his speech badly affected as well?

Speaker 17 Initially, and then was actually fine, just slower to remember stuff. But it was like, it was like a personality change initially.

Speaker 17 And again, you know, it's gone back to you know, pretty much normal, I think. Yeah, by the grace of God, yeah.
The thing I really remember was him doing a painting of Dumbo the Elephant,

Speaker 17 and it was, to be fair to him, really high quality, it was just fantastic. You're smashing it, dad, smashing it, but you know, what the hell?

Speaker 17 And he shows it to goes, Look at what I've done, kids, and we were like, Wow, daddy, that's amazing.

Speaker 1 And you're like, oh, this is the wrong way around.

Speaker 17 This is the wrong way around, It's weird. But obviously, that was great that he was getting those motor skills back.

Speaker 17 But, kind of, like I said, that's like a weird memory as opposed to a trauma memory. And I think that's got to be thanks to my parents.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so you obviously weren't a kind of anxious worrier. Otherwise, that kind of experience would have really thrown you for a loop on.

Speaker 17 I think so. I don't think I'm very neurotic.
And that is, yeah.

Speaker 17 But I did realize quite early was going out with my current boyfriend, current boyfriend, current husband I realized quite early on that if he wouldn't text me back at midnight I'd sort of be like oh no he's had a head injury mm-hmm that became quite a quick assumption but again just being like well I'll find out in the morning and then we'll just do two years of rehab and

Speaker 17 so they're not too bad yeah he'll do some drawings of Disney characters maybe I can encourage him to do some abstract expression as well totally I'll help him outline Pinocchio and fill in the you know yeah fill in the colours so yeah so overall very very good suburbia woking

Speaker 17 so yeah I had a really nice time growing but you were born in the United States I was born in the United States whereabouts New York City oh yeah Manhattan wow and then I went to Germany from the ages of three to five that was also because of that and then Woking New York Dusseldorf Woking nice read it on a t-shirt do you have any memories of those places Yeah, lots of memories of Dusseldorf.

Speaker 17 And I could speak German. So I have memories of having these conversations in German.
So that's weird. But then I didn't stay fluent, but I learnt it again later.

Speaker 1 Do some German. Go and do it now.

Speaker 17 Also, can I besiege?

Speaker 1 It's quite good, actually, that isn't it. That's nice.

Speaker 17 It's like German newsreader tone, I think, is so nice.

Speaker 17 Heuter gib deriele probleme and

Speaker 17 you know, you're like, oh, that's actually lovely, I think.

Speaker 1 Well, it is not so harsh. Yeah, because obviously a lot of people's associations with the German language are not positive.
Certainly for my parents' generation.

Speaker 17 Yeah, that's it, isn't it?

Speaker 1 And they always used to go on about, oh, it's such an ugly language. It's so guttural.
But actually, the way you were doing it was good. Yeah, well, thank you very much.

Speaker 1 And also, I do like, you know, I love bands like Kraftwerk. Yes.
I love a lot of the Can and Neui.

Speaker 17 I was really into German scar as a teenager.

Speaker 1 Really?

Speaker 17 Yeah, that's quite beautiful. You know, there's a lot, a lot of quite existential themes in German scar.

Speaker 1 German scar. Yeah.
But you also speak good Spanish. Did you study Spanish?

Speaker 17 Yeah, so I think actually Dusseldorf is the reason behind this. I was always into languages.
So then I went to uni and studied languages, French and Spanish, Spanish from scratch.

Speaker 17 And I realized amongst my year of doing languages, almost everybody was either born bilingual, you know, had a bilingual parent, or had a weird stint living in a different country.

Speaker 17 And I think that is the sort of unfairness of it: that if you get that time in a different country, your brain as a little child is just altered, it is just spongier to absorbing languages, I think.

Speaker 17 It became such an obvious thing that everyone had in common.

Speaker 17 So, yeah, so I did French and German throughout school, and then I dropped German and took up Spanish.

Speaker 1 Is that something that you and Al will do, do you think? Move to a different country for a while while your child is young?

Speaker 17 Well, I think we're too selfish. I don't know.
Like we're in London. I can't, I don't know what I'd do in a different country.
Do you know what I mean? But maybe we should.

Speaker 1 I think you should. Greenlight.
That would be...

Speaker 1 Imagine all the experiences you'd have. And saying that about children being able to absorb languages much easier when they're young is so true.

Speaker 1 And that is a superpower to have another language in your locker.

Speaker 17 God, but where the hell do we go? You really think we should go to but you can speak Spanish.

Speaker 1 Why don't you do a Susie Izzard and go and perform comedy in Europe and do

Speaker 1 like you did a whole special in Spanish? I can't be bothered.

Speaker 17 I feel it is such effort doing that. It is such effort.
Because on my year abroad, I was in Mexico and I did a flipping hour of comedy monologues and it was excruciating.

Speaker 17 I just can't go back there Adam.

Speaker 1 I can't do it.

Speaker 17 I hear you but I don't think I've got the energy.

Speaker 1 What about just talking to the child in Spanish?

Speaker 17 Yes I do do a bit of that anyway because it's funny because I've realized now he's six months. I can get him out of a tantrum by putting on a headscarf and speaking in a different language.

Speaker 17 Like it like I sort of kind of pretend to be like a babushka basically, and will say in Spanish or something, like he shouldn't cry.

Speaker 1 Can you give me some babushka?

Speaker 17 Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, I might be like, I do start in English to not freak him out to we're like, hello, little baby.

Speaker 17 It's not good. Hello, little baby, but I'm wearing this headcarve.
I'm going,

Speaker 17 like that. And it literally snaps him out.
And then, and then at the end, I go, bong, bong, bong, and he laughs.

Speaker 1 What's the bong, bong, bong?

Speaker 17 It's just like a punchline and he can feel it's a punchline as well it's classic stuff it gets him every time and I also sometimes wave this um there's these classes called baby sensory and you pay them loads of money and they just wave fabric in their face basically

Speaker 17 so I often go welcome to baby sensory this is five pounds fifty bong bong bong and he always laughs so so that's that's been great and it's a good way of bringing in language to yeah to a baby's life I suppose that was quite spooky because my mum was Chilean So

Speaker 1 my youngest memories are of her talking to me in Spanish, but then she stopped when she moved to the UK.

Speaker 17 Well, when did she move to the UK then?

Speaker 1 Well, actually, she had moved to the UK and started speaking Spanish to us, but then I've told this story so many times,

Speaker 1 but then

Speaker 1 was told by all the friends of her and my dad that, oh no, you're going to confuse them.

Speaker 17 Well, you know what?

Speaker 17 This is, you probably know this, but this is the thing about bilingual kids that if you raise a child totally bilingual their development is slower yeah until the age of about seven and then they suddenly shoot up past every other kid right and they're the genius kids but you do have to as the parent i think this is really genuinely very difficult put up for four five six these ages of the kid being like wait what literally talking in the wrong language all the time and being really slow at learning spelling and grammar and just actually been totally out of kilter because they've got too much going on.

Speaker 17 Yes. Then they get to seven and got yourself a flipping kid and a half.

Speaker 1 It's all a series of gambles bringing up children, isn't it?

Speaker 1 Because it's like you're taking the gamble that they won't be residually screwed up by the experience of being slower than their classmates and things like that and that they won't absorb some sense of insecurity or insufficiency and you're hoping that it'll all be resolved a bit later on.

Speaker 1 I'd say take the gamble. Children are fairly resilient.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I think take the gamble, but the problem is I'm not actually native, I'm not a native speaker. So I think I'd rather just interest him.

Speaker 17 I'd rather get him curious in other sounds, other cultures, other ways of saying things

Speaker 17 rather than necessarily being like,

Speaker 17 hello, I'm your mom and we're randomly going to speak Spanish for the next 18 bloody years. I just think that would affect me, that would affect my mental health in a drastic way.

Speaker 1 Or just do the accent.

Speaker 17 No, when you'll be with me, we'll be like this, okay?

Speaker 1 That would be quite funny if he grew up just with an accent.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 he can't actually speak Spanish.

Speaker 17 Hi, Dad. Hey, mom, how the hell are you doing?

Speaker 1 You good? You okay?

Speaker 1 No, it wouldn't work.

Speaker 17 Did your mom call you, you know, Adam Buxton?

Speaker 1 Adam Sito.

Speaker 17 Adam Sito. Buxton Sito.

Speaker 1 And there were little bits of vocab, like I had a blanket that I used to kind of sniff every night. Yes, and that was mi almoada.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 And so there was things like that, you know.

Speaker 17 It's actually gorgeous Chilean Spanish. It's really like

Speaker 17 sorry, sorry to any Chileans listening, but it's got this like wrinky dinkness to it. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 17 Like, I went on my honeymoon in Chile, and in the pharmacy, it's like, don't, don't sin, don't,

Speaker 17 like, it's, it's got these, this sort of smallness to it. Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 1 I think I do. A kind of musical.

Speaker 17 Yeah, yeah. So it'd be like, por favor em quiero para se temor.
Ah para se temoro sito.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Do you know what I mean? It's just like

Speaker 1 you did it very well then, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 17 Oh, I love it.

Speaker 1 I love it, love it, love it. Like robot language.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, that's true.
Do you speak Spanish? No, not really. I mean, I do think that you know, I can get by

Speaker 1 in a conversation, but I would love to live in Spain or something like that.

Speaker 17 The horrible thing about languages, the horrible, unbearable truth is that if you speak another language, and not completely natively, you're just good at it or you're almost fluent or whatever, you live eternally with guilt that it's not as good as it can be.

Speaker 17 It's like having been a bodybuilder as a teenager and your muscles are always wasting away and you just feel all the time embarrassed about the level you're at but it's so sad because you should feel good about it Yeah.

Speaker 17 But I'm pretty sure this is a thing. It just, I think, I have Colombian neighbours and the guilt I feel every day.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? Like, because you think they're judging you.

Speaker 17 I just feel so embarrassed when, because they always speak to me in Spanish and say, how's Thomas doing? And I'll basically say the equivalent of, Thomas is pretty good. Wow, crazy.
De De Bye.

Speaker 17 Oh, God. Oh, God.

Speaker 1 That was awful.

Speaker 17 That was awful.

Speaker 1 Because that's not the way anyone thinks. Like, if a foreign person is speaking to you and they're trying to do English, even if the English is like pretty ropey,

Speaker 1 you're just impressed. You're like, yeah, go for it.

Speaker 17 You know, that's probably true. Is that completely true?

Speaker 1 Not everyone is as great as I am.

Speaker 17 Yes, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So some people can be intolerant and go, you know, like you can't speak English properly.

Speaker 1 But they're dicks. Yeah.
And the thing is that, like, someone making an effort to speak another language, you're just, as far as I can tell, and I think

Speaker 1 that is true. Yeah.
You give them a break. You're not like, your English is crap.
Yeah, exactly. yeah.

Speaker 1 You know, you're like, yeah, I know what you mean.

Speaker 17 Especially when they're doing a pretty good job. Yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 they're taking what they need or want. And they don't even be able to say a single word in their language.

Speaker 17 Totally, totally. No, you're right.
You're right. Just got to give ourselves a break and be like, you know, keep tracking.

Speaker 1 What are you going to do about social media

Speaker 17 with your kids? Oh, actually, I have a really clear answer.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah.

Speaker 17 I actually spoke to my husband. I sort of woke up, you know, almost like woke up like someone coming out of their coffin from the dead going, Christ, we need to talk about social media and the baby.

Speaker 17 Right, this is what I'm thinking, okay? Firstly, we're not allowed to go on social media in front of the baby.

Speaker 17 We can go on WhatsApp, can go on text, that's just part of life, not sure what to do about that. But not making something like Instagram look normal.
That's us.

Speaker 17 Right, the second thing is he will not be allowed to go on social media till he's 16. Then when he's 16, he can opt in.
Those are just the rules, and I'm not going to bend on it.

Speaker 17 The second thing is I have already bought a desktop computer. There will be no laptops in the house for this baby, no iPads.
If you want to go on the internet, that is completely fine.

Speaker 17 It's in the living room and it's on a desk.

Speaker 1 And there's CCTV recording everything you're doing.

Speaker 17 There's no CCTV.

Speaker 17 But if you disobey me, I will come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Speaker 17 So look, I'm obviously sounding too harsh. That's something I should have mentioned about my childhood.
My dad was actually pretty strict.

Speaker 17 He would often say, I'm gonna come down on you like a ton of bricks.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Mean it really. So yeah, look, we'll see.
This might not all work out at all, but I want to be quite strict about it, actually. I think it's a serious, huge, massive problem.

Speaker 17 I think I want to find the balance between keeping him safe and him being too much like Marcus from About a Boy. You know, like, I'm already dressing him in a way that I don't think is fair on him.

Speaker 17 So I've just got to, yeah, try and balance it. But I really, I actually do mean it when I say I think I'm going to try and be pretty strict.

Speaker 1 Do you think? Were you strict? No.

Speaker 1 Oh, God. I wasn't.

Speaker 17 I shouldn't be strict.

Speaker 1 I think you should be strict. I think your parents, from my reading, were possibly a little bit like mine in that they were fairly conservative.
Yes.

Speaker 1 And my parents were superficially strict, but they just didn't have the will to stick with it, really. So we ended up getting away with murder.

Speaker 17 Well, kind of me, you know, it made me quite a good liar. So that is the problem as well.

Speaker 17 It doesn't actually sort out. They were saying the other day, God, you were so great as a teenager.
You just weren't no issues at all. And I remember being like, God, I was so great at lying.

Speaker 17 You know, not to be like I was this bad kid, but I had some pretty fun times.

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I think I was the same. It wasn't lying.
So like, I wouldn't lie, I don't think. No.
But I was, well, once I was described in a school report as sly and underhand.

Speaker 17 Yes.

Speaker 1 That's great. Your teacher saw that.
And I was like, no, yeah, that's true, isn't it?

Speaker 17 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I had that skill of just being able to keep things from my parents.

Speaker 17 I've forgotten how this was put, but my German teacher once sort of accused me in quite an emotional way of taking the piss. Right.

Speaker 17 You know, and that was fair enough. I feel really bad about that, actually.

Speaker 17 But yeah, and when I was a teenager, there's only so many times you're sleeping over at charlotte's house do you know what i mean it's just a lot of using those excuses to get away with the stuff but at least that stuff was in person not on i don't know instagram yeah yeah meeting up with i don't i don't even know what i'm talking about i wish all the kids luck yeah definitely i mean i think the answer is just to keep chatting have those family suppers yeah are your kids okay do they seem all right i think so but i mean i don't know yeah Because they're probably very sly and underhand.

Speaker 17 Yes. Yeah, and good for them, you know.

Speaker 1 I think they are. They're great.
I mean, we didn't send them away to a boarding school, which is one big difference.

Speaker 17 Yeah, you idiots. You should have.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we would have had way more free time. But

Speaker 17 I can't. That is just.

Speaker 1 So I do think that the relationship we have with them is perhaps a little closer. It's quite different to the one I had with my parents.

Speaker 17 Oh, you went to a boarding school?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I did.

Speaker 17 Right, right, right, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 There were some good things about it, but I do think my relationship with my parents suffered. Yeah, I bet.
And it was never.

Speaker 1 I feel like I have a closer relationship with my children. Oh, that was interesting, and I'm really grateful.

Speaker 1 I love information, and you satisfy the plateful.

Speaker 1 one. Imagine information every day and every night.

Speaker 1 I saw an interview that you did with The Telegraph.

Speaker 17 Yes, I shouldn't speak to The Telegraph, should I?

Speaker 1 I mean, the thing is about The Telegraph, I think they take comedy quite seriously. Like, they're quite good at coming.
It's true, you know.

Speaker 1 They write about it quite well.

Speaker 17 Yeah, completely.

Speaker 1 In your interview, they obviously, you know, Telegraph, Times, etc., they love any kind of woke identity politics.

Speaker 1 They know their readers are so wound up by all that stuff. So they really love to chat about it.

Speaker 17 Moth to a flame. That's an idiom I do know.
Okay.

Speaker 1 I mean, you know, hold my hand up.

Speaker 1 I'm kind of the same sometimes as well. I find all that culture wars stuff sort of interesting.
But

Speaker 1 you were saying they were asking you, like, well, what's the deal with doing character-based comedy? Is that okay? Just appropriating characters. Yeah, don't you get into trouble with that?

Speaker 1 And I was like, oh, I've never heard anyone being worried about that before. God, yeah.
Is that a thing to be worried about?

Speaker 17 You know what? My honest answer to that, I think it is a very legitimate thing to be worried about. I think the more this conversation on identity and,

Speaker 17 you know, as an actor, what you can portray and what you can't, according to who you are, your experience, or your ethnicity, or something. I think there is definitely something in the conversation.

Speaker 17 It is a really important thing to think about and maybe important to worry about.

Speaker 17 I'm not actually sure what I said in that interview, but my view on it is: you just have to be, you have to be thoughtful. And that actually should apply to comedy full stop, shouldn't it?

Speaker 17 Like, you know, if you're writing, let's say, a new show and you've got a joke that you know is cheap or off-colour, that's going to go out. And actually, character just needs to be the same.

Speaker 17 And I think you need to consider where you're coming from and what the joke of the character actually is.

Speaker 17 Basically, if you're punching down, really. And I think if you are punching down, which there was comedy that was punching down,

Speaker 1 I've always had a problem with the punching down system, though. Yeah.
Because there's so many ways that it cannot, there's so many different forms of power dynamic that exist, right? Yeah, totally.

Speaker 1 Not just about identity, but can also be about so many different forms of status. Yeah.

Speaker 17 And that's actually what I mean as well. I think it would be lazy to even see, well, when I say punching down, I mean just between the classes or man to woman or something like that.

Speaker 17 It's, it's, there's just so many subtleties in it, I think. And you can see when you watch any character comedy that you think is any good,

Speaker 17 it's because the person has thought about it, they've constructed something that feels truly 3D, that feels very real, that is made with love, that has all the grey shades and doesn't have a kind of black and white thing that could get you in a place of either in trouble or feeling like you're in trouble, that you shouldn't really be doing this.

Speaker 17 So, I don't know if that is an answer to it, but basically, I think it's a

Speaker 17 real issue to think about mixed with it can be done.

Speaker 1 I mean, I basically just in a more circuitous way asked you exactly the same question that the Telegraph did while blaming them for asking you a cheap question like that.

Speaker 17 No I it's it's good I think also though because my husband is also a comedian and also kind of is more a comedy actor. We talk about this stuff all the time.

Speaker 17 It's kind of really on the forefront of our our minds just kind of but you know you want to make sure you're doing

Speaker 17 an ethical job, I think.

Speaker 1 Because with my telegraph hat on do you like my telegraph hat?

Speaker 17 It's lovely. Thank you.

Speaker 1 I guess you sort of think, well, that's a dead end then for any kind of acting. Like, what accents can you do? The accent of someone from a different class?

Speaker 17 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Can you, if it's all going to boil down to sort of power relations

Speaker 1 and be measured in that way,

Speaker 1 then

Speaker 1 there's not that much that you can really do. But I think fundamentally it's got to come from somewhere that isn't just a place of contempt, I suppose.

Speaker 17 That's it. That's it, exactly.
It's got to come from truth and love

Speaker 17 and studying something, not just pulling out of your ass.

Speaker 17 And

Speaker 17 although,

Speaker 1 how about this?

Speaker 1 Being pulled out of someone's ass.

Speaker 17 I guess you can pull it out of your ass. What am I trying to say?

Speaker 17 I think understanding why it's funny, it is also subtle though, isn't it?

Speaker 17 Like I saw the new Alan Partridge show yesterday at the screening and there's so many moments that you'd say oh well that's really edgy but it they've thought about it they've picked the right stuff they've

Speaker 17 there's like a comedy sieve and you've got to push all your stuff through the sieve and and refine it and and know i i wrote this joke recently about periods and when i i sort of realized oh my god that's like i've actually written a really misogynistic joke there and you just you either take it out or you refine it or you put it in a different way and you go, ah, this is what I want to say.

Speaker 17 It's kind of about,

Speaker 17 I don't want to say it's about being clever, but it is a bit, isn't it? It's about kind of focusing.

Speaker 1 Thinking a little bit further.

Speaker 17 Yeah, thinking about detail, thinking about what stuff means, what, you know, what are the implications of what you're saying.

Speaker 17 And if you're thinking about the implications, both for the laugh and what it means about the person you're portraying, then I think it's going to be okay. Yeah.
And also, we can make mistakes, maybe.

Speaker 1 Sure, yes, that's the thing. I think, I think it's like

Speaker 1 I wish people would think the best of other people rather than immediately assuming like you fucking bigot. You know,

Speaker 1 you're like, well, what else have they done? In what context? Is this part of a pattern of bigoted stuff that they're doing, or is this they've just slipped up?

Speaker 17 Yeah, and you know what? It's actually making me think because also some people can be offended by stuff and that is,

Speaker 17 you know, they're entitled to feel offended, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't be doing the thing full stop. I had quite an interesting experience years ago now.

Speaker 17 I had this thing in my show, I think this was 2016.

Speaker 17 And I think it could be said that I might not do this anymore, but it was a character who was talking about her, you know, like drug addiction, basically.

Speaker 17 But then she just goes through cowpole, paracetamol, or whatever. It was a kind of a cheap little bit like that.

Speaker 17 And this woman spoke to me afterwards and was like, that was really, really disgusting.

Speaker 1 Oh, why?

Speaker 17 And because, you know, it was making light of drug addiction.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 17 You know, it was a really

Speaker 17 stupid joke. It was in like a character as well, but it's like it goes from cowpole to like Vicks Vaporub, and I maybe go through 40 different things like that.
Yeah.

Speaker 17 So it's really silly and whatever. But when she spoke to me at the end, I was like, wow, to be fair, she's got a point.
And also, what, you know, who knows what her experience is with the whole thing?

Speaker 17 Am I going to keep doing that bit?

Speaker 17 Yeah, to be honest.

Speaker 1 I mean, the thing is,

Speaker 1 how many other people are, you know, that's sad that she felt that

Speaker 1 and that she was worried by that.

Speaker 1 But at the same time, how many other people are going to watch that bit and think that you are genuinely making some commentary on what it's really like to be addicted to?

Speaker 1 Do you know what I mean? Cowpole.

Speaker 17 Come on.

Speaker 17 So, yeah, I do feel like

Speaker 17 I heard her out as well and was like, oh, well, thank you for speaking to me. I'm definitely going to think about it.
And I think I did think about it.

Speaker 17 And I came to the conclusion that I was going to continue. Yes.

Speaker 17 But like I said, who knows? Maybe I wouldn't do a.

Speaker 17 I don't know. I think it's just always got to be a moving.
Comedy's got to be a moving thing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 17 But yeah, I just don't want us to be too scared by it.

Speaker 1 Have you done stuff in America?

Speaker 17 Yeah, I have actually.

Speaker 1 Have you been doing things recently?

Speaker 17 I think I last performed on stage in America two years ago or something.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I've done the kind of I'd almost say the equivalent kind of places that I gig at in London and America.

Speaker 1 Are you someone who considers success in America to be the kind of pinnacle of entertainment business success? Hmm.

Speaker 17 That my answer to that question is twofold.

Speaker 17 Yes, in terms of I think I would describe other people's success like that.

Speaker 17 Like it's almost like Olivia Coleman's you can say she's so successful now because she's known in America or she won an Oscar. I think, in terms of myself,

Speaker 17 that country terrifies me. And I love living in North London.
And I slightly feel like I've got... Oh, no, I hate to say that.
I hate to say this because

Speaker 17 it will sound fake.

Speaker 17 But I do slightly, secretly feel like I've got everything I've ever wanted.

Speaker 1 Fake. Fake bullshit.

Speaker 17 Bullshit, nasty little lucky

Speaker 17 phony bitter.

Speaker 1 Social media. That's my social media voice in my head always.
Yeah. Responding to things like that.

Speaker 1 No, that's nice. That's nice to feel like you can appreciate that.

Speaker 17 Yeah, just, I really like my job. I love my job.
And I think the tricky thing is when you're not working, you always want the next opportunity. So, of course, that could be anything.

Speaker 17 You know, if

Speaker 17 it was an American opportunity, it wouldn't be like, oh, but I don't need that. You know, I want to work.
I want to keep on working and making stuff and whatever. But

Speaker 1 if they did like an American version of Staff Let's Flats that was obviously going to be a pile of shit. Yeah.
Would you just go along and

Speaker 17 apartments?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 17 Would I go and do it?

Speaker 1 Yeah, just because it's like a job in America.

Speaker 17 Oh, God, that's a great question. It depends.
Yeah, I suppose it would depend. It would depend what my bank account looks like, I suppose.
And so in the yeah, yeah,

Speaker 17 yeah, that's a really hard one, though. I don't know.
Depends on the thing, but yeah, probably why not? I think I'm really up for experiences. I love

Speaker 17 doing stuff to see what it's like.

Speaker 17 Like when I went on tour with Alan Partridge, when I went on the Alan Partridge Stadium tour, I super did that on purpose.

Speaker 1 When was it that you did that?

Speaker 17 That was three years ago now, I think. So what's that, 2022?

Speaker 17 I completely did that because I was like, what? I'm going to be on a tour bus with Coogan, some dancers, and be performing at like the Newcastle Arena.

Speaker 1 And then he found out that Steve only travels in a private Rolls-Royce. Nobody behind the bus.

Speaker 17 He often was in the bus. It was so funny.
It honestly, it was hilarious. He was in the bus 30% of the time.
Yeah. I couldn't believe it.
It was ridiculous.

Speaker 1 Being funny.

Speaker 17 Yeah, I'd say showboating.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 17 With, you know, showboating and sometimes being very funny, but you can wind him up as well. You know, you can sort of like, like it was a lot of winding up Steve in a bus yeah and then you know

Speaker 17 yeah him complaining about like Jackie Chan's earnings okay

Speaker 17 yeah it was what were you playing I can't even remember like two random ass characters some woman that he interviews in the first half then a kind of drunken member of the audience in the second half I really loved it, but I think there was some, we ran out of time, I think, with some of the, what those characters were doing, basically, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 17 But as an experience, it was exactly what I'd hoped it would be, which was nuts. Yeah, it was great.

Speaker 17 And those, I think when you get to do a job that's weird, surely just that thing of going, okay, what will this be like to experience as opposed to where will this get me?

Speaker 1 Yeah. What are your memories then of that tour?

Speaker 17 One of my favourite moments was in the bottom.

Speaker 17 So the bus was a tour bus like Spice World, right?

Speaker 17 So literally a freaking tour bus. So you've got all these bunk beds up top with this

Speaker 17 kind of movie theatre in it.

Speaker 1 Wow.

Speaker 17 Yeah, and we've got eight or nine dancers. And then me, the kind of assistant producer, the tour manager, and Steve sometimes.

Speaker 17 And downstairs, you've got these little booths on the tour bus and this kind of kitchen area.

Speaker 17 And the kitchen is like stocked with all different, you know, whatever, drink, non-alcoholic booze, loads of proper booze, whatever.

Speaker 17 And so we're on one of these journeys. What you do as well, you'd finish at a stadium.

Speaker 17 So let's say Glasgow, you rap at Glasgow, and then for some reason, I think this is how all tours work, but it's bizarre.

Speaker 17 So once you rap in Glasgow, you know, Steve takes off Alan Partridge, you all get in your normal clothes, you jump on the bus and you drive all night to Bournemouth.

Speaker 17 Isn't that a weird way of doing stuff? And I think it's to just save money on hotels. So you just drive for 12 hours.

Speaker 17 And there was this one night where Steve was like really sitting in the downstairs kind of area.

Speaker 17 And the assistant producer was talking about how he used to be a bodybuilder and was something like the most successful teenage bodybuilder on the Isle of Sheppey.

Speaker 17 Like 20 years ago.

Speaker 17 And Steve starts scrolling his phone like mental. And he's literally going crazy on his phone.
I was like, Steve, what are you doing?

Speaker 17 And he goes, I've got to find find something more masculine than that.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 17 And he takes ages. He takes 10 minutes.
And eventually, Steve showed me a video of himself jumping off a cliff

Speaker 17 into the sea. He goes, how about that? I was like, I think the teenage bodybuilder in the Isle of Sheffield is like a lot better than that.
And he stormed off. Oh my God.
I loved it.

Speaker 17 And then a moment I loved also from the tour. So the dancers who were wicked, actually, I've never really, have you worked with dancers before?

Speaker 17 No, their thing is they absorb choreography like they are genies in bottles. They're just unbelievable.
It's incredible to watch. But they're not super invested in comedy.

Speaker 17 So, they kind of thought that Alan Partridge was Steve. Right.

Speaker 1 They couldn't, you know. Well, that's an easy mistake to make.

Speaker 17 It is an easy, yeah. And they, they, the whole time, were just like, this show kind of sucks ass.
It doesn't make any sense.

Speaker 17 And then we did our first night in Belfast to like, I think it was 8,000 people. And they all laughed when they should laugh.

Speaker 17 And the dancers were freaked out by it because they actually had never realized they were in a comedy.

Speaker 1 They thought he was a real third-rate washed-up TV person.

Speaker 17 Yeah, and they were like, this guy sucks, bless him. Obviously, if he's got money to book dancers, we'll do it.
But really, we feel sorry for the bloke. It's miserable.

Speaker 17 Then, when he's wearing the wig and the dress, they're like, okay. And I think I was still trying to, I was like, trying to explain to them, like, it's like this comedy character he does.

Speaker 17 But again, it's just different worlds. It's like them saying to me, oh, we're about to do a flip and a chasse.
And I'm like, I don't know what you mean. So anyway, so Belfast freaks them out.

Speaker 17 And then they're like, wait, what is going on here? And that's when I was like, I've been trying to tell you. He's like a comedian.
This isn't like a real thing.

Speaker 17 And we went into the movie theater bit of the sort of upper deck of the tour bus. And Alpha Papa was on one of the like Netflix things.

Speaker 1 My wife's favourite film. Right.

Speaker 17 It's a brilliant, hilarious movie. And we turn it on and

Speaker 17 it was

Speaker 17 just like they were kind of freaked out by it. Like, almost it gave them the ick, and they had to turn it off after 10 minutes.

Speaker 1 For those unfamiliar, this is the Alan Partridge movie.

Speaker 17 The Alan Partridge movie.

Speaker 17 And then suddenly, this guy that they're doing the show, he's suddenly this character in the movie. Yeah.
And they, they really just, they were like, we can't even stomach that.

Speaker 17 What the hell is going on? And now we're stuck on this bus driving from Glasgow to Bournemouth. How do we escape? This is fucking shit.

Speaker 17 And they turned on 50 Shades of Grey and kind of never talked about it again.

Speaker 2 Wait, this is an advert for Squarespace.

Speaker 1 Welcome back to Infopod.

Speaker 3 Today, we talk to reporter Mandy Brotrunk about the benefits of building a website with Squarespace, and I punctuate everything she says with strange noises.

Speaker 3 Mandy, why should people use Squarespace to build their website?

Speaker 6 So, if you go to squarespace.com/slash Buxton, you will find a wide selection of beautiful and professional-looking website templates.

Speaker 9 And there's so much functionality with a Squarespace website.

Speaker 11 You can set up your own online store, have a members' area,

Speaker 12 collect subscribers, and send out newsletters,

Speaker 14 keep track of those analytics.

Speaker 5 You can try it for free at squarespace.com/slash Buxton.

Speaker 6 And if you decide to purchase a website or domain, you can save 10% to check out with the offer code Buxton.

Speaker 15 So start your free trial today at squarespace.com slash Buxton.

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Speaker 1 Hey, welcome back, podcasts. That was Emma Siddy talking to me there.
It was really good to meet Emma. I really enjoyed talking to her.
And I'm very grateful to her for giving up her time.

Speaker 1 And also to Rose Matafeo for providing a venue for our chat. Thank you, Rose.
I didn't actually see her that day. But I really liked your house.
It was just right. Thank you.

Speaker 1 Well, I'm not going to wang on too much today, but I did just want to mention that I've put up some jingles from the podcast on my website, adam-buxton.co.uk.

Speaker 1 And what you do is you go up to the top, and I think one of the headings is podcast, and there's a drop-down menu, and it says jingles.

Speaker 1 And you go there, and you will find a selection of some of my favorite jingles from this podcast from over the years. The podcast is 10 years old now, do you realize? I'm not big into anniversaries.

Speaker 1 Just ask my wife.

Speaker 1 So I'm not going on about the milestone,

Speaker 1 but

Speaker 1 people every now and again say, oh, I wish I could find some of your jingles and just listen to them individually.

Speaker 1 So I hope you will find some of your favorite jingles have now been archived on my blog for your listening pleasure. All right, that's it for this week.
Thanks again for checking out the album.

Speaker 1 If you have, don't forget to look at some of those live dates coming up. There's the Mannington Book Bash where I'm going to be talking about my own book and interviewing Nigel Planer.

Speaker 1 And then there's those dates in October, Wimbledon Literature Festival with Samira Ahmed, the Adam Buxton Band playing at the Art Center in Norwich for a couple of nights, and also

Speaker 1 a big show at the Royal Festival Hall towards the end of October. You'll find details on my website in the events section.
Thanks very much once again to Emma City.

Speaker 1 Thanks to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for all his invaluable production support. Thanks to everyone at ACAST for liaising with my sponsors.
Thanks to Helen Green. She does the artwork for the podcast.

Speaker 1 But thanks, most of all, to you for coming back. How about a creepy sofa hug? Come here, hey.

Speaker 1 Good to see you.

Speaker 1 Hope you enjoyed hanging out in the kitchen for a change. I certainly did.
Until the next time we meet, please go carefully. And for what it's worth, I love you.

Speaker 1 Now I'm going to go for the full shout in the house.

Speaker 1 There's only the boys here today, so let's do it.

Speaker 1 Bye!

Speaker 1 My God, scared the shit out of me. Sorry, I was doing the bye for the podcast.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 I thought it'd be rod.

Speaker 1 I'm very sorry that I scared you, Natty. That's fine, it was just a shock.
By the way, this is Nat, who is the star of Pizza Time.

Speaker 1 Hello. Is that appropriate to say? The star? Well, it was written about you.
How do you feel about that? Invasion of your privacy, humiliating, something that you feel has created a wedge between us?

Speaker 1 No,

Speaker 1 I think it's completely untrue. Untrue? Well, exaggerated, over-exaggerated, definitely.
What, that you only ate pizza for a long period of your teenage years? I mean, every teenager has his pizza.

Speaker 1 I had a teenager amount of pizza. No.
And I never took beer that was not mine. Yes, you did.
You did. Communal beer, maybe, but.
Communal beer.

Speaker 1 Who else drank beer at that point? It was just me. Maybe you, then, that's the problem.
Maybe it's you drinking that beer and then you're just forgetting that.

Speaker 1 No, the point was, as the lyric states, it was my beer. You're stealing all my beer.

Speaker 1 It was mine, mine, me, mine, mine, mine, mine.

Speaker 1 And it was like you were too young to be having all the beer anyway. How old was I?

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 1 18. Were you 18, maybe? Yeah, drinking age, yeah.

Speaker 1 Well, it was mine. Yeah, well, I apologise.
No, that's okay, you don't need to apologise. I got a song out of it.
Yeah, that's pretty good.

Speaker 1 And I don't do it anymore, so you got a song, and I no longer do it. So,

Speaker 1 pretty good. And it's a classic song.
Right, charts.

Speaker 1 I mean, maybe not charts, although the album has been in the charts. Many times, yeah.
Technically, it's a chart hit. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Anyway, thank you. That's okay, anytime.

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Speaker 1 Give me like a smile and a thumbs up.

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Speaker 1 Please like and subscribe.

Speaker 1 Give me the smile and a thumbs up.

Speaker 1 Lights like a pipe when it bums up.

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Speaker 1 Life and pat when it bumps up. Please like and subscribe.

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Speaker 2 This is an advert for Squarespace.

Speaker 1 Welcome back to Infopod.

Speaker 3 Today, we talk to reporter Mandy Brotrunk about the benefits of building a website with Squarespace, and I punctuate everything she says with strange noises.

Speaker 3 Mandy, why should people use Squarespace to build their website?

Speaker 6 So, if you go to squarespace.com/slash Buxton, you will find a wide selection of beautiful and professional-looking website templates.

Speaker 9 And there's so much functionality with a Squarespace website.

Speaker 11 You can set up your own online store, have a members area,

Speaker 12 collect subscribers, and send out newsletters.

Speaker 14 Keep track of those analytics.

Speaker 4 You can try it for free at squarespace.com slash Buxton.

Speaker 6 And if you decide to purchase a website or domain, you can save 10% to check out with the offer code Buxton.

Speaker 15 So start your free trial today at squarespace.com/slash Buxton.

Speaker 16 Mandy, I can help you. Thank you.

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