EP.258 - EMMA SIDI

Hello, Adam Buxton here with news of some live shows, details of which you'll find on my website adam-buxton.co.uk.

On the 10th of October, I'll be on stage at the Wimbledon Theatre with Samira Ahmed, talking about my book I Love You Bai, showing clips and signing things afterwards.

On the 13th and 14th of October, the Adam Buxton Band is playing two nights at the Norwich Arts Centre.

Expect songs from my new album Buckle Up, Great Bants, and afterwards, I'll sign things if you want.

And finally, on the 26th of October, I'll be appearing at the Royal Festival Hall as part of the London Literary Festival.

Expect humorous readings, videos, and music, followed by, yep, signing.

And then, I think that's it for live shows for the rest of this year.

Tickets and info at adam-buxton.co.uk.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin.

Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening.

I took my microphone and found some human folk.

Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke.

My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man.

I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan.

Hey,

how are you doing, podcats?

It's Adam Buxton here.

It's a windy day out here in Norfolk.

Grey clouds are scudding.

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

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.

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.

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.

How you doing anyway, podcasts?

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.

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 someone told me it made number 16

but they did say it's likely to drop out again immediately 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

I did send out one of my very infrequent newsletters, which you can sign up for by going to my website, adam-buxton.co.uk.

There's a link in the description.

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.

Whoa key doggy.

We're intrepid, Rosie.

I don't want to be a trepid, I want to go back to the kitchen sofa.

Kitchen sofa, yes, yes, I know.

Well, we will

right, it's a couple of minutes later now, and

haven't really found anywhere more sheltered to record this, so

I think we might head back.

We're back in Rosie's favorite place, the kitchen.

It's gonna fill up your water bottle, dog legs.

There you go, mate.

Mmm, that was delicious.

Do you want some too, Rosie?

For

well, look, let's go and sit on the sofa.

Oh, yeah, this is

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

SiddiFacts.

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.

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.

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

which is really great if you haven't seen it.

I think it's still on YouTube, PLS Like,

in which Emma played a Zoella-style social media influencer called Millipede.

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

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.

There's a link in the description.

You can see it on YouTube still, it's only short.

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.

Rose's co-writer on Starstruck was fellow Kiwi Alice Sneddon.

Emma played Kate, the best friend of Rose's character Jesse.

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.

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

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.

Emma's portrayal of Gray was, intentionally, thoroughly inaccurate.

My conversation with Emma was recorded earlier this month, September 2025.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You're looking very fresh, may I say?

This is the first time we've met.

Yeah, ah, we've met very briefly.

Where did we meet before?

This is one of those.

It was so brief.

Oh, yeah.

It's a big name drop, this.

Do it.

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.

Yeah.

So.

I haven't been invited for a few years.

So

that was back in the day.

Actually, I was even a plus one.

I wasn't even invited then.

So very briefly then, I think I was with Rose or something.

Rose Mattafeo.

Rose Matafeo.

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

So.

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

Oh, God.

What's the thing he called in

Wendy?

I was dressed as Wendy from The Shining.

Oh, in right, not from Peter Pan.

Not from Peter Pan.

I had a bat and the fringe, a fake fringe.

That's a good costume.

Yeah, it's actually really good because I didn't have to buy anything for it.

Even the fringe I own.

Yeah.

What were you dressed as?

Well, actually, you don't remember, so.

I think

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

Yes.

They were dressed as handmaidens.

Yeah, it was that one.

And was Alan Carr dressed as a gingerbread man or something?

It's entirely possible.

God, it's electric even saying these sentences.

And Frank Skinner

was dressed as.

Who does Adam Driver play in the Star Wars films?

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

Is it someone called Lilo?

Rex?

No, Reno?

Rido.

Rollie.

Rolo.

Anyway, Anyway, I think it was Kylo Wren!

Kylo Wren.

Yeah.

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

What?

Because he was Lilo Wren.

So it was a mashup of...

Got it.

I'm probably not doing justice to...

Did he have any Wren elements?

Yeah, there were some.

I think he had some superficial elements of the Star Wars character, plus the Lilo.

You could have a bird, the Ren.

Right, there you go.

Whatever.

But he, I think, spent his whole evening explaining his costume.

Sure.

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

I think I was dressed as a kind of generic alien.

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

You actually looked really plain.

Yeah.

I think that could have been a different year.

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.

It was a very impractical costume.

Yeah, and I'm sorry, I'm just meeting again properly now.

I shouldn't say you looked plain.

No, that's okay.

You thought I was a disgrace.

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.

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 violence 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 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 well I think This is where the pushback starts.

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.

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 going out today.

Yeah.

Those are always the lamest costumes when they just squirt some

blood on and they look all grimy.

Would you go to the Met Gala?

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?

I think.

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

I mean, that, to me, that's my worst nightmare.

I wouldn't like to go.

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

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

Who's Miss Moneypenny?

Oh, Judy Stench?

No, she's Naomi Harris.

Naomi Harris.

Okay.

So I was once on an EasyJet flight sitting next to who I thought was Naomi Harris.

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?

Wow.

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

Did you?

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 recognise you.

It's 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 around.

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.

And she said, My advice is, you just need a big break.

I mean, that is good advice.

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.

Yeah.

You know what I mean?

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

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?

Okay, Nahomi.

How do I get Danny Boyle?

Yeah.

But you're so right.

That's the more insightful.

it's the wider thing of going

trucking.

That's your only hope of applying that kind of advice.

Because otherwise, yeah, it's just like, my advice is be incredibly beautiful.

Yeah, that's exactly.

Meet lots of amazing people and be very talented.

Totally.

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

Green Lights.

Right.

Have you read Green Lights?

No, I have a bit of a...

Aversion.

Yeah.

Why?

Explain.

To Matthew McConaughey.

Sure, I think maybe a lot of people do, but 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.

Yeah.

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?

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

Yeah, well, all those rom-coms, I didn't get it.

For me, I was like, why is this guy everywhere?

And then I, in Wolf of Wall Street, when he's just, you know, it's so celebrated that scene.

Pounding on his chest.

Yeah.

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.

His chest pounding was something he did before a tape.

Yes, yes, I know.

We all know that.

That's that.

Okay, that is what sums it up.

That

pinnacling that we've all improved, mate.

It's fine.

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

Okay.

I thought you need to read Green Lights.

No, I can't do it.

It's really amazing.

Are you reading it or listening to the audiobook?

Of course, I'm listening to the audiobook.

Fine.

So you like him then?

So because you like to hear him say it.

I love his voice.

Oh, my God.

Green lights.

He says that

because it's all about his philosophy.

It's like jam-packed with all his kind of hokey philosophy, which, and I thought of it because talking of um

you know people with incredible genes like naomi harris

he is this you know exceptionally beautiful man

and he's oh really you know fair enough no no no i don't honestly all right but he

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 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

he doesn't talk about where they were politically but they sound like fairly conservative parents certainly religious and whereabouts in texas

and there was a lot of kind of physical abuse is what you've got to call it

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 and he still loves his parents but 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

his mum is making dinner and his dad the 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 and i can tell you're listening to the audiobook

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

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.

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

And then she grabs a kitchen knife and she is brandishing it.

And the dad,

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.

Wow, I'm trying to think.

Is that funny or violent?

Is it just violent?

It's kind of nightmarish.

Like if you saw it in a film, it would just be like, it's almost lynchy.

Yeah, yeah.

You go, who wrote this?

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

but that diffuses the situation.

Oh, god, actually, I genuinely got chills thinking of the knife.

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's so

really scary image, and then they start snogging, all covered in ketchup

because they're

because 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.

Shut up, this is it, no, this is right and the point no boys behind the sofa no

and he's like that's what it was like round at 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 oh god this ah this is why this man drives me mad do you do you really

Do you think that happened?

I don't know.

If I ever met him,

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.

Why did it evaporate?

Well, it was just a scheduling.

Fine, fine.

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

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

Yeah.

And it's not all so shocking, right?

It's all

a lot of it is much more wholesome and just straightforwardly entertaining.

okay plus i really genuinely love a couple of his films like they mean a lot to me contact and interstellar right i i haven't seen those ones they're both about aliens

um

or the stars they are about the stars yeah it's definitely jody foster is in contact he's amazing right and he is a uh a kind of

um supporting character but but but he's good see i'm more this says a lot actually i'm more magic mike yeah okay and um uh how to lose a guy in 10 days yeah that's what i'd write to him about yeah okay and go sorry i don't love you but those films were good well look if he ever gets back to me because it was a very crawly letter that i wrote

then come along and we'll read it together sit down with me and matthew and you can see if you come out of it feeling differently about it yeah

yeah i just thought here is a guy who is a genuine movie star like one of the last of the real sure movie stars along with someone like Scarlett Johansson or something like that.

Billboard,

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.

And I just thought it would be amazing to meet him and kind of.

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.

It really is pretty entertaining.

But right the way through, part of his philosophy is trying to turn adversity into a learning experience.

He doesn't put it in that way.

He says it's a green light.

Right.

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.

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

No, no, it's great.

It's great.

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

No, no, of course not.

And I'm not.

Sorry, that sounds like I was.

Sure.

I'm not either.

Right.

You know.

His dad died.

How do you think his dad died?

Okay, how old was he?

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

I'm going to say trespassing.

Why trespassing?

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 we were looking for the tracks.

You know, I can just see that.

Stealing lead packs, yeah, stealing copper and I'll sell it anyway.

But I'm wrong, am I?

Uh, yes, he died climaxing while making love to his wife.

Matthew's mum or different wife, no, no, Matthew's mum.

How do we really?

Yes,

shut up, he was probably watching, shut up, Matthew.

Yeah, watching again.

How so?

They know that just because his mum was like, oh, I'll tell you the moment.

I think so.

Yeah, yeah.

What happened?

His head blew off or I think.

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.

I think that's the end of that.

I've done Peyote in a cage with the mountain lion.

Green light.

I've had 78 stitches sewn into my forehead by a veterinarian.

Green light.

I've had four concussions from falling out of four trees, three of them on a full moon.

Green light.

I have bombo naked until the cops arrested me.

Green light.

I believed everything we do in life

is part of a plan.

Green light.

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

That's part of the plan.

Green light.

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

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

Yeah.

So it felt kind of personalized.

Good.

Green light.

Oh my god.

I can't do it.

I can't do it.

How are you doing at the moment?

How is life for you?

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.

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.

Yeah, we're speaking in September 2025.

In September 2025.

And

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

This is your first?

This is my first.

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 saying no to some stuff, able to do some other things.

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.

I thought my discernment meant...

Yeah.

Well...

I've got a baby I could be bringing up.

Exactly.

Give me that party shit bag.

That's exactly it.

So it doesn't make any sense.

But yeah, that's been interesting.

But yeah, 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 means, I think, during those first months, you're coming to terms with even that.

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.

Yeah.

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.

Of you all opened up.

Yeah, of me opened up, of the baby coming out, of all that kind of thing, like a scene from the thing from

you probably haven't seen it.

I haven't seen the thing, no.

It's a lot of kind of C-section stuff.

Oh, right, I'll check it out.

I'll be able to deal with it now.

Um, and there was this video that I hadn't seen at all, and oh, it's so beautiful, but obviously, flipping intense.

Sorry, it's gonna say fucking, obviously, that's fine as well to say, 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 are you?

Is your partner in the room?

My partner's in the room.

My husband Al is in the room.

And I was like, yeah, yeah, put the screen down.

If I'm totally honest, I was out of it.

I'd had a long labour.

Gas and air, all that, you know, all that stuff.

Pissed up.

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.

But it doesn't look like my stomach, you know, it looks so disconnected from, I don't know.

And this baby is halfway out, and

his eyes are sort of half open, 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.

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.

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.

And so they all close their eyes and lift out this thing because he is a thing.

I mean, you said the thing, but it is.

Well, it's more like alien, actually.

Oh, God.

Yes, I've heard of some of that happens in alien.

Lift him up, and then there's little D and balls are there.

And yeah, my husband goes, it's a a boy, and I go, My beautiful boy.

Again, I don't remember, I don't really remember realizing it was a 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 do that.

I wonder if that's protocol now.

Maybe someone got angry with them and said, How dare you find out the sex of my child before I do?

I'm suing you.

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?

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.

Gently cut you open.

So pretty cool, really.

That's amazing.

Yeah, it's amazing.

So feeling all good.

And the little baby is just...

So freaking cute.

Oh, good.

I'm glad.

Yeah.

But it's a lot, obviously.

That goes without saying.

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

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.

And I hadn't thought of that.

Yeah.

Think of uni or something being like that.

Right.

And I think that's something 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

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

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

Yeah, I never understand that.

And it loves you.

Also,

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.

God.

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,

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.

Just did it in, well, I won't say the borough, but a borough in London.

Oh, it gives me the ick.

Not the ick, the creeps.

Well, at least there wasn't like a video or anything.

How do you know that?

No, there isn't a video.

McConnell's probably not a video.

Yeah, he will do.

Of his.

But, oh, good.

Well, I'm glad it's sort of gone

relatively well.

It has.

It definitely has.

Yeah.

Yeah, good.

And has it given you lots of great ideas for shows?

Great question.

And my answer to that is no.

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

About.

You're so right.

It's such a

gap in the material.

A lot of funny material there.

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 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

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 but anyway I'm getting on with it and you're like wow that is so 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 like I love MCT.

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

Yeah.

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

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But goddamn, I love her.

Is the baby's name Basil or

Derrigan?

I was just thinking, Herbie.

Yeah, yeah, Herbie.

I should have asked that, put my hand up and said, I've got a question.

Is your baby called Herbie?

And is it only people who are having a nice experience of parenthood that go to that sort of thing?

Well, this is what I'm saying.

I found the writer's one.

So a lot of these NCT groups, you know, it's a lot of full Matley stuff where, I mean, people are amazing, but there's a lot of focus on the babies.

Of course there is.

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.

Then there were some writers for like Sky News.

You know, they're loving it because they feel traumatised by the news.

Oh, yeah, that's interesting.

Mixed with,

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

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

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

which I really understand.

I thought it was really honest, you know, she's there with this baby in a carrier, going, Oh, God, now I've got to get fully back to just baby

while this film is done.

So, it's funny to call it extreme grief, but you know, I really appreciated her saying that, and I think it's 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.

I think there's a few things with

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.

But that's sort of...

To have an NCT group that allows you to say...

crazy,

not really okay stuff like that is really, really healthy.

I think it's a really great place that's good yeah as long as people don't judge you I guess 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 um but yeah sorry I think what I was saying with that was that

at some point because there's a sort of playwright who leads it um 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 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?

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.

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 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?

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.

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

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

Just quite fine.

He was in an accident.

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

No way.

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.

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

How old were you?

I was nine.

And I had two years, a seven-year-old brother and a four-year-old brother.

So yeah, mad, awful.

Were you very frightened?

Did you understand what had happened?

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

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

Were you laughing at that?

I found that hilarious.

I think some of those things, you know, when you're told about them.

It's too mad mad to be able to do it.

You know, your dad's been in a major head trauma-related accident.

You go, oh, classic meal dad anyway.

You know, Simpsons on kind of thing.

So, yeah, I found it really, really funny.

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.

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

So he was there full time?

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.

Was his speech badly affected as well?

Initially, and then was actually fine, just slower to remember stuff.

But it was like a personality change initially.

And again, you know, it's gone back to, you know, pretty much normal, I think.

Yeah, by the grace of God.

The thing I really remember was him doing a painting of Dumbo the Elephant.

And it was, to be fair to to him, really high quality.

It was just fantastic.

You're smashing it, Dad.

Smashing it, but you know, what the hell?

And he shows it to the, he goes, look at what I've done, kids.

And we were like, wow, daddy, that's amazing.

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

This is the wrong way around.

It's weird.

But obviously, that was great that he was getting those motor skills back.

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.

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

I don't think so.

I don't think I'm very neurotic, and that is, yeah.

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.

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

so again, not too bad.

Yeah, he'll do some drawings of Disney characters.

Maybe I can encourage him to do some abstract expressionism.

Totally.

I'll help him outline Pinocchio and

fill in the colours.

So yeah, so overall, very, very good.

Suburbia, woking.

So, yeah, I had a really nice time.

So 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.

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 learned it again later.

Do some German.

Go and do it now.

Also, can I besiege?

It's quite good, actually, that, isn't it?

That's nice.

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

Heuder, gib des wiele probleme and

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

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.

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

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.

And also, I do like, you know, I love bands like Kraftwerk.

Yes.

I love a lot of the Cannes and Neu.

I was really into German scar as a teenager.

Really?

Yeah, it's quite beautiful.

You know, there's a lot, a lot of quite existential themes in German.

German scar.

Yeah.

But you also speak good Spanish.

Did you study Spanish?

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.

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.

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 it became such an obvious thing that everyone had in common so yeah so I did French and German throughout school and then I dropped German and took up Spanish.

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?

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.

I think you should.

Greenlight.

That would be.

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.

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

God, but where the hell do we go?

You really think we should go to.

But you can speak Spanish.

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

like you did a whole special in Spanish?

I can't be bothered.

I feel it is such effort doing that.

It is such effort because I on my year abroad I was in Mexico and I did a flipping hour of comedy monologues and it was excruciating.

I just can't go back there, Adam.

I can't do it.

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

What about just talking to the child in Spanish?

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.

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.

Can you give me some babushka?

Yeah, yeah.

Well, first out, I might be like, I do start in English to not freak him out to wear, hello, little baby.

It's not good.

Hello, little baby, but I'm wearing this head scarf.

I'm going,

like that.

And it literally snaps him out.

And then at the end, I go, bong, bong, bong, and he laughs.

What's the bong, bong, bong?

It's just like a punchline, and he can feel it's a punchline as well.

It's classic, it gets him every time.

And I also sometimes wave this, there's these classes called baby sensory, and you pay them loads of money, and they just wave fabric in their face, basically.

So I often go, Welcome to Baby Sensory.

This is £5.50.

Bong, bong, bong.

And he always laughs.

So

that's been great.

And it's a good way of bringing in language to

a baby's life, I suppose.

That was quite spooky because my mum was Chilean.

So

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

Well, when did she move to the UK then?

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

but then

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

Well, you know what?

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

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 being totally out of kilter because they've got too much going on.

Yes.

Then they get to seven.

You've got yourself a flipping kid and a half.

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

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.

I'd say take the gamble.

Children are fairly resilient.

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.

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

rather than necessarily being like,

Hello, I'm your mom, and we're randomly gonna 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.

We'll just do the accent.

No, when you just be with me, we'd be like,

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

Yeah, let me speak Spanish.

You can't actually speak Spanish.

Hi, Dad.

Hey, mom, how the hell are you doing?

You good?

You're okay.

No, it wouldn't work.

Did your mom call you, you know, Adam Buxta?

Adam Sito.

Adam Sito.

Buxton Sito.

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.

And so there were things like that, you know.

It's actually gorgeous Chilean Spanish.

It's really like,

sorry, sorry to any Chileans listening, but it's got this like rinky dinkness to it.

Do you know what I mean?

Like, I went on my honeymoon in Chile and in the pharmacy, it's like,

like, it's got these sort of smallness to it.

Do you know what I mean?

I think I do.

A kind of musical.

Yeah, yeah.

So it'd be like, por favor em quiero para se temoro ah para sitemor sito.

Do you know what I mean?

It's just like

you don't hit it

it.

Like robot language.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's true.

Do you speak Spanish?

No, not really.

I mean, I do think that, you know, I can get by

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

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.

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.

But I'm pretty sure this is a thing.

It just,

I have Colombian neighbours and the guilt I feel every day.

Oh, really?

Because you think they're judging you?

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.

You know, oh, God, oh, God.

That was awful.

That was awful.

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,

you're just impressed.

You're like, yeah, go for it, you know.

That's probably true.

Is that completely true?

Not everyone is as great as I am.

Yes, yeah, yeah.

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

that is true.

Yeah.

You give them a break, you're not like, your English is crap.

Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

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

Especially when they're doing a pretty good job.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And especially if they take what they need or want to even be able to say a single word in their language.

Totally, totally.

No, you're right, you're right.

We've just got to give ourselves a break and be like, you know, keep tracking.

What are you going to do about social media

with your kids?

Oh, actually, I have a really clear answer.

Oh, yeah.

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.

Right, this is what I'm thinking, okay?

Firstly, we're not allowed to go on social media in front of the baby.

We can go on WhatsApp, can go on text, that's just part part of life.

Not sure what to do about that.

But not making something like Instagram look normal.

That's us.

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.

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 is completely fine.

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

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

There's no CCTV,

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

So look, I'm obviously sounding too harsh.

That's something I should have mentioned about my childhood.

My dad was actually pretty strict.

He would often say, I'm going to come down on you like a ton of bricks.

I just 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.

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.

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.

Do you think?

Were you strict?

No.

Oh God.

I wasn't.

I shouldn't be strict.

Well 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.

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.

Well kind of me, you know, it made me quite a good liar.

So that is the problem as well.

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.

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

Yeah.

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.

Yes.

That's great.

Your teacher saw that.

And I was like, oh, yeah, that's true, isn't it?

Yeah.

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

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.

You know, and that was fair enough.

I feel really bad about that, actually.

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, 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.

Yes.

Yeah, and good for them, you know.

I think they are.

They're great.

I mean, we didn't send them away to boarding school, which is one big difference.

Yeah, you idiots.

You should have.

never found that.

Yeah, we would have had way more free time, but um, I can't.

That is just 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.

Oh, you went to a boarding school, yeah, I did, right, right, right, yeah, yeah.

There were some good things about it, but I do think my relationship with my parents suffered, yeah, I bet.

And it was never

I feel like I have a closer relationship with my children.

Oh, that was interesting, and I'm really grateful.

I love information, and you serve it by the plateful.

Going in the left here, coming up the right.

I saw an interview that you did with The Telegraph.

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

I mean, the thing is about The Telegraph, I think they take comedy quite seriously, like they're quite good at it.

It's true, you know.

They write about it quite well.

Yeah, completely.

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

They know their readers are so wound up by all that stuff.

So they really love to chat about it.

Moth to a flame.

That's an idiom I do know.

Okay.

I mean, you know, hold my hand up.

I'm kind of the same sometimes as well.

I find all that culture wars stuff sort of interesting.

But

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?

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?

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,

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.

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

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?

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.

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

Basically, if you're punching down, really.

And I think if you are punching down, which there was comedy that was punching down,

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.

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

Yeah.

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.

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,

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

an ethical job, I think.

Because with my telegraph hat on, do you like my telegraph hat?

It's lovely.

Thank you.

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?

Yeah, yeah.

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

and be measured in that way,

then

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.

That's it.

That's it, exactly.

It's got to come from truth and love and studying something, not just pulling out out of your ass.

And

although, how about this?

I guess you can pull it out of your ass.

What am I trying to say?

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

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 they've thought about it, they've picked the right stuff.

They've

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 wrote this joke recently about periods and when I sort of realised 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.

It's kind of about

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.

Thinking a little bit further.

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

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.

Sure, yes, that's the thing.

I think it's like...

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

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?

Yeah, and you know what?

It's actually making me think because, also, some people can be offended by stuff, and that is,

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.

I had this thing in my show, I think this is 2016, 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.

But then she just goes through cowpole, paracetamol, whatever.

It was a kind of a cheap little bit like that.

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

Oh, why?

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

Okay.

You know, it was a really

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 so it's really silly and whatever but when she spoke to me at the end i was like well to be fair she's got a point and also what you know who knows what her experience is with the whole thing am i gonna keep doing that bit yeah to be honest i mean the thing is

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

and that she was worried by that.

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?

Do you know what I mean?

Cow Pole.

Come on.

So, yeah,

I do feel like

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.

And I came to the conclusion that I was going to continue.

Yes.

But like I said, who knows?

Maybe I wouldn't do a.

I don't know.

I think it's just always got to be a moving comedy's got to be a moving thing.

Yeah, yeah.

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

Are you have you done stuff in America?

Yeah, I have actually.

Have you been doing things recently?

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

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

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

Hmm.

My answer to that question is twofold.

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

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,

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 it will sound fake, but I do slightly, secretly feel like I've got everything I've ever wanted.

Fake.

Fake.

Bullshit.

Bullshit, nasty little.

Lucky you.

Phony bit.

Social media.

That's my social media voice in my head always responding to things like that.

No, that's nice.

That's nice to feel like you can appreciate that.

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.

You know,

if 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

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

rent apartments?

Yeah.

Would I go and do it?

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

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,

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

doing stuff for the, to see what it's like.

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

When was it that you did that?

That was three years ago now, I think.

So, what's that?

2022.

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.

And then you found out that Steve only travels in a private Rolls-Royce

behind the bus.

He often was in the bus.

It 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.

Being funny.

Yeah, I'd say showboating.

Yeah.

With, you know, showboating and sometimes being very funny, but you can wind him up as well.

You know, you can sort of like, it was a lot of winding up Steve in a bus.

Yeah.

And then, you know,

yeah, him complaining about like Jackie Chan's earnings.

Okay.

Yeah, it was quite funny.

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 what those characters were doing, basically, is what I'm saying.

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

Yeah.

It was great.

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?

Yeah.

What are your memories then of that tour?

One of my favourite moments was in the bottom.

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

So literally a freaking tour bus.

So you've got all these bunk beds up top with this

kind of movie theatre in it.

Wow.

Yeah, and we've got eight or nine dancers.

and then me, the kind of assistant producer, the tour manager, and Steve sometimes.

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

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

And so we're on one of these journeys.

What you do as well, you'd finish at a stadium.

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.

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.

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.

And there was this one night where Steve was like really

sitting in the downstairs kind of area.

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

like 20 years ago.

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?

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

What?

And he takes ages.

He takes 10 minutes.

And eventually, Steve showed me a video of himself jumping off a cliff

into the sea.

And 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.

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?

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.

So they kind of thought that Alan Partridge was Steve.

Right.

They couldn't, you know.

Well, that's an easy mistake to make.

It is an easy, yeah.

And they, the whole time, were just like, this show kind of sucks ass.

It doesn't make any sense.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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 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 my wife's favourite film right it's a brilliant hilarious movie and we turn it on and

it was

it was 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 for those unfamiliar this is the alan partridge movie.

The Alan Partridge movie.

And then, suddenly, this guy that they're doing the show, he's suddenly this character in the movie.

Yeah.

And they really just were like, we can't even stomach that.

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.

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

wait continue

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

Just ask my wife.

So I'm not going on about the milestone,

but

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

But thanks, most of all, to you for coming back.

How about a creepy sofa hug?

Come here, hey hey.

Good to see you.

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.

Now we're going to go for the full shout in the house.

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

Bye.

My god, scared the shit out of me.

Sorry, I was doing the bye for the podcast.

Yeah.

I thought we were off.

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.

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?

No,

I think it's completely untrue.

Untrue?

Well, exaggerated.

Overexaggerated, definitely.

What, that you only ate pizza for a long period of your teenage years?

I mean, every teenager has his pizza.

Yeah, but I had the 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.

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.

No, the point was, as the lyric states, it was my beer.

You're stealing all my beer.

It was mine, mine, me, mine, mine, mine, mine.

And it was like you were too young to be having all the beer anyway.

How old was I?

I don't know.

18.

Were you 18, maybe?

Yeah, drinking age, yeah.

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.

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

Yeah, pretty good.

And it's a classic song.

Right, charts.

I mean, maybe not charts, although the album has been in the chart.

So

technically, it's a chart hit.

Yeah.

Anyway, thank you.

That's okay, anytime.

Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe.

Like and subscribe.

please like and subscribe.

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up, I say a pant for me bums up, give me like a smile and a thumbs up,

I say a pant for me bums up,

like and subscribe,

like and subscribe,

like and subscribe, please like and subscribe.

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up,

I say a pant for me bums up,

give me like a mile and a thumbs up, I say a pant for me bums up,

like and

Two likes and subscribe.