Adam Buxton interview: ‘I worry about being confessional – is it a bit up itself?’

For almost an hour on the phone, my conversation with Adam Buxton appropriately rambles: through pop culture, lockdown life, grief, the perils of peering into one’s past, and – to my utter delight – David Bowie’s part (yes, that is a double entendre) in Labyrinth.

It’s almost 25 years since The Adam and Joe Show was first broadcast on Channel 4. Now – by way of various radio, TV, film, funny videos and live shows – Buxton is British podcasting’s favourite interviewer, and purveyor of the patented “ramble chat”.

Beginning in 2015, The Adam Buxton Podcast debuted at number one in the British iTunes chart and continues to sit in the UK comedy top 10. Episodes are introduced with an actual ramble, as Buxton walks his dog – a poodle-whippet cross named Rosie – in the Norfolk countryside, where he lives with his wife and three children.

Interviewing friends, artists, comedians and all-round impressive personalities, Buxton uncovers much more about his guests with his ramble-chatting style than any generic traipse through their career histories would likely reveal. Hear Zadie Smith on how keeping busy holds off thoughts of her own mortality; Bob Mortimer confessing to his love of reality survival show Naked and Afraid; Jeff Goldblum on comparisons between raising kids and playing jazz piano.

With his gentle, cockles-warming meander through topics, Buxton reveals just as much about himself, picking through the foibles, anxieties and occasional childishness of being a grown-up: the seductive joy of sulking; the trivial things that kick off marital arguments; the deep insecurities that plague most comedians; coming to terms with his own infantilisation; and losing patience with his kids for not sitting up straight in restaurants.

Buxton admits the podcast has become “more honest and confessional” over its 130 episodes (and counting). “I bare my soul occasionally,” he says. “I worry about doing it. I think, ‘Is this just a bit up myself?’ Would it be better to be a professional and just make people laugh?’”

The joy of the listening is finding a relatable thread between us, the listeners (collectively dubbed “pod-cats”), and Buxton, the most likable chap in British comedy. It’s a reputation that’s deservedly earned from 25 years of sweet-natured, nerd-friendly comedy. After working on Channel 4’s Takeover TV, Buxton and Joe Cornish (also a lifelong friend and director of Attack the Block and The Kid Who Would Be King) began The Adam and Joe Show in December 1996 – a gleefully silly collection on home video-style skits, shot by Buxton and Cornish on DV mini cameras, riffing on pop culture and general Nineties-ness.

Along with Simon Pegg and the Spaced crew, Adam and Joe were part of a comedy generation who made geek culture cool. They went on to host long-running radio shows on XFM and BBC 6 Music, and roles in sitcoms and film (most notably in Hot Fuzz) beckoned for Buxton.

Now, he has has written Ramble Book, a memoir framed by the death of his father, Nigel Buxton, a former Sunday Telegraph travel editor who’s fondly remembered as “BaaadDad”, the youth correspondent for The Adam and Joe Show.

Ramble Book is about growing up in the Eighties and growing old(er) in the now, but making sense of it all by learning more about his father and their relationship. Buxton uncovers his father’s family history: how he was the son of a former butler and estate overseer for a wealthy family, and was, thanks to patronage from this family, able to attend a boarding school, where he was taunted for not being posh enough – which gives some insight into why he sent Buxton to boarding school and always insisted on correcting mispronunciations.

Buxton solves the mystery behind an always-locked suitcase and learns about his father’s debts. In one remarkable story, he finds a letter that his father had written to his friend David Cornwell (better known as spy novelist John Le Carré) asking to borrow £40,000. But the most revealing, all-too-human moments come after his father is diagnosed with cancer and comes to live with him; there’s a spikiness and impatience between them, an easily relatable family dynamic, as Buxton tries to break down the formalities of the father-son relationship and reach a cinematic closure that never quite happens.

Buxton recounts his own rites of passage moments though life-defining pop culture: Eighties music, The Breakfast Club, Alien and Star Wars. Buxton describes how unpacking a Millennium Falcon toy as being “no less memorable and moving than the birth of at least two of my children.”

Buxton tells me the writing process was a journey of clichés: an “emotional rollercoaster” and “cathartic” experience. “At times, looking back was very chastening,” Buxton says. It’s perhaps best summed up an observation his father made about getting old. “He talked about the danger of looking back over your life,” says Buxton. “You’re poking around in the attic, never knowing if you’re going to come across the sweet smell of the pressed gardenias that you kept, or the smell of the dead rats – all the mistakes and the things you’re ashamed of. And I don’t care who you are, your attic is going to be stuffed with both.”

Buxton looks back with some conflict over his private education – the experience of being sent away to boarding school and the sense of privilege. After boarding school, Buxton attended Westminster School, where he met Joe Cornish and Louis Theroux. Buxton recalls the issue of privilege being a conversation even back in 1996, when they first made The Adam and Joe Show. “We felt guilty and felt that people resented us at the time,” he says. “We felt like we’d really lucked out and thought, ‘I bet there are other people who are doing this stuff and haven’t been given a break.’ We fit the bill superficially.”

Buxton remembers that Channel 4 wanted to position The Adam and Joe Show as a Brixton-made, DIY alternative to mainstream, Oxbridge-led television. A Channel 4 press officer even told them: “Don’t tell anyone you went to public school.”

“We weren’t setting ourselves up to be edgy or anti-establishment at all,” Buxton says. “But that’s the way Channel 4 wanted people to think of it. That certainly didn’t fit in with us having gone to an expensive school. So we weren’t supposed to advertise the fact we went to public school.”

In his most recent podcast episode, with Zadie Smith, Buxton revealed that his children have been educated privately. The motivation, he said, was not about elitism but simply, “Where’s the best place for them to go around here?”

In the five years since the podcast began, Buxton says he’s made friends with guests, such as Romesh Ranganathan and Natasia Demetriou. With others, such as Zadie Smith, Buxton finds himself “luxuriating in their intelligence”. The best episodes do indeed ramble (“Some people just like talking b------s,” he says) and are most insightful when Buxton holds his own observations and insecurities up against his guest’s experience and perspective.

“The thing that haunts me is I don’t want to be too self-indulgent,” Buxton says. “You don’t want to wang on about your problems. On the other hand, I like talking about that stuff. I’ve always been curious and anxious about difficult and depressing and frightening things. I find it comforting to talk about those things – and interesting and occasionally funny.”

I tell Buxton that I find his conversations about parenting especially relatable. There is a strange comfort in knowing that Buxton and Louis Theroux suffer the same parental hang-ups as I do.

“By having children you’re multiplying your pool of potential anxieties by the number of children you have, plus… loads,” he laughs. “One of my main worries is the extent to which I am screwing up my children. I think it’s sort of inevitable.”

Sadly, Buxton’s mother, Valerie, died during lockdown. The day after her funeral, Buxton and Joe Cornish reunited to record a podcast episode together, a brave and bracingly honest exploration of bereavement – further impacted by the strange reality of lockdown.

“I just wanted to be honest,” Buxton says. “I was going to keep putting out podcasts, but I knew I would be thinking about this, and would be quite unhappy sometimes. Joe was good at dealing with me in that mode. It must be weird for some people if they grew up with us being these stupid guys talking about Star Wars. Suddenly they’re 51 and one of them is trying not to cry and the other one is farting.”

Ramble Book: Musings on Childhood, Friendship, Family and 80s Pop Culture is out on September 3. To order your copy for £16.99, call 0844 871 1514 or visit the Telegraph Bookshop. For his podcast, go to adam-buxton.co.uk