‘Sometimes I overshare': Adam Buxton on fear, fun, finance – and falling out with friends

The Guardian

8 hours ago

On a muggy summer day, Adam Buxton is talking me through the songs on his debut album, Buckle Up. 'There's one on there called Standing Still,' he says, 'which was written when I was feeling absolutely bleak and lost and is about opening a packet of pasta when all the pasta spills. I thought: 'You can get a joke in there about being a fusilli billy and maybe that will distract a bit from the more earnest and pain-laden lyrics about how, every morning, I drink a cup of tea and it helps me with all the thoughts I have to smother.''
What are these thoughts? 'I get overwhelmed by the world and, the worse the news gets, the harder it bites,' he says. 'I get existential fear and I think I should go and join Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) and work with them. But then, is that really the best use of my talents? My wife is like: 'Please don't join MSF. It's really helpful to have you around here. And, also, I think you're good at doing your podcast and that helps people.''
Buxton, 56, cuts a pensive figure as he strokes his grey-streaked beard. He has travelled to the Guardian's London offices from his home in Norfolk, where he lives with Sarah, their three children and their dog Rosie, who regularly features on his podcast. The Adam Buxton Show began in 2015, the year that his longstanding comedy partner, Joe Cornish, went off to make movies. During Covid, at a time when people were more isolated and atomised than ever, Buxton's gentle, affable chat won a vast and loyal fanbase.
Conversation is important to Buxton. He was raised in west London by his journalist father, Nigel, who was travel editor of the Sunday Telegraph, and Chilean mother, Valerie. He has described his dad as 'gruff, pompous, conservative and harshly critical of nearly everything I enjoyed as a youngster and beyond', while his mum was his 'ally', someone who squared up to his father and encouraged Buxton's love of music and eventual TV and comedy career.
'Watching my parents, the problem was they didn't talk enough,' he says. 'Stubbornness, pride and hurt feelings prevented them. It's probably why I feel it's ultimately a good thing to talk more rather than less … Sometimes I feel I overshare and sometimes I can hear my dad or even my mum going, 'It's too much – say less.''
Buxton's readiness to talk about his own life encourages his podcast guests to let their guard down. His friend Louis Theroux opened up about his drinking problems, admitting that during the pandemic he would regularly be parenting his three sons hungover. 'I did sometimes wonder if you could do the job drunk,' he told Buxton. 'Maybe that's controversial, but I'm going to say yes.' Singer Pauline Black talked about performing in front of skinheads who were on speed in the 1970s and constantly fearing racist violence. Zadie Smith reflected on the 'death terror' that inspires her. How does Buxton approach such a wide range of guests? 'I'm always just looking for a moment of genuine connection,' he says.
The guests aren't all celebrities. The Syrian refugee Hassan Akkad described being detained and tortured by the police for attending a protest, then paying smugglers to take him on a dinghy from Turkey to Greece. Once the overfilled boat began to sink, he swam for seven hours to make it to Lesbos.
'It's valuable for people to be able to talk to each other about complicated things,' Buxton says. 'I grew up in a house with parents who I didn't agree with politically, but that didn't stop me loving them. The problem now is that people are very prepared to think the worst of anyone. That seems to be the default position, to read the most bad-faith version of whatever's going on in the situation.'
Over the past few years, for the first time, he's had some permanent fallings out with friends over politics. 'It was really shocking when it happened, because I sat down with them and tried to get past it,' he says. ''Surely we can talk about it?' I said. 'We've got too much in common.' And it was so upsetting and frightening when it was apparent that we couldn't. It completely threw me for a loop for a while.'
He has written two memoirs: Ramble Book, published in 2020, about his life in the 1980s and the death of his father in 2015; and 2025's I Love You, Byeee, which covers his TV career in the 1990s and the death of his mother in 2020. He spent nine months caring for his father after he was diagnosed with cancer. 'Before he moved in, I'd imagined conversations filled with tender reminiscences, confessions and closure,' he writes. 'In the end, we were just two uptight men who found it easier to be on our own.'
His mother's death felt more sudden, despite her health deteriorating over a number of years. 'The ones who really love you, you end up taking for granted,' he told Cornish in a podcast episode recorded a few months later. 'I just had it in my head that we were going to have another chapter and she would be with us. I was totally sideswiped by her death.'
Hearing him grapple with his bereavement has helped me with my own grief over the death of my mother. At the end of I Love You, Byeee, he thanks his mother for loving him and apologises for not taking the time to talk to her more about her life. It's a regret I've often had myself, holding on to questions that will now never be answered, and there is a comfort in hearing that expressed by someone else. How is he coping now? 'I feel as if I've really been in the hole with grief for ages, looking through photos, thinking about it, talking to relatives, maybe spending too much time there and not moving on sufficiently,' he says. 'I really miss them and that doesn't go away. I'm surprised how much that doesn't go away.'
He is still haunted by one song that reminds him of his mother, Randy Crawford's One Day I'll Fly Away. 'I listened to that song the night after she died, since it's one of her favourites, but this time I suddenly heard such darkness in it,' he says. 'She sings, 'I follow the night / Can't stand the light / When will I begin / My life again?' and it made me think of where my mum might be and I began to feel so fearful. There's grief and then there's fear and the fear is worse.'
Buxton went to the fee-paying Westminster school in London, which is where he became friends with Theroux and Cornish. It was while studying at Cheltenham College of Art that he began tinkering with the self-filmed sketches he sent to the Channel 4 show Takedown TV, and which formed the basis for the Adam and Joe Show. This began in 1996, and included everything from a toy-themed recreation of The English Patient, to Buxton's father being filmed as he explored the nightclubs of Ibiza. At a time when shows such as Spitting Image and Brass Eye were skewering politicians and celebrities, Buxton and Cornish preferred to make fun of themselves.
The show was axed after four series, and the pair went on to work together on the radio. With the 30th anniversary of the Adam and Joe Show coming up, does he think they will ever make another TV series?
'Never say never, but it would be quite weird,' he says. 'Over the years, we've discovered the podcast is a good medium for us because we know how we fit together in that world. We do the Christmas podcast together every year and I don't think that's going to stop anytime soon.'
With a new celebrity-fronted interview podcast seemingly popping up every week, does he worry about the future of his show? 'I don't think about it really,' he says. 'I'm not on social media, I don't check numbers and I gauge it by whether I'm still getting sponsors. I do sometimes think, if the sponsors went away and it wasn't financially worthwhile, would I still do it? And I think I would. It is fun. I'll probably only stop when Rosie dies.'
From 2007 to 2009, he co-hosted a BBC Radio 6 Music show with Cornish, which included jokey radio jingles. He sees his album as a natural progression for this musical tinkering – a selection of 'proper music' with a funny edge, written by him over five years and produced by Joe Mount of indie group Metronomy. The 15 tracks span everything, from fast-paced electropop about sitting on the moral fence (Dancing in the Middle) to 1970s Brazilian bossa about drying the dishes (Tea Towel), Dylanesque folk singing about differing musical tastes (Skip This Track) and thundering jungle breakbeats for a love letter to wearing shorts (Shorts).
This solo project puts him centre stage, but he is still keen to work with others. 'I like anything where it's collegiate and you have an experience with people,' he says. 'That's why I always wanted to go into the [I'm A Celebrity] jungle. Now I do get offers to go in there but I think I'm too old. I don't know if I could hack it physically.'
What if they offered you a million pounds? 'It's not about the money, man – it's about the experience,' he laughs. 'I'd do it for free if the right people were in there.'
He's also keen to act more: in 2007, he was cast in Edgar Wright's romp Hot Fuzz, where he played a local journalist who meets a grisly end. 'I'm hoping I might be entering my more castable years as an older man. It might be easier to slot me into a few creepy old guy roles. That's the dream: get a part on a show that ends up doing really well. You just show up, you don't have to write it and you don't have to worry about it, just hang out with talented people. That would be really good.'
Adam Buxton's new single Doing It Wrong is out on Decca. His album Buckle Up is released on 12 September