March 6, 2006
THREE MORE XFM BITS
CRACKERS, PUBLIC ENEMY ALBUM TITLES, R KELLY
It’s a slow process going through all these Xfm shows. I have to transfer them from the DATs then trawl through all the dreadful crap that Joe and I come out with in order to get to the slightly better bits. I did think about just sticking the shows up in their entirety but decided against it because a) I couldn’t have used the music (which love it or loathe it, is kind of an important part of the 2 hour listening experience!) and b) there are far too many links where we just don’t have a clue what’s going on, either because we’re ill prepared or grumpy or we’re having technical difficulties! What’s left may not be solid gold, but there’s the odd nugget that may amuse. You can find all the extracts I’ve loaded so far in the Radio category of this site.
Here’s us talking about crackers and hassling our then-producer Lyla about her selection of Editors introductions (December 10th, 2005), discussing possible new Public Enemy album titles (December 3rd, 2005) and listening to extracts from R Kelly’s insane DVD (November 19th, 2005).
FUNNY SKETCH BY PETER SERAFINOWICZ
Peter Serafinowicz (who will be familiar to you from Spaced, Sean Of The Dead and Look Around You to name but a tiny handful of his remarkable achievements) is in LA at the moment, hanging out with Matt Groening, getting parts in American sitcoms and being an all round over-acheiving ponse. To make matters worse he and his girlfriend Sarah Alexander, his brother James and his friend Ryan Cartwright have put together a short sketch about the creation of a new Oscar statuette for the noughties. Check out Peter’s UNBELIEVABLE Alan Alda impression. If you close your eyes it’s as if they just chopped up some audio of Alan Alda’s actual voice, that’s how weirdly exact it is. His Pacino is great too and he even looks the part and his Paul McCartney song for Capote is a peach. Enjoy!
OUT OF FOCUS GROUP NEWS
OOFG 8 which took place on Wednesday15th February was an outrageous success and I think everyone had a good time. Well there was one guy who looked a little bit moody but I think he may have been an unpleasable nerd. The only thing that worried me was the fact that a few people got turned away because of lack of space. Basically it’s best to book so if you’re up for coming along to the next one on Wednesday15th March, give The Zetter a call now. I’ll have a couple of new video bits to show, my usual character bollocks and a few surprise comedy guests that will make you puke with excitement when you see them take the tiny stage. Check out the details in the Live Appearances category of this site…
March 5, 2006
IT CROWD NEWS
The IT Crowd finished it’s 1st run on Channel 4 last week and was generally considered a success. I’m pretty sure there’s a second series in the pipe. Some people hated it because it wasn’t sufficiently cutting edge and seemed old fashioned with it’s studio audience and all, but I believe it held on to it’s decent ratings throughout the run (sitcoms often tail off) so Graham must have been right about there still being people out there who enjoy stuff that actively avoids shocking people (which is very rare in modern TV when you think about it). Shocking people is all very well when there’s a good reason for it and it’s well done (like nudity!) but most of the time it’s just tedious and revolting (like nudity!)
Of course, I’m bound to be pro IT Crowd because Graham is a friend and I was in it! My episode, ‘The Haunting Of Bill Crouse’ went out a couple of Fridays ago and I was very excited about it. On the whole I see things I’ve been in and I want to go and hide in a box (100 Greatest Whatevers for example) because all I can see is me being self conscious but this time I thought I did OK and the whole episode made me laugh quite a bit. It looks as if they had to cut a lot of stuff with Judy, (the mad beast-woman in the orange boiler suit) which must have been a time thing. It’s a shame as she did a load of funny scenes, which made a lot more sense of her presence in the episode. As it stands it’s hard to see why she’s there sometimes, although her call to Roy complaining that her smashed computer won’t receive e-mail made me laugh a great deal. Anyway I was proud to be in it and I very much hope it won’t be the last time Graham and I get to work on something together.
I’m about to get down to work properly on my contribution to the IT Crowd DVD extras (a 15 minute spoofy behind the scenes thing narrated by my character Ken Korda) so I’ll keep you all posted because I imagine you’re quite fucking impatient for news on that front, right? Thought so.
ADAM & JOE ON 100 GREATEST FUNNY MOMENTS
CHANNEL 4, SUNDAY 26th, FEBRUARY 2006
I didn’t mention this show before it went out because I was ashamed I was a part of it. I think the best thing to do is post a bit of us talking about it on November 19th, 2005 on Xfm, which sort of explains my reservations. Basically, as funny as a lot of the clips in the list were those shows are fucking shit and I should have learned my lesson about appearing on them by now.
To add insult to ignominy, I saw that Time Out referred to us as being ‘among the talking heads who pretend their memory is crystal clear when really they’ve seen all the clips the night before on a specially prepared DVD’. Well that’s exactly the reason we only spoke about our own clips so put it in your sarcastic hole Time Out. Mind you, Time Out were nice about my performance in The IT Crowd so they can take it out of their hole again but if I see any more ill informed sniping, they’ll be putting it right back in their hole with no chance of a hole reprieve.
As far as list shows go, I hereby swear that I will never give an interview to another list show again, even if it’s 100 Greatest Adam Buxton Moments hosted by David Bowie. OK, if they got Bowie to host it I would do a short interview.
As an unnecessary addendum to this whole topic, here’s myself and Joe having one last moan on Xfm (March 4th, 2006).