6 MUSIC

Since my last post Joe and I announced that we’re starting a 12 week run of shows on 6 Music from Saturday 2nd April (2011) in our usual slot (10am – 1pm). I’m mainly nervous that the chest infection I’ve had for the last few weeks (the stubborn legacy of my Christmas stint of illin’) will mean that every time I laugh listeners will be treated to a wheez that sounds like a tramp trying to start a car that he and his tramp friends have just hauled from a pond. The doc (not Dr Sexy sadly) gave me some Amoxycillin yesterday so I’m sure that’ll clear it right up in no time (is my pro-biotic sarcasm dripping through OK?) Even if it halts the wheezing by the time I’m back on the radio there may be evidence of lightheadedness, insomnia, confusion, anxiety, sensitivity to lights and sounds, and unclear thinking. A normal show in other words! Ha ha ha. You thought those were side effects caused by the Amoxycillin but it turned out that’s what I’m always like! You fell for it!!

Speaking of the show, the big news is that we are in the process of completely reinventing the entire programme. There’ll be 10 guests every hour, all of them plugging their new book/CD/TV show/film/charity exercise/unhinged philosophy, and every interview we conduct with them will leave you confused and depressed. In between interviews there’ll be a lot of music by Bruno Mars who is also providing us with new jingles and a new theme song. Features like Text The Nation and Made Up Jokes are to be replaced with new interactive features like Where You Callin’? wherein people tell us where they are calling from then hang up, and Weather Whot, which gives callers an opportunity to tell us very briefly about the weather where they are (I thought of this and I think it’s a good one).

We’ll also have a fuck of a lot of stuff about Charlie Sheen. There’ll be regular ‘Sheenews’ updates, ‘Winning!’ mashups and Charlie jingles along with a lot of Sheen based humour and banter. Joe wasn’t really up for this stuff but I forced it through and I think it’s a winner because everyone is focused on Charlie right now and you need to give people what they want, even if they don’t realise they want it or don’t need it or even if they actively resist it.

Needless to say I can’t wait to be back. I’ve missed doing the show a lot. On a serious note (not that the other stuff about all our new features wasn’t serious of course) Joe and I are both heavily indebted to Andrew Collins and Richard Herring who stepped in for us all those months ago then ended up making our lovely warm slot their own despite not really knowing how temporary or not the arrangement was, quite an enervating position to be in I’ll warrant. I don’t imagine for a second our 3 month return spells the end of the line on 6 for them, but anyway, wanted to say thanks.

In the meantime, you can help us with our first show back by getting in touch with any personal anecdotes you may have accrued in the last 15 months(!) since we’ve been away. I know that’s a bit vague but if your message is sufficiently interesting we will almost certainly fit it in to a special edition of ‘Anecdotties’ between the Charlie Sheen stuff and whichever Bruno Mars songs we’re playing.

E-mail your enjoyable anecdotes to adamandjoe.6music@bbc.co.uk (not ‘Adam&Joe’ as a hairy moron put in a blog post recently) and please use the subject header ANECDOTTIES!

COUNTRY MAN 3!

Here’s the latest episode of fun fieldism from Monty BH. There should be another along next month. Thanks to Jamie Johnson who helped me shoot the bits where the camera is moving.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNSgIMQ0L2s

IN YOUR FACE!

I did this when 6 Music was saved last year but really it’s a timeless piece of music suitable for any victory celebration, as long as you’re happy to celebrate like a tool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNSgIMQ0L2s

Til next we do meet, keep your room nice and neat.

Love A Buxtn

To run a successful blog that people keep coming back to you should post frequently and resist the temptation to post too much. The same could be said of most creative endeavours. So, is my refusal to follow that advice some kind of strategy? Yes, that’s exactly what it is. A strategy. I like long pauses followed by a torrent of content when the levee breaks. I should have posted a few weeks back when Adam & Joe’s Song Wars Volume 2 was released but I was in the middle of things with my Ken Korda project (thanks to those of you who helped out BTW). Now I’m in bed, dosed up to the tits with ill pills, necking cough syrup like L’il Wayne and generally cashing in my ill chips.

Yesterday was grim. I was shaking, groaning and coughing til I expected to see blood spraying the duvet (that’s a nice festive image isn’t it?) but there are also periods of fluey remission when it’s quite fun to be just tooling about in bed and not having to do any other chores. Last night with feverish focus I watched Francois Truffaut’s 1959 film The 400 Blows for the first time. It was either that or The Last Airbender.

400 Blows is good! It’s about a Parisian boy rebelling against crappy parents and teachers. There are many memorable moments but the one that really got its hooks in was a scene in the second half where dozens of children aged between about 4 and 7 are watching a puppet show. Every shot is filled with these little rapt faces all concentrating on the show, each one so expressive and filled with personality they could star in a film themselves. It was a little like watching my boys watching Harry Hill’s TV Burp. They can’t possibly understand all the jokes but they roll about, literally holding their sides with joy.

After my edifying dose of Truffaut I finished listening to Frank Skinner’s account of returning to stand up after his TV years. Like many comedians he’s a mix of self effacing, conceited and solipsistic but unlike many comedians he gets the balance pretty much exactly right throughout, even in a bizarre and pornographic recollection of a banana based casual sex encounter. I even found myself laughing at a joke about football. Speaking to Frank about his Roman Catholic faith David Baddiel asks if it bothers him that most other religious people seem to be stupid or mad or both. Skinner asks him if he feels that way at Chelsea matches. Now I’m downloading Alexei Sayle’s autobiography. Then I’ll watch The Last Airbender. Incidentally I’d like to take this opportunity to say I’ve finally got the point of the I-Pad. My wife got me one for my birthday last year and if you’re ill, or otherwise at leisure, it’s your best friend.

It was the fun aspect of non life threatening illness that inspired my Flu Song.

FLU SONG

It’s one of the ones I did for Song Wars when Joe was away for Glastonbury 2009 and Garth Jennings sat in. Garth beat me with a song about Hay Fever which I accept sounds superficially more appealing, but my flu song deserves serious analysis nevertheless. So you can imagine my delight when I came across this review on line:

Buxton’s clever and tuneful journey through the highs and lows of a bout of flu is an unfairly overlooked gem. The plummy, nasal vocal recalls Syd Barrett and perfectly compliments the woozy psychedelic feel of the guitar part, which drenched in a pleasing tremolo was played by Buxton himself and suggests a considerable talent that begs further exploration. Lyrically The Flu Song is certainly one of his strongest. The nod to You’re The One That I Want’s “I’ve got chills” is just one of many inspired moments like the observation that, for a heterosexual man of limited intelligence, an attractive woman with flu seems somehow less contagious than anyone else. There’s useful information too in the section about chewing vitamin C tablets only to find ones bowels distressingly loosened thereafter. All in all it’s hard to understand why this wasn’t included on the recent Song Wars Volume 2 album. Next time you have flu make sure this is the song playing in a fevered loop in your mind!

OK. I wrote that. But it’s all true. The reason it wasn’t included on the album was that we thought we should stick to competition entries between Joe and myself though my brilliant Bob Dylan’s DVD Box Set song appears as does Joe’s unaccountably popular Retro Text The Nation jingle. So, the album…

ADAM & JOE’S SONG WARS VOLUME 2

YOU CAN DOWNLOAD IT HERE OR SEND OFF FOR THE ADORABLE PHYSICAL VERSION HERE

SONG WARS FACTONS

• The release came about thanks to Dreamboat records. They pointed out to us that very little of Adam & Joe exists in the physical world and it would be nice to create a treasurable CD/vinyl object with which to dignify our musical efforts as much as possible.

• In that spirit I lavished both time and care on the artwork which features an inner montage packed with details to pore over and fathom for years. I was a little disappointed to see someone’s already ripped the cover off though.

• For a while we were considering a different design. How exciting for you to see it here!

• We didn’t go ahead with it because some ponces ripped that one off too.

• We decided not include every song we’d done since Song Wars Volume 1 for reasons of space and decency. Instead we chose our favourites.

• On the whole the critics have been fulsome in their praise and many consider Song Wars Volume 2 one of the best albums of this or any other year. However there have been one or two troubling comments that I’d like to address.

Some people seem think I thrashed out songs like Bob Dylan’s DVD Box Set and Bums & Binge Drinking (Kate Nash Song) in ‘a giggling 10-minute rush of post liquid lunching’ implying a kind of dissolute, freewheeling disregard for songcraft that I for one refuse to accept. Can’t speak for Cornballs but as far as I know he’s not much of a lunchtime drinker. Bums & Binge Drinking was carefully constructed from pure scratch and was a considerable investment of both time and emotional energy. DVD Box Set didn’t take quite so long, created as it was over a pre existing backing track, but now a whole year after that momentous recording session, I sing that song to myself quite often and find it to be excellent. To see someone saying that my Zimmerman ‘bears absolutely no resemblance to Bob Dylan’ is hurtful and maddening. The impression is of the Bob Dylan who sings on last year’s Christmas album and it is both accurate and moving, as Bob himself would readily attest if he were given the opportunity. But no, certain so called journalists just don’t want to go the extra distance do they?

• The album is divided into an A side (with my songs on) and a J side (with Joe’s songs on). This is great on the vinyl but a bit weird on the CD. I guess no one listens to CDs in order any more though, do they?

• When I play the album I like to add more treble and turn up the volume. No disrespect to Ali Chant who mastered the thing, that’s the just the way my ears groove.

• The album has parental guidance stickers and the word EXPLICIT all over it because of the word ‘shit’ that I left unbleeped in Nutty Room. I honestly didn’t think ‘shit’ was considered explicit any more. I guess I wouldn’t say it on the radio or in front of my children. I might say it in front of your children though.

• Song Wars Volume 2 was number 1 in the i-tunes comedy charts for a while. I’m well aware that this mainly serves to highlight the craziness of the i-tunes chart system, but I’m still very happy to enjoy my formal status as a number 1 artist (or to put it another way an artist adept at doing number 1s. A piss artist?)

That’s it for now.

6 MUSIC

The question people keep asking is of course, ‘when are you both back on the radio?’ We’ve done a pre-recorded Christmas day show, which will go out from 10am to 1pm on the big day and that was fun but both of us were well aware that it’s not the same. The regular live show is the important thing and we both want to do more, it’s just a question of when we can find a few months to have another decent run.

Until then, time and 6 Music permitting, I may well do some more Big Mix Tape shows or perhaps something live again, either on my own or with someone else. I’ll let you know if and when things materialise on any of these fronts.

I did an I-TUNES PLAYLIST recently that features a lot of the songs I played on Big Mix Tape shows as well as few more recent purchases. For a while my photo sat next to the members of Take That and gratifyingly, it seemed as though we’d been at the same photo session.

Do leave a comment and the same goes for the Song Wars album too, whether you’re on Amazon or wherever, it’s always nice to see lively debate raging below if not blanket praise!

I’ll try to post in a few days with details of the on-line version of BUG we recently put together but for the time being…

love Adam

I’m posting this as an open letter on my blog rather than once again going through the proper channels because you seem more approachable on-line than off for some reason and I’m hoping that there’s a chance you might somehow be directed to read this! It’s worth a try.

I wonder if you’d consider being a guest on my radio show on BBC 6 Music: Adam Buxton’s Big Mix Tape (Sunday, 12-2pm)?

The format is straightforward: I make a themed compilation tape each week, the way people did in analogue times, and I’m joined by a guest for the central section. For example, this week’s show features music for a tape you’d make for a new boyfriend/girlfriend. The title of the tape is Wave Of New Relations (after a misheard Pixies lyric) and my guest is Jon Ronson, a journalist and documentarian whose work I’ve always admired and enjoyed (check out his brilliant radio show Jon Ronson On or his superb documentary about Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes). Jon contributed a few tracks for the mix tape and talked to me about his books, TV and radio shows and whatever else happened to come up. As usual my interview style was far from slick but I hope that my encounters are entertainingly conversational at least.

I was told via a series of Chinese whispers that you’d heard a version of Changes that I recorded in support of 6 Music, which you apparently liked! Perhaps you were being polite and supportive or perhaps you never heard it and the Chinese was mistranslated, but I was pleased nonetheless. One of our listeners (Chris Salt, the Saltman) made a fantastic Lego video to go with it look!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gcabr_09e4

At this point I’m going to put myself in your boots and consider how unappealing my request seems. I have after all spent a large part of my life doing bad impressions of you, often with my sometime comedy partner Joe, mainly based on saying ‘wuzza wuzza wuzza’ which, if I were you, I would find perplexing. Joe and I also spend in inordinate amount of time considering your role and your magnificent packet in Labyrinth when there is a good case to be made for some of your other film roles being more significant. Also I might appear to be a silly man on a number of levels but you’re someone whose work I’ve loved in all it’s forms since I was very young and I’ll never give up the meagre hope that our paths might one day cross.

I’m not a physical or mental threat and the show would be recorded at the BBC with responsible humans around and would take only an hour of your time so what’s the worst that could happen?! Best case scenario: we make a memorable radio show that thousands of highly intelligent 6 Music listeners will cherish! Worst case scenario, you find me an unctuous prat and make a mental note never to respond to online petitions for your guest services again (though you may have already made that mental note). If you don’t want to be alone in a studio with me, we could ask Joe to come too!

Give our producer James Stirling a call at 6 Music. I could do any time next week. Or any time after next week. Hoping this finds you well and eating a Bowiesnack.

Love Adam

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Gcabr_09e4

Some more details here

I’m recording a show round the corner in the morning but I’ll be there as soon as I can after we’re finished. I’m not planning on performing or anything but I want to come and show my support so maybe see you there! And hey, guys, let’s try to keep it non violent, yeah? We don’t want a repeat of the ugly scenes that unfolded when Wogan left…

Hello friends! It’s been so long. So much has happened. I’m so sorry. We only just finished shooting the BBC2 sitcom I’m acting in last Friday and I haven’t had a free blog shaped minute for ages. In between the sitcom and the radio show I’ve also been making a few short videos for the BBC’s wonderful relaunched comedy website which I heartily recommend you visit and bookmark forthwith.

BBC Comedy Website!

As well as my Nutty Room video, which you can see below, there’s also a thing I did for Eurovision a few months back which is exclusive to that site for the time being.

Eurovision Thing

I’ve also finished a video for a drum’n’bass/pirate radio song about the film Ratatouille which should be up there before too long so keep an eye out (though if you are coming to/were at BUG at Latitude you’ll have seen it), but for now, here’s Nutty Room and beneath it some info about its creation.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW4OsbPSxf0

The song was created as part of Song Wars, the competitive song-writing feature our 6 Music show in which Joe and I write songs on a given subject and our listeners vote for which one they like best. The theme of that week’s battle was ‘scary songs’. Joe did one about a ghost that I recall he wasn’t that pleased with and I did one about the lair of a movie style disturbed nutbag called Nutty Room. I’m proud to say our listeners voted my song the winner that week and I was delighted as I had spent many long minutes on its complex harmony arrangements. In fact Nutty Room is considered one of the best songs ever written (if the list of the best songs ever written were to include every song ever written).

The video was shot on Thursday 23rd April 2009 in an old abandoned house nearby where I live in Norfolk. It was boarded up years ago but dishonest people bust in and stripped out the fittings, floor tiles and everything else of any value. Now it’s just a shell, overwhelmed by vines and weeds, the walls crumbling and the floorboards rotten and treacherous. According to many local residents the house is haunted by the ghost of a monk (as opposed to being haunted by a living monk which can also happen). I often passed the house on walks and after a few weeks I couldn’t resist poking around. It scared the crap out of me, not so much because of the ghost monk (who I imagine would be fairly mellow) but because there are so many dark corners, blacked out rooms and cellars. As everyone who’s ever watched a horror film knows, these are exactly the kinds of places in which twisted homicidal nuts love to hang out and dissect annoying teenagers. I knew this was the perfect place to make a video for my song.

To create the nutty room you see in the video I spent a couple of weeks painting crazy childish art all over the walls just as twisted lunatics so often do in films to create what looks like the cover of a bad indie album. There were times when I worried that spending lonely hours scrawling on the walls of an abandoned house for a 3 minute internet-only video was not a good use of my time and might even indicate that I was partially insane but when I started collecting jars and filling them with sausage meat and hair to enhance the nuttiness of the room, those worries seemed quaint and trivial. Finally the nutty room was complete and all that was needed was someone to help me realise my vision.

I called my friend Dougal Wilson, the award winning director of videos for Coldplay, Dizzee Rascal, Jarvis Cocker, and many others and he got on the next train to Norwich. Dougal arrived around 11pm and we drove straight to the scary house where I had set up some lights and my video camera. I put on my best nutty-hat and an old lab coat, loaded a syringe with red paint and we got to work. Filming went smoothly apart from a moment when we set light to a load of old newspapers from the 60’s that we’d found in a bath tub in one of the rooms. It was a profoundly stupid thing to do and we nearly died of smoke inhalation. By 4am the next morning we decided it was time to pack up and go home only to find that the lights of the car had been left on and the battery was dead so we had to walk back to my house in the foggy chill of the night. We didn’t care because we felt that we had created something truly stupid. I hope you agree.

Adam Buxton, July 2009

ADDENDUM

I just came across this animation that a chap named Jordan made for Nutty Room a few months back. Nice job yo! And of course he has used the version that was originally broadcast on Song Wars last year which contains the reference to Patrick Swayze rather than Kevin Spacey as it is now. A few people have asked why I changed it and it was simply that I wasn’t aware how ill poor old Patrick Swayze was when I did the song and upon making the vid decided to switch the names (which were only ever intended to rhyme with ‘crazy’ of course) to avoid potential ghoulishness of an unpleasant kind, as opposed to fun ghoulishness like making clothing out of other people’s skin and keeping winkies in jars. Cheers Jordan!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kW4OsbPSxf0

No doubt I’m breaking all kinds of Big British Castle rules by doing this, but as the show went out weeks ago and is apparently floating about on other parts of the web and no money is changing hands, I’m hoping no one will mind if I enable you to download the New Year compilation I put together for Radio 2 along with artwork should you wish to burn a CD and print out a sleeve like in olden times.

Just click on the links below, which will take you to Sendspace where you can download the 4 WAV files that make up the 2 hour show. If you want to print out artwork for your 2, 1 hour CDs just click on the ‘COMPILATION CD INLAY’ links then right click on the artwork to save them to your desktop and when you print them out they should fit into an old school jewel case. Of course now, evil geniuses have introduced a new design of jewel case, which will force everyone to invest in new printing software for the inlays, but I’m encouraging you to recycle the old ones. Simply locate a CD by some unbelievably over hyped band from a few years ago, pop open the jewel case and substitute this exclusive artwork instead! Everyone wins! Even the overhyped band because they already have your money although they’re probably wishing they could have just matured slowly rather than being thrust into the limelight so quickly and having all kinds of unwanted pressure put on them as a result.

The Best Of Adam & Joe Part 1A

The Best Of Adam & Joe Part 1B

The Best Of Adam & Joe Part 2A

The Best Of Adam & Joe Part 2B

ADAM & JOE 6 MUSIC COMPILATION CD INLAY FRONT

ADAM & JOE 6 MUSIC COMPILATION CD INLAY BACK

Photograph by the brilliant Perou

Here’s the video for my song about Baz Lurhmann’s film Australia, which I’m probably a little too delighted to say, won Song Wars on our 6 Music show last weekend. I liked Joe’s song a lot, but I would have been depressed if he’d won having simply sung over the intro for Kim Wilde’s Cambodia when my effort (though heavily indebted to Rolf Harris’s Aussie classic Sun Arise) was at least constructed from scratch. When I say ‘from scratch’ I mean from scratch and the possibly harder work of both Harris and Luhrmann of course.

Anyway, I hope you like the song and the video, which is the first I have uploaded to You Tube in HD! Double click on the video below to open the You Tube page then click ‘watch in HD’ beneath the vid window to get the full effect. It took me a while to figure it out because I still favour a 4:3 frame with 720 x 576 resolution. I like things boxy, like an old TV set and to me that will always be the most desirable aspect ratio and resolution for anything that isn’t a an actual feature film but I’m aware that I’m part of a dying breed. Plus, if I switch to HD for everything I’m just going to have to invest in twice as many storage drives to accommodate the bigger file sizes. Fucking technology. Huge Jackman’s manly pecs certainly have come out nice though.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_z2Jug78zw

You could be forgiven for thinking that back in July this year I posted about MeeBOX not being commissioned then immediately sank into a deep sofa of depression from which I have only just hauled myself, hence my lack of on line activity. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’ve been skipping about, dancing and laughing and singing with friends, family and TV commissioners and there was simply no time left to attend to my blog duties. Apologies. I’ll try to reduce the gaps in future.

ADAM & JOE ON 6 MUSIC

In the meantime things have been going well at the Castle, despite it being tough to fit in radio duties with our other work commitments recently. To be specific, Joe has film commitments and I’m trying to reform The Commitments but I’m having trouble with Andrew Strong, he’s a loose cannon I tell you! Because of all this we’ve been doing Song Wars less regularly than we might otherwise but sometimes a show where we have absolutely nothing prepared turns out to be very enjoyable. Whether it’s as enjoyable for listeners I don’t know.

I’m not in the habit of seeking out criticism, either good or bad but a couple of reviews of Joe and myself on the radio were pointed out to me by almost everyone I know over the last few weeks. Amazingly we appear to have earned a regular listener in the form of Telegraph radio critic Gillian Reynolds who makes kind mention not just here but here! I’ll let you know when the backlash starts but until then my Mum and Dad have never been prouder.

Here’s a pic of me and Joe with our Video Wars competition winner Chris Salt, The Saltman, Salty, A Salt With A Deadly Chris, Ready Salted Chris, Sea Salt, Summer Salt etc. A very nice guy and a very worthy winner.

BUG 09, BFI SOUTHBANK, SEPTEMBER 18th & 23rd, 8.45PM

I’ll be back in the warmseat at the BFI Southbank on Thursday 18th September for BUG 09. If you’ve not made it along to one of these, it’s a bi monthly evening of top-notch new music videos, which I host. As well as the vids there’s also an interview of variable ridiculosity with a painfully hip director (Romain Gavras this time I think) and my occasional rambles through the joyous lunacy of the You Tube comments paddock. If it’s sold out, which tends to happen, then why not come along to BUG The Directors Cut the following Tuesday 23rd, also at the BFI Southbank. It’s basically the same show as the previous Thursday but minus the director interview (hence ‘the directors cut’ you see!!) so although my stupid chatter will still feature, it makes for a leaner show overall!

You can book tickets for BUG 09 or BUG 09 The Directors Cut here

Hope to see you there.

Love Ad

September 11th, 2008

It’s finally official! Joe and I are taking over the Saturday morning show on 6 Music as of next Saturday (27th October). We’ve signed on for a years worth of shows (minus a few holiday weeks) so it’ll be the longest unbroken run we’ve ever had on the radio (unless we get fired/suddenly very ill etc.) In some ways it’s a little daunting because both Joe and myself are as busy as we’ve ever been with various odds and sods, but a regular show at the great Big British Castle is too good an opportunity to pass up.

Our new producer will be Jude Adam who also produces Stephen Merchant’s very good Sunday afternoon show at 6 and used to produce Roundtable which I went on a couple of times years ago so I’m pleased we’ve got her! As far as the podcast goes we’re having a meeting next week to establish what we will be able to do with these. Joe and I are very keen for it to be as much like our old Xfm ones as possible, ie around half an hour containing good bits of the broadcast show and a few new tittles too. I really hope we can find a way to do it without it being as time consuming as it used to be at Xfm.

As far as the Saturday show goes it’ll be the usual sort of thing: me and Joe talking a lot of bollocks about TV, movies, music and anything else that occurs to us on the way in. I imagine Text The Nation will return, and I’m keen to continue our version of Sean Keavney’s feature Band Aid, with Joe and me pitching home made tunes against eachother to play out at the end of the programme. Anyway I need to talk to Joe and Jude about all this so I should shut up for now but I’m very excited and I really hope you like it. The picture above is from a few weeks back of us at 6 Music with Jenny who assisted us so wonderfully when we were covering for Sean. We really need to get some new pictures taken.

STARDUST PREMIERE GOSSOP!

I’ve been increasingly busy with the BBC3 pilot so I failed to deliver exciting premiere gossop immediately after the exciting premiere, but to be honest it wasn’t the most exciting night of all time, for me at least although it was great being there with my Ma. For a start I was feeling quite fluey and then me and Mummy (to use her proper name) made the mistake of turning up to the Odeon Leicester Square on time, ie. much too early. If you arrive with all the famous people you can pretend that the paparazzi and the crowd are screaming for you as well as Tina Sparkle or whoever, but when you’re alone on the red carpet and not a single person has a clue who you are it tends to bring you back down to earth in a way that’s unwelcome at the premiere of a film you’re actually in.

Of course even if they’d seen the film they would have a hard time picking me out of a Krypton Factor style line up, but that’s not the issue. I consoled myself with the fact that these days the red carpet and screaming crowd has been replaced with a small rather antiseptic press enclave, temporarily walled off to exclude the throngs of passers by and honest everyday folk for whom I am a kind of legend. If they’d let the REAL people in, the place would have gone mental when me and my Mum showed up. They probably just didn’t have the police to deal with it is all.

Once inside we were ushered into an empty VIP holding cell downstairs, as I was going to be going up on stage with the rest of the cast before the film. I felt bad that the place wasn’t rammed with people I could point out for my Ma, but she seemed to be having a good time, sipping her warm, flat champagne and checking out the wall of old black and white photos from 50 odd years of premieres at the Odeon. Odd to see them all there in that lost world of old school movie stardom, smoking and drinking away luxuriously, looking young and sexy and properly famous, no cheeky TV presenters waiting nearby to spit in their face. It must have been fun, surely.

Finally it was time to join the other members of the Stardust cast on stage with director Matthew Vaughn. There was no De Niro, Danes or Pfeiffer (although Michele did appear briefly for the cameras outside) but most of the Brit comedy types showed up. On our way down the side of the auditorium a few people saw Ricky Gervais and Dave Walliams and started snapping away on their camera phones. One guy called out to Dave ‘here he is! What a joker!’ which made David laugh. Then we all stood about rather awkwardly in the wings waiting to be introduced. I found myself stood next to Jason Orange (Take That did a song for the film) and we shook hands for something to do. He seemed nice although I noticed that none of The That said their names when being introduced to people as if there was no possible way you wouldn’t know who they were. Even Mark who I thought would have better manners. Ricky and David amused eachother in the gloom and Sienna Miller squeezed my arm affectionately, possibly by accident as I’m sure she didn’t know who or what I was. Rupert Everett didn’t acknowledge me in the slightest, despite having spent a good 5 days working with me and the others on our ghost scenes last year. Perhaps he’d read an interview I did recently where I described him as a bit of a twat when you first meet him but very nice after a while and didn’t appreciate it. Or perhaps he was just nervous to meet me again. Yes, that’s probably it.

Here’s a picture I took from my spot on the stage. On the extreme left you can see the edge of Julian Rhind Tutt’s face, next to Mark Strong who is looking at Walliams and Sienna Miller and that’s Vaughn behind her with Ricky Gervais behind him. Then there’s Take That at the end.

Favourite part of the night: meeting Neil Gaiman and chatting with he and Dave Walliams about Lou Reed whom, Dave pointed out repeatedly, Neil resembles somewhat (see pic below). Neil told us a story about having supper with the irascible ex-Velvet a while back. Apparently Lou was interested in getting Neil to turn his album Berlin into a graphic novel of some kind. What a whimsical delight that would have been! According to Neil he was not the cantankerous tyrant of legend. That doesn’t surprise me. I’m sure he’s not the easiest of people but when you think of all the tedious questions he must get asked over and over again by half witted rock journos, is it any wonder he occasionally decides to behave like a prick, if only to give them something fun to write.

And that was about it. I was sorry not to hve seen Jonathan Ross and his wife Jane (who co-wrote the screenplay) as Jane got me involved with the whole thing in the first place by suggesting me to Matthew Vaughn for the role of Quintus when Noel Fielding had to drop out, but it’s always impossible to have a normal conversation with anyone at those things even if you can find them so hopefully I can say thanks under more normal circumstances in future. Premieres tend to be a bit anti-climactic unless you’re off to some party or other, but I wasn’t so I stepped out of the cinema into the small gang of onlookers hoping to catch a glimpse of someone exciting. By this time the walled press enclave was gone so it was open season for onlooking. And still there were no screams when I emerged. Bastards. I think my Ma had a good time though and that after all, should always be the main thing, right?

I do live gigs so infrequently at the moment that I seldom have the pre-show confidence afforded you by consecutive nights of doing the same material until you’ve nailed it. Thus I cycled off to Shepherd’s Bush on Wednesday with a not inconsiderable sense of dread and fear. I think that’s something everyone gets before a gig, no matter how seasoned they are but this was a little more intense than normal. It’s hard to analyse exactly what it is that makes one so anxious. I suppose the most obvious thing is not wanting people to think you’re crap and if you don’t have the wherewithall to tell yourself for sure that they’re wrong and it was just an off night, that’s a frightening prospect. It’s not dissimilar from the dread of visiting a doctor when you suspect there might be something badly wrong with you except with an audience you’re worried you’re going to be diagnosed with terminal mediocrity.

The flipside of all of this diffidence is the coke style sense of euphoric indestructibility that a good reaction from an audience can give you. Presumably that’s why so many performers end up hedging their bets and just taking Charlie Farley but that’s not a route I want to go down just yet. Anyway, Knock2bag at a nice little place called Bar FM off Shepherd’s Bush green turned out to be great. The MC was Jarred Christmas who kept the audience very happy and was a bit spikey without being horrid, which is hard to do well. The first act I saw was Dave Earl as Brian Gittins who I’d heard about from Tony Law but hadn’t seen before. He was brilliant and he’s only been doing live stuff for a year and a half so he’s just going to get better and better. The character he does is a weird creepy guy who runs a mobile café and you keep thinking he’s going to say or do something revolting but he constantly up-ends your expectations winningly.

After the break I was on and it went really well. I did Famous Guy with a few of the new bits that died so spectacularly at The Albany a while back and I was very glad to find they went down a treat although it should be said the audience was amazingly supportive and I got away with a few slips and lapses that would have stuffed me with a tougher crowd. I was so relieved it had gone well that rather than get back on my bike immediately and begin the rainy trek south, I accepted a delicious beer form the organiser and watched as the next act came to the stage.

From where I was standing I couldn’t quite see him properly but I could hear he was a Kiwi and he sounded funny. Then I got a closer look and holy shit! It was Murray (aka Rhys Darby, the manager from the Flight Of The Conchords TV show!!! He is the Bob Fossil of the Conchordsphere with all the brilliance that implies! He wasn’t in character obviously and his act (which he’s been doing for a while and involves a lot of beautifully executed impressions of odd sounds and mechanical noises) was very slick and as funny and inventive as you’d hope from one of The Conchord team. The audience went nuts for him too and when he finished I couldn’t help going up and introducing myself in quite an overwhelming and stalkerish fashion. He was dead nice and said he really liked Famous Guy, which was a kick. Also I got my photo taken with him. When I got home I kept looking at it. Me and Murray!! BAND MEETING!!! If you still haven’t seen the Flight Of The Conchords show BBC4 are running it from next Tuesday so check it out. The first episode is great so you’ll know pretty quick if you’re going to like it or not, but you in for a very happy time if you do. Also get down to Knock2bag it’s a good scene and all the acts that night were excellent.

Thanks for coming down if you did and to the guy I spoke to about acting, give us a shout via You Tube, I’m afraid I laundered your details!

WE’VE ARRIVED!

Someone forwarded me this link featuring some chaps doing The Robert De Niro Calypso at a gig, which you can see here. As they admit under the clip, they start off a bit shaky but they do it proud later on. It’s amazing when people you’ve never met like something you’ve done enough to do their own version. I saw Sam Bain the other night (he and Jessie Armstrong write Peep Show) and he was saying how thrilled he was at having seen a fan version of Peep Show on You Tube. One of the very first things Joe and I did with a video camera when we were about 13, was to reconstruct Monty Python sketches. I still have the one we did about the man who writes the funniest joke in the world then dies laughing. It’s not quite as good as the original but it’s got something. OK, it’s got 2 quite posh 13 year old boys and that’s about it, but it was fun doing it. Oh, and in case you thought I was drawing a direct comparison between The Robert De Niro Calypso and Monty Python, you’re absolutely right. Checkon!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ReTUv9nVvg

ADAM & JOE RADIO SHOW LACK OF NEWS!

We have a couple of offers floating about at the moment for podcast and radio things but we’re still waiting on the BBC for a decision. This may take a little longer due to the resignation of Ric Blaxill, the man responsible for getting us into 6 Music in the first place. There’s a story about the whole ludicrous fartstorm here. The situation seems way out of control over there at the moment and my heart goes out to Ric and Leona McCambridge and anyone else losing their job and for what? They were trying to put an enjoyable show on and a few times they cut corners in one area that they presumably felt no one in their right mind would ever give a flying fuck about. Could they not have been warned? These are talented, hard working people here! Fair enough, routine deception isn’t to be encouraged but it’s hardly the same as the wankers on those late night TV call-in shows who would do everything they could to fleece people and not even give them anything more entertaining in return than Brian Dowling giggling distractedly next to some barely sentient girl. And the Blue Peter debacle beggars belief! Joe’s theory is that the viewers actually voted for the wretched cat to be called ‘Pussy’ not ‘Cookie’ and that was the reason for the switch to ‘Socks’. Either way, this is a chapter in the BBC’s history that people are going to look back on with bafflement in a few years.

SHOCK VIDEO CLIPS!

I got a message from a You Tube type the other day requesting some Shock Video clips. I had a quick search to see if anyone else had put anything up from either of the 2 groundbreaking series but then I remembered…it’s the show with tits in it, so they wouldn’t have been able to due to You Tube’s sensible no-porn policy. You can find out more about the genesis of Shock Video in the ‘Career’ section of this site but for now here’s a couple of specially censored clips for you. I might put some more up in a few weeks but the censorship is fairly labour intensive! The one about Morten Gungle who wants to be gay took us about an hour to record because we were laughing so hard. The bit that really got us was the name ‘Frunke’ but it was all quite tricky. You can still hear Joe struggling with some chuckle stifling around halfway through. Apparently they’re having chuckle stifling in the Olympics now. Joe could well be coming back with gold!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbHMfeYmZLg”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ReTUv9nVvg