I’ll be doing a short version of my current Famous Guy set this coming Wednesday at the Knock 2 Bag comedy night at the FM Bar in Shepherd’s Bush (Hopgood Street, W12 7JU) so do come along if that sounds in any way fun. It should be a good night as I’m on the bill with, amongst other high quality turns, the mighty Tony Law and the sublimely odd Brian Gittins, two of my favourite comedy types at the moment. Details here. Hope to see you!

The last time I spoke to someone at the BBC about my pilot MeeBOX they said there was still no confirmed transmission date but it might get shown in May, half a year after it was delivered. Things move slowly in the world of TV scheduling and that’s nobody’s fault but it’s very frustrating from my point of view not to be able to show you the fruits of last year’s labours, all of which I’m very pleased with, especially as BBC3 were originally talking about transmitting the show much earlier this year. However I’m grateful they commissioned the show at all and I don’t want to upset anyone at the Castle by putting stuff on You Tube before the show goes out but I’m hoping they won’t object too strongly to me re-posting this video I made for Spoon, an edited version of which turns up at the end of MeeBOX. This was on You Tube for a week or so last summer and then got taken down when the decision was made to include it in the pilot so it’s not as if it’s being unveiled for the first time ever.

In fact it was shown at BUG 06 last month and the audience liked it. That said someone who looked like a promo director of some kind (on account of his trendiosity) approached me in the bar after the show and said “I thought showing the Spoon video was very brave”. “How d’you mean?” I asked. “I just thought it was really, really brave” he said inscrutably before blending back into the trendy throng. I honestly don’t know if he was putting the video down or not. Perhaps he meant it was foolhardy of me to abuse my privileges as host by showing my own home made stuff. Surely not. I dunno.

Some people don’t seem to know what to make of the vid and they expect it to be either cooler or funnier, but it was just supposed to be a very quick, cheap response to a song that stood out when I first heard Spoon’s excellent last album, GA GA GA GA GA. I know the band are aware of it, because I showed it to lead singer Britt Daniel when I first met him. He was polite but a little mystified. Can’t blame the guy though. What other response is appropriate when you’re alone in a tiny dressing room with a sweaty fan who has just shown you a sweaty fan video starring themselves mugging furiously to your anti war song?

I’m happy to say we’re on slightly less sweaty fan terms now. In fact here’s a picture of me with Britt at February’s Spoon show at The Scala. The band were on top form but I couldn’t see a fucking thing as the place was so packed. It’s the short people who suffer when their favourite band gets famous.

BUG 07, 22nd MAY 2008 @ BFI SOUTHBANK

Speaking of being packed out, tickets for BUG 07 on Thursday 22nd May 2008 go on sale to the general public (ie. non BFI members) this Friday 11th April. You can book here so make sure you get in early as they really do go quickly. In fact that’s why there is an additional show (featuring the same videos) the following week on 27th May but I won’t be hosting that one as I’m away. We’re lining up a top class guest host however so if you do miss out on BUG 07 that’s always an option. If we do repeated nights in future I’ll almost certainly be hosting them too though. There’s also talk of us doing BUG events at some festivals this year but I’ll let you know when that’s confirmed.

Cheery tut-goodbye ho!

I went and bought Stardust on DVD the other day so my sons could see their Dad with an axe in his head and a good time was had by all, but I couldn’t resist tweaking the ending slightly for my own puerile amusement. No disrespect meant to Danes, Cox, director Matthew Vaughan or anyone else involved, it was just a scene that was begging for some very lame tweakery. Or was it? In fact this is so lame I may remove it fairly soon. (in fact I did remove it but a few people asked me to put it back and I saw that Neil Gaiman linked to the clip from his site so if he’s OK with it, so am I!)

Strange that I would be anxious about offending the creators of a fantasy film when I posted far more disrespectfully tweaked footage of the Pope’s funeral for which I’ve received all kinds of faintly alarming threats, giving the lie to the notion that it’s only Muslim fundamentalists who love grabbing the wrong end of the stick. My priorities need looking at. OK, if that’s everyone offended I’ll be on my way.

My friend Garth Jennings’s film Son Of Rambow, which was shot back in late summer 2006, is finally out in the UK so why not go and see it? Garth is part of Hammer & Tongs, an independent production company run by Garth and producer Nick Goldsmith who made their name making wonderful pop vids like this Fatboy Slim one. I pop up in the film for a few minutes as a chemistry teacher who suffers a painful nose injury (my third big screen head trauma in recent years). If you watch the film carefully you’ll see that the staff common room is populated not only by Garth’s friends and family (which you wouldn’t know unless you actually were one of Garth’s friends and family) but by the members of Travis (who wore the same sort of teacher costumes in the Hammer & Tongs video for Driftwood years back) and Nigel Godrich (Nigel has produced albums by Travis as well as Neil ‘Divine Comedy’ Hannon who provided a song for Garth’s directorial debut Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy). Here’s a few pics from our day on set.

There’s been a highly efficient publicity campaign for the film off the back of its success in Sundance last year that’s brought it into the public consciousness extremely effectively with all the good and bad that entails (comparisons to Hot Fuzz and Be Kind Rewind are misleading), but overall the reaction from people who’ve seen it has been amazingly positive. Very heartening considering how long Nick and Garth struggled to raise the finances for it. Here’s hoping it does BOFFO B.O! Good luck Garth & Nick!!

Hey ho hoo ha! It’s been ages! How are you? I haven’t posted for a while because I’ve been distracted by an increasingly steady trickle of bits and pieces that may or may not ever see the light of day (that’s life on the exciting margins!) Earlier this month I wrote and recorded a half hour pilot for BBC Radio 4. It has the provisional title ‘A Week With Adam Buxton’ and it’s a mix of sketches and character bits (there’s some Famous Guy in there) as well as interjections from my Dad, Nigel Buxton (a.k.a. BaaadDad). Helping me perform the sketches were Amelia Bullmore (Jam, Brass Eye and Big Train) and Matt Berry (Snuff Box, Mighty Boosh, Darkplace and IT Crowd) who were both as good as you’d expect (ie. very).

We recorded the show in front of an audience at the Radio Theatre in Broadcasting House. I would have posted details for getting tickets here but they all went very quickly so I wasn’t able to. If you were one of the people who came along, thanks, you were a very good crowd. It was really fun to do and it would be a hoot if the BBC saw fit to commission a series but I won’t hold my breath. As I’ve discovered with MeeBOX (my TV pilot for BBC3 which is still awaiting a transmission date) things like this can take a very long time in the Big British Castle. I’ve heard the radio pilot is likely to go out some time in the autumn, so I’ll let you know when I hear a definite date.

With all these pilots I should be given a fricken pilot’s license! Ha ha ha. I made that joke at the recording but I thought I’d repeat it for those who weren’t there. I went on to say that I’m now able to fly commercial airliners but they won’t let me have my own series! Obviously I sincerely hope that doesn’t turn out to be the case, even though there’s a fuck sight more money in flying planes than making culty comedy shows.

Here’s the Radio 4 pilot team in the green room before the recording. From left to right: producer Ed Morrish (who got the thing off the ground, thanks Ed!), me, my Dad, Amelia and Matt.

I’ll be doing some more Famous Guy. Also they’ve got Arnab Chanda on the bill who I saw performing last night and was very impressed by. Sharp but warm. Like a pocket knife. Details and picture of me from 10 years ago here. Hope to see you.

The thought of once again being stood shoulder to shoulder with fellow Spoonocrats (Spoonatics?) cradling a pint, confident in the knowledge that I’ll know and like every single song the band play has sustained me through a black winter. Truly I am a small, nerdy man. I haven’t always got as much from Spoon gigs as I do from their records but last August at London’s Borderline was up in my top 5 gigs of all time, so my quarg-circuits are fizzing with anticipation! Haven’t been to The Scala for ages (last time was probably 10 years ago (!!) when, dressed as Ken Korda at the request of the band, I introduced Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci) but I remember it being a lovely venue. Will you be there? Buy tickets here

Here’s a bit of footage I shot of lead singer Britt Daniel before that Borderline gig on 17th August of 2007. When the band had finished their soundcheck Britt and I squeezed into the tiny dressing room backstage and I tried not to look too obviously over-excited as he played 3 songs for me: The Beast & Dragon Adored, Advance Cassette and this one, Black Like Me, the wonderful final song on their latest album Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga and one of my favourite Spoon songs ever! I’ll probably post the other two at a later date. You can read my fan review of the subsequent gig and more about how I got to film with Britt here.

In addition to the hand held camera that shot this footage I had a small digital camera on movie mode, taped to the wall shooting the performance as if from a webcam. The idea was to include it as part of my MeeBOX pilot somehow but in the final analysis this kind of musical performance just didn’t fit with everything else and for the sake of compromise we used an edited version of my video for Spoon’s Don’t Make Me A Target which I posted briefly last year then removed. I’ll repost that vid, along with loads of brand new bits from MeeBOX just before the pilot goes out in March (or early April).

Maybe see you Monday!

I know I only just dissected BUG 05 and BUG 06 isn’t until the end of March, but so many people have said they were unable to get tickets for the previous shows that I thought I’d give you an early heads up so you can’t say I didn’t tell you. You can book tickets here. Looking forward to seeing you already!

My friend Garth Jennings’s film Son Of Rambow is due for release in the UK sometime in the next few months. It’s about a couple of schoolboys who become friends while making a Rambo inspired action film in the early 80’s. As far as I can tell it’s got almost nothing in common with Michel Gondry’s forthcoming Be Kind Rewind, except that it features people using video cameras to ape Hollywood movies (which is what everyone does with a video camera at some stage, let’s face it). Anyway that link is enough for a trend to be spotted, hence this nice article in The Guardian today which gratifyingly namechecks me and Joe along the way and even quotes a couple of Joe’s toy movie lines! It makes me wish someone would pay us to make more of these. Of course, we could make them for free and put them on You Tube, but they take a while and we’ve got complicated grown up lives to maintain! If any eccentric millionaires with a penchant for 3 minute toy based remakes of popular films are reading, get in touch.

Here’s one of the toymovies I had more of a hand in, our version of Shine. Joe’s approach to the toymovies he took charge of like Toytanic and Saving Private Lion tended to be more deconstructive and straightforwardly, well, funny. I tended to go for more obscure choices and then just do a kind of weird infantile re-make which, looking back on it was sometimes missing the point. I think maybe Joe tried to tell me as much once or twice but I probably got defensive about it. I’m so much more mature now, as anyone who has heard my Song Wars sulks on our 6 Music show can attest! I still have a soft spot for this one though, despite the miss-spelling of ‘Shiny’ and the fact that the lovely all inclusive You Tube frame (which shows much more than a regular TV would) means that my hands are clearly visible in a lot of the shots.

FUN FACT: When we did Vinyl Justice with Gary Numan for The Adam & Joe Show we handed him a toy keyboard and he picked out the tune for ‘Cars’ on it while we were filming. We never used it in the piece but the audio turns up in this toymovie, so when you hear ‘Cars’ that’s genuine Numanoid fingerwork you’re hearing!!!

Thanks to all of you who showed up to another sell-out BUG at the BFI/NFT on the south bank last Thursday. These are just about my favourite gigs at the moment and it’s always a really good crowd that comes along. It was another good evening with perhaps our best set of guests so far (with all due respect and deference to our previous guests who have all had their own special marvelosity!) I spoke to Phil Sansom and Olly Williams, the directing team known as Diamond Dogs who were fantastically nice, funny guys and to the Dutch artist Roel Wouters (pron. ‘Rool Vooters’) who struggled through my rambling interview in his second language so charmingly that everyone sort of fell in love with him. It didn’t hurt that the two examples of his work we showed that night (more or less his only forays into pop video thusfar) were a couple of absolute peaches. Check them out. Great tracks too! Here’s Roel’s You Tube channel and here’s Roel’s lovely website, both well worth a CSI style investigation. Book now for BUG 06 here!