what Have I done?

Hello. Adam Buxton here. Welcome to this dive down the rabbit hole of my professional past. I've included most of the things that worked out OK, though inevitably there's some stuff here that I would do differently now, if I did them at all. But I’m sure you’ll explore in a spirit of forgiveness and understanding the way everyone does on the internet.

Most of the videos in this section are also collected in the VIDEO section of this website along with a few others I like. OK, back we go…

1995 - 2002 TAKEOVER TV (CHANNEL 4 & E4)

In 1994, when I was in my final year of a sculpture degree in Cheltenham College Of Higher Education I sent in some of the videos I'd been making to a production company called World Of Wonder who had placed an ad in the NME asking for 'weird, funny and original' clips made by members of the public for a show that ended up being called TakeoverTV. 

Fenton Bailey (who set up World Of Wonder with his partner Randy Barbato) liked my tape, especially a music video I'd made at art school called Randy Tartt.

After I left art school I got a job working as a researcher on TakeoverTV in World of Wonder's small office above the Body Shop in Brixton, watching and logging tapes that people like me had sent in. 

The first series of TakeoverTV featured a diverse mix of serious video diary pieces, music, animation, pranks, stunts and sketches, all made by non professionals on home video equipment. It was YouTube on TV basically. Each episode was hosted by a different contributor and as several clips that I'd made ended up being used on the show, I got the job of presenting the first and the last episodes of series 1 in 1995. 

The second series of TakeoverTV went out on Channel 4 in 1996 and this time they ditched the serious bits in favour of the weird and funny stuff. I presented the whole series from my flat in Brixton Hill, where I filmed links on a Hi-8 camcorder in front of a set I built using a load of old TVs playing feedback patterns I made at art school. This time I got Joe Cornish involved. I'd been friends with Joe since we met at school aged 14 in 1983.

Joe and I hosted a third series of TakeoverTV which went out on E4 in the UK in 2002.

1996 - 2001 THE ADAM AND JOE SHOW (CHANNEL 4)

The commissioning editor for TakeoverTV at Channel 4 was Peter Grimsdale. Peter liked the links and film spoofs using toys that Joe and I had made for TakeoverTV in 1995 and he gave us the chance to make our own show together. 

It took a while for us to figure out what exactly would go in our show, but eventually we settled on the idea of a home made pop culture parody programme hosted from our bedroom. We tried filming in my actual bedroom in my parents' house in Clapham, but unsurprisingly that turned out to be impractical, so we built a bedroom set in a room at World Of Wonder's Brixton office where we made the first 2 series between 1996 - 1998. Later World Of Wonder rented us a studio flat in Borough and we made much of the 3rd and 4th series there up until 2001. 

Initially we had wanted to call the show Stüffe (pronounced shtoof) but luckily Peter Grimsdale strongly advised/insisted we call it The Adam and Joe Show.

I used to describe The Adam and Joe Show as Wayne's World crossed with The Late Review, i.e. a kind of pop culture comedy review that was genuinely made by the show's presenters. We shot it ourselves on mini DV cameras, built sets and props, did the lighting, sound and any writing that we needed. We also edited much of the show ourselves although that was one of the places we also had help from a talented professional.

When we were making The Adam and Joe Show, we would say in interviews that it was supposed to date badly. It was made nearly a quarter of a century ago now, and parts of it have dated worse than others. Channel 4's copyright algorithm ruthlessly removes most of the clips I try to post on YouTube, (even though they don’t own the rights) but I'll give it another go.

We made four series of The Adam and Joe Show between 1996 and 2001, with 2 specials: Adam and Joe's Fourmative Years (a review of Channel 4's early output) and Adam and Joe's Toymovie Special (which featured a selection of the toy movie spoofs we'd made). 

We also produced a book that you can only get for too much money now, a VHS video compilation of series 1&2, also not worth what it would cost to buy it, and The Adam and Joe DVD, which you can still pick up for a reasonable price if you haven't thrown out your DVD player. For fans of air dates, HERE'S A LIST OF AIR DATES (thanks to John Lavalie for this).

Link: How we made the Adam and Joe Show (The Guardian)

2002 - Adam, BaaadDad and Joe making TakeoverTV series 3

 2004 - THE ADAM AND JOE DVD

In Summer 2004 we put together a DVD which features most of our favourite bits from all 4 series of The Adam and Joe Show. There wasn't the budget to release every episode we made so instead we decided to make Best Of compilations for each series as well as for regular segments like Vinyl Justice, Ken Korda and BaaadDad (aka my father, Nigel Buxton). 

I also put together a 'featurette' called The Story Of Adam & Joe: a forty minute trawl through our archives including clips of us from school, work and college followed by the highs and lows of making The Adam and Joe Show, featuring brief appearances from Louis Theroux, Jonathan Ross and Matt Lucas along the way. 

2000 & 2002 - ADAM AND JOE GLASTONBURY FESTIVAL COVERAGE (BBC3, 2000 & 2002)

Back in Summer 2000, Joe and I were asked by BBC3 (or BBC Choice as it was then known) to present their Glastonbury coverage. We had a wonderful time with a great crew basically getting progressively drunk and filming stupid conversations with whichever celebrity or musician happened to be wandering past our enclosure. 

Our mission for the weekend was to talk to David Bowie who was headlining the Sunday night on the Pyramid Stage. We failed. Apparently he was considering doing an interview either with us or with Jo Whiley, but in the end he didn't do either and buggered off in his Bowiebus. Very zenzible.

There was no Glastonbury in 2001 (we covered the Fuji Rock Festival instead) but we were back in 2002 for an even more shambolic Glasto stint. That was the fateful year we interviewed Rolf Harris -  but I've told that story too many times (the last time being one of my appearances on Richard Herring's podcast I think). 

2000 & 2002 - SHOCK VIDEO (E4, BRAVO)

The show that had the longest life from our rather aimless post Adam and Joe Show TV years was Shock Video, a series of half hour programmes featuring odd clips from mildly pornographic TV shows around the world. 

The show was originally made for American television, but when Channel 4’s newly launched sibling station E4 bought it 2001, Joe and I were given the job of providing a new voice-over. We decided that viewers would be too distracted by the nudity to care what was being said, so we ended up providing a commentary on the clips that was sarcastic and occasionally funny, but mostly just a bit lame and mean spirited. 

It taught me a valuable lesson, which I remind my children of every day: If you think it’s beneath you to provide a voice-over for soft porn clips, don’t do it, but don’t agree to do it then be all sniffy about it, that’s just dickish.

Our snarky voice over notwithstanding, Shock Video did well enough to be recommissioned and in 2002 we found ourselves back in the voice booth for a second series. This time, rather than being negative about the porn, we concentrated on amusing each other by doing silly voices and improvising some songs.

2002 - ADAM AND JOE ON DERMOT'S SPORTING BUDDIES (BBC3)

In May of 2002 Joe and I were asked to appear in a series which featured Dermot O'Leary exploring the sporting passions of various celebrities that included Johnny Vegas, Sean Hughes and Baby Spice. Because Joe and I had no sporting passions to speak of, Dermot took us to Skegness for some Go Karting. We had a good time, though I don't know how Dermot didn't just punch us on several occasions. 

2002 - THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN SERIES 3 DOCUMENTARY (BBC3)

This was a half hour behind the scenes documentary that I shot while Mark, Jeremy, Steve and Reece were working on their 3rd series. It originally went out on BBC3 in November 2002. You can find it on the League Of Gentlemen 3rd series DVD extras. You can see a chunk that someone put on YouTube HERE.

2003 - ADAM AND JOE GO TOKYO (BBC3)

In April 2003 Joe and I went out to Tokyo where we spent 10 weeks shooting a series of 8 programmes about Japanese popular culture for BBC3. Adam and Joe Go Tokyo was produced by Jonathan Ross's company Hot Sauce and was similar to Jonathan's show Japanorama.

You can see pretty much the whole series of Adam and Joe Go Tokyo on YouTube. Below is photo montage I made as a thank you card for the people who worked on the show with us out there.

2003 - ADAM & JOE ON XFM RADIO

In August 2003 we stepped in to cover for Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant while they were working on the second series of The Office. We occupied their 1-3pm slot on Saturday afternoons on Xfm on a sporadic basis for the next couple of years. When Ricky and Stephen left Xfm permanently we carried on doing a Saturday show until 2006. 

A few weeks before we started at Xfm, Joe and I went in for a meeting with Ricky and Stephen’s producer Karl Pilkington to talk about what we were planning to do on the show. Karl stressed the importance of not over-preparing. “If you play them something you’ve spent ages working on,” said Karl of the listeners, “they can tell you’re trying too hard and they'd don't like it”.

I decided to ignore Karl’s advice and enjoyed myself over preparing for semi regular features like Celebrity Regression Therapy, in which Joe would ‘hypnotise’ me until I was possessed by the spirit of a various stars that the listeners would have to guess the identity of, Crap Commentary Corner in which Joe would play sections of entertainingly strange or bad DVD commentaries, Rock & Real or Rock & Rubs, in which listeners tried to identify the invented band names in a list of real ones, and most imaginative and ground breaking of all, Anecdotties, in which listeners told anecdotes and we decided which one we liked best.

In our last year at Xfm we put out a series of 20 short podcasts containing clips from our Saturday shows as well as more sweary and inappropriate bits that me and Joe recorded when we were off air.

2004 - THE LAST CHANCERS (CHANNEL 4, E4)

The Last Chancers was a sitcom about a 30 something loser (my character, Johnny) trying to make it with his indie band in Brighton. The show was created by Tony MacMurray and after a pilot directed by Stephen Merchant, Tony and I wrote the series in 2003. It was filmed towards the end of that year on location in Brighton.

Channel 4 asked Angel Eye (the production company we made the show with) to edit 6 programmes worth of material into 5, which they showed over the course of a week in December 2004 on E4. At the channel's request Angel Eye also further edited the 5 shows into 2 one hour programmes that went out on consecutive nights on Channel 4 a week later. 

It’s strange that so much work and thought went into the show and now the main thing I remember is that it was broadcast in a weird way. TV is brutal.

2004 - 2004 THE STUPID VERSION (BBC3, 2004)

This was a one hour review of the year using manipulated footage and specially filmed sketches that Armando Iannucci put together with contributions from most of the people who would go to work on Time Trumpet a year or so later. I fiddled about with a BBC News report about a new video from Osama Bin Laden and sent it to Armando a few days before The Stupid Version was broadcast and he put it in.

2005 - I PAVEL (EDINBURGH FRINGE FESTIVAL)

In August 2005 I went to perform at The Edinburgh Festival for the first time with a show featuring my East European animator character Pavel, parts of which I wrote with Graham Linehan who had been encouraging me to do something with the character for a while.

I'd been re-editing and dubbing bits of video around that time and putting the results on my new YouTube channel and I crowbarred a few of my videos into the Pavel show too including one reimagining the Pope's funeral as a sci-fi movie ceremony.

2006 - TIME TRUMPET (BBC2)

My contribution to Armando Iannucci's comedy show Time Trumpet was attending a few brainstorming sessions at the BBC, filming a couple of sketches and being one of the fake pundits, including Matt Holness, Richard Ayoade and Stewart Lee, who commented from time to time. I also submitted a few videos I'd already made and Armando picked the ones he thought might work in the show, including Tiny TV Boss, a video I'd made the year before using a telephone, a video baby monitor and my 3 year old son.

2007 - MeeBOX (BBC3)

One of a number of failed pilots I've made over the years, MeeBOX was an attempt to weave together some of the videos I'd been putting on YouTube along with a few other spoofs and character bits.

It was made in 2007 and I managed to rope in some great people to help me, including Jonny Greenwood, who did the title music, the artist and game developer David O'Reilly who did the animated opening title sequence, actors Emma Pierson and Jo Bobin, and comedians Tony Law, Joanna Neary, Gareth Tunley and Matt Berry who pop up briefly in a couple sketches.

The pilot was broadcast in June 2008 on BBC3 but (SPOILER ALERT!) did not go to series.

2007 - RADIOHEAD THUMBS DOWN WEBCAST

In November 2007 Garth Jennings and I travelled to Radiohead's old studio outside Oxford where we helped the band put together a three hour live webcast to celebrate the completion of their album In Rainbows. The webcast was called Thumbs Down and featured specially made no-budget music videos (mastermind mainly by Garth), band performances shot on vintage TV equipment assembled from eBay by producer Nigel Godrich, and other odds and sods.

2007 - HOT FUZZ (Directed by EDGAR WRIGHT)

I played Tim Messenger, an annoying local reporter who (SPOILER ALERT!) meets one of the grisliest ends in cinema history.

My scenes were shot in April and June 2006 and I loved it. Director Edgar Wright was on my podcast in 2017 and we talked about filming Hot Fuzz towards the end of our conversation.

2007 - SON OF RAMBOW (Directed by GARTH JENNINGS)

I play a chemistry teacher who sustains a bad nose injury in this, the second film directed by my friend Garth Jennings about 2 young boys making their own video version of Rambo in the early 80's. 

I only did a couple of days shooting on it and pop up very briefly in the finished thing, but I'm very proud to be part of it.

It was released in British cinemas in April 2008 and hit number 2 in the box office chart on its opening weekend! Of course, it's not the first time I've worked with Garth. We made this video for the Wannadies in 2003.

2007 - STARDUST (Directed by MATTHEW VAUGHAN)

I play a ghost called Quintus who has died after getting an axe in the head. One way or another most of my film appearances have involved head trauma.

Here's a picture of me on the green screen stage at Pinewood with fellow ghost Mark Heap and beyond him Rupert Everett and Julian Rhind-Tutt.

2007 - RUSH HOUR (BBC3)

This was a pre-watershed sketch show for BBC3 produced by Zeppotron, which was shot in and around Ealing Studios in October/ November 2006. It aired on BBC3 in March/April 2007. My main role was as a performer but I also wrote sketches for my character Rock Dad (see below). 

2007 - BUG (BFI SOUTHBANK, LIVE VENUES)

BUG is a show featuring a selection of the latest interesting, brilliant, strange and otherwise noteworthy music videos that I still present from time to time at the BFI Southbank in London. I was invited to be the host of BUG in 2007 by David Knight who writes about music video for Promonews and, along with film producer Phil Tidy, finds most of the videos we show at BUG. 

David was keen to keep alive the spirit of Antenna, a music video showcase that ran at the BFI for 20 shows. David, Phil and Louise Stevens (who produces the live shows), remain the core of the BUG team along with Miland Suman and London post production facility Locomotion.

You can watch most of the videos we've shown at BUG over the years, and see if there are any new live shows coming up at the BUG website.

As well as introducing the music videos, I add bits and pieces of my own stuff from my laptop that might take the form of a song or a video I've made, like the one below, with Ken Korda describing the promo for Joss Stone's Baby Baby Baby.

Doing BUG in 2007 was also the first time I started reading out comments that You Tubers have left beneath music videos. Here's a video shot by the BUG team of me reading out comments at a BUG show in 2011 when I was experimenting with a great new Hoodie and Bowler Hat look:

2008 to 2011 - ADAM AND JOE ON BBC 6 MUSIC

In August 2007 Joe and I were invited to fill in for Shaun Keaveny on the 6 Music breakfast show while he was on holiday, and in 2008 6 Music offered us our own Saturday morning slot from 9am - 12pm. Apart from the odd pre-recorded show and a couple of extended breaks we were there every Saturday until December 2009 when the slot moved an hour later to 10am - 1pm for the last few shows, before Joe went into production with his debut feature Attack The Block.

We presented our last 6 Music show together from the  Glastonbury festival in 2011. 

Once again we put out a podcast after each live show though this time the only new material we recorded for these (apart from jingles) were the introductions. Another change was that instead of me doing all the editing on the podcast, as I had done at Xfm, our producers Jude, Claire, Ben and James chose what to include. Being something of a control freak, that made me anxious at first but eventually I relaxed (a bit) and the podcasts were much the better for it.

 6 MUSIC SEGMENTS

Still not sufficiently confident in our freeform waffling abilities, Joe and once again came up with a number of segments and recurring features to give the 3 hour live shows a bit of structure and 'content'. The most enduring of these were Text The Nation, Song Wars, Made Up Jokes and Boggins. Oh, and we would also refer to those listeners who tuned in from the very start of the show as Black Squadron. Joe would issue commands to test the loyalty of Black Squadron and ask that they send in photograph proof that they had complied. It wasn’t as dodgy as it sounds.

TEXT THE NATION

Listeners emailed (or texted) stories on a given theme. One of the most popular messages we received was from a listener called Stephen Curran who told us about an action comic he created as a youngster that was called 'STEPHEN!'

It turned into a bit of a meme for a while, and we received reports of people shouting "STEPHEN!" at gigs and other gatherings of switched on groovers. The correct response to hearing someone shout "STEPHEN!" was to shout back "JUST COMING!"

These incidents became known as 'Stephenage' and on rare occasions I still get the odd middle aged groover catching my eye in public and delivering a bashful "Stephen!?" Here's how it all started:

BOGGINS

Towards the end of 2009 I started doing an impression of my sister in law's dog on the show that involved a lot of panting, slobbering, licking and farting sounds. Joe christened the fictional dog Boggins. Listener response to Boggins was mixed and after a few weeks two warring camps formed: SAVE BOGGINS and KILL BOGGINS. We eventually released the imaginary dog into the mud and the stinks of Glastonbury during our last Adam & Joe 6 Music show in 2011. 

2010 - COUNTRY MAN

I made the first of a short series of Country Man videos for the BBC website in September 2010 when I was camping in Dartmoor with some friends including Garth Jennings who helped film the piece with me one afternoon.

The other Country Man videos (except for one shot in the Tate gallery in London) were all filmed in fields around Norfolk where we had moved in 2008. My character Monty Buggershop Hooty (pronounced 'Monty Bershif-Hoy') wasn't really based on anyone. It was just a fun voice to do. You can find all the Country Man videos in the VIDEOS section of this website.

2011 - NEVER MIND THE BUZZCOCKS (BBC2)

 I'd been on this show a couple of times as a panelist and felt I hadn't done an especially good job either time, but in 2011 I was invited to guest host and it was a lot more enjoyable. As well as reading out some YouTube comments I was able to show the Moby video I'd made a few months before for a BUG show at which I interviewed Moby himself.

2012 - ADAM BUXTON'S BUG (SKY ATLANTIC)

 In 2012 we made a TV version of BUG for Sky Atlantic that was produced by Burning Bright. That was were I first met Séamus Murphy-Mitchell who now helps me with The Adam Buxton Podcast.

2013 - KERNEL PANIC (LIVE SHOW)

 Kernel Panic was a live solo show that I started performing in late Summer 2013. A more accurate title than Kernel Panic would have been A Bit Like BUG But With More Of My Own Stuff, but I thought Kernel Panic was snappier.

Like my usual recent live stuff, I described the show as "like a funny TED talk". It was me and my laptop and a screen, and I'd take the audience on a tour through the contents of various folders on my desktop. There were short videos I'd made (mostly from 2013 but some from further back), various internet comments I'd gathered, and other random bits, many of which turned up later on the ADAM BUXTON'S OLD BITS DVD.

 2014 - ADAM BUXTON'S SHED OF CHRISTMAS

I worked with Burning Bright again in 2014 to make Adam Buxton's Shed of Christmas, which again, was a bit like BUG but filmed in one of the sheds where I live in Norfolk, and it was all Christmas themed. Tim Key did some poems, Gaz Combes played a great version of I Believe In Father Christmas by Greg Lake, and I came up with a theme song that I retooled the following year for my podcast.

I tried to upload the full version of the show on YouTube but it was immediately blocked. If you have Sky Plus you can download it there, but here's a few of the videos that were part of the programme.

 2014 - 8 OUT OF 10 CATS DOES COUNTDOWN, DICTIONARY CORNER

I was in Dictionary Corner on 8 Out Of 10 Cats Does Countdown for the first time in 2014 and it was fun. 

 2015 - THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST 

The Adam Buxton podcast is mostly me talking to friends and other interesting people. Some are funny ( EP.100 with my school friends Joe Cornish and Louis Theroux or EP.82 with comedian Tash Demetriou for example) and others are more serious (EP.98 with human rights activist Maya Foa, or EP.102 with writer Philip Pullman). Most of the interviews are bookended with me walking Rosie in the fields out in East Anglia where I live.

I started putting out episodes of The Adam Buxton Podcast on my Soundcloud page in September 2015. A few months later I joined Acast and they have been the main platform for the podcast since then.