Adam Buxton interview

Adam Buxton is always entertaining to talk to, so when we heard he was bringing his live show to London and Brighton we decided it was time for a catch up...

Hi Adam. How's things?

Things is nice thanks. Just got back from my holidays in France though so I'm a little blue, as per my song on the subject. But that's about as bad as my life gets currently so I'm pretty lucky I think.

We're looking forward to seeing your show Kernel Panic in London later this month, after we heard people saying nice things about your Edinburgh Fringe dates. What can everyone expect?

I describe it as a kind of stupid Ted Talk. I just roofle through the contents of my laptop, dipping into files and sharing the contents therein. A lot of the stuff in Kernel Panic I've been trying out at BUG shows this year (BUG is the music video showcase I host at the BFI Southbank and around the UK now and then) so it's a mixture of comments I've found beneath videos on YouTube, ruminations on David Bowie, earache and other random odds and sods of mine from the last year. I suppose it's like a Best Of BUG but without other people's music videos played in full.

We understand a couple of the clips in the show star your kids - how willing were they as participants?

Not very. All they care about is getting me to download apps for them and watching YouTube videos made by annoying young American men who have watched too much Family Guy and talk too fast, so I had to threaten to cut off their supply of both to get them to cooperate. It was all very fraught and we fell out quite badly. Now, because of the success of the shows, they feel exploited so things are a little frosty at the moment. I think one of them may be trying to sue me but I'm waiting to hear from their lawyers. We'll see how they like when Santa brings them a lump of coal for Christmas, then maybe they'll remember who run tings.

Ha ha. The show is multimedia heavy - with lots of powerpoint preparation required, and presumably lots of browsing to find bits worth featuring. How long would you estimate it has taken you to put together?

I guess about 10 months off and on, but during that time I'm doing new BUG shows too so one thing feeds off the other. If you're a regular BUG goer, then you probably would have seen me trying out a lot of the stuff in the show, but there's also a few other bits that I've been putting together over the last 2 or 3 months too.

I keep tinkering with it though, trying to polish the magnificent turd that is the show and squeeze in another little joke if I can. That's a nice image isn't it?

Do you now deliberately go looking for videos that are likely to generate angry/confused comments? You presumably can't browse the internet care free any more?

It's hard to predict which videos will generate the most entertaining responses. Someone on YouTube sent me a link to a video for a Brian Eno track (An Ending - Ascent), a very ethereal piece of ambient music that you wouldn't think would be in any way controversial, but there's some great bits of philosophising and disagreements about the meaning of life in the comments section.

There's angry and confused comments beneath just about every video on YouTube but I try to include the quite clever comments too. They're a little harder to find but there's lots out there.

Most of the stuff that I end up reading out I've come across by accident though, so it hasn't affected my internet habits much. Having said that before I did BUG I wouldn't read EVERY SINGLE comment beneath a video and now I often do, which swallows up whole days and is threatening to turn my life into a weird exercise in post-modern futility.

Have you discovered any great/terrible new videos recently?

Well, Smell Yo Dick from 2008 is worth a look if you don't already know it. Hard to tell exactly where it's coming from, but that's half the 'charm'.

The new MGMT vid is good too, directed by Tom Kuntz.

Your own YouTube channel is loved by tens of thousands of subscribers. Do you just produce new videos for it on a whim when an idea strikes you, or is there a lot of advance planning involved?

Having young children tends to make advance planning of any kind quite hard. Almost everything I've done has been on a whim. The way to make an impact online these days is to upload stuff on a regular basis, once or twice weekly or even daily, like the aforementioned annoying American men, but I just can't do that. Partly because there isn't time and partly because I don't have enough that's worth uploading that frequently. Also I tend not to upload videos I've made until after I've stopped playing them to live audiences. It's not as if everyone in the audience would see them even if they were on my YouTube channel, but it feels like a courtesy to keep the material in the live shows exclusive as much as possible.

What's your views on copyright/piracy etcetera? We note you've put your Bug TV shows on your channel...

Despite being a gruff, bearded man with a fondness for cutlasses and doubloons, I don't entirely condone piracy though I find it hard to get worked up when people upload TV shows that have already aired.

I've never expected to make any money off anything I've done after it's gone out so my attitude to all that kind of thing may be a little cock-eyed. Plus I make money from doing live shows and doing the odd voice-over or song for a TV commercial so for the time being I'm lucky enough not to have to rely on royalties (which is just as well as I don't get any beyond a cheque for £11 for appearing in The IT Crowd every 6 months).

Primarily I want people to be able to watch or listen to things I've made so if there's stuff online that I'm not being paid for, I'm not getting too upset. I don't know if Sky Atlantic would agree with me about that but they haven't made me take the Bug shows down yet. Unfortunately because I don't have permission to upload them, they are blocked for various devices and parts of the world.

As far as copyright in general goes, I think it's often too restrictive. As long as people aren't seeking to profit from illegally redistributing something you've made, I don't see the problem with them sharing it and fucking about with it however they want. And when I've paid for something and find I can't even copy it from one device to another because it's only authorised for one computer and all that bullshit, that makes me want to fucking scream. But it's still very early days for all this technology and it'll take a while before all this kind of thing settles down.

One day I'd like make something, like a podcast or a short film, put it online and get paid for it the way Louis CK and more and more comedians are managing to do with their work, and then perhaps I'd be able to focus exclusively on doing my own stuff, but for the moment, I like doing all sorts of bits and pieces and I can't complain with how it's going at all.

Great answer Adam. Changing the subject, in how many interviews are you asked if/when Adam & Joe will be back on the radio?

It never comes up. Most people want me to get back with Edith Bowman.

To answer the question you're too polite to ask directly (which I appreciate!) I don't know when Joe and I will be back on the radio. We've both moved on a bit, but it's not as if we've fallen out so I hope one day the planets will align sufficiently for us to do something else together, but for the moment he's busy conquering Hollywood and I'm busy conquering onanism.

Aside from a bit on It's Kevin, you've not been involved in much TV acting recently. It's it due to a lack of opportunities presented, or not something you're interested in doing much of right now?

I think I was blacklisted by some casting agents for being too shit in auditions. Also I have tried to be a little more picky after doing one or two projects that didn't work out as well as I'd hoped.

I think I'm in a weird transition stage at the moment. The thing is I'm still just too pretty for a lot of roles. When I get a bit older and gnarlier I'm going to be perfect for the heavyweight parts my extraordinary talent truly deserves. Basically I think I just need to write something for myself to be in.

What are your plans after Kernel Panic Adam? We hear you're working with Graham Linehan. Is it on a project for your character Pavel?

I'm doing some writing with Graham, next week actually. It's very early stages on a comedy drama thing we've been talking about for a while. Not Pavel, no, this would be more sci-fi, which is something I've always wanted to do. I hope it works out, but with TV and film, if 1% of all the ideas you kick around get anywhere, you're very lucky. Apart from that I'm planning quite big mid life crisis.

Thanks for all your time Adam, and we hope the shows go well.

'Adam Buxton: Kernel Panic' will be at Union Chapel in London on 13th - 16th September. London Details The show will also be in Brighton on Friday 11 October. Brighton Details