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Adam Buxton: ‘I used to think, "Why isn't Dad more proud of me?" But he was’

The podcaster, comic and radio host has made a career out of his insecurities. But uncovering a family secret has helped him find peace

This is the third time I’ve met Adam Buxton, but the first time I’ve met him on his own. Our first encounter was in 2001, alongside his childhood best friend and frequent comedy partner, Joe Cornish. Back then, they were making the Channel 4 comedy series The Adam And Joe Show, in which the two of them brilliantly, and with often astonishing prescience, satirised pop culture: in a segment titled The 1980s House, they sent up a then-nascent obsession with nostalgia TV (“Early mornings on television in the 80s were very different from today: there were only three and a half channels, all showing popular comedy rodents”); they recreated revered films and sitcoms with stuffed animals (Toytanic! Furends!). It was silly, smart and superbly of its time, and for a certain demographic – ie mine – The Adam And Joe Show remains some of the greatest TV comedy ever made.

I next met him 12 years later, this time with his father, Nigel. A former travel editor for the Sunday Telegraph, Nigel was also regular guest BaaadDad on The Adam And Joe Show, where Buxton and Cornish riffed on Nigel’s conservative persona, getting him to review, witheringly, the Prodigy singles and Tribal Gathering. BaaadDad was beloved by fans, but by the time we met he was a frail 89-year-old, his son now protecting him rather than directing him, gently helping him up steps and prompting his memory. As for Buxton, he seemed a little lost, with Cornish now pursuing a film career (he wrote and directed the sci-fi comedy Attack The Block, and co-wrote The Adventures Of Tintin: The Secret Of The Unicorn). I worried Buxton would be condemned to that graveyard for comedians, a panel show career.

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