EP.268 - ADAM AND JOE

December 25, 2025·1 hr 46 min·9 clips

"Dad, I found Jesus" — the ceramic statue of Christ that belonged to Adam's late mother had been relocated to an outside wall.

1. THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST episode 268 is a Christmas Day 2025 special conversation with longtime collaborator Joe Cornish. 2. Adam Buxton hosts from a farm in Norfolk while Joe Cornish joins as his co-host and creative partner from the Adam and Joe duo. 3. The episode functions as an informal year-in-review and gift exchange rather than a themed interview. 4. Buxton opens by reading a listener message from Ben Jackson, who leads the Many Men Sound System choir in Falmouth, Cornwall, and has arranged Buxton's theme song for the group. 5. Buxton recounts finding a ceramic statue of Jesus, which belonged to his late mother, missing after his daughter's 17th-birthday party, only for it to turn up relocated to an outside wall. 6. He promotes upcoming Adam Buxton Band tour dates featuring tracks from his album "Buckle Up" with members of Metronomy. 7. He mentions recent podcast appearances on Tape Notes with John Kennedy and Joe Mount, and on Soda Jerker on Songwriting with Simon Barber and Brian O'Connor. 8. Buxton appeals for Christmas donations to Medecins Sans Frontieres, Music for All, and St Mungo's homelessness charity. 9. Cornish and Buxton banter about burning books, including audiobooks, in the fireplace, riffing on a review that called Buxton's memoir "I Love You, Bye" "quite light." 10. Cornish describes seeing Matilda the Musical multiple times in 2025 and recounts a performance where a full musical number was skipped due to a technical blackout. 11. He recalls asking an usher about the missing number and being told there would be no announcement, to avoid refund requests. 12. Cornish shares meeting Nigel Planer at a book festival and discovering Planer wrote the "tying my dog to the railroad track" bit from The Young Ones that Cornish and Charlie Brooker both loved. 13. The pair exchange made-up jokes from listeners, including Peter from the Highlands' "Brat is lava" volcano joke and Natalie from Apeldoorn's French pun about losing "the will to live." 14. Buxton describes a joke that came to him in a dream about a third "Now You See Me" heist-movie sequel, retitled "Now You Emphasize Me Three." 15. They exchange Christmas gifts, including novelty tiny-violin and toot-horn props that Cornish gives Buxton to accompany maudlin or self-aggrandizing passages from his audiobook. 16. Buxton gives Cornish a set of seven harmonicas in different keys, and the pair improvise briefly with them. 17. The tone throughout is loose, digressive, and self-deprecating, built on decades of in-joke rapport between the two Adam and Joe collaborators. 18. It mixes sincerity, including the charity appeals and grief over his mother's statue, with silliness, including dark jokes and gift props. 19. Longtime Adam and Joe fans who enjoy meandering, in-joke-heavy Christmas specials will get the most out of it. 20. Listeners wanting a focused interview, a single structured topic, or fast-paced editing should skip this one.

As heard by us

A choir's electronic theme-song tribute sets up birthday harmonica, bad Bowie, and warm musical awkwardness.

The episode uses a choir's electronic arrangement of Adam's theme song as a neat way into music chat with a social edge. Ben Jackson's Many Men Sound System pulls Jefferson Airplane, Hot Chip, and a synth/drum machine into the same orbit, while the choir's "He's a man" warm-up…

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Why you'd press play

For a choir-powered theme-song tribute and a birthday detour into amateur Bowie.

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