A chatty, self-deprecating memoir recalls the podcaster’s start in TV and his lifelong friendship with comedian and film-maker Joe Cornish
T
he writer and comic Adam Buxton’s first memoir, Ramble Book, dug into his childhood and his relationship with his father, who featured as the cantankerous BaaadDad in Buxton’s 1990s pop culture series The Adam and Joe Show. I Love You, Byeee is the follow up in which he remembers his late mother, Valerie, and reflects on his TV career which began with him landing a job at Takeover TV, a showcase for new talent on Channel 4, where he brought in his childhood friend Joe Cornish.
Fans of The Adam and Joe Show will find reminiscences about the pair’s toy movies, where they recreated films such as Titanic and Trainspotting, and their radio shows on XFM and 6Music. Buxton is candid about the strain of their working relationship and his feelings of insecurity when Cornish went off to direct his first film, Attack the Block, without him.
Buxton’s audiobooks tend to do extremely well, in part due to the author’s chatty, self-deprecating style that is fun on the page yet transmits more effectively in audio. His vocal delivery is warm, whimsical and underpinned by a gentle melancholy. But key to their success is the way that Buxton approaches them less as a straightforward narration than a fully fledged sound project, using similar features to those on his pod, The Adam Buxton Podcast. Along with his trademark songs and jingles (which could be annoying but are not), I Love You, Byeee has two bonus chapters. The first is an essay on the author’s love of David Bowie that was cut from the book, and the second is a bracingly honest conversation between Buxton and Cornish in which they recall the highs and lows of their friendship.
