Adam & Joe

Joe: "Pretty much the reason we did the Adam and Joe Show was so that we could sponge as much free stuff off of it. That was our main motivation. Fucking hell, we're going to get on TV. We can get free stuff."

"I'd like to do the Adam and Joe Show for ITV1," Joe says, leaning across the table, "for a huge amount of money." He looks at both of us earnestly, as Adam sits by and nods his agreement. "And make it really shit. On early Saturday or Sunday evening."

Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish have been protesting for years that they wanted to 'sell out'. In almost every interview they have given since the first series of the Adam and Joe show came along almost six years ago, they have been adamant in their insistence that all they want to do is sell out. "The first thing we ever said was that as soon as we can we want to do an advert and make loads of money out of it," continues Adam. "Doing this Virgin commercial was fantastic. I think a few people were going 'fucking Adam and Joe have sold out' and we were going, well it's not a surprise, is it?"

Joe: "My version of star struck is being intimidated and thinking that I can't possibly keep up with the witticisms that are being bandied about. But I don't necessarily get dazzled by star power. I'm too arrogant for that. I think I'm superior."

When the Adam and Joe show first arrived in 1996, Channel 4 was still a relatively young channel, whose only main competition was the other three terrestrial channels. Satellite television had yet to make any kind of serious impact on the viewing habits of the nation, and, keen to mark themselves out from the rest, Channel 4 introduced a British version of America's Public Access Television, in the form of 'Takeover TV'. The idea behind the show was simple - the public would send in tapes of themselves, and Channel 4 would put them on television. Simple, effective, and - most importantly for a growing television station - cheap.

Adam and Joe have been best friends since they first met at the age of 13, at the exclusive Westminster public school. Along with their friend Louis Theroux, they started messing about making short films on Adam's father's camcorder. When they heard of the new Channel 4 show, they jumped at the opportunity to get themselves on television. "I always used to dream about being on telly when I was younger," admits Adam. The production team behind Takeover TV liked their entry so much that Adam and Joe made regular appearances throughout the first series, and on the back of that were given their own late night show. They have described the show themselves simply as "silly nonsense made by two twats in a bedroom."

Adam: "I really enjoy doing the Ken Korda stuff, we're just laughing quite a lot. Joe would direct those and ruin quite a lot of it by laughing from behind the camera."
Joe: "By snorting. You can probably see some of the cuts on the show, just before the cuts there's a snort. That's just us laughing. The rest of the country just sit looking."

There have been four series of The Adam and Joe Show so far, although following both the second and third series, they swore they would never produce another. They have since learned to never say never again, as Adam explains. "We were doing interviews while we were still working on the show. And you'd just have this enormous weight of all the things we knew we had to do, all these kind of little stupid things, which normally you'd just delegate, we have to fucking do every single one. And the idea that you've got all this to do in the next two weeks just makes you want to kill yourself. So people would say, are you doing another series? You go 'No! I can't wait until it's over and I never want to see Joe again and Joe doesn't want to see me again." "But as soon as it's over you think, I miss it and I want to do it again."

The Adam and Joe Show always kept the home-made feel first introduced by their appearances on Takeover TV, presenting the show from what looks like a typical student bedroom, with walls covered with posters and strange pop culture. Between them, Adam and Joe do almost all the work, both behind and in front of the camera, something they are both very proud of, but also feel is a big pressure - Joe immediately says that the best part of making the show is "finishing it." When they first contemplated returning for a fourth series, they wanted to "totally reinvent the show," says Joe, "and have a brand new idea. But we thought there was more mileage in it, and every new idea that we had for it didn't seem to sustain for more than three minutes. So we ended up just doing another series, basically."

Joe: "Basically, we're very confusing and terrible trouble, and please help. In any way you can. This may be our last ever interview."

The new series brought new characters and running gags, including the 1980s House, the Urban Chaos Collective, and People Place, in which they both play day time television presenters Lindsey Munk and Nikki Boxx. "I find that disturbingly easy to do," admits Joe. "I think I could well be on QVC in a few years." "Joe's got a wide streak of professional insincerity," agrees Adam. When we ask them who their favourite characters from the show are, they both look slightly surprised by the terminology we use. "It is weird when people talk about them as characters," says Adam, "because you just think of them as ways for us to do things that aren't us, because it's too embarrassing."

One of the things they both find more difficult to do is the Media Chaos Collective, where they play Andy and Martin, two west coast activists bent on subverting the minds of the nation. "Those ones we find less nice to do," says Joe, "the ones where we prank people. It's very discomfiting to be doing something to someone else's disadvantage, which a lot of contemporary comedy seems to relish." "I didn't like them," agrees Adam. "I had the same feeling I used to have before I went back for a new term at school. Just impending doom." The Media Chaos Collective inserts included spoofs of Trigger Happy TV and a Mark Thomas-style invasion of Virgin Head Office, although they did take a slightly different route from all the usual television pranksters. "We explain what we're doing before hand," confesses Joe, with a grin. "We used to genuinely prank people but we can't hack it any more, so we tell them what we're doing, and usually their performance is bad enough to look genuine anyway." "It's so lame though, if you think about it," laughs Adam, "just filming ourselves trying to get into a building and getting thrown out."

Joe [on Jamie Theakston]: "There's something weirdly glamorous about being that rubbish and getting that much work. There's a strange anomaly that makes you think he's some sort of strange God. How do you get to that place where you can be slightly shit, but yet be unbearably confident and successful?"

One of the most popular inserts of the series, or at least the one that got the biggest reaction from the comedy-watching public, was the spoof of Chris Morris's Jam, restyled as 'Goitre'. Just before the series was broadcast, Adam met Morris through their mutual friend Graham Linehan, but found himself too intimidated to speak. "I just didn't know what to say. I was just absolutely crapping my pants… Then after a while he was so nice that I think I tried to make a couple of jokes and they went down pretty badly, so then I shut up again." "Professional comedians don't like to laugh, Adam, in a relaxed situation," points out Joe, "because they do it for a living. It's like a busman's holiday. They want to be very serious." They have since heard that Morris was quite amused by their Jam parody. "He liked it, apparently," says Adam. "But if I was him I'd probably say I liked it as well and I'd probably really hate it." They both start laughing. "He's probably just being gracious. Two little twats taking the piss out of his hard work. Fucking cunts."

Now that the fourth series is out of the way, Adam and Joe are currently looking for new horizons. "We probably couldn't sit in that bedroom looking like students forever," admits Joe. They recently hosted a new series of Takeover TV for E4, paying back their debt to Channel 4 for the big break that they were given on the same series. Joe also hosted This Week Only on Channel 4, a weekly topical comedy show, and they have both begun appearing on panel shows in order, they say, to test the waters on where they can go from here.

Adam has also recently spent time touring with Travis, following them on their European and American tour. "Every now and again when I've got some time I'll go on tour with them and just film them fucking around. That's really good fun for me because that's just an excuse for me to go and hang out with them and go to lots of gigs and pretend I'm a pop star." His films have already been used by Travis on their recent tour in the UK, as a backdrop on the stage before the band come on, and if you listen very carefully, you can hear Adam singing along.

Adam: "Doing Takeover TV is quite nice because we've got a civilised life. We can see our friends and we can go out. We can't do that when we're doing the Adam and Joe Show, it's literally day and night we don't see anyone."
Joe: "Almost like a doctor or nurse or someone who does a real job who deserves to be angry."

Adam's appearance on Never Mind The Buzzcocks was certainly a big success, but it's not something that they feel particularly at home doing. "Most of the time we don't feel like we're on telly," says Joe, "because we just make our stupid little show in our silly little room, and then when you actually do go into a studio we do get really nervous just like anyone else would." "I just look at myself and I think I just look wrong," agrees Adam. "I look completely out of place. What am I doing there?! Id on't look famous or anything. Everyone else there, their faces just seem right in some way. It's like, yeah, of course you're famous. But I just look wrong." "Because the Adam and Joe Show is half stupid magazine show, it's as if we should be all right on shows like that," muses Joe. "But we're not. Basically, we're very confusing and terrible trouble, and please help. In any way you can. This may be our last ever interview."

Working on separate projects has been something of a new adventure for both of them. "It would have been a bit weird a while back for us to do things individually because we're both quite insecure," says Adam, "but now it's a bit better." "We're basically regarded as a two headed monster I think," says Joe, "and as much as we try for our own mental health to build individual personalities, it doesn't really seem to work. They can't tell the difference between us. I'm called Joe Buxton all the time."

Joe: "Who's comparable to us, fame wise. Mel and Sue?"
Adam: "No, they're more famous than us."
Joe: "They are, they have more than one advert."

At the moment, they seem particularly underwhelmed by their own level of fame. "I'd say people less famous than us would be people who had been in a local paper," says Adam. "You know what I mean? 'Hey, you were in the local paper yesterday! You collected all those things! I read that! It's nice to bump into you!' We're more famous than that. But only just."

The last project the public will have seen them do together is their Virgin Mobiles campaign, something that they both admit to having enjoyed very much. "It was such good fun," Joe says enthusiastically. "We got a Winnebago. That's all I'm going to say really." "And people coming up and just saying, 'Is there anything you need? Are you okay? Can we get you anything?'", adds Adam. "It was just great, just like a wet dream." The commercial was the first of what they hoped would be a regular money earner for the Adam and Joe camp. "We aspire to make commercials with plots," asserts Joe.

'My Mum keeps thinking it's a trailer,' says Adam. ' "What's your new programme?" What do you mean? "I keep seeing trailers for it." It's not a trailer Mum, it's an advert. "For your new programme?" No. For Virgin Mobiles. "Why are you making a programme about Virgin Mobiles?"'