Ramble Book: Musings on Childhood, Friendship, Family and 80s Pop Culture

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But just before he had zoned out completely, Dad slowly reached out his arm, took my hand and brought it to his face. “He probably wants me to wipe his mouth or scratch his ear or something,” I thought, but to my surprise he gave my hand a kiss. Oh shit! I thought. This is it. Closure time! Well, it doesn’t much matter. But that’s why we make things and organise things, isn’t it? Otherwise, of course it’s all meaningless.” As soon as I began to read, the moment felt over-burdened with significance. I tried my best to give the audiobook performance of a lifetime, but within a few lines I stumbled on some nautical jargon, and when I mispronounced the name “Maturin” as “Maturing”, Dad waved his hand emphatically for me to stop. I apologised and asked if he wanted me to continue. Feebly, he reached across and pushed the book out of my hands. I’d failed the audition for my own Moving Moment With Dying Dad scene but, I reminded myself, he’d kissed my hand. That wasn’t nothing. Over in the flat I found him sitting up in bed looking worried. “It’s the strangest thing,” he said, all the hardness gone out of his voice. “I woke up and I no longer had any sense of who I am.” I fetched a family photo album and found that he was able to recognise and identify everyone in it, so the problem wasn’t with his memory. Instead, it was his sense of self that had short-circuited. I didn’t like to see him vulnerable. On the other hand, it was preferable to seeing him crotchety and impatient

Thing is, you’re unlikely to strike up a heart-to-heart chat with your son for the first time while he’s standing over you until you’ve finished your smoothie, getting annoyed when you don’t take your pills or hoisting your nappy on before bed. Also you’re more or less deaf. And you’ve got cancer. In the end we were just two uptight men who found it easier to be on our own. The content covers his days at boarding school, the family’s travels (his dad was the Travel Editor at the Telegraph, so holidays were exotic), discovering music, discovering girls, never living up to his dad’s expectations, his days at Westminster where he met Joe and Louis Theroux and others. It’s whimsically done, and admirably honest. The only bits that fell flat for me were the music deep dives - only because I didn’t have the obsessions that he had with David Bowie and others. The bits on friends, school tribes, formative experiences and eighties culture were great. Where an autobiography has been written by an actor or other public performer, it’s not uncommon for them to also narrate the audiobook. This is true of Adam Buxton with Ramble Book, Michael Cashman with One of Them, Miriam Margolyes with This Much is True, and Stephen Fry with his various volumes of autobiography, including The Fry Chronicles, More Fool Me and Moab Is My Washpot. Hearing the author’s words in their own voice brings another dimension to the work, and lets you take them with you wherever you’re going, whatever you’re doing. There’s never been a better time to get lost in a good book… so we’d love you to join the friendly Mirror Book Club community on Facebook. Members share thoughts on the current book of the month, post other recommendations and exchange book news and views. There are regular giveaways too. Has his father’s obsession with money rubbed off on him? “No, the reverse is probably true: I don’t think about money enough. I’ve never really wanted to be rich, that’s never, ever been a motivating factor for me at all. I felt sorry for my dad and although I was very grateful to him for the sacrifices he made, which meant I met so many people that were important to me. I resent… I thought he gave up too much. And I would rather have had him around. I mean, I think I would? Maybe I wouldn’t have got a book out of it.”I was three or perhaps four years old when I realised that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl,” she writes. “I remember the moment well, and it is the earliest memory of my life.” What follows is a highly evocative sentence, that hints at the beauty of the writing to come: “I was sitting beneath my mother’s piano, and her music was falling around me like cataracts, enclosing me as in a cave.”

Yes,” replied Pa softly before continuing, as if to himself, “Occasionally, I feel that I’m absolutely irrelevant.” Lea Ypi is professor of political theory at the London School of Economics, but she grew up in Albania during the years of communist rule. Her grandfather had been prime minister for just over a year in the early 1920s, and was assassinated in December 1940. Those facts – and the detrimental impact the family’s association with the former prime minister would have – were kept from her during her childhood.Even at school, Louis and Joe were the two funniest people to hang out with. I can see why he went down the serious documentary route – good for you, enjoy your Baftas – so it’s nice to showcase his stupid side. Mirror Book Club members have chosen My Name Is Why by Lemn Sissay as the latest book of the month. Plus, there are clear benefits to being able to relive the past. Buxton always knew his father was baffled by his interests – that was the whole joke of BaaadDad. Recently, he has been watching old outtakes from The Adam And Joe Show. “We shot absolute hours of stuff with my dad, making him go to places that he hated, and he was always game. It was heroic. I used to think, ‘Why isn’t he more proud of me?’ But he was proud. I can see that now.” Buxton’s emotional openness is surely partly a reaction against his father; despite being sent to boarding school when he was nine, I have rarely met a man less afraid to show his vulnerabilities. Another reaction against his father is Buxton’s marriage. He and Sarah have been married for 19 years, after meeting through another school friend. “She looked like Sean Young in Blade Runner, and we were both a little oversensitive, so we bonded. Also, she’s tall. Joe’s tall, Louis’s tall, I do seem to be attracted to tall people because I’m short.” It was Sarah who forced him to look at how harsh his father could be to his mother. “At first I was defensive, but then I understood that she just doesn’t want me to turn out like that,” Buxton says.

Imagining George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, he delivers a lesson on how such rivers came to be named. Names affixed to bodies of water by Indigenous peoples gave way to Dutch pronunciation, then anglicization. The Delaware, however, derived its moniker from Lord De La Warr, a “dubious aristocrat” otherwise known as Thomas West. READ NEXT: Best poetry books to buy The best autobiographies to read in 2023 1. One of Them by Michael Cashman: Best showbiz autobiography That was bad news for me. I’m not fond of dairy products, and cheese makes me especially sad. In the months that followed, I found cleaning up after toilet accidents infinitely preferable to preparing cheesy noodles, cheesy scrambled eggs, cheesy liver and other cheese nightmares for Dad, which, more often than not, he didn’t even eat. After close to 200 episodes, he left to pursue other interests, and eventually found himself elected to the European Parliament, representing the seat of West Midlands. He was a spokesperson on human rights and, before his time in Brussels drew to a close in 2014, he’d been awarded a CBE for public and political service. Returning to Britain wasn’t the end of his political career, nor of his campaigning, and he took his seat in the House of Lords as a life peer. When I heard Adam Buxton had written a book, I was really keen to read it. I still remember the night I discovered the anarchic joy that was The Adam and Joe Show, a comedy that still fills me with fond memories of my student days and early married life.Aside from his father, the other leading characters in Ramble Book are Cornish and Louis Theroux, Buxton’s friends since Westminster. When they were 15, Buxton and Cornish invented their own fantasy media empire, called Joe/Adz Corporate; their first productions were sketches, parodies of the Gold Blend Advert and Monty Python tributes, filmed on Buxton’s father’s video camera. Within a decade they were broadcasting similar things on Channel 4 on The Adam and Joe Show, which is where Ramble Book ends. Buxton would now like to write more – about working with Cornish, and his “hair-raising 90s”. It wasn’t his first TV appearance, but Adam Buxton hit the big time in 1996, with Channel 4’s The Adam and Joe Show. Since then, he’s been a regular on BBC3, Xfm, the Edinburgh Festival, films and Eight out of Ten Cats Does Countdown’s dictionary corner. To many, he’ll be best known for his long-running podcast, with a simple formula – an unhurried, rambling chat – that attracts guests of impressive calibre. You don’t need to scroll far through the archive to come across Joe Lycett, Robbie Williams, Zadie Smith, Derren Brown, David Sedaris, Michael Palin, Frank Skinner, and skaters Torvill and Dean. The mix is as eclectic as it is entertaining. At the age of 17, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learns that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he finds out that his mother has been pleading for his safe return to her ever since his birth. When I was confident that he was OK and through the worst of the morphine fugue, I asked if he’d like me to put on Air Force One with Harrison Ford. Dad liked Harrison Ford. We watched Indiana Jones one Christmas towards the end of the 80s when Dad was starting work on his novel, The Proving Ground. “That’s who should play me when they turn my book into a film,” said Dad. You describe yourself as “a chronic over-thinker”. Have you become even more introspective this past year?