THE ADAM BUXTON PODCAST - EP.249 - PAULINE BLACK

Episode Date: June 11, 2025

Adam talks with English author, actor and frontperson of seminal ska band The Selecter, Pauline Black about the early days of Two Tone, her experiences growing up feeling out of place as part of an adoptive family in Essex and how she came to be reunited with her biological mother.Conversation recorded face-to-face in Coventry on 8th May, 2025Thanks to Séamus Murphy-Mitchell for production support and additional conversation editing.Podcast illustration by Helen Green WATCH PAULINE BLACK: A 2-TONE STORY - 2025 (SKY ARTS)PICS AND RELATED LINKS (ON ADAM'S WEBSITE) Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I added one more podcast to the giant podcast bin Now you have plucked that podcast out and started listening I took my microphone and found some human folk Then I recorded all the noises while we spoke My name is Adam Buxton, I'm a man I want you to enjoy this, that's the plan. Hey, how are you doing? It's Adam Buxton here, reporting to you from a Norfolk farm track, early June 2025. I'm here with my dog friend Rosie, she's a Whippet Poodle cross. She's not that

excited to be out for a walk but she's trotting along beside me and like a brand of shampoo I once favored she is Pantene, Pantene, Pantene, Pantene. in panting and that's doglegs panting. How are you doing though, Podcats? I hope you're doing okay wherever you are. Me? Oh I'm fine, thanks. Can't complain. Hello Techno bird. Hovering above the field. How high do you think that is doglegs? I strongly don't care. I want to go back to the sofa. I'd say that's about a hundred feet up. Very good hovering plus techno.

Oh look, there's a few of them. Anyway look, let me tell you a little bit about podcast number 249 with my guest, the English singer, actor and author Pauline Black. Pauline Black facts. Born Belinda Magnus in 1953 to a white Anglo-Jewish mother and a Nigerian father, Pauline was adopted by a family from Essex who gave her the name Pauline Vickers. She studied science at Lanchester Polytechnic, now Coventry University, before training as a radiographer, and she worked for the NHS for five years before she entered the music industry.

When the Specials, then known as the Special AKA, released their 1979 single Gangsters on the two-tone label, the B-side was an atmospheric instrumental by Neil Davis and John Bradbury called The Selector. Following the success of the single, Neil Davis put together a seven-piece band made up of Coventry musicians that included Arthur Gaps Hendrickson and on vocals was Pauline, who took the stage name Pauline Black. Singles like 3 Minute Hero, Missing Words and the Evergreen On My Radio made The Selector one of the most successful scar bands of the two-tone era, alongside the specials Madness, Bad Manners, The Beat and The Body Snatchers. But despite their popularity, internal tensions, financial disputes and the pressure of the music industry led to the Selecta

parting ways in 1981, after which Pauline embarked on a career as an occasional TV presenter and as an actor on TV and in the theatre. Pauline reformed the selector in 1991, and the band have toured intermittently with a variety of lineups ever since. In her memoir Black by Design, a two-tone story published to great critical acclaim in 2011, Pauline writes about the challenges of growing up as one of the few black children in a predominantly white part of Essex, dealing with racism and with a sense of not fully belonging. She also writes about her time at the forefront of the two-tone movement and about reconnecting with her biological mother, and how doing so helped her to come to terms with an often painful childhood.

That memoir formed the basis for a documentary released earlier this year, Pauline Black, A Two-Tone Story, directed by photographer and filmmaker Jane Mingay. In 2022, Pauline was awarded an OBE for services to entertainment. The same year she was appointed as a Deputy Lieutenant of the West Midlands. As you'll hear, my determination to get Pauline on the podcast was sparked a few years ago when I saw a half-hour BBC documentary from 1980 called Rudy's Come Back, The Rise and Rise of Two-Tone. I'm sure I mentioned it at the time on the podcast and I've probably mentioned it a few times since. It's a peach. There's a link to the doc on the BBC iPlayer which you'll find in the

description of today's episode and that doc features some wonderful footage of the selector at the very beginning of their career, alongside scenes of the specials on stage and clowning around in the Coventry flat slash base of operations for Two Tone, owned by label mastermind Jerry Dammers. It was watching that doc that made me buy Pauline's book and I was delighted when she agreed to meet for an interview as long as I was able to get myself to Coventry where she still lives. So last month May 2025 I drove to Coventry to meet Pauline in a small studio that I had booked to record the session,

and we had a very nice chat. However, the next day when the studio sent through the files, they apologized for the fact that Pauline's mic had not recorded, and she could only be heard coming through faintly in the background on my microphone. DISAPPOINTED! I did take along my backup recorder which I sometimes have relied on when microphones have failed but that also didn't work. That was my fault. So anyway, I have spent quite a while putting the audio through various bits of fancy noise tweaking software to try and make Pauline's voice more audible. And you can definitely hear it fine, and I've got it sounding

as good as I possibly could for you, but it is very roomy, much more so than a recording would normally be on this podcast. I wish it had been my mic that failed and not Pauline's, and I apologize to her and to you listeners for the sound quality not being up to scratch. But I still wanted to rescue what I could from this interview. Pauline is a wonderfully articulate and impressively tough person and I hope you will still be able to enjoy hearing her talk about the early days of two-tone, her experiences growing up and feeling out of place in Essex, and how she came to be reunited with her biological mother, and much else. Back at the end to say goodbye but right now

with Pauline Black. Here we go. RamblChat, let's have a RamblChat We'll focus first on this, then concentrate on that Come on, let's chew the fat and have a RamblChat Put on your conversation coat and find your talking hat During the lockdown, I discovered that documentary Rudy Come Back, which was an arena program shown in 1980, I think, wasn't it? Half an hour thing. Have you seen it recently? I've seen bits of it recently. Adrian Thrills.

Adrian Thrills. A couple. Everyone had an awful little Mac there that they tied too tight at the waist. I've got my awful little Macbook Pro. That's my version of the awful little Macbook Air. Pros are too big. I absolutely love this documentary. It's so evocative and exciting and as a little snapshot

of a nascent scene, pretty hard to be beautifully shot that kind of attention to quality that the BBC had in those days, you know, like the photographers and sound people at the very top of their game, the way they filmed all the concert stuff and the way they filmed you guys in the studio at the Horizon Studios. Horizon Studios, which is no more. Right. The late lamented. There was some old converted stables that used to back onto the railway station. It's kind of, you know, those awful centres now, you know, where you find TK Maxx

and kind of business, but it was very sad when that, the demise of that. Yeah. It looked like a cool place. And you, and the Selecta recorded a lot of stuff there, right? Uh, we, the original band recorded too much pressure and celebrate the bullet. Yeah. Okay. First two albums. Do you remember that day when Arena came to film and you were playing?

Well, they acted as if you were recording. Yes. Three-minute hero. We were miming. Right. You were sort of recreating the recording experience. We weren't actually recording. Oh yeah, I can remember it.

I mean, everything was new then. That's what you have to remember. And we were, we probably, I don't know how many shows we'd done by then. I mean, we got together in the May of 1979 and by the early autumn, well, it was end of August, early September, I think when that was going on when we were recording that album.

You know, that was the first time really anyone had kind of taken an interest in this. I think Melody Maker had been up and done our first interview. So it was new to everyone. We've just been doing shows, a lot of them sporting specials. There's a lot of little clubs like the F Club in Leeds and, you know, Sheffield Limit Club, which were all tiny. And we would do matinees at that time because there were young kids who bunk off school or, you know, out of the orphanage and stuff like that and then decide to follow us and all of those things.

And so we were kind of building up that following because, you know, there were six black artists in it and one white guy kind of thing. And it was just so different. We weren't like the specials. We certainly weren't like madness, you know, some white guys and, uh, kids, black kids at that time found that interesting that this was a different take on things and something different was going on here. The music is infectious, so you can't do anything other than dance to it.

So it was like, it was like being in a youth club to be perfectly honest. I mean, you know, the whole kind of way of the band that that's how it had originated to a certain extent with Hardtop 22, where a lot of the members had come from. That was another local band. the basement, they were allowed to rehearse. I didn't know them at that time, much to everyone's derision back then. I mean, I came from folk, which isn't exactly true. I came from the back room of a pub, which was the old Dyer's Arms in Coventry. And it was just a place where you could go and there would be folk people, there would be some other people who did a bit of kind of alternative stuff, somebody banged out. I didn't know Richie Haven stuff, you know, and you were playing a bit of Dylan and things like that.

Yeah. And occasionally a couple of mine that I rudimentarily written, the first one being about the Leeds, a serial killer. Oh, um, his name has gone AWOL. I'm not good on my serial killers. One of the big serial killers. Oh, um, I'm not good on my serial killers. One of the big serial killers. Yeah, one of the big serial killers called Bradford City and lamenting the fact of this poor young woman who'd ended up sort of, you know, becoming a prostitute and was prey to

and she ended up dead at the hands of the serial killer. Not exactly the fodder that you would think that somebody might fetch up with. Yeah. Did you, what were the other subjects on the shortlist? Or did you immediately go for that one? It's the strange thing is that after making that film, Pauline Black, a two turn story, Don Letts very nicely came along and did an interview And he just absolutely nailed it because he said what the select was about was social reportage And this exactly what we were about and that's exactly what I was doing then and that's exactly what hard top 22 did

I mean, that's what we kind of did talked about what the environment was like exactly I mean the things that were around us and our attitude towards it because we felt that it was important I suppose as you know, British blacks Growing up here being born here or whatever telling our side of the story and I've always thought that hybrid musics side of the story. And I've always thought that hybrid musics, not completely, you know, I'll take a bit of that and I'll take a bit of that and that kind of way of thinking, but something that is fully formed, butts up against something else, as something wonderful happens and they kind of melt into each other and work, but that takes work to make that thing happen. Yeah, yeah, because the word that would crop up when you're blending genres for some people

is appropriation or cultural appropriation. And where do you see the line between kind of exploitative, bad, quotes, cultural appropriation and something more positive of blending genres and making something more interesting? Cultural appropriation. Right. Myself, by the very definition of the fact that I exist. You know, a black person from Nigeria came along and liked a white person from this country who happened to be Jewish as well. And my mom, I think, was 17 when she was pregnant with me and it sparked off each other.

And here I am. Well, you can't get much more cultural appropriation rather than a bit of miscegenation, can you? I'm fully in favor of miscegenation. Cultural appropriation, no, that's just Bode, Derek the Cornroy. What's the definition of miscegenation? Miscegenation? Oh, well, I mean, you know, having sex across the racial barriers, if you want to see them as barriers.

I consider that the white women here in this country at that time were pioneers. As far as women are concerned, you're left holding the baby rather literally. And at that time, if you'd got a brown baby, then you'd got a problem because there weren't very many people in this country who were accepting of the fact that, you know, you were kind of mixing things up a bit. Yes. Why is it then thinking about your adoptive mother, who was in some ways, I don't know about politically, but in other ways, quite conservative, I suppose,

a working class white family from Romford, Essex with, they already had a couple of boys, did they? They had four sons. Four sons, right. Why were they adopting another girl? Because she'd always wanted a girl and she'd had a hysterectomy, so she couldn't have one. They were older, they were in their mid-forties by that time. And because she knew a woman who lived around the corner, as everyone knows a woman who lived around the corner who was in some sort of church

association thing, and a lot of babies were adopted through church associations or something to do with the church because it was like saving these kind of, you know, little colonial creatures that sort of cropped up that nobody wanted. So you either ended up in Barnardo's, which there was one, and that was in Dagenham in Essex, or you ended up in a home. And I consider myself lucky in some ways being doctor being given the chances that I was because otherwise I would have ended up in Barnardo's and Dagenham but the problem was I didn't know any other black people I didn't know any other black kids my mother knew a couple of people who had adopted but

they were always young Nigerian kids and their parents were students over here and they would go back and they could be sort of plucked out of the home at a moment's notice and off they would go. So I mean, there was nothing to make friends with. I was the only black kid in both, you know, sort of junior school and senior school. Pete Do you think though that your mum was on a sort of Christian mission to do the right thing with a mixed-race baby?

I think that the opportunity had come about where there were Nigerian students or Ghanaian students coming here and were studying like my dad was. You know, children would appear for whatever reason, young people, they like to fuck. So I mean, you know, know you're gonna get a few accidents as it were and we always got left with the mums who were invariably white so those girls were then left with a child they'd been secreted away in a mother and baby home so nobody actually knew they were pregnant and usually those places farm those babies out to people either to foster initially, which I was fostered initially, and with a view as they always used to

say to adoption at some later stage and sometimes the guards stayed in contact with the children and other times maybe they didn't depending on what their family situation was like and paid some money towards the child while they were being fostered. So that's how it was for me. And when did you first start thinking about being different and feeling that you were different? Well, when I was adopted, because she had to tell me when I was about four years old, just before I started school.

And do you have a clear memory of that? Oh, God, yes. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I puked all over her. She was doing the ironing and I puked all over her. Lovely ironing. Pauline. I know, Jackson parked her sheets. What did it mean to you?

Do you remember? Yes, well, it was a bit of a, I always equate these things to like being smacked. She was a bit handy with her hands, if you know what I mean. A good smack in those days was considered sort of, you know, good medicine for that behavior, any inquiring behavior basically. And I remember her telling me sort of saying, you know, when you go to school, some people may say things and call you names and all this which never really occurred to me at all. And then she told me about that, you know, my father had come from Nigeria, my mother was English and they couldn't stay

together and they'd had me and they couldn't look after me so she had me and they'd adopted me and so these were all new concepts kind of coming at you. Well, I mean my guts didn't take it very well, put it like that. So that was a lot of thinking to be done but that was the time when I started thinking, well, you're not like anyone around here. But it hadn't really come up until then. But after that, once I knew, I was kind of sensitized to the thought that being black didn't sound as though it was a really groovy thing to be, if you lived in Romford and around, you know, where we were in Essex, I should say. I'm sure that's not true now. It's not even true of the street that I live in because I went back there to do some filming. And I'm pleased to say that miscegenation has gone very well in Romford.

Yeah. Half the street that I used to live in, which was wholly white, apart from me, is, yeah, healthily kind of brown and black. Job done. Did you think about your biological parents a lot? I thought about my mother a lot. Less so about my father because that didn't seem tangible to ever be able to find him because nobody would give you any information other than he was Nigerian. My mother, there was a little bit more information about her, which I had snooped by looking

through my mother's chest of drawers and in, you know, they always have things, don't they, in chest of drawers? CB 0 Sure. I had a secreted in there or some old handbag at the top of her and I was a nosy kid on a need-to-know basis. And I had found in one of these drawers some documents and they were adoption papers. I didn't necessarily know that there were some court papers there. So and that actually said that Belinda Magnus changed into Pauline Jean Anne Vickers as

I was known then. So I put those two things together. And there was a registered envelope, which my mother used to send money to my mother. This is my birth mother I'm talking about, to my adopted mother. And that had an address on it, 32 Review Road, and that was in Dagenham. And I had that until I was 42 and I never acted off it. What made you act when you did? Age, really. You know, you're doing the reckoning in your head and you think, well, if she was young, I'd always known she was 17. My mother had been very specific about it. You know,

she was 17, poor girl and all this kind of thing being taken advantage of by black men and all this, which to a certain extent couldn't have been further from the truth. I think it was my mother taking advantage of what else? So at 42 you're thinking, well, you know, for a woman that's moving closer and closer towards 60 now, the bosom, but I mean, you know, my maths has never been great. But, and I thought, well, she might not be alive. So I thought, well, she's going to be something like that kind of age. Maybe I should get off my ass and do something. And you found her in Australia.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. By virtue of the fact that one of my brothers went round to that address. Nobody lived there anymore of that name, but the person who did live there, he said, oh, I'm sure three sisters used to live here, he said, Oh, I'm sure three sisters used to live here. He said, I think I've got the deeds somewhere and I'll be trundled. And he came back and said, Oh, yes, their name was Magnus. And he said, I think they live in Surrey.

So that was how I found them. And how was it meeting her for the first time? Because I mean, you know, families are weird anyway, whatever your arrangement, whether you're adopted or not, there's no guarantee that you're going to feel a close bond with other members of your family just because you're related by genes and chemicals. But how was it to meet this person? Well, the strange thing was that because she was in Australia, I didn't meet her straight away. My first meeting was over the phone.

And I'd written her a very, very long letter because again, you don't know how this letter is going to land. You don't know whether they're married, whether the husband knows any of those things, you know. And I was black. I thought, well, you don't know how that's going to go. I mean, Australia is known for it. So welcoming carpet is it for was certainly back then or so now. You know what I mean? So I thought, well, I'll write a very discreet letter. So you don't have to talk to anyone else. Do I have to tell anyone else about me? Just talk to me if you can, expecting a letter back.

But I told her all my details and then, oh, because of the time difference, at some ungodly hour in the morning, the phone started ringing. And this was a week later, because that's how long it took a letter to get there. And my husband got up and answered the phone. And he said he thought it was Dame Edna Everidge coming up the ring. And because she was going, oh, I want to talk to my Belinda. Are you aware of it? Because then she called me that for the first 10 years that we knew each other.

She just couldn't get her head around that I was pauling and had never equated me with that. Anyway, so that was a very rude awakening to my mother. Yeah. And within, I think, about a month or so, we were out there and spent a month with them. The thing I suppose that every child is hoping for at some point in their life is for some answers for why they are the way they are. And sometimes I regret personally not finding out more about my mother before she died.

And I do feel slightly as if I missed an opportunity to put a few of the pieces of the puzzle into place as to why I am the way I am, why I think the way I do, those kinds of things. Were you interested in any of that? And if so, did you get any answers? Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, it's a kind of a strange thing because I'd always been very much of that idea that it's nurture. It's nothing to do with genes.

Right. Okay. Because in the racist soup that we live in, you kind of have to believe that maybe that's true to a certain extent. And you don't really want to go down that whole kind of eugenics road. So I'd always steered away from that kind of idea. And then I met my mother, who she had so many quirks and they were all mine. Pauline quirks. Yeah.

And we'd never met. We'd never met. If she's relaxed and standing, she stands in sort of third position ballet. And I hear myself sometimes laughing and it's her laugh. It's nothing to do with me. Or you look down at your legs and you think, well, my mom's legs. It's her laugh. It's nothing to do with me or you look down at your legs And you think then my mom's legs kind of it's like that And if she went to a restaurant and something wasn't quite right on the plate She'd have to rearrange and why do the same thing?

But then you wouldn't ever met each other and that's scary Yeah, so it was all a bit like that so we were just finding out about each other and she was quite mercurial because obviously They weren't practicing Jews, but I think that you know, the Jewish heritage was Considered something and certainly they got very worried during the war when it looked like you know We were going to be invaded by Hitler. So, you know, they were as Jewish as far as that was concerned. But she had married an Irishman in a Roman Catholic church in Clonokilty in Southern Ireland. And she'd then gone to Australia and fallen in with the Jehovah's Witnesses. It was like she just

tried anything. Sure. Give it a go. And I thought, well, that's just so like me I mean, I will go to the hospital. I think well I'll do that. Well, I won't do that and I end up in a band You know, it was so she was always kind of questing in that way. She's on an adventure Yeah, she was on an adventure and an obvious see my father Was like probably the biggest adventure of her life because eventually I plucked up courage to say, by the way don't happen to know my dad's name do you oh yeah well you mean Gordon.

And out it all you know fell. And was Gordon still around at that point? No he died the year. Oh really. Which I didn't know about then she wanted to know whether I had found him or not. From that piece of information, I found one of his wives. He had eight. He was a high status Nigerian.

Yeah, he was a prince. I mean, there's a lot of princes. It's a bit of a joke, Nigerian princes, but he actually was and my grandfather was the oba, which is like a king in a small kind of, you know, kind of principality of the thing, I suppose. And that was passed around between five families. And it was his turn and he died on my birthday in 1976 and had been a school teacher for a lot of his years and ran the local grammar school and was a piano player and I played piano quite unconsciously from that. So there were a lot of overlaps and out of that I found like lots of mixed race people who looked

like me who suddenly became my half brothers and half sisters. Okay. So I prolific my dad. Yeah. I was prolific as my grandfather, he had over a hundred children. Whoa. Twenty wives.

Oh man. Hmm. Previagra days too. That is... Bad daddy. I mean, that's a world of stress that's looming there. I mean, you know, most people, they're doing well if they can pin down one relationship, let alone that many.

But I suppose they just had a different attitude towards those things. I guess they were not getting too bogged down with anything, which in itself is kind of an admirable quality. Was your mum, though, upbeat? Did your mum seem kind of tortured by the fact that she had had to give you away back in the day? She had been tortured. Two years after, which would have been, I mean, I was adopted at 18 months old. So a little while after that, I think that she had a nervous breakdown and told me that she had a nervous breakdown, she couldn't do anything. And then she'd met her present husband, an Irish laborer, who was in Dagnam, I think

he came to live there at the house or something like that. And they got together, a very handsome man, I mean, he was great. And he knew about me. All of that generation knew about me but they'd never told their children who were my peers sort of thing. They always said, I mean after I went there, they always said, we knew there was something a bit strange about Eileen because every time she saw a black man she'd run up to them, cut their face in her hands and go you're so beautiful. I said that sounds like my mother. You know what I'm thinking? I don't know.

I don't know. But this is what they told me. So they were unsurprised when I appeared and so everybody kind of knew. It was quite... it must have been traumatic for her but she had more front than forwards. I mean, she just fronted it up. This is my daughter. So I mean, that was the sort of person she was. She was just going to brazen that one out. Shut me down if you care.

Who was the singer then? Was it her or Gordon? She sang. Right. She sang. She had a really good voice as well. Did you arrive at your selector vocal style or was that the way you always sang?

No, it wasn't the way I always sang. Well, I have a very sweet voice. That was my kind of folk singing voice, you know what I mean? I mean, Joni Mitchell-y kind of, you know, Joan Armatrading-y kind of voice, two were popular at that time. So I used to listen to an awful lot of them. I had that voice but it was wholly unsuitable for that kind of band, but I was desperate

to be in a reggae band, right? So it was a little bit like, why can't I really use that voice? Then it kind of went through Romford a bit, and then it went through the Caribbean a bit. And then I was just doing that, just mixing up all, like I said, you know, that kind of slipping accents to just find this relatively strident in the early days young woman in a comfortable way to be on stage and didn't really look back much after that. Yeah. It's such a great style, kind of declamatory, almost wide-eyed the way you are doing Three Minute Hero in that arena doc. It is bizarre. It's bizarre to me, but it felt completely natural. I mean, look at Hazel O'Connor. I mean, there's no way that Hazel O'Connor sounds, I mean,

I know the woman and there's no way she sounds like Eighth Day, you know, it's very declamatory as well. There was a lot of declamatory stuff going on then, I mean Lena Lovitch was quite declamatory. So all of that had seeped in there somewhere and got repackaged deep in my grey matter and just popped out and that was Pauline Black. It got renamed, I mean Pauline Vickers became Pauline Black and it was just like someone who'd always been there just saying, well, here I am and this is me and this is not fully done, but we're going to go with this. We're going to run with this bit. And that's what we ran with.

Yeah, that was a good scene. I loved that kind of music around that time. That was when I was growing up in my adolescence. And now there's a lot of good musicians around and really talented women, especially. But it's funny how on the whole, the current crop of really talented female musicians, it's much more about being breathy and quiet. My theory is that it's because a lot of them came up through DIY music and they're in their rooms making music on their laptops, like Billie Eilish and people like that. And so they sing very close on the mic and they're very breathy. But I do like the louder, more strident, almost yelpy style. Well, they were different times. They were different times then,

because all the deaths were analog. As a vocalist, you were invariably in some awful small club where your feet stuck to the floor with possibly somebody on guitar who was a complete ego maniac and thought they were Clapton or the Who guy. And so that would be terrifically loud, just screaming out over, the foldback is absolutely useless. So you've got to get over that.

Right. None of this in ears stuff back then. I mean, you were flying by the seat of your pants and that's if the foldback worked and anyone cared enough to put you in it. The foldback being the monitors front of stage so you can hear what the band actually sounds like. And yourself. So they've got amplified instruments to begin with, right? Their egos are fully amplified so they're going to be at 11 not 10 even and all you've got is these monitors at the front which has them in as well and you trying to find yourself in there in very small venues where people are very

loud and dancing so that's quite a loud thing too. So you find a way to work with that. And we came up through that. We didn't come up through recording studios. Recording came much later, after our people in London actually got off their arses to find out what the provinces were and maybe sign you. Sorry if I sound cynical, but I am about music industry.

Oh, I think that's- I think everybody is probably, maybe less so now, I don't know. Because there were so many other ways to sort of, you know, come up through TikTok, all those kinds of things. You know, we didn't have any of that. You were reliant on somebody getting their Gucci loafers on a train and up here. As Adrienne Thrills said, it's happening in Coventry of all places. I know, of all places. What a thing to say, you know, let's set this up, of all places. Were you munching huge quantities of drugs in those days?

I was never very good with drugs. I did acid one time. That was complete nutter disaster. Mostly people were sort of feeding orange juice into me to make me come down. Because you were having a bad trip? Yeah, I had a bad trip. I used to smoke some marijuana and things, but nothing. It made me paranoid, particularly after the trip.

Yeah. That didn't go well. So I was never deeply, deeply into drugs, but I liked what it did. And I would love to play the piano if I was high. That was just a glory to know I could spend hours doing that. Yeah, listening to music when you're a bit stoned. Yes, he's good. But I like mine. Yeah. It was that in those days, you got to remember what music was. So that was like Oodles of Grateful Dead and stuff like that.

You've got to be high to listen to that. It was for the heart of the sun. It only makes sense when you're stoned. It's funny though, how drugs play such a central part in a scene. Maybe you disagree, but looking at the arena doc again and lots of footage from around that time, especially at two-tone gigs, well it's the two-tone dance and watching the specials on stage and Lin-Ville Golding jumping around. That energy, I don't know if it's just excitement and adrenaline, probably a large part of that, but also you would think there's probably some speed flying around and things like that.

Blues, what's blues? Blues is just a form of amphetamine sulfate. Right. Yeah, I mean, you would find certainly skinheads back in those days, you know, the bag full in the same way as your generation did ease probably. Well, they used to give speed to the soldiers. My dad was in the second world war and they were given speed. And it's very fighty.

So if you're asking someone to sort of charge at somebody with a bayonet or whatever, you know, is your weapon of choice, you're going to need a bit of an incentive aren't you? And it probably does give a huge incentive. And hence you could wade into whole layers of skinhead seek hiling at you and think you were invincible. And did it, I mean, it feels like it probably did kick off quite a bit around that time in those. Yeah.

And how were you with that environment? I mean, I'm a physical coward, so I would have been cowering in the back room. And I think I always went on the fact that it takes a lot for a man to hit a woman in public. So I always rested on that kind of side of things. I was unlikely to get mullered, but it was collateral damage around me in the band. That was another thing. It was obvious to me, I guess, that you've got to remember the time that it was. I mean, Rock Against Racism was going on. The late 70s, yeah. Seeing what happened at Victoria Park, it was the first time that racism was being openly discussed.

It was the first time that people were actually actively talking about the Sus laws. Films were coming out like Babylon and so there was this youth culture but it was a different youth culture to what it had been. It had moved and it wasn't even necessarily punk but there were a lot of tribes within it. You know, punks, roo boys, a whole business kind of thing, skinheads, all there for maybe lots of varying reasons but brought together by the music. That was the unifying thing. How they felt in that space against, you know, some poor Mod who was there in his Italian finery, that was something else. They might not be quite so forgiving. It's not like now people wear clothes don't they, to kind of identify themselves in some posery way. Back then

you were wearing those clothes because it was a way of life and you were in that space as a way of life using your useful energy to... if you saw someone with an inch longer hair than you then they had to belong to that tribe and not that tribe. So it was very much like that. But everybody knew what a racist was. And a lot of them came with, you know, Doc Martens and short hair. Not a lot of them, some of them, right? And those would invariably be down the front and Zeke Hyling, particularly at us, because there were a lot of black people. I mean, there's no point in Zeke Hylling at Madness, is there? I mean, what's that going to get you?

And that was a generation that had grown up in a newly multicultural Britain. Oh, no one called it multicultural then. I mean, that was all- Sure. That's a retrospective term. But it was a country where the demography had been transformed by immigration and they were, correct me if I'm wrong about this, is how I interpret it. There was sort of young generation of people who had grown up and they were pushing back against it. Why? Because they're... Kind of. I mean, there were pockets of black people around the country, you know, like in Bradford. There would be maybe a concentration of people, you know,

Kenyan Asians, Ugandan Asians at that time, who had come in, who'd settled there. So that was something, right? There'd be some pools in Bristol with a whole tradition of black people growing up there. There'd be Tiger Bay in Cardiff and in London obviously there was Brixton, in Birmingham there was Handsworth. But I mean if you went to rural Norwich you'd be bloody hard pushed to find anyone who was black, any of the rural places. So this whole concept that Enoch Powell was trying to run with, that we were overrun with these people of a different colour and different culture and all the rest of it, couldn't have been further from the truth. There were some, but even then it was too many. Nobody

was calling it multicultural. We weren't even calling it multicultural. It was just like, well, what's your problem? We grew up here the same as you. We've listened to all this crap 70s pop music the same as you. We've danced to all that. We've done the same things as you. Here we are. We've now found a form of music, marrying up that whole reggae thing with some of the rock,

some of the punk and all this, and melding it into something completely new, which you love, but you will stand there and seek eye-lattice. But did you ever have anyone kind of articulate their racism? No. No, okay. Nobody could articulate it. The person who was, and really, nobody really articulatesulates racism now if you think about it, they don't they find a leader That was he not pal then it is Nigel Farage now or Trump or Tommy Robinson or whoever

Yeah, Robinson exactly. So they find a leader and And said well, yeah, I agree with him But it's all sort of you know sort voce and kind of down the pub and yeah, you know, I mean, they come over here and they do this, they do that. And I'd heard that litany all the time I'd been growing up from my own family. So I was very, very familiar with what white people thought about black people or anyone who didn't look like them, basically, you know, I mean, it could be Jewish people, it could be Chinese people. My family would never go to a Chinese. I mean, we had one Chinese restaurant in Romford, never went near there, we're not meeting, you know, in my family that would

be we're not eating that foreign muck. That was what they said quite audibly. I still don't understand why your parents thought it was a good idea to adopt a mixed race girl if that's how they felt about the world. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Yeah. People are complicated. It's not just that linear thing of, oh, well you do that.

So you're a racist. You, it doesn't work like that. They didn't like black people, but they loved me. Now I can't figure that out. You'd have to ask them, and they're not here to ask. But isn't that very much kind of the nature of Britain? Well, I've got a black friend, and he's great. He's as, you know, I go to reggae concerts with him.

He's really nice. But in the abstract, it's a different thing. In the abstract, if I know they found themselves in a chabine or something down Notting Hill back in the day, they'd be horrified or whatever. You know, that wouldn't be quite so friendly. Did you have happy times though with your adoptive parents? Of course. Yeah.

You write about your dad certainly quite affectionately. My dad was great, you know, and I don't believe that he, I can't honestly say that he was ever racist. I ever heard him use any pejorative term at all. I heard my brothers who were a bit older than me, but obviously much younger than my parents, I heard them use pejorative terms and aunts and uncles that kind of surrounded for whatever reason. But one uncle in particular who definitely thought that he had the right idea and was always talking about it. But he fancied himself as a trade unionist of all things. And, uh, was a single man at, uh, Sheffield.

The station there. So yeah, that's families though, isn't it? Everyone's got one of those. Yeah. Everyone's got an uncle Will. That was my particular, but I used to argue with him when I was about 11, I think. Yeah. Right.

What would you say? Well, we would argue about, because I was aware at that time that there was a Conservative Party in the Labour Party and Conservative parties seemed to service rich people and working class people were serviced by labour. I'd worked that much out, but not really very much else. So I used to argue to him about those sorts of things. But being a trade unionist, I said, well, don't you think that you ought to think the Labour Party's better? Not Enoch Powell. I knew that much, but not really very much else. But I'm good at elasticating an argument and trying to hold my own. If

I can do that, I owe it to Uncle Will. Would you have political discussions with the band, with the selector? Oh, the original band, you didn't have to. I mean, we were all on the same page. We were all on the same page. I mean, there's absolutely no doubt about that. And were any members of the band, or for that matter, other people in other bands, who you were aware of them getting a bit frustrated, like, can't we just play music? Why does it always have to be political? Or was everyone on the...?

No, not everyone was. I think people have this very, very rosy idea of the Tuto movement as this sort of embracing umbrella of all these bands. I don't believe that anyone who was to do with it at the time, 1979, I can only speak for them, was racist. Obviously not. But in terms of talking about political things, certainly bands like Bad Manners or Madness just thought we should all bloody well shut up. And it would be much better if we did about those sorts of things. That this was good time music and everybody wanted to dance and have a good time.

Why are you banging on about this? I mean, that was basically the kind of thinking that there was. But it was a movement and I really bought into that movement. I really believed it. I still do. You know, it's like kind of the idea of Camelot, you know, for one shining moment. Yeah, yeah.

Sure. And that sends shivers up my spine, thinking for that one moment that it looked as though all the crap that has happened since was never going to happen. But here we are. Yeah, yeah. No, I agree with you.

It's so utopian and exciting and everything about it, the look of it, the black and white Czech motif, everything made sense. It was a totally integrated in every single sense of the word idea, music, people. It's so exciting. This is an advert for Squarespace. Everyone would like to have a website. Yes! But not everyone can build their own. No. But they can come right here to Squarespace where they can start a free trial

and play with all the templates. Type in a paragraph, pop in a pic, stick a video in there as well. Don't be a Wally, oh my golly, there's so many things that you can do. It's fun and easy too when you are working with Squarespace Can I check my analytics? Of course you flipping cam, and why not have a members area too?

Oh thanks, can I set up like a shop? Well we wouldn't be much cop if we didn't have the tools for you to do that easily Visit squarespace.com slash buxton. Play around, do a trial, it's free. And there's even a code that will save you 10% If you decide to buy a Squarespace website. What is the code? Oh sorry, yes the code is buxton.

8. Continue. Hey, welcome back Podcats. That was Pauline Black in a roomy room and once again I do apologize to her and to you for that poor sound quality but I hope it didn't interfere with your enjoyment of hearing her chat too much. And look, now I've come across my son, Frank, walking the other way across this farm track. We both set out for a walk at the same time. Frank would usually take Rosie for a walk in an afternoon but today I said no, I'm going to take Rosie because I'm doing my podcast intro and outro.

How are you, Frank? I'm okay. Yes, we've crossed paths. I'm going to take Rosie because I'm doing my podcast intro and outro. How are you Frank? I'm okay. Yes, we've crossed paths. I'm sorry. You'd rather me not come along. No, that's not true. I'm very happy to cross paths with you as you are my son. What are you listening to?

I am listening to Chico Boaque, who is the Brazilian guy. He's on the playlist that I gave you a while back, giving him a deeper dive than I gave him last time. Deep dive on Chico Buahe? Is it Buahe? I've no idea. What did you say? Buahe?

Buahe? But maybe it's Buahe. How are you spelling it? B-U-A-R-Q-U-E. B-U-A-R-Q-U-E. Barque. Barque. I would go for Barque. Okay. Let's Google it.

Um, oh Max, my brother calling now. It's all happening at the same time. Just decline the call. How do you decline the call? Just click the red bar. Okay, it's stopped. Sorry Uncle Dave, I'll call you right back. What are we typing in? Chico. Chico. Chico-boarque. It's just regular Chico. B-U-A-R.

This is good stuff, isn't it? Q-U-E. Q-U-E. Parque. I'm saying parque. Chico-boarque. Ah, I was right. You were right.

I was more right than you were. You were more right than I was. Chico-boarque. Yeah, all right. Don't gloat. Cool, well right than you were. You were more right than I was. Yeah, alright, don't gloat. Cool, well that's good to know. Just calm down. Don't say it again. I can't make it stop! There we go, we've both grown a little bit. See you back at the ranch.

See ya. I tell you what, I'll include a link to Frank's Spotify playlist that he was referring to in which he collected a lot of great Brazilian music I think it's all Brazilian Chico Boaque. Oh God it went off in my pocket. Just stop stop saying it anyway yeah I'll put that in the links today and you will find in the description of the podcast one link that says pics and related links or something like that and that'll take you to my website adam-butxton.co.uk and there you will find other links to all sorts of stuff. You can sign up for the

newsletter and you can navigate to my single pizza time. I got a notification from Apple Music the other day now Rosie is looking very nervous about the cannon that's up ahead but Rosie I don't think it's activated at the moment I really hope it's not we're passing a sonic cannon a gas-powered big gun that scares birds over this field let's run Rosie run run run run I really hope it doesn't go off because Rosie hates it and so do I go on it's called a scatter bird or something like that I haven't heard it Run, run, run. I really hope it doesn't go off because Rosie hates it and so do I. Go on, it's called a scatterbird or something like that. But I haven't heard it go off recently. So I'm hoping it's not gonna go off today.

Okay. I think we're okay. That is well stressful. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh yes, I got a notification from Apple Music, because I registered myself as an artist on Apple Music and Spotify and all these kind of platforms, before the release of my single. And I got this notification saying artist, Adam Buxton, you have received 61,000 plays this week or

something like that a big number or big for me anyway and I was thinking oh that's good numbers for pizza time and then I realized that Apple Music has included all the listens for tippy toes which is the song from sing to that has my character Klaus kick and clobber on it saying tippy toes tippy toes I can't see your tippy toes what do you mean you haven't heard tippy toes it's an absolute banger I should have mentioned it to loyal carna last week. I mean it makes baby shark look like a pathetic failure but it's got several million views on YouTube and does quite well on the streaming platforms. A little better than pizza time anyway. So yeah go and listen to pizza time and discover lots of other great things via my website

and the link in the description, which will also take you to a post for this week's podcast. You can see a picture of me and Pauline. And you will also get a link to the BBC iPlayer where you can watch the fantastic Rudy's Come Back documentary. All right, that's pretty much it for this week, I think. I've got to get back, get this uploaded. Later in the week I'm off to Salford to record my appearances on Richard Osman's House of Games. Quite a few friends and family members asking

me to bring them home. House of Games merch, salt and pepper shaker, just any merch really they'd be happy with and I've been saying yeah I'll do my best. You never know if you're on with some Brainiac and that's you toasted then your only hope is to endear yourself to the Brainiac and hope that they donate some of their merch out of pity. But yeah I've been studying maps finding out where places are. Timbuktu, I know where that is now, had no idea before. Do you know where Timbuktu is, doglegs? Just before Timbuktu 3. The future so bright I've got to wear shades. Deep cut. Well it's in Mali, West Africa. So fingers crossed that comes up. Although I'm putting out this podcast

before I do the recording so there's a chance I suppose that someone might hear it and ensure that there is no Timbuktu related question. Okay shush, thank you so much to Seamus Murphy Mitchell for his invaluable production support and additional editing on this technically challenging episode. Thank you so much to Helen Green for her beautiful artwork. Thanks to everyone at Acast for all their hard work, liaising with my sponsors.

But thanks most especially to you. I appreciate you coming back. May I lean in for a creepy hug? Come here, hey. How's it going? Good to see you. Until next time, please go carefully and for what it's worth, I love you. Byeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa She could walk in Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Like and subscribe Like and subscribe Like and subscribe Please like and subscribe Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up

Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile and a thumbs up Nice like a pant when me bum's up Give me like a smile on the button's up It's nice when the button's up When the light, when the button's up When the light, when the button's up When the light, when the button's up When the light, when the button's up When the light, when the button's up When the light, when the button's up

When the light, when the button's up When the light, when the button's up When the light, when the button's up When the light, when the button's up When the light, when the button's up When the light, when the button's up I'm going to be a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a

little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a little bit of a Thanks for watching!