The Netmums Podcast - S8 Ep3: James and Clair Buckley on their chaotic but highly watchable home life

Episode Date: October 4, 2022

James and Clair Buckley chat about their YouTube hit 'At Home With The Buckleys', how on earth they've been allowed to write a book and James's take on his Inbetweeners stint. And if that wasn't enough, there's even some top tips on how to BBQ like a pro! All on the latest episode of The Netmums Podcast with Wendy Golledge and Jennifer Howze.  At Home With The Buckleys - Scummy stories and misadventures from family life by James and Clair Buckley - Released 29th September 2022.

This episode is sponsored by Aldi. Life with a newborn is amazing, but why does no one tell you how many nappies they go through? That's why finding nappies that fit, are gentle against your baby's skin, and don't break the bank is so important. Sign up on Netmums and you'll receive a voucher to claim one full-size pack of Aldi Mamiya newborn nappies, totally free. Sounds good to us. Now on with the show. You're listening to the Netmums podcast with me, Wendy Gollage. And me, Jennifer Howes. On this week's show. Us two and the boys, we've just always been this little unit. We really enjoy spending time together. We don't really like being apart from each other.

But before all of that... Hello, hello, lovely people. Welcome back to another episode. Now, today, it's a sad time for Jen. I'm introducing Jen because Jen is emosh, very emotional. Jen, over to you. Yes, I am very emosh. My daughter goes to university this week. And I thought I would be quite jolly about having all this free time where I wasn't having to basically clean the kitchen and pick up her shoes and drive her places. But yeah, it's kind of bearing down on me and I'm feeling, I'm feeling very emotional and a little bit, you know, up in the air about it. And it's making me emotional.

And my daughter's only 11. The thought of them going. I will say check in with me next week where I may be, you know, larking about with, you know, next time you see me, I'll have like a martini glass and be like woohoo she'll be free well I'm gonna let you introduce our lovely guests today because I think they're a little bit they're not quite at the leaving for uni stage yet but they might wish they were yes we are delighted to have with us today James and Claire Buckley

as many of you may know they are creators of the popular YouTube channel At Home with the Buckleys and now authors of a brand new book, At Home with the Buckleys, Scummy Stories and Misadventures from Modern Family Life. That's out on the 29th of September as a hardback, audiobook and an e-book. Now James of course was in the iconic series The Inbetweeners and two Inbetweeners movies, the first of which set the record for the biggest opening weekend for comedy film, both of which I watched with my fist in my mouth, remembering my misadventures. And since then, he's worked on a host of other acting projects and been nominated for a BAFTA, don't you know? And Claire is an actor, editor, former model, writer of horror stories, and of course, a mum. They've got two boys, Harrison and Jude, and a dog named Paisley. And I want to know what sort of dog it is. So ladies and gentlemen,

welcome James and Claire. Hello. Hi guys. What an intro. That was a great one. I know, difficult. I sort of just want to leave it there. I don't want to ruin it. Thanks. Leave on a high. Now, there's something very earthy about you two on your YouTube channel. It's pretty no holds barred.

James cutting the glass, James talking about anal fissures. You know, it's pretty real. Why is it so important to you guys to show parenting warts and all to your audience? I'm not sure it's something that's important. I don't even think it was on purpose. No. I think it's just, I think people appreciate genuine,

sort of genuine people, especially on platforms like youtube where it's uh it's a views based economy sort of thing where you have to what's the word clickbait things like that which we're not very we're not particularly guilty of that i think we like to we like to um poke fun and uh and showcase the stuff that everybody's getting up to in their lives and why it's funny. Yeah, that's the main thing. It's just funny, isn't it? I think everything about parenting is funny in honesty. It's got to be funny or you cry.

That's the theory. Yeah, that's one thing I really like about it is it does feel a bit like hanging out at y'all's house you know you're around it's like oh you know marinating steaks or chatting or calling out to each other while chores are happening it's just like a really great vibe yeah I like to think that um people understand that is, whether or not we had a camera on at that point, that's what we'd be doing with our lives. I think that's what people would enjoy about it and appreciate. They can tell that we're not sort of playing up

or being unnatural in any way. Yeah. What made you decide to do it? Well, yeah, I i mean we genuinely we started it just before lockdown really kicked in and james had been on youtube before he's got a gaming channel that he had been enjoying doing so he had sort of had a little taste of the YouTube world and, you know, you enjoyed sort of the behind-the-scenes stuff of it as well, the editing and all that sort of stuff. And it was just something that we very casually talked about for, like, one night.

I wanted to do more vlogging content, but I knew that the humour and the fun would come out of having Claire involved as well, having the two of us. And because I quite enjoy sort of winding Claire up and getting on her nerves a little bit, I enjoy her reaction. And I thought other people would as well. That's just a loving husband. I know, yeah. I enjoy winding up I'm just going to share a few million people me winding up as well why not we genuinely spent very little time talking about it even less time thinking about it or planning it yeah I said let's do it there's nothing left to

lose I had um you know COVID well that hit. There's nothing left to lose. Well, that was it. That was what was in my head. COVID had just hit and the whole of my diary for a year just went blank. And I was like, oh, OK. So, yeah, I suppose I'll just sit here now for the next year. And so I wanted to do something. And we, you know, we both feel like we're creative people and we like to make things so it just seemed like a good idea to pass the time and now it's sort of gone up again and it's become a little thing in our lives that we that we really enjoy and are getting sort of these strange opportunities like writing a book and stuff like that which is nonsense I mean I know you always hear people say oh they'll let anyone write a book when they but it's it's true

we've confirmed it we've confirmed that saying they will let anyone write a book and we've done it so yeah before we get on to the book which we want to talk about some of the bits in that i've got a very important question how do you keep your house so clean with two kids it's all about the camera it's a camera trick it really it genuinely is we try to turn this camera this computer around right now there's a yeah it's a mess big old mess left over from the carnage of the morning of getting the children at disco it's all there and that's why you only ever see the living room in the kitchen yeah we've um because i've kind of mastered those two but it's there's actually a sort of ongoing joke on our youtube channel with um the people who watch it the utility room is like a no-go area and sometimes sometimes i'll

accidentally leave the door open and everybody in the comments is like, oh, we saw you're washing and you're rubbish piled up. Excellent. Excellent. So going on to the book, you talk a lot about music. Music is a big part of your life, how important it is to you both. You share your Desert Island discs. I love that bit and how your entire life could be chalked up to the Beatles. Your kids are named Harrison and Jude and Claire. I want to know a little bit more about this Beatles tattoo you had as a girl. Yeah. Yes. I can imagine. Um, as, as you grow older and after having had two kids might be interesting. How does music play a part

in kind of daily family life it's huge it's constant I've just taken the boys to school and as soon as I sat in the car put the car in reverse started to creep back out the driveway and then it's just oh dad can we put the Beatles on put it back in park go on my phone search for the Beatles so that adds another two minutes to you know it's like in the mornings but every second counts but they've got to have the the Beatles on before you know before they leave for school that day and um yeah it is it's just constant we've always got music playing and we all seem to enjoy the same bands and not only that like the boys are also fascinated by the Beatles I'm not sure they had much choice

and it's really great that they got on board with it because it would have been would have been awful if they didn't like I know it was really difficult yeah but they love watching YouTube videos and documentaries about not just the music, but about the way they went about recording and the rumours and the fights. Harrison especially has just got this knowledge of, encyclopaedic knowledge of the Beatles. Me and James, we've always loved the beatles even you know before we got together it was one of the things that we spoke about constantly and harrison's blowing my mind because i never thought it would be gospel but he knows more than we do because he's just he just spends

all of his time like jim says, watching stuff, reading stuff. Playing stuff. Playing. They're both learning. Judd's learning how to play the bass. Harrison's learning guitar. They both play the drums. It's just. Christ, two sons who play the drums.

That's bold. Because it's not quite music at the beginning, is it? It's gorgeous noise. No, it's not. It's not music at the beginning, is it? It's not. It's not music at the beginning, no. I've got a daughter learning to play the piano and that's bad enough. And they start violin at school in year six. Lovely. That's a difficult one to get on board with.

Isn't it the cat with the rocking chair? Isn't that how it starts out? We haven't started yet. I'll report back. What about this tattoo? Well, I was a ton dating and I said, right, well, I'm going to get a tattoo just because that's what I thought you should do. So it's a working class tradition.

We've both subscribed to. And I didn't spend very long thinking about what I wanted. I knew straight away it's got to be something to do with the Beatles. If I had maybe thought it through a little bit more and maybe put a little bit of time and effort into what it might be, it maybe would have lasted a bit longer. But I just went for the Beatles um their you know their logo they're just the actual writing and I just got it right on my

stomach not thinking about like you say oh maybe I'll have children and it might not look as great no just went for it loved it was so proud of it. And then, yeah, two babies later, it was a little bit wobblier than it was when it was first done. Sort of went a bit like that. So I ended up having to get it covered up. There's a lot of things that are a little bit wobblier, two babies later. That's very true.

Not for the gentleman among us, might we add. No, I'm wobbling. Oh, that's weird because he did get wobblier as well. I'm wobbly. Sympathy wobbles. Yeah, I'm just, you know, it's unity, isn't it? So Claire, I am also a mum whose husband is away for work quite a lot. This month it's Nepal, which is galling to say the least.

And I feel like I often get left holding the baby. Do you, how do you juggle that kind of being a parent, James is away, you've got a super popular YouTube channel, two kids, a dog, a utility room to clean. How do you do that well recently he hasn't been away which I don't know if it's better or worse to be honest because now I've got to tidy up after him as well but back in the day when he was you know see what's going on back in the day when um the boys were actually really small James was working constantly and he traveled a lot and sometimes it was it definitely was hard and you know you would

have those little moments where well for me anyway it would just I would sort of sit and think oh is this it is this I'm just changing nappies and cleaning the bottles and waking up and doing it again. And the house is always a mess, no matter how hard I clean it. But on the other hand, I genuinely felt really lucky to be able to be at home with them and never miss a thing. You know, sometimes we would FaceTime James, wherever he might be at that point. And he would sort of feel like he'd missed a couple of little things or you know a little milestone here and there which I wouldn't have gave up for the world so it depends how you look at it because I feel like James had the harder

job where he would be away and he would miss those things now obviously the boys are older and you know they're at school and me and James are doing this this thing together it's it's a little bit easier for me to be busier you know doing the book and stuff this is all really new to me and you know I'm loving it it's so much fun but I still have that sort of thing where I'm like oh Harrison's got you know a school assembly and you cannot book anything in that because I you know I need to be there so for me yes it was hard at times of course it was but I felt really lucky to be able to do it and I've just I don't really like being away from them anyway so I loved it the school you just said that about the school admin though the school admin is real oh yeah there's a lot

to keep up with it's the cause of the most rows in my house school admin because I do it but I get really annoyed about it I know well now I'm handing over all my school admin to my actual child so she's got to do all her own admin so we'll see how that works yeah let's let us know if the handover actually happens right or maybe then you could try that with Harrison and Jude like right now outsource it feels more so these days than than when i was growing up that you are you really are signing up for life like as soon as i left school it was like right get a job because that's it yeah yeah you know we've done our bit and i was like okay but i can't i don't think the kids are ever going to leave the house when they get like they'll be home 30, they'll be kind of just like, oh, I'm between

flats, Dad, can I just come back for a bit? And I'll say, yes, of course you can. You don't have to actually leave if you don't want to. No matter what stage of parenting you're at, from pregnancy through to the toddler years, we all need a little help. And Aldi's on hand with advice and support

every step of the way. Head to the Bump, Birth and Beyond Hub under New Parents on netmums.com for a whole host of useful information from tried and tested birth tips to bedtime routines for babies. And while you're there, make sure you sign up for your free pack of Aldi Mammy and Newborn Nappies. It takes less than 30 seconds. We've timed it, by the way. And you'll get a voucher for a free full-size pack. Now, back to the show. Now, the book's full of all these great combination of things, the recipes for cocktails, how to grill steaks. I'm from Texas, so I particularly love all your marinade bits, you know, discussion about your

childhood and early years. But you have this bit that talks about yes days where you say yes to things that for the kids that you usually say no to. Have you ever said yes to something that you really regretted saying yes to? I mean, we mainly keep a yes day in the arsenal, in bag there for instance if we were planning to do something and something happens or something comes up and the kids are disappointed and I mean that year when Christmas got cancelled yeah COVID and stuff like that right okay we had a few yes days let's have a yes day that's what do you want to do we'll go and do it and you know what do you want to eat what do you want to eat you know that's always that's where it usually starts and if one of you cookie for

breakfast yes sure if one of you wants mcdonald's and the other one wants dominoes then we'll make two different orders and we'll you know yeah they don't really take the mick that much do they i think they understand i i just think they're simple boys aren't they they don't really and i think this is what kids might discover is that they don't really want that much they may think they do but if you say to them all right what do you want we'll do anything it'll be can i have a cookie for breakfast i'm not sure see i think i'd get can i have that stranger things lego which is 500 quid that'd be the problem i'd get us all the lego sets in all the world let me just say there is yes day limitations ah they can't be they can't yeah there's gotta be a line there's no 500 quid present they can't bankrupt crazy. Yeah, there's got to be a line. There's no 500 quid present. They can't bankrupt us on Lego.

Cookies. Fine. Lego. Yeah. Do you ever have yes days with each other? I'd like to. I'd like a yes day. Oh, no.

I'd like a yes day. Yeah. I think that would be a lot of fun. I think you've just really screwed claire here your yesterday would be boring it would be can you leave me alone yeah stuff like that can you leave me alone yeah all right i love it when i find out something a little bit random about guests and claire oh no my random thing about you is that you write horror stories. And James, you've talked about liking being scared. So what I want to know is this.

Claire, what's the most horrific thing about James? And James, what's the scariest thing about Claire? Horrific. Define horrific. Something about that man next to you that horrifies you. He's anal Fisher right now. He is. That would... That's quite terrifying, especially with him

trying to get me to look at it. That would be banned from cinemas. That would horrify anybody in truth. What's scariest about Claire? Just her whole thing that she's got going on.

Expand! She's got going on. Expand. She's got a sort of Joe Pesci, Goodfellas thing that she's always had, where it's sort of, she's quite small and petite, Claire, but she's got a menacing look when she wants, and she can make you feel really uncomfortable. You don't know whether she's joking a menacing look when she wants and she can make you feel really uncomfortable you don't know whether she's joking or not and she does that thing naturally like when joe pesci is going what funny funny how you said it how am i funny funny like a clown do i amuse you is that what i do i'm only joking don't worry about it and you go oh yeah good one good one claire

she's got that she's got that. She's got that. She's got that in her bag. Yeah, she can switch that on every now and again. It keeps you on your toes. Like, Claire is obsessed with true crime and serial killers and things like this, and she says things to me like, I'd be able to get away with it. You heard it here first, ladies and gentlemen.

I know, yeah, you're not so out of me. So if anything happens to me, if anything happens to me if anything happens to me don't do that because my god god if you like fell down the stairs or something they'd go through your internet search history and it would be acid in the bath how do you dissolve a body and things like that not not in the bath no that would be an amazing youtube channel though, James, after your death. Yeah. Well, I might be able to enjoy it, of course.

So the plan. Being a couple, you got married soon after meeting. You had your first child quite young. You lived together, worked together, now written a book together. When will you be heartily sick of one another or will that never happen? has it already happened oh we're already sick of each other yeah that's why the youtube channel is so funny but we're mates we're friends aren't we we're mates and you know i don't think you ever really like your friends no we're just uh that all all of us uh us two and the boys, we've just always been this little unit. We really enjoy spending time together.

We don't really like being apart from each other. And we don't really like anyone else. We are just this little unit. I think what you said there is quite important actually because i do feel like me and james are friends like yes he's my husband and you know all that stuff but he's genuinely like my mate he's like my pal so you know because you can sort of compartmentalize stuff especially working together where there's the youtube stuff obviously we were working together on the book for a while and then there's

parenting and then there's being married and so you can you can sort of put them into different categories but as long as you sort of make time for each individual thing it's it's it's usually all right now you know he gets on my nerves constantly but that's as a husband so you know on a friday night when we sit down and we want to pick a movie and get a takeaway and you know catch up and be stupid that's when we're mates and that's when we genuinely can sit down and really make each other laugh. So when I'm getting on your nerves as a husband, that's different to when I'm getting on your nerves as a colleague? Yes. Right, okay.

Just making sure. Yes, because you are quite a terrible colleague as well. But it doesn't double up. You don't get doubly angry with me. Depends. It depends how funny you are that day. Because that's the one thing that James can do he can get out of it by making me laugh which is annoying because you never I never want to laugh

now I just want to talk to you a little bit about the in-betweeners but in relation to our kids because I'm the generation that watched it as I've said with my fist in my mouth, partly because I was like, oh Christ, I remember that happening. I remember doing that. And watching it as a grown up is all well and good. You watch it, you laugh. And then you think, oh my goodness me, I'm going to have a teenage daughter in a year. Do you kind of like look at the boys as a boy from the in-betweeners and think holy hell this is just coming my way I don't really think about the in-betweeners that much and I didn't when I was doing it and uh I still don't now and that's not because is that trauma therapy is that just it is a little bit it's gonna you know in 20 years time or something, there might be, I might have to go and have some therapy sessions to talk about because it has been all suppressed.

Like it really has, even when, especially when I was doing it, the stuff I was saying and the way I was behaving, if I, if I thought about it for a second, I maybe wouldn't have been able to have performed it with the confidence and the oomph that it needed to sell it. There's a scene where my character, Jay, is talking to an old lady on the seaside and he asks something specific of her. It's a sexual act. We're all grown-ups here, Claire. Stop laughing.

And the reality is that's funny on television that's really funny it's like oh god what an outrageous thing to happen isn't that weird on television the reality was was that I was stood here there was an old lady in front of me and I was saying these disgusting things to her so if you start to think about it that way you can't overthink it no so i i've never really thought about it all i know is that the boys i will never officially they don't ever do that oh i will never officially give them my blessing to watch the in-betweeners i can't i can't imagine anyone's going to come out of that unscathed I know I was saying it's almost impossible for me to be embarrassed

I think that's the only thing I think that's the thing is the boys watching the in-betweeners so yeah they'll never be able to watch it and hopefully we won't be able to talk about it they so well well if they do I don't want to know well I'm going to let my girls watch it as a lesson

in what teenage boys are actually like. I think that's fair enough, yeah. I think it's like it should be on the curriculum as part of a girl's education. Yeah. Over to you, Jen. Let's stop embarrassing poor James. I'm happy to move on to the classic Buckley marinade.

She's back on stakes. It's the Tex marinade. She's back on steaks. It's the Texan. I'm back on steaks, I know. You all seem to have an inordinate number of grills, barbecue grills at your home. How many is that actually? Well, you're in England, Jen. They're not grills, they're barbecues.

I know, but I said barbecue grill because I tried to cover both for our people here and in the States. Well, it's obviously very American influenced anyway, my cooking. I've got five barbecues. But it's four more than you need, isn't it? One of them's a pellet smoker. One of them's a wood smoker. And there's three that are grills at different sizes.

But it is American influenced. I've been really lucky that i've had i've had the barbecue in austin um a handful of times now where'd you go in rudy's yeah which uh it's just absolutely amazing should we go honestly he did send me pictures and i was like that looks good it is brilliant and that's what i try and fail to recreate at home. It is becoming more popular now. There are barbecue restaurants popping up, that sort of American-influenced pulled pork and stuff like this.

But it's not the same as over there in the States. I think it will be eventually. But obviously there's, you know, hundreds of years of history of barbecuing in America that we need to catch up on. It's weird that you know that. Well, it's true. It's amazing. It's incredible.

It's an amazing skill. I want you to see Claire's face, listeners. It's hysterical. She's just like, ugh. Oh, I'm just so. And the problem is he rarely gets it right. And if any listeners have watched our YouTube channel, they'll know exactly the face I'm making because he gets so excited

and he makes all these plans for barbecues and he always burns it or undercooks it. Or, I mean, there's a rare occasion where he does manage it, but it's just so much hassle. And by eight o'clock at night, everybody's starving because nobody's had anything to eat. That is the barbecue way though, isn't it?

Yeah, well, that's what I'm learning. Yeah, the man heads out with, you know, a plate of raw meat. And it somehow comes back raw. It's really weird. Sometimes it does, yeah. It's amazing. So other than a fight about a barbecue what is next for the Buckleys I think what's next for the Buckleys is that we were allowed to write a book

from a publisher got in touch with us said you fancy writing a book we thought that no fault of our own we thought that would be fun but now we actually feel quite guilty because the publishers are so nice to let us write this book we enjoyed doing it so we've we've obviously got a responsibility to try and get people to buy it and i think that's um because it generally doesn't really make much difference to us whether people buy it or not but we want people to buy it of course but we've we've done we've done the fun bit which was making it yeah um so we do but. Yeah. So we do want people to buy it. And I think we'll be, obviously, the lead up to Christmas will be us popping up in people's lives saying,

hey, we've got a book, do you fancy buying it? Oh, God, which is just crazy. So I think that's what's going to take us up until Christmas. And I just don't think we're made for it, me and James. No, we're not good at this, are we? We'll find something that we are good at, I reckon. We keep trying stuff. Just keep plugging away, you guys. You'll eventually hit upon it.

Then it'll be Christmas. And then it'll be Yes Day. Every family knows how that goes down. They're not relaxing times of the year. No. Used to be great. I remember being a kid oh i love it absolutely brilliant but there's a lot of organizing that doesn't make any difference to you

yeah but i have to hear you i help out come on well we're very much looking forward to oh you, you shouldn't have filled that silence, Jen. I was waiting for how long that silence was going to last. Can we wrap this up, please? Yeah, let's wrap this up before divorce is what's next for the Buckleys. No, no, no, there's no divorce. I've told her this before. She doesn't get out of this that easy.

She's not getting out of this. She's not walking away from this. You're in, mate. You are in. Oh, guys, thank you so much. It has been a pleasure and a hoot. Thank you. Thank you, guys.

Thank you for having us. It was so much fun. Thank you. Enjoy the rest of your day. Don't leave and have a row, please. We'll try not to. No, we won't. Take care.

Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.