Not for the want of trying but I failed to grow a substantial moustache this month and shall hasten to return all sponsership monies received post haste.
Adam hosted the YouTube Awards from Abbey Road. The whole evening was live-streamed and there's plenty of evidence at the AdamAndJoe.comfansite.
Film4 finally scheduled Attack the Block to air on the night the action was set (bonfire night). I'm still waiting for a theatrical venue to have to guts and foresight to do the same.
Attack the Block's scorer, Steven Price has made a beautiful, award worthy job for the Gravity soundtrack (and also The World's End, out on DVD & Blu-ray NOW!).
Gemma Davison met Adam and Cyriak at the Bradford Animation Festival.
There was a lot of chatter this month about Cornballs being cajouled into directing Star Trek III, having turned it down in May. Mr Pegg's word is in the film here and JJ Abrams approves of the notion but Joe's still not attached.
Way too many people moaned about Jack Whitehall pinching Adam's Baaaddad idea. The first ep was fun. It has it's moments and it's more than fifteen years since Nigel first made his appearance on the Adam and Joe Show. I think we're ready to survive a different format by now with out a twissy-fit. Who watches BBC3 anyway? (I do).
He also hosted the British Arrows (advertising industry award show).
The month wound down with Adam presenting the first of three BUG 40s at the BFI.
His special guest was the adorable Ian Pons Jewell . A young man called Steve Quinn was in the audience. Imagine how he must have felt when this popped up.
These were the last BUGs he'll preside over for a while as he's taking a break to concentrate on some stuff "of his own", as it were. I'm hoping a Christmas adblogpost might reveal a few more details but he's certainly worked very hard this year. He insists (well, mentioned in a tweet to Roo) that he won't be away for long.
Trivia: I could be wrong but I don't think Adam donned his lovely spectacles at this BUG which makes me wonder if he's been messing with lasers or sutin.
After a wonderfully successful, eight week run on Sky Atlantic HD Adam Buxton's BUG's first series* has finally ended and to sate any withdrawal sickness, I thought I'd do a little recappitation.
Episode One kicked of with the delightful intro song featuring a lovely monkey as Adam implored us to "stop looking and the monkey as it's time to start the show".
We saw the first of the familiarly fun folders from his desktop suitcase. He showed us the visual mnemonics from his travels to Los Angeles and Australia.
Cool Comment Guy popped up for the first time and we were told to "stop observing small kids eyes". Wine Prone Cowboy prompted Adam to do a lovely, cod, royalty-free reworking of Rhinestone Cowboy in front of his audience but the abiding meme memory from this episode will be the touching "my CONDOLENC".
Garth Jennings kicked off a weekly succession of bespoke BUG videos with his explosive film featuring Adam miming to Guitar Wolf's version of Summertime Blues. There was a cameo from Baaad Dad in there too and Sky made a little extra bit with Garth.
Episode Two suggested that Pluto and Manthea were watching the show. The suitcase that week showed us his Shittier Beatles folder with it's MPoo3 suggestions.
ApplePieIsGoodToEat had a special, cheeky pop up animation for his comment "Oh and dear yellow one, I feel the need to tell you your PANTS are spicy".
MISSGOSH got her famous "I hope this comment is being read out by Adam Buxton" dream realised, and on the telly this time.
We witnessed the misuse of Adam's "Skip this ad now > > >" gag but probably the most memorable Youtube interlude was Gil McRipley's Rifle Burs - "SWAG".
David Wilson gorgeously filthy video for Adam's Sushi Song aired that week and there's a behind-the-scenes film to go with this too.
We learned that Mr Gyllenhaal can provoke a comment of "Meh, with a side order of pfft" but more often some pork-based stabbing is the plat-du-jour. This is also the video for which we saw Adam's elaborate, visual stingy response to Etienne Marvelo's wildly absurd and pretentious comment.
At the start of Episode Three, Adam's folder revealed a photo of his local pub, complete with it's funny spelling.
We met the fella who wants to "marry Grimes. Marry her hard" and learned that Thom Yorke has turrets and looks like Jodie Foster. We also had the confusingly posed "Original? no! Devlhish! ? Maybe! A pleasure for ones eara? Surelly".
Instead of a bespoke BUG video, this week Adam dressed up in heels, gloves and tight black leggins to give us his literal rendition of Pull Up to the Bumper which I was disturbed to see live at the recording of the pilot show. I've not seen a man look so utterly comfortable in heels that high since Terence Stamp strutted the outback.
The suitcase for Episode Four revealed a short video featuring his daughter, Hope in an ad to promote holidays.
This was followed by the joyously depressing video for The Counting Song, directed by Cyriak with illustrations from Sarah Brown.
We were introduced to someone who knows native people, learned a new insult - "dickehad" and the emoticon representing Owen Wilson :~) followed by a disgruntled appearance from Jareth.
We learned that although a "chopped-up Amen break at 170bpm laid over square bass is prototypical D&B/Jungle" it can be mistaken - "it's breakcore, you fucknose", and we enjoy an appearance from the shouting poet, MrMrDSWoods including his sublime "TAKE THAT TO THE BANK YOU MUFFIN FACTORY".
Episode Five was the one which brought us "Thumbwhore", "Wot is BUK?" and "knock on the front door and ask for The Fighter".
We had brief appearance from Cool Comment Guy and a visual jingle for Commentary Digest.
Dougal Wilson's vision for Adam's classic "Poo Poo Party Pom Pom" was aired in this episode too and Sky have an enchanting Behind-the-Scenes film to go with.
Episode Six is the one with the intro song that sounds a bit like Louise's blissful Star Trek song. It had the Filthy Fridges folder, a pop-upset from Jareth, a comment that simply read "Bord?" and also the "Jesus Christ, I think I got a depression".
Episode Seven was the one where we were advised to "calm your tits". Adam showed us the contents of his "Shit Jennifer Aniston Films" folder and revealed that the folder for "Garage Band Jingles That I Haven't Used" was empty.
Adam made a fragrantly urban opening ditty for Episode Eight and unpacked his 'Previously Unseen Bobbles" folder showing what Bob Dylan's was actually typing while Joan Baez was strumming and warbling in the background.
Adam brought Radiohead's No Surprises video up to the comment reading plate and at the risk of peeving lovely Buxty by linking something with a tiny bit of a Joeness, one of the best runner-ups for the Adam and Joe Video Wars competition was this wonderful likeness of that same video.
Adam directed the final video of the series. The song, Amazing Music Video, is new. The video is everso amusing featuring Baaadad and Sif Agustsdottir with her top off, maybe.
The Admirals of Idiocy are returning for at least 12 weeks from the beginning of April and it's not just wishful thinking on the part of lovely James....a parchment has floated down from the castle ramparts.
Is this Adam doing the latest Wrigley's campaign? Was this what she meant?
Joe talked to Total Film about his fractional contribution to the creation of Tintin.
The BBC Comedy microsite has released the third instalment of Country Man.
Joe's little Attack The Block hobby has a website, a Twitter account and a Facebook page. The trailer is expected any day now so follow, like and sign in there for updates. Some promo stuff was shot here last month.
Adam is doing a gig this weekend at a really lovely venue in Islington. His two shows at the Leicester Comedy Festival got some lovely responses on Twitter and Squadron member, Simon grabbed him for a bit of signatory and forgery action. He was also available for amateur papping too.
Joe was spotted on the tube a couple of times last week which means he's not toning his body on his bicycle any more in the hopes that his gym ones might be used in a Twilight film but on the other hand he's not quite haughty enough to use a Hummer. Something tells me he has had quite an influence on some of the younger members of his ATB cast.
I'm sure you've all found Adam's latest YouTube upload. There's another Buxton shaped gem out there but in the interest of balance, I'm going to save that link until Joe's little film trailer pops out.
Don't forget that SFX Magazine is out on 9th March and it will hopefully contain Jon Hamblin's interview with Joe. Not to mention the Attack The Block edition of Little White Lies due in the shops next week too.
If I was a PC user, I'd find one of those pony, fist-shaking emoticons and ftp* it right into the webmastery turret of the Big British Castle.
They've completely revamped their interfaces over the last week or so and are behaving like a middle-aged woman trying to squeeze into those jeans that looked so good when she was 25. The main omission to the Adam and Joe page is in the gallery area but at the point of writing this, most of the stuff is still sitting on the server.
While I'm dissecting their page, I should say it now has one of those ludicrous alpha-numeric mumbo-jumbo addresses that doesn't so much trip off the tongue as dribble onto the floor like some weirdly named sweet from abroad that you thought would be good but actually had a strange aftertaste.
Furthermore, if it weren't for a hole full of idiots like me, you'd have to Google for the link because they are not showing up in the list of 6Music presenters at the moment. I suppose we should be encouraged that they have made a page for them at all and the artwork is double plus fun.
They've also linked this page in the tabs at the new Mixtape page and Collins and Herring have their own page at last. Richard doesn't have a castle email addy and his Twitter isn't listed but it's a start, isn't it?
I've been trawling the cached pages to gather and preserve links for as long as stuff is still stored on their servers. I saved a page last night which has subsequently gone from Google but happily, other search engines with cached pages are available.
The new format does still have a photo gallery but only seven sections have been retained so I'm listing the older links below.
The new video section points to a list of blog posts with 'video' tagged in them, similarly with the Song Wars link. Happily they've retained an area for the Video Wars which showcases A-Salt with a deadly Chris-p's wonderful Lego film for Jane's Brain and also gives a link to the runner-ups'. I still love to watch Stuart Lanceley's, by the way.
Their biography is in dire need of an update. Apparently, Joe is doing some other thing for Film4.....chortle. When will he finish writing that?
The contact page is only showing an address for Adam which sent me into a downward spiral of depression but I have to remind myself that they made this page, didn't they?
If you happen upon some of the tabbed links, you'll see a right-hand side bar that will hot you over to Adam and Garth's downloads but it's not in the top menu tabs.
They have finally removed Joe's Myspace link and replaced it with an IMDB clicker. They're still linking Adam's Blog and one of his YouTube channels. The lovely fansite is only linked on the Blog homepage now.
The tracklisting section has been tidying itself up nicely throughout the domain over the last few months and it's a really good resource these days.
My opening gambit was not intended as a complaint about the new website format as it's impossibly sexy. It was more an exasperated exhalation because it prompted a time-draining click around the endless nettosphere.
Black Squadron Have a look at members of the Black Squadron elite following their commands...
WARNING: SEVERAL LINKS ON THIS PAGE ARE OLD CACHED DATA AND WILL EVENTUALLY TAKE YOU DOWN A BLIND ALLEY FROM WHICH YOU MAY NEVER RETURN.
So I poodled around some other cached pages and it was like unpacking that box you brought with you when you moved home but never got around to opening. It's going to take a long time to go through it all as I stop to reminisce.
Things like the Guardian Webchat, Joe's Big Jaffa and this short animation.
If you're like me, you've been horribly frightened by a great big MALWARE WARNING shouting at you when you try to access the old Adam&Joe.co.uk website and whilst it looks rather old fashioned nowadays, it's got some tempting little nuggets. You can splash around a pool of cached pages if you go in through this little keyhole. There are all kinds of silly memories there, like a thingumy they did for the Might Boosh website.
In the early to mid-noughties, David Buxton used to keep Adam and Joe's net presence organised (sort of) with various incarnations. I think I'm right in saying all these are his: The Poo Pages, www.doctormacintosh.co.uk and latterly, Reliably Broken where much of the blind alley data you've been frustrating yourself with, now resides.
The Poo Pages has an entertaining piece from Adam about why there would never be a fourth series of the tv show.....erm.
Finally, a site that is very much alive and kicking but was brought into my memory vortex via one of David's old links is The Idler. It has the Cooking with Toothpaste Guide, list of Very Bad Things and Joe's breakdown of twenty years of Bounty bar ad campaigns.
Otherwhere around the web was a little bit in the trade mag Televisual about BUG and an addition to the Attack the Block IMDB entry about some video effects.
I know various people got a bit antsy about the current John Smith's ad featuring Peter Kay which reminded us of a Text The Nation submission and also the Graham Norton Show featuring the Lost Kawfay British accent tutorial woman.
By his own admission, Adam was sent that link to the silly accent lady and it may well have been doing the rounds. For my money, Adam's presentation of the material was in another stratosphere to Mr Norton's but it's usually the researchers that find this stuff and even if they knew what Adam had done with it, I still think it's fair game to put it on a tv show - it's a visual on YouTube, after all.
Life is too short to let this stuff get you down. Adam and Joe delight in recycling their own material and I hope they're chuffed when other people pick up on stuff they've used. If we weren't so invested in these idiotholes, we'd realise it's par for the course throughout the media.
Apropos of very little at all, this idiothole gathered a lifetime of experience and came up with the brilliant discovery that "Adams big mix tape" is an anagram of "Database Gimp Mix". Priceless, if it weren't for my OCD problem with the repetition of 'mix' and the potential insult contained therein.
Adam was showing this wonderful film at BUG this month and like a heavenly, timely meteorite, he plopped it all over us on the morning of The Great Launch
Other stuff has happened this week but the main thrust (if I may be so base on a Saturday night) of this post was to preserve a few dusty old corpses before they were interred forever.
Don't miss your chance to see Richard Herring's Sony Nominated show As It Occurs To Me at the Leicester Square Theatre.
Like a proud mother, I'm thrilled to see Adam so busy, filling our barren baskets with his bountiful fruits.
He impressed us with his YouTube pieces at Christmas, delighted us with his appearance on Miranda Hart's alternative review of the year with his Alone in the Shed segments. We will witness the fruits of his Spring 09 labours with The Persuasionists on BBC2 in a couple of weeks and now we have two stand-up dates in the calendar, and lots of loverly BUG shows.
South Bank, Waterloo - BUG on 21st January. Notting Hill/Bayswater - Popcorn on 22nd January. Shepherd's Bush - Knock2Bag on 27th January. South Bank, Waterloo - BUG on 28th January. Norwich - BUG on 3rd & 4th February. Leicester - Comedy Festival BUG on 10th & 11th February.
I've been tweeting this information but it's nice to gather it all together & put it here, I suppose. If he carries on like this, I'm going to have to install a wanky calendar module to this blog.
In a week where both the Black Squadron photos AND the podcast were made available in record time we had a few other nibblets of news, gently gathered here.
Since today may well be the last regular Black Squadron command, I shall be standing by with readied toast, eggs, water-based markers, bread, fruit, bacon, pans, lavvy paper, biscuits and my bin because if ever there was a time to combine all our training, it must surely be today.
A terrible thought from the Castle's DG but all manner of other exciting things could happen to Adam and Joe between now and 2012.
Mark Thompson implies that channels such as 6Music could be in firing line, along with BBC3 and BBC4.
Adam had a romantic break in Amsterdam with his wife. One would hope that all expenses were paid for by this gig at Eurobest. There should be some opening night photos sometime on the site.
The BUG website is looking much smarter these days and gives dates for the next BUGs in London and Norwich.
Edgar Wright attended the Royal Film Performance of The Lovely Bones, directed by Peter Jackson on Tuesday and I'd like to assume that Joe was there too. Do I get extra points for seeing it a full 24 hours before them?
In 'friend of the show' news, Garth Jennings has a Vampire Weekend promo on YouTube and Ben 'Sontum of Quolace' Mercer played a gig on Friday, attended by several Black Squadron/TweetSquadron members.
Paul O'Connor's made-up joke was sadly omitted from the podcast last month so I have immortalised it here.
As usual, many people favourited and tweeted various classic Adam and Joe moments from YouTube.
Always worth reminding everyone that the full original Adam and Joe Channel 4 shows can be found on 4OD but the YouTube snips are greatly enhanced by the comments.
Finally, with no real connection at all beyond Big Talk and a quote from Joe on Robert Popper's Timewaster book, I recommend the sweet pain induced by Robin Cooper this week.
I'm double posting in case anyone outside the UK was not able to view the latest videoblog entry because it was on a channel only available to UK ip's. The lovely Castle Keepers have allowed it onto their huge, glistening, bejewelled channel where the entire Commonwealth, Empire and many magical lands far beyond can also enjoy it.
FYI - The SixGroupSix channel has had more views but does not seem to accept comments. The BBC one takes comments but nobody seems to have much to say.
