ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Hey! Welcome back. You made it. Well done.

I’ve no idea why I didn’t write a book years ago. It’s so easy. Especially this kind of book. You just remember some funny things and a few sad things and write them down, then the editor (Jack Fogg) comes to your house after you’ve missed a few deadlines and says, ‘These lists of your favourite albums and films are great, but maybe you could flesh them out a bit?’ And that’s it.

Nevertheless, there were times during the process of putting this book together when I started to wonder if it would join my failed TV pilots in the ‘Didn’t Quite Happen’ bin. In those moments my special personality recipe of low self-esteem and high self-regard may have made me challenging to work with, be friends with, be related to and live with. I just checked with my wife and she’s saying ‘Nooo!’ in a rather sarcastic and unbecoming fashion.

Anyway, in the hope of maintaining some of my relationships a while longer, I should probably thank some people who have helped with this book, directly or indirectly.

Here we go …

Thanks to my mum, my brother and sister, who let me say what I wanted here, though I’m sure they could all tell you some very different stories about Dad, and about what I was like to grow up with. Thanks as well to Aunty Jessica, my Californian cousins and my in-laws Harry, Sophy, Marilyn and Edward.

Thanks to my kind and generous friends, especially those who pop up in this book one way or another: Joe, Annabel, Mark, Zivi, Louis, Nancy, Dan, Garth, Woz, Lottie, Jo, Chris, Patrick, Zac, Ben W., Alison, Guy, Chad, Tom H., Ben H., Miriam, Bill Muggs, Jonathan, Jane, Emily, Edgar, Simon, Maureen and every member of The Best Band in the World.

Thanks to those who have helped me make an actual living from my ludicrous mouthings over the years: Chiggy, Emily, Becca and all at PBJ, Séamus, Matt, Anneka and all at Acast, Fenton Bailey, Randy Barbato, Peter Grimsdale, Stephanie Calman, James Stirling, all at Sue Terry, Louise Stephens, David Knight and the BUG team.

Thanks to everyone at HarperCollins, especially Holly Kyte for her insightful copy-editing, Isabel Prodger for her publicity skills, Orlando Mowbray for his mastery of marketing (sorry I came off Twitter just before the book came out, Orlando), Fionnuala Barrett for audio-book production, Terence Caven for book layout and Simeon Greenaway for cover design.

Special thanks to my editor Jack Fogg, who turned the torture into genuine fun.

Thanks to Luke Drozd for his magnificent posters and book plates.

Thanks to Helen Green for creating the artwork and the illustrations for this book with typical speed and professionalism. Helen draws the way I always wished I could draw. She draws Bowie the way I feel about him.

Thanks to the people that keep my fortunate life on the rails: Janice, Charlotte, Becca, Jonathan, Felicity and Ross. Thanks to great teachers everywhere, especially Mr Kendrick, Mr Field, Ms Miller, Mr Stewart and Mr Benenson. Thanks to doctors and nurses, especially in the NHS. Thanks to smiley train conductors, rubbish collectors, good cops, silly comedians, scientists working to save the planet … shit, this list is getting out of hand. OK, I’ll wrap it up.

I hope that, despite my carping, my gratitude to my dad has come across. And Zavid, too, of course. Also buried inside this book is my love for my children, Rosie and my wife, without whom none of this would mean anything. Sitting around and laughing with you all is the happiest I get.

Right, that’s enough of that.

I sometimes read books like this and think, ‘How could they have possibly remembered all that stuff? Are they just making it up?’ In my case I used a combination of diaries, videos and voice notes to recall specific details, though of course I probably got some things wrong or misremembered in the course of trying to make sense of certain incidents. The thing that proved almost magically effective when it came to unlocking many of the memories in here was music. I found that if I looked back at the UK charts for any given period in the Eighties, the songs would bring back a flood of precise details about what I was doing at the time.

For playlists containing a lot of the music mentioned in this book visit Spotify and search for therealadambuxton.

There are also videos and other bits and pieces on my website: adam-buxton.co.uk and on Joe’s Instagram: mrjoecornish.

OK, now I really am going. Thanks. Bye.

Adam Buxton, March 2020