BOOK REVIEW: I Love You, Byeee by Adam Buxton

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in July 2025.

I Love You, Byeee, Adam Buxton, out now, Mudlark, £18.73

When Adam Buxton interviewed Paul Weller live on BBC Radio 2 in 2010, he hit upon the brilliant idea of singing, Grease-style, "Paul Weller, Weller, Weller, ooh! Tell me more! Tell me more!" to his guest's face. The notoriously truculent Modfather was not amused and the rest of the interview continued under a cloud of extreme awkwardness.

This is typical of the anecdotes you'll find in I Love You, Byeee, the second enjoyable volume of Buxton's memoir, in which the genial comedian and podcaster presents a litany of blunders for our amusement.

His almost constant self-deprecation would be wearing were it not for the fact that Buckles - as he's affectionately known to his large cult fan-base - is a self-evidently genuine, thoughtful and naturally funny man who's also justifiably proud of the work he created with his 'comedy wife' Joe Cornish.

The detailed chapters on the making of their inventive low-budget DIY comedy opus The Adam and Joe Show are catnip for comedy nerds. A pair of old schoolfriends steeped in pop culture and silly creativity, they were given carte blanche by Channel 4 to make the show they wanted to make.

The acutely self-aware Buxton admits that being privately-educated, well-spoken white men gave them an automatic head-start. He also reveals that working with Cornish sometimes put a strain on their friendship. Both insecure and competitive - Buxton secretly worried that Cornish was more talented than him - the accounts of their occasional 'wobbly voiced' arguments will resonate with anyone who hates confrontation. But they love each other, clearly.

Buxton also writes movingly about his mother, who passed away in 2020; the book, for all its mirth and nonsense, is essentially a sincere tribute to her.

Celebrity memoirs are often mired in hilarious hubris, but Buxton - maverick subversive that he is - has gone in the opposite direction. His memoirs are charming and endearingly honest.

BOOK REVIEW: Bob Dylan: Jewish Roots, American Soil by Harry Freedman

This article was originally published in The Big Issue in July 2025.

Bob Dylan: Jewish Roots, American Soil, Harry Freedman, out now, Bloomsbury Continuum, £15.99

No cliche is left unturned in Bob Dylan: Jewish Roots, American Soil, a workmanlike and rather pointless retelling of Robert Zimmerman's journey from Hibbing, Minnesota to global superstardom in the mid-1960s.

Author and Jewish cultural historian Harry Freedman attempts to reframe this extremely well-worn tale through the prism of Dylan's Jewishness, and the important role it played in his early life and work. An interesting angle in theory, but as Freedman concedes - practically from page one - it doesn't bear much scrutiny. So why write a book about it?

Dylan isn't ashamed of his Jewish identity, it just isn't something he's ever really thought about. It neither interests nor defines him. That may or may not be true, I'm none the wiser after reading the book, but it's effectively what Freedman tells us whenever he remembers to return to his ostensible theme.

What we end up with is a passable piece of sociopolitical post-war history - Freedman is quite good on contextualising detail - peppered with some cursory hand-me-down analysis of Dylan's work.

Freedman's prose is often clunky, repetitious and rife with vague supposition. He dutifully hits every familiar narrative beat - voice of a generation, going electric, Newport '65, 'Judas!' etc. - while adding no fresh insight.

For Dylan completists, this is just another book to add to the pile. For anyone who's recently discovered him via James Mangold's film A Complete Unknown - and that would appear to be the target audience - it will at least fill in some gaps. But other, better Dylan books are available.