Review of their 30-year celebration at the Royal Albert Hall

Before most of the internet existed, let alone social media, Adam Buxton and Joe Cornish were the OG content creators, shooting sketches and general shenanigans, first on Super-8 videos for their own entertainment, then landing their own cult Channel 4 show, which ran from 1996 to 2001.

They are keen to cement that pioneering place in history with this 30th anniversary retrospective, staged in the glorious setting of the Royal Albert Hall and recorded for a later release. Such grandeur is, however, an unlikely backdrop for a duo who famously worked with a DIY ethos, recording material in their bedroom or a set made to look very much like it.

The same unshowbizzy vibe comes across, at least initially, as low-effort amateurism. At the start, they shuffle on with little fanfare and admit Buxton’s laptop’s on the fritz so can’t provide the track they wanted to kick off with. One might expect a little more from a pricey gig at one of the world’s most prestigious music venues. Bet the Royal Philharmonic don’t have these problems.

Throughout the three-hour-with-interval show, the atmosphere remains more Comic-Con session than spectacle, but exudes the sort of easy chemistry you can only get from four decades of friendship. Such charm means the event works as a warm-hearted celebration of fandom – and a two-way one at that. Buxton and Cornish are giving their cult base the inside track that they seek but they are the supreme pop-culture consumers themselves.

Their cluttered set here recreates the Channel 4 show, a backdrop full of cut-out faces and other ephemera, dominated by a giant Jan Leeming. The smallest nod to the sense of occasion comes from their three-piece band named Pointy Finger, in a deep cut reference from one particular episode.

This live show sets up the late 1980s/early 1990s media ecology from which they emerged, newly free from the constraints of professionalism. Inspired by zine culture, Adam And Joe combined the ‘give-it-a-go’ spirit of shows like Get Stuffed, The Word and Network 7 with the nerdiness and production values of American public access TV, especially a show called Squirt TV, hosted by New York teenager Jake Fogelnest.

It had started when they were schoolmates with access to a camera – thanks to Adam’s dad’s job as a travel journalist – shooting endless footage of them dicking around as teenagers with their contemporary, Louis Theroux, plenty of which survives today. 

Mid-1990s Channel 4 programme Takeover TV, which invited public submissions, was the modest breakthrough, with Buxton quickly rising to presenter while Cornish was still harbouring aspirations to be a serious director – later achieved with the likes of Attack The Block and The Kid Who Would Be King. 

And they really cracked it when they started recreating movie scenes with toys which proved popular enough for them to land that C4 series. Cornish was lured back into the project but told Buxton he was willing to ‘work with you, not for you’. The lo-fi skits, ‘some innovative, some shoddy,’ by Buxton’s own admission, were to be their making.

As they prepped for the show – oddly commissioned from Channel 4’s ‘religion and features’ departments – they filmed all sorts of nonsense, including taping themselves watching TV in their Clapham flat. As if that could ever make a telly show. Their lip-syncing to adverts and other cultural memes is basically TikTok before TikTok, and their Quizzlestick spoof predates Mitchell & Webb’s similarly baffling Numberwang.

This show is a neat way of repackaging such great sketches – especially given the future release in whatever format – even if fans may already know them. 

The effort that went into some of the toy spoofs, especially Titanic, went above and beyond and stand as a testament to the deeper pleasures of real commitment that you could never recreate with an AI prompt. Plenty of great pun-laden scenes were included here, though the recreation of the Normandy landings for laughs in their Saving Private Ryan parody struck a slightly odd note on Remembrance Day in the venue that hosts the Royal British Legion’s commemorations. 

Holding up especially well are the People Place sketches, inspired by vacuous daytime TV and its love of fake urgency and phobia of dead air. And there’s an infectious jauntiness to songs such as His Name Is Bobby (about Mr De Niro), a Bob Hoskins-inspired Cockney knees-up and their showstopping football chant, untroubled by their complete ignorance of the sport.

And the final leg of the show served as a fitting (if over-long) tribute to Nigel Buxton, the show’s BaaadDad offering his take on topic such as gansta rap and clubbing on which a posh old white dude was hilariously ill-equipped to comment. But he gave it one hell of a go.

That spirit passed down from father to son, and even if this show couldn’t create the sense of occasion the venue demanded, the reminder of some of the duo’s finest work was still a welcome one.

Review date: 12 Nov 2026
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: Royal Albert Hall