I ask, finally, what his father would have made of Ramble Book. “He would have thought it was, as he said about many of my efforts, pretty rubbishy.” He is still not sure whether he should have been so honest; it was certainly not his father’s way. “He thought that, if you just keep that upper lip stiff, then you’ll be surprised by how much you can cope with. There’s some truth to that but what won out for me was a sense that it is valuable to talk about difficult things,” says Buxton. “I’d rather be talking than not.” Has his father’s obsession with money rubbed off on him? “No, the reverse is probably true: I don’t think about money enough. I’ve never really wanted to be rich, that’s never, ever been a motivating factor for me at all. I felt sorry for my dad and although I was very grateful to him for the sacrifices he made, which meant I met so many people that were important to me. I resent… I thought he gave up too much. And I would rather have had him around. I mean, I think I would? Maybe I wouldn’t have got a book out of it.” And hurrah for this book. An amazing project that must have added several grey hairs to the skulls of all concerned. Galactic Ramble a fascinating book and, unlike some reference publications, one that, I very much fear, I’ll have to read from cover to cover. See you in a year or two then. Well, it doesn’t much matter. But that’s why we make things and organise things, isn’t it? Otherwise, of course it’s all meaningless.” At the age of 17, after a childhood in a foster family followed by six years in care homes, Norman Greenwood was given his birth certificate. He learns that his real name was not Norman. It was Lemn Sissay. He was British and Ethiopian. And he finds out that his mother has been pleading for his safe return to her ever since his birth.

Recently I watched an Adam and Joe show on the 4Player and was surprised that his dad appeared on the show. I mean, his dad must have been alright to have been willing to be on his son’s comedy TV show playing a posh, grumpy old man doing unlikely things for the audience’s amusement. He plays me – with delight – a new jingle he’s been working on. It’s about Covid-19 and contains the lyric “I have to wear a mask because IIIIIII am toxic/ Terrible things are spilling out of me…” When he played it to his eldest son, Natty, he told him it could be funnier. “And I had to resist the temptation to say, ‘You don’t know anything! Play me some of your funny jingles, 18-year-old!’ I didn’t say that, I just said, ‘Yeah, you’re probably right…’” Nigel Buxton is portrayed as an irascible but lovable figure during Adam’s childhood, who becomes more irascible and less lovable as the years go by.The confluence of the Delaware River and Neshaminy Creek, in Croydon, Pennsylvania. Photograph: Jana Shea/Alamy Buxton’s emotional openness is surely partly a reaction against his father; despite being sent to boarding school when he was nine, I have rarely met a man less afraid to show his vulnerabilities. Another reaction against his father is Buxton’s marriage. He and Sarah have been married for 19 years, after meeting through another school friend. “She looked like Sean Young in Blade Runner, and we were both a little oversensitive, so we bonded. Also, she’s tall. Joe’s tall, Louis’s tall, I do seem to be attracted to tall people because I’m short.” It was Sarah who forced him to look at how harsh his father could be to his mother. “At first I was defensive, but then I understood that she just doesn’t want me to turn out like that,” Buxton says.

You were an early adopter of podcasting. Do you get fed up with all these Johnny-come-lately copycats? We are talking in the flat attached to Buxton’s recording studio, which is filled with his father’s furniture. Nigel died in 2015, several months after he came to live with Buxton and his family. Something of a hoarder, his oldest son, who “definitely shares that tendency”, can’t bear to throw away his father’s things. So, on a lovely summer’s day, the two of us sit in what is undeniably an old person’s flat, my feet on a needlepoint footrest. Behind Buxton is a bookcase filled with his father’s books. All around us are photos of Nigel. “I thought, well, this could be a cool place for my children to hang out,” he says, but then adds, “I’m worried it’s slightly mad that I’m building this weird museum in here.” Our interview has very much turned into a ramble chat. When I first arrived at his house, I worried that Buxton was weighed down by the past. But now it feels more that he simply surrounds himself with happy memories; he loved his parents, he loves his friends – why shouldn’t he keep mementoes from them? Yes,” replied Pa softly before continuing, as if to himself, “Occasionally, I feel that I’m absolutely irrelevant.” As soon as I began to read, the moment felt over-burdened with significance. I tried my best to give the audiobook performance of a lifetime, but within a few lines I stumbled on some nautical jargon, and when I mispronounced the name “Maturin” as “Maturing”, Dad waved his hand emphatically for me to stop. I apologised and asked if he wanted me to continue. Feebly, he reached across and pushed the book out of my hands. I’d failed the audition for my own Moving Moment With Dying Dad scene but, I reminded myself, he’d kissed my hand. That wasn’t nothing.My chest elevator dropped a few floors. I had been so focused on Dad’s physical deterioration, I hadn’t considered what might be happening to his mind. Imagining George Washington’s crossing of the Delaware, he delivers a lesson on how such rivers came to be named. Names affixed to bodies of water by Indigenous peoples gave way to Dutch pronunciation, then anglicization. The Delaware, however, derived its moniker from Lord De La Warr, a “dubious aristocrat” otherwise known as Thomas West.

But just before he had zoned out completely, Dad slowly reached out his arm, took my hand and brought it to his face. “He probably wants me to wipe his mouth or scratch his ear or something,” I thought, but to my surprise he gave my hand a kiss. Oh shit! I thought. This is it. Closure time!Even at school, Louis and Joe were the two funniest people to hang out with. I can see why he went down the serious documentary route – good for you, enjoy your Baftas – so it’s nice to showcase his stupid side. I find it a bit hard to get my head around the fact that Adam is now fifty years old, much as I struggle to get my head around the fact that I'm now forty-six, but hey, it happens to us all, I suppose. Writing a book seems a natural thing to do at the time Adam has reached in his life. He's now married with three kids, and the death of his father (the legendary BaaaaadDad) in 2015 provoked some reflection on his life. This book is the result, and it turned out to be a wonderful read. Thing is, you’re unlikely to strike up a heart-to-heart chat with your son for the first time while he’s standing over you until you’ve finished your smoothie, getting annoyed when you don’t take your pills or hoisting your nappy on before bed. Also you’re more or less deaf. And you’ve got cancer. In the end we were just two uptight men who found it easier to be on our own. That was bad news for me. I’m not fond of dairy products, and cheese makes me especially sad. In the months that followed, I found cleaning up after toilet accidents infinitely preferable to preparing cheesy noodles, cheesy scrambled eggs, cheesy liver and other cheese nightmares for Dad, which, more often than not, he didn’t even eat.

I certainly cried as I was writing. I regretted things, felt ashamed, thought of things I should have said. I’m not sure how useful some of that wallowing was, but overall it did me good. It also encouraged me to find out a lot more about my parents. We never talked about emotional stuff, about their pasts or families. So it was fascinating digging into all that. I was three or perhaps four years old when I realised that I had been born into the wrong body, and should really be a girl,” she writes. “I remember the moment well, and it is the earliest memory of my life.” What follows is a highly evocative sentence, that hints at the beauty of the writing to come: “I was sitting beneath my mother’s piano, and her music was falling around me like cataracts, enclosing me as in a cave.” It’s impossible not to fall in love with Morris’ style. That her subject matter is one so rarely discussed makes this short autobiography all the more engaging.

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In Lancaster, Pennsylvania, King stops at the home of James Buchanan, the bachelor president from 1857 to 1861, who sympathized with the south and loathed abolition. Ending slavery could wait. Of the supreme court’s infamous Dred Scott decision, Buchanan highly approved. Joe always makes me laugh until I wheeze. Sometimes you get intelligent, interesting people who are good at talking – Romesh Ranganathan or Kathy Burke spring to mind – so you just have to turn the thing on and listen to them. Later I may have been aware that the same two geezers had a show on radio six music but never managed to tune in. Only much later, in the era of the podcast did Buxton reappear. Technological advances meant The Adam Buxton podcast could be saved in Spotify and played on the car stereo. On long journeys my wife (my wife) and I could be entertained and informed while having our spirits lifted as we sing along to the insanely catchy jingles, "give me little smile and a thumbs up, nice little pat when me bums up" is a personal favorite. Over in the flat I found him sitting up in bed looking worried. “It’s the strangest thing,” he said, all the hardness gone out of his voice. “I woke up and I no longer had any sense of who I am.” I fetched a family photo album and found that he was able to recognise and identify everyone in it, so the problem wasn’t with his memory. Instead, it was his sense of self that had short-circuited. I didn’t like to see him vulnerable. On the other hand, it was preferable to seeing him crotchety and impatient Mirror Book Club members have chosen My Name Is Why by Lemn Sissay as the latest book of the month.