Yes,” replied Pa softly before continuing, as if to himself, “Occasionally, I feel that I’m absolutely irrelevant.” I didn’t like to see him vulnerable and frightened. On the other hand, it was preferable to seeing him crotchety and impatient. It didn’t look as though he was going to die at that very moment, so I asked if he’d like me to read to him

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.”The result is an intensely moving conversation between two pals, by turns silly and tearful, with Cornish mildly guiding Buxton to talk through his grief (“But hey, how are you doing, man? What’s the weather like in your head?”). “That was never really the basis of our relationship,” says Buxton. “Joe’s not someone who rings up for a long, deep conversation. He’s someone who’s probably closer to my mum’s way of thinking – ‘Come on, man. Don’t waste time doing all this introspection, just get on with it.’ I thought it might be a good antidote to how I was feeling, which was very caught up in it and isolated.” 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.

Then one night in mid-November 2015, when I was watching TV with my wife, my phone rang. It was Dad calling from his bedroom. “Adam? Something extraordinary’s happened.” 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.

It wasn’t his first TV appearance, but Adam Buxton hit the big time in 1996, with Channel 4’s The Adam and Joe Show. Since then, he’s been a regular on BBC3, Xfm, the Edinburgh Festival, films and Eight out of Ten Cats Does Countdown’s dictionary corner. To many, he’ll be best known for his long-running podcast, with a simple formula – an unhurried, rambling chat – that attracts guests of impressive calibre. You don’t need to scroll far through the archive to come across Joe Lycett, Robbie Williams, Zadie Smith, Derren Brown, David Sedaris, Michael Palin, Frank Skinner, and skaters Torvill and Dean. The mix is as eclectic as it is entertaining. There’s never been a better time to get lost in a good book… so we’d love you to join the friendly Mirror Book Club community on Facebook. Members share thoughts on the current book of the month, post other recommendations and exchange book news and views. There are regular giveaways too. Buxton wrote this book after the deaths of his father and of David Bowie, and his life as a Bowie superfan is a fascinating thread running through the book. The triumph though is Buxton’s account of his relationship with his father, who appeared as “BaaadDad” on The Adam And Joe Show. 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.

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. It’s easy to imagine that investigative presenters like Theroux simply swoop in, do their jobs and move on to the next subject, the next programme or the next big thing with barely a thought for the one they’re leaving behind. This autobiography proves that not to be the case at all. Not only are there real people behind the stories; there are real people presenting them, too. Plus, there are clear benefits to being able to relive the past. Buxton always knew his father was baffled by his interests – that was the whole joke of BaaadDad. Recently, he has been watching old outtakes from The Adam And Joe Show. “We shot absolute hours of stuff with my dad, making him go to places that he hated, and he was always game. It was heroic. I used to think, ‘Why isn’t he more proud of me?’ But he was proud. I can see that now.”Is there really a rivalry there? “When I joke, there’s always a grain of truth to it. But it’s so unimportant. I definitely had a long phase with Joe when I really did feel threatened and felt like people saw me as the failure. I thought, ‘Oh NO, I’m [the Fifth Beatle] Pete Best!’ But then I got over it. I’m sure it pops up, it’s bound to pop up, isn’t it?” King recalls an earlier time in a Buddhist monastery. Warned that surrounding scenery would detract from solitude and commitment, he nevertheless succumbed. King is nothing if not curious. 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. At the end of the audio version of Ramble Book, there is a conversation between the pair in which Cornish brings up that comment, which he had long forgotten: “I think I was probably looking for the most provocative answer. My brain issues the true standard answer and then thinks, well, that’s a bit boring, what would be more interesting?” You can hear Buxton gasp, re-evaluating 40 years of casual banter. “I think the relationship worked creatively because we are very different, but I never understood that,” he says now, smiling.