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. You were an early adopter of podcasting. Do you get fed up with all these Johnny-come-lately copycats? Ramble Book is about parenthood, boarding-school trauma, arguing with your partner, bad parties, confrontations on trains, friendship, wanting to fit in, growing up in the '80s, dead dads, teenage sexual anxiety, failed artistic endeavours, being a David Bowie fan and how everything you read, watch and listen to as a child forms a part of the adult you become. Mirror Book Club members have chosen My Name Is Why by Lemn Sissay as the latest book of the month.

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.” They had a more upbeat conversation on standby in case the episode was too “dreary”, but in the end Buxton broadcast the original and was inundated with messages from listeners. “I was very glad,” he says quietly. “That was that thing I always really wanted… a group of people who really get where I’m at.”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.

Adam rambles on about lots of consequential, compelling and personal matters in his tender, insightful, hilarious and totally unconfused memoir, Ramble Book .’ It’d be good for Rosie to sit down and have an honest chat with the local muntjac deer. Just so they can air their grievances and explain what it’s like being terrorised by a yappy little poodle-cross. 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.” Aside from his father, the other leading characters in Ramble Book are Cornish and Louis Theroux, Buxton’s friends since Westminster. When they were 15, Buxton and Cornish invented their own fantasy media empire, called Joe/Adz Corporate; their first productions were sketches, parodies of the Gold Blend Advert and Monty Python tributes, filmed on Buxton’s father’s video camera. Within a decade they were broadcasting similar things on Channel 4 on The Adam and Joe Show, which is where Ramble Book ends. Buxton would now like to write more – about working with Cornish, and his “hair-raising 90s”. 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.”With its rugged fells, softly flowing streams, glittering tarns and wide open lakes, the Lake District is England’s most popular National Park. Covering 2,362 square kilometres of protected land, it’s still easy to find an isolated felltop to breathe in the fresh Cumbrian air and escape modern life here.”

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. 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.” 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. There’s a humanity to Ramble Book, a familiarity, and a reminder that famous people are just like the rest of us – just a bit better known.

Discover the back stories of some of the best-known names in showbiz and politics, in their own words

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.