Beyond the Applause with Gorillaz Bassist Seye Adelekan
Sober Awkward
Victoria Vanstone
4.8 • 535 Ratings
🗓️ 26 July 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Gorillaz bassist Seye Adelekan joins Vic for a wonderfully honest conversation about belonging, family, fame and finding his place in the music world.
Seye talks about moving around the world as a child, the family who shaped him, his love of music, touring, the forgotten gigs and the long period he spent in rehab.
Now over seven years sober, he shares how recovery changed his life, his relationships and the way he steps onto some of the world’s biggest stages - stone cold sober.
Seye wants people to leave his gigs, his online spaces and his everyday interactions with something more than they arrived with, and Vic genuinely felt that warmth by the end of their conversation.
He shows sobriety does not have to make you smaller, quieter or less capable of performing in front of a crowd. Sometimes, it helps you stop hiding, own your space and finally understand why you are standing there.
(Vic also tells Seye the story of her finger, which, between two former party animals familiar with two-day benders, earns her a surprising amount of respect. Some people bond over music and recovery, while others compare unexplained bodily damage from the old days!)
Enjoy!
💛 Resources & Links
Follow and Find out more about Seye head to https://www.seyemusic.co.uk @seyemusic
📘 Victoria’s memoir – A Thousand Wasted Sundays
A brutally honest and hilarious look at motherhood, anxiety, and ditching the booze.
👉 https://amzn.asia/d/0aZ69GpK
Vic's book 'Mumming - A year of Trying (and Failing) to be a better parent - https://amzn.asia/d/0bUJTS2W
🎧 Listen to more Sober Awkward episodes
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Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | right the kettles boiled perfect timing i'll just make myself a quick cupper take a deep breath and pretend i know exactly what i'm doing |
| 0:10.6 | right let's get started have you ever woken up on a sunday morning with massive anxiety and said to yourself, |
| 0:22.6 | I'm never drinking again, only to find yourself waving 50 bucks at a barman by happy hour? |
| 0:28.9 | Do you ever wonder why everyone else can stop at one while you end up at a dodgy after party |
| 0:34.6 | holding hands with a weird bloke called Disco Dane. If so, it might be time |
| 0:40.5 | to take a closer look at your reliable social crutch, alcohol. On this podcast, I investigate |
| 0:47.3 | my own deeply dysfunctional dealings with booze and find out what it's really like, navigating |
| 0:53.4 | this alcohol-drenched world, one fizzy |
| 0:56.0 | water at a time. I'm going to open up a shame shed of humiliating drinking stories to help |
| 1:02.1 | you understand why waking up with one eyebrow missing and a kebab sticking out of your top |
| 1:07.4 | pocket might actually be negatively impacting your health. So what happens when you |
| 1:12.9 | put down those cheeky pints and finally let go of those rewarding mummy wines? I guess we're just |
| 1:19.8 | going to have to wait and see. I'm Victoria Vanstone and this is sober awkward. |
| 1:29.7 | I'm glad I made it to the studio today. |
| 1:32.5 | I've been tucked up in bed all weekend with a horrible cold, |
| 1:35.9 | but I'm feeling a bit better today, |
| 1:37.2 | and doing anything sober, awkward, makes me feel happy. |
| 1:39.8 | So I made it here, and I managed to get up in time to watch the football. |
| 1:43.0 | And I'm croaking because I'm ill, and I'm croaking because I've been screaming at the television. But it was a brilliant game. I'm not going to talk about football today because that is not the right thing to do. And I'm sure you want me to talk about sobriety. So I'll try and do that. I posted a video yesterday about sobriety and I'd spent ages on it and it got one like. |
| 2:03.8 | I'd love to tell you that I didn't care that I posted it and then put my phone down and carried |
| 2:09.3 | on with my day being snotty and had coped with it like a perfectly balanced emotionally evolved |
| 2:15.1 | human being but that would be a lie. Recording videos, believe it or not, |
... |
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