David Baddiel on Family, Jewishness, and the Healing Power of Comedy, Part One
40:06 Share

This episode is sponsored by Oracle. Even if you think it's a bit overhyped, AI is suddenly everywhere. From self-driving cars to molecular medicine to business efficiency. If it's not in your industry yet, it's coming fast. But AI needs a lot of speed and computing power, so how do you compete without costs spiraling out of control? Time to upgrade to the next generation of the cloud, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, or OCI.

OCI is a blazing fast and secure platform for your infrastructure, database and application development, plus all your AI and machine learning workloads. OCI costs 50% less for compute and 80% less for networking. So you're saving a pile of money. Thousands of businesses have already upgraded to OCI, including MGM Resorts, Specialized Bikes and Fireworks AI.

Right now, Oracle is offering to cut your current cloud bill in half if you move to OCI for new U.S. customers with minimum financial commitment. Offer ends 31st of December 2024. See if your company qualifies for this special offer at oracle.com. That's oracle.com.

Bada, bada boom, sold. Huh? Just sold my car on Carvana. Dropping it off and getting paid today. Already? What, you still haven't sold yours? You told me about it months ago. I just... Is the offer good? Oh, the offer's great. Don't have another car yet? I could trade it in for this car I love. Come on, what are we waiting for? Ah, you're right. Let's go.

Whether you're looking to sell your car right now or just whenever feels right, go to Carvana.com and sell your car the convenient way. Terms and conditions apply. 70,000 people are here, and Bob Dylan is the reason for it. Inspired by the true story. If anyone is going to hold your attention on a stage, you have to kind of be a freak. Are you a freak? Hope so. And starring Timothee Chalamet as Bob Dylan. How does it feel?

We divide everyone. Turn it down! They lied! To change everything. Make some noise, BD. Timothy Chalamet. Edward Norton. El Fanny. Monica Barbaro. A complete unknown. Only in theaters Christmas Day. Rated R. Under 1790. Made it without parent. Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Leila Ismail.

Our guest on the podcast today is comedian and screenwriter David Baddiel. He is also the author of numerous books, including the critically acclaimed essay, Jews Don't Count. He was live on stage on the 21st of October, 2024, at London's Union Chapel to talk about his hilarious new memoir titled My Fan.

Joining him to discuss it all was actor and writer Sanjeev Bhaskar, who is best known for his television comedy sketch show, Goodness Gracious Me. This recording is in two parts. Intelligence Squared Premium subscribers can get early access to the full-length conversation straight away, including content that isn't available anywhere else. Head to intelligencesquared.com forward slash membership to find out more, or hit the IQ2 Extra button on Apple.

Now, let's join our host, Sanjeev Bhaskar, live on stage with David Baddiel. Welcome everyone to this Intelligence Squared event. Our guest this evening needs no introduction. He's already been named, so you know that's not going to be a surprise. But David is an author, he's a comedian, he's a screenwriter, he's written and performed in loads of successful TV shows, TV shows, TV shows, TV shows.

the Mary Whitehouse experience at the beginning of the deal and Skinner unplanned amongst others is the author of several successful books children's books as well but the best-selling polemic Jews don't count which was turned into a documentary by Channel 4 and his latest book is the subject of this evening's chat and

instant Sunday Times bestseller my family the memoir and also I should add that David has done three live shows my family fame not the musical trolls not the dolls and from November the 9th they're showing my family not the sitcom on sky and in subsequent weeks it will be the other two so please welcome David Baddiel hello

So David, I mean, first of all, I have to say, I mean, you know this, but I'm letting you in on this actually, that I think I was about five chapters in when I contacted you to say, I'm really, really loving this. And you said, contact me again when you finished it. And I loved it even more by the end of it. So it's funny. It's really moving. It's incredibly insightful. I've found a lot to get for it personally as well.

But it's an unusual memoir in that it's not a celebrity memoir about your career. No. It's about... Oh, neither is it about your nuclear family, in terms of your wife and your kids. No. Although they're all mentioned. They are. So could you explain what the My Family, the memoir, means? Yeah. So...

My family, and I don't know if this is true of people in general, but when I think of, even though I have children and I've had children for 23 years, when I say my family, I kind of think of when I was a kid. I kind of instinctively think my default family is my mum and dad and my two brothers. And to some extent, my grandparents.

And that's just a sort of childish thing. I mean, one of the things I think about being a comedian is it reveals, I don't know if you believe this too, but it reveals a truth

about adulthood, which is everyone is just winging adulthood. Like there's some, I'm gonna say this, some older people in this room and me, and I think everyone at heart feels about 12 or 13. There's only one person in the world whose age in his soul matches up to the age he in fact is and his name is Michael Gove, but...

Everyone else in the world gets older but feels about 13 or 14 which might be why when I write a book called my family it is about my parents and my grandparents to some extent and my brothers and but that's also obviously because that's where the formative stuff happened and then the other reason is

I'm very obsessed with truth. I'm sort of massively, weirdly, annoyingly obsessed with truth. Now that's something else which in the book I'm... There's a lot of footnotes in the book and that's partly because I'm always trying to qualify what I'm saying. And one of the things is it's annoying, I think, when people, especially when famous people say, well, if I have one fault, it's just that I'm too honest. I mean, it's the sort of thing Prince Andrew fucking says, basically. LAUGHTER

He says honourable, but, you know, whatever. And it's annoying, but I'm not trying to claim it as a kind of absurd, like, moral plus. It's more like a type of incontinence, I think. It's a type of emotional and verbal incontinence that I've monetised in my life, and that's worked quite well for me, right? But the reason I mention it is I think the wellspring for this book, as indeed it was the wellspring for my family, not the sitcom when I did it as a show, was I went to my mother's funeral.

And at my mother's, it's good that I went, nice of me. It was good of you. I said that like that's odd, but I think people do generally. But when I was at my mum's funeral, a lot of people, many of whom I didn't know, were coming up to me and saying, telling me that my mother was wonderful. And the thing that bound all these people together was that they didn't really know her.

Not really. And after a while I started to think this is kind of weird because it feels to me like a sort of second and more profound erasure than her actual death. Because what we do when people die is we don't tell the truth about them.

We lie about them because we think we mustn't speak ill of the dead. But that does a profound disservice to the dead because it does not allow them to do the thing we're meant to do in memorialising them, which is sort of make them live again.

genuinely in the memory. And my mum died very suddenly, it was very shocking and it felt like, where is she? Where's she gone? And in order to try and preserve her, I felt this very strong urge to tell the absolute truth about my mother. I think I say in the book because the dead, despite what we might like to think are not angels,

And to tell the truth about my mother, and indeed my dad as well, and probably everyone, but certainly my mother, you're telling a truth which involves an enormous amount of sort of madness.

Weird, mad, fucked up behavior, which might be something which in a different memoir might feel like this is very angry and bitter and whatever. But I feel that because I'm sort of very, very comfortable in my own skin. You know this about me. And so whatever weird, transgressive damage happened to me when I was young, I don't see it as damage.

I see it as kind of sculpture, accidental sculpture, that has made me who I am. And so it's a celebration of all this fucked-up behaviour that happened in my childhood. And that's what makes this book different from Spare by Prince Harry. Also, I don't recall in Spare a picture of a womble in it, I think. So those are the two major differences. It was there, but I think it was Prince Philip. LAUGHTER

You talked about the truth thing, and that was one of the things that I got from the show when I went to see the show several times. Yeah. Was that it was a celebration of the truth in all its kind of unvarnished glory. And you talk about in the book as well about your mum's funeral, that there is this kind of sanitised version which doesn't feel true. Yeah. And in terms of kind of accessing all of that, the unvarnished truth...

It strikes me as, for me, it would be quite difficult. Was it a difficult path to tread? No. I mean, that is to do with me. And I think that that might be fair. And I'm also asking because you've got two brothers. Yes. Who have a vested interest in the story. Yes. Okay. So that's two different things, but they're both relevant. So, like...

Later on in this book, and to some extent it's perhaps its high point for some people, I do quite a deep textual analysis of my mum's erotic poetry. A book of erotic poetry that I found dedicated to her lover.

golfing memorabilia salesman that she became obsessed with in the mid 70s and the book I found it after her death when we were clearing out her to staff I found this book it's called feelings I think named after the 1970s song feelings is it by Charles Aznavour I'm not sure but anyway feeling you know that book that song and

I open the book and almost immediately there are these incredible anatomical descriptions of my mother's vagina as acted upon by her golfing memorabilia lover. And a lot of people, I think, would normally close such a book. A lot of children would close such a book and think, "I must never see this again." But I thought, "Ah, material." That's what I thought.

And that is to do with the sort of sliver of ice I guess that is in a writer's heart. But at the same time I did think this is fucking hilarious and I think she sort of wanted this to be published. Maybe not quite in the way that I've done it but nonetheless I think she did. And so in terms of like how you

to speak about my brothers. That's a key issue because I am, I've written a book called The God Desire and The God Desire is about being a fundamentalist atheist, which I am, but sort of really wanting God to exist. But one of the things about being that type of person is I don't feel that I need to worry about the dead and what the dead think.

I think I used to do a joke years ago. I did a joke about people talking about what my grandfather would have wanted and I what he would have wanted I always imagine when people talk about what he would have wanted is if he was still alive But what my grandfather would have wanted if he was still alive was to be dug up quite well I thought I thought it died, but actually took a while I

Anyway, so I don't believe in in the spirits looking down at me So the people who matter are the living and their memories do matter So I did speak to both my brothers about this. My younger brother said you're not fucking doing it And my older brother was much more. He sort of said look I could talk to you about this project this is before the stand-up show for hours, but I

I know you, you're going to do this, aren't you? And I said, yeah. And I kind of said, you'll just have to trust me. It's an act of love. It's an act of celebration. And it might not seem like that because he knew what was coming, but it is. And then this thing happened which proved that to be true, kind of,

empirically proved it to be true, which is I did the show. It began, it was in the West End for two runs, but before that it was at a place called the Chocolate Factory, some of you may know it's in Borough Market, and it's a small theatre and I do the first show and I come on afterwards for an encore and the encore in that show was a Q&A.

ad lib Q&A because I knew people would have loads of questions and there's all these really important people in the first night in the room Michael Billington the drama critic of the Guardian and all these people and they've all got their hands up and I say I'm sorry I can't take any questions until I hear what my older brother

And the book is dedicated to Ivor because my parents were so mad. The only reason I'm not insane is Ivor Baddiel. There's no question about this. Ivor, who is a bit insane, was the buffer. So anyway, I basically said, what do you think, Ivor? And he said, and his voice just came out of the darkness, oh, I loved it. And then he said, I loved it because it felt like she was in the room.

And that's moving, but it also is artistically job done. Because I wanted, as I said earlier, to recreate my mother in her actuality. Emotionally, I wanted to do that because she vanished in a way that felt to me like almost like made no sense. I don't know if everyone else feels like this when their parents go, but because my mum went very quickly, it just felt like to me this is not processable, how much of a gap there is in my life. And so...

I, for saying that, proved something about it, which then proved to be true as I did the show and as people have talked to me about this book, which is, I feel like I've met your mother. And I'm not sure you do that by saying, oh, what a wonderful person they were after they've died. No, I think that's very true. This episode is sponsored by NetSuite.

What does the future hold for business? Ask nine experts and you'll get ten answers. Inflations up or down, rates will rise or fall. Can someone please just invent a crystal ball? Well, until then, over 40,000 businesses have future-proofed their business with NetSuite by Oracle. The number one cloud ERP brings accounting, financial management, inventory and HR into one fluid platform.

With one unified business management suite, there's one source of truth giving you the visibility and control you need to make quick decisions. With real-time insights and forecasting, you're peering into the future with actionable data.

If I had needed this product, it's what I'd use. NetSuite by Oracle is just a really smart tool for businesses looking to make proactive moves and make the best out of future opportunities. Whether your company is earning millions or even hundreds of millions, NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize your biggest opportunities.

And speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com. This guide is free to you at netsuite.com. That's netsuite.com.

The Yeti store has so many great gifts, we had to hire a cattle auctioneer to make the most of these next 30 seconds. All right, folks, let's get started with the Yeti French Press. Enjoy coffee that stays hot for hours in the French Press. 34 ounce for you, 6-4 for the crews of the Yeti French Press. Mixed waterproof bags, bags are waterproof. Submersible waterproof doubles, waterproof bag bags. For us, mostly waters to get a waterproof Yeti bag. Do I smell something cooking? Oh, new cast iron skillets made.

be passed down like mama's recipes. Take your steak, cornbread, cobblers, pot pie, and potatoes to the next level with three sizes of Yeti cast iron skillets. Gear, gifts, and product experts. Visit the Yeti store at Santana Road today.

Enjoying your podcast? We'll be brief. If you're looking for the perfect holiday gift, gift scratchers from the California Lottery. With so many to choose from, you're sure to find the right gift for anyone on your list. Now that your holiday shopping list is figured out, enjoy this bird singing jingle bells.

Give the gift of Scratchers from the California Lottery. A little play can make your day. Please play responsibly. Must be 18 years or older to purchase, play, or claim. It's something, again, that you mention in the book, which is about generational trauma. Yeah. And just a little bit about...

particularly your mum's background, which you have a lot more detail about. I just wondered if you could just kind of illustrate some of that. Yeah, so my mum was born in Nazi Germany. She was born in a place called Königsberg, which is now called Kaliningrad.

She only got out and my grandparents who also got out by the skin of their teeth and actually this is one of the reasons why I wrote a book because there were things I could not cover in a stand-up show and one thing I couldn't cover I think was the enormous anxiety I think that my grandparents must have felt

Germany in 1939. So they had been quite wealthy and they'd lost everything and my grandfather Ernst Fabian and I'm not sure how many people know this because I think people think of concentration camps as only existing during the Second World War but in fact after Kristallnacht

lot of Jews, something like 30,000 Jews were sent, Jews who had basically had their houses and shops destroyed and synagogues destroyed were then sent to concentration camps. That included my grandfather who was sent to Dachau and he was there for six months during which time my grandfather basically sold, my grandmother sold whatever they had left which was very little in order to bribe officials to get him out of Dachau. Then they had a very short amount of time

during which time they wanted to get to Britain. In fact, they wanted to get to America, but they didn't get to America, but they wanted to get to Britain and to just enter Britain, they needed to have to show a thousand pounds in a British bank account, loads of money then. And again, I'm not sure how many people know this, but there's like, you know, it was very, very difficult, I think because of Kindertransport,

have a notion of Britain opening its doors to refugee Jews during the Holocaust. That's not true. It was really, really difficult for, you know, Jews who were not part of the Kindertransport to get to Britain and actually, sorry, I'm now slightly overdoing this information, but it is really interesting, I think, a secret part of British history, which I've written something else about, a novel is that my grandfather was interned

on the Isle of Man during after 1940 when they got here so what there is are these letters from my grandmother mainly because she learned English to things like the Jewish Refugee Agency which are so anxiety creating for me to read because they make me think what am I doing here? I can only just

be here by absolute chance because they say things like, right, we're trying to get you a visa card. This is in like March 1939. You've now had a baby. We didn't know you were having a baby. We're trying to get her an entry card as well. And if you hang on, we might get one. And it's all desperate. It's desperate.

But they get in, they managed to get here in August 1939, and then my grandchild is interned in June 1940. Now, in June 1940, there was a lot of, a bit like there is now, migrant hysteria.

whereby basically the right-wing press, the Daily Express and the Daily Mail, because the government was suppressing information about the Holocaust for essentially anti-Semitic reasons, people didn't know why there were Germans in Britain. There were by then like maybe 90,000, 100,000 German Jews in Britain

And ordinary British people and the papers were kind of like, what are these Germans doing here? They must be fifth columnists, right? Spies. Spies. So Churchill, who did know why they were there, just reacted to that and said, yes, arrest the lot. He said, collar the lot is what he said in 1940. And they got sent mainly to the Isle of Man. My grandfather got sent to the Isle of Man. I must just tell you something about that for anyone who doesn't know.

The Isle of Man is an amazing thing. So, basically, the German Jewish refugees are... There's about 90,000 of them there on the Isle of Man, and the British do a very British thing, right? These places are not like Auschwitz, right? They just basically, in a slightly lazy way, they put barbed wire around all the B&Bs, and then they just leave the Jews to it. And what the Jews do is, within about six weeks, there's a fucking university on the Isle of Man. LAUGHTER

There is, like the Amadeus Quartet form on the Isle of Man. There's six Nobel Prize winners in Douglas in 1940. It's incredible, right? And there's like exhibitions and whatever. And my grandfather, it turns out, has a brilliant time, right? It turns out like he told me, oh, it was really nice on the Isle of Man. So that's one thing. But meanwhile, it's incredibly traumatic for my mother. This is the thing, in terms of what you were saying about intergenerational trauma. You have to imagine that my mother, as a

as a very young girl is taken away from Germany, arrives in Britain, they're in a hostel for about three weeks, then they get put in one room in Cambridge for some reason, then her father is arrested, then she's living with her mum who speaks German during the war and people think she's a spy so she can't get a job. You know, I mean it's unbelievably traumatic and also all her family beyond that is dead.

So the level of trauma is amazing. But one thing I try and say in the book is this is awful and terrible, but I think it came out in not a tragic way, but a tragicomic way. You do. And you do have letters that your grandmother sent.

As you mentioned, them being told that they have to go to Berlin to talk to the British embassy or whatever to get the extra visa for the child. All of this kind of pressure. And also, once your grandfather was interned in the Isle of Man, the letters that your grandmother sent worrying about his kind of...

There's one incredibly really sad one where she says that she's worried because his anxiety has caused him to lose his voice. Yeah. And I can't remember, did I print the one about him losing his watch? Is that in there? No, maybe not. I don't remember the watch, the voice. Okay, yeah, no, there's one where she says he's lost his voice. I have another one where she says the only thing we got out of Germany was this watch. He can't even tell you where it is because he's lost his voice. I mean, all these things were news to me, by the way, because I...

I don't know if anyone else has been through this, it's a rather bleak thing to say but it's true is that when your first parent dies you kind of lazily don't clear out their stuff if they stayed together because basically my dad was still there in their house so I thought I'll look for some stuff. I found this book of erotic poetry, that'll do. Whereas obviously when he died I had to clear out everything and that's when I found loads loads of more stuff which is slightly what inspired writing the book.

So that was a bit about your mum's background. Your dad's family were settled in Swansea. Yes, so my dad... Sorry, I was going to say, was he the first person to go to university? Yeah. From his family? Yes. So my dad... So I think, going back a few more generations...

they were also fleeing Jews. Obviously, I imagine there's some Jews in this audience and they will know that one of the things about being Jews, if you do any kind of ancestry thing, if you do who do you think you are, which not that many people will have done, but I've done, is it's interesting because when I did who do you think you are, I don't know if anyone's seen that, it was 2004, but I actually had a bit of a breakdown in the middle of it. And the breakdown was because I got onto the Isle of Man and they said, oh, we think

this is the room that your grandfather was interned and it was a disused Chinese restaurant and there was just like noodles everywhere, right?

And I stood in the middle of it and I said, I'm pretty sure that Ian Hislop at this moment is standing in front of a 17th century manor house and saying, it's exactly the same as it was when my great-great-grandfather... But if you're Jewish, it's just people fleeing and sort of staying where they can and in hovels of one sort. And everything's broken. I went and saw the brick factory that my grandparents used to own, a brick factory in Königsberg, and now that's just stumps.

It's just stumps and syringes because it's basically where drug addicts hang out now. And that was my Who Do You Think You Are? It was not a beautiful episode with lots of lovely houses. It's places that have been bombed, essentially. And so, yeah, so my great-grandfather on my dad's side, he was fleeing from Russian pogroms.

In the 19th century and the story about him, which I think is an apocryphal story But I like it is that he got he was smuggling himself on a timber boat from Latvia And he was trying to get to New York as indeed my other grandparents were but he didn't speak any English and the boat stopped at Swansea He got off and I assumed ten years later. He had learned enough English or Welsh to say where is the Statue of Liberty?

It's a long way over there. And yeah, that's how he ended up in Swansea. And that's why there were about 2,000 Jews in Swansea. And one part of that, my family, were ultra-Orthodox, really Orthodox, and they still are. There's Frummers all over that side of the family. But on my mum's side, on my dad's side, they weren't.

and he was very working class and Welsh. By the way, again, I know there are some Jewish people here, but my brother, Ivor, I sort of love this about, his wife is not Jewish and his mother-in-law has always had problems with the fact that my dad was Welsh and Jewish.

She says to Ivor, sorry, did you just run that past me again? I know your mum was German and Jewish. They can understand that. Like American and Jewish. But Welsh and Jewish. It doesn't compute for some reason. But he was really Welsh, my dad. And yeah, very working class. He was an only child because his two brothers had died. One in childbirth and one when he was two years old. And he got out of poverty by becoming a chemist.

I don't mean like at Boots. I mean he learned chemistry and he got a PhD in inorganic chemistry and so was obsessed with science. As like that's your salvation is science. Great. I just wanted that background just so we know where you've come from. Right. Would you care to read? I would like to read. Thank you so much. I mean you don't have to if you don't want to. I was just getting the impression that you might. Yeah.

Just beautiful.

Whatever you love, find it on eBay. eBay. Things people love.

This episode is brought to you by GlobalX. Since 2008, GlobalX ETFs has been committed to empowering investors with unexplored intelligence solutions. GlobalX specializes in exchange-traded funds that offer exposure to the artificial intelligence ecosystem, including themes like data centers, robotics, semiconductors, and cloud computing. To learn more about GlobalX's entire suite of ETFs, from covered calls, fixed income, emerging markets, and more, visit GlobalXETFs.com.

I'm just going to read a few fragments. I'm actually not going to read a whole bit because I wanted to... There's something I have mentioned now, but it is really the central part of certainly my mother's story, and I guess the central part, the driving part, although there's lots of other elements, of this book. And one of the things I talk about on the way to this is I talk about various ways in which my mother was not a stereotypical Jewish mother, and that would include being frantically over-sexual. Like,

like massively over sexual telling you all the time about her sex life. There's one bit in Who Do You Think You Are? and I talk about this in the book which was cut from Who Do You Think You Are? where she's supposed to be talking poignantly about her dad

his struggle to get away from the Nazis and she just starts talking about how many prostitutes he used to see every time he came up to London. And you know as I think I say in the book, you know, it's supposed to be tragic but it's a certain curveball to discover that he had a happy ending.

And she's very, very upfront about all this. And my mother's lack of boundaries and her frantic sexual upfrontness informs the central part of her story, which relates to this. And then I show you a picture of a book called Golf: The Golden Years.

which is written by my mother. This is Golf the Golden Years, the first and the most successful of four books my mother wrote about golf. Here's another one that's called Beyond the Links. And she signed this one, Golfingly Yours, Sarah Baddiel. She signed all of her books.

and all of her correspondence after the late 1970s in the same way. In case you're wondering, no, golfingly is not a word. And sometimes she would put little epigraphs, little poems that she would write in the front of these books. I'm going to read one of those to you now. What makes the sun shine all the year? What makes all cloudlets disappear? What binds in friendships strong, sincere? It's golf.

Be honest, who knew that was the answer? But my mother never really played golf.

In all the time she was obsessed with golf memorabilia, I was aware of her having visited a couple of pitch and putt courses, maybe the odd beachside crazy one, and that's about it. And then I talked for a while about the strangeness of golf, in particular in our house, because we were a very football-based family, and also because golf at the time was still basically barring Jews.

from being in golf clubs. But then I mentioned this man and I don't know if you can see him here but it's a man smoking a pipe and wearing a lot of golf stuff with a golf club and I say David White first appeared in our lives, that's his name, David White,

first appeared in our lives in the mid-1970s, at which point he suddenly became very, very present. Here's a website called Dating Guide, which happens to have a section called How to Tell If Your Wife is Having an Affair. And it includes an interesting pointer. If your partner suddenly has new interests, such as golfing...

bowling or any other hobby you've never seen before, beware. This may be a sign that the other person is interested in this hobby, so your partner is taking it up. Perhaps we should cut to the chase. When she met David White, my mum fell madly in love with him and they went on to have a torrid affair that continued for many years. Being my mother, however, this affair involved an obsessive sidebar.

In essence, she took dating guys notion that if you're having an affair, you might begin to show some interest in your lover's hobbies and pastimes, not as something she needed to watch in herself so as not to alert her husband, but more like a very literal instruction.

Then I show a lot of evidence of the various massive multitude ways in which golf started to completely I'm going to use the word infect our house and this time This is David White's car with a number plate 66 par my mother's car with the same number plate and

There we have the, it's a sort of wall with the British Golf Collector Society, all the names of the British Golf Collector Society in it with my mother and David White put together. But the most importantly, however, is David White didn't just play golf. He ran a golfing memorabilia business called Golfiana.

So did my mother, right? That's their two cars together, which is one of the strangest parts of this story. My mother's way of showing this bloke that she loved him was to set up a rival golfing memorabilia business with the same name.

I'm not sure that's even allowed under corporate copyright law. And Golfiana was a massive success. Here's a big article about my mother and her collection in Golfing Illustrated. And I mean, I'm just going to cut through it, but there's loads and loads of pictures here of the way every item in our house

every light, every picture, every ornament suddenly became a golf thing. Every bit of jewelry that my mom wear became a golf thing. And then I say, my mother's affair with David White might seem like a complicated thing to write about publicly, which it is, but one thing should be clear. My mother was not ashamed.

her affair with David White. On the contrary, she was proud of her affair with David White. She considered in a very 1970s way that having an affair was glamorous and so she would basically tell everyone about it and

Absolutely everyone including her children about it and I think one of the ways in which this need to tell people about it Can be shown is in a subconscious slip. Well, not that subconscious that happened later in life so roundabout because it this defined her life for many years and it carried on for many years and round about 2008 my mother is getting on a bit and

and she has a number of ailments, which also she was quite keen to let you know about in quite a Jewish way. But she also was very, very keen that she should be remembered as still a sexually adventurous person. And both these sides come out in an email that she writes to David White at this time, around about 2008, that he's going to be in New York. And she contacts him, and she says to David White, the leukemia, and now also the Crohn's disease,

make me very tired, but perhaps you can join me to make the naps more interesting. It is perhaps the least enticing come online in the history of come online. So at this point some of you may be thinking, hold on, this is a private email. Is this legal to reproduce? What about the ethics of all this? How did you even get hold of it? Well,

If you look very closely at that email again, you'll see that it was cc'd to me and my older brother. C fucking c'd, not bcc'd. Oh no, nothing so discreet.

I asked her about this, I phoned her, I said, why? Why would you copy me on this email? And she said, oh, it was a mistake. A mistake, right. Oh, I've accidentally CC'd my son. Oh, and my other son, Butterfingers. No, she wanted us to know. Thank you very much.

Thanks for joining us.

This holiday season, surprise everyone on your list with the best gifts. Tickets to see their favorite artists live. Choose from thousands of concerts and comedy shows, including Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige, Matt Matthews, Metallica, Thomas Rhett, Trans-Siberian Orchestra, Sarah Silverman, and so many more. Share a memory together.

or give a gift they'll never forget. Find the most exciting gift for every fan at LiveNation.com slash gifts. That's LiveNation.com slash gifts.