David Baddiel on Family, Jewishness, and the Healing Power of Comedy, Part Two
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For this episode, we're rejoining for part two of our conversation with David Baddiel, the comedian and the award-winning writer. He was live on stage on the 21st of October 2024 for our Intelligence Squared live event discussing his new memoir, My Family. Joining him to discuss it all was the actor and writer Sanjeev Bhaskar.

Recording is in two parts. If you haven't heard part one, do just jump back an episode and get up to speed. Now let's rejoin our host Sanjeev Bhaskar live on stage in conversation with David Baddiel. I mean, I know this is a question that has been asked of you before. This was an affair that

Ran for about 20 years. Yeah, I mean, I think it had his absolute white heat sort of in between about 1975 to 1980 81 But I definitely picked up again normally at sort of golfing events. I think yeah with the David white heat. Yes This is the question that's been asked actually and I don't know what the answer to it is, but I

Your dad didn't know? Yeah, well, that's something I say in the book and people are confused about it, as am I. But I mean, so there's another bit, for example, where I tell a story that my brother tells, Ivor tells, about how one of his first girlfriends was called Tracy and he brought Tracy down to meet my mother at her stall that she had in Grey's Antique Market in Bond Street. Her stall was called Golfiana.

It was opposite my dad's dinky toy stall because by that time my dad had been made redundant from Unilever where he'd been a chemist and was running a dinky toy store down there. Opposite was the Golfiana stall but he wasn't there and

my brother introduced Tracy and my mom started talking mentioned David White as she often did and just turned to Tracy and went my lover of 20 years and carried on talking as if as if nothing had happened she was always doing that and yes there were a lot of red flags or indeed white ones on putting greens but

I think, and the way to put this, or the way I put it in the book, is that my dad somehow managed not to notice it. And the reason I use that construction is I don't mean that he was like a sort of cuckoldy man who was too frightened to deal with it and in denial with it. What I mean is that my dad was so male...

and so Colin Baddiel-ish that it was just a sort of, and I'm going to use a Yiddish word here, a kind of mishegas of my mother's that he couldn't be fucked with. And she had a lot of these and he wasn't bothered. I described my dad at his funeral. I said of my dad that he was a man who liked food, football and shouting, who the fucking hell is this now, every time the phone rang.

He was just a very, very cross, aggravated man. He had the saving grace of being really, really funny. He was a very funny bloke. And also, in his own incredibly male way, he did really love his children, I think. But he was just not bothered about my mother and her various madnesses, and he just tuned them out. And it's incredible to tune this out, because it was really a loud tune.

that my mother was playing and everyone knew about it, I knew about it when I was... Okay, so I'll give you an example of how I know that my dad didn't know and this is quite late on. I'm living with Frank Skinner in our flat, we had a flat that we shared together when I got friendly with Frank and my dad came round to my house, so this is like late 90s

and said, "Oh, the mother," which is what he always called my mum, "left this," and it was an envelope, "left this on her desk for you." And it's an envelope with the word "David."

Right? Nothing twigs. I just wrote the word David on it. So I think, oh, that's a bit weird. And he's standing right in front of me. I open it and there's a golf card. There's like a card with an old golfing scene on it. I didn't think anything of that. My mum sent everyone golf cards. My birthday, not interested in golf. She just sent me a golf card. And so I open it and I read out loud what's written inside the card. And it says, to David...

In memory of the masters where you were my master. Love, Sarah. And it's hard to say when exactly in the reading of that card, out loud, in front of my dad, I realised it wasn't for me. But I was not the David to whom it was addressed. Probably round about the words, the masters, by the way. And by the way, I looked over at Frank and Frank fucking knew what it was about. I can tell you. He absolutely knew. But my dad said, what does that mean?

Right? He said, "What does that mean? Why is she saying that?" And I just said, "Oh, I don't know." And that seems like... I now think back on that. I think, well, maybe that was the moment to tell him, to be honest. But I didn't because also I was a bit thrown by it because it made me think, "Oh, dear, did their relationship involve BDSM as well? Were they dressed in like, you know, Pringle Gimp masks or something?" Because, like, when you were my master at the Masters, it sounds a bit like something else might be going on. So, I think my dad...

Genuinely didn't know about it or he did know about it He he just didn't like deal with it, but not in this kind of like terrible frightened in denial way well also because I mean you've got a bit in the book where he he answers the phone Yes to David white. Yes, I should explain that. Yeah, I

That sounds like what you were there. No, I have recordings of that happening. So you might think, well, how the fuck can that be? Because my mother, I talk about my mother, both my parents were hoarders. My mother was an incredible hoarder. And by the way, I think you need to see that in context. Because hoarding, you just think, okay, that's a crazy thing to do. No, this is someone who lost everything when she was young. Everything. And so therefore, I think she held on to things in her life. And one thing she held on to absolutely was her

David White obsession. And one way she did that was by every single time he rung, she would press record on her answer phone. Now, old answer phones used to be basically just cassette machines, right, that you could set to record. Now, they were supposed to flick up so that you don't record, but she would keep it pressed down and she had hundreds of cassettes with David White, with DW written on them, and these would be piled up round the house. Another red flag, I would say. But

Nonetheless, I've listened to those and before we get to that particular conversation, they are brilliant by the way because they are an audio time machine. I bought an old cassette player to listen to them and there are things in them. One thing I really, really love is discovering just how successful

golf memorabilia dealer my mother was because I sort of knew that but in this finding out the archive there's a letter from Willie Whitelaw saying thank you so much Mrs. Baddiel for sending me this golfing book and there's a phone call on one of these cassettes from Peter Alice.

Right? Now, some of you will know, Peter Alice was the foremost BBC golf commentator for about 30 years. There's a phone call saying, hello, Sarah, this is Peter Alice. I've got some friends around for dinner and they want to read my autobiography. I wonder, do you have a copy of my autobiography? I'm sure you will. And I'm thinking, is this fucking J.R. Hartley made flesh? I promise you, a different demographic would not laugh like that for this. But

But it's really brilliant. Anyway, there's also a phone call and most of the tapes are David White. She deliberately kept all the messages from David White. Some of those are quite hard listening, not because I'm not bothered about the sort of slightly sexy talk, although some of it is a bit difficult because my mum puts on a sexy voice, which is slightly like the posh voice she put on for me on the phone anyway. But also, some of that stuff is just, like, annoying me.

but there's a weird bit where he gets my dad. David White calls and asks to speak to my mum and they have a long chat about the fact that my dad has one of those newfangled phones that you could walk about the house with.

with, right? And David White says, "Oh, I haven't got one of those. I must get one. I'm sitting in the hallway." He goes, "Oh, don't worry. I can take it up to Sarah and she's asleep." So, they don't get it. She doesn't get to hear about it. And it's sort of amazing. I mean, there's also another bit which I hadn't read before, which I also really love is... So, David White is a kind of slightly shadowy figure in many ways, although he's really in the book. And I found a letter from him.

My mother and David White had a number of business dealings that went wrong, right? And they're having a big row about this by letter and David White says, in response to something my mother says, "I see in your last letter that you suggested that we have a big, you know, meeting where we sort all this out and the umpire, the sort of referee between us, should be Colin." And I'm thinking, "What?" Right?

And then he says, but I don't think that's possible because every time I've met the dear doctor, which is what he called my dad because my dad had a PhD, the dear doctor, he's been rude and boorish to me. And I think, well, you are fucking his wife, David, so maybe that was reasonable. But then I say, actually, to be fair, he was like that with everyone. So this was the only time it was right in terms of a stop clock being right twice a day. Anyway, so yeah, there's a lot of weird shit going down.

One of the things that comes up a lot in the book actually are things that your dad describes as aggravation. Yes. And so one of the reasons you kind of suggest that

He didn't know and couldn't be bothered with it because it would just be aggravated. Yes. No, that's absolutely true And that that extends to other things as well, right? Yeah. Well, yeah, I mean so I think that was my dad's main thing in life is that my dad wanted to avoid Aggravation almost everything was aggravation his children undeniably were aggravation His wife was aggravation his job was aggravation losing his job was aggravation I mean

He was a very clever man, my dad, but he was, you know, he was kind of an animal at some level. He was like a very clever animal, like when he sneezed. I have never heard a sound like my dad sneezing. He actually would say achoo, but he would say ahoo, right, without the C, unbelievably loudly. I don't know how he did it. And then sometimes he would sleep for no reason in the middle of the front room. He would suddenly go to sleep as a sleep on the floor.

So he was like a sort of wild animal who was very clever, I think, my dad. And, yeah, aggravation was the thing that he was trying to avoid. I mean, there's a bit in the book, but I can't even remember it exactly. Oh, I'd have to find it where... So my mum thinks he's having an affair. Well, that's what I was going to say. Right, is that the bit you referred to? Yeah, yeah. I would have to find that bit, because I can't remember the exact details of it, and I would like to be able to if I can. Do you know where it is? I don't. It's kind of...

hang on so it's basically your mum held on to one car yeah okay that's the bit i mean i love that bit but i don't i don't know if i can find it oh here it is i found it all right okay so there's a weird bit where my mom i actually hear my mom having a conversation with her lawyer where she's talking about getting possibly getting divorced from my dad and she says that he's like

Having affairs or whatever and I don't think this is true. I think that fitted in with my mum's version of her Jilly Cooper life basically and I because my dad it was too much aggravation for him to have an affair and then I do find this thing which I'll read to you Which I do love so much because I found this in my mum's stuff

So I think my mum kept this as truth that my dad was having an affair. It's a card that says to Colin, greetings and best wishes for Christmas and New Year from Rita. Rita Verma, brackets, sorry, Unilever. That's it, right? So...

I say, again, context is everything. It's the fact that I found this card buried in a basket of letters and cards and poems written by my mother to David White, all of which are overflowing with extreme idiosyncratic eroticism that delights me.

I think it's possible its placement there is because she wanted to think of this as something she'd found that confirmed that my dad was indeed the Lothario he needed to be to fit into her model of her life. Except it so isn't. It's not just the lack of passionate words, it's the lack of words. Almost all the words beyond "to Colin" are expended on one thing, which is identifying who sent this letter.

You can, I think, sometimes read Sarah Baddiel's love letters to David White and wonder if he really gave her much thought. But if Rita Verma was Colin Baddiel's lover, then really something has gone awry in the "you were always on my mind" paradigm. Because plainly, when writing this card, Rita thought, "Will he know who I am?" She got to Rita and thought, "I'd better put my surname." And then thought, still not sure, "Better put where I work."

With him. That'll probably do. If it's a love letter, it's either a fabulous double bluff designed to thwart discovery or there was very little actual love in the love affair. If it is a piece of erotica, it is, as the great Sean Locke phrase has it, a challenging wank.

I just say, I've never read that bit before, and you've chosen the bit that probably delights me most in the entire book. I love it. I found that bit just marvellous. It's the little increments. It's from Rita to Verma to Unilever. It's a build. It's brilliant. I love it. This episode is sponsored by NetSuite.

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How aware? Can I call it a dysfunctionality within the family? I think you can, yeah. Okay. Um...

How aware of that dysfunctionality were you when you were that age? Well, I think that one of the things about

You know, one of the things about families is that everyone accepts what their lives are, what their universes are when they're a kid, right? And so I accepted a lot of weird stuff. I did accept that my mum suddenly became really interested in golf. I mean, it seemed odd to me, but then my mum had done odd things before, like, for example,

My mum was someone who I think couldn't relate to people on a normal level only by what they liked.

And she used to focus on this. I think I talked at one point about how I once said that I liked Marilyn Monroe having seen an old film even then it would have been an old film and she suddenly bought me endless pictures of Marilyn Monroe to put on my walls and was still well up to her death sending me first day covers of Marilyn Monroe stamps and stuff like that even though I wasn't actually from the 1950s.

And similar to that, this is something that's quite important in the book, is that my first books that I read when I was a kid, children's books, were Billy Bunter books. And that was because my mum used to collect children's books before she collected golf stuff. And she gave me one of those. I said I quite liked it. Next thing I knew, there were hundreds. There were hundreds in my room. And then she enrolled me without me asking in something called the Old Boys Book Club.

Now the Old Boys Book Club still exists and it's a place where they discuss Billy Bunter books which were written by the way in the 1920s by a bloke called Frank Richards and I was taken when I was 11 to meetings of the Old Boys Book Club left there by my mum. I was 11, everyone else was 70. I mean God knows what might have gone on to be honest but nothing terrible happened except I was extremely, extremely bored.

And I mean, I might as well tell you, shall I tell you how the book ends with a reference to that? I feel it's a bit of a spoiler. Yeah, let's save that. All right, we'll save that. Let's save that and see where it goes. But yeah, it's a lovely end to the book. But no, just in those terms, it's like in terms of answering your question, is I knew, I mean, there's a book also, the book opens with David White in our garden trying to teach me how to play golf.

And it's deliberately written to sound as if something really terrible is going on. And then it is. Because he's teaching me how to play fucking golf. Yeah. Which is a sport that even then I thought, this is for twats, this sport. But he really wanted to teach me how to play it. And...

I, you know, it was a weirdly transgressive moment, but comic because there's a football goal in our garden over there. I'm playing golf. He's sort of behind me showing me how to do this. There's a fucking football goal over there, David. So our dad had bought that for us. So it is weirdly transgressive, but I don't know that I, you know, really thought about what was going on. I think I just accepted it. But also because you, well, it wasn't that you weren't allowed friends round, but it was frowned upon.

Yeah, that was for a different reason and not to do with so that was yeah something else I talked about in the book is so my dad was made redundant in the early 80s and He then became very very obsessed with money He hadn't been not obsessed with money before that but he became totally obsessed with money So much that he would say you can't have any friends back and this is a quote in case they eat some toast. I

He did say that. So we weren't allowed to have friends back and I mean that made things quite difficult and there was another thing that made things difficult which was

So when people talk about an affair, I think they assume that the marriage, the main marriage from which the affair is branching off is probably dead, especially sexually. That is not the case with my parents. And I have insomnia. And the reason I have insomnia is that I was woken up every single night by the sounds that my dad especially was making in the bedroom next door. And for years, I thought there was a wounded walrus in my parents' bedroom.

I've watched a lot of pornography, I mean really, a lot. And I have never heard another orgasming man make that sound. The only man, the only person or being who I think might is Chewbacca. And

This is a true story. It's a true story. I managed to get a friend of mine round. I managed to get a friend of mine round, also called Dave, to stay the night. I don't know, maybe he didn't eat any toast. But he was staying in our house and I said to him, I was sleeping in another room, he slept in my bedroom, I said to him, just so you know, my parents might have sex and they make very, very weird noises. And he looked at me in a kind of like...

I'm 16, I know what fucking sex is like mate and I was like, okay and went off to sleep in the other room and then this is totally true at 3 o'clock in the morning Dave came into the bedroom I was in, knocked on the door white with fear this is what he said, he said Dave, I think your mum's died

And I said, "What?" And he said, "I think your mum's died because your dad is making noises like I've never heard anyone make. They're like the noises that my uncle made at my aunt's funeral." And I'm like, "They're having sex." He went, "No, no, no, no, no, no. These are terrible noises." So I said, "All right." I got up. We went and stood in my bedroom in my boxer shorts. We waited about four seconds. And then we went, "Raaah!" I said, "They're having sex," and went back to bed. So it was difficult, yeah. It was difficult having people around.

Okay, I just want to go on a tangent to a couple of things that are in your book. One of them, let's just go there, cats. Yeah. Your love of cats. Yeah. That was from the beginning. Yes. So there's a chapter totally about cats towards the end. It's partly, I think I say, that Alan Corrin once said that the three things you need to sell a book are

Nazis golf and cats Did a book called golfing for cats with the swastika on the golf flag? And so I'm partly responding to that. But also now I am very obsessed with cats and my dad

I felt always that the only real affection he ever showed when we were young was to the cat. And that's definitely something... I mean, I show affection to my kids all the time, far too much, and they're bored with it. But I'm also very, very obsessed with the four cats.

that I have. One of the cats, the cat that I had that I was most obsessed with ever was a cat that me and Frank Skinner shared together. We worked on the name for quite a long time. It was Chairman Meow. And we were very...

very happy with that name and then I knew it was a good name because I took it to the vet, took her, she's a her, Chairman Meow to the vet and the receptionist said what's the name of the cat and I said Chairman Meow. It got a massive laugh in the waiting room, I was pleased with that and then I went into the vet, to the actual vet and I noticed that the receptionist had just written down on the computer just Meow, just like her surname and

Which means that when I actually, when the vet got the details of the cat up on the computer, I could tell he was thinking, meow, what a shit name for a cat. You're meant to be a comedian, can't you do any better than that? Sorry, I will just tell another, one more cat story. I mean, cats are really important to me, so it's not just comedy, but I...

That cat, Chairman, I called her the Chairman, she used to go and get fed by another woman who lived around the corner from me all the time. And eventually that woman got a bit annoyed and decided to buy a collar for Chairman because I hadn't bought her a collar. And her point was, I don't want to carry on feeding your cat. I was like, yeah, just don't feed her. But she would do it anyway. And then she said, well, I want the cat to go back to you. And so what she did was she put a phone number, my phone number,

my landline number at the time, on the collar. But she didn't put Chairman Meow, she put David. My phone number had David, which meant for years I was convinced that my wife, Morwenna, was going to get a phone call saying, I'm afraid David's been in a road accident. He's lying on the ground, shall we just hit him with a shovel? Because he was always shitting in my garden.

But I am very obsessed with cats and I think it is to do with that and actually I talk about Zelda who is the cat I'm presently most obsessed with because Zelda was my cat that actually the daughter of my main cat Pip at the moment. It's all very confusing but anyway Zelda was taken away by my mum and

and my mum then died and then she lived with my dad the whole time my dad had dementia and then he died and then we just inherited her back and she's feral and mad mainly because she lived with my dad but I feel this incredible connection with her and that's like got must be to do with that strange history. No and it's lovely actually the chapter in the book about cats is very funny but it's also very moving as well it's lovely.

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Okay, I have to tell you, I was just looking on eBay where I go for all kinds of things I love, and there it was. That hologram trading card. One of the rarest. The last one I needed for my set. Shiny like the designer handbag of my dreams. One of a kind. eBay had it, and now everyone's asking, ooh, where'd you get your windshield wipers? eBay has all the parts that fit my car. No more annoying, just beautiful.

Whatever you love, find it on eBay. eBay. Things people love. The other area that you'd cover a little bit, which I did want to mention, was fame. Yeah. And what were Sarah and Colin's reactions to you becoming famous? Were they interested? Was it aggravation? It's aggravation, I think. I mean, so my mum liked the fame. She liked the fame. She was not interested at all in what I was famous for.

I don't think my mum ever said, "Oh, I like that joke. "Oh, that song you do about football, that's good, isn't it?" Never. I mean, that's sort of an extraordinary thing, isn't it? 'Cause that song, which they were totally both around for, this was well before my dad had dementia and she was totally still in my life, you know, people are singing at Wembley, like 80,000 people are singing at Wembley. At no point is my mum phoning me up and saying, "Oh, I just heard your song and that's good. "How does it go?" No, right? She's not interested. I show this actually,

There's a bit that it's really a visual joke this although interesting enough you read the audiobook so in the audiobook quite a lot of it is me describing pictures because there's load of pictures in the book so I have to describe a totally visual joke I mean a true thing but a joke which is I'm trying to show how much my mum wanted to be part of my fame even though she wasn't very interested in the actual work and what I show is the infidel premiere

And at the Infidel premiere, there's me and Omid Jalili standing there. Sorry, the Infidel was a film I wrote in 2010 about a Muslim who discovers that he's biologically born a Jew. Go and see it. It's on Amazon if you want to. People think, oh, that sounds interesting at this particular moment.

But anyway, so I'm there on the red carpet and there's all these photographers and I say, "You can see all these photographers." And then I say, "Well, not all the photographers." And then I widen the photo and there's a picture of my mother with the photographers taking a photo. But I don't think she's doing that in order to get a really good photo of me. And I can prove that because the photo that my mother had up in her house of the infidel premier is not the one she's taking of me and Omid.

It's the one with her in it, right? It's which is a press photo of the of her and all the photographers. So I don't think she was very interested. But I think the reason I include the chapter about fame is that I think I did a show about fame. It's one of the shows that are coming up. And as you'll know, I've had an incredible amount of really embarrassing experiences with famous people.

I mean, it's kind of amazing how much I've fucked up with famous people. And I think that is to do with my upbringing, because I think I had an upbringing which did not suit me for the sort of behind-the-velvet-rope discretion of fame. And so I say things and do things with famous people that I think I'm not meant to. Sometimes it's just unfortunate what happens, because part of it is I look like a lot of other famous Jews, I think. Like, it's just a sort of Groucho Marx thing.

So, for example, Ronan Keating of Boyzone once said to me that he really loved all my work and I was very happy about that and he kept on saying it and it was very flattering and then he said, what I particularly like that you did was Blackadder.

And I said, I'm not Ben Elton. And he said, he got really pissed off. Like I've been deliberately trying to trick him with my face. Um, I don't, shall I tell, I do this story. Shall I do this story? Yeah, I'll do it. Fucking hell. I'm sorry if you've heard this before, but it is a funny story. Uh, Andrew Lloyd Webber just thinks that I am Ben Elton. Uh,

And he does. There's a famous thing, there's an urban myth, or maybe it's not an urban myth, in showbiz, that when he was writing The Beautiful Game, which is a musical he wrote about football, he was sitting at home and Fantasy Football League was on, the show I used to do with Frank, and he said to one of his minions, called one of his minions, oh, get me that, because he didn't know anything about football, he said, get me that Jewish glasses, beardy-looking bloke off the telly, and they went and got him Ben Elton by mistake. LAUGHTER

And I thought that cannot be true, but then Frank Skinner met Andrew Lloyd Webber and Andrew Lloyd Webber actually said to him, "I love that show you do on the sofa with Ben." This is after he'd written a fucking musical with Ben Elton. So one time I met Andrew Lloyd Webber at a showbiz party. It was the ITV Summer Party. And I met Andrew Lloyd Webber and I said to him, "Andrew, you know I'm not Ben Elton, don't you?" And he looked really frightened and confused like,

Oh my god, what's wrong with Ben? Is he having a nervous breakdown? What the fuck?

And he got so frightened and flustered that he left the little circle we were in. But before he left, and the woman he was talking about didn't know that he'd said this, she didn't hear him say it, he said to me, oh, this is Sarah. And then he went off. And I thought, that's odd, because I know that his second wife was Sarah Brightman. So I assume this isn't his wife. I assume it's unlikely to have two wives of the same name. So I say to her, oh, what do you do for Andrew?

And she looks a bit weirdly at me and says, well, I look after the estate and the horses. And I think, okay, some kind of PA. And then because it's fame and it's a world I don't really belong, a weird thing happens, which is Eamon Holmes, who I've never met before in my life, comes over to say hello. And I say, oh, hello, Eamon. This is Sarah.

And she looks absolute daggers at me and says, "Is that meant to be some kind of joke?" And then I realized in a flash what had happened. When Andrew Lloyd Webber had left me in a fluster, he'd confused the name of his third wife, Madeleine, with the name of his second wife, Sarah. And I thought, "That's too embarrassing to tell her." So when she said, "Is that meant to be some kind of joke?" I said, "Yes."

And she said, "Well, it's not a very funny one." Yeah, she's absolutely right about that, isn't she? Absolutely right about that. So I went and found Andrew Lloyd Webber. I made my... It was so embarrassing. I made my excuses and left. I went and found Andrew Lloyd Webber in another part of the party. And I said to him, "Andrew, word to the wise, you just told me that your wife's name is Sarah. It's not Sarah, is it?" "No." "That's really embarrassing because I introduced her to someone else as Sarah. Please never do that to anyone else again."

And he said, "I'm really sorry about that, Ben." He did. Absolutely true. I still don't know if that was a joke. So that's just one of many, many very awkward things that have happened to me in the world of fame. There's a few of them in the book. Each one made me laugh out loud, which is great.

I'm gonna ask one more question here and then we'll open it up to questions to David from the audience. So I just, I mean there are loads more that we could talk about obviously. I think that the way that you talk about

Both of your parents passing is incredibly moving and in your dad's case quite funny as well. And it is that thing about perspective, isn't it? I mean, I tell students at Sussex that if anything that's overwhelming kind of consumes you and you lose perspective. Do you teach at Sussex or do you just turn up and tell them that? No, I just turn up and tell them to hang about outside. I'm Chancellor. I'm Chancellor of the University of Sussex. Are you? Congratulations. It's ridiculous.

And you know one of the things about humor and irony is it gives you instant perspective. So that one thing that's kind of terrifying or awful or frightening or whatever, if it's also ridiculous, it's not one thing anymore. And that really comes through all of it. Which makes, I guess, the most difficult parts of the truth palatable.

Yeah, but one of the things about that, sorry, I don't know what you were going to say, but I think this is the way you're heading, is that, and this is why this is a book that is slightly different, I mean, more than slightly different from the stage show, is that I can open up comic truths to be something a bit more. And so one good example of that, I think, is...

My mum was on Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned. And I use it as another example of my mum's desperate need to tell people about her infidelity. And how she does that is... So I don't know how many people remember Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, but it was an ad-lib show that me and Frank did on ITV. And we always used to pick someone out of the audience to be what we called the secretary, who would write down on a whiteboard the things we talked about that week. And my parents came one time.

and I sort of knew straight away because as I said earlier my mum liked to be in the spotlight and she liked to share my spotlight if she could that she was desperate to be the secretary and I put this to Frank early on in the show and Frank who knew my mother well was not keen

Nonetheless she ends up being the secretary actually she ends up being the secretary because she does a very my mom thing which again I think I talked to said earlier like she's not a normal Jewish mom as in just taking pride in her child's achievement that can be seen from the fact that when we're discussing it Frank says to me look either I let down an old lady or the show will be shit and my mom shouts out it always is

That's how she gets to be the secretary because the audience loved that and applaud But then there's a really interesting moment again a mad moment, but sort of interesting which is my mom and

I might just read the bit towards the end of this, but anyway, my mum, she starts talking at one point about how I'm one of three, one of three brothers. And she just starts saying, oh, he's got a younger brother called Dan and an older brother called Ivor. And the audience go, ah, because she's being so mummish. And I say, I don't know why you're going, ah, that just means my mum had sex with my dad three times. And that gets a bit of a laugh, but not as big as the response when my mum says, how do you know they were all from your father?

She says that on telly with my dad in the audience. So I say, mother, that's not a comeback to me. That's calling yourself a slag. Now, I regret that now. I wouldn't do that now, even if my mom was a bit of a slag. I wouldn't do that. But she completely tops me. My mom says about herself saying, how do you know they were all from your father? She says, no, it means I had a good life.

What I think about that is that's really interesting because it's very 70s at some level at some level It's just again her saying in the kind of Erica young way that it's demonstrative that she isn't just a little housewife from Dollis Hill Because she had this interesting sex life, but I think she means subconsciously something else which is what you have to remember about my mother is that I

had Hitler never existed, she would have married someone very royal almost, like some kind of Prussian prince or someone probably very, very wealthy in Germany and she would have had a gilded life. She didn't get that. She married a Welsh working class bloke who was always aggravated and was maybe having an affair with Rita Verma. From Unilever. From Unilever, that's the one. But...

She didn't get that. Instead, she got David White, who I think was the nearest thing she could get in like 1976 to the Prussian prince with his smooth pipe and his, you know, golfiness and his clubbiness and his non-Jewishness. I think for her that represented this kind of nearest thing to the Prussian prince that she could get. And so I think when she says, no, it means I had a good life, I think she means I lived a good life. I think she means...

I lived in my own way, my good life, the one that was stolen from me. I think that's what she means. And when I write that, I am moved by it. I don't think that's just funny. I think it's funny the way I get there because it's about golf. It's about her shouting something transgressive on a comedy show. But then I find, and this is, I think, what the book's trying to do, a deeper and maybe more generous truth than I would have found on stage about all that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by me, Leila Ismail. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.

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