David Baddiel


David Lionel Baddiel is a British-American comedian, novelist and television presenter. He is known for his work alongside Rob Newman in The Mary Whitehouse Experience and partnership with Frank Skinner. Besides comedy, Baddiel is also a published novelist and a screenwriter who is the author of the children's novels The Parent Agency, The Person Controller, AniMalcolm, Birthday Boy, Head Kid and The Taylor TurboChaser.

Early life

Baddiel was born in Troy, New York, and moved to the UK with his parents when he was four months old. He is the second of three sons.
His parents were both from Jewish families. His father, Colin Brian Baddiel, was Welsh-born from a working-class background and worked as a research chemist with Unilever before being made redundant in the 1980s, after which he sold Dinky Toys at Grays Antique Market. His mother, Sarah, was German-born. She died in 2014, and was a five-month-old refugee child when she was brought to the United Kingdom in 1939 by her parents after escaping from Nazi Germany, where her father, Ernst, had been stripped of his assets. Soon after their arrival, Ernst was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man for a year.
Baddiel grew up in Dollis Hill, Willesden, north London. He attended primary school at the North West London Jewish Day School in Brent. After studying at The Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Elstree, a public school near Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, he studied English at King's College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the Cambridge Footlights, and graduated with a double first. He began studies for a PhD in English at University College London but did not complete it.

Career

''The Mary Whitehouse Experience'' and ''Newman and Baddiel''

After leaving university, Baddiel became a professional stand-up comedian in London, as well as a writer for acts such as Rory Bremner and series including Spitting Image. His first television appearance came in one episode of the showbiz satire Filthy, Rich and Catflap. In 1988 he was introduced to Rob Newman, and the two formed a writing partnership. Subsequently, paired up with Steve Punt and Hugh Dennis, another comedy duo, they began writing and performing in The Mary Whitehouse Experience on BBC Radio 1, where the show ran for four series and a special. This success led the show to transfer to BBC2, where it ran for two series, after which both duos decided to end the show. During this time, Baddiel also co-hosted the Channel 4 programme A Stab in the Dark.
After The Mary Whitehouse Experience, Baddiel and Newman re-teamed up for Newman and Baddiel in Pieces, which ran for seven episodes on BBC2, featuring character sketches, monologues and observation routines. Despite a fraught working relationship, the show saw Newman and Baddiel find enormous success as live performers, held up as examples of comedy as ‘the new rock ’n’ roll’, with their tour culminating in the first ever sold-out gig for a comedy act at Wembley Arena, playing to 12,500 people. Despite this success, increasing tension between the pair led to them announcing the tour would be their last together. Their final tour was the subject of a BBC2 documentary, Newman and Baddiel on the Road to Wembley.

''Baddiel and Skinner''

Baddiel subsequently met and began sharing a flat with fellow comedian Frank Skinner. Both lifelong football fans, the pair created, wrote and performed Fantasy Football League, a popular entertainment show based on the growing fantasy football craze. Running for three series on BBC2, followed by a series of live specials throughout the 1998 World Cup and then again through the 2004 European Championship, as well as a series of podcasts for The Times from Germany at the 2006 World Cup, and another series for Absolute Radio from South Africa during the 2010 World Cup. During this time the duo also twice topped the UK Singles Chart with the football anthem "Three Lions", co-written and performed with The Lightning Seeds. The song was originally written as the England football team's official anthem for UEFA Euro 1996 and was subsequently re-recorded with updated lyrics as the unofficial anthem for the 1998 World Cup. The song won the hearts of many England fans and has had unofficial re-writes for the 2018 FIFA World Cup.
After ending Fantasy Football League, the pair took an improvised question-and-answer show to the Edinburgh Fringe which then became a television series, Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, which ran for five series on ITV, as well as a West End run at the Shaftesbury Theatre in 2001.
The pair also appeared on a celebrity special of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? in 2001, becoming the first celebrity contestants to reach £250,000 for their charities, the Catholic Children's Society and the Imperial Cancer Research Fund.
On the Official UK Charts on 13 July 2018, the song Three Lions by Baddiel, Frank Skinner and The Lightning Seeds also re-entered the charts at Number 1, celebrating the progress of England national football team at the 2018 FIFA World Cup with the phrase "it's coming home" featuring heavily on social media and television.

Blackface controversy

Baddiel has received criticism for his blackface impression of Black footballer Jason Lee on the programme, which involved him wearing a pineapple on his head and blacking up. Jason Lee has said he considered this a form of bullying.

Solo work

Baddiel has written four novels: Time for Bed, Whatever Love Means, The Secret Purposes and The Death of Eli Gold. In June 2015, Baddiel published his first children's novel, The Parent Agency, which won the LOLLIE award for ‘best laugh out loud book for 9–13-year olds’ and is now being developed into a feature film, also written and produced by Baddiel, by Fox 2000 Pictures. His subsequent children's novels include The Person Controller, AniMalcolm, Birthday Boy and Head Kid. He wrote The Boy Who Could Do What He Liked, a short story published for World Book Day in 2016.
In 2001, Baddiel wrote and starred in Baddiel's Syndrome, a sitcom for Sky 1 which also starred Morwenna Banks, Stephen Fry and Jonathan Bailey, which ran for fourteen episodes. He also wrote the comedy film, The Infidel, starring Omid Djalili, Richard Schiff, Matt Lucas and Miranda Hart. Baddiel has since adapted the film into a musical with music by Erran Baron Cohen. Baddiel directed the production which ran at London's Theatre Royal Stratford East in late 2014. Baddiel's other writing credits include The Norris McWhirter Chronicles for Sky 1, which starred Alistair McGowan and John Thomson and which Baddiel also directed, and two episodes of the ITV reboot of Thunderbirds, Thunderbirds Are Go!
In 2004 Baddiel created and hosted Heresy, a BBC Radio 4 panel show which sees celebrity guests trying to overthrow popular prejudice and received wisdom. The show is currently in its 10th series, and has been hosted by Victoria Coren since 2008, with Baddiel returning regularly as a guest. In 2014 Baddiel created and hosted Don't Make Me Laugh, a new panel show for Radio 4 which tasks guests with talking for as long as possible on obviously humorous subjects without getting laughs. The second series aired in 2016. In 2015, he created and fronted David Baddiel Tries to Understand..., a BBC Radio 4 show which sees Baddiel try to understand famously complex subjects as suggested by his followers on Twitter, and has now run for three series.
Baddiel has appeared in shows including Little Britain, Skins, The Life of Rock with Brian Pern and Horrible Histories and is a regular guest on panel shows including 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, QI and Alan Davies’ As Yet Untitled. In 2016, he fronted a four-part travel documentary for Discovery entitled David Baddiel On the Silk Road, a 4,000-mile journey to explore the most famous trade route in history, as well as presenting two episodes of BBC2's Artsnight and becoming a regular presenter of The Penguin Podcast in which he interviews authors about the objects that inspired their books, which has seen him interview guests including Johnny Marr, Zadie Smith and Ruby Wax. Other documentaries he has fronted include Baddiel and the Missing Nazi Billions, Who Do You Want Your Child to Be?, World's Most Dangerous Roads, and an episode of Who Do You Think You Are?. He appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2018.
Baddiel has also filmed a documentary about his father's dementia, The Trouble with Dad. This was screened on Channel 4 in 2017.
In 2019 Baddiel featured in Taskmaster series 9. He won one episode and finished fifth in the overall series.

Stand-up

In 2013, he returned to stand-up comedy with his critically acclaimed show FAME: Not the Musical, which ran at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe before transferring to London's Menier Chocolate Factory and a subsequent nationwide tour. In Spring 2016 Baddiel premiered his latest show, My Family: Not the Sitcom, again at the Menier Chocolate Factory. The confessional show tells the true story of Baddiel's recently deceased mother and dementia-suffering father.
Following a five-week run, the show transferred to London's West End in September 2016 for another five-week run at the Vaudeville Theatre. In spring 2017 it was announced that the show would return to the West End for one final ten-week run at the Playhouse Theatre in March 2017. In the same month, it was announced that the show was nominated for an Olivier Award, in The Entertainment And Family category. The show was performed as part of the Montreal Comedy Festival in 2017, and will tour the UK in 2018. Most recently, Baddiel took the show to a four-city tour of Australia. His new show about social media, Trolls: Not The Dolls, tours the UK in 2020.

Plays

In October 2019 Baddiel's play God's Dice was produced at the Soho Theatre, London. The title is an allusion to Einstein's view of quantum uncertainty: "God does not pay dice with the universe". The work deals with "an ageing seduced into supporting a radical religious sect".

Personal life

Baddiel has two children with his partner, fellow comedian Morwenna Banks – a daughter Dolly and a son Ezra. They live in North London. He has two brothers – Ivor, who is a writer, and Dan.
Baddiel's book, The Secret Purposes, is based in part on the internment of his grandfather on the Isle of Man during the Second World War. His father is from Swansea and his mother was born in Nazi Germany, a swastika appearing on her birth certificate. An episode of the BBC's genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? investigated his heritage in some detail, but failed to prove his theory that his mother had been secretly adopted from another Jewish family who had no hope of escaping. Despite his upbringing, he has described himself as a "10 out of 10 atheist" and as a "fundamentalist" "Jewish atheist".
He is a big fan of the rock band Genesis and introduced the band at their press conference in 2006. He also provided sleeve notes for the reissue of the album Nursery Cryme as part of the Genesis 1970–1975 box set. Baddiel is also a fan of the band's former lead singer Peter Gabriel. A diarist for The Times once incorrectly reported that he had been "loud and offensive" while attending one of Gabriel's concerts, something Baddiel has referred to in his live act.
Baddiel is also a fan of David Bowie and marked the singer's 65th birthday in 2012 by expressing a desire on Twitter to see him come out of retirement. Baddiel attended the tribute concert to Bowie at London's Union Chapel following the musician's death and addressed the audience, describing Bowie as "the greatest tunesmith we have".