David Baddiel is incredibly good company in this audiobook. It made me laugh and cry. I felt like I was missing out by not having the physical book because it is full of photos of his family and his mum's golf memorabilia, but I love the way that Baddiel stops reading at these moments and casually and unscriptedly describes the image, like a rambling and lovingly composed HTML alt attribute. He invited me to go and look at the images in a bookshop, which I might well do.
This is the book version of his My Family: Not the Sitcom theatre show. It's mostly about his parents, Sarah and Colin Baddiel, a bit about his brothers, Ivan and Dan. Sarah had a long-running affair with a man called David White, a pipe-smoking golfing enthusiast and memorabilia dealer. Colin seemed not to notice or care. Both of them were neglectful by today's parenting standards, but, as Nora Ephron would say, they provide good copy. Sarah was shameless in the broadcasting of her sexuality ("My clitoris is on fire!"). David admits he spent much of his 30s in therapy. Sarah died 7 years before her husband, who had dementia and Pick's disease, which exaggerated his worst qualities of rudeness and swearing - often hilariously.
I've always liked David Baddiel. He played an important part in the formation of my sense of humour via The Mary Whitehouse Experience and Fantasy Football League with Frank Skinner. I remember that my brother, Gregory, read his first novel, Time for Bed, which seems to be the thinly fictionalized version of this memoir. I admire his thoughtfulness and honesty. He admits in this book that he has to tell the truth and lacks the common Jewish trait of shame, which leads to some funny anecdotes about his life as a celebrity.
I zoomed through this book in a few days, often smiling and laughing as I listened on my daily walks around the estate. It's touching and moving - particularly towards the end when he describes the death of both his parents and a beloved cat. But some of the biggest laughs come in these dark times. May you live a long life. What a great hang!