S6 E1: David Baddiel, comedian

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:07I'm Grace Dent and this is Comfort Eating from The Guardian. A podcast where we pay homage to the lesser celebrated foods in life. Because even as a restaurant critic, I believe the food that matters most is often that snack you cobble together when you're curled upon the sofa. Each week, I ask my guest to lift the lid on what comfort foods have seen them through their lives. Because you can tell a lot about a person from what they eat behind closed doors.

0:44Just a quick word, there will be some strong language in this episode.

0:55Hello, friends. Now you find me actually on my hands and knees I am wedged behind my sofa I'm just doing a bit of tidying up I've got a new episode of comfort eating to record And I do like to have the place Spick and Span I am trying to get rid of the mountain of cat hair The swathes of it that are always blowing through my living room I've also been looking at my messages now some of them are about comfort eating some people were asking for style advice I mean I don't know have you actually seen me I only have two looks either very very tight mafia wife dresses or to be quite honest I'm just lying down in pajamas but I'm very flattered my one tip to give to you carry a lint roller now if you do ever look at me up close I'm generally festooned in cat hair I do take a lint roller with me everywhere this morning I was actually standing in the aisle on an Avanti train just giving my arms and legs a quick go now my guest today i am so excited is someone who i know loves cats as much as i do because i've been stalking him on instagram and i think he probably ought to give himself a quick roll with his roller before he leaves the house it's david baddiel comedian tv presenter screenwriter and million copy best-selling author of children and adult books no not those type of adult books His TV programmes include the Merriweus Experience Fantasy Football League with his long-running comedy partner, Frank Skinner.

2:46He is a bona fide comedy legend and he has been for absolutely decades. I can't wait to find out what he nibbles on when he's off stage and back home.

3:09David Baddiel, welcome to Comfort Eaton. Thank you, Grace Dent. It's lovely to be here. Now, as well as being a writer, a presenter, a comedian, you're responsible for the ultimate, ever optimistic England football song, Three Lions. Now, this is a song that you co-wrote as England's official song for the Euros in 96. Since then, it's been number one four times. It's been in the top 40 nine times. you must get, I don't want to talk about money, but you must get a solid paycheck every time the Euros or the World Cup comes round. It's brought you Evergreen fame. But what is the most gangster thing that it has actually brought you?

3:54Well, not money. So for a start, I mean, you know, it's brought me and Frank Skinner and Ian Brody of the Lightning Seeds a fair wedge. but I can promise you certainly not since Spotify took over has it brought us much money in fact I'm going to quote a figure so when England played Columbia in the 2018 World Cup it was downloaded something like 4 million times for which me and Frank and Ian received from Spotify 1200 pounds hang on a minute that's nothing I know I know that's the point it came out in 1996 and it went platinum in 1996 Just to be clear, we've done okay. I'm checking my privilege here.

4:34It's done very, very well. I'm going to reframe my question. When it first came out on vinyl and you were making loads of money, at any point did you just go and think, I'm just going to get gold teeth? I never thought about gold teeth. So not at any point have you ever bought a pair of£900 athleisure wear trousers from Bond Street? Well, let me tell you something that just happened today. Because I am from sort of lower middle class immigrant stock. and I've done all right in my life, but I find it quite hard, as does my wife, Morwenna Banks, who is from rural poverty in Cornwall, to actually flex anything.

5:12And yesterday, two towels arrived that had a high thread count and that were quite fluffy, and that's because we sat there the other day, having got out of the bath, saying, why are we drying ourselves with these rags? Surely we can do better than this. and it never occurred to us in years and years and years.

5:42Every week, my guest shares with me their ultimate comfort snack. Now, this is the treat that they turn to when their soul is low on sunshine and it needs a little boost from the kitchen cupboard. Can you unveil your snack? It's in front of us in my Harry and Meghan tea towel. Yeah, that's nice. Go and do it. Well, before I do it, I just want to say something, which is this is going to confuse some people who have a one-dimensional view of me. It's going to confuse me even more because doing this, lifting a thing that looks like this, particularly something ceremonial with food underneath, it reminds me of what Jews do at Passover.

6:19And Jews at Passover have matzah, which is unleavened bread, under something like this. unfortunately i have a bacon sandwich i shouldn't laugh oh my god that looks good i mean look a bacon and egg sandwich bacon and egg right talk me through the bacon and egg sandwich because i i think you've probably got very exacting standards about how it has to be done well can i just say something always when you say talk me through it i'm already in trouble here because i really want to eat this oh please go ahead can i eat it i can't eat and talk at the same time you absolutely can okay there is no shame in that i want so i have no impulse control in general in my life especially around food and this is my favorite comfort food and so i have to eat it do it do it do it but okay this is a messy sandwich this is not this is oh that's good oh i say do you need the bacon crisp yeah i'm trying to finish that i can sense I can sense that the moment you started eating that sandwich you thoroughly regretted that you had to do the rest of the interview I've got to say this is a good bacon sandwich I tried to starve myself before I came here because I knew the bacon sandwich was coming I couldn't do it Do you diet?

7:40I have done, I've kind of given it up now it's a good thing because if I ran hungry all the questions you've asked me so far would have just been gibberish always has to be white bread ground bread is just idiotic with a bacon sandwich It's got to be, for me, I don't even like it toasted. Some people like it toasted. If you read, like, The Guardian, How to Make a Perfect Bacon Sandwich. Who are those wankers? Yeah, those wankers will definitely say one side of it should be toasted. Fuck that. Because it's the squishiness of the mother's pride, essentially, with the slight crispiness of the bacon that is part of the joy of it.

8:17So, David, it's been a busy decade. alongside penning several best-selling books for adults and children, fronting TV shows and writing plays. You've spent the last 10 years touring award-winning solo stand-up shows. In fact, you've packed up and set off on no less than nine tours since 2013. But on your 2021 comedy tour of the UK, something strange happened. You started a phenomenon posting pictures of your breakfast. Yeah, that's right. In hotels up and down the country on Twitter. And there was a really strident response to this. Of all the things you've achieved in your life, you've never been backwards and coming forwards with an opinion, right?

9:03Yeah. All of my life, it feels like, since I was about 17. That's true. The first time I ever saw you. Please eat, please eat. So there's this very strident response about breakfast. What gets people most animated about a hotel breakfast? So this is what happened. when I was touring I was trying to make a more simple point than it turned out the one that I ended up making which is if you tour in Britain whether you're in a band or a comedian or whatever and you're doing a book tour and you're staying at a lot of British hotels what's available every morning I mean unless you're at very posh places if you're at the Marriott or whatever you come down you probably had quite a bad night the night before because you've done a gig and you haven't step very well at what emma and there it is the full english breakfast i was at one this morning no were you this morning and i walked past the tiny little frozen croissant that has been cooked at four o 'clock in the morning the bowl of slightly stale alpen kind of alp it's not alpen it's not alpen it's never alpen own brand little yeah own brand muesli and then the the terrine that you open and it is the old congealed scrambled egg that was also you've got to think that the people that get stuck with the breakfast shift have to go in at about four o 'clock and some of them are very angry about life and they're not making this with love people say that food is made with love there is no love made by somebody who's begrudgingly smoking a rothman's outside now going absolute bastards look at the wall so i love the fact that you started to really get people talking about this well what happened in the end was i was trying to say how is one supposed to like eat healthily if one is on tour in britain because here it is bacon eggs uh beans sausages waiting for you every morning and i have no willpower so i can't not eat this and it's killing me probably to eat this every morning which i was doing people weren't interested in my health what they were interested in and this is what it revealed is the plating of the of the full english breakfast there's a fault line in the british public which is they are obsessed and there are basically full english excuse me that's a bit of bacon there are full english breakfast police out there you're the first person i'll come for eating that's actually eaten at the point where you're regurgitating yeah i know i may actually go to the kitchen and cook a bit more uh so there are people who you put a picture of a full english breakfast out there and they will go crazy because the eggs are touching the beans uh or because the sausages are a bit overdone or because you've got some mushrooms on it and they don't like mushrooms or there's a huge fuss about whether beans should be in a ramekin or just on the plate or whether they should be there at all and you get people having a nervous breakdown uh because eggs are touching beans or whatever and I think there's something about the happy smiling face thing of a full English breakfast if you get obviously the eggs in the right place and the sausages in the right place or whatever that is just so appealing you were very good every day at going on and you give people your breakfast they come back at you with their funny funny funny happy ha ha ha and it's lovely and it's joyous and it's fun and that's the great bit of social media isn't it you You know, you're like at one with the world.

12:23Yeah. But then I used to look at you and it would be like two o 'clock, three o 'clock in the afternoon. And I'm like, David, you're arguing with people about eggs. And like, and it's not fun anymore. It's turned into, you know, it's turned into these eggs obviously represent your views on the Saturite government of 1985 or whatever. I know that you started to document this, your addiction to social media. I noticed that happening because I was the same as well I've been there I think we've both been through the mire with uh with using social media yeah what made you realize it was a problem um well I think my family a bit my family would tell me you know get off your phone dad you're supposed to be more engaged uh but I think also I used to think of it I think as somewhere where you could make jokes which was sort of very important you could start a funny thread like about full english breakfast and you could which obviously i found myself doing deal with quite important stuff like say anti-semitism in a way that would obviously lead to trolling but somehow or other you could still get your point across and then gradually i realized oh no it's sort of not that anymore and especially now i will still say the odd thing but i'm not i don't look at responses at all anymore and it's been much better for me mentally but also i think in terms of the way that place is now i just don't want to spend all my time fighting against the same people and hearing the same people shout back i've eaten my sandwich by the way i will donate half of mine no i'm all right for the minute but are you though i want to eat that i really want to eat the other one but i'm gonna leave it for the minute

14:09Let me take you back to the beginning of your comedy career. Yeah.

14:19I knew you couldn't resist it. Okay. You left Cambridge University in 1986 as vice president of the Cambridge Footlights and with a double first class degree in your back pocket. What's the plan? I was going to be a comedian. Really? Yeah, I've never had a proper job, which is weird, particularly as my kids now both are working in cafes and stuff. Not once ever. I've only ever done in terms of proper jobs, and they're both through my mum. My mum got me a job knocking down a wall at the vintage magazine shop in Soho because of a mate of hers around the shop, half of which was porn. And I only had a hammer, and my mate Jeremy Jacobs had another hammer, and we knocked down a wall.

15:05I did that for a week. And then another week, her stall, selling golf in memorabilia called Golfiana, for one week was in the basement in Liberties. And I looked after that, but I didn't know how to work the till. So I didn't sell anything. You have never been in a corporate environment. You have never been to like a mince pie jingle and mingle breakout session where you've had to speak. Do you know, you've never done anything. That's not something sexual, what you just said. No, no, no, you don't get, you're not, these days, you're not allowed to have sex at the mince pie jingle. Just jingle and mingle.

15:35Sounded to me like some kind of dogging. With these? No, I've never. I've never done it. And I feel bad in a way. You're fascinating. But that's because. You're like the royals or something. The royals have worked harder than you. Well, there's two things. At least they have to go. Can I just say, it's not some comfort privilege. We didn't have any money. My dad had been made redundant. It's just, what? No, I had a grant to do a PhD, which I did at London University. I was doing it and doing comedy at the same time. And back then, a grant to do a PhD, you could survive on that. You're literally like an advert for the Tory party to never, ever bring back grants.

16:10You literally came out with your double first and you were like, I'm going to be a stand-up comedian. And then I was working on the London Cabaret circuit and within about eight months, I was comparing the comedy store. But you were working on the Cabaret circuit. You had a 15-minute bit and you went out and just did it at Cabaret. Yeah, just to be clear about something, I came out of Cambridge University just after the time when, if you'd been in the Cambridge Footlights, you were just on telly. So Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, all those people, they came out in 1981 and they had a show. I can remember watching it.

16:43They had a show based on their Footlights May Week review show that was on BBC Two. Yeah, a bit of Frank Laurie. And bang, they were there, right? Yeah. By the time I came out in 1986, alternative comedy had completely taken over comedy. it was much better to have gone to Manchester University. I can remember I phoned up the comedy store when I came out of Footlights and I remember phoning them and them saying, have you had any experience in comedy? I was just trying to get an open spot. And I said quite proudly, I was vice president of the Cambridge Footlights, they put the phone down. So then I had to just go on the cabaret circuit, which basically involved going to places all over London, to shit pubs all over London, doing open spots and door splits and whatever.

17:21And I was on the cabaret circuit for five years. But you're still at some level furious about this, aren't you? I'm not furious about having done it. I'm actually really pleased I did the Cabaret Circuit. One of the best moments of my life was I've been doing the Comedy Store for about a year, about 1989. And Kim Kinney, who used to run the bookings and ran the place with a rod of iron, little Scottish bloke, he came into the dressing room and he said, just after I'd done a really storming set, we're going to move you up to Compare next week. and I remember thinking that's amazing because for me right Alexi Sale and all those people were the people who I looked up to and they had compared the comedy store so I'm really pleased I did that what I'm not pleased about is the assumption that because I went to Cambridge that I had an easy ride into TV.

18:10Do you think that the going up to compare was that your big break? No, the break, my break was that, so me and Rob Newman, who was also on the Cadbury circuit, we were doing stuff together, but also separately doing stand-up, and we were writing together, and then suddenly they asked me and Rob and a bunch of other people, Punt and Dennis, but also Joe Brand and Mark Thomas and all these people to do a show, and that was the Mary Weiss experience on Radio 1, which had five series on Radio 1, and that was really the break.

18:53this goes to television it's your first major tv gig writing and performing it's a four-person sketch show yeah it's you there's rob newman the steve punt this hugh dennis all still around doing doing their thing see i lived through this i don't want to embarrass you no no you're not I lived through this. I remember videoing it on my, you know, dusty VHS and just playing it again and again. It's this massive hit. You do live tours. There's the catchphrases, the characters that are still in mainstream culture. You're suddenly very famous. You're a teen idol. Mia Romney were the first comedians to do Wembley Arena.

19:41That was the sort of pinnacle of it. Did you go on hoverboards or skateboards? No, he did. So he was always more straightforwardly rock and roll than me, being very, very good looking and just a bit more mental. And he came on to Wembley on an electric skateboard. He was wearing a kind of cape and an electric skateboard. And we left the stage in our History Today characters, which for anyone listening doesn't know, these two old professors who used to slag each other off like primary school children by saying, see that piece of flob over there? That's you, that is, right? And though we went off dressed as those two on a bicycle in terms of excitement, Wembley Arena was amazing.

20:23I always say that when you went out and did that at Wembley Arena, I remember the kind of shock in the media that comedians could do that. I think you were the first people to do that, to kind of combine like the brashness, the swaggeriness, the sexiness of pop stars. And you were going out and going, that's you that is. There was a sort of slight sexiness to it. And it didn't feel like actually where I'd grown up doing comedy because the cabaret circuit felt much more like agitprop, much more like everyone's very political. It's kind of serious, even when it's funny. And there's a kind of slight dustiness to it.

21:04And it wasn't very glamorous, right? And then I think towards the end of the 80s and the start of the 90s, that shifted a bit and we were part of that shift. Suddenly it became less political and more starry. Have you ever snogged an Appleton? I really have never snogged an Appleton. So one way in which I've really, really not flexed fame is sexually. Really? Come on. You were allowed to then? We were allowed to? I know. That was the only good thing about that. We looked disgusting. We looked awful. But, you know, you could go missing. There was no phones. There was no pictures. It's all true.

21:43But what I, so I, when I was young, I went out with the same person from when I was 16 to when I was 27. I went out with the same woman and lovely woman. But that was too long for me when I was that age. I just didn't know how to split up with anyone. Splitting up with people just seemed like really, really difficult. Oh, my God. You're that guy that just dates you out of politeness for a decade. For a decade Is there something wrong David? No It's fine, I'm having a great time Okay well she might be listening to this So I'm not going to go into too much But I do think that I don't understand it I still don't understand it If I did have sex with someone After a gig I would think you have to have a sliver of ice in your heart To be properly promiscuous And I always found it really impossible to say And now I never want to see you again So I would end up in another relationship friendship and also i did fall in love very very quickly now i at least am not like a lot of my compatriots who i believe wake up every morning at about four o 'clock sweating with anxiety thinking who did i get my cock out in front of in a hotel corridor in 1992

23:04We were, my production team, we were talking about you yesterday for this meeting. And I said to them in the middle of the meeting, in about 1996, I once met you. Did I try it on? No. Well, there you are, you see. I should have done. The absolute opposite, right? I said to them, I once tried to chime up. It was having absolutely fucking none of it. Well, that's so wrong of me, you see. I now deeply, deeply regret that. I was fit then. I was fit then. You're very fit now, Grace. Thank you, but I was actually, everything was pointing in the right way then. It wasn't just like good girdle, right?

23:45We missed it. And like, it was in a bar in North London. Yeah. And I remember just going, oh, hi, blah, blah, blah. And you just kind of got your beers and walked off. I'm so sorry. And that is it, but this is what I'm saying. And now 2024, you knew when I said something, you knew there was no shit on you whatsoever because you haven't done anything. Well, actually, walking away from you, and you would have been like someone I would definitely think was fit in 1994 or whatever. I would have seen you and thought, oh, I need to walk away from this because I was monogamous. Yes. And so I had to avoid situations like that.

24:25How old were you, though? You must have been about that. I don't know, in my 1994? Yeah, 20. Like 30? Yeah. Late 20s? I've forgotten how old I am. 30? 1994 has been 30. Hang on, you would have been, what, 22 or something? Yeah, something like that. Oh, now we're sitting here slightly thinking it's terrible that we missed this opportunity. We're having this awful sad moment. Imagine how happy we could have been. Imagine. Because you really like cats. anxiety and mental quests for fame all in the same house. That would have been great. Cats and food. Just loads of cats, just cat hair and a faint smell of cat weed just both standing out in the garden looking for stray animals.

25:16So I'm imagining you on a classic night out. perhaps you've fallen out of the groucho maybe damon alban has thrown up in your hat probably alex james is trying to get you to buy into his cheese company yeah what are you eating on the way home okay so so my main comfort food not just in the 90s uh a sort of big comfort food is curry um and uh that's because i mean i love curry in general but there is a sort of of specific thing which is we never went out to eat at all when i was young we my dad went mad about money round about sort of 1980 because he got made redundant and because my dad was an incredibly truculent bloke no one would give him another job and he ended up selling dinky toys in a market for the rest of his life and making no money and so we never went out to eat we never went on any foreign holidays or anything like that and the first time i can remember ever going somewhere it was a place called the Shah Bar in Hampstead which he used to call the shag bag because my dad always had to have funny names for places and it was a curry house which is still there and just thinking this is amazing.

26:27David can I take you back now to your childhood in Dollis Hill London in the late 60s early 70s you had two brothers and your parents were both Jewish your mum, Sarah, was a refugee from Nazi Germany and your dad, Colin, was from a working class family in Swansea. He gained a PhD in chemistry and worked with Unilever. So you've got German, Welsh and Jewish cultures in the home. Does this translate into what your mum is cooking? Not properly. So because she's a terrible cook. So she tried to. I do remember her cooking chicken soup, which obviously is a big Jewish thing, but it was basically just a big vat of water in which she's thrown the occasional claw, that sort of it, right?

27:10And it was just tasteless and whatever. And then also every so often she would cook roasts, which is not very Jewish, but that might have been an attempt to assimilate. It's like we'll have Sunday roasts, which she would overcook to such an extent that I still now think of the sort of meat there as like as hard as a house brick. And I've got a bit of a thing now about that, which is I can only have meat sort of dangerously rare in reaction to that. But all families really only have about three or four dishes. They have time and time again. So if you're not at the Shah Bar, what is an average thing your mother's cooking?

27:46Wednesday night you get in from school. The main thing I remember about my mother's cooking is that she would sometimes tease us about pudding. She would say, I've got quite an exciting pudding. And it would always be a fucking tangerine. Tinned peaches. It would be that. It would never be, you know, lemon meringue pie. Things I'd never even heard of then. Just a Sara Lee Gatto or something, like just a Viennetta. A Sara Lee Gatto for me, it would have been really heaven at the time. They were about 89 pence. Yeah. And you could get, they were always in the supermarket in the freezer bit, but just taking off that white plastic thing, and then the chocolate would have all clung to it.

28:27I was just amazed. I got one the other day. It actually wasn't Sara Lee, but it was very similar, Banoffee pie that I got from Sainsbury's, and it was frozen. and I did a thing, I don't know if you ever do this, I'm like, I just want to eat this now, so I put it in the microwave, not on defrost, but just on full power. And then it was all over the place and I said to my son, I'm going to think of this as something posh. I'm going to think of it as deconstructed banoffee pie mess and then ate most of it.

29:01you're one of three brothers and two out of the three of you have made careers out of being funny yeah so back then was it a funny house it was a funny house my dad especially was really funny very angry man, very Welsh, very shouty. I think I said at his funeral, I said my dad was a lover of football, food and shouting, who the fucking hell is this now, every time the phone rang. But he was a very funny bloke. Do you do that now? No, no, I'm very unangry. In every way, the cycle of not abuse, but of sort of bad behaviour in my house, I have not repeated it, I have reacted against it. So my mother was deeply self-dramatizing and I am unbelievably un-self-dramatizing.

29:48And my dad was really angry and I almost never get, I don't like anger. I don't like to get angry or whatever. Did you say? But he was funny. He was really funny. This stops now with regards to your parents' behavior. Did you go like, this stops now? No, I just didn't, I couldn't find it in me to be like that at all. And especially like, I'm obsessed with truth, right? I'm obsessed, obsessed, obsessed. I don't really have any kind of mantras of how I live my life except a sort of on the spectrum need to be honest all the time. And that's what I'm doing now. You know, when you ask me questions, I don't think about how to answer them.

30:22I say them because I feel really uncomfortable with in any way framing or curating who I am. Because my mother used to do that all the time. The golfing thing, the most extreme thing. My mother fell in love with this golfing member of Billy a Salesman and then decided, like literally overnight, that she was obsessed with golf. because my mother had all sorts of issues to do with being a refugee from Nazism and not knowing what her life should be because her life should have been something completely different it should have been this really actually rather beautiful life in Prussia in which she would have been quite fated and maybe some kind of semi-aristocratic princess it wasn't that, it was completely destroyed and the only way she could find the shards of it I think was in what was around in Crickerwood in 1975 and one of them was this golfing memorabilia bloke.

31:09And so she became obsessed with golfing memorabilia. And all the time, I kind of knew as a kid, A, I knew she was having the affair because she would tell everyone. But B, I kind of knew this isn't you. You don't like golf. What are you talking about? And I think that's why I need to be truthful all the time. How old were you when you realised that she was having the affair? I think I knew about it when I was sort of 13 or 14. The only person who didn't know about it, amazingly, was my dad. My dad managed to sort of not know about it. It's a brilliant, brilliant example of denial for his whole life.