David Baddiel on shaking the family tree in his deeply personal one-man show

25 years ago, David Baddiel was one of the biggest names in British comedy. Alongside fellow comic Rob Newman, the two were famously the first-ever stand-up comedians to perform at the iconic Wembley Arena in 1993. Although the 54-year-old has long since reverted to smaller-scale shows, the memory of performing to over 12 thousand people isn’t something one forgets – even a quarter-century removed from the fact. “I look back on it with a lot of fondness,” Baddiel says.

“It was a great, very exciting time. As it happens, I don’t think the work I do now would suit arenas. I’ve been touring this show in the UK in rooms that are 1700-seaters, maximum. I wouldn’t want to go over that, because the show is very intimate. I think it would lose that in a bigger space. I’d be happy to do an arena again, but I think I’d have to write a different show.” Baddiel goes on to note that those that have ascended to similar heights are just as deserving of praise as those with a more alternative, cult following.

“Lots of the comics in the UK who are doing arenas are really good,” he says. “I’m a big fan of Michael McIntyre, who gets a lot of stick for being mainstream and ‘safe.’ In actuality, his material is incredibly microscopic and well-observed. It’s just a British class thing that creates that snobbishness.”

When Baddiel speaks of “this show” in the present tense, he is referring to his critically-acclaimed stage show My Family: Not the Sitcom. As the title suggests, Baddiel goes for a deep-dive into key aspects of his family history, particularly in relation to his parents. Baddiel describes My Family as “a stand-up show 3.0,” meaning “at its heart, it’s a stand-up show, albeit a stand-up show with theatrical benefits.” Stylistically, it’s somewhat of a spiritual successor to a show Baddiel had done back in 2013, entitled Fame: Not the Musical.

“I hadn’t done stand-up for a while,” he explains. “When I did a talk about fame, I hadn’t pitched it as comedy – it was basically a TED-style thing. It got so many laughs, I thought maybe this is a way of coming back to stand-up: Doing longer-form storytelling, using a screen and keeping the whole thing on one theme so it feels more like a theatre show.”

David Baddiel

My Family was initially developed during a trial run at London’s Soho Theatre in 2016 before it made its official premiere at another London venue, the Menier Chocolate Factory. “There was loads of stuff that changed,” says Baddiel of the transition from the workshop performances to opening night. “There were different stories that were in it then, and it’s all been refined, changed and tightened. I’ve never written the show down word-for-word – it’s built around true stories. Just as anyone would with stories they know, I don’t tell them word-for-word the same every night. Ad-libs have often occurred to me, and have then gone into the show.”

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While many would baulk at the idea of delving into the lives of those closest to them, Baddiel is emphatic that he showed no reticence whatsoever when he was putting My Family together. “I have no filter when it comes to telling stories about myself,” he says. “Two things always exorcise humiliation for me: comedy and honesty. If it’s true and it’s funny, I don’t care how embarrassing a story is.” Of course, it’s one thing to put yourself on the comedic chopping block – another entirely to involve others, least of all people who aren’t even around to defend themselves. This, as Baddiel admits, took its own set of navigations.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLSoIi7M1CQ

“I talked it through with my brothers,” he says. “They were both very uncertain, but I ended up saying ‘Look, you’re just going to have to trust me. I know it’s revealing, but it’s coming from a good place.’ Both of them came, and now they love the show. My older brother, who came on the opening night in London, made me cry. Not just because said he loved it, but he added: ‘It felt like she was in the room.’ He was talking about our mum – which is sort of the point of the show. My ideology is when people die, it does them a disservice to pretend they were saints. It erases who they actually were. If you put in all the stuff that people like to brush under the carpet normally, then you have a chance of actually bringing them back to life.”

After performing the show across the UK and taking it to Montreal’s Just For Laughs festival, Baddiel is bringing My Family to Australia for the very first time. It marks Baddiel’s second-ever visit here, although it could even be argued that his maiden voyage didn’t even count. “I did a corporate gig in Sydney,” Baddiel recalls.

“It was a gig for Fosters – 200 Brits had won a competition with Fosters to spend two weeks in Australia, and I was their entertainment at their closing-night party. These were people who’d entered the competition by saving up over 200 cans each. I basically didn’t do any comedy – it was just crowd control. They were the drunkest people in the history of drunkenness. It was still fun, though. I’m hoping, this time round, they’ll be a bit more open to listening.”