My Family: the Memoir, with David Baddiel

On the surface, David Baddiel’s childhood was fairly standard: a lower-middle-class Jewish family living in an ordinary house in Dollis Hill, north-west London. But David came to realise that his mother was in fact not ordinary at all.Having escaped extermination by fleeing Nazi Germany as a child, she was desperate to make her life count, which took the form of a passionate, decades-long affair with a golfing memorabilia salesman. David’s detailing of the affair – including a hilarious focus on how his mother turned their household over to golf memorabilia, and an eye-popping cache of her erotic writings – leads to the inescapable conclusion that Sarah Baddiel was a cross between Jack Niklaus and Erica Jong.Meanwhile, as Baddiel investigates his family’s past, his father’s memories are fading; dementia is making him moodier and more disinhibited, with an even greater penchant for obscenity. As with his mother’s affair, there is both comedy and poignancy to be found: laughter is a constant presence, capable of transforming the darkest of experiences into something redemptive. (HarperCollins)David and Jack met at Dar's in Hampstead, North London.Follow and subscribe to The Booking Club:Twitter/X: @bookingclubpodInstagram: @bookingclubpodTikTok: @bookingclubpod This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit jackaldane.substack.com/subscribe