My Family

'Genuinely one of the funniest books I have ever read. I wept with laughter' HADLEY FREEMAN

‘Baddiel has made true art out of experience … A masterpiece’ SATHNAM SANGHERA

'Laugh out loud funny … The read of the summer' THE SUNDAY TIMES

A searingly honest, funny and moving family memoir in which David Baddiel exposes his mother’s idiosyncratic sex life, and his father’s dementia, to the same affectionate scrutiny

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.

My Family: The Memoir is David Baddiel’s candid examination of his childhood, family and memory offering a twisted love letter to his parents.

'Baddiel has done his parents proud’ GUARDIAN

'Such a blisteringly honest book it would set fire to the word "candid" for being too pathetic' CAITLIN MORAN

Reviews

'Devastating and gaspingly funny, often in the same sentence. He'll hate me for saying this but David Baddiel is so good at everything he does, he's at risk of becoming a national treasure' Hadley Freeman, author of House of Glass

‘My Family is as dark as it is funny, and it is very very dark and very very funny. Baddiel has made true art out of experience, I don't know how he does it. A masterpiece’ Sathnam Sanghera, author of Empireworld

'Such a blisteringly honest book it would set fire to the word "candid" for being too pathetic' Caitlin Moran, author of What About Men?

'Baddiel writes with a comic’s fluency and timing … The tale of his mother’s affair is told without judgment, and with genuine empathy, while gleefully dancing around the edges of decency … In giving us the full, unvarnished picture, Baddiel has done his parents proud’ Guardian

'A must-read, must-buy. Laugh out loud funny – and moving. The read of the summer' The Sunday Times

Praise for My Family: Not the Sitcom (the stage show)

‘Rivetingly revealing’ Michael Billington, Guardian

‘Witty and profound’ Evening Standard

‘Wonderfully warm yet brutally frank, fearless yet very funny’ London Theatre