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David Baddiel on Family, Jewishness, and the Healing Power of Comedy

History &
Social Policy

How laughter has the capacity to transform our darkest experiences into something more bearable

David Baddiel has been on our screens for over 35 years. The creator of The Mary Whitehouse Experience and one half of Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned, he spent his early career in the world of television comedy. More recently, he has become a leading voice on Jewishness and antisemitism in the U.K after releasing his award-winning documentary and book Jews Don’t Count.

In October 2024 he came to the Intelligence Squared stage to discuss how both comedy and Jewishness have shaped his career and life. Drawing from his hilarious new memoir My Family, he discussed his upbringing from reckoning with his family’s trauma from the Holocaust to his late mother’s affair with a golfing salesman and his father’s struggles with dementia. Baddiel revealed his family story to shed light on why he believes laughter has the capacity to transform our darkest experiences into something more bearable.

Speakers for the motion

  • David Baddiel

    Comedian and author of the new memoir My Family

Chair

  • Sanjeev Bhaskar

    Actor, writer and presenter

Speakers are subject to change.

Speakers

Speaker

David Baddiel

Comedian and author of the new memoir My Family

Author, comedian and screenwriter. He has written and performed in a series of highly successful TV comedy shows, including The Mary Whitehouse Experience and Baddiel and Skinner Unplanned. He is the author of four novels as well as six books for children which have sold over 1 million copies. His latest book is My Family.
Host

Sanjeev Bhaskar

Actor, writer and presenter

Sanjeev Bhaskar is an actor, writer and presenter.  He first came to notice in the ground breaking television comedy sketch show Goodness Gracious Me and the Emmy and Peabody award winning The Kumars at Number 42, (Both BBC) and both of which he wrote and appeared in. His other TV credits include The Indian Doctor, Dr Who, Midsomer Murders, Horrible Histories and The Sandman (Netflix) and five series of Unforgotten (ITV) with series 6 transmitting in early 2025.. His book India with Sanjeev Bhaskar, based on his BBC documentary series of the same name was a Sunday Times bestseller. He has appeared on the West End stage in ART and as King Arthur in the Monty Python musical SPAMALOT. Movie credits include Notting Hill, Arthur Christmas, The Zero Theorem, Paddington 2 and Yesterday.   Along with The Kumars and Gareth Gates, he had a number 1 pop single with Spirit in the Sky for Comic Relief in 2003. Sanjeev is also the current chancellor of the University of Sussex and an ambassador for UNICEF UK.  He was awarded an OBE in 2005. His personal claim to fame is adding the word ‘chuddies’ to the Oxford English Dictionary.