David Baddiel

David Lionel Baddiel FRSL (; born 28 May 1964) is an English comedian, presenter, screenwriter, and author. He is known for his work alongside Rob Newman in The Mary Whitehouse Experience and his comedy partnership with Frank Skinner. He has also written the children's books The Parent Agency, The Person Controller, AniMalcolm, Birthday Boy, Head Kid, and The Taylor TurboChaser. Early life David Lionel Baddiel was born on 28 May 1964 in Troy, New York, the son of a Welsh father and German mother. He moved to England with his family when he was four months old. His parents were both Jewish: his father, Colin Brian Baddiel, came from a working-class Swansea family and worked as a research chemist with Unilever before being made redundant in the 1980s, after which he sold Dinky Toys at Grays Antique Market. His mother, Sarah, was born in Nazi Germany; a swastika appeared on her birth certificate. She was five months old when she was taken to England by her parents in 1939 after the family had fled Nazi Germany, where her wealthy father had been stripped of his assets as a victim of Kristallnacht. Soon after their arrival in the United Kingdom, her father was interned as an "enemy alien" on the Isle of Man for a year. He had mental health issues, sometimes requiring hospitalisation, for the rest of his life. Baddiel said in 2022 that he had been parented by his elder brother Ivor, as "my dad was unemployed and angry, while my mum was distracted by her passionate affair". An episode of the BBC genealogy series Who Do You Think You Are? investigated Baddiel's heritage in some detail, but failed to prove his theory that his mother had been secretly adopted from another Jewish family who had no hope of escaping. He grew up in the Dollis Hill area of London alongside his two brothers Ivor and Dan (one older, one younger). Ivor is a writer. Baddiel attended the North West London Jewish Day School in Brent, and the public school Haberdashers' Aske's Boys' School in Elstree. He studied English at King's College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the Cambridge Footlights, and graduated with a double first BA. He began studies for a PhD in English at University College London, but did not complete it.