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David Baddiel: ‘My life was out of control and I’m not a person who is comfortable with that’

David Baddiel: ‘My life was out of control and I’m not a person who is comfortable with that’ 1 2 3

[prev] …weirdness of it and what it does to a person. It ended up getting lots of laughs: I was surprised at how many laughs it got. And so I thought maybe this is a way of getting back into stand-up in a way that was different from what I’d done before, so I created it as a thematic, long-form, comic narrative rather than just “and here’s another funny thing about something”.’

‘The hair in particular among comedy men is very gel and very boy band’

Given his prolonged absence from stand-up, Baddiel is in an ideal position to spot the stark differences between the scene today and when he was cutting the comedy rug in the 90s. ‘When I was walking around Edinburgh last August and looking at posters, I saw an awful lot of young men who seemed like not quite the most handsome boy in One Direction. The hair in particular among comedy men is very gel and very boy band. That doesn’t mean that they are rubbish: I don’t think you can prejudge on the basis of hair. Of course some people blame me and Rob Newman for that anyway.’

When it comes to analysing his own legacy to the British stand-up form, he sees both positive and negative elements. ‘No one had done an arena before us, and now that is de rigueur for some very successful comedians. And no one had been presented in an NME kind of way. Comedy was a little bit too serious and too worthy at that point, but then we came along to say that it doesn’t all have to be about politics, some of it can be about pop music and sport and sex. That really did change comedy in a good way and presented it to a younger audience. What it also led to, though, was the homogenisation of a particular type of young, good-looking, male stand-up: some are good, some not so good, but there are probably just too many of them.’

‘My partner is upstairs and I’ve sent her an email this morning about the shopping…’

Baddiel is certainly happy to be back in the stand-up fold once more, but he has plenty other projects keeping him going just now. He’s just given the green light for a Channel 4 pilot of Sit.com, which aims to show how the modern family copes in this uber-technological age. ‘TV seems a little frightened of screens; they will have the odd screen in the odd scene, but I’m sitting here now with three screens around me: a mobile phone, a computer and a laptop. My partner is upstairs and I’ve sent her an email this morning about the shopping. My feeling… [cont]

David Baddiel: ‘My life was out of control and I’m not a person who is comfortable with that’ 1 2 3

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