David Baddiel

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Biography

An accomplished comedian, author, screenwriter and television presenter, David Baddiel returned to stand-up comedy in 2013 with his critically acclaimed show, Fame: Not The Musical. In Spring 2016 David premiered his latest show, My Family: Not the Sitcom, at London’s Menier Chocolate Factory. A huge hit, the show transferred to London’s West End where it ran for five weeks at the Vaudeville Theatre and ten weeks at the Playhouse Theatre, was nominated for an Olivier Award, and toured nationally throughout 2018.

In June 2016 David Baddiel’s first children’s novel, The Parent Agency won the LOLLIE award for ‘best laugh out loud book for 9-13 year olds’ and is currently developed into a feature film by Fox 2000, written and produced by David himself, alongside Academy Award and BAFTA winning producer Ruth Kenley-Letts. David subsequently published further children’s novels with The Person Controller, AniMalcolm, Birthday Boy and Head Kid, and has previously written four critically-acclaimed adult novels; The Death of Eli Gold, Time For Bed, Whatever Love Means and The Secret Purposes. David also wrote the hit comedy film The Infidel which starred Omid Djalili, Richard Schiff, Matt Lucas and Miranda Hart and received a glut of four star reviews hailing it “the Summer’s funniest film” (Andrew O’Hagan, The Evening Standard). It has since been adapted into a musical, also written and directed by David, with music by Erran Baron Cohen, which ran at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in late 2014.

Baddiel created and presented – with Frank Skinner – Fantasy Football and Baddiel & Skinner Unplanned, attaining three number one hits alongside The Lightning Seeds with the football anthem Three Lions. In 1992, he performed to 12,500 people with Rob Newman at the Wembley arena, in the UK’s first ever arena comedy show and was credited as turning comedy into “The New Rock’n’Roll”. This followed the hit TV shows The Mary Whitehouse Experience (BBC2) and Newman and Baddiel in Pieces (BBC2). In 2010 David reunited with Frank Skinner to exclusively present a series of shows from the World Cup in South Africa for Absolute Radio, (which attracted over 3 million downloads). His travel documentary for Discovery entitled David Baddiel On The Silk Road, aired in Spring 2016 and in 2017, Channel 4 also aired The Trouble with Dad, a one-off documentary following David and his older brother Ivor as they care for their father Colin and his experiences with Pick’s Disease, a rare form of dementia, which is also one of the central themes of My Family: Not the Sitcom.

In 2004 David created BBC Radio 4 show Heresy which sees a team of three highly opinionated guests use their wit, wisdom and verbal dexterity to argue against popular prejudice and overthrow received opinion. In 2014 he created and hosted a new radio 4 late panel show, Don’t Make Me Laugh which ran for two series and in 2015 he created and fronted David Baddiel Tries to Understand… for Radio 4 which is now in it’s fourth series.

In 2010, David made his directorial debut with The Norris McWhirter Chronicles, a film for Sky 1 which he also wrote, with appearances from Alistair Mcgowan, Lee Mack, John Thomson, and Frank Skinner.

[Source: David Baddiel’s website, 28/02/2021.]