If you decide to base a stand-up show around the sexual exploits of your dead mother, you’ve got to be really sure it’s what she would have wanted. If you’re a traditionally fairly broad comic whose popularity arguably peaked in the ’90s, and you decide to base a stand-up show around the sexual exploits of your dead mother – in other words, if you’re David Baddiel – you’ve got to be really, really sure it’s what she would have wanted.
Sure enough, Baddiel addresses the ‘exploitation vs tribute’ conundrum about halfway through this new act – somewhere between reading out his mum’s erotic poetry and splashing her sexually explicit emails to her lover across a giant screen – and concludes that she probably would’ve been fine with it.
We’ll never know for sure, of course, but ‘My Family: Not the Sitcom’, which, to a lesser extent, is also about Baddiel’s dementia-stricken father, is clearly a therapeutic exercise for the comedian, whose openness and sincerity is such that at times it was all I could do not to invade the stage and give him a massive hug.
As a performer, though, Baddiel lacks gravitas, littering the show with clanging, unnecessary callbacks and kicking the whole thing off with a examination of social media, which feels like a needless attempt to come across as contemporary.
Still, Baddiel was never going to be the star of this show – not when the stories of his mother’s infidelity and his father’s cantankerousness are so utterly, freestandingly funny. Aided by photos from the family albums, clips from his past projects and a big-screen clicker, Baddiel gives us intimate access to his family history, illustrating every eccentricity of his nearest and dearest with tragicomic evidence and anecdotes.
At times uncomfortable to behold, ‘My Family’ is a nonetheless brave and emotive two hours. The question is, once you’ve cracked jokes about your mum wanking, where do you go next?