Column by David in The Times.
REGULAR READERS WILL KNOW THAT in my new year column I stated that one of my resolutions for 2007 was “to have a literary feud”. Well: good news. My colleague at The Sunday Telegraph, a fellow called Mark Sanderson, writer of their Literary Life column, has helped me out by having what I believe is called in the tabloids “a pop” at me.
Column by David in The Times.
In my second novel there is a character who, on her first trip to London, cannot afford a guidebook, so instead just uses an old A-Z, choosing to visit those streets that sound enticing: Lamb’s Heart Yard, Golden Square, Old Seacoal Lane – anywhere with a name that suggests that William Blake might once have walked there. She is often disappointed, discovering that however romantic the street name might be, the reality now is less Dickensian gables and cobbled streets and more Costa Coffees and NCPs.
This might seem to be a salutary lesson in “what’s in a name-ism”, based on the realisation that what a place is called is unlikely to have any bearing, at least with the passing of time, on its pleasantness. However, that salutary lesson seems not to have been learnt by me, suggesting as I did last autumn that our family went on holiday to Martha’s Vineyard: a place I knew next to nothing about, but have always thought sounded very nice.
Interview with David in The Independant.
David Baddiel, 42, returns with his radio show ‘Heresy’ on BBC Radio 4 at 6.30pm on Wednesday.
If I weren’t talking to you right now I’d be …
Writing the scripts for my Radio 4 show Heresy, or for a movie I’m writing for BBC films, or my new novel: although what I mean by writing is doing two sentences, and then endlessly and aimlessly looking at YouTube, iTunes, or out of my window.
A phrase I use far too often is …
The truth is always complex.
Column by David in The Times.
FRIENDS OF MINE SOMETIMES SAY that I lead a Larry David life.
By which they mean not, sadly, that I have my own award-winning sitcom on HBO, and $475 million from the syndication of Seinfeld, but that tiny little mistakes and errors of judgment in my life are constantly soaring out of control, leading me into web after web of misunderstanding, embarrassment and self-immolation. So: this week I went to see the new stage production of D. B. C. Pierre’s Man Booker-winner Vernon God Little at the Young Vic, partly because my friend, the brilliant actress Joanna Scanlan, was in it, but also because I thought it would make a good piece for this column. Two tickets for the press night were summarily ordered and off I went.