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Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: I've mentioned already the unsurprising information that I've spent a

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Speaker 2: considerable amount of time in therapy. Whilst there, I was

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Speaker 2: always saying to my therapist that it was difficult to

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Speaker 2: find a template from my type of child on trauma.

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Speaker 2: Or to put in another way, the writing of a

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Speaker 2: story about a boundaryless mother who flaunted her infidelity in

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Speaker 2: front of all and sundry, including her children, might suggest

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Speaker 2: an intense and difficult drama. But frankly, the gravitat of

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Speaker 2: that tone is scuppered the moment you have to include

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Speaker 2: the phrase engulfing memorabilia. I think one must accept that

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Speaker 2: whatever damage was caused by all this, it is, in

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Speaker 2: the end a comedy.

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Speaker 3: That's David Biddil, London based comedian, TV presenter, screenwriter, author

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Speaker 3: and singer. Davis is a story of a secret that

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Speaker 3: lived out in the open, one that shaped his family life.

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Speaker 3: It's also a story about speaking one's own truth out

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Speaker 3: loud with courage and gusto and plenty of humor. I'm

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Speaker 3: Danny Shapiro and this is Family Secrets. The secrets that

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Speaker 3: are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others

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Speaker 3: and the secrets we keep from ourselves.

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Speaker 2: I was born in Upstate New York and Troy, near Albany.

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Speaker 2: I have no memory of that time, but I think

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Speaker 2: it is still quite important because my dad very much

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Speaker 2: what wanted to be a scientist. He was a scientist

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Speaker 2: and he'd got out of working class semi polity in

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Speaker 2: Wales because of that.

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Speaker 1: And then during the sixties had.

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Speaker 2: We married my mother, who was a refugee from Nazism,

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Speaker 2: and a baby which she came feeling that they went

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Speaker 2: off to America, which was part of something at the

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Speaker 2: time called the brain drain from Britain, where essentially clever people,

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Speaker 2: mainly scientists, thought there was more work and more money

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Speaker 2: to be had in America. And so my dad was

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Speaker 2: teaching at a place called Renselare Polytechnic Institute, and two

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Speaker 2: children were born, one of which was me and the

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Speaker 2: other which was my older brother in quite a small

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Speaker 2: amount of time, which suggests that they were having quite

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Speaker 2: a lot of sex at that point in time. And

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Speaker 2: then they came back to Britain and we lived in

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Speaker 2: a tiny flat in a place called Made of Veil,

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Speaker 2: which I also have no memory of, but my life

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Speaker 2: sort of begins my memory life begins about nineteen sixty

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Speaker 2: nine nineteen.

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Speaker 1: Seventy when we moved a place in.

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Speaker 2: London called Dollis Hill, which is not to be clear

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Speaker 2: for anyone who might know London a bit like Piccadilly

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Speaker 2: or Hampstead or Kensington. It's not a place redolent with

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Speaker 2: poetry that you see in Richard Curtis films.

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Speaker 1: It's a very very mundane part of London. It's rock solid.

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Speaker 2: Not suburbia in terms of leafy and nice suburbia, sort

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Speaker 2: of inner city suburbia, kind of rough suburbia. And we

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Speaker 2: had a semi detached house there and I lived there

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Speaker 2: with my mom and dad and my two brothers, my

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Speaker 2: then and a kat who was quite an important finger.

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Speaker 2: One key thing in there was a kind of mixed Jewishness,

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Speaker 2: by which I mean my mother was a refugee from Nazism.

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Speaker 2: As I said, her father, my grandfather, had been in

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Speaker 2: a concentration camp Dachau before the war. When they came

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Speaker 2: to London, they were committed reform Jews. They weren't Orthodox,

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Speaker 2: but they were very committed to still doing all the festivals,

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Speaker 2: providing a Jewish life for their daughter and for her children.

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Speaker 2: I meanwhile, I went to the nearest school to my

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Speaker 2: house where a Jew wouldn't get bullied in nineteen seventy London,

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Speaker 2: which was, as it happened, a very very orthodox Jewish

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Speaker 2: primary school. And so I and my brothers when we

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Speaker 2: went to school, we wore at yarmockers. I wore something

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Speaker 2: called sitsit, which are an internal like a Mormon style vest,

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Speaker 2: which has sort of tassels that you have to show.

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Speaker 2: If you don't show the tassels at the school, you

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Speaker 2: get into trouble. That Hebrew, I did blessings, I only

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Speaker 2: kosher food at the school, and yet my dad, who

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Speaker 2: was a stone cold atheist, would basically be making me

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Speaker 2: bacon sandwiches for breakfast before I went off to this

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Speaker 2: school every day. So there was just a mass of

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Speaker 2: incoherent Jewishness that define my early life.

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Speaker 3: I relate to this more than I can say. Where

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Speaker 3: did that sit with you? I mean having bacon, eggs

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Speaker 3: and shees for breakfast and then going to essentially the ashiva,

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Speaker 3: Like where did that reside for you? Who did you

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Speaker 3: think you were when you were that age?

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Speaker 2: That's a really really good question, because I guess I've

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Speaker 2: always been massively interested in authenticity and authentically being who

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Speaker 2: I am. It's the thing I've chased in my life

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Speaker 2: and to some extent monetized in my career because as

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Speaker 2: a stand up comedian, the work I do is all

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Speaker 2: extremely personal. It is all very much based on my

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Speaker 2: family history, and a lot of it is about having

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Speaker 2: had this sort of mixed up childhood and also involved,

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Speaker 2: particularly in the case of my mother, there's this very

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Speaker 2: strange self dramatizing shadow play which may or may not have.

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Speaker 1: Had anything to do with who she really was. I

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Speaker 1: think it became very.

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Speaker 2: Important to me because of this as I grew older,

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Speaker 2: even from adolescence, to live authentically, to think who am I?

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Speaker 2: I must be all the time, exactly me. I cannot

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Speaker 2: bear to be not.

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Speaker 1: Me in any way.

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Speaker 2: But when I was a kid, it was all pretty

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Speaker 2: mixed up. One thing I am incredibly militantly unashamed about

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Speaker 2: is being Jewish, because even though these were many different

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Speaker 2: types of Jewish as all batting up against each other,

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Speaker 2: my family life was still really fucking Jewish. A lot

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Speaker 2: of Jews have this mixed up child that I think,

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Speaker 2: and I got inculcated very early on into a mistake

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Speaker 2: about the world, which is I think I thought thought

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Speaker 2: that the whole world was Jewish, or my parents' friends,

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Speaker 2: for example, were Jewish. I went to a Jewish school,

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Speaker 2: my grandparents were Jewish, went to Jewish youth group. And

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Speaker 2: then I guess the shock of realizing when I went

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Speaker 2: to secondary school to high school, oh, it's not there's

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Speaker 2: Jews who are tiny minority, and there are anti ze

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Speaker 2: Mites in Britain. It was too late for my internal self,

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Speaker 2: it was too late for my soul, I think, and

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Speaker 2: I guess I continue at some level even though it's

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Speaker 2: not true about the world. The world is very much

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Speaker 2: presenting it to us as not true at the moment.

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Speaker 2: But I think I believe that Jews are the default

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Speaker 2: in the world. The Jews are the norm, and everyone

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Speaker 2: else is not the norm. They used to be a

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Speaker 2: Broadway show actually be called When You're in Love The

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Speaker 2: Whole World is Jewish in nineteen sixty seven. I used

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Speaker 2: to have an LP of that show for some reason.

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Speaker 2: And the whole world is never Jewish, but I thought

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Speaker 2: it was until early age, and I still do in

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Speaker 2: a way and in a way to comfort to me.

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Speaker 3: David describes as mother as a fantasist possessed of a

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Speaker 3: rich strangeness. These qualities are present in his mom for

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Speaker 3: as long as he can remember, though the layers of

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Speaker 3: meaning of that rich strangeness come into fuller view as

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Speaker 3: he grows up.

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Speaker 2: When I was young, my grandparents would occasionally fill in

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Speaker 2: the gaps of their history, this terribly, terribly, unbelievably traumatic

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Speaker 2: history they had in the thirties in Germany, but my

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Speaker 2: mother later on would fantasize about it. So she would

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Speaker 2: tell me, for example, that she could speak German when

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Speaker 2: she couldn't. Later in life, she told me that she

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Speaker 2: didn't believe her parents were her real parents. She believed

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Speaker 2: that her dad was in fact her mother's brother who

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Speaker 2: had died in the Warsaw Ghetto. And I now understand

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Speaker 2: why she's doing that, because for my mother, that was glamorous.

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Speaker 2: My mother was always chasing a kind of lost glamor,

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Speaker 2: and it, even though it's a terrible tragic thing that

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Speaker 2: she's fantas sizing about, at some levels, she would have

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Speaker 2: preferred to having a live parents, the glamour of her

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Speaker 2: parents or her dad being someone who had died in

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Speaker 2: the Warsaw Ghetto. And this is as I say, this

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Speaker 2: is what I understand, is that my mother was always chasing,

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Speaker 2: I think, but couldn't find it and found it very

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Speaker 2: difficult to find in dollars hill a phantom glamour. And

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Speaker 2: I think this is because she was born into a

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Speaker 2: family that, if Hitler had not existed in a parallel universe,

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Speaker 2: would have been very, very wealthy. They were industrialists, they

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Speaker 2: were sent me aristocratic in a place called Kernigsburg in

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Speaker 2: East Prussia. They were the sort of mainstays of their

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Speaker 2: Jewish social class. They had servants. My cousin Michael tells

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Speaker 2: me they had a RUBINTI I don't know if that's true,

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Speaker 2: but I wish it was true so that.

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Speaker 1: I could look for it.

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Speaker 2: And I think my mother knew this even though she

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Speaker 2: hadn't experienced it, I mean only as a really young child,

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Speaker 2: because she was born in ninetly thirty nine and only

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Speaker 2: just got out.

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Speaker 1: So that's an important thing as well.

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Speaker 2: My mother, I think, even though it wasn't at the

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Speaker 2: front of her mind, unconscious, must have.

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Speaker 1: Been aware of the nearness to death, of.

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Speaker 2: The fact that she was only here at all by

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Speaker 2: the skin of her teeth. And I think this was

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Speaker 2: partly what created in her this need to live life

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Speaker 2: as best she could had a very intense pitch, but

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Speaker 2: this pitch was not offered to her because she was

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Speaker 2: actually living in a very dull place with this very

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Speaker 2: working class man with three children.

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Speaker 3: I mean, your mother was a baby when she came

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Speaker 3: here with her parents. And when you say skin of

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Speaker 3: their teeth, it really was the skin of their teeth.

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Speaker 3: It was a miracle when anybody got out when a

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Speaker 3: tue got out of Germany in nineteen thirty nine, but

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Speaker 3: they came in what was it August, and by September

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Speaker 3: the borders were completely closed, and everyone who stayed was Yeah.

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Speaker 2: I actually actually didn't know until I started doing some

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Speaker 2: research on it quite recently, just just what a close

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Speaker 2: shave it was. I was always aware of it because

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Speaker 2: I always knew that my mum would been born in

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Speaker 2: March nineteen thirty nine. You know, it was always going

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Speaker 2: to be close. But what I didn't realize was after

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Speaker 2: Crystal that my grandfather had been sent to a concentration camp.

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Speaker 2: Three hundred thousand Jewish men were sent to concentration camps

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Speaker 2: after Crystal Act, which there is a much away innss

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Speaker 2: of I think I think people think concentration camps are

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Speaker 2: something that happened in ninety forty one when the Final

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Speaker 2: Solution properly started.

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Speaker 1: In fact, many Jews were sent to concentration camps.

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Speaker 2: Before that, and he got out again something that people

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Speaker 2: don't realize happened. He got out I think with bribery

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Speaker 2: and under the premise that he would leave. It was

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Speaker 2: basically the dues were allowed out of concentration camps for

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Speaker 2: a short time as long as they were leaving the country,

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Speaker 2: as long as they pledged to leave the country. And

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Speaker 2: the problem with that, of course, is that they would

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Speaker 2: have no entry point to another country. They were writing.

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Speaker 2: These are just letters that I've seen recently to Jewish

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Speaker 2: Asignum organizations in London pleading to be allowed into the UK.

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Speaker 2: And they had no money at that time, and they

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Speaker 2: had to show as part of this process a thousand

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Speaker 2: pounds It show was.

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Speaker 1: A huge amount of money obviously.

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Speaker 2: Then in a British bank account before they would be

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Speaker 2: allowed in it.

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Speaker 1: They had to have avid davits from.

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Speaker 2: British systems and all sorts of other paperwork, and then

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Speaker 2: they had a child and the most extordinary letter, which

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Speaker 2: I hadn't really thought about aunt I saw it is

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Speaker 2: a letter from one of these Jewish organizations in London

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Speaker 2: that are trying to help them to my grandparents saying, okay,

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Speaker 2: we will have to redo your visa now to include

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Speaker 2: your child. You know I it seems weird because they

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Speaker 2: must have known that was happening anyway. The letter says,

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Speaker 2: if you wait another ten days and this is July

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Speaker 2: nineteen thirty nine, by now, we will get you another

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Speaker 2: entry guard. But then you need to go to Berlin

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Speaker 2: to get it stamped, and all of this bureaucracy. It's

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Speaker 2: just infuse, which is it's infused with such.

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Speaker 1: A high level of anxiety.

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Speaker 2: You know, when I'm reading it in twenty twenty four

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Speaker 2: now and then when you're reading it in ninety thirty nine,

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Speaker 2: you and your child, it's so extraordinary.

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Speaker 3: Do you think your mother knew these facts of her history?

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Speaker 3: Did her parents talk to her about it? Or do

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Speaker 3: you think that this was real analyzed intergenerational trauma the

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Speaker 3: kind of ineffable, you know, the things that we sort

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Speaker 3: of pick up and that we maybe can't attach an

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Speaker 3: actual memory to or a language two, but that becomes

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Speaker 3: part of what forms usays the way it clearly did

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Speaker 3: with her.

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Speaker 2: Well, some of it is fact, I mean the fact

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Speaker 2: that she knew. But my mother's real name I'm using

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Speaker 2: really in a very ironic sense. There her first name

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Speaker 2: was not Sarah. That was the name that you know

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Speaker 2: she used. I thought of her as Sarah, but her

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Speaker 2: first given name was a name given to her, as

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Speaker 2: it were, by the Nazis, forced on her by the

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Speaker 2: Nazis because in ninety thirty nine Jewishly.

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Speaker 1: Was had to be named from a list.

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Speaker 2: You had to choose their name from a not very

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Speaker 2: pleasant list and names. A lot of horrible names were

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Speaker 2: on it, and as far as I can remember from

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Speaker 2: it was the best of a bad bunch. And the

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Speaker 2: interesting thing is that although my mother designated herself in

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Speaker 2: later life as Sarah, which is by the way, still

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Speaker 2: a Nazi name, because Jewish children also had to be

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Speaker 2: Sarah or Rachel as their middle names, and I think

254
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Speaker 2: Moisture or Isaac there were boys had to be their

255
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Speaker 2: middle names. But one thing I didn't realize is that

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Speaker 2: my mother was still called from it by her parents

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Speaker 2: when she was living in Cambridge as a child, which

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Speaker 2: is where they lived in Britain.

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Speaker 1: After the war. I actually did a show.

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Speaker 2: I did a stand up show based on my parents,

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Speaker 2: and I used to come out afterwards and Q and

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Speaker 2: a and ad lib with the audience. And one time

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Speaker 2: a man stood out, Who's I found this really movie?

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Speaker 2: And said, I actually knew your grandparents, and I've got

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Speaker 2: a letter here from one of them. And he wrote

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Speaker 2: a letter from my grandma to him, written in about

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Speaker 2: I don't know, nineteen fifty two or something, in which

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Speaker 2: she says, I have to go now because it's time

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Speaker 2: for little from.

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Speaker 1: Its prayers, or because I can.

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Speaker 2: Hear a little from it crying. I never heard my

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Speaker 2: mother called that, you know, in the wild, as it were,

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Speaker 2: and I found it very extraordinary that then, you know,

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Speaker 2: as a child, she would have been called from it.

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Speaker 2: She would have been called this name that was handed

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Speaker 2: down to them, forced on them by the Nazis.

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Speaker 1: I don't know.

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Speaker 2: I don't know how much detail of this that my

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Speaker 2: mother really knew, but that in itself seems to be

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Speaker 2: an unbelievable bobbld of complexity to live with.

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Speaker 1: On her shoulders.

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Speaker 2: My father is called was called Colin Badiel is also

283
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Speaker 2: Jewish in a slightly different lineage that also involved fleeing

284
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Speaker 2: his grandfather my great grandfather was fleeing from Russian pogroms

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Speaker 2: from Cossacks. I think they were in Latvia, and the

286
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Speaker 2: story goes I think this might be an urban myth

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Speaker 2: that applies to a number of Jews in the nineteenth century,

288
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Speaker 2: was that my great grandfather smuggled himself onto a boat

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Speaker 2: and the boat was meant to be going to New York,

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Speaker 2: but was go to New York.

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Speaker 1: But he didn't speak in English.

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Speaker 2: When they stopped at Swansea to refuel. Swansea in Wales,

293
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Speaker 2: he didn't speak an English and he just thought it

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Speaker 2: was the end of the line. So he got off

295
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Speaker 2: and presumably ten years later, said to someone, excuse me,

296
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Speaker 2: where is the Statue of Liberty? And they said, no, no,

297
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Speaker 2: you're in Swansea. And that's why that part of my

298
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Speaker 2: family is from Wales. My dad was very Welsh, I

299
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Speaker 2: sort of, you know, come extremely Welsh at some level.

300
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Speaker 2: When you tell people in Britain that my dad was Welsh,

301
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Speaker 2: they will say often, oh, I thought he was Jewish,

302
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Speaker 2: and I said, yeah, it was Welsh and Jewish. But

303
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Speaker 2: for some people people find that In Congress it's very interesting, well,

304
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Speaker 2: people assume where people assumed Jews can come from basically Germany,

305
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Speaker 2: Russia and New York. He was very working class. His

306
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Speaker 2: dad used to sell cloth material from door to door.

307
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Speaker 2: He was essentially a tinker. And my dad was born

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Speaker 2: in nineteen thirty four. They lived at a terraced house

309
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Speaker 2: in Swansea that I stayed in on holiday many times

310
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Speaker 2: when I was growing up. We never used to have

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Speaker 2: nice holidays abroad in the South of France or anything

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Speaker 2: like that.

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Speaker 1: My dad just used to take us.

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Speaker 2: Back to Swa and we lived and we stayed in

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Speaker 2: his parents' house. He's not untypical my dad, I guess

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Speaker 2: of that generation, a very very intelligent man, but with

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Speaker 2: always no emotional intelligence. You know. My father was very clever,

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Speaker 2: very funny, incredibly and forward about science. I think in

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Speaker 2: his heart he would have liked to have been an

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Speaker 2: important man of science, a researcher who made great discoveries,

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Speaker 2: and that eluded him because of life.

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Speaker 1: Because he had three kids, he had to feed.

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Speaker 2: Them, and so he got a job with a corporation.

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Speaker 2: He became essentially a middle manager for Unilever. But I

325
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Speaker 2: think that a sign. I think that in all my

326
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Speaker 2: dad's quickness of mind and funny as there was a.

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Speaker 1: Lot of rage.

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Speaker 2: And it's weird because I think of intelligence now as

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Speaker 2: involving emotional intelligence. I think you can't just be well

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Speaker 2: read or good at science and be an intelligent person.

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Speaker 2: You have to have some awareness of what's steaming your

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Speaker 2: way and your inner cauldron. I'm not sure my dad did.

333
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Speaker 2: I think that is the source of the dysfunctional fit

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Speaker 2: that happened with my mother. Someone recently asked me how

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Speaker 2: it happens a lot with this story is people said,

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Speaker 2: your daddy must have known about this affair, and I said, well,

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Speaker 2: it's hard to tell, because my father would not express

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Speaker 2: an emotional vocabulary. He didn't have the emotional vocamputery. It

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Speaker 2: seems to me that you have to have an emotional

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Speaker 2: vocamplary to talk me about the fact that your partner

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Speaker 2: is having an affair. My mum had a very romantic,

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Speaker 2: slightly grand delinquent sense of life, but she was normally

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Speaker 2: enough in my sense of her until about ninety seventy

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Speaker 2: three or seventy four, when I'm about ten, at which

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Speaker 2: point she becomes obsessed with golf and everything to do

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Speaker 2: with golf and golf memorabilia. I one think about golf

347
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Speaker 2: is in America, I think people take it more seriously

348
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Speaker 2: as a sport, but here golf is really thought of her as,

349
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Speaker 2: if I can use the word, a naff sport played

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Speaker 2: by cilly men with mustaches and silly clothes.

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Speaker 1: But she did.

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Speaker 2: She became obsessed overnight in this very extreme way.

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Speaker 1: She went on to.

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Speaker 2: Write five books about golf, and the whole house suddenly

355
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Speaker 2: became covered in golfing memorabilia. She wore golfing brooches, golfing earring,

356
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Speaker 2: golfing necklace, Every card, every calendar was about golf.

357
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Speaker 1: It was amazing.

358
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Speaker 2: She just covered herself in golf and golfing. Member really,

359
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Speaker 2: but I don't think she was actually interested in the sport.

360
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Speaker 2: She liked children's books. Before that, she had worked as

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Speaker 2: a dental receptionist, but never anything to do with sport.

362
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Speaker 2: We were interested in football. She wasn't interested in that anyway.

363
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Speaker 2: A key element of all of this is that this guy,

364
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Speaker 2: David White appeared in our life at the same time,

365
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Speaker 2: and he was a golfing memorabilia collector, loved golf and

366
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Speaker 2: played all the time, played golf all the time, and

367
00:18:57,840 --> 00:19:00,800
Speaker 2: talked about golf all the time. So it's not a

368
00:19:00,840 --> 00:19:06,160
Speaker 2: complex equation to work out that those things might be connected.

369
00:19:06,880 --> 00:19:10,359
Speaker 2: That this man was around her house a lot, always

370
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Speaker 2: talking about golf, and she had fallen kind of absurdly

371
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Speaker 2: in love with it. Eroto manically. Eroto Mania is an

372
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Speaker 2: actual word, isn't it for when people fall in love

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Speaker 2: in an over obsessive way.

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Speaker 1: And you know, we all knew when the golf was

375
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Speaker 1: a clue.

376
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Speaker 2: But my mother was also very very key to tell

377
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Speaker 2: everybody about this affair.

378
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Speaker 1: She would mention it, you know, like just in passing as.

379
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Speaker 2: A story, I'd tell about how my brother took one

380
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Speaker 2: of his first girlfriends to see my mom at her shop, Golfiana.

381
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Speaker 2: She had a store in an antique market opposite my

382
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Speaker 2: dad's store. My dad, by this time it was done

383
00:19:41,320 --> 00:19:45,639
Speaker 2: agra scientist. He lost that jobsly dinky toys cars at

384
00:19:45,680 --> 00:19:48,119
Speaker 2: an antique store in opposite it was my mom's golfing

385
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Speaker 2: memorabilia store.

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Speaker 1: So that's something of a red flag.

387
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Speaker 2: Anyway, my brother took this new girlfriend to see my mom,

388
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Speaker 2: and my mom just mentioned within seconds David White and

389
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Speaker 2: then turned to this girlfriend, this new new ivors and

390
00:20:00,880 --> 00:20:03,639
Speaker 2: said my lover of twenty years, and then carried on

391
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Speaker 2: talking to my brother as if nothing had happened, because

392
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Speaker 2: you know, she really thought the affair was a plus.

393
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Speaker 1: She thought it was glamorous, and he was kind of glamorous.

394
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Speaker 2: He was a smooth looking, polo necked, pipe smoking, bearded man,

395
00:20:15,359 --> 00:20:19,640
Speaker 2: handsome in a kind of nineteen seventies way. I think

396
00:20:19,680 --> 00:20:21,919
Speaker 2: he used off to shave things like that that my

397
00:20:22,000 --> 00:20:27,760
Speaker 2: dad didn't. He was more middle class, more you know, clubbable,

398
00:20:28,040 --> 00:20:31,640
Speaker 2: less Jewish, not Jewish at all. Basically, this was the time,

399
00:20:31,680 --> 00:20:33,720
Speaker 2: by the way, when in Britain Jews were still not

400
00:20:33,800 --> 00:20:37,040
Speaker 2: allowed in a lot of golf clubs. Golf clubs were restricted,

401
00:20:37,840 --> 00:20:41,960
Speaker 2: not always formerly, but Jews just couldn't get in. I offered,

402
00:20:41,960 --> 00:20:44,280
Speaker 2: wonder if, subconsciously as well, that to do with my

403
00:20:44,320 --> 00:20:47,960
Speaker 2: mother trying to overcome this internal jewishness that had caused

404
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Speaker 2: us so much trouble when she was a child.

405
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Speaker 3: You know, I'm just thinking about the way that no,

406
00:20:55,200 --> 00:20:58,480
Speaker 3: this wasn't a secret. And at the same time, the

407
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Speaker 3: tagline for this show is the secrets that are kept

408
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Speaker 3: from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the

409
00:21:02,760 --> 00:21:06,600
Speaker 3: secrets we keep from ourselves, and to me, the secrets

410
00:21:06,640 --> 00:21:10,879
Speaker 3: we keep from ourselves are often the most interesting or

411
00:21:10,960 --> 00:21:15,640
Speaker 3: poignant the way in which this affair sort of lived

412
00:21:15,880 --> 00:21:18,639
Speaker 3: in your family and was out in the open because

413
00:21:18,640 --> 00:21:20,840
Speaker 3: your mother was out in the open about it. But

414
00:21:20,880 --> 00:21:22,960
Speaker 3: at the same time, and one of the things that

415
00:21:23,080 --> 00:21:25,040
Speaker 3: comes up and I find really moving, is that you

416
00:21:25,040 --> 00:21:28,800
Speaker 3: have all these documents, right, so you have this artwork

417
00:21:29,400 --> 00:21:32,000
Speaker 3: that your older brother made. You know that it's supposed

418
00:21:32,040 --> 00:21:34,240
Speaker 3: to be I guess about family or who his dad

419
00:21:34,280 --> 00:21:37,160
Speaker 3: is or whatever. And in every single one of these

420
00:21:37,600 --> 00:21:41,480
Speaker 3: child's drawings, somebody smoking a pipe. Yeah, you just think

421
00:21:41,600 --> 00:21:45,800
Speaker 3: like wow, you know, like I mean, just what would

422
00:21:45,800 --> 00:21:48,719
Speaker 3: a child therapist do with that? Like pipes are smoking pipes?

423
00:21:48,800 --> 00:21:49,679
Speaker 3: I mean, it's it's.

424
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Speaker 2: Yeah, I know, I love that it was. I think

425
00:21:52,720 --> 00:21:55,199
Speaker 2: one of the key things for pout David White that

426
00:21:55,240 --> 00:21:57,840
Speaker 2: he smoked a pipe. I think you could take that

427
00:21:58,000 --> 00:22:00,480
Speaker 2: in many ways, one in the Freudian way that there's

428
00:22:00,520 --> 00:22:03,240
Speaker 2: something a bit you know, sexual about a pipe, bit

429
00:22:03,320 --> 00:22:06,800
Speaker 2: panic about a pipe. But also there's something that is

430
00:22:06,840 --> 00:22:10,680
Speaker 2: sophisticated about a pipe, or there was in nineteen seventy three,

431
00:22:10,720 --> 00:22:13,920
Speaker 2: there's something absurd about a pipe. But there's also something

432
00:22:14,040 --> 00:22:19,159
Speaker 2: fatherly about a pipe. My mother would archive everything she

433
00:22:19,280 --> 00:22:22,120
Speaker 2: was a kind of archive ast the hoarder of her

434
00:22:22,119 --> 00:22:25,280
Speaker 2: own life. So she's left and I have them and

435
00:22:25,520 --> 00:22:29,680
Speaker 2: use of the book, every love letter, every poem she wrote,

436
00:22:29,720 --> 00:22:32,440
Speaker 2: any poems, many erotic poems to David White.

437
00:22:33,280 --> 00:22:34,240
Speaker 1: She copied all of these.

438
00:22:34,280 --> 00:22:36,280
Speaker 2: She would send them to him, but she always keep

439
00:22:36,280 --> 00:22:40,439
Speaker 2: copying and captable. And she also got a magazine called Pipeline,

440
00:22:40,680 --> 00:22:43,960
Speaker 2: which is a pipe smoker's magazine, and she always just

441
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:45,880
Speaker 2: brought that because she was thinking, Oh, how else can

442
00:22:45,920 --> 00:22:49,359
Speaker 2: I service a service my lover's interest not just golf,

443
00:22:49,400 --> 00:22:52,960
Speaker 2: I must become interested in pipes as well. It's poignant,

444
00:22:53,280 --> 00:22:57,159
Speaker 2: but it's also funny because the specifics of this relationship

445
00:22:57,200 --> 00:23:01,000
Speaker 2: are comic. And there might have in other ways in

446
00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:03,400
Speaker 2: which I could have told this story, or I could

447
00:23:03,440 --> 00:23:06,719
Speaker 2: think about this story as completely somber and tragic and

448
00:23:06,800 --> 00:23:09,560
Speaker 2: moving and damaging. But in my heart, Danny, I find

449
00:23:09,600 --> 00:23:12,320
Speaker 2: it more moving because it's funny. I think that what

450
00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:14,920
Speaker 2: lifts it from the damage is the comedy and gives

451
00:23:14,920 --> 00:23:18,359
Speaker 2: it joy. And the secret that I've discovered as I've

452
00:23:18,400 --> 00:23:20,639
Speaker 2: decided to research this and find out about it in

453
00:23:20,680 --> 00:23:22,800
Speaker 2: order to write about it and talk about it, is

454
00:23:22,800 --> 00:23:27,360
Speaker 2: how deep my mother went. You know how many artifacts

455
00:23:27,440 --> 00:23:30,840
Speaker 2: golfing pipe and how many letters there were. Things keep

456
00:23:30,880 --> 00:23:33,159
Speaker 2: cropping up, and I just think that's another level of

457
00:23:33,320 --> 00:23:39,560
Speaker 2: extraordinary obsession and extraordinary flagrancy about this love. When she died,

458
00:23:39,600 --> 00:23:41,800
Speaker 2: me and my brothers were sorted through stuff in my parents'

459
00:23:41,840 --> 00:23:45,280
Speaker 2: house and we were depressed, you know, because our muma died.

460
00:23:45,400 --> 00:23:48,040
Speaker 2: It was bleak, and she had died very suddenly and

461
00:23:48,119 --> 00:23:51,720
Speaker 2: rather horribly, and it's not nice sorting through your dead

462
00:23:51,760 --> 00:23:55,080
Speaker 2: mother's stuff. But then my younger brother, Dan, who is

463
00:23:55,119 --> 00:23:58,399
Speaker 2: sort of angrier than me about the whole infidelity David

464
00:23:58,400 --> 00:24:01,520
Speaker 2: White thing, and I think feels more damage by it,

465
00:24:01,520 --> 00:24:03,720
Speaker 2: suddenly came up to me and said, oh, I found

466
00:24:03,800 --> 00:24:07,639
Speaker 2: this at the back of the cupboard. You might want it.

467
00:24:07,840 --> 00:24:09,680
Speaker 2: I was going to smash it, but you might want it.

468
00:24:10,560 --> 00:24:14,240
Speaker 2: And he handed me a mug, a coffee mug with

469
00:24:14,359 --> 00:24:17,359
Speaker 2: a picture of David White on it on both sides

470
00:24:17,400 --> 00:24:20,160
Speaker 2: of the mug. And I didn't tell my older brother

471
00:24:20,320 --> 00:24:22,600
Speaker 2: that we found that. But next time there was a

472
00:24:22,600 --> 00:24:25,040
Speaker 2: break in the sorting through stuff and a call for

473
00:24:25,119 --> 00:24:28,239
Speaker 2: a cup of tea, I secretly did it, and then

474
00:24:28,240 --> 00:24:31,080
Speaker 2: I just handed my brother his tea in that mug.

475
00:24:31,160 --> 00:24:35,159
Speaker 2: And he laughed and laughed, And that's my point. You know,

476
00:24:35,440 --> 00:24:38,960
Speaker 2: for a moment, there was laughter in that house of death,

477
00:24:39,640 --> 00:24:42,160
Speaker 2: and that's very important for me, because comedy is very

478
00:24:42,880 --> 00:24:45,359
Speaker 2: salvational for me, for want of a better word, it's

479
00:24:45,440 --> 00:24:48,800
Speaker 2: what lifts these moments from being too sad and too grim.

480
00:24:50,280 --> 00:24:53,800
Speaker 3: What is there to do with that other than to

481
00:24:53,920 --> 00:24:57,359
Speaker 3: make comedy out of it? And do you think you

482
00:24:57,359 --> 00:25:00,920
Speaker 3: would have become a comedian? It's pass to pull this apart,

483
00:25:00,960 --> 00:25:04,200
Speaker 3: but do you think that this is what made you

484
00:25:04,240 --> 00:25:07,080
Speaker 3: a comedian or do you think that being a comedian

485
00:25:07,080 --> 00:25:10,359
Speaker 3: and having that innate talent is part of what saved

486
00:25:10,359 --> 00:25:12,840
Speaker 3: you and allowed you to kind of work through things

487
00:25:12,880 --> 00:25:15,000
Speaker 3: that otherwise might have ended up feeling like anger.

488
00:25:17,280 --> 00:25:20,320
Speaker 2: It's a really hard question, I think for me to answer.

489
00:25:20,359 --> 00:25:23,639
Speaker 2: I know that I think of comedy as an enormously

490
00:25:23,760 --> 00:25:27,960
Speaker 2: useful buffer or reworking of things that are too grim

491
00:25:27,960 --> 00:25:31,359
Speaker 2: to deal with. And I don't think of my mother's

492
00:25:31,400 --> 00:25:33,879
Speaker 2: affair as too grim to deal with. I do think

493
00:25:33,920 --> 00:25:36,760
Speaker 2: of her death as appalling the way it was. And

494
00:25:36,800 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 2: immediately after my mother's death, we had to go and

495
00:25:38,800 --> 00:25:42,639
Speaker 2: tell my father, who was already deep into dementia, that

496
00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:45,040
Speaker 2: my mother was dead, and despite their very, very rocky

497
00:25:45,160 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 2: and flawed marriage. I think I say in the book

498
00:25:47,760 --> 00:25:50,840
Speaker 2: that theirs was a very ragged form of love. He

499
00:25:50,880 --> 00:25:54,080
Speaker 2: was incredibly upset and vulnerable, and me and my older

500
00:25:54,119 --> 00:25:56,120
Speaker 2: brother we had to try and comfort him.

501
00:25:56,440 --> 00:25:57,000
Speaker 1: We did that.

502
00:25:57,160 --> 00:26:00,360
Speaker 2: We hugged him, told him everything would be okay, that means,

503
00:26:00,359 --> 00:26:02,800
Speaker 2: and then forty five minutes later we had to do

504
00:26:02,840 --> 00:26:05,359
Speaker 2: it again, and then again and then again.

505
00:26:05,160 --> 00:26:05,760
Speaker 1: For a year.

506
00:26:06,440 --> 00:26:08,240
Speaker 2: At the end of that, my dad started doing this thing,

507
00:26:08,720 --> 00:26:11,479
Speaker 2: you know. He would just do this dimastic and say,

508
00:26:11,520 --> 00:26:14,240
Speaker 2: where is she? Where's the mother? That's what he called

509
00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:16,040
Speaker 2: my mother. He would always call it the mother. I

510
00:26:16,040 --> 00:26:19,760
Speaker 2: would have to tell him that she was dead later on,

511
00:26:20,560 --> 00:26:23,840
Speaker 2: you know, about a year later. He wouldn't react quite

512
00:26:23,840 --> 00:26:26,280
Speaker 2: in the same kind of fall and crumbling way. He

513
00:26:26,320 --> 00:26:28,399
Speaker 2: would sort of go, yes, yes, yes, I knew that,

514
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:32,120
Speaker 2: and then start saying, so, I'm a single man.

515
00:26:32,200 --> 00:26:35,119
Speaker 1: Now, perhaps I should get out on the pull, which for.

516
00:26:35,160 --> 00:26:38,639
Speaker 2: Any if you know that expression, basically maybe I should

517
00:26:38,680 --> 00:26:41,959
Speaker 2: go out and try my luck were in the singles market.

518
00:26:43,080 --> 00:26:45,679
Speaker 2: And it's awful, it's terrible, And it was so in

519
00:26:45,760 --> 00:26:49,240
Speaker 2: character for my dad and funny, you know, and Basically,

520
00:26:49,240 --> 00:26:51,440
Speaker 2: if anyone point to me towards comedy, it was my dad.

521
00:26:51,480 --> 00:26:55,760
Speaker 2: My dad used comedy as a form of denial. He

522
00:26:55,800 --> 00:26:59,600
Speaker 2: would definitely prefer, you know, rather than dealing with a

523
00:26:59,600 --> 00:27:03,240
Speaker 2: difficult situation. He could make an aggressive joke about it

524
00:27:03,280 --> 00:27:04,520
Speaker 2: at someone else's expense.

525
00:27:05,119 --> 00:27:06,640
Speaker 1: But you know, I am.

526
00:27:06,480 --> 00:27:08,680
Speaker 2: Not a person who believes in God. I don't believe

527
00:27:08,720 --> 00:27:11,400
Speaker 2: in any kind of great pattern to life. I think

528
00:27:11,440 --> 00:27:14,800
Speaker 2: that essentially we are just dust here for a little

529
00:27:14,800 --> 00:27:18,680
Speaker 2: while in what John Updyke called brilliantly this complex interval

530
00:27:18,720 --> 00:27:22,119
Speaker 2: of light. And I think the only thing, really, the

531
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:24,600
Speaker 2: only thing that for me, takes all this somewhere else,

532
00:27:24,720 --> 00:27:27,800
Speaker 2: is laughter. Really, if I was to believe in God,

533
00:27:27,840 --> 00:27:30,359
Speaker 2: I would say his greatest gift to us is laughter,

534
00:27:30,680 --> 00:27:34,000
Speaker 2: because it allows us to process and deal with things

535
00:27:34,000 --> 00:27:35,720
Speaker 2: that otherwise would be intolerable.

536
00:27:40,840 --> 00:27:56,280
Speaker 3: We'll be right back. It was Dad may have tried

537
00:27:56,320 --> 00:27:59,480
Speaker 3: to turn towards humor. There's a moment when David's breaking

538
00:27:59,520 --> 00:28:02,800
Speaker 3: the news to his dad about his mother's death, and

539
00:28:02,840 --> 00:28:07,040
Speaker 3: his dad just crumbles, he falls apart, and it would

540
00:28:07,040 --> 00:28:09,600
Speaker 3: be the most natural thing in the world to wrap

541
00:28:09,640 --> 00:28:13,080
Speaker 3: his arms around his father in a hug. But David writes,

542
00:28:14,080 --> 00:28:17,439
Speaker 3: we are not a huggy family. I hug my kids

543
00:28:17,480 --> 00:28:19,960
Speaker 3: a lot more than they want. But that does not

544
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:24,600
Speaker 3: come from a forty three Kendall road inheritance. But in

545
00:28:24,640 --> 00:28:27,480
Speaker 3: a way, doesn't it. One thing we can do with

546
00:28:27,520 --> 00:28:29,159
Speaker 3: the things that are not the way we would have

547
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:31,880
Speaker 3: wanted them to be growing up is that we can

548
00:28:31,920 --> 00:28:36,720
Speaker 3: grow in counteridentification to those things. We can decide, well,

549
00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:39,480
Speaker 3: I'm going to be a different kind of parent or

550
00:28:39,560 --> 00:28:42,120
Speaker 3: partner or human being in the world.

551
00:28:44,040 --> 00:28:49,240
Speaker 2: My obsession with authenticity, whatever that means, is I think

552
00:28:49,280 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 2: in reaction to my mother creating, as it were, these

553
00:28:52,840 --> 00:28:56,160
Speaker 2: personas for herself. These different personas are different boys in

554
00:28:56,160 --> 00:28:58,480
Speaker 2: their life. But the biggest and long mister, which was

555
00:28:58,880 --> 00:29:02,480
Speaker 2: golf memorabilia queat golf of them a brilliant nut. But

556
00:29:02,560 --> 00:29:04,880
Speaker 2: I always thought watching and doing that, even when I

557
00:29:04,920 --> 00:29:06,200
Speaker 2: was young, I thought, who is this?

558
00:29:06,200 --> 00:29:07,120
Speaker 1: This isn't you.

559
00:29:08,000 --> 00:29:10,960
Speaker 2: So the authenticity thing is kind of in reaction to that.

560
00:29:11,720 --> 00:29:14,720
Speaker 2: And I think absolutely the way that I've parented my

561
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:18,880
Speaker 2: kids is in reaction to that. I think generationally we

562
00:29:19,040 --> 00:29:21,560
Speaker 2: come from parents who, on the whole were not brilliant

563
00:29:21,720 --> 00:29:25,360
Speaker 2: at showing affection. My generation, you know, we had parents,

564
00:29:25,440 --> 00:29:28,040
Speaker 2: especially fathers who were not brilliant at that. And there's

565
00:29:28,040 --> 00:29:31,840
Speaker 2: a notion or else simplistic notion of cycles of abuse

566
00:29:31,920 --> 00:29:35,280
Speaker 2: being repeated. But there's another idea, which is I think

567
00:29:35,320 --> 00:29:38,480
Speaker 2: you can grow in counter reaction to the way you

568
00:29:38,520 --> 00:29:42,040
Speaker 2: were brought up if you were aware enough. It's not easy,

569
00:29:42,840 --> 00:29:44,640
Speaker 2: you know, awareness, it's not always easy to know where

570
00:29:44,640 --> 00:29:47,160
Speaker 2: the damage was that happened to you that you don't

571
00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:48,680
Speaker 2: want to pass on to your kids, or it might

572
00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:51,840
Speaker 2: be their subconsciously. One thing I talk about a lot

573
00:29:53,080 --> 00:29:55,880
Speaker 2: is cats. I'm very obsessed with cats. And there was

574
00:29:55,920 --> 00:29:58,280
Speaker 2: a cat in our house when I was young, and

575
00:29:58,360 --> 00:30:00,640
Speaker 2: that cat got all the affection from my dad, got

576
00:30:00,680 --> 00:30:03,280
Speaker 2: an awful lot of affection, And that's clearly one reason

577
00:30:03,320 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 2: why I'm obsessed with cats. You know, I think people

578
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:09,320
Speaker 2: want affection, but sometimes there are blockages, and there were

579
00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:12,920
Speaker 2: a lot of blockages at forty three Kindle Road where

580
00:30:12,960 --> 00:30:16,000
Speaker 2: I grew up. So now I see how that cat

581
00:30:16,120 --> 00:30:19,440
Speaker 2: ended up as the repository of simple affection because my

582
00:30:19,520 --> 00:30:22,160
Speaker 2: dad was able to show simple affection to an animal,

583
00:30:22,560 --> 00:30:24,880
Speaker 2: but he couldn't show it to his wife and not.

584
00:30:24,760 --> 00:30:26,720
Speaker 1: Really to his children, And so.

585
00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:30,280
Speaker 2: I think that implies that my dad wanted to show affection,

586
00:30:30,560 --> 00:30:32,640
Speaker 2: that he wanted to receive affection, but he couldn't do

587
00:30:32,680 --> 00:30:37,720
Speaker 2: it in a straightforward way to his family because it

588
00:30:37,720 --> 00:30:41,160
Speaker 2: would mean showing vulnerability. But I saw vulnerability on his

589
00:30:41,320 --> 00:30:43,440
Speaker 2: face when I told him, when me and my brother

590
00:30:43,480 --> 00:30:44,920
Speaker 2: told him that my mom was dead, and it was

591
00:30:44,960 --> 00:30:47,120
Speaker 2: so intense, you know, it spoke.

592
00:30:47,160 --> 00:30:50,640
Speaker 1: I guess of this huge need, perhaps his.

593
00:30:50,640 --> 00:30:54,800
Speaker 2: Whole life, a huge need wanting to be hugged, wanting affection.

594
00:30:54,880 --> 00:30:55,479
Speaker 1: Who knows.

595
00:30:55,720 --> 00:30:58,520
Speaker 2: It's hard to tell with someone as male and as

596
00:30:58,560 --> 00:31:00,800
Speaker 2: rejecting of emotion as my father.

597
00:31:01,640 --> 00:31:04,880
Speaker 3: Do you think that your parents ever had a conversation

598
00:31:05,560 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 3: about David White or do you think that they ever

599
00:31:07,920 --> 00:31:08,880
Speaker 3: ever talked about it?

600
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:10,520
Speaker 1: I don't really know.

601
00:31:11,200 --> 00:31:13,240
Speaker 2: It's a strange thing how much I know that I

602
00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:15,480
Speaker 2: don't know that, and how much everyone seems to know

603
00:31:15,640 --> 00:31:18,000
Speaker 2: around my family that my mother was so flagrant with

604
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:21,280
Speaker 2: all this information. They argued all the time, ceratinly. My

605
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:23,160
Speaker 2: dad shouted at my mum all the time. My mum

606
00:31:23,280 --> 00:31:25,160
Speaker 2: didn't tend to respond that much, but my dad was

607
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:27,640
Speaker 2: very shouty out. He wasn't a violent man, but he

608
00:31:27,760 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 2: was very loud and very angry. Irritated all the time, aggravating.

609
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:32,800
Speaker 1: I could hear.

610
00:31:32,680 --> 00:31:35,880
Speaker 2: Them sometimes arguing through my bedroom wall. I had many

611
00:31:35,920 --> 00:31:39,400
Speaker 2: things through my bedroom wall, but shouting at her. Once

612
00:31:39,440 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 2: I heard him shout we're supposed to be in love sarcastically,

613
00:31:43,360 --> 00:31:46,280
Speaker 2: which is a very grim thing to hear your parents

614
00:31:46,280 --> 00:31:48,840
Speaker 2: shout angrily at each other. But I did never hear

615
00:31:48,920 --> 00:31:52,520
Speaker 2: him shout your fuckings someone else. Actually, there's an amazing

616
00:31:52,600 --> 00:31:56,000
Speaker 2: letter that I have seen where David White writes to

617
00:31:56,040 --> 00:31:59,760
Speaker 2: my mom. It's about some big golfing memorabili snaff who

618
00:32:00,320 --> 00:32:04,280
Speaker 2: that they've had. They've basically got into trouble because David

619
00:32:04,320 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 2: White got my mum to sell some dodgy golfing memorabilia

620
00:32:07,960 --> 00:32:10,920
Speaker 2: on his behalf. It was fake in various ways, and

621
00:32:10,960 --> 00:32:13,680
Speaker 2: then they were thrown out of the golfing memorabilia society.

622
00:32:13,720 --> 00:32:15,720
Speaker 2: I mean, it's a long story, a terrible scandal.

623
00:32:15,920 --> 00:32:19,160
Speaker 1: But then David White writes my mum a letter saying, come.

624
00:32:19,000 --> 00:32:21,680
Speaker 2: On, we need to talk about this because they were

625
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:25,600
Speaker 2: loggerheads about it, and my mom suggests that my dad

626
00:32:25,640 --> 00:32:28,760
Speaker 2: could be the referee, the umpire between them, and then

627
00:32:28,840 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 2: David White writes a letter back to my mum saying,

628
00:32:32,000 --> 00:32:34,960
Speaker 2: I don't think the good doctor, that's what he calls him.

629
00:32:35,360 --> 00:32:36,400
Speaker 1: He says, I.

630
00:32:36,400 --> 00:32:40,080
Speaker 2: Don't think he'd be right for this, because I've always

631
00:32:40,120 --> 00:32:43,840
Speaker 2: found it rather rude and boorish towards me, David White says,

632
00:32:43,840 --> 00:32:44,960
Speaker 2: in this imperious way.

633
00:32:45,200 --> 00:32:48,160
Speaker 1: And what's brittant about that is my dad.

634
00:32:48,080 --> 00:32:50,880
Speaker 2: Was rude and borish to everyone, you know, but David

635
00:32:50,920 --> 00:32:53,280
Speaker 2: White would be the one person who he actually had

636
00:32:53,320 --> 00:32:58,120
Speaker 2: every reason to be rude and borish to. So that

637
00:32:58,240 --> 00:33:01,040
Speaker 2: letter implies this weird I don't know, I know what

638
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:04,800
Speaker 2: the word is a touch of drama, a shadow play

639
00:33:05,040 --> 00:33:07,520
Speaker 2: where everyone was going to have a meeting David White,

640
00:33:07,640 --> 00:33:08,920
Speaker 2: my mom, my dad.

641
00:33:08,920 --> 00:33:10,440
Speaker 1: It's the climactic scene.

642
00:33:10,560 --> 00:33:13,080
Speaker 2: My dad was going to be the umpire where anyone

643
00:33:13,120 --> 00:33:15,560
Speaker 2: admitting that what was actually going on was an affair

644
00:33:15,840 --> 00:33:19,680
Speaker 2: between two of these people and the other two were married, and.

645
00:33:19,600 --> 00:33:21,280
Speaker 3: It was your mother's idea. She said that was a

646
00:33:21,320 --> 00:33:22,000
Speaker 3: good idea.

647
00:33:22,120 --> 00:33:23,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was my mother's idea.

648
00:33:24,440 --> 00:33:26,280
Speaker 2: But it's interesting that David White said I don't want

649
00:33:26,280 --> 00:33:27,960
Speaker 2: to do it because he's rude and bor it. She

650
00:33:28,080 --> 00:33:29,920
Speaker 2: doesn't say, obviously, I don't want to do that because

651
00:33:29,920 --> 00:33:32,120
Speaker 2: we're having an affair and he's your husband. He doesn't

652
00:33:32,160 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 2: say that. He says no. Colin is too rude. Well,

653
00:33:34,880 --> 00:33:37,920
Speaker 2: the lack of transparency in all the parties is so

654
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:41,040
Speaker 2: strange because my mum is talking about the affair all

655
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:43,240
Speaker 2: the time and yet not if you see.

656
00:33:43,080 --> 00:33:43,520
Speaker 1: What I mean.

657
00:33:44,400 --> 00:33:47,120
Speaker 3: That's where it makes it a really interesting family secret, right,

658
00:33:47,200 --> 00:33:49,959
Speaker 3: because what you just said is the lack of transparency,

659
00:33:50,040 --> 00:33:53,880
Speaker 3: and yet on the surface of things completely transparent, but

660
00:33:54,080 --> 00:33:57,479
Speaker 3: not in the way that the people around it are

661
00:33:57,560 --> 00:34:01,280
Speaker 3: metabolizing it. And also it's to me, at some point

662
00:34:01,440 --> 00:34:08,480
Speaker 3: this affair kind of loses steam or stops altogether in reality,

663
00:34:09,040 --> 00:34:11,839
Speaker 3: but does not stop for your mother.

664
00:34:12,320 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 1: That's true. It's hard to know what the true truth is.

665
00:34:15,560 --> 00:34:17,520
Speaker 2: The height of the affair was in the late seventies

666
00:34:17,560 --> 00:34:19,640
Speaker 2: early to mid eighties, when my mum is in her.

667
00:34:19,480 --> 00:34:21,360
Speaker 1: Mid thirties to mid forties.

668
00:34:21,440 --> 00:34:24,200
Speaker 2: Is definitely happening then a lot, because I have all

669
00:34:24,200 --> 00:34:27,000
Speaker 2: the erotic poetry. It's all written then, and the erotic

670
00:34:27,040 --> 00:34:30,400
Speaker 2: poetry has mundane elements. It tends to detail things like

671
00:34:30,719 --> 00:34:33,560
Speaker 2: where they've met up. I also have answer phone messages

672
00:34:34,200 --> 00:34:36,680
Speaker 2: on Casseka. She recorded all of them, and she kept

673
00:34:36,719 --> 00:34:38,800
Speaker 2: the two of them talking, which often includes her saying,

674
00:34:39,239 --> 00:34:41,800
Speaker 2: where shall we meet? I booked a hotel, let's go here.

675
00:34:42,600 --> 00:34:44,880
Speaker 2: By the way, he David White is often quite demuring

676
00:34:44,920 --> 00:34:46,720
Speaker 2: about that. He doesn't really seem to want to agree

677
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:49,799
Speaker 2: to anything, but he obviously did agree to some of it.

678
00:34:50,520 --> 00:34:54,160
Speaker 2: And the Erotic Poetry includes some very very graphic references

679
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:55,120
Speaker 2: to things that.

680
00:34:55,120 --> 00:34:55,920
Speaker 1: Happened between them.

681
00:34:55,960 --> 00:34:58,759
Speaker 2: I mean, it's properly erotic, but not in the sense

682
00:34:58,800 --> 00:35:01,759
Speaker 2: that one would read it and feel aroused, while I

683
00:35:01,760 --> 00:35:04,200
Speaker 2: certainly would. Maybe I think one would think, oh my god,

684
00:35:04,239 --> 00:35:07,160
Speaker 2: I can't believe she's put that in a poem. But

685
00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:11,040
Speaker 2: you know, it's very graphic and atomically. I mean, I'll

686
00:35:11,040 --> 00:35:12,920
Speaker 2: be honest with you, Danny, it was weird when I

687
00:35:12,960 --> 00:35:18,360
Speaker 2: found the Book of Erotic Poetry, because you know, it's

688
00:35:18,480 --> 00:35:21,560
Speaker 2: very very graphic, and most people would shut it immediately

689
00:35:21,560 --> 00:35:25,400
Speaker 2: because it's very mind their mum. But for me, seconds

690
00:35:25,440 --> 00:35:28,960
Speaker 2: after I found it, the Nora Efron Everything is copy

691
00:35:29,080 --> 00:35:33,040
Speaker 2: gene kicked in because at that point, which was soon

692
00:35:33,080 --> 00:35:35,480
Speaker 2: after my mom's death, you know, and I found this

693
00:35:35,800 --> 00:35:39,440
Speaker 2: the school book. I mean, these poems, she'd written copyright

694
00:35:39,480 --> 00:35:41,560
Speaker 2: on them, and I think she'd written copyright on them

695
00:35:41,560 --> 00:35:43,800
Speaker 2: because she would really like them to have been.

696
00:35:43,680 --> 00:35:45,120
Speaker 1: Published, you know.

697
00:35:45,560 --> 00:35:48,000
Speaker 2: And I didn't have a problem very quickly with how

698
00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:51,719
Speaker 2: graphic they were, and I thought it's brilliant as well.

699
00:35:51,880 --> 00:35:54,840
Speaker 2: I thought this is material, which is great, but I

700
00:35:54,880 --> 00:35:57,520
Speaker 2: also thought there's something beautiful about them.

701
00:35:57,440 --> 00:35:59,360
Speaker 1: Even though they're terrible. They are terrible.

702
00:35:59,440 --> 00:36:02,680
Speaker 2: Formerly does a poetry, But what's brilliant about them is

703
00:36:02,719 --> 00:36:06,040
Speaker 2: how much my mother doesn't know what poetry is, which

704
00:36:06,040 --> 00:36:09,239
Speaker 2: is why she's included these very very extraordinary details of

705
00:36:09,280 --> 00:36:12,360
Speaker 2: their love making in a way that isn't really poetic

706
00:36:12,480 --> 00:36:13,640
Speaker 2: and hilarious for that.

707
00:36:13,680 --> 00:36:18,759
Speaker 3: Reason, including decidedly unpoetic descriptions of anatomy.

708
00:36:19,320 --> 00:36:22,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, there is some incredible lines about the detail exactly

709
00:36:22,040 --> 00:36:23,560
Speaker 2: what they did together, as well as a lot of

710
00:36:23,640 --> 00:36:27,080
Speaker 2: this mundane stuff like there's literally one poem which is

711
00:36:27,120 --> 00:36:29,000
Speaker 2: just about trying to go and meet David White to

712
00:36:29,040 --> 00:36:31,880
Speaker 2: talk about a golfing fair together, and in the poem

713
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 2: it says things like I'm going to meet you in Willesden,

714
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:39,719
Speaker 2: which is near Dolly's Hill, and the BBC man, I

715
00:36:39,719 --> 00:36:41,799
Speaker 2: don't know who he is, a BBC man will be there.

716
00:36:41,840 --> 00:36:43,319
Speaker 1: I will wait for you there, And you.

717
00:36:43,360 --> 00:36:45,719
Speaker 2: Realize that this is just my mother's diary, but she's

718
00:36:45,719 --> 00:36:49,320
Speaker 2: put it in Stanzas because she wanted to poeticize her life.

719
00:36:49,480 --> 00:36:51,640
Speaker 2: She wanted her life to be poetic, even if she

720
00:36:51,680 --> 00:36:53,680
Speaker 2: was not a poet. I think that if I was

721
00:36:53,719 --> 00:36:55,920
Speaker 2: someone else, if I was not a writer, not a comedian,

722
00:36:56,280 --> 00:36:58,080
Speaker 2: I might have been horrified. I might have thought this

723
00:36:58,200 --> 00:37:00,640
Speaker 2: must never see the light of day. I don't know,

724
00:37:01,160 --> 00:37:03,240
Speaker 2: but now I thought, this is brilliant, this is material.

725
00:37:03,920 --> 00:37:06,080
Speaker 2: But it wasn't just that. It wasn't quite as cold

726
00:37:06,160 --> 00:37:08,160
Speaker 2: as that. I think there is a coldness to it,

727
00:37:08,800 --> 00:37:12,680
Speaker 2: whoever it is, even in war. I think there's a

728
00:37:12,719 --> 00:37:15,360
Speaker 2: sliver of ice in the heart of the writer. Poetry

729
00:37:15,400 --> 00:37:18,080
Speaker 2: means anything that happens in their life they will seize

730
00:37:18,160 --> 00:37:19,240
Speaker 2: and turn into story.

731
00:37:20,120 --> 00:37:22,360
Speaker 1: Yeah, but also it's true.

732
00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:26,960
Speaker 2: I thought my mother's funeral, you know, this idea that

733
00:37:27,040 --> 00:37:30,520
Speaker 2: she was wonderful and it was lovely and everything else.

734
00:37:30,560 --> 00:37:35,000
Speaker 2: I thought I was being told. I thought, that's not

735
00:37:35,040 --> 00:37:37,239
Speaker 2: saying anything about it. Where's she gone? Where is the

736
00:37:37,239 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 2: woman gone who writes very very erotic poetry that somehow

737
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:44,840
Speaker 2: isn't erotic and isn't poetry, but it is still somehow amazing.

738
00:37:44,880 --> 00:37:48,920
Speaker 2: Where's that wonder everything about my mother is there. There

739
00:37:48,920 --> 00:37:50,440
Speaker 2: are many many people coming out to me at my

740
00:37:50,480 --> 00:37:53,080
Speaker 2: mother's funeral telling me that my mother was wonderful, just

741
00:37:53,080 --> 00:37:55,920
Speaker 2: say over there again, she was so wonderful, so wonderful,

742
00:37:56,120 --> 00:37:58,720
Speaker 2: such a wonderful woman. Often while I found that disorientating,

743
00:37:58,760 --> 00:37:59,920
Speaker 2: you know, I wanted to say to them, did you

744
00:38:00,000 --> 00:38:04,279
Speaker 2: I actually know her? Not because she wasn't wonderful, but

745
00:38:04,800 --> 00:38:06,919
Speaker 2: because there was no detail in what they were saying,

746
00:38:06,920 --> 00:38:08,880
Speaker 2: And it felt to me like a second death, like

747
00:38:08,960 --> 00:38:14,240
Speaker 2: a second more profound erasure of this incredibly idiosyncratic woman.

748
00:38:14,800 --> 00:38:17,440
Speaker 2: If you just idealize someone as we tend to do

749
00:38:17,600 --> 00:38:21,000
Speaker 2: after they died, and actually their memory fades again, is

750
00:38:21,000 --> 00:38:23,719
Speaker 2: crushed again, because you can only call them up and

751
00:38:23,760 --> 00:38:27,640
Speaker 2: make them live by detailing their strangeness, I think, and

752
00:38:27,680 --> 00:38:33,839
Speaker 2: their idiosyncrasies, and that in humans that's often very flawed specifics,

753
00:38:34,440 --> 00:38:36,200
Speaker 2: and my mother had a lot of specifics.

754
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:38,720
Speaker 1: When I first did.

755
00:38:38,600 --> 00:38:41,520
Speaker 2: A stand up show about my parents, both my brothers

756
00:38:41,520 --> 00:38:42,880
Speaker 2: were uncertain, unhappy.

757
00:38:43,320 --> 00:38:45,719
Speaker 1: Both of them said, in different ways, don't do this.

758
00:38:45,840 --> 00:38:48,320
Speaker 2: My younger brother, who, as I say, is angrier about

759
00:38:48,320 --> 00:38:50,920
Speaker 2: the whole thing, and you're not fucking doing it. And

760
00:38:50,960 --> 00:38:53,279
Speaker 2: my older brother said, look, I know you, and we

761
00:38:53,280 --> 00:38:55,440
Speaker 2: could talk about this for hours, but you know you're

762
00:38:55,480 --> 00:38:57,160
Speaker 2: going to do it, aren't you? And I said yes,

763
00:38:57,640 --> 00:38:59,520
Speaker 2: And I said, you're gonna have to believe me. It

764
00:38:59,560 --> 00:39:02,000
Speaker 2: comes from a place of love. And then when I

765
00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:05,360
Speaker 2: did the show, I came back on stage offers for

766
00:39:05,360 --> 00:39:07,000
Speaker 2: an encore. It was a Q and A, just an

767
00:39:07,040 --> 00:39:10,799
Speaker 2: ad lib Q and A with the audience, and all

768
00:39:10,880 --> 00:39:12,600
Speaker 2: these people have their hands up and I say that

769
00:39:12,640 --> 00:39:15,120
Speaker 2: you just have to wait a minute, just everyone. I

770
00:39:15,120 --> 00:39:16,680
Speaker 2: had to find out, first of all, what my older

771
00:39:16,719 --> 00:39:19,040
Speaker 2: brother thought. And I look at the room and I

772
00:39:19,040 --> 00:39:22,040
Speaker 2: can't see him, and I said, Iva, what do you think?

773
00:39:22,719 --> 00:39:24,640
Speaker 2: And he said, I loved it. And then he said

774
00:39:24,840 --> 00:39:27,200
Speaker 2: I loved it because it felt like she was in

775
00:39:27,239 --> 00:39:30,799
Speaker 2: the room, which I found incredibly moving and still do,

776
00:39:30,920 --> 00:39:33,839
Speaker 2: because that's job done. That's what I was trying to do.

777
00:39:34,160 --> 00:39:37,080
Speaker 2: I was trying to make genuinely live again in the

778
00:39:37,080 --> 00:39:39,279
Speaker 2: way that platitudes at a funeral do not.

779
00:39:40,520 --> 00:39:44,120
Speaker 3: That's beautiful. It reminds me of something that William Stafford,

780
00:39:44,200 --> 00:39:46,840
Speaker 3: great American novelist, was once asked at like at the

781
00:39:46,920 --> 00:39:48,919
Speaker 3: end of his life, what he would say to his mother,

782
00:39:48,960 --> 00:39:51,759
Speaker 3: who had died when he was very young, and he said,

783
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:53,719
Speaker 3: I would say, look, I wrote all these books for you.

784
00:39:54,239 --> 00:39:59,160
Speaker 3: There's something in that. It goes really back to what

785
00:39:59,200 --> 00:40:02,280
Speaker 3: you said about us anticity, which I found very moving

786
00:40:02,800 --> 00:40:09,319
Speaker 3: given your childhood and the impossibly mixed messages or you know,

787
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:13,320
Speaker 3: just mixed realities that you were, you know, getting between

788
00:40:13,680 --> 00:40:16,040
Speaker 3: you know, home and the Yeshiva and who are you?

789
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:19,720
Speaker 3: And what that blossoms into could have blossomed into something

790
00:40:19,760 --> 00:40:22,799
Speaker 3: else for someone else, but what it blossoms into for

791
00:40:22,920 --> 00:40:28,759
Speaker 3: you is an absolute like just inner mandate to be authentic,

792
00:40:28,880 --> 00:40:32,120
Speaker 3: to not lie, to not omit. I mean even the

793
00:40:32,200 --> 00:40:37,320
Speaker 3: idea that like to be fully fully there without editing

794
00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:39,480
Speaker 3: yourself in a way. And I don't mean on the page,

795
00:40:39,480 --> 00:40:41,200
Speaker 3: but I mean, you know, when you do your comedy,

796
00:40:41,239 --> 00:40:44,279
Speaker 3: when you do your shows, which it would seem to

797
00:40:44,320 --> 00:40:49,200
Speaker 3: me is the huge saving grace for you here, is

798
00:40:49,239 --> 00:40:52,600
Speaker 3: that you could make meaning out of all of this,

799
00:40:53,280 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 3: including some really really hard intergenerational stuff.

800
00:41:00,080 --> 00:41:00,279
Speaker 1: Yeah.

801
00:41:00,280 --> 00:41:04,000
Speaker 2: I think that's true even now, Danny, in this moment,

802
00:41:04,000 --> 00:41:06,600
Speaker 2: when you ask me a question, my response is just

803
00:41:06,640 --> 00:41:08,920
Speaker 2: to come back with the truth as much as possible,

804
00:41:09,000 --> 00:41:10,040
Speaker 2: don't filter it.

805
00:41:10,040 --> 00:41:11,000
Speaker 1: It never occurs to me.

806
00:41:11,760 --> 00:41:13,800
Speaker 2: I don't have time to think, how can I frame

807
00:41:13,880 --> 00:41:16,040
Speaker 2: this in a way that will, you know, look good

808
00:41:16,080 --> 00:41:17,759
Speaker 2: for me, look good for my mom, look good for

809
00:41:17,800 --> 00:41:19,880
Speaker 2: my family. I can't do it. And I know that

810
00:41:19,960 --> 00:41:22,560
Speaker 2: might sound a bit self aggrandizing. It's not meant to be,

811
00:41:22,560 --> 00:41:24,480
Speaker 2: because you know, I see it at times as sort

812
00:41:24,480 --> 00:41:27,440
Speaker 2: of almost incontinent, like I'm sort of continent with the

813
00:41:27,520 --> 00:41:30,840
Speaker 2: truth at some level. Luckily I have enough skill to

814
00:41:31,000 --> 00:41:35,640
Speaker 2: shape that being continent into stories. But my instinct when

815
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:37,520
Speaker 2: I'm talking, when someone asks me a question, when you

816
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:40,920
Speaker 2: ask me, you know, incredibly brilliantly perceptive questions about my childhood,

817
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:43,359
Speaker 2: it just triggers in me. I need to tell you

818
00:41:43,400 --> 00:41:46,480
Speaker 2: the absolute truth as near as I can articulate it.

819
00:41:47,160 --> 00:41:50,960
Speaker 3: And that is, at least in part, a response to

820
00:41:51,239 --> 00:41:54,600
Speaker 3: being raised by a woman who literally couldn't do it.

821
00:41:55,320 --> 00:41:58,080
Speaker 3: One other thing I'm curious about is, you know you

822
00:41:58,120 --> 00:42:00,720
Speaker 3: can't know the answer to this. You can you can't

823
00:42:00,760 --> 00:42:03,719
Speaker 3: know for sure whether your parents ever talked about David White,

824
00:42:04,160 --> 00:42:06,279
Speaker 3: and you probably can't know for sure the answer to

825
00:42:06,360 --> 00:42:10,680
Speaker 3: what I'm about to ask you. But do you think

826
00:42:10,840 --> 00:42:14,520
Speaker 3: that by the end of her life and she died

827
00:42:14,560 --> 00:42:18,360
Speaker 3: fairly young seventy four do you think that she ever

828
00:42:18,640 --> 00:42:26,279
Speaker 3: had that moment of embodying herself? You know, did the

829
00:42:26,360 --> 00:42:29,799
Speaker 3: fantasist ever rest Was there ever a point where she

830
00:42:30,680 --> 00:42:34,680
Speaker 3: was truly authentically herself in a way that she would

831
00:42:34,719 --> 00:42:36,239
Speaker 3: have felt or understood.

832
00:42:37,200 --> 00:42:40,600
Speaker 2: I think my mother was someone operated in terms of persona.

833
00:42:41,280 --> 00:42:42,960
Speaker 2: The way they're about to say that she's someone who

834
00:42:42,960 --> 00:42:45,640
Speaker 2: couldn't tell the truth is that she's someone who is

835
00:42:45,719 --> 00:42:49,600
Speaker 2: constantly telling her truth in some way, but it is

836
00:42:49,640 --> 00:42:53,760
Speaker 2: not quite the truth, because she's fitting herself into personas

837
00:42:53,800 --> 00:42:57,880
Speaker 2: that are absurd, that are not her, like golf memorabilia,

838
00:42:58,040 --> 00:43:01,239
Speaker 2: nat or other ones that seem closer to who she is,

839
00:43:01,280 --> 00:43:03,520
Speaker 2: but still don't feel quite real. So towards the end

840
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:06,680
Speaker 2: of her life, she became her persona was more Jewish.

841
00:43:06,760 --> 00:43:09,160
Speaker 2: She became like being macha and did a lot of

842
00:43:09,200 --> 00:43:12,360
Speaker 2: stuff around the local synagogue and was constantly having kiddershes

843
00:43:12,440 --> 00:43:15,320
Speaker 2: in honor of her dead parents, and that felt closer

844
00:43:15,400 --> 00:43:17,160
Speaker 2: to who she was, but still to some extent a

845
00:43:17,280 --> 00:43:20,480
Speaker 2: role that she was occupying. To be fair to my mom,

846
00:43:20,520 --> 00:43:23,840
Speaker 2: we all maybe occupy roles, although that is partly what

847
00:43:23,880 --> 00:43:26,960
Speaker 2: I've set my stall out against. I think, how can

848
00:43:27,000 --> 00:43:29,040
Speaker 2: I try not to play any kind of role, but

849
00:43:29,160 --> 00:43:32,120
Speaker 2: just be as entirely in myself as possible. But that

850
00:43:32,560 --> 00:43:37,040
Speaker 2: might be a role, right. There was one moment actually

851
00:43:37,840 --> 00:43:41,040
Speaker 2: where I helped my mum manage to come out of character,

852
00:43:41,120 --> 00:43:43,640
Speaker 2: as it were. I find it weird though, when I

853
00:43:43,680 --> 00:43:46,600
Speaker 2: think about it. I went round to see them and

854
00:43:46,680 --> 00:43:48,880
Speaker 2: I wasn't living at home. I was about twenty but

855
00:43:49,040 --> 00:43:50,719
Speaker 2: already moved out home, and they were having, as they

856
00:43:50,719 --> 00:43:53,920
Speaker 2: often were, an argument in our front guard, very public argument.

857
00:43:54,760 --> 00:43:56,160
Speaker 2: We just got out of the car and we're having

858
00:43:56,200 --> 00:43:59,000
Speaker 2: a route. But I've watched them have this route. And

859
00:43:59,040 --> 00:44:01,120
Speaker 2: my dad went into the house and slammed the door,

860
00:44:01,480 --> 00:44:03,200
Speaker 2: and my mother turned to me and she said, it's

861
00:44:03,239 --> 00:44:08,400
Speaker 2: so tiring living without an emotional life, so tiring living

862
00:44:08,440 --> 00:44:11,799
Speaker 2: without an emotional life. And I was really shocked, not

863
00:44:11,840 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 2: because that wasn't true, not because I thought, how dare

864
00:44:14,040 --> 00:44:16,839
Speaker 2: she say that about my dad? I thought, oh, that's

865
00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:20,759
Speaker 2: absolutely right. And that was surprising to me because I thought,

866
00:44:20,800 --> 00:44:25,280
Speaker 2: how is my mother, of all people, said something so unvarnished,

867
00:44:25,360 --> 00:44:28,319
Speaker 2: so un self conscious and true. And it shocked me

868
00:44:28,320 --> 00:44:30,920
Speaker 2: because I thought, maybe somewhat underneath all the layers of

869
00:44:30,960 --> 00:44:34,239
Speaker 2: self consciousness and persona playing there's a real person with

870
00:44:34,400 --> 00:44:37,000
Speaker 2: emotional intelligence and self awareness. But it sort of just

871
00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:39,120
Speaker 2: flashed in front of me, and then she would have

872
00:44:39,160 --> 00:44:42,560
Speaker 2: gone back to talking about golf or later Jewishness or

873
00:44:42,600 --> 00:44:45,440
Speaker 2: the synagogue or whatever else she felt she needed to

874
00:44:45,480 --> 00:44:48,799
Speaker 2: put in front of her to talk about. My mom

875
00:44:49,520 --> 00:44:51,640
Speaker 2: didn't really relate to people as people. She tended to

876
00:44:51,640 --> 00:44:54,239
Speaker 2: relate to them in terms of what she had decided

877
00:44:54,360 --> 00:44:58,480
Speaker 2: they liked some very small thing that she decided X

878
00:44:58,680 --> 00:45:01,400
Speaker 2: likes this, so al focus on that. Like my wife,

879
00:45:01,600 --> 00:45:05,080
Speaker 2: who is per former writer herself, you know, she pointed

880
00:45:05,080 --> 00:45:06,440
Speaker 2: out to me that my mom was always.

881
00:45:06,160 --> 00:45:08,919
Speaker 1: Getting her champagne because once.

882
00:45:08,840 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 2: Once my wife said, oh, it was having a last

883
00:45:13,160 --> 00:45:16,359
Speaker 2: champagne that my mother was there and saw her doing

884
00:45:16,360 --> 00:45:18,160
Speaker 2: that like it. So my mom was always trying to

885
00:45:18,200 --> 00:45:20,920
Speaker 2: get her champagne, always very cheap champagne.

886
00:45:21,760 --> 00:45:24,240
Speaker 1: But she was sort of a people pleaser in a way.

887
00:45:24,640 --> 00:45:26,400
Speaker 2: But the way she would do it would be just

888
00:45:26,480 --> 00:45:29,359
Speaker 2: to decide, this is what that person likes and then

889
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:32,600
Speaker 2: get them that stuff, and no amount of saying, actually,

890
00:45:32,600 --> 00:45:35,439
Speaker 2: I'm not this person, I don't like it that much

891
00:45:35,480 --> 00:45:39,120
Speaker 2: would make any difference. Like with me, she gas lipped

892
00:45:39,200 --> 00:45:40,640
Speaker 2: me when I was a kid in the thinking that

893
00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:42,880
Speaker 2: I was a fan of these books called Billy Bunter

894
00:45:42,960 --> 00:45:46,520
Speaker 2: books when I was young. Billy Bunter was written in

895
00:45:46,560 --> 00:45:50,880
Speaker 2: the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, and he's basically Harry Potter,

896
00:45:50,920 --> 00:45:54,040
Speaker 2: but with more fat shaming. And I believed that I

897
00:45:54,360 --> 00:45:56,640
Speaker 2: was a fan of Billy Bunter. And it ended up

898
00:45:56,680 --> 00:45:58,319
Speaker 2: with her taking me to a thing called the Old

899
00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:01,680
Speaker 2: Boys Book Club, a societ where they talked about Billy Bunter,

900
00:46:02,160 --> 00:46:05,840
Speaker 2: where I was eleven and everyone else was seventy. She

901
00:46:05,880 --> 00:46:08,279
Speaker 2: would leave me there and come back three hours later

902
00:46:08,360 --> 00:46:11,280
Speaker 2: with all these very old people. And that was because

903
00:46:11,280 --> 00:46:16,240
Speaker 2: my mother had decided, this is what David likes me, David,

904
00:46:16,320 --> 00:46:18,560
Speaker 2: this is what David's and I must service what he likes.

905
00:46:18,920 --> 00:46:20,880
Speaker 2: And at some level that's what she was doing with

906
00:46:20,960 --> 00:46:24,680
Speaker 2: David White. David White likes golf, so I must become

907
00:46:24,800 --> 00:46:28,120
Speaker 2: obsessed with golf. And it was of a weirdly mechanical

908
00:46:28,760 --> 00:46:32,040
Speaker 2: decision at some level. And the fact that I didn't

909
00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:34,560
Speaker 2: really like Billy Bunter, I'm just didn't know at the time,

910
00:46:34,600 --> 00:46:36,840
Speaker 2: but so or that David White might have thought, you know,

911
00:46:37,320 --> 00:46:38,799
Speaker 2: you know, I want to have sex with you, I

912
00:46:38,800 --> 00:46:42,560
Speaker 2: don't really want you to intrude on my whole golf world.

913
00:46:43,239 --> 00:46:47,040
Speaker 2: That would never occur to her because whatever you liked,

914
00:46:47,120 --> 00:46:50,839
Speaker 2: she had to provide it in spades, in many, many

915
00:46:50,880 --> 00:46:52,080
Speaker 2: different ways that were mad.

916
00:46:53,000 --> 00:46:56,759
Speaker 3: It seems almost like, you know, you're describing someone who

917
00:46:57,480 --> 00:47:00,440
Speaker 3: didn't have a center, or didn't have at access to

918
00:47:00,480 --> 00:47:01,240
Speaker 3: her own center.

919
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:02,880
Speaker 1: That's very true.

920
00:47:03,080 --> 00:47:04,799
Speaker 2: One of the extorted things she does is I did

921
00:47:04,840 --> 00:47:07,440
Speaker 2: a documentary called who Do You Think You Are?

922
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:08,600
Speaker 1: I think in America as well.

923
00:47:08,640 --> 00:47:12,120
Speaker 2: It's a genealogy documentary, and my mother's in it, obviously,

924
00:47:12,120 --> 00:47:14,799
Speaker 2: and there's a bit that was cut because she just

925
00:47:14,800 --> 00:47:18,160
Speaker 2: starts talking in a very very flirty way, sort of

926
00:47:18,160 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 2: with the camera about her dad, my grandfather who was

927
00:47:21,120 --> 00:47:24,279
Speaker 2: in Dachau and you know, escaped to Britain and then

928
00:47:24,440 --> 00:47:27,320
Speaker 2: was interned in Britain because he was in an enemy alien,

929
00:47:27,440 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 2: had this terrible life. She talked him out how I

930
00:47:29,560 --> 00:47:31,319
Speaker 2: used to go to Soho in London, to the Red

931
00:47:31,360 --> 00:47:34,680
Speaker 2: Light area, to Berrick Street to have sex with prostitutes.

932
00:47:34,719 --> 00:47:36,640
Speaker 2: She doesn't actually say that out loud, but that's what

933
00:47:36,760 --> 00:47:39,160
Speaker 2: she meets. It's clear and clear that this sort of

934
00:47:39,200 --> 00:47:41,120
Speaker 2: went on, and she was aware of it when she

935
00:47:41,160 --> 00:47:43,000
Speaker 2: was a teenager. And what she says, you know, we

936
00:47:43,040 --> 00:47:45,120
Speaker 2: all knew what he was doing, but we pretended we

937
00:47:45,160 --> 00:47:47,920
Speaker 2: didn't in this kind of twinkly flirty way. And I'm

938
00:47:47,960 --> 00:47:50,200
Speaker 2: looking at camera like, what the fuck, what are you doing?

939
00:47:50,280 --> 00:47:53,239
Speaker 2: Why are you saying this about your dad, my grandfather?

940
00:47:53,760 --> 00:47:55,720
Speaker 2: But it's your point about her not having a center.

941
00:47:55,719 --> 00:47:59,359
Speaker 2: There's some currency in her doing that, immediate currency for her,

942
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:01,600
Speaker 2: but it's so wrong. And that's like the golf. At

943
00:48:01,600 --> 00:48:03,960
Speaker 2: some level, there's currency for her in being obsessed with

944
00:48:04,000 --> 00:48:07,720
Speaker 2: golf and memorabilia. But it was entirely wrong. My mother

945
00:48:08,000 --> 00:48:11,080
Speaker 2: was a great empress of wrong at some level.

946
00:48:11,800 --> 00:48:19,560
Speaker 3: The great Empress of wrong. Yeah, we'll be back in

947
00:48:19,600 --> 00:48:38,120
Speaker 3: a moment with more family secrets. In the UK, where

948
00:48:38,200 --> 00:48:40,960
Speaker 3: David lives with his wife Morwenna and there are two

949
00:48:41,080 --> 00:48:45,400
Speaker 3: grown kids, it must be said that he's pretty well.

950
00:48:45,640 --> 00:48:49,080
Speaker 3: He's pretty famous, like recognized when he walks down the

951
00:48:49,080 --> 00:48:55,680
Speaker 3: street kind of famous. He's a comedian, presenter, scriptwriter, author, singer,

952
00:48:56,360 --> 00:49:00,480
Speaker 3: a multi hyphenate. As they say, fame can be erupting.

953
00:49:00,520 --> 00:49:03,719
Speaker 3: Of course we all know that, but David's commitment to

954
00:49:03,760 --> 00:49:09,480
Speaker 3: authenticity is his own personal shield against all that humor.

955
00:49:09,920 --> 00:49:13,799
Speaker 3: Fierce intelligence, and the desire to do it differently are

956
00:49:13,880 --> 00:49:20,359
Speaker 3: his superpowers. Laughter is the best medicine. But one less

957
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:24,200
Speaker 3: than funny note is that David White passed away just

958
00:49:24,239 --> 00:49:26,320
Speaker 3: a few days before this conversation.

959
00:49:28,040 --> 00:49:30,239
Speaker 2: David White actually died quite recently, just like a week

960
00:49:30,239 --> 00:49:33,680
Speaker 2: ago or so. I got told. People are who read

961
00:49:33,680 --> 00:49:36,399
Speaker 2: the book are always asking me, what did David White think?

962
00:49:36,440 --> 00:49:39,080
Speaker 2: What does David White think about you doing all this?

963
00:49:39,920 --> 00:49:41,680
Speaker 2: But I've had very little contact with him. I did

964
00:49:41,719 --> 00:49:44,120
Speaker 2: write to him when my mom died and said, I

965
00:49:44,120 --> 00:49:46,000
Speaker 2: thought you should know this that she's died. She was

966
00:49:46,040 --> 00:49:48,000
Speaker 2: always in love with you. He sent me a letter

967
00:49:48,000 --> 00:49:50,480
Speaker 2: about but he didn't real respond to it because you know.

968
00:49:51,040 --> 00:49:52,080
Speaker 1: I see you in his own way.

969
00:49:52,080 --> 00:49:54,880
Speaker 2: He's a man like my father, even though he was

970
00:49:54,920 --> 00:49:56,680
Speaker 2: a man quite happy to have an affair, which my

971
00:49:56,719 --> 00:50:01,440
Speaker 2: father was not, but a man, you know, without interest

972
00:50:01,520 --> 00:50:05,879
Speaker 2: in dealing with emotional complexity. He lived in Slovenia and

973
00:50:06,160 --> 00:50:08,520
Speaker 2: never really engaged with anything. When I was unearthing my

974
00:50:08,600 --> 00:50:11,040
Speaker 2: family secrets of the world, and then his half sister,

975
00:50:11,120 --> 00:50:13,280
Speaker 2: who came and saw the stage show that I did,

976
00:50:13,840 --> 00:50:15,120
Speaker 2: wrote to me and said, I think you should know

977
00:50:15,200 --> 00:50:17,160
Speaker 2: he died the other day, which I felt kind of

978
00:50:17,200 --> 00:50:19,880
Speaker 2: sad about, because as I think about all this, one

979
00:50:19,880 --> 00:50:21,720
Speaker 2: thing I should make clear is, you know, I celebrate

980
00:50:21,760 --> 00:50:22,000
Speaker 2: all this.

981
00:50:22,239 --> 00:50:24,640
Speaker 1: I think of all of this as rich.

982
00:50:24,480 --> 00:50:28,280
Speaker 2: And strange and funny and weird. And yet there's damaging

983
00:50:28,320 --> 00:50:33,320
Speaker 2: stuff going on in transgression and narcissism and fairly psychotic

984
00:50:33,360 --> 00:50:35,440
Speaker 2: behavior in some ways, and it did cause problem and

985
00:50:35,480 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 2: my dad having to live in denying of it in

986
00:50:38,160 --> 00:50:40,040
Speaker 2: the way that he did was obviously damaging for him,

987
00:50:40,080 --> 00:50:44,239
Speaker 2: and my mum crossed all sorts of boundaries. But I

988
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:46,440
Speaker 2: have lived to find it funny and I'm very glad

989
00:50:46,440 --> 00:50:48,600
Speaker 2: of it. I know both my brothers find it troubling,

990
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:51,680
Speaker 2: but at the end of the day, often the damage

991
00:50:51,800 --> 00:50:55,080
Speaker 2: that we work through when we're young is what makes

992
00:50:55,160 --> 00:50:58,160
Speaker 2: us who we are. And I am happy with who

993
00:50:58,280 --> 00:51:01,719
Speaker 2: I am, so therefore I do not judge my mother negatively.

994
00:51:02,160 --> 00:51:04,360
Speaker 2: You know, I think that I don't call it damage

995
00:51:04,360 --> 00:51:08,160
Speaker 2: in the book, I call it accidental sculpture. So anyway,

996
00:51:08,239 --> 00:51:10,200
Speaker 2: the point being, for all the trouble and whatever it

997
00:51:10,239 --> 00:51:12,840
Speaker 2: may have brought, I think my life would be duller

998
00:51:13,440 --> 00:51:15,480
Speaker 2: without it. I may not even be a comedian. So therefore,

999
00:51:15,480 --> 00:51:17,279
Speaker 2: when I found out that David White had died, I

1000
00:51:17,320 --> 00:51:18,080
Speaker 2: was quite sad.

1001
00:51:19,000 --> 00:51:21,440
Speaker 3: Well, it's also in a way it's the end of

1002
00:51:21,480 --> 00:51:25,640
Speaker 3: that story, right, yes, exactly, Yeah, yeah, I mean all

1003
00:51:25,680 --> 00:51:27,360
Speaker 3: three legs of that stool are gone.

1004
00:51:27,680 --> 00:51:30,240
Speaker 2: Yeah, the main players have exited the stage.

1005
00:51:30,280 --> 00:51:31,240
Speaker 1: And that feels sad.

1006
00:51:33,320 --> 00:51:36,479
Speaker 2: Fame place a strange angular role in all this, because

1007
00:51:36,520 --> 00:51:39,480
Speaker 2: I think fame is a type of mistaken identity. Erica

1008
00:51:39,560 --> 00:51:41,759
Speaker 2: Jong said, the more famous you are, the more people

1009
00:51:41,760 --> 00:51:44,840
Speaker 2: will get you wrong. And that's definitely been my experience

1010
00:51:44,880 --> 00:51:48,040
Speaker 2: that people refract a version of you that they want

1011
00:51:48,080 --> 00:51:50,680
Speaker 2: to see, which won't be who you are, and that's

1012
00:51:50,680 --> 00:51:54,160
Speaker 2: troubling if you're someone who's obsessed with authenticity. I don't

1013
00:51:54,160 --> 00:51:56,799
Speaker 2: really do characters. I just talk about myself in my

1014
00:51:56,880 --> 00:51:59,560
Speaker 2: children's books. I can create character. The way that I

1015
00:51:59,560 --> 00:52:02,040
Speaker 2: talk as a stand up about my own life and

1016
00:52:02,080 --> 00:52:03,719
Speaker 2: shape my own life for my own voice is a

1017
00:52:03,719 --> 00:52:07,200
Speaker 2: way of combating that mistaken identity. And I think that

1018
00:52:07,480 --> 00:52:09,759
Speaker 2: what I feel from my own family experience is that

1019
00:52:10,480 --> 00:52:12,239
Speaker 2: now I want to be a situation is where there

1020
00:52:12,280 --> 00:52:14,960
Speaker 2: aren't secrets and everyone is being as true and authentic

1021
00:52:15,000 --> 00:52:17,440
Speaker 2: as possible, but there are some things which I've also

1022
00:52:18,080 --> 00:52:19,040
Speaker 2: taken and absorbed.

1023
00:52:19,120 --> 00:52:21,000
Speaker 1: It's not all counter reaction, you know.

1024
00:52:21,560 --> 00:52:23,400
Speaker 2: Like within the family that I grew up in, my

1025
00:52:23,440 --> 00:52:26,640
Speaker 2: older brother is incredibly important and he definitely first started

1026
00:52:26,640 --> 00:52:30,280
Speaker 2: turning me onto comedy. He played me LPs and tapes

1027
00:52:30,320 --> 00:52:33,080
Speaker 2: of really funny early British comedy. My dad used to

1028
00:52:33,080 --> 00:52:35,840
Speaker 2: play me Peter Seller's records. Peter Sells used to do

1029
00:52:35,920 --> 00:52:39,040
Speaker 2: these sketch records, and comedy was a saving grace in

1030
00:52:39,120 --> 00:52:42,160
Speaker 2: my house in forty three Kendor Road. And that's one

1031
00:52:42,160 --> 00:52:44,080
Speaker 2: thing about comedy. You know that when you laugh, you're

1032
00:52:44,080 --> 00:52:48,120
Speaker 2: not pretending. It's sort of impossible to be pretending when

1033
00:52:48,120 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 2: you laugh. When you laugh properly, I mean, obviously, people

1034
00:52:50,239 --> 00:52:54,000
Speaker 2: who sit and pretend that Shakespeare is funny are pretending,

1035
00:52:54,160 --> 00:52:57,239
Speaker 2: you know, in the theater they are pretending because they

1036
00:52:57,239 --> 00:52:58,880
Speaker 2: want to hear that they want people to.

1037
00:52:58,880 --> 00:52:59,719
Speaker 1: Hear they're very clever.

1038
00:52:59,800 --> 00:53:03,160
Speaker 2: But proper laughing is a version of no pretense, I think,

1039
00:53:03,440 --> 00:53:07,720
Speaker 2: because it's such an instinctive thing, particularly when you lose control,

1040
00:53:08,120 --> 00:53:11,080
Speaker 2: as something that's really funny. And so I think that

1041
00:53:11,120 --> 00:53:12,880
Speaker 2: it would have been for me even back then if

1042
00:53:12,880 --> 00:53:14,760
Speaker 2: I didn't realize it then the fact there was funny

1043
00:53:14,880 --> 00:53:17,400
Speaker 2: in the house. That would be a way of finding

1044
00:53:17,520 --> 00:53:20,759
Speaker 2: authenticity that might have been missing elsewhere. And maybe I've

1045
00:53:20,760 --> 00:53:22,719
Speaker 2: built on that. I mean not just me, me and

1046
00:53:22,760 --> 00:53:24,960
Speaker 2: WI Whener and our kids have built on it, as

1047
00:53:25,000 --> 00:53:27,200
Speaker 2: it's so key to the way we communicate.

1048
00:53:27,719 --> 00:53:29,360
Speaker 1: We just communicate through funny.

1049
00:53:29,360 --> 00:53:31,040
Speaker 2: You would be absurd to match that we spend all

1050
00:53:31,080 --> 00:53:33,719
Speaker 2: our time laughing at each other, but we do spend

1051
00:53:33,719 --> 00:53:35,279
Speaker 2: a lot of time laughing. And I love it that

1052
00:53:35,360 --> 00:53:36,840
Speaker 2: both my kids are really funny.

1053
00:53:37,120 --> 00:53:37,319
Speaker 1: You know.

1054
00:53:37,360 --> 00:53:39,840
Speaker 2: That is so important to me because it feels like

1055
00:53:39,880 --> 00:53:42,720
Speaker 2: I've managed to find a way of creating the truth

1056
00:53:42,719 --> 00:53:45,640
Speaker 2: that is most important to me in this current space,

1057
00:53:45,719 --> 00:53:48,440
Speaker 2: in my family space now. And I had some of

1058
00:53:48,480 --> 00:53:50,480
Speaker 2: that when I was young. But I also had this

1059
00:53:50,520 --> 00:53:54,239
Speaker 2: other thing, a wide and crazy untruth that I guess

1060
00:53:54,360 --> 00:53:55,960
Speaker 2: is where I would try and place the way I've

1061
00:53:56,040 --> 00:54:04,080
Speaker 2: gone forward from where I came from.

1062
00:54:04,280 --> 00:54:09,240
Speaker 3: Here's David reading one last passage from My Family the Memoir.

1063
00:54:14,719 --> 00:54:18,040
Speaker 2: I knew before I had written or performed the show

1064
00:54:18,239 --> 00:54:20,799
Speaker 2: about my parents that it would, in its own way

1065
00:54:21,480 --> 00:54:24,640
Speaker 2: be an act of love, a show that celebrated the

1066
00:54:24,680 --> 00:54:29,000
Speaker 2: what or more specifically, but I think this is of necessity,

1067
00:54:29,200 --> 00:54:33,520
Speaker 2: born out of love, an act of reclamation, because, as

1068
00:54:33,560 --> 00:54:36,080
Speaker 2: I've said, my mother died abruptly, and so the lack

1069
00:54:36,120 --> 00:54:39,640
Speaker 2: of time, the lack of dying time, meant there had

1070
00:54:39,640 --> 00:54:43,120
Speaker 2: been no longer bye, no mobilization of memory.

1071
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:45,479
Speaker 1: What I was trying to do with.

1072
00:54:45,480 --> 00:54:48,319
Speaker 2: The stage show and my family, not the sitcom, and

1073
00:54:48,400 --> 00:54:51,239
Speaker 2: already had an instinct about before I even started it

1074
00:54:51,440 --> 00:54:57,160
Speaker 2: was this sounds creepy, but hey reincarnate to describe it

1075
00:54:57,160 --> 00:55:00,080
Speaker 2: in such detail and to leave nothing out that you

1076
00:55:00,160 --> 00:55:04,759
Speaker 2: would truly come alive again on stage, not truly at all,

1077
00:55:04,800 --> 00:55:06,960
Speaker 2: of course, but in the sense that people use that

1078
00:55:07,080 --> 00:55:09,879
Speaker 2: phrase to push it as far as it could go.

1079
00:55:10,600 --> 00:55:14,120
Speaker 2: And then obviously I didn't know this in advance, performing

1080
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:17,520
Speaker 2: across the world for two years, thus giving me, with

1081
00:55:17,680 --> 00:55:20,520
Speaker 2: a whole load of people who never met her, the

1082
00:55:20,640 --> 00:55:35,720
Speaker 2: chance to properly say goodbye.

1083
00:55:35,880 --> 00:55:39,720
Speaker 3: Family Secret is a production of iHeartRadio. Molly z Accur

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Speaker 3: is the story editor and Dylan Fagan is the executive producer.

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Speaker 3: If you have a family Secret you'd like to share,

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Speaker 3: please leave us a voicemail and your story could appear

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Speaker 3: on an upcoming episode. Our number is one eight eight

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Speaker 3: eight Secret zero. That's the number zero. You can also

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Speaker 3: find me on Instagram at Danny Rye, and if you'd

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Speaker 3: like to know more about the story that inspired this podcast,

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Speaker 3: check out my memoir Inheritance.

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Speaker 2: For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 2: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.