WEBVTT - A Phantom Glamour 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:02.759 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:05.040 --> 0:00:08.480 I've mentioned already the unsurprising information that I've spent a 0:00:08.520 --> 0:00:12.319 considerable amount of time in therapy. Whilst there, I was 0:00:12.360 --> 0:00:15.120 always saying to my therapist that it was difficult to 0:00:15.200 --> 0:00:18.480 find a template from my type of child on trauma. 0:00:19.239 --> 0:00:21.040 Or to put in another way, the writing of a 0:00:21.160 --> 0:00:25.720 story about a boundaryless mother who flaunted her infidelity in 0:00:25.720 --> 0:00:29.320 front of all and sundry, including her children, might suggest 0:00:29.360 --> 0:00:34.080 an intense and difficult drama. But frankly, the gravitat of 0:00:34.159 --> 0:00:37.440 that tone is scuppered the moment you have to include 0:00:37.479 --> 0:00:42.400 the phrase engulfing memorabilia. I think one must accept that 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:45.320 whatever damage was caused by all this, it is, in 0:00:45.360 --> 0:00:46.760 the end a comedy. 0:00:48.640 --> 0:00:53.760 That's David Biddil, London based comedian, TV presenter, screenwriter, author 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:56.840 and singer. Davis is a story of a secret that 0:00:56.960 --> 0:01:00.720 lived out in the open, one that shaped his family life. 0:01:01.480 --> 0:01:04.880 It's also a story about speaking one's own truth out 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:20.040 loud with courage and gusto and plenty of humor. I'm 0:01:20.120 --> 0:01:24.120 Danny Shapiro and this is Family Secrets. The secrets that 0:01:24.160 --> 0:01:26.560 are kept from us, the secrets we keep from others 0:01:27.080 --> 0:01:30.080 and the secrets we keep from ourselves. 0:01:33.640 --> 0:01:36.759 I was born in Upstate New York and Troy, near Albany. 0:01:37.000 --> 0:01:39.000 I have no memory of that time, but I think 0:01:39.000 --> 0:01:42.160 it is still quite important because my dad very much 0:01:42.240 --> 0:01:45.000 what wanted to be a scientist. He was a scientist 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:47.560 and he'd got out of working class semi polity in 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:49.080 Wales because of that. 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:50.600 And then during the sixties had. 0:01:50.480 --> 0:01:53.120 We married my mother, who was a refugee from Nazism, 0:01:53.560 --> 0:01:55.480 and a baby which she came feeling that they went 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:57.800 off to America, which was part of something at the 0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:02.080 time called the brain drain from Britain, where essentially clever people, 0:02:02.160 --> 0:02:05.560 mainly scientists, thought there was more work and more money 0:02:05.800 --> 0:02:07.720 to be had in America. And so my dad was 0:02:07.760 --> 0:02:12.320 teaching at a place called Renselare Polytechnic Institute, and two 0:02:12.360 --> 0:02:15.200 children were born, one of which was me and the 0:02:15.200 --> 0:02:18.040 other which was my older brother in quite a small 0:02:18.080 --> 0:02:20.160 amount of time, which suggests that they were having quite 0:02:20.160 --> 0:02:23.800 a lot of sex at that point in time. And 0:02:23.840 --> 0:02:25.600 then they came back to Britain and we lived in 0:02:25.600 --> 0:02:28.600 a tiny flat in a place called Made of Veil, 0:02:28.960 --> 0:02:30.919 which I also have no memory of, but my life 0:02:31.000 --> 0:02:34.800 sort of begins my memory life begins about nineteen sixty 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:36.080 nine nineteen. 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:37.480 Seventy when we moved a place in. 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:41.800 London called Dollis Hill, which is not to be clear 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:45.000 for anyone who might know London a bit like Piccadilly 0:02:45.400 --> 0:02:48.760 or Hampstead or Kensington. It's not a place redolent with 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:51.240 poetry that you see in Richard Curtis films. 0:02:51.560 --> 0:02:56.080 It's a very very mundane part of London. It's rock solid. 0:02:56.560 --> 0:03:00.280 Not suburbia in terms of leafy and nice suburbia, sort 0:03:00.280 --> 0:03:04.760 of inner city suburbia, kind of rough suburbia. And we 0:03:04.800 --> 0:03:07.520 had a semi detached house there and I lived there 0:03:07.520 --> 0:03:09.280 with my mom and dad and my two brothers, my 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:11.880 then and a kat who was quite an important finger. 0:03:12.880 --> 0:03:16.640 One key thing in there was a kind of mixed Jewishness, 0:03:16.760 --> 0:03:20.600 by which I mean my mother was a refugee from Nazism. 0:03:20.680 --> 0:03:23.600 As I said, her father, my grandfather, had been in 0:03:23.639 --> 0:03:27.040 a concentration camp Dachau before the war. When they came 0:03:27.080 --> 0:03:31.920 to London, they were committed reform Jews. They weren't Orthodox, 0:03:32.400 --> 0:03:35.040 but they were very committed to still doing all the festivals, 0:03:35.200 --> 0:03:39.320 providing a Jewish life for their daughter and for her children. 0:03:39.640 --> 0:03:41.520 I meanwhile, I went to the nearest school to my 0:03:41.560 --> 0:03:44.840 house where a Jew wouldn't get bullied in nineteen seventy London, 0:03:44.920 --> 0:03:48.560 which was, as it happened, a very very orthodox Jewish 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:50.760 primary school. And so I and my brothers when we 0:03:50.800 --> 0:03:53.560 went to school, we wore at yarmockers. I wore something 0:03:53.640 --> 0:03:58.720 called sitsit, which are an internal like a Mormon style vest, 0:03:59.440 --> 0:04:01.720 which has sort of tassels that you have to show. 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:04.040 If you don't show the tassels at the school, you 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:08.160 get into trouble. That Hebrew, I did blessings, I only 0:04:08.200 --> 0:04:10.680 kosher food at the school, and yet my dad, who 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:14.640 was a stone cold atheist, would basically be making me 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:17.520 bacon sandwiches for breakfast before I went off to this 0:04:17.560 --> 0:04:19.920 school every day. So there was just a mass of 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:24.760 incoherent Jewishness that define my early life. 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:28.240 I relate to this more than I can say. Where 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:31.440 did that sit with you? I mean having bacon, eggs 0:04:31.480 --> 0:04:34.960 and shees for breakfast and then going to essentially the ashiva, 0:04:35.120 --> 0:04:37.000 Like where did that reside for you? Who did you 0:04:37.040 --> 0:04:38.679 think you were when you were that age? 0:04:39.320 --> 0:04:42.160 That's a really really good question, because I guess I've 0:04:42.160 --> 0:04:47.800 always been massively interested in authenticity and authentically being who 0:04:47.839 --> 0:04:51.000 I am. It's the thing I've chased in my life 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:53.880 and to some extent monetized in my career because as 0:04:53.920 --> 0:04:56.920 a stand up comedian, the work I do is all 0:04:57.040 --> 0:04:59.480 extremely personal. It is all very much based on my 0:05:00.200 --> 0:05:02.159 family history, and a lot of it is about having 0:05:02.240 --> 0:05:06.440 had this sort of mixed up childhood and also involved, 0:05:06.440 --> 0:05:08.520 particularly in the case of my mother, there's this very 0:05:08.560 --> 0:05:14.120 strange self dramatizing shadow play which may or may not have. 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:18.760 Had anything to do with who she really was. I 0:05:18.760 --> 0:05:20.120 think it became very. 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:22.240 Important to me because of this as I grew older, 0:05:23.040 --> 0:05:27.239 even from adolescence, to live authentically, to think who am I? 0:05:27.240 --> 0:05:30.440 I must be all the time, exactly me. I cannot 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:31.120 bear to be not. 0:05:31.200 --> 0:05:32.440 Me in any way. 0:05:33.080 --> 0:05:35.159 But when I was a kid, it was all pretty 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:40.359 mixed up. One thing I am incredibly militantly unashamed about 0:05:40.560 --> 0:05:44.960 is being Jewish, because even though these were many different 0:05:45.000 --> 0:05:48.039 types of Jewish as all batting up against each other, 0:05:48.160 --> 0:05:51.760 my family life was still really fucking Jewish. A lot 0:05:51.800 --> 0:05:54.279 of Jews have this mixed up child that I think, 0:05:54.800 --> 0:05:58.120 and I got inculcated very early on into a mistake 0:05:58.400 --> 0:06:00.279 about the world, which is I think I thought thought 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:04.200 that the whole world was Jewish, or my parents' friends, 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:06.120 for example, were Jewish. I went to a Jewish school, 0:06:06.160 --> 0:06:08.400 my grandparents were Jewish, went to Jewish youth group. And 0:06:08.440 --> 0:06:11.360 then I guess the shock of realizing when I went 0:06:11.360 --> 0:06:15.160 to secondary school to high school, oh, it's not there's 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:17.880 Jews who are tiny minority, and there are anti ze 0:06:17.920 --> 0:06:23.039 Mites in Britain. It was too late for my internal self, 0:06:23.040 --> 0:06:25.360 it was too late for my soul, I think, and 0:06:25.400 --> 0:06:27.240 I guess I continue at some level even though it's 0:06:27.279 --> 0:06:29.160 not true about the world. The world is very much 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:31.839 presenting it to us as not true at the moment. 0:06:32.240 --> 0:06:34.560 But I think I believe that Jews are the default 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:37.640 in the world. The Jews are the norm, and everyone 0:06:37.680 --> 0:06:38.880 else is not the norm. They used to be a 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:41.680 Broadway show actually be called When You're in Love The 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:45.120 Whole World is Jewish in nineteen sixty seven. I used 0:06:45.120 --> 0:06:47.200 to have an LP of that show for some reason. 0:06:47.839 --> 0:06:50.040 And the whole world is never Jewish, but I thought 0:06:50.040 --> 0:06:53.200 it was until early age, and I still do in 0:06:53.240 --> 0:06:55.240 a way and in a way to comfort to me. 0:06:59.120 --> 0:07:02.560 David describes as mother as a fantasist possessed of a 0:07:02.680 --> 0:07:06.800 rich strangeness. These qualities are present in his mom for 0:07:06.839 --> 0:07:09.680 as long as he can remember, though the layers of 0:07:09.840 --> 0:07:13.320 meaning of that rich strangeness come into fuller view as 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:14.000 he grows up. 0:07:17.520 --> 0:07:20.800 When I was young, my grandparents would occasionally fill in 0:07:20.840 --> 0:07:26.160 the gaps of their history, this terribly, terribly, unbelievably traumatic 0:07:26.280 --> 0:07:29.560 history they had in the thirties in Germany, but my 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:33.840 mother later on would fantasize about it. So she would 0:07:33.880 --> 0:07:36.200 tell me, for example, that she could speak German when 0:07:36.240 --> 0:07:39.480 she couldn't. Later in life, she told me that she 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:43.480 didn't believe her parents were her real parents. She believed 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:46.040 that her dad was in fact her mother's brother who 0:07:46.080 --> 0:07:50.080 had died in the Warsaw Ghetto. And I now understand 0:07:50.120 --> 0:07:52.960 why she's doing that, because for my mother, that was glamorous. 0:07:52.960 --> 0:07:56.000 My mother was always chasing a kind of lost glamor, 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.480 and it, even though it's a terrible tragic thing that 0:07:59.520 --> 0:08:02.520 she's fantas sizing about, at some levels, she would have 0:08:02.560 --> 0:08:05.880 preferred to having a live parents, the glamour of her 0:08:05.920 --> 0:08:08.080 parents or her dad being someone who had died in 0:08:08.120 --> 0:08:10.400 the Warsaw Ghetto. And this is as I say, this 0:08:10.440 --> 0:08:12.880 is what I understand, is that my mother was always chasing, 0:08:12.960 --> 0:08:14.880 I think, but couldn't find it and found it very 0:08:14.960 --> 0:08:19.160 difficult to find in dollars hill a phantom glamour. And 0:08:19.200 --> 0:08:21.600 I think this is because she was born into a 0:08:21.640 --> 0:08:25.880 family that, if Hitler had not existed in a parallel universe, 0:08:25.880 --> 0:08:28.920 would have been very, very wealthy. They were industrialists, they 0:08:28.920 --> 0:08:32.840 were sent me aristocratic in a place called Kernigsburg in 0:08:32.920 --> 0:08:36.000 East Prussia. They were the sort of mainstays of their 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:39.920 Jewish social class. They had servants. My cousin Michael tells 0:08:39.920 --> 0:08:42.200 me they had a RUBINTI I don't know if that's true, 0:08:42.240 --> 0:08:43.959 but I wish it was true so that. 0:08:44.000 --> 0:08:45.040 I could look for it. 0:08:45.880 --> 0:08:47.960 And I think my mother knew this even though she 0:08:48.040 --> 0:08:50.880 hadn't experienced it, I mean only as a really young child, 0:08:50.920 --> 0:08:53.320 because she was born in ninetly thirty nine and only 0:08:53.400 --> 0:08:53.920 just got out. 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:55.640 So that's an important thing as well. 0:08:55.640 --> 0:08:57.960 My mother, I think, even though it wasn't at the 0:08:58.080 --> 0:09:02.200 front of her mind, unconscious, must have. 0:09:02.240 --> 0:09:04.880 Been aware of the nearness to death, of. 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:08.040 The fact that she was only here at all by 0:09:08.120 --> 0:09:10.440 the skin of her teeth. And I think this was 0:09:10.520 --> 0:09:13.400 partly what created in her this need to live life 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:18.120 as best she could had a very intense pitch, but 0:09:18.440 --> 0:09:20.400 this pitch was not offered to her because she was 0:09:20.440 --> 0:09:22.800 actually living in a very dull place with this very 0:09:22.840 --> 0:09:25.079 working class man with three children. 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:27.800 I mean, your mother was a baby when she came 0:09:27.800 --> 0:09:29.960 here with her parents. And when you say skin of 0:09:30.000 --> 0:09:32.360 their teeth, it really was the skin of their teeth. 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:34.559 It was a miracle when anybody got out when a 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:36.520 tue got out of Germany in nineteen thirty nine, but 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:40.160 they came in what was it August, and by September 0:09:40.559 --> 0:09:44.559 the borders were completely closed, and everyone who stayed was Yeah. 0:09:44.679 --> 0:09:46.800 I actually actually didn't know until I started doing some 0:09:46.840 --> 0:09:49.040 research on it quite recently, just just what a close 0:09:49.040 --> 0:09:51.600 shave it was. I was always aware of it because 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:53.600 I always knew that my mum would been born in 0:09:53.640 --> 0:09:55.880 March nineteen thirty nine. You know, it was always going 0:09:55.880 --> 0:09:59.160 to be close. But what I didn't realize was after 0:09:59.240 --> 0:10:03.240 Crystal that my grandfather had been sent to a concentration camp. 0:10:03.320 --> 0:10:06.640 Three hundred thousand Jewish men were sent to concentration camps 0:10:06.679 --> 0:10:09.320 after Crystal Act, which there is a much away innss 0:10:09.360 --> 0:10:11.800 of I think I think people think concentration camps are 0:10:11.880 --> 0:10:14.120 something that happened in ninety forty one when the Final 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:16.079 Solution properly started. 0:10:16.120 --> 0:10:18.439 In fact, many Jews were sent to concentration camps. 0:10:18.120 --> 0:10:21.160 Before that, and he got out again something that people 0:10:21.160 --> 0:10:24.640 don't realize happened. He got out I think with bribery 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:27.280 and under the premise that he would leave. It was 0:10:27.280 --> 0:10:29.480 basically the dues were allowed out of concentration camps for 0:10:29.520 --> 0:10:32.640 a short time as long as they were leaving the country, 0:10:32.640 --> 0:10:34.520 as long as they pledged to leave the country. And 0:10:34.520 --> 0:10:36.560 the problem with that, of course, is that they would 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:40.600 have no entry point to another country. They were writing. 0:10:40.920 --> 0:10:43.920 These are just letters that I've seen recently to Jewish 0:10:44.000 --> 0:10:48.080 Asignum organizations in London pleading to be allowed into the UK. 0:10:49.040 --> 0:10:51.280 And they had no money at that time, and they 0:10:51.320 --> 0:10:53.960 had to show as part of this process a thousand 0:10:54.000 --> 0:10:54.800 pounds It show was. 0:10:54.800 --> 0:10:56.640 A huge amount of money obviously. 0:10:56.240 --> 0:10:58.959 Then in a British bank account before they would be 0:10:59.000 --> 0:10:59.400 allowed in it. 0:10:59.480 --> 0:11:02.000 They had to have avid davits from. 0:11:01.920 --> 0:11:04.280 British systems and all sorts of other paperwork, and then 0:11:04.280 --> 0:11:08.680 they had a child and the most extordinary letter, which 0:11:08.720 --> 0:11:10.959 I hadn't really thought about aunt I saw it is 0:11:11.000 --> 0:11:13.840 a letter from one of these Jewish organizations in London 0:11:13.880 --> 0:11:16.200 that are trying to help them to my grandparents saying, okay, 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:19.760 we will have to redo your visa now to include 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:23.400 your child. You know I it seems weird because they 0:11:23.480 --> 0:11:25.760 must have known that was happening anyway. The letter says, 0:11:26.360 --> 0:11:28.840 if you wait another ten days and this is July 0:11:29.280 --> 0:11:31.800 nineteen thirty nine, by now, we will get you another 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:35.400 entry guard. But then you need to go to Berlin 0:11:35.559 --> 0:11:38.040 to get it stamped, and all of this bureaucracy. It's 0:11:38.080 --> 0:11:41.240 just infuse, which is it's infused with such. 0:11:41.080 --> 0:11:42.439 A high level of anxiety. 0:11:42.520 --> 0:11:45.160 You know, when I'm reading it in twenty twenty four 0:11:45.200 --> 0:11:47.679 now and then when you're reading it in ninety thirty nine, 0:11:48.080 --> 0:11:50.080 you and your child, it's so extraordinary. 0:11:51.760 --> 0:11:55.840 Do you think your mother knew these facts of her history? 0:11:56.040 --> 0:11:58.040 Did her parents talk to her about it? Or do 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:01.800 you think that this was real analyzed intergenerational trauma the 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:04.680 kind of ineffable, you know, the things that we sort 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:08.079 of pick up and that we maybe can't attach an 0:12:08.080 --> 0:12:11.400 actual memory to or a language two, but that becomes 0:12:11.640 --> 0:12:13.800 part of what forms usays the way it clearly did 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:14.160 with her. 0:12:15.760 --> 0:12:18.800 Well, some of it is fact, I mean the fact 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:23.120 that she knew. But my mother's real name I'm using 0:12:23.440 --> 0:12:26.439 really in a very ironic sense. There her first name 0:12:26.480 --> 0:12:28.880 was not Sarah. That was the name that you know 0:12:28.960 --> 0:12:31.199 she used. I thought of her as Sarah, but her 0:12:31.240 --> 0:12:35.040 first given name was a name given to her, as 0:12:35.080 --> 0:12:37.400 it were, by the Nazis, forced on her by the 0:12:37.480 --> 0:12:40.440 Nazis because in ninety thirty nine Jewishly. 0:12:40.240 --> 0:12:41.480 Was had to be named from a list. 0:12:42.360 --> 0:12:45.320 You had to choose their name from a not very 0:12:45.360 --> 0:12:48.400 pleasant list and names. A lot of horrible names were 0:12:48.440 --> 0:12:50.880 on it, and as far as I can remember from 0:12:50.920 --> 0:12:53.680 it was the best of a bad bunch. And the 0:12:53.720 --> 0:12:58.040 interesting thing is that although my mother designated herself in 0:12:58.120 --> 0:13:00.880 later life as Sarah, which is by the way, still 0:13:00.920 --> 0:13:04.040 a Nazi name, because Jewish children also had to be 0:13:04.120 --> 0:13:06.560 Sarah or Rachel as their middle names, and I think 0:13:07.080 --> 0:13:09.280 Moisture or Isaac there were boys had to be their 0:13:09.320 --> 0:13:12.200 middle names. But one thing I didn't realize is that 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:14.920 my mother was still called from it by her parents 0:13:14.920 --> 0:13:17.440 when she was living in Cambridge as a child, which 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:18.719 is where they lived in Britain. 0:13:18.480 --> 0:13:20.960 After the war. I actually did a show. 0:13:21.040 --> 0:13:24.160 I did a stand up show based on my parents, 0:13:24.280 --> 0:13:26.640 and I used to come out afterwards and Q and 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:29.640 a and ad lib with the audience. And one time 0:13:29.679 --> 0:13:31.760 a man stood out, Who's I found this really movie? 0:13:31.880 --> 0:13:35.000 And said, I actually knew your grandparents, and I've got 0:13:35.000 --> 0:13:38.160 a letter here from one of them. And he wrote 0:13:38.200 --> 0:13:40.959 a letter from my grandma to him, written in about 0:13:40.960 --> 0:13:45.360 I don't know, nineteen fifty two or something, in which 0:13:45.400 --> 0:13:47.640 she says, I have to go now because it's time 0:13:48.200 --> 0:13:49.160 for little from. 0:13:49.040 --> 0:13:50.680 Its prayers, or because I can. 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:54.600 Hear a little from it crying. I never heard my 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.120 mother called that, you know, in the wild, as it were, 0:13:58.120 --> 0:14:01.840 and I found it very extraordinary that then, you know, 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:04.040 as a child, she would have been called from it. 0:14:04.280 --> 0:14:06.160 She would have been called this name that was handed 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:08.360 down to them, forced on them by the Nazis. 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:09.800 I don't know. 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:11.360 I don't know how much detail of this that my 0:14:11.400 --> 0:14:13.920 mother really knew, but that in itself seems to be 0:14:13.920 --> 0:14:18.480 an unbelievable bobbld of complexity to live with. 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:19.520 On her shoulders. 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:24.480 My father is called was called Colin Badiel is also 0:14:24.600 --> 0:14:29.040 Jewish in a slightly different lineage that also involved fleeing 0:14:29.760 --> 0:14:33.840 his grandfather my great grandfather was fleeing from Russian pogroms 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:38.560 from Cossacks. I think they were in Latvia, and the 0:14:38.600 --> 0:14:40.520 story goes I think this might be an urban myth 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:43.280 that applies to a number of Jews in the nineteenth century, 0:14:43.400 --> 0:14:46.280 was that my great grandfather smuggled himself onto a boat 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:47.960 and the boat was meant to be going to New York, 0:14:47.960 --> 0:14:49.080 but was go to New York. 0:14:49.880 --> 0:14:51.240 But he didn't speak in English. 0:14:51.280 --> 0:14:56.160 When they stopped at Swansea to refuel. Swansea in Wales, 0:14:57.440 --> 0:14:59.880 he didn't speak an English and he just thought it 0:14:59.920 --> 0:15:01.240 was the end of the line. So he got off 0:15:01.360 --> 0:15:04.400 and presumably ten years later, said to someone, excuse me, 0:15:04.400 --> 0:15:06.960 where is the Statue of Liberty? And they said, no, no, 0:15:06.960 --> 0:15:09.360 you're in Swansea. And that's why that part of my 0:15:09.400 --> 0:15:14.000 family is from Wales. My dad was very Welsh, I 0:15:14.080 --> 0:15:17.000 sort of, you know, come extremely Welsh at some level. 0:15:17.040 --> 0:15:20.240 When you tell people in Britain that my dad was Welsh, 0:15:20.600 --> 0:15:22.920 they will say often, oh, I thought he was Jewish, 0:15:23.440 --> 0:15:25.320 and I said, yeah, it was Welsh and Jewish. But 0:15:25.360 --> 0:15:28.720 for some people people find that In Congress it's very interesting, well, 0:15:28.760 --> 0:15:34.080 people assume where people assumed Jews can come from basically Germany, 0:15:34.720 --> 0:15:39.480 Russia and New York. He was very working class. His 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:43.680 dad used to sell cloth material from door to door. 0:15:43.720 --> 0:15:46.600 He was essentially a tinker. And my dad was born 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:49.720 in nineteen thirty four. They lived at a terraced house 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:53.440 in Swansea that I stayed in on holiday many times 0:15:53.440 --> 0:15:55.040 when I was growing up. We never used to have 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:58.120 nice holidays abroad in the South of France or anything 0:15:58.120 --> 0:15:58.320 like that. 0:15:58.360 --> 0:15:59.600 My dad just used to take us. 0:15:59.480 --> 0:16:02.320 Back to Swa and we lived and we stayed in 0:16:02.400 --> 0:16:06.640 his parents' house. He's not untypical my dad, I guess 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:09.080 of that generation, a very very intelligent man, but with 0:16:09.120 --> 0:16:13.480 always no emotional intelligence. You know. My father was very clever, 0:16:13.760 --> 0:16:17.800 very funny, incredibly and forward about science. I think in 0:16:17.880 --> 0:16:20.000 his heart he would have liked to have been an 0:16:20.040 --> 0:16:23.680 important man of science, a researcher who made great discoveries, 0:16:24.280 --> 0:16:25.920 and that eluded him because of life. 0:16:25.960 --> 0:16:28.320 Because he had three kids, he had to feed. 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:32.120 Them, and so he got a job with a corporation. 0:16:32.240 --> 0:16:36.160 He became essentially a middle manager for Unilever. But I 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:38.000 think that a sign. I think that in all my 0:16:38.160 --> 0:16:41.400 dad's quickness of mind and funny as there was a. 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:42.400 Lot of rage. 0:16:43.280 --> 0:16:46.120 And it's weird because I think of intelligence now as 0:16:46.280 --> 0:16:50.760 involving emotional intelligence. I think you can't just be well 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:54.440 read or good at science and be an intelligent person. 0:16:54.480 --> 0:16:57.520 You have to have some awareness of what's steaming your 0:16:57.560 --> 0:17:01.160 way and your inner cauldron. I'm not sure my dad did. 0:17:02.560 --> 0:17:05.480 I think that is the source of the dysfunctional fit 0:17:06.160 --> 0:17:09.679 that happened with my mother. Someone recently asked me how 0:17:09.760 --> 0:17:12.560 it happens a lot with this story is people said, 0:17:12.560 --> 0:17:16.920 your daddy must have known about this affair, and I said, well, 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:20.399 it's hard to tell, because my father would not express 0:17:21.240 --> 0:17:24.359 an emotional vocabulary. He didn't have the emotional vocamputery. It 0:17:24.359 --> 0:17:26.040 seems to me that you have to have an emotional 0:17:26.119 --> 0:17:28.879 vocamplary to talk me about the fact that your partner 0:17:28.920 --> 0:17:32.600 is having an affair. My mum had a very romantic, 0:17:32.680 --> 0:17:37.399 slightly grand delinquent sense of life, but she was normally 0:17:37.480 --> 0:17:41.879 enough in my sense of her until about ninety seventy 0:17:41.880 --> 0:17:45.000 three or seventy four, when I'm about ten, at which 0:17:45.040 --> 0:17:49.560 point she becomes obsessed with golf and everything to do 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:53.800 with golf and golf memorabilia. I one think about golf 0:17:53.960 --> 0:17:56.640 is in America, I think people take it more seriously 0:17:56.680 --> 0:18:00.920 as a sport, but here golf is really thought of her as, 0:18:01.080 --> 0:18:04.200 if I can use the word, a naff sport played 0:18:04.200 --> 0:18:07.280 by cilly men with mustaches and silly clothes. 0:18:08.160 --> 0:18:08.600 But she did. 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:11.640 She became obsessed overnight in this very extreme way. 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:12.840 She went on to. 0:18:12.760 --> 0:18:16.440 Write five books about golf, and the whole house suddenly 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:23.280 became covered in golfing memorabilia. She wore golfing brooches, golfing earring, 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:26.840 golfing necklace, Every card, every calendar was about golf. 0:18:28.320 --> 0:18:28.920 It was amazing. 0:18:28.960 --> 0:18:31.400 She just covered herself in golf and golfing. Member really, 0:18:31.400 --> 0:18:34.680 but I don't think she was actually interested in the sport. 0:18:35.880 --> 0:18:38.520 She liked children's books. Before that, she had worked as 0:18:38.560 --> 0:18:42.399 a dental receptionist, but never anything to do with sport. 0:18:42.480 --> 0:18:46.040 We were interested in football. She wasn't interested in that anyway. 0:18:46.119 --> 0:18:48.040 A key element of all of this is that this guy, 0:18:48.560 --> 0:18:51.359 David White appeared in our life at the same time, 0:18:51.680 --> 0:18:55.600 and he was a golfing memorabilia collector, loved golf and 0:18:55.640 --> 0:18:57.760 played all the time, played golf all the time, and 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:00.800 talked about golf all the time. So it's not a 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:06.160 complex equation to work out that those things might be connected. 0:19:06.880 --> 0:19:10.359 That this man was around her house a lot, always 0:19:10.480 --> 0:19:13.520 talking about golf, and she had fallen kind of absurdly 0:19:13.560 --> 0:19:17.159 in love with it. Eroto manically. Eroto Mania is an 0:19:17.160 --> 0:19:19.320 actual word, isn't it for when people fall in love 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:20.680 in an over obsessive way. 0:19:21.240 --> 0:19:23.560 And you know, we all knew when the golf was 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:23.960 a clue. 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:25.880 But my mother was also very very key to tell 0:19:25.920 --> 0:19:27.560 everybody about this affair. 0:19:27.640 --> 0:19:31.000 She would mention it, you know, like just in passing as. 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:32.439 A story, I'd tell about how my brother took one 0:19:32.480 --> 0:19:37.080 of his first girlfriends to see my mom at her shop, Golfiana. 0:19:37.440 --> 0:19:39.720 She had a store in an antique market opposite my 0:19:39.800 --> 0:19:41.280 dad's store. My dad, by this time it was done 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:45.639 agra scientist. He lost that jobsly dinky toys cars at 0:19:45.680 --> 0:19:48.119 an antique store in opposite it was my mom's golfing 0:19:48.160 --> 0:19:49.440 memorabilia store. 0:19:49.480 --> 0:19:50.960 So that's something of a red flag. 0:19:51.000 --> 0:19:53.919 Anyway, my brother took this new girlfriend to see my mom, 0:19:54.119 --> 0:19:58.040 and my mom just mentioned within seconds David White and 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:00.840 then turned to this girlfriend, this new new ivors and 0:20:00.880 --> 0:20:03.639 said my lover of twenty years, and then carried on 0:20:03.720 --> 0:20:06.200 talking to my brother as if nothing had happened, because 0:20:06.240 --> 0:20:08.800 you know, she really thought the affair was a plus. 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:11.080 She thought it was glamorous, and he was kind of glamorous. 0:20:11.080 --> 0:20:15.280 He was a smooth looking, polo necked, pipe smoking, bearded man, 0:20:15.359 --> 0:20:19.640 handsome in a kind of nineteen seventies way. I think 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:21.919 he used off to shave things like that that my 0:20:22.000 --> 0:20:27.760 dad didn't. He was more middle class, more you know, clubbable, 0:20:28.040 --> 0:20:31.640 less Jewish, not Jewish at all. Basically, this was the time, 0:20:31.680 --> 0:20:33.720 by the way, when in Britain Jews were still not 0:20:33.800 --> 0:20:37.040 allowed in a lot of golf clubs. Golf clubs were restricted, 0:20:37.840 --> 0:20:41.960