David Baddiel is feeling a little bit low. Not only does he have the beginnings of a cold, but he is still coming to terms with the result of the general election, which saw him forsake his beloved Labour Party – amid the row over antisemitism – and vote Lib Dem.
A “waste of a vote”, he now concedes, cast in a bid to prevent a Tory landslide.
“I was vaguely hoping that there would be a hung parliament,” he laments when I catch up with him just before Christmas.
“Actually, it’s interesting to see how [the Tories] are already riding roughshod over the promises they made just last week. Boris is an amazingly brazen bloke – he just doesn’t care about anything except power. So it’s going to be an interesting ride.”
While David may mourn the loss of a more moderate political climate, however, the divisive nature of government – and, it seems, the anger of an entire nation – is certainly spewing up content for his latest tour.
Trolls: Not the Dolls, which hits venues across the county this month, sees the comedian, novelist and TV presenter delve into the murky world of social media to try and understand just what is making people so enraged.
“I noticed during my previous shows that people seemed to react well to the social media stuff,” he says. “And actually, I am slightly addicted to Twitter. The show is an attempt to explore how we have got to this place.”
The North Londoner, now 55, found fame during what, in hindsight, seems a halcyon time of poll tax riots and high-interest rates as one-quarter of the hit Radio 1 – and then BBC2 – a comedy show The Mary Whitehouse Experience. With his floppy-haired, pin-up partner Rob Newman, he was credited with helping to make comedy ‘the new rock ‘n’ roll’ when the pair played to 12,000+ people at Wembley Arena in 1993.
Shortly afterwards, amid growing animosity, they went their separate ways.
But it wasn’t long before Baddiel was back, this time with Frank Skinner, riding the wave of ‘baggy’ culture as co-host of the post-pub footy fest Fantasy Football League. The swagger and lad mag legend status was sealed when the pair’s song Three Lions, penned and performed with the indie band the Lightning Seeds, stormed the charts to become the soundtrack of summer 1996, as England hosted the European Championships and made it to the semi-finals.
Further shows with Skinner followed, before Baddiel emerged as a thoughtful solo creative, penning novels for adults and children, a play, TV scripts and, in 2016, a very personal stand-up tour about his recently deceased mother and his father, Colin, who suffers from an extreme form of dementia known as Pick’s disease. Now he is fixing his gaze on social media.
“I have used Twitter for a decade as a sort of diary, writing about Brexit, Trump and antisemitism, but also lots of personal stuff too,” he reflects.
“There’s a lot about growing old, and about my children, so my Twitter feed is a sort of map of the past 10 years. I thought it would be interesting to mine some of that, along with some of the comments the posts have generated.”
As a comedian, Baddiel is more than used to dealing with hecklers, so addressing the trolls was initially an enjoyable pastime.
“I decided to respond to them and try to put them down, which worked quite well, and there seemed to be a wider audience enjoying it. I was never one for: ‘Don’t feed the trolls.’”
Twitter, he says, provides the perfect platform for those who want to get angry. It is an instant medium.
“I get furious comments from people who aren’t responding to one of my tweets from that day, or even week,” he explains. “They have actively searched out my comments from years ago to find something to make them angry. They want to get angry.
“Also, we didn’t used to write everything down – we just said stuff. Now people are writing all the time and they tend to turn the volume up by 10, which magnifies the rage. Someone once tweeted that I should be ‘drawn and quartered in the public square’. I thought: ‘Who does this bloke think he is, Charles Dickens?’”
In other ways too, David believes that social media is not all to the greater good.
“When it started, it felt like it was just going to be a bulletin board; a way for people to send messages to each other. But actually it’s changed everything.
Politics, culture, truth, mental health: all kinds of things have been affected. Sometimes in ways that are quite good, but at other times in ways that we don’t yet understand.
“I think there are still a lot of people out there who are nice, and who are not mad – we just don’t hear about them because they are not constantly shouting. I do worry that the anger and hate on social media will spill over. People are much more tribal than they used to be and that doesn’t stay online.”
Anger aside, moreover, David worries that social media has become a huge distraction.
“If I decide to respond to a troll, three hours can fly by,” he admits. “It’s not healthy. And, as a writer, I find it too easy to keep checking Twitter instead of working.”
Trolls: Not the Dolls, however, isn’t all about the negative.
“You get some amazingly funny stuff on [Twitter]. Sometimes I feel like the conductor of a huge comedy orchestra, with everyone joining in. It’s not all dark – it can be very life-affirming.”
One thing sure to reunite the country – at least for a few weeks this summer – is the European Football Championships, with the semi-finals and final on these shores for the first time since 1996. The hurt count may be up to 54 years now, but England fans will still be “dreaming” of victory and belting out Baddiel’s lyrics.
“I get a lot of stick from Scottish people about the song,” he laughs. “So it may not unite us all. The Welsh seem less bothered. At the last World Cup, it did seem like the whole nation was singing it, but again, that was because people were sharing it with me on social media. Someone sent me pictures of an entire street singing, which is really joyful.
“And yes, I am looking forward to the summer. We’ve got a good side and they’re playing really well – so hopefully we’ll have good reason to sing the song.”
- Trolls: Not the Dolls is at Dorking Halls, Jan 31; New Victoria Theatre, Woking
- Feb 23; G Live Guildford, Mar 20; Rose Theatre, Kingston, May 3
Visit: davidbaddiel.com
