David Baddiel.

I Like Genesis – up to and Including Wind and Wuthering in 1976. I Don’t Like Them Ironically; I Think Many of Their Songs Are Genuinely Beautiful, and Would Remain Beautiful If Stripped of All Moog Bombast and Played on Acoustic Guitar. a Long Time Ago, I Stopped Finding This Difficult to Admit. in Fact, I Now Rather Pride Myself on It, and Feel Irritated by the Name Checking of the Band in Recent Attempts by Ageing Musical Journalists to Reintroduce Progressive Rock into the Acceptable Cultural Canon, Always Freighted Down with Ironic Smirking. Genesis Were Brilliant. There, I’ve Said It.

I Think That People Are Terrified About Race and Religion, Especially Issues Surrounding Muslims and Jews, and When People Are Terrified, What They Really Should Do Is Laugh.

I Really, Really Wanted to Be a Punk Rocker. and Then, at the Start of 1977, My Friend Dave Played Me Blood on the Rooftops, a Song from the Album Wind & Wuthering, by Genesis. Genesis! This Was a Time When, for a Young Teenager Who Was Attempting to Live His Life by the Rules Laid Down in NME and Sniffin’ Glue, Genesis, Along with Pink Floyd and Yes, Represented Everything That Was Dull, Pretentious, Overblown, Middle-class and Unacceptable About Music Before the Year Zero of Punk. Trouble Was, I Really Liked the Song. Resistant Though My Ear Was Supposed to Be to This Particular Quality, I Thought It Was Beautiful. but I Held On, Fastened to the Safety Pin of Self-denial, Buying White Riot and New Rose and Peaches, Until One Day, Possibly Under Cover of Darkness, Probably in Disguise, I Went to Our Price in Willesden Green and Bought Nursery Cryme. and I Was Lost. Peter Gabriel Had Me at I Heard the Old Man Tell His Tale . I Didn’t – and Still Don’t – Know Why the Changes of No Consequence Should Pick up the Reins from Nowhere, but It Suddenly Became Clear to Me Why I Loved This Band. They Wrote Fantastic Songs.

I’m an Atheist Myself. but I Am Not Interested in Making People Think That Their Faith Is Rubbish. I Think It’s Good That People Have Faith. What I Am Interested In, However, Is Taking the Piss Out of the Structures and the Extremisms That Grow up Around That Faith.

When I First Started Doing Stuff on TV, a Lot of People Thought I Was Pakistani or Indian, Because I’m Dark and Because Baddiel Sounds Like a Non-English Name. Indians Used to Come up to Me and Say: ‘I’m so Glad There’s an Indian Bloke on Telly.’

I Have Gone Skiing with Peter Gabriel. Angus Deayton Is a Friend of Mine and He Knows Peter Gabriel. He Invited Me Skiing a Few Years Ago, and I Might Go Skiing with Peter Gabriel Again in a Few Weeks’ Time, in Fact. That’s Quite Exciting. Exciting for My 14-Year-old Self, Anyway.

I Don’t Have Any Interest in Stirring Things Up. I Have an Interest in Writing About Subjects That I Want to Be Funny About. I’m Not Going to Not Write Something If I Am Worried That People Might Get Offended, but at the Same Time, I’m Not Deliberately Setting Out to Offend Anyone.

In the 1960S There’s an Era of Sexual Liberation and Then There’s an Appropriation, a Commandeering of That Idea of Sexual Liberation by People Who Don’t Really Understand It, I.e. Older, Middle-aged Men Who Are Running Television, Who Think, ‘Oh, People Are Having Sex More Than They Used to Be, and Before Marriage, and Talking About Sex, and We Weren’t Allowed to Do That in the ’50S but We Are Now, so We’ll Do That’, but Their Understanding of How to Do It Was Very End-of-the-pier.

Falling in Love with Genesis in 1977 Was a Nightmare for Me. It Felt a Bit Like Living in Germany in 1935 and Deciding to Convert to Judaism.

I’m Happy to Keep on Apologizing Because I Do Know That Not Everyone’s Seen the Latest Apology. You Make Statements, and Not Everyone Sees Them, They Often Just Fizzle in the Air. You’re Trying to Explain That You Made a Mistake and That There Are Things You Didn’t Understand, but Some People Want to Be Able to Say, ‘You’re a Terrible Person’, and I Think There’s a Thrill to Anger Too.