David Baddiel delves into his mum’s sex life in a jaw-dropping memoir

According to publishing lore, books about Nazis, cats and golf are most likely to turn a profit. So this memoir by comedian David Baddiel – a besotted cat-lover whose grandparents fled Nazi Germany, and who grew up in a home stuffed with kitsch golf memorabilia – ought to fly off the shelves. But the real USP of Baddiel’s book is the topic that links all three: the tragicomedy of his mother’s long-running affair with a golf pro called David White. This affair was the subject of Baddiel’s 2016 stand up show, but the book provides much more space for nuance and compassion.

Because Sarah Baddiel – who died, aged 75, in 2014 – was a hoarder, her son now has access to every jaw-droppingly explicit detail of that affair. She kept copies of the love letters and erotic poetry she wrote for him, as well as audio cassettes of their phone calls. Not that Sarah kept her passion for a married man secret while she was alive. She left evidence of it scattered around the family home she shared with her emotionally stunted husband, Colin, and her three sons Ivor, David and Dan. On one occasion, she actually cc-ed two of her sons into an email she wrote to her lover.

Much of Sarah’s “frantic sexual upfrontness” will leave the reader caught between squirming, spluttering and sighing. Take the list of imaginary golfing book titles she invented, which include: “Lady in the Deep Rough”, “I’ll Go Where You Hit Me!” and “You Got Me In a Hole”.

Studying her odes to the illicit couple’s “nibbling” and “licking” (and an email which runs simply: “MY CLITORIS IS ON FIRE !!!!!”), Baddiel is relentlessly critical of his late mother’s grammar, but bends over backwards not to judge her sexual transgressions. Instead his book is an attempt to make sense of her. He does this with an appealing mix of blunt witness statements and family photographs and documents which he offers up to his readers, allowing them space to sift the evidence for themselves.

“My mother was a fantasist,” he says. Because her family’s wealth was lost to the Nazis, Sarah had ended up in suburban North London, married to a man whose favourite subjects were chemistry and dinky toys – a man who made noises like a dying walrus when they were intimate. So she tried to claw back the lost glamour with a series of more romantic fabrications. She liked to spin yarns about her “real” father and pretended to recall a room in Nazi Germany she could never have seen. Baddiel clocks every aspect of her “bats---tery”. He notes how odd it was that she sought to keep White’s attention by setting up a rival golf memorabilia business with the same name (Golfiana) as that run by the object of her desire. He flags up the lies and wonders if her prostrate devotion to both golfing tat and White was real. Perhaps she was more desperate to create the identity of an adulterous businesswoman than to be one?

Baddiel is often self-critical, and many of the laughs come at his own expense; his urge to give us the whole messy truth is hugely appealing. That said, I was left with a few questions. I did want to know if all three Baddiel boys took DNA tests to check their paternity. And I wanted to know more about what happened to David White. Did his wife ever know what he was up to? After Sarah’s death, Baddiel emailed to inform White of her passing, noting that he’d probably need to know as she “was in love with you”. White replied with formal condolences, leaving only a vague hint of his intimacy with the deceased. But the Baddiel brothers ensured her defining romance was recorded. Her gravestone reads: “Golfingly Yours.”

My Family is published by Fourth Estate at £22. To order your copy for £18.99 call 0808 196 6794 or visit Telegraph Books