Baddiel's book of bad reviews

The comic has just struck a five-book deal with publishers Fourth Estate, including the autobiography, a collection of journalism, a novel for adults, and two books for children.

But he says that when it comes to writing about his own career, he wants to do it ‘in the negative’, concentrating on critics who consider him ‘a shite writer and comedian’.

‘The working title is My Life in Bad Review,’ he wrote in his literary column in The Times. ‘Kind of like Fever Pitch, but instead of Arsenal, it’s people slagging me off. Fever Bitch, if you like.

‘This may seem extremely masochistic, but it does seem to me something that hasn’t been done before. It hasn’t been done before because, of course, it can be very upsetting to contemplate sentence upon sentence describing oneself as a smug, odious, loathsome, unfunny, ugly creep.’

But he adds: ‘I hope that the book will be an unusual memoir, more about the anecdotal experience of being an object of negativity than a long sobby winge.’

Baddiel says that among his worst reviews were Julie Burchill saying he looked like ‘Rob Newman’s severed afterbirth’ and Q magazine saying of Three Lions: ‘In the future, folk memory will eradicate the memory of David Baddiel’s singing just as effectively as it has eradicated the memory of corpse-robbers during the Blitz.’

Published: 25 May 2007