David Baddiel: ‘I want to be seen as not just Big Mister Jew’

The British comedian wants to position Jews in contemporary conversations about minorities by talking about more than Bradley Cooper's nose.

British author, comedian, TV presenter and – somehow, these days – political activist David Baddiel is caught in a surreal snare of his own design.

A few days before Baddiel arrives in Australia to speak at the Sydney Jewish Writers Festival, a teaser trailer emerges of the Italian/Irish-American Catholic actor Bradley Cooper wearing a monumental (in fact, pyramidal) prosthetic nose to play the Jewish composer Leonard Bernstein in the Bernstein biopic, Maestro.   

“One of the problems with being me is that I am the go-to person in Britain – and, a little bit, in the world now – for things like the Bradley Cooper nose,” says Baddiel, at the other end of a Zoom call to his home in North London.

“I’ve had about 27 different news outlets wanting me to write about it and I am saying, ‘I’m not doing this.’ Because I’ve done it all before: when Golda Meir was portrayed by Helen Mirren with a big nose, I did a big article for The Guardian, I went on the radio. I can’t do this every time! Partly because I want to be seen as not just Big Mister Jew, but also because I don’t like repeating myself.”

The reason Baddiel might be perceived as the UK’s “Big Mister Jew” is his consistent and courageous public identification with his Jewish heritage, even though he is a self-proclaimed atheist with no political or emotional affinity to the state of Israel.  

Baddiel stands up and shouts out, “I am a Jew! Do you have a problem with that?”

And the resounding chorus he hears in reply is, “Yessss! Shut up!”