A few months ago, after speaking at an event, I was approached by an 82-yearold woman, who told me the first penis she ever saw was my father’s. It was a good opening gambit, and led me into conversation with this woman, whose name is Joyce Rose. She went on to explain that, growing up in Swansea, she was childhood friends with my father, Colin Brian Baddiel; and when she was four, she followed Colin, also four, into the lavatory and watched him – curiously and patiently – until suddenly spotted, and told off, furiously, by both her mother and Colin’s mother, my grandmother.
It was a very sweet story, and so it was with a sinking feeling inside, a sinking feeling that I am now fairly used to, that…