Starmer and Southgate ‘both centrist dads’ – David Baddiel

We spoke to David Baddiel, who helped to write the Three Lions anthem, and started by asking him about whether he thought he’d ever see his famous song being discussed at the White House.

David Baddiel: I didn’t think I would live to see that. I was a bit worried because, I believe what happened was, someone said to Keir, ‘Is it coming home? Is football coming home?’ And I thought Joe Biden won’t understand that, and Joe needs no more confusing.

Cathy Newman: And who knows whether he did or didn’t understand it?

David Baddiel: Actually, I think they did start talking and I think Keir said ‘Do you know about soccer?’ And he said something along the lines of ‘Yeah, England are doing well because of you, Keir.’

Cathy Newman: Is there a sense that a nation is sort of daring to hope, there’s a mood of optimism politically and in sporting terms?

David Baddiel: Yeah. It’s a weird time because it feels for England, and it will be different in Scotland and Wales, but it generally feels that there are reasons to be cheerful, as Ian Dury put it, round about now. A friend of mine, John O’Farrell, a comedy writer, said it was a planned thing because one imagines that Gareth is a Labour voter. But England would not play very well, so the Tories couldn’t get any boom from that. Then suddenly Labour won and England starts playing properly well, and generally increased the mood of national optimism.

Cathy Newman: Keir Starmer and Gareth Southgate, are they kind of cut from the same cloth, in some ways? They’ve had their doubters, they’re both perhaps a little bit dull, but that kind of steady resilience is paying off.

David Baddiel: Yeah, I think they’re both kind of centrist dads aren’t they? Both of them have kind of had this long suffering thing, where it’s taken them a while to get to a point of victory. Starmer is in a place of victory, Gareth may be on the edge of victory. He seems a more vulnerable person to me than Starmer. Starmer feels like he’s got something iron within him. Gareth has taken a while to have that iron and I think that’s what we might be seeing in him. We might be seeing a certain ruthlessness in him which Keir Starmer definitely does have. And I think Gareth needs to win a major tournament.

Cathy Newman: Right. Who knows whether that will happen. But it’s a young, diverse team, and yet it’s not that long ago since cabinet ministers were defending the right of fans to boo the team for taking a knee. Are they, in a way, the sort of best riposte to the culture wars debate?

David Baddiel: People who said you can boo the team, that’s mad, because we’re football fans. And booing a team that you want to win, sort of psychologically unsettle them, whatever they’re doing, is not a good idea.

Cathy Newman: You’ve written in your memoir about just how crucial sport was in your life.

David Baddiel: Well, football. That’s quite important, right? Because my book is partly about the fact that my mother had a very big affair with a golf memorabilia collector and turned our lives over to golf, made the house a kind of palace to golf. One of the things that was transgressive about that, I know it was unfaithful and all that, but more transgressive was it was golf rather than football. I think that was one thing that was weird about it for me and my dad and my brothers. It’s like, why is she interested in golf?

Cathy Newman: So your dad, Colin. You talk about his descent into dementia in the book. He found joy in Wales making footballing history. I know he’s sadly passed away.

David Baddiel: One of the things that I’ve forgotten there, you’ve given me goose pimples. Because one of the things about football as well, like music really, is it can touch people who you think have gone. My dad, I remember watching him when Wales were in the Euros a few years ago and they won. And I could tell he was really happy, even though I don’t think if you asked him if he would have known exactly what was going on. There was enough there, the red, the cheering, the music, for him to feel, ‘Oh, I love this’, even though he wasn’t really there. Sorry I’m tearing up now.

Cathy Newman: I guess it makes you think about the past, doesn’t it, in some ways?

David Baddiel: Sport’s like that. Football’s really like that. Football’s a thing that connects you with eternity, really.

Cathy Newman: What do you think your dad would have had to say if England does win on Sunday?

David Baddiel: My dad was Welsh, but actually he was very behind the fact that we as kids always wanted England to win. So I don’t think my dad would have said, ‘Is it coming home, David?’ Because he never said that, but I think he’d have been pleased for me.

Cathy Newman: And poignant for you that he’s not there at this point.

David Baddiel: Always poignant. I’ll be thinking about him. But I’ll be just mainly thinking of the many, many years that I and many other England football fans have watched this team not win.