David Baddiel

(on what it is to be Jewish) David: I belong to a very particular generation, whose parents or grandparents were Orthodox and whose relatives were killed - and for whom Jewishness, therefore, is a very serious affair. I come from a generation that bears the marks of that seriousness but became quite ironic about being Jewish. Our children don't have that seriousness to be ironic from.

(on University experience) David: My dad is a second generation immigrant and from a very poor background in Swansea, and when he went to university it was a statement of him moving from a very poor background and moving on in life. He then passed that on to me - there was no question that I wouldn't go to university. Because my kids haven't come from a poor background it doesn't have the same social implications, but still I'd rather they did go to university because I think they would enjoy it.

(on our need to explain the world) David: We look at it long past the point where we are straightforwardly governed by our selfish genes, and what drives us are not the basic positives any more but the basic negatives: anxiety, fear, incomprehension, the desperate need to think that we know, to be "right" all the time, and, above all, to be parented – and there you have him, God.