His parents were both from Jewish families. His father, Colin Brian Baddiel, was Welsh-born from a working-class background and worked as a research chemist with Unilever before being made redundant in the 1980s, after which he sold Dinky Toys at Grays Antique Market. His mother, Sarah, was German-born, and was a five-month-old refugee child when she was brought to the United Kingdom in 1939 by her parents after escaping from Nazi Germany, where her father, Ernst Fabian, a victim of the "Kristallnacht" pogrom, had been stripped of his assets. Soon after their arrival, Fabian was interned as an enemy alien on the Isle of Man for a year. He had mental health issues, sometimes requiring hospitalisation, for the rest of his life.