Why I've renamed myself Jemima Khan Goldsmith

Arguments with her family about the Israel-Gaza war inspired the film producer to create a new hit podcast and made her feel 'schizophrenic and confused' about her Muslim and Jewish surnames, she tells Robbie Griffiths

JEMIMA KHAN GOLDSMITH is trying out a new name. Famous as both Jemima Khan and Jemima Goldsmith, she feels neither the Muslim nor the Jewish one fits her new hit podcast. "I'm so confused and schizophrenic about it, I've actually put both in the credits... it's the first time I've ever done that," she explains.

Her name is important, because the podcast is A Muslim & A Jew Go There, presented by her friends Baroness Warsi (who is Muslim) and David Baddiel (who is Jewish). Their tough weekly conversations about the issues of the day for their respective communities attempts thoughtful debate, rather than argument. Khan Goldsmith came up with the idea in the fallout of the Israel-Gaza war, and it's already "taken over her life".

She does the planning, recording and editing and when the show began in February, it went to the top end of the charts and has stayed there.

Until recently, she used Goldsmith (the name of her businessman father James, and brothers Zac, now Lord Goldsmith, and Ben) for her personal life, and Khan (her married name from her time with cricketer and beleaguered Pakistani politician Imran Khan) for work. "Both names really reflect my investment in this conversation, because there's a Jewish name and a Muslim name" she says.

Often dismissed as a "socialite", Khan Goldsmith, 50, has quietly become one of our most prolific TV and film producers. But after the shocking Hamas attack on October 7 and the brutal Israeli war on Gaza that followed, as well as arguments with her family over the subject, she set out to make her first podcast.

"There were two conversations going on that I was listening to, and they were not happening in the same room," Khan Goldsmith says. "I was sort of slightly going from one to the other playing devil's advocate. I have Muslim sons and I have brothers who consider themselves kind of tribally Jewish, and very aligned with Israel."