Life hasn't always been straightforward for Daisy May Cooper: growing up in rural poverty in Gloucestershire with her brother Chaz, she had to work a myriad of low-paid and unrewarding jobs just to make ends meet. Don't Laugh, It Will Only Encourage Her is the endearingly honest and hilarious memoir from the co-creator and star of award-winning BBC comedy This Country.

Daisy explains:

"When things were really bad, Mum would always say to me:
'Don't worry, it will be a good read for your memoir one day.'
'Mum, I auditioned to be a stripper by snogging a pole and was laughed off the stage by a bunch of topless dancers.'
'Well that can go in the memoir.'
'Mum, I spent all my student loan accidently on a penthouse suite in a fancy hotel in Marble Arch, now I face getting kicked out of drama school.'
'That's a good one for the memoir.'
'Mum, sorry I'm late for dinner, I had to work late at my cleaning job because someone balanced a Quaver packet full of piss on the radiator in the boy's toilets, and I didn't realise until I picked it up, so I had to wash the piss off me in the sink while trying to learn my lines for that Call The Midwife audition I have in London tomorrow.'
'Memoir...'"

"I have lived the most humiliating, ridiculous, screw-up of a life but Mum was right, you've just got to remember, sometimes the worst experiences make the most entertaining stories."

First published: Thursday 28th October 2021