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'll Only Encourage Her is the endearingly honest and hilarious memoir from the creator and star of award-winning BBC comedy This Country.
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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.