In an age when celebrities are desperate to protect their public image, it’s refreshing to meet a star as totally filter-free as funny lady Daisy May Cooper. Rising to fame as the writer and star of This Country, Daisy has gained a million-strong army of fans on social media with her frank, often racy confessions about work, money, sex and dating.
After a wild summer that saw Daisy, 38, welcoming her third child, Benji, seven weeks before he was due, the mother-of-three is returning to filming her hit comedy Am I Being Unreasonable? and putting out a brand new look.
Closer caught up with Daisy to talk babies, ghosts and the daytime TV star who convinced her to go sober.
Congratulations on baby number three! How are you handling it?
It’s been a really mad time, but it’s so amazing. My partner Ant had got two kids from his previous relationship, and obviously I’ve got two kids [with ex-husband Will Weston]. They get on so well, and Benji connects all of the children because they’re all brothers and sisters.
Has it made you want more kids?
No way. Oh my God. It was terrible. It was so scary having him seven weeks premature. I don’t think I’ve quite processed it. It’s one of those things that five years down the line, I’ll go, ‘F*ck, how did we get through that?’ But anyway, he’s fine now. Miserable b*stard.
Do your older children (Pip, five, and Jack, three) understand that you’re famous?
It’s funny, because I’m such a narcissist. I’ll try to sit Pip down to go, ‘Let’s watch me on The Masked Singer.’ And she’ll just say, ‘No, I hate it.’ Unless we go to Legoland and then they give me a deal on those queue-jumping passes. That’s the only time she appreciates me.
You live in the Cotswolds, where you grew up. Do people treat you any differently now you’re a TV star?
I never, ever get stopped, and if I do it will be someone from school being like, ‘You’re that girl that pissed herself in PE.’ You couldn’t pay me to be away from here.
Your new book, Hexy B*tch, is about all things spooky. Where does that interest come from?
I’ve just always been fascinated with the supernatural. My mum lost her sister to drink driving when her sister was 30, so I was dragged around a lot of really sh*t medium nights in the back room of the pub. But over the last few years, this veil has been lifted. It’s not a question if, it’s a question of why.
You must love Halloween, then?
I always just try to do that Mean Girls things where I try to dress up sexy. It was Wednesday Addams last year – a sexy version, because I just hope to get a shag out of it at the end of the night. This year I’ll go as something really generic, and a bit sexy and pathetic.
You stopped drinking a year ago. How has it changed your life?
It’s the best thing I’ve ever done. I’m like a f*cking racoon let loose in a garage if I have a drink. I’m just horrible. I’m just all over the place. When I stopped drinking, it’s like 99% of my problems just completely vanished.
Wasn’t it Denise Welch who advised you to quit?
Yeah. She said to me, ‘It will be the f*cking making of you. You will just be so much happier.’ And it really is.
Would you ever want to be a Loose Women panellist?
I’d just get f*cking cancelled, I think. It’d be the quickest cancellation ever! I’d be on there for 20 seconds!
Hexy B*tch by Daisy May Cooper is out 24 Oct (£22, Octopus)