HAPPY DAZE
‘Rehab was best thing I’ve done’ – Daisy May Cooper on divorce, why she quit drinking and the man who changed her life
Plus, how she'll be spending the big day with her family on Monday
JUST over a year ago, Daisy May Cooper matched with a guy on the dating app Hinge.
They started chatting, he seemed charming and they arranged to meet.
7
7
He told her he worked in advertising. So far, so promising.
“What he actually meant,” says Daisy, “was that he puts f***ing billboards up! Can you believe that?!”
They’ve been together ever since.
In fact, “Ant from Bristol” came into BAFTA-winning comedian Daisy’s life at exactly the right time, following the breakdown of her two-year marriage, a string of dating disasters – the details of which are very funny, but mostly unprintable – and a private torment that eventually saw her check into rehab.
READ MORE ON DAISY MAY COOPER
Despite his cheeky creativity with the truth about his employment, Ant’s uncomplicated ordinariness is one of the things she loves most about him – Daisy has spoken previously about being drawn to men she wanted to “fix”.
“I don’t think I could date anybody in the industry,” she says. “I’m too much of a narcissist to be able to share my spotlight!
“Now I understand a relationship shouldn’t be rowing at 3am, then walking out and turning your phone off.
“That’s not what love is. Love is being able to live together on a day-to-day basis, enjoying each other’s company, being completely yourself and having that accepted.
Most read in Celebrity
“He doesn’t want to compete with me. He earns £1,500 a month and he’s the sweetest, kindest, most chilled-out man.
“He’s like the new Jesus Christ. We get on like a house on fire – and we shag all the time!”
Does he have any flaws?
“Well… breathing with his mouth open. And he walks on his tiptoes, which is also a bit annoying. But we never row.”
‘I was rushing the kids’ bedtime story so I could have a drink’
It’s rare to find someone in the public eye so unguarded, so unflinchingly honest as Daisy.
Self-deprecating, constantly hilarious, deliciously sweary and entirely unfiltered, she is a total joy.
7
She’s also ferociously talented.
The phenomenal success of the last few years has seen Daisy, 37, become one of the UK’s most in-demand writers and comedy actresses, with three series of acclaimed mockumentary This Country (co-created and co-written with younger brother Charlie and for which she landed a BAFTA in 2018), a second season of her comic thriller Am I Being Unreasonable? in the pipeline and whispers that she’s set to replace Judi Dench as James Bond’s M.
Earlier this year, she was utterly compelling as a poverty-stricken single mum in black-comedy-drama Rain Dogs, and she’s also about to star as a team captain alongside Alan Carr in ITV’s new flagship gameshow Password.
Yet she still lives just a few miles away from where she grew up in Gloucestershire (“People know me best there from p**sing on the gym mat in Year 6”), and eschews designer stores, preferring instead to splurge in budget high-street shops.
“My biggest vices are The Range and Home Bargains,” she says.
“I’ll go in there and just buy so much crap.
“When you’re buying £200’s worth every week, it does add up.
“I’m just awful with money – absolutely atrocious!”
However, success has come with its own price tag.
While Daisy’s career was sky-rocketing, her personal life was falling apart and she made the momentous decision to leave her husband Will Weston soon after giving birth to their second child in October 2020.
Her struggles behind the scenes culminated with a spell in rehab late last year, followed by the stark realisation that she needed to quit drinking.
“Going to rehab was the best thing I did,” she says, speaking about her experience publicly for the first time.
“I just felt really lost and said to my agent: ‘I need a break from everything’.
“So I went there and now I want to write a film about it, because it was extraordinary.
“Addicts are some of the most interesting, funny, smart, creative and loving people I’ve met in my life.
“You can see why it happens.
“They’re sort of angels on Earth who haven’t been equipped to live amongst the muggles.
“This was all literally just before I gave up drinking, which is the biggest gift I’ve ever given myself.”
Today, Daisy, mum to five-year-old daughter Pip and son Jack, three, is eight months sober.
She can see now she’d become trapped in a vicious cycle.
“The biggest reason for my drinking was because I’m terrible with social situations.
“I get so anxious and felt alcohol was this superhero juice that would give me a great personality where I could talk to people.
“But I’d get such crippling hangover anxiety, I’d feel suicidal the next day.
“I was waking up thinking: ‘F**k, what did I do last night? What did I say?’ Another wasted Sunday.
“It suddenly occurred to me that I didn’t have to do this any more. I didn’t have to torture myself.
“And just taking alcohol out of the equation means I’ve got time for my kids that I never had before.
“I remember rushing to read their bedtime story because I wanted them to get to sleep so I could go downstairs, have a drink and watch Married At First Sight.
“Now I can be completely present.
“I’d recommend sobriety to anybody.
“I’m still in the early days, but it’s changed my life.”
‘There were times I hated my ex and he hated me’
Coming off social media (she doesn’t even own a mobile now) has also been key to finding balance.
Daisy gained huge followings on Instagram and TikTok, thanks to her lockdown correspondence with a lovesick sea captain (if you know, you know) and battles with her beleaguered book publisher over whether she could write about an ex with a wonky penis, but insists she has no plans to return.
“I became completely obsessed with it, and it took over everything.
“It was instant gratification – I’d put something up and then be constantly refreshing the page.
“It became another ‘thing’, phone addiction.
“I haven’t had a phone for about a year and that’s been liberating.
“People can only get hold of me by email, so I have to carry my laptop everywhere. But it’s brilliant.
“Social media is a rat race.
“I was scrolling through other people’s lives and I’d think: ‘Why am I not as successful as them? Why am I not as pretty as them?’ Just awful.”
Has fame changed her?
“Fame has taken me on a journey.
“Without sounding w***y, it’s made me realise what’s really important in life.”
She remembers a pivotal moment came last Christmas when she was away filming and couldn’t make her daughter’s nativity.
“She was playing this great big cardboard star and she knew I couldn’t go and wasn’t there, but my mum said she was kind of looking out for me in the audience.”
Daisy grimaces. “Urgh. I will never forgive myself for missing it.
“I’m never going to get this time back with my kids, so now I’ll always put my family first.
“As long as I’m a good mum, that’s all I care about.
“I’ve had a real epiphany over the last year.”
With everything much calmer now, Daisy has been able to salvage a friendship with ex Will, who she met on Tinder in 2015.
They’ve come out the other side of their split with new respect for each other.
“Divorce is one of the hardest and most expensive things to do, but it was so worth it.
“I see my ex-husband with his wonderful new partner and how happy he is and I think we’ve got two amazing children.
“It’s lovely to appreciate him.
“There were times when I hated him and he hated me.
“We were completely incompatible.
“Poor bloke, he had a gardening and plant company, and he’d come in from work and try to talk to me about it, but I couldn’t give a flying f***!
“We didn’t even have the same sense of humour.”
A major red flag, she says, was the fact he didn’t find This Country funny.
“How could I be with a guy who doesn’t think my show is funny?” she asks.
“I wouldn’t find his jokes funny, either.
“This was the best thing we could have done.
“We can be friends now.
“There are people who persevere with marriage when neither is happy.
“It doesn’t make any sense.”
From the ashes of that marriage rose the superb Am I Being Unreasonable?, co-written with Daisy’s old drama-school friend Selin Hizli, and named after the legendary Mumsnet forum, which saw her through her darkest days.
‘Random women on Mumsnet helped me through my divorce’
While Daisy agonised over her future with Will, she’d (anonymously) turned to the collective wisdom of the parenting site, where users are known for their no- nonsense advice, which is often reduced to a straightforward LTB (Leave The B*****d).
“This one woman – a Poldark fan from Halifax – really helped me through my divorce,” she says.
7
7
“I’ve never met her, she doesn’t know who I am and I don’t know who she is, other than the fact she likes Poldark, but my god, I don’t know where I’d be without her.
“During my worst times, I’ve posted my troubles on Mumsnet and been helped by these random women.”
She adds: “And it’s funny, because they’ve got a thread about the show, so I’ve been spying there.
“Some of them have got theories and, to be honest, I’ve stolen most of their ideas.”
The second series begins filming in March, but Daisy admits the writing process has not been easy.
Several months in and with five episodes written, she had a major panic and insisted they needed to scrap everything and start from scratch.
“I suddenly had an anxiety attack and said: ‘We’re gonna get slated for this,’ and we had to start all over again.
“I’m my own worst critic. Nothing’s ever good enough.
“It’s that ‘difficult second album’ syndrome.
“I’d rather do my bloody tax returns than write.
“I’ve also been paid for it in advance, which is the worst thing anybody can do with me!”
Many of those insecurities stem from the years Daisy lived on the breadline, working shifts as a cleaner and forced to pawn her possessions to survive while she and Charlie desperately tried to get This Country commissioned.
The journey is documented in her bestselling memoir Don’t Laugh, It’ll Only Encourage Her, which ends with the series being snapped up by the BBC in 2017. But memories of those days are never too far from the surface.
“There’s always the fear you’re going to lose it all tomorrow.
“The hardships never end, they just take a different form.
“Before I do anything, I feel sick and wonder why I’m putting myself through this.
“And then I remember I’ve got a mortgage and a divorce to pay for.”
She might be unaffected by her own celebrity, but there’s no mistaking the physical transformation Daisy’s undergone in the last year.
With blonde hair extensions, movie-star teeth and a weight loss that has revealed a pair of legs supermodels would kill for, she’s a million miles away from This Country’s Kerry Mucklowe now.
“I’m all about body positivity, but I wasn’t happy with the way I was,” she says.
“I couldn’t walk upstairs without wheezing.
“Being able to go into a shop and not be ashamed, and to enjoy what I wear and feel confident, is a joy.”
Daisy says she was always naturally slim, but shortly before This Country began shooting the first series, doctors put her on medication for anxiety and depression, which made her quickly gain a lot of weight.
“The quetiapine made me constantly hungry and really tired and my metabolism slowed down to a crawl.
“I was a size 22 at one point, and I used to find clothes shopping really stressful.
“I tried the keto diet, but it wasn’t until I swapped medications around with my GP that the weight fell off.
“Everybody deserves to feel confident about themselves.”
Daisy is determined to ringfence more family time, but 2024 may be her most high-profile yet.
Mystery word game Password hits screens in the new year, and while it’s already big in the US, Daisy and Alan Carr bring a great dollop of Great British sauce to the ITV version.
“I can’t believe I’m being paid to fart around.
“Alan says if we bottled what we have together, we’d have bleach, which I’m not sure is a compliment.”
‘Alan Carr and I are thick as f***, so we’re well-suited to a simple game’
The premise of the show is simple.
With £10,000 at stake, the celebrity captains are paired with a contestant and given a word to describe using only single-word clues.
“It felt like the sort of thing Alan and I would be doing if we worked in a big Tesco and were on our break having a fag outside.
“We’re also both thick as f***, so don’t give us Mastermind or The Chase, but a simple word-association game?
“We can completely cope with that.”
In the meantime, Daisy will be having a well-earned festive break with the family to Disneyland, Florida, where they’ll be spending Christmas Day – even if she’s beginning to regret the decision.
“I’m flying nine of us out, which I now think is the stupidest idea, because I’ve read that the queues for rides are so long, people are just going to the loo where they are.
“They are s***ting in the queues.”
So, while you’re tucking into your turkey tomorrow, spare a thought for Daisy.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
“This Christmas,” she says, “I shall be queuing for a ride at Disneyland, probably covered in my own faeces.”
Daisy will be a team captain on Password, coming to ITV1 in 2024.
7
7
IN THE CHRISTMAS CHAIR WITH DAISY MAY
What do you like best about Christmas dinner?
The stuffing.
Favourite festive movie?
The Muppet Christmas Carol. It’s the best story of all time – and not just for Christmas.
What presents have you asked for this year?
I’d like the Sylvanian Families river canal boat, because I never got it as a child.
Are you on the naughty or nice list?
When I set up my Direct Debit for the donkey sanctuary, I’ll be on the nice list.
Best Christmas Day TV?
Gavin & Stacey.
Christmas Day or New Year’s Eve?
Christmas Day! New Year is depressing – you wake up hungover and you’ve still not done your f***ing tax.
Topics