In March, Daisy Haggard finished shooting the third season of Breeders, the uncomfortably honest comedy about parenting in which she stars alongside Martin Freeman. The plan was to spend the next few months working on her own scripts. Haggard is hot property as a writer these days, following two series of the excellent BBC sadcom Back to Life, the story of a woman who returns to her small town after a long stint in prison, which she created, co-wrote with Laura Solon and starred in. Now was the time to crack on: she had a couple of ideas for feature films she wanted to pursue and another TV show, and though she wasn’t thinking she’d make any more Back to Life – certainly not straight away – there was also clamour to revisit that.
April, Haggard admits, was pretty much a bust. There was Easter, the school holidays, and she had other highly important things on her mind, such as finding out when the reality show Love Is Blind will return. But “peak procrastination” arrived in early May. After several weeks of intense research, she adopted a rescue puppy: Betty, a scruffy, five-month-old dachshund-poodle-segugio-italiano-yorkie-bichon-frise-cocker mix with a broken elbow. Betty has landed in a loving, crowded home in the south London burbs, which Haggard shares with her partner, Joe, their two daughters, aged seven and four, and two previous rescue dogs.
