When Daisy May Cooper signed up for the dating app Hinge, she used a fake name. Finding romance as a famous divorcee was proving to be a “bloody minefield”, and she figured using an alias might help, which it did. The actor-slash-TV-writer soon matched with the man she’s currently seeing – a man who, she is thrilled to say, “did not know who the f*** I was” despite the multiple photos on her profile. “It’s just that nobody recognises me now,” Cooper chuckles over a video call.
Only three years on from This Country and already there’s not much about Cooper that is recognisable – even to her. Now 36, she bears little resemblance to Kerry, the delightfully deadpan, jersey-wearing braggart of the hit BBC mockumentary she wrote and starred in with her brother Charlie across three critically acclaimed seasons and one hysterical special. Her life certainly looks nothing like it did then, back when she and Charlie would write by day and clean offices by night. It’s depressing, but not surprising, that it’s Cooper’s physical transformation that got people most riled up when, earlier this year, countless articles circulated documenting her “unbelievable!” weight loss. The internet, bored and mean, latched on.
