‘I did The Masked Singer because I needed the money – but it embarrassed my daughter’

Many stars sign up for celebrity-themed reality shows, but not very many of them are quite as honest about their motives for doing so as BAFTA-winning This Country creator Daisy May Cooper.

Daisy happily admitted on the So Wrong, It’s Right podcast the simple reason that she accepted an offer to appear on The Masked Singer: “I needed the money.”

The Masked Singer pays its celebrity contestants very well, Daisy added: “Of course it does, it’s like a public execution.” When it came to the topic of humiliating public appearances, she added that she found watching Macy Gray’s public meltdown on the show particularly excruciating.

She told podcast host Olivia Attwood that The Masked Singer is one of her daughter’s favourite TV shows, and so she had imagined that the young girl would be proud to see her mum appearing on it. But that wasn’t quite how it turned out: “She was so embarrassed,” Daisy laughed,” she was really upset with me for doing it.”

Overall though, Daisy says that he children “f***ing love” having a famous mum. “You can get tables like Pizza Express. Even when it’s fully booked. [The staff] will say ‘Oh, yeah, This Country, I can find you a table…'”

One of the other advantages to being famous, Daisy says, is meeting other celebrities. She singles out This Morning’s Ben Shephard for particular praise. “What a gent of a man,” she said, admitting that she’s always had a bit of a crush on him.

Explaining that she had to be careful when speaking to him on This Morning for fear of seeming “creepy,” Daisy said: “He’s so f***ing kind, and so sincere…He’s one of those people that, if you broke down on the hard shoulder he’s stop – and get one of those pump things for your tyre.”

Daisy admits that she’s not particularly practical, and has been terrible at all of her non-acting jobs.

After one role as a young mother in ITV series Doc Martin she returned to the West Country, and worked with her younger brother (and This Country co-star Charlie) cleaning offices.

“We weren’t very good cleaners,” she admits, “and we did try.” Daisy said she wan’t very focused on tree job, and there’s “still be coffee rings on the desk” after she’d finished.

Despite doing her very best, Daisy says, she’d still receive angry notes from her boss telling her “this is a pig-sty.”

She says that if show business didn’t work out for her, she’d be “f***ed.” She says that if she had had the breakthrough hit with This Country, which she and Charlie wrote after they’d lost the cleaning job, she has no idea what she’d be doing today.