This week we’re travelling to leafy South London and visiting the glorious home of comedy legend Helen Lederer. Helen is probably best known as a trailblazing stand-up comedian and actress, appearing in such iconic shows as Absolutely Fabulous, Bottom, Girls on Top and Naked Video. But she is also a celebrated novelist and humour writer with her book Losing It nominated for the P. G. Wodehouse Comedy Literary prize. She also founded her own comedy prize CWIP – Comedy Women in Print. We talked to Helen about breasts in 1970s literature, the Four Marys, embarrassing teenage diaries and the power of funny women.

BOOKS

Daisy Buchanan – The Sisterhood

Nina Stibbe – Reasons To Be Cheerful

Nina Stibbe – Love Nina

Helen Lederer – Losing It

Muriel Spark – The Driver’s Seat

Muriel Spark – The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

EM Delafield – Diary of a Provincial Lady

Leslie Thomas – Tropic of Ruislip

Helen Fielding – Bridget Jones’s Diary

Susan Jeffers – Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

Charlotte Mendelson – When We Were Bad

Melissa Broder – The Pisces

Annabelle Gurwitch- I See You Made an Effort

Noel Streatfeild – The Circus is Coming

Arianna Huffington – Thrive

Laurie Graham – Life According to Lubka

Laurie Graham – Mr Starlight

Laurie Graham – Gone With The Windsors

Eckhart Tolle – The Power of Now

Lydia Davis – Can’t and Won’t

Helen Lederer – Coping

Jane Asher – Easy Entertaining

Enid Blyton – Malory Towers In the Fifth

Laurence Olivier – Confessions of an Actor

Helen Lederer – Single Minding

DC Thomson – The Best of Jackie

Sofie Hagan – Happy Fat

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