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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