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By the Creator of Big Boys: Cheer the F**K Up

By the Creator of Big Boys: Cheer the F**K Up

How to Save your Best Friend

Summary

Brought to you by Penguin.

This book will definitely make you laugh and might just make you cry, but it could also help save a life.

Cheer the F**K Up is a bold, brilliant and very personal account of a young comedian’s experiences with mental health. An ode to the importance of friendship, Jack Rooke takes us on a mission to better understand the reasons why so many people are struggling, and how we can all feel better equipped in knowing how to support that one friend we might be that bit more worried about.

Part comedic memoir, part advice guide, this book is a fresh and timely take on a huge issue very close to Jack’s heart – in 2015, while working as an ambassador for a male mental health charity, he lost one of his best friends to suicide.

Taking you on a journey through his life and experiences with grief, sexuality, depression and more, Jack offers his own frank and powerful advice on how best to have meaningful conversations about a loved one’s state of mind. Hilarious and heart-breaking in equal measure, Cheer the F**K Up will definitely make you laugh and might just make you cry, but it could also help save a life.

'Cheer the F**K Up is, without a doubt, the most meaningful and funniest book I have ever read on mental health and loss. Jack is a genius (fact) and he weaves together themes of love, grief, sexuality, trauma, growing up, mental health and friendship in a memoir that will stand the test of time. If you are a human living on this planet YOU NEED THIS BOOK! It has never been more important and never been more needed.' - Scarlett Curtis

'Once you've had the pleasure of reading a work by Jack Rooke, you'll have spent time with one of the funniest, warmest, most caring people I've ever known, and he'll feel like your new favourite friend. This book deals with difficult topics in such a beautiful, thoughtful and hilarious way. It's the book we all need in our lives.' - Nicola Coughlan

© Jack Rooke 2020 (P) Penguin Audio 2020

About the author

Jack Rooke

Jack Rooke is a writer, comedian and mental health ambassador. He is the creator, writer, star and exec-producer of the hit Channel 4 series Big Boys. He presented the BBC Radio 4 comedy Good Grief and Arts special Mamma M.I.A. He was also BBC Radio 1's on-air expert in bereavement and mental health for The Surgery.

Jack has produced three stand-out Edinburgh Fringe shows -Good Grief, co-written with his 85-year-old Nan about his father's death, Happy Hour, a comedic tribute to a friend lost to suicide, andLove Letters, a show about modern romance described by the Guardian as 'effortlessly charming and buoyantly funny.' Jack's shows have transferred on to London's Soho Theatre, Latitude Festival and The Roundhouse.

In 2019 he contributed an essay to the award-winning book It's Not OK to Feel Blue (& Other Lies), curated by Scarlett Curtis. Cheer the F**K Up is his debut publication.
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