Daisy May Cooper asked BBC co-star to contact her from the dead – and he did

Daisy May Cooper has seen the other side.

The This Country star, 38, found fame, Baftas, and financial security after starring in the beloved BBC mockumentary sitcom alongside her brother Charlie Cooper.

After it aired in 2017, she gained an almost cult following of comedy lovers, and eventually the mainstream public who latched onto soundbites of her being raucously funny on radio and TV appearances.

The Cirencester-born comedian’s life became unrecognisable, as she found herself on the world’s stage with a huge microphone and money like she’d never dreamt, all earnt from her unique brand of national treasure: straight-talking, relatable, and unflinchingly, ever so lovably Daisy.

‘The best thing that’s come out of this has been money,’ she tells . ‘I don’t care what anybody f**king says. It might not make you happy, but it gives you choices.’

She adds: ‘The thing that I ended up doing is just becoming a f**king alcoholic, because I didn’t have any money, and you just want escapism when things are so bad.’

But perhaps the biggest change in Daisy’s life didn’t come when she found outward success in the stars, but her internal one that happened when her friend and This Country co-star Michael Sleggs died at the age of 33 in 2019.

In the sitcom, Sleggs joined Daisy, her brother Charlie and even the Bafta-winner’s real life dad, Paul Cooper, in the cast. Sleggs played a character also called Michael, but with the surname Slugette – and he was called Slugs for short.

This loss led Daisy to write a book called Hexy B*tch – about her relationship with the supernatural – which, admittedly, sounds like it could be a ridiculous romp into some odd supernatural sub Reddit of her mind.

But it’s actually hilarious, moving and raw.

That’s exactly how I found Daisy to be while chatting via Zoom, as she discussed how grief has shaped her through tears and laughter – and the message she received from Sleggs after he died.

‘Since Sleggs passed away I feel like this veil has lifted, and there’s just been stuff that I can’t explain. It’s weird. I’m living my life a lot differently to how I lived it before,’ she says.

‘I’m a lot more open minded. Now I can see the bigger picture so I don’t get as angry or I don’t get anxiety as much as I did. I just feel like there’s a sense of calm about life.’

Daisy and Charlie were with Sleggs through it all, when he was diagnosed with cancer as a teenager through until his final days in palliative care.

‘He was in agony all the time,’ says Daisy of her friend.

‘Near the end, his body started retaining water, which was f**king horrible. And he was in so much pain in his joints, and he would have these open, kind of like gangrenous sores on his legs. It was horrible.’

While he was in palliative care, Daisy had many conversations with Sleggs, who was scared of dying.

‘He was really frightened about death and about dying, and then he phoned me up that he said: “I’m just not scared anymore, because last night I had this being, this kind of angelic, spiritual light thing at the bottom of the bed that felt more real than what this feels like,”‘ recalls Daisy.

This – thing – told Sluggs he would have a new body within seven days at midnight, so he took that to mean he was either going to miraculously recover and have a body that was no longer in pain, or die.

‘And f**king hell, he died in seven days at 11.59pm,’ says Daisy.

‘So that’s one of two things. My grandfather was a GP, and he always said with terminal patients, don’t ever give them a day to die, because they will f**king die on that day. Even in that respect, it’s bizarre.

‘Or it’s the other option, where he was visited by something that reassured himhe was going to cross over at that time. It’s making me feel emotional about it now,’ says Daisy, tearing up.

Sleggs promised to come through to Daisy from beyond the grave if at all possible.

‘If anybody was gonna f**king come through, it would be slugs,’ Daisy says, which she hoped would confirm her suspicions about there being some sort of life after death.

‘Because he knew how much I loved all this s**t. And I’d said to him, “You know, you’re going to come back the second you f**king die, you’ve got to come back and let me know that there’s something on the other side.”‘

Still in tears, Daisy explains: ‘I had nothing, and I felt like it can’t be true, because he would have come through.’ 

Little did Daisy know that Sleggs’ death would be the moment a veil lifted for her, and she found herself faced with a number of supernatural scares over the coming months and years.

The Am I Being Unreasonable? star’s house – which she has since moved from – ended up haunting her and her guests.

Once, she saw a pair of severed legs of a little boy running around her room, and when friends came they reported strange happenings on the top floor, while her cleaner talked of paintings miraculously moving themselves.

Later, Daisy discovered her new build house was located beside the site of an abandoned railway, famous for transporting injured soldiers.

There was also a boy who drowned in the nearby lake – which you can see from the window of her house – in 1959.

While Daisy wasn’t scared of the legs at the time, recounting it terrifies her still. It wasn’t a conscious being, she thinks, but more like a memory or time slip.

But then the weirdest thing happened yet. Sleggs did come through after all, she thinks.

The comedian also asked Sleggs on his death bed whether he was sad about missing out having kids and seeing old age.

‘He meant this with no irony at all,’ chuckles Daisy, continuing: ‘He said, “What I am really gutted about is I’m not going to see the Phoenix Festival.”

‘The Phoenix Festival is like the f**king sh***est, tiny little f**king cr*p village fete, where they just have some live music. 

‘But he f**king bummed it because it was like within walking distance of his house and it was free – because he was such a tight git.

‘He f**king lived for that f**king day. And he specifically lived for this one that was coming up, because there was a Guns N’ Roses tribute act playing, and he was obsessed with it.’

It was a few days after Daisy was talking about Sleggs’ fondness for the festival when she woke up in her new seemingly ghost-free house to something ‘tugging’ on her duvet- ‘as if it had a ‘thumb and a forefinger just picking up and dropping it’.

‘I was just kind of watching it for about 30 seconds. The room felt really cold. There was no draft, there was no fan on,’ remembers Daisy, who brushed it off as no one else was there to see it, and she had just woken up so might’ve been foggy from sleep.

In August though, Daisy and her partner both woke up to banging on the bedroom door that was so loud she thought they were being robbed.

‘We thought we’d been burgled, it was that terrifying. It was knocking in a musical way. It felt intelligent,’ Daisy recalls.

‘So we opened the door and there’s nobody there. We’ve got CCTV all around the house. There was nobody who came through the door. Nobody came out of the door.

‘And we’re like, was it the f**king the cats? Like, how could the cat knock on the door like that?’ she remembers, adding: ‘This is the first time I’ve had somebody here that has experienced it at the same time as me. ‘

Daisy chokes up as she reveals: ‘Then I realised it was the day of the f**king Phoenix Festival.’

Hexy B*tch by Daisy May Cooper is out on October 24, and is available for £22.