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

How to Save Your Best Friend

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

By: Jack Rooke

Narrated by: Jack Rooke

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About this listen

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 heartbreaking 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.

Mental Health

Psychology

Psychology & Mental Health

Health

Funny

Witty

Heartfelt

Feel-Good

Thought-Provoking

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Critic reviews

"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)

Most relevant

Back in 2015, fresh from Edinburgh festival, my friend Nay bought me a ticket to see Jack Rooke's 'Good Grief' at the Soho Theatre. I knew nothing about it, or him, but Nay told me "you HAVE to see this. YOU, specifically YOU." So I took my friend Fi along, and we both cried our way through the whole thing, from both laughter and sadness. Jack is part of the DPC (dead parents club), specifically the DDC. His open and honest chat about grief in the show was so refreshing, and exactly what I'd been doing since my Dad died in 2004. In his book, Jack mentions that after performing the show each night, throngs of people would be clambering to chat to him about their own dead relatives and friends, and I did exactly this (sorry, Jack!), excitedly telling him that I was in the dead parents club too! And I spoke about my Dad all the time! I was grieving to anyone who would listen!

I've been following Jack's career ever since, and had really been looking forward to this book. I downloaded the audiobook, and it was like listening to an extra friendly, lovely pal chat to you about some traumatic and shitty and hilarious things, peppered with wonderful advice about how you can seek support if you’re feeling blue, if you’re worried about someone else or if you want to know which gay bar in London is the best. Now, more than ever, so many of us are struggling. Someone you know might be thinking about taking their life, or one of their friends or family members may have died quite suddenly. I would whole heartedly recommend this book to anyone, whether or not they’ve been touched by death in any way. If they’re lucky enough not to have been, then it’s only a matter of time; let’s be honest. This book will guide them through it all, offering friendly support in an entirely non judgemental and very lovely way. Buy it for someone you know and get yourself a copy too.