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What's That Lady Doing?: Guilt, Shame, Blame and Other Funny Stories
For fans of Really Good Actually and I'm Glad My Mom Died
'A deftness that catches your breath' - Fern Brady
'An incredible piece of writing' - Brett Goldstein
'Interrogates moments of trauma with insight, kindness and humanity' - John Robins
This is a book about mistakes. And why we should de-flower shame in all its messy, complicated glory...
Hello!
It's Lou here...
I've poured my heart and guts on to the page and shared my soul in this book. This won't be for everyone but I hope it helps the people it does connect with. We all have stories and I think its useful to share them, I think it helps unite us and in some ways it helps us release some shame.
I've been alarmingly truthful and sincere, because I think society would be better if we could all be honest. I've of course used humour too, not as a way to cope (I've processed the darker things that have happened to me), but as a change in pace, some gorgeous light relief, because life is light and dark dancing together in the wind. And I love jokes.
If this is the sort of thing you're after, please pick me up and take me to bed (that's the book speaking so a little joke there).
'A deftness that catches your breath' - Fern Brady
'An incredible piece of writing' - Brett Goldstein
'Interrogates moments of trauma with insight, kindness and humanity' - John Robins
This is a book about mistakes. And why we should de-flower shame in all its messy, complicated glory...
Hello!
It's Lou here...
I've poured my heart and guts on to the page and shared my soul in this book. This won't be for everyone but I hope it helps the people it does connect with. We all have stories and I think its useful to share them, I think it helps unite us and in some ways it helps us release some shame.
I've been alarmingly truthful and sincere, because I think society would be better if we could all be honest. I've of course used humour too, not as a way to cope (I've processed the darker things that have happened to me), but as a change in pace, some gorgeous light relief, because life is light and dark dancing together in the wind. And I love jokes.
If this is the sort of thing you're after, please pick me up and take me to bed (that's the book speaking so a little joke there).
231 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 17, 2023
21 people are currently reading
174 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
August 19, 2023
I remember seeing Lou's first TV appearance on Russel Howard and being fascinated by her. What kind of life had preceded that moment to create such extreme confidence? This book is about the fires which forged the absolute legend of Lou Sanders, and it's a ride.
It's a short book in which you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll google videos of a band called Geof Leopard, you'll hate the world a little bit more, but ultimately appreciate that you get to share a few hours with someone who speaks with such searing honesty, self-awareness, and hilarity.
If you have seen her stand-up shows, some of the darkest bits are hinted at, but if you are coming at this because you saw her on Taskmaster or Q.I. then be warned, there is a lot of post-watershed content.
It's a short book in which you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll google videos of a band called Geof Leopard, you'll hate the world a little bit more, but ultimately appreciate that you get to share a few hours with someone who speaks with such searing honesty, self-awareness, and hilarity.
If you have seen her stand-up shows, some of the darkest bits are hinted at, but if you are coming at this because you saw her on Taskmaster or Q.I. then be warned, there is a lot of post-watershed content.
August 6, 2023
I love Lou Sanders. I saw her recently, supporting Nick Offerman and she was funny both on purpose and entirely by accident. Reading this book slightly blew my mind, if I'm honest. There is a lot here. A lot. And it's not a particularly long book. I love that I can hear Lou's voice in my head as I read it. It did, at times feel like watching about forty car crashes simultaneously and trying to process them. There's confessional writing and then there's this. I admire her tremendously and knowing a thing or two myself about addiction and shame it rings a lot of bells. There is a great deal to be said for facing your demons and then talking about them and that's what this book is. Fair play to her and congratulations on still being alive and so positive. I'm not sure I'd be either under the circumstances.
August 18, 2023
I’ve felt over the last year that every comedian has a book out. This is the result of the pandemic, where comedians could write material but had no way of testing it out on audience. It seems that a lot of them decided to use this time to write a memoir and this is up there with the best of them. One of the most important things about a memoir written by a celebrity is that it feels authentic and this book feels like a rambling conversation with Lou. She has such a strong narrative voice. I must admit to being a bit fascinated with Lou Sanders for a while now. I’d seen snippets of her stand-up, appearances on panel shows and a gloriously deranged turn as Mel Giedroyc’s sidekick on Unforgivable. However, it was her appearance on another Dave comedy show that cemented her in my memory as someone I’d like to know more about. On Outsiders, she was in a team with Ed Gamble, tackling activities out in the woods to earn Scout-style badges devised by David Mitchell. It was her effect on Ed that absolutely floored me. She slowly drove him to distraction by agreeing a plan, then as he struggled with it, she would get bored and wander off to start a Plan B by herself. His exasperation is delightful. Similarly, on Chris and Rosie Ramsay’s BBC2 show, she dissolved the presenters to puddles of uselessness by beautifully relaying a story about a dog’s back end while visibly gagging! I felt like this was a lady with a gloriously quirky and unapologetic way of being herself in the world that I simply loved. I learned while reading this memoir that her ease with herself, her authenticity, has been very hard won. I now admire her all the more and plan on buying this book for all the teenage girls in my life by the bucketload.
Lou tells her story with no frills or filter and that led to a really intimate reading experience. I could hear her voice immediately and that is the best thing about it. She tells the story of a difficult early life - struggles with ADHD and a very late diagnosis, coupled with devastatingly low self-esteem. Totally misunderstood at home, she was drinking and drug-taking from an early age. All to mask feeling different and as if she didn’t belong anywhere. Leaving home at 15 and working in pubs, she learned to use drink to create a new persona, one that made people laugh. She used whatever it was that made her feel different and strange for laughs. Drama followed her and some of her stories, especially around the opposite sex are starkly told and are all the more devastating for their honesty. She only realises in reverse that it’s impossible to give consent when you’re incapacitated. She’d learned that it was sometimes easier to give in and drink numbed the reality of what had happened. Each wound is almost unnoticed and that’s not just because she was obliterated. She’s totally unaware that she has the ability to keep to her boundaries, in fact I don’t think she was aware of her ability to set them. People who are worth nothing can’t ask for things. They’re not even aware they have the right to say no.
Lou is very matter of fact and unshowy about choosing to get sober and change her life. She credits AA with her success and it took a few false starts to get passed the times she kidded herself - ‘I’ve not had a drink for months, surely one or two would be okay?’ She learned that for her, one leads to many so she can’t have any. Ever. It only became clear for her when she realised she was ruining her own chances, self-sabotaging her career. She would ask comic friends why new comics were getting TV gigs and she wasn’t. After shows where she was obliterated, threw things into the audience and even bit someone, it took a good honest friend to tell her the truth. TV producers didn’t trust her, she was too unpredictable. That friend probably saved her career, in act they saved her life. I found her clarity around this part of her life really admirable, but she doesn’t want to see herself as a heroine or an example. This book doesn’t have a self-help vibe. She knows that she is a work-in-progress and only sticking with AA and practicing abstinence will work for her. In fact she also realises that therapy keeps her life ticking over, it gives her a release - like the pressure valve for her life. I loved the raw honesty of Lou’s writing. This is a book that never could have happened if she hadn’t learned to love every bit of herself. Well, most bits anyway. Some celebrity books are a list of achievements or a ‘how I became famous’ journey, but you don’t really meet the person. I’m not very good at surface stuff. Small talk is impossible for me, because it feels totally inauthentic. I put this book down feeling like I’d really met the person between it’s covers and we’d had a long, honest conversation about life.
Lou tells her story with no frills or filter and that led to a really intimate reading experience. I could hear her voice immediately and that is the best thing about it. She tells the story of a difficult early life - struggles with ADHD and a very late diagnosis, coupled with devastatingly low self-esteem. Totally misunderstood at home, she was drinking and drug-taking from an early age. All to mask feeling different and as if she didn’t belong anywhere. Leaving home at 15 and working in pubs, she learned to use drink to create a new persona, one that made people laugh. She used whatever it was that made her feel different and strange for laughs. Drama followed her and some of her stories, especially around the opposite sex are starkly told and are all the more devastating for their honesty. She only realises in reverse that it’s impossible to give consent when you’re incapacitated. She’d learned that it was sometimes easier to give in and drink numbed the reality of what had happened. Each wound is almost unnoticed and that’s not just because she was obliterated. She’s totally unaware that she has the ability to keep to her boundaries, in fact I don’t think she was aware of her ability to set them. People who are worth nothing can’t ask for things. They’re not even aware they have the right to say no.
Lou is very matter of fact and unshowy about choosing to get sober and change her life. She credits AA with her success and it took a few false starts to get passed the times she kidded herself - ‘I’ve not had a drink for months, surely one or two would be okay?’ She learned that for her, one leads to many so she can’t have any. Ever. It only became clear for her when she realised she was ruining her own chances, self-sabotaging her career. She would ask comic friends why new comics were getting TV gigs and she wasn’t. After shows where she was obliterated, threw things into the audience and even bit someone, it took a good honest friend to tell her the truth. TV producers didn’t trust her, she was too unpredictable. That friend probably saved her career, in act they saved her life. I found her clarity around this part of her life really admirable, but she doesn’t want to see herself as a heroine or an example. This book doesn’t have a self-help vibe. She knows that she is a work-in-progress and only sticking with AA and practicing abstinence will work for her. In fact she also realises that therapy keeps her life ticking over, it gives her a release - like the pressure valve for her life. I loved the raw honesty of Lou’s writing. This is a book that never could have happened if she hadn’t learned to love every bit of herself. Well, most bits anyway. Some celebrity books are a list of achievements or a ‘how I became famous’ journey, but you don’t really meet the person. I’m not very good at surface stuff. Small talk is impossible for me, because it feels totally inauthentic. I put this book down feeling like I’d really met the person between it’s covers and we’d had a long, honest conversation about life.
August 29, 2023
I've been putting off writing this review because it's so new and I didn't want to negatively effect the overall rating for the book. I'm going to focus mainly on the positives of the book. Lou has had a tough life and has had to face and overcome many awful situations, there are a lot of sad moments within this book and I am glad that Lou seems to be in a happy and positive place now. It's a very honest book, Lou does not hold back at all, she owns any mistakes she may have made and she writes in a friendly, conversational tone.
I really enjoyed the sections about Lou discovering therapy and spirituality, she repeatedly said she was aware that it is often viewed suspiciously by many and so she kept these bits to a minimum but as someone who had no prior knowledge about these things I found these sections informative and really interesting and I would have liked to have read more.
This is ultimately my issue with the book, I would have liked it to have had more depth. I felt a lot of things were skimmed over, the general format is that Lou would tell an anecdote and then towards the end of that chapter she would write about a lesson learned from that with the benefit of a lot of time and hindsight. This would take the form of a small paragraph at the very end of the chapter and because the book's main arc is that it has a happy ending, I think it would have benefited from more depth about how Lou worked through the issue and more self-reflection. I felt the book wasn't sure whether the overall vibe was trying to be funny or serious, the book features some very serious topics such as rape, addiction and low self esteem but there always seemed to be a layer of attempting to be light-hearted not far behind and the book never really settled in to what it wanted to be.
I really enjoyed the sections about Lou discovering therapy and spirituality, she repeatedly said she was aware that it is often viewed suspiciously by many and so she kept these bits to a minimum but as someone who had no prior knowledge about these things I found these sections informative and really interesting and I would have liked to have read more.
This is ultimately my issue with the book, I would have liked it to have had more depth. I felt a lot of things were skimmed over, the general format is that Lou would tell an anecdote and then towards the end of that chapter she would write about a lesson learned from that with the benefit of a lot of time and hindsight. This would take the form of a small paragraph at the very end of the chapter and because the book's main arc is that it has a happy ending, I think it would have benefited from more depth about how Lou worked through the issue and more self-reflection. I felt the book wasn't sure whether the overall vibe was trying to be funny or serious, the book features some very serious topics such as rape, addiction and low self esteem but there always seemed to be a layer of attempting to be light-hearted not far behind and the book never really settled in to what it wanted to be.
August 8, 2023
A good memoir from Lou Sanders. This was a light hearted, funny read.
The writing has great flow and was easy to follow.
Lou Sanders gives an honesty account of her joys, strengths, mistakes and choices through a humorous lens. Some serious topics are covered in this book and as a reader, you are left with no doubt about some of the regrets or consequences of the author’s life choices but all of this is done in quite a light-hearted, banter-y way so it doesn’t feel heavy going or depressing.
I love the approach Lou Sanders takes to mental health, spirituality and sex positivity in this book. It is clear that mental health is really important to her and I love the time she gives to the topic as well as the honesty about her own experiences in this book - all done with the intention of showing there is no shame to struggling with mental health; in fact it’s completely normal. I think this is a powerful takeaway from this book.
My reflection however is that although the author deals with difficult topics from her own life in this account, the humour sometimes acts as a way to gloss over some of these so I didn’t feel like I’d fully got to know her and the impact some of these things have had on her life.
This was an enjoyable memoir. I think fans of Dolly Alderton’s writing would enjoy this book.
TW: alcoholism, sexual assault
The writing has great flow and was easy to follow.
Lou Sanders gives an honesty account of her joys, strengths, mistakes and choices through a humorous lens. Some serious topics are covered in this book and as a reader, you are left with no doubt about some of the regrets or consequences of the author’s life choices but all of this is done in quite a light-hearted, banter-y way so it doesn’t feel heavy going or depressing.
I love the approach Lou Sanders takes to mental health, spirituality and sex positivity in this book. It is clear that mental health is really important to her and I love the time she gives to the topic as well as the honesty about her own experiences in this book - all done with the intention of showing there is no shame to struggling with mental health; in fact it’s completely normal. I think this is a powerful takeaway from this book.
My reflection however is that although the author deals with difficult topics from her own life in this account, the humour sometimes acts as a way to gloss over some of these so I didn’t feel like I’d fully got to know her and the impact some of these things have had on her life.
This was an enjoyable memoir. I think fans of Dolly Alderton’s writing would enjoy this book.
TW: alcoholism, sexual assault
August 16, 2023
“Honest discussion is an antidote to shame, and it’s the only way to garner change.”
Anyone who loves British comedy will probably recognise Lou Sanders. She was the winner of season 8 of Taskmaster, and has been a guest on such shows as Would I Lie To You and 8 Out Of 10 Cats. She’s a funny gal, is what I’m saying.
So, I was sort of blown away by how harrowing parts of this memoir were. Her voice shines through so clearly on the page, and she definitely owns her past mistakes and missteps. I loved following her on her journey of self-discovery and recovery.
This was laugh out loud funny in parts, but there is always a sinister undertone cutting through it. It never goes fully maudlin, and it was just lighthearted enough to not feel like a slog. There are some trigger warnings that I was not expecting, but I’m glad were addressed, from underage alcohol abuse, to sexual assault, to the crippling sense of shame that follows.
Told in short vignettes, Lou never shied away from owning up to her mistakes, which I find admirable.
I will say that this will not be for everyone. The way it’s written is quite silly in parts, and I know that some people will be expecting more of a comedy than a melodrama. It definitely felt a bit unhinged in places, but overall I enjoyed it.
Fans of Dolly Alderton, or Jennette MdCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, I would encourage you to check this out!
Thank you to Lou Sanders and Blink Publishing for the ARC. What’s That Lady Doing will be published 17th August 2023. As always, this was an honest review.
Anyone who loves British comedy will probably recognise Lou Sanders. She was the winner of season 8 of Taskmaster, and has been a guest on such shows as Would I Lie To You and 8 Out Of 10 Cats. She’s a funny gal, is what I’m saying.
So, I was sort of blown away by how harrowing parts of this memoir were. Her voice shines through so clearly on the page, and she definitely owns her past mistakes and missteps. I loved following her on her journey of self-discovery and recovery.
This was laugh out loud funny in parts, but there is always a sinister undertone cutting through it. It never goes fully maudlin, and it was just lighthearted enough to not feel like a slog. There are some trigger warnings that I was not expecting, but I’m glad were addressed, from underage alcohol abuse, to sexual assault, to the crippling sense of shame that follows.
Told in short vignettes, Lou never shied away from owning up to her mistakes, which I find admirable.
I will say that this will not be for everyone. The way it’s written is quite silly in parts, and I know that some people will be expecting more of a comedy than a melodrama. It definitely felt a bit unhinged in places, but overall I enjoyed it.
Fans of Dolly Alderton, or Jennette MdCurdy’s I’m Glad My Mom Died, I would encourage you to check this out!
Thank you to Lou Sanders and Blink Publishing for the ARC. What’s That Lady Doing will be published 17th August 2023. As always, this was an honest review.
August 6, 2023
You never know what events that have shaped a person and in this memoir we learn a lot about the travesties that have befallen Lou Sanders, some that have been out of her control. Others have been of her own making and she doesn’t shy away from that. Within the pages are many dark subjects and this may be too overwhelming for some readers as this isn’t the type of book you would expect. But this does seem to be an honest look at her life. A think a lot of people will pick up this book because of her TV appearances and be disappointed that it’s not crammed full of laughs, I know I was. But there is a deeper story here that Sanders wants to share with us all.
The chapters are short so it’s easy to dip in and out of, but I found the pages with the chapter headings/pearls of wisdom, superfluous.
I received an early copy from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for a review.
The chapters are short so it’s easy to dip in and out of, but I found the pages with the chapter headings/pearls of wisdom, superfluous.
I received an early copy from the publishers via NetGalley in exchange for a review.
July 21, 2023
I'm sorry to say that I just couldn't connect to this at all. Not really sure why its been written, the purpose of it. Just felt like reading someone's diary bragging about their teenage and early 20s drunk and drug stories.
Couldn't stand the lol at the end of sentences, felt like lazy writing.
Some topical, and sensitive topics in this which could help women but felt that got lost in the lols and the booze.
I'm not the right reader for this unfortunately.
Couldn't stand the lol at the end of sentences, felt like lazy writing.
Some topical, and sensitive topics in this which could help women but felt that got lost in the lols and the booze.
I'm not the right reader for this unfortunately.
August 1, 2023
I'm sorry to say that this book just didn't sit with me. I am a fan of Lou's comedy, but I struggled to connect to the format, and the anecdotes sort of felt a little like the ravings of an unhinged person.
I think this may suit the an audio book told in Lou's own voice for comedic timing and delivery.
I think this may suit the an audio book told in Lou's own voice for comedic timing and delivery.
August 18, 2023
Very likable voice and some brutal honesty
August 22, 2023
Lou is hilarious and a lot of great life lessons in this book!
August 23, 2023
Really good listen, easy and funny but deals with a darkness within her life too. I really recommend- and I loved listening to Lou read it herself.
May 14, 2024
Written in such a ridiculously likeable voice, it would be hard not to love it! Also enjoyed the balance of humour combined with some pretty deep topics/anecdotes too
August 13, 2024
Funny and brilliant coming of age romp
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews